One-Two Punch

Before I graduated from the publishing industry to become a totally broke independent, I honed my repartee skills on a viciously left-wing website that was popular with a devoted lesbian crowd while I worked a day job as an Art Director, but first I needed the right avatar for my online persona: a "front" for my actual intellectualism as a genuine media professional working in the big city among so many striving, pseudo-literary poseurs.

I found the perfect image in an actress whose breakthrough part had been playing it straight in a thinly-masked gay role about a female boxer from the 'hood. Because I was training hard in MMA at the time, my sports lingo was freshly dyke-friendly, which dovetailed nicely since the "out" actress had practically crashed her car on the set of a popular t.v. show with her also-drunk girlfriend in the passenger seat. She was dysfunctional enough for me to pass muster with the bullish traffic cops on the site. It got me "in" with their gatekeepers, as I began hunting the board during the annual summer slowdown that's our industry standard. I was so good at it, in fact, that I became a "starred commenter"; meaning, out of all the responses their articles generated, mine would be at the top of the list as a preferential read.

It was incendiary. As I won every conversation, the trolls went wild with bloodsport. The message boards were so hot that the editors, in a fit of diva pique, decided to remove them from the article's features one slow Monday morning, as their entire audience (myself included) wrote them the painful truth: our sparring meant to be a sideline to their "ChickLit" main event was far better than any trite, canned copy a bunch of easily-programmed drones could ever hope to write.

Their collective online works were such robotic, politically-correct pieces of crap, that any ass-kissing, first-year student at a women's college could regurgitate the tepid curriculum of an average "Gender Studies" class on their site. Their supposedly select cadre of special guest writers and accompanying editors didn't have an original point of view in the entire pretentious place, but I did. I was so unnerving to the home team that I earned a "rep" that carried me all the way here, to you: my beloved, faithful audience living in the land of the free and the home of the brave, in an actual writer's paradise that's "The Promised Land". Thanks for sticking with it. <Ding ding!> "HERE. WE. GO!"

Winston

By now you should know that compulsively hoarding "cat ladies" and most "volunteer" pet rescue kooks are totally fucking nuts, because they use animals for their own selfish healthcare needs instead of going to see a doctor regularly, and these bitches can definitely afford to see a rich white psychiatrist any day of the week. Ya read me? My own particular obstacle course of "fucked-up white person" dysfunction came in the form of an unstable Jewish/WASP from Connecticut who had insane parents with money to spoil her rotten, just so they could avoid icky things like "parenting" on the daily, which is a big "no-no" in demented, wealthy, corrupt, country circles that worship money and extreme dieting as a panacea to manic-depression and suburban alcoholism, best done indoors and away from legitimate authority figures who don't have help on the payroll as the ticket price to their admission to a better life for their families.

Lisa was a typical selfish bitch working unnecessarily in publishing, is what I'm sayin' to you. Much like our Napoleonic publisher's bitch of a wife, she told me early on that she didn't need to work for money, she just didn't like being bored. Right....same! We had nothing in common and she knew it, so, just to fuck with me as a better-looking genius, she pretended she didn't know I was working in the same room as her, choosing to signify her utter distaste for the genuine working class ethnics of native New York like me by shutting the office lights to the studio room while I still sat in it, because she was threatened by my superior work ethic, too, in addition to my good looks. You know: a total fucking bitch among many.

She was also one of the worst book designers I'd ever met, though as an average white Baby Boomer, that wasn't especially exceptional to me, either. I knew a lot of dumb rich fucks from publishing. When I finally told her that I noticed she was shutting the lights on purpose, she giggled and blushed like a crazy toddler caught stealing cookies from the cupboard before dinnertime, and then she quickly walked away embarrassed, down the short hallway and out the door without saying a word to anyone. Like any other asshole in business, she pretended she couldn't "hear" me, even though she had the money to buy two hearing aids for herself and I didn't, which didn't give her quite the edge she hoped for, because she's also stupid and slow.

In addition to nursing her long list of deliberately untreated disorders and serious health conditions as leverage and the occasional workplace weapon (where it's completely inappropriate to do so because, like, we work with books as objects), she had absolutely no conversation skills whatsoever. So, within record time, I pushed through my obligatory "too low" job title that was used as a justification to underpay me my true worth (as yet another sign of disdain telegraphed to me that was glaringly obvious), to take command of an imprint without a real leader that became a big money-maker for the largest book retailer in the country, because Lisa was too incompetent to lead effectively. Within my first week on the job, every freelance designer, on-the-job contractor, pre-press artist, printer, typesetter, service provider, ex-employee, as well as all of their current employees, told me the exact same thing. 

