Swap

For years, my mom and her immediate family have been stuck in deeply ingrained patterns of dysfunction that are hard not to notice, though if they are openly observed and remarked upon, they freak out to prevent revelation, which is part of the abusive cycle they remain trapped in. It's heart-breaking to watch sometimes, because like children who want candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I know that their bad choices will only make them sicker through my continued neglect. And just like I know that all those pop-culture movies contributing to deliberately false ideas about real American life that we know aren't true (just like I know that people in India do not break out into Bollywood-type skits every time someone gets engaged, funny as that might in the entertainment world), I know that they argue with me because they fear committal to a state mental institution, like old horror movies filmed in black-and-white.

They don't realize that those abusive types of hospitals are a thing of the past, because they fear healthcare, too, just like my mother's youngest sister hides her irrational phobias over rain and storms, because she knows it's another symptom of her psychoses. It was in this manner that my mother and her family hid the worst of their sicknesses behind socially acceptable hobbies like cleaning and eating and shopping, because they provide easier cover than drinking and smoking, which they mistakenly believe are more open manifestations of mental illness and the stress that produces.

Of course, their weirder addictions simply made our households much more stressful to reveal to anyone outside of our family group (which was part of the point), forcing me and my Gen-X friends into old patterns of drinking and smoking to relieve the inner tension cause by their abusive patterns, which put us right back to where our Depression-Era grandparents lived: at hip, flapper-type bistros full of smoky jazz and fun, which was not at all what my mom and her sisters wanted. They can't smoke, or drink, or have fun easily, because their nervous tensions make them feel nauseous all the time, especially when they don't take their medications. 

My youngest aunt is so "pukesy-poo" (they make up cutesy names to hide the root cause of their anxieties), that as kids, we knew she'd get sick from sitting in a rocking chair that moved slightly (so we'd sneak up behind her to tilt the chair back-and-forth, making her squeal), or from hearing about someone vomiting (so we'd imitate puking sounds with our grandpa), or it might be that she simply she wasn't sipping from a straw the stomach-calming sodas that she's addicted to.

In was in this way that my mom's middle sister became a hardcore food addict, with an addiction so severe that she has to attend weekly group meetings and pay out big bucks to some unhealthy food company that "has to" feed her controlled portion-sizes of chemically-laden food that will surely kill her off someday soon, like my mom's Aspartame-addicted youngest sister. They haven't actually conquered anything in this world. If anything, their silent generation of "Do-Nothings" have created even worse patterns with harder addictions, like hoarding and binge eating, or simulating a "shopper's high" through a covertly athletic "runner's high", making it extremely difficult to diagnose and treat, which is also part of the point.

One year, my infamously large "Moose Dog" accompanied me to my mom's eating-disordered sisters' house in upstate Westchester with me, staying overnight in her basement on Christmas Day Eve, with the understanding that he and I would leave early the next morning for my mom's place in Rockland after staying the night, because I wanted access to her immediate back yard for bathroom runs that are easier when no else is around, like we did whilst in the country. She was fine with that, and so throughout the day, as other family stopped by, I went up-and-down the basement stairs to the rest of the house, periodically checking in on my still-young Malamaute.

At some point during the day, Ted had figured out how to open up sealed plastic containers to gorge himself sight unseen, because on a food run to the garage, my cousin (her son) was looking in the garage and then the basement room for something, while I held Ted's leash and looking on. He stuttered a bit at first while he looked for something his mom had asked for, because where some such holiday food had been stored were the missing Christmas cookies that my aunt and her "fat friends" (the women who join her in her periodic over-eating that's related to their disorders), trade with each other under the cloud cover of a traditional church cookie swap.

You see, Ted masterfully uncapped (without marring them) the tops of each container with Christmas cookies, eating every single one of them, and it was at least three large flat containers that can hold sheet-pan sized cakes. Hilarity ensued, as first my other cousin (her second son), and then my aunt joined us in the mysterious search for her cookie-swap cookies. We all laughed about it, as Ted reposed regally upon on the cool tile floor near the basement door, in a tellingly calm Zen-like fatness, well-satisfied with his holiday endeavors, unruffled as he was because he successfully masterminded this quest for food done on the sly, because winter is coming!! Feed me fat!! FAT!!!

But that's not why my cousins were laughing. They loved Teds' "taking one for the team", because each and every year my cousin's suffer with this gaggle of crazy females and their weird cookie obsession, because even more than that, they bake poorly on purpose to hurt one another with. Addicts don't eat food because it tastes good like we do. No, the point behind their cooking is to make the drug that they need to get high (taste, flavor, and skill aside), and that's exactly why my cousins will always remember one very special dog who ate all the food that sucked, forever putting him in their memory favorably, because your food addiction is no match for my dogs, ladies.  
You're not even as good as one of my animals, woman.

Static

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_%28video%29

In every human family there are unhealthy people, and then there's me. In contrast to my sick family members, I stand out like there's a permanent spotlight shining down upon my head at all times, which there kind of is. I can't help it. I notice things like people, places, and, well, the things that are around me, which is unnerving to a lot of people with serious mental disorders. After the state psychiatric institutions were deregulated in the late 70s, herds of brain disordered people have littered our neighborhoods like the societal indigents they are, without ever choosing to be that. I feel sympathy for them, but not much, because when I was growing up, me and my friends were terrorized by people too fucking sick to care about us, with absolutely nothing to replace those scary old psychiatric wards of yore, except the anger of an entire generation of children who served as the "X" marking the spot where healthy parents should be. We had none.

And so we began a lifelong crusade of speaking about our lives openly: first to one another, and then to a wider audience in the real world, as wild and different as the frightened and totally unmedicated people we were forced to spend somewhat intimate company with at family gatherings, not that seriously sick people can handle normal human relationships, like, say, that of greeting your cousin in an appropriate manner. Instead of recognition or awareness, we got weird kids who stood facing empty corners, or they sat staring into space for hours while stuffing their faces with food, faces twisted into grotesque expressions that are the opposite of genuine hunger, like Gorgons from ancient mythologies past. Our job was to ignore them as best as we could, while normalizing the oddball behavior of the mentally ill among us, lest they notice our healthily flushed cheeks fresh from outdoor exercise, or our bright eyes that shine from good eating.

It was what we knew how to do: pretend that our cousins were perfectly fine, even when it was obvious that they weren't, but what else could we do? Put them away? My mom and dad were friggin' nuts, but they were also brilliant at times, too. Yeah, my paternal cousin from Brooklyn was a lying thieving drunk, but he's also one of the quickest, sharpest, funniest comedians I've ever met in my life. They were not all bad, certainly not horrible enough to toss into some prison-like hellhole of a Halloween haunted house, like those abandoned buildings that litter this country's poor history with our collective psychological past. Some people have disorders they can manage with professional help on an outpatient basis and some can't, but what we all agreed upon was that prison is no place for people with schizo-affective disorders. They need reliable adult supervision and affordable medicine, but if you've ever tried to reason with a hallucinating schizophrenic on a ten day bender, you know how bad other people's psychoses can be, especially if you aren't the knife-wielding maniac.

So that's what we did; we tried to lives our lives alongside seriously under-treated patients because there was no alternative to the horrors of the penal institutional system, until today. My cousin John A. was so bad, though, that there was no amount of explaining we could do to cover for him. We told friends and distant relatives visiting from out-of-town that he was merely "autistic", when that was clearly not the case, but what else could we do? My uncle barely managed on his own, and his ex-wife is an alcoholic nurse. There wasn't anyone to turn to. My uncle has successfully raised two completely abnormal and utterly dysfunctional adults who cannot pass as normal in society, leaving us with the burden of coping with them as best as we can, while they take and take and take from us without ever giving back, creating a deficit so brutally one-sided, that each and every one of us in my immediate family have borne the brunt of their irresponsibility.

My uncle has a very small business that's staffed with one lifelong employee, a man so sick, he has completely filled up his apartment with stuff like any decent hoarder would, living out of my uncle's office space by taking showers where he can and eating off of a hot plate, and this is what passes for "legal counsel" in my mother's family. This, after he almost bankrupted my grandparents so he could not work any job while attending lengthy law school exams and numerous tries at the Bar Exam, living at home like my mom's youngest sister has all of her life, until both of my grandparents passed. My cousin spent hours at our house in New City flicking light switches on and off, until we worried he would break them. Ditto with the microwave and the doorbells. And just like horror movies of the day, he would stare for hours at the t.v. set in the basement. At what, we had no idea, until one afternoon when we were emboldened by a group of us, we asked him: "Hey! What are you staring at?"