Oh....great. Plus, Marie, she hid her deafness from us on purpose! That was my first "work lunch" with the young Millennials working there. Their treat. Gee, kids, thanks for cluing me in! They wanted to tell me that they didn't know about it, because they didn't hire her. The publisher did! Okey dokey! Yeah, I got that. Thanks. Every dick move you could think of, they threw at me, which I expertly dodged just as quickly. Lisa continued to avoid me passively-aggressively through a thick haze of Valium and anti-depressants, only moving about the office in a creaky, stiff, robotic way when she needed more coffee from the office kitchen. She ignored everybody like it was part of her job. That was their big "Art Director" on-site, when I got there: a bitch too crazy to speak normally in "human". Some communication expert.

It wasn't exactly a "hostile" takeover on my part, in the wake of her almost complete mental and physical absence within the company, but crazy bitches do what they do anyway, regardless of my active participation or bodily presence. That didn't stop her from trying to hang her hat on my hook as part of her poor work survival skills, and she told me that every few weeks, too. "You know, I'm trying to get you fired", she'd say to me with a half-lidded death-stare frozen onto her angry face. Yeah, bitch? How? You fucking suck. The only time she spoke to me was to try and give me orders, but like I mentioned, I'd already locked myself down tight with the other imprint in the house that she demeaned as, yep, too "lowbrow" for her to work on as a bargain book line. 'Kay, bitch.

The only time she brightened up at work was after I pinned a large colorful photo of my dog Teddy smiling up at me while walking in Prospect Park, with his cutely-colored collar of rainbow smiley faces prominently displayed. Oh! Now, I was a human fit for her to talk to! You have a dog! Uh, yeah. She could care less about me and my dog, but it unfortunately opened up the door to the only subject she actually cared about, her stupid fucking terrier, Winston. He was as average as she was, but it helped me get actual work-related information out of her if I just unlocked her artificially-sealed mouth with some loose doggie talk. What a fucking weirdo! Within weeks, everyone in the office visibly groaned whenever Lisa lisped at me in her overly-loud deaf accent, because it was like a sitcom beer-drinking game: how many times will this daft bitch repeat the same story over and over again? 

Oh, good. Winston, again, She was the dullest person I'd ever met, and her interior book layouts were as boring as she was, which is why we gave her old classics to re-design for the umpteenth time. Hard to screw that up, but she would, periodically, which caused Manufacturing to go ballistic and then ask me to prove her liability. Uh, what the fuck do yo do for me, exactly, besides ride my coat tails for a living? Fuck off! Pin her in a meeting on your own without my ammo, because you humps sure as shit don't give me anything to work with. You want a turn-coat, make your own, and don't you know, readers, without me they couldn't? It was so sad and pathetic, because she cost them so much fucking money with her errors, but the crazy old man still wouldn't fire her. He liked talking to an "older" woman! It was that fucked up, but who cared?

I was face-out on the shelves of every single B&N store in the world and online. I just didn't fucking need them. So, whenever we had to interact about work, I brought up her dip-shit dog, which got her talking to me, and then I waited for her to obsessively repeat the exact same story back to me. When there was an opening conversationally, I took it, as the leading creative adult working in the company. But not before she first told me the exact depths to her depravity, as a way to be colorful with her rather generic roots. First, her parents met in an insane asylum (OOO!) when her dad worked as the orderly helping her resident mom with the bigger mental patients needing subduing. Uh huh...that sounds like a good story...and then it would end.

Ditto with her "dog rescue" work. She knew I got badly hurt in a walking accident with my giant Mal. Did the bitch care? Nope! She reiterated to me that she once again wanted me fired. Anyway, she doesn't work with those kinds of animals. Ew! She was offended by the very suggestion, as well as the poor, ailing, elderly people who tried to give her other types of similar terriers to place in better homes. She didn't give a fuck. Not her job! Anyway, they had legal issues with "pet adoptions". But, that didn't stop her from giving a face-eating dog to a healthy young couple with small children! Did she tell them? "Oh, I don't have to do that. It wasn't his fault he was hungry!" You fucking cunt. Okay, so tell me about your dog. Was he a rescue dog? Oh, yes, and from a nice, rich, white gay couple of affluent men living in a beautiful downtown loft, too, which means he was treated really well. 

Yay! That's some sort of pride in something, I guess. But, did I know that she only did it because she lacked affection as a child? Excuse me? What the fuck did you just say to me? I'd do that to her when I wanted her to speak even louder, so the whole office could hear, thus sharing complicity with her obvious dysfunctions. Yell it, Lisa! And then she would. Out loud, in front of anyone. "My parents didn't touch me as child!" OH! What else? "I use dogs for affection because I lacked intimacy as a child! My parents are cold and emotionally distant." 

And there it was, my fellow excellent humans of Earth: an actual bitch-sized snare that caught me one very large, dumb, clueless kook in the wild office spaces of New York City. That's how you fight back without tricky employment lawsuits and illegal firings, with clearly documented cases of workplace harassment attached for good measure. Rainbow-colored and neatly packaged, too.