Do you know what he told us? He told us that was listening to the voices coming out of the set that spoke to him in between the static. Fuck...that would be why he had answered "nothing" in a flat monotone to our previous lone inquiries, because he's clever enough to know what not to say to us, as if someone had coached him about "passing" under keen observation. And do you know what he does today, readers? He works for the U.S. Department of Taxation, otherwise known as "The IRS". Yep, he compulsively fills out numeric data day after soul-crushing day, until his supervisors finally gave him another column of numbers to fill in, after slowly transitioning from part time to full time work over the years, with lots of great benefits that we all pay for as U.S. citizens. He does the job that a mindless computer can do better every day of the week, and he does it with your life and taxes on the line . How's that for a case of the Halloween "Heebie Jeebies"?

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heebie-jeebies_%28idiom%29

20 Years After Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Crack the Whip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://becauseisaidiwould.com/

Genetics

Pamphlets and prayer, time and money, love and loss, pain and hope.

For years I've thought about oft-touted "stigmatized" diseases, (like alcoholism and drug addiction), as genetic conditions like mental illness, often incurring in the patient at the same time they struggle with substance abuse. It's a phenomenon I've seen up close and personal for most of my life. Mental illness, like cancer, does not discriminate, and so it goes with addictive disorders, which lead me to ask myself, this: if these various conditions and afflictions are so common among humanity, why haven't we properly addressed them?

I know all the usual arguments: "Oh, you don't know how bad it is when I reveal my illness to someone, the prejudice and the bias, blah, blah, blah", words typically spoken by a generic human to me, someone of the most rarest ethnic minority on the planet! I know true marginalization, and watching some random headcase get drunk is certainly not a new or atypical experience for me. Does it sound something like that? Yeah, well folks look at me like I have three heads most days of the week. I'm not exactly "run-of-the-mill" in human.

Most reluctance regarding addictions are due to the person alone, something so well known, it forms the basis of every type of self-help plan, and there are so many of them: AA for alcohol, NA for drugs, sex addiction counseling, Weight Watchers for food junkies, Gamblers Anonymous, it goes on and on and on. Whatever weird "jones" you got, someone else has it, and that's part of it, too. I interacted with some guy online who swore to me that he has a real fetish for frumpy down coats, when he saw a picture of me wearing one in a head-to-toe winter outfit that's common around here, which I then linked back to mental illness and the penchant the disturbed have for unique weirdness, often adopting S&M practices for their shock value. Shockingly, he did not reply and has (surprise, surprise) since stopped following me online.

On any given day. The Dr.Phil show is filled with kooks of varying degrees who have honed their lurid recovery tales over the years, auditioning for a spot on t.v., and finally landing that big audition by appearing on the show with their beleaguered, exhausted families, broke and in tears, in serious need of a vacation and expensive healthcare. Two of the more serious bipolar cases I have met in recent years admitted to their love of hammy bad acting, using their disorders for entertainment value by carefully honing their lies in front of a live (and trapped) studio audience that is the group therapy session.

Instead of feeling the "shame" they so often speak of publicly, it is, in fact, often the exact opposite dynamic in effect: they desperately want our attention, and the more beautiful the human, the more lengths said kook goes to invent a tale of disease and horror. Trust me, I know, though in truth, they never really succeed with me, versed as I am since childhood in the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King. Yeah, nice try, kid. Maybe next time!

In fact, since I've returned home, me and my friends and neighbors openly discuss our habits, tightly linked as a community as we are, because we share a lot of connectors in our shared genetic history. An upstairs neighbor and I talked one warm summer night when I was on the porch trying to catch a breeze about his many years sober, as I revealed my family's struggle with the disease, no tension or static between us; only understanding and empathy. Heck, I knew kids in Rockland County who bottomed out, left home, went abroad for awhile, and then came back from rehab to graduate, all before our junior year in high school.

Same with my mailman, in a chance meeting one morning at my front door: his many years sober, the hearing disability I inherited from my father, and the link between genetics and populations with food allergies, like Asians may have with dairy products and/or flush from alcohol, Native Americans and their inherent toxicity from alcohol due to a lack of the proper enzyme for breaking down our country's mostly European types of fermented drinks, and my stepmothers' serious case of Celiac's disease, born of her upstate Dutch/German family's rural farm diet of meat and potatoes for many, many years, in relative isolation from the rest of the world, including "The City" and it's highly varied cuisine. Uh, yeah you can't break down wheat gluten! That tends to happen over long periods of time and a lack of proper exposure to different types of food groups.

After me and my mailman conquered that huge intellectual hurdle of inherited human diseases in under five minutes flat, (it was a chill, brisk day and he had a full route to attend to), we moved on easily to other topics like his wife's training diet and athleticism, because I also follow a strict diet when I train in MMA. We pondered why such a thing as genetic disorders are still so taboo, leaving off the conversation for some other time. Perhaps today is a good day to end it.

And so it went that a week or two later, I spotted two lost souls "pamphleteering" outside our grocery store. One man had the wide, red-eye stare of a crazy ex-con, and upon closer examination of the brochure, I was right yet again! Turns out his father started the program in desperation of his son's constant incarcerations from drug and alcohol offenses, as is so often the case. Addicts do not belong in jail. It's like sending someone who hoards to a garage sale with $100 burning a hole in her pocket. Bad news will come from it! Same with the rather stern-looking and stiff young man standing next to him, who briefly chatted with me while not moving, breathing, or blinking his eyes once, because he was heavily medicated: their addictions are one just part of a much larger equation, one that includes mental illness and secret family dysfunctions, and that is the real reason why people don't talk openly about their problems: they know we know.

My ex-husband (soon to be annulled in connection to me, because of his inability to have an adult, mature marriage with his amount of disabilities): it isn't just the alcohol or drugs, or his Native American heritage, or his supposed "stupidity" that comes out whenever it is convenient for him to get out of trouble. It's his mental illness that he refuses to treat, because his psychotic behavior is the lone "power" he feels he can wield against healthy people the most, that he is so prejudiced against, much like his refusal to disclose. He feels that this is his one big "win" against me, by refusing to speak the words any person who cares about their health and those of their loved ones would say out loud or in written form: "Hi. My name is David, and I'm an alcoholic." ("Hi, David" , from the group in response. He goes on to speak some more.). "I'm also a drug addict and mentally ill. I suffer from manic depression that I refuse to treat, because I can use it to hurt my friends and family."

That's what all his time-wasting bullshit of a life comes down to, really; that one small disclosure above in bold, as I typed it out above. Those are the words he chooses to keep deep down inside, get sick from, and eventually die from. It's how he wastes his entire life. Instead of withholding these "magic" words from me, words that were supposed to make me afflicted, he stuffs them back down, choking on their toxic power, making himself ever sicker by it. But, not me. Not ever me. Never me. He has been in and out of rehab and jail many times over.

And so, on this day in Januray: Amen to you who are afflicted and seek solace in The Lord. May you find the peace and help that you need as we humans do, who all have afflictions to tend to in this life that is imperfect while on this planet. May you find solace and soothing in the arms of Our Blessed Lord. Amen to you who have the courage to live. Break the cycle of abuse, my friends. Rise above it! I want you to win and be strong, to become like I have, through the constant care, tending, work, and patience that has made me who I am. I await you on the other side with open arms, too.

Contract-Free Living

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract 

Like most Americans, I suffered from the effects of economic fallout in the usual ways: creative firing strategies at the office designed to hide layoffs with phony blame-filled situations so as to avoid expensive wrongful termination suits, actual money mismanagement from poor business, and extremely bad planning. You know, the usual stuff when times get hard and people get shifty and desperate. You want to see humans at their worst? Restrict resources, then watch people go ape-shit scrambling after a few bucks. It's vile nasty stuff, but such is the part of human nature that a money town like "Gotham" attracts, not least of which are it's shark-y natives, which is nothing new to a girl like me. You should meet my family.

Suffice to say, I was thrust back into an extremely low budget lifestyle, those dreaded waters where many try to swim and just as many fail. I'm a great swimmer, though, so for those times when I drop down,  I'm never fully inept or incompetent; such are the strengths of my naturally inherited gifts. But it does take me to some funky places with some very sharp contours, and more on that later. Be careful out there, y'all!

So, what's a gifted artist and writer with expert publishing skills to do? You're reading one of my "hobbies" on my "free" time right now. But other than this, I get serious about adhering to a disciplined lifestyle, which includes keeping a running ledger of expenses deducted from a set amount I have on hand that I saved. And that's it, my big secret about how I do it: basic working class know-how, without any weirdo shit. No drug running, no guns, no thieving, no stealing, no begging, no bartering that's loosely called "dating", or any other immoral behavior of any kind, in any way, shape, or form. It's all above-the-board, totally legit living. No hooker stuff happening!