Dear crazy "cat ladies" and fellow "dog-whisperers" of the world, please take note: you will be phased out by real warriors in the near future, but we do accept cash, checks, and money orders. Just not you. Your homework for today is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_law_enforcement

Demon Hunter

One of the more salacious facets of our Holy Roman Catholic faith is exorcism, so much so that Hollywood has grown fat and rich with its telling and re-telling over the years, almost in direct contrast with the intensely taut state that is demonic possession. It's not something I talked about during my office career, as sanitized places where the gossip can be about sex or drugs, but never about the evil that lurks around a generic-looking water cooler, but that's exactly what it was.

After reenacting countless work scenarios where every single card in the crazy deck was played for a host of sick people at work, it was the only explanation left to explain the suicides, mental illnesses, and violent psychosis I observed firsthand, as well as heard in the first person from other employees. You could feel it swirling around you, the way you can feel a house's soul as either empty and fraught, or lively and well (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2016/01/sick-house.html). It's the same thing with some office spaces and commercial buildings: if you immediately get a bad feeling (or very soon after), trust it.

In criminology, sometimes a gut instinct is the only thing a really good detective has, besides knowing the killer is guilty as fuck, because evidence is notoriously tricky to find, and that's what evil relies on. It was the only explanation that made sense to me after my years toiling for insane family businesses; that they thought they had "the drop" on better workers because they cheated. It was something my dad and I used to talk about openly with one another. He worked for a sick family in Pennsylvania (the one year we had lived, as a family, outside of the New York area) who had a solid business that didn't need tricks, but they skimmed off the top anyway, and for peanuts, too. If they made a million-dollar deal, then a thousand or a few hundred dollars would go missing. It was always petty cash.

And it was baffling to my father, because they were already rich and successful. I asked my dad why he didn't call the cops after figuring out their scheme, and he just muttered that "all good things come in time". He got a big payout as his severance for knowing about them, in a dramatic stand-off scene that enabled us to move into a house in suburban New York with our family dog. He just wanted out. I knew it was finally over when the head of the family (one son flipped on the brother and father to cop a plea) appeared on the cover of a famous American magazine, and it still sickens me to think about it to this day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rigas). 

Given his rough Brooklyn upbringing, my father already knew that the line between businessman and gangster could be a thin one. I think he was afraid they'd kill us, if he talked about it to anyone in the cable business. Besides the company, there were absolutely no signs as to how tight a grip the corruption of this wealthy family had over the other rich white men in town. We lived in a beautiful Victorian house we were very happy with, and the countryside was beautiful. I had my own room! Plus, we got the cutest little Samoyed puppy I'd ever seen in my life. Life was good. But, still, there was something. My mom asked one of the women in town to do a "house reading" for us, which, to the uninitiated, is gauging a living space for "good" or "bad" spirits. 

We were told that our house was "clear", meaning that if anyone had died there (and with a house that old, before funeral parlors and that sort of thing, dying at home came with the territory), they'd been happy, peaceful people who'd moved on easily. Oh good...we breathed a sigh of relief. That's good. And it was. We had a clay patch in the backyard, beneath a little ridge that led to a set of old train tracks we loved to explore together. As kids, we were instantly bumped up a grade for our innate New York street smarts and natural acuity (in rather stark comparison to the small-town folk), and we jumped into huge piles of autumn leaves in the fall that smelled of the richness of the earth. It taught me that good and evil can live right next door to each other, sometimes in very close proximity.

Let's leave it at that for now, as a sort of a beginner's primer to the (super)natural forces that exist around us, every single day. I couldn't wear a cross to work back in the day without getting hassled about it, (in yet another tale of workplace harassment that's actionable by law), and my life in the secular world has always danced around the natural one that I know to be true, but try telling that to deeply ignorant people who are afraid. Fear is a crippling emotion that feeds off bad juju (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juju), keeping its oppressors stuck in deeply ingrained patterns that can last for many years, often until death. And afterward.

Some say that "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger", but that's not what happens with evil. No, sometimes it soul-sucks at you real slowly, until you grow weaker and weaker, almost dead with its sickness. Doubt me? Well, I've survived brush-ups with a few witches (recently, too, with a deranged Hexe: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hexe), and as your favorite modern Fili (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fili), let me assure you: witchcraft isn't something that you just hand out once a year with Halloween candy. No, children, there are dark things to be afraid of that go bump in the night, and I'm here to tell it to you straight. Class is now in session.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/04/16/vatican-exorcism-course-draws-170-students-to-study-demonic-activity/

The One-Armed Bandit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit

The first day on my new job years ago came with a directive to take down one of the weird black-and-white "head-shots" from the company wall, for scanning into some brochure