Yeah, but, how exactly do I do it? Well, it takes thought and a lot of experience. When I couldn't afford a pricey "smart" phone anymore, I converted the device into a smaller version of an iPad that I still use today as a music player, calendar, camera, to-do list, and public Wi-Fi enabled Internet surfer, which can also serve as a desktop publishing device in a pinch (with very tiny type: good thing I have excellent vision). That's savvy companies pay big $$ for. I'm also not some gadget addict who "has to" have the latest electronics in order to feel relevant or hip, simply because I do not use tools for purely ego-driven satisfaction. In other words, I'm  woman about it, and not some big whiny baby. I couldn't survive thinking that way.

Next, I got a cheap no-contract phone that I load with minutes as I need them, which pretty much guarantees that I never go over budget, and that I have a built-in mechanism to control the length of my conversations. Since I pay for each and every minute, I am quite aware of time passing by. Try it sometime; it works. It's "Pay-as-you-go" for the 21st century, without getting locked into a loaded contract that gives a company undue power over me, my life, and my finances, by building in hard-to-find features that allow lawyers to operate hand-in-glove with banks, making your accounts vulnerable to anyone who has the time and resources to drain it, at their say-so. Uh uh. I don't think so. Why should you be penalized by a phone company for dropping a pricey plan because you lost your job?! Makes no sense.

Next up, that all-powerful feelgood medium, The Holy TV Set, of such prominence to society that's it's placed in the center of our biggest rooms. I had an ex who was so addicted to t.v., he "had to" have one with cable, (and my old, pre-flat screen era t.v. with basic free t.v. would not do) so he forced one on me by saying it was my "Christmas" present, like an avid bowler who buys a bowling ball for his wife as an "anniversary" gift. When he turned violent on me, crashing uninvited in a drunken stupor on my couch that I came home to after a very long, hard, backstabbing day at work, he asked me to decide quickly which of his purchased items in my home he preferred I trash, in response to my break-up with him and subsequent ousting from my life and my apartment. I chose the big air conditioner he also couldn't "live" without, over his Almighty T.V., and that's what he kicked in.

But he is not like me, and he never will be. When I can't afford cable, I just go without, like I did in college, or when I'm in a tight spot financially. Feeling strapped because of the latest HD t.v.? Get a digital antenna with a digital signal converter, and now you're watching basic t.v. channels for free, just like me. No bills, no contracts, and no expensively lawyered-up financial devices to get what's left of your money that you need to buy food. You can do the same thing with Internet usage. Buy a low cost Wi-Fi enabled device, put bandwidth on it as you need or can afford, and voila: you're surfing the net without Big Brother watching you. You're welcome :)

Want to see the latest DVD movie release? Check it out for free from your local library, just like I do. My library is also a community center with timed Internet access from a bank of public computers, free yoga and Tai Chi lessons, free blood pressure readings every month, periodic blood drives, story time for kids, arts and crafts for them, too, art openings....you name it. They're always adding on stuff. There's no need for all this static over things and objects. These things do not own you; they are not more important to you than your fellow humans, so break free from these chains that bind you unnecessarily, because I want you to live in peace, my brothers and sisters. Amen to you.

Weird Trash

One of my neighbors went through his stuff, to sort it out before moving across the country, which is always a great idea. It's a great idea anytime, actually. You never know what you'll find (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-vintage-tee.html), 
and clutter is a real productivity killer, so, barring any deeply psychological hoarder-type issues that require strong, daily doses of anti-psychotics and almost constant, round-the-clock therapy, take a deep breath, open up a box, and just start. Call it "Feng Shui" if you want to make it sound extra exotic, like some Ancient Chinese secret.

"Hello, invisible ghost dog!"

Anyway, my neighbor was busily sorting through his stuff one day when I was throwing out my regular, dull, every day garbage, and we had a good, brief exchange about his brother's taxidermy gift, and his older model (but still bitchin') Harley bike. The next day, I found the remnants of his cleaning in the garbage pails, which I photographed. 

This is a "negative", or "film strip".

Don't wait for death or jail time: do it now. What have you got to lose, other than junk? Trust me, your tasteless knickknacks are worth jack shit, man, even on eBay, if you can figure out how to do that. Lose the baggage, and join us free people in society. What are you waiting for? A long holiday weekend?! JUST DO IT. DO IT NOW. Thank you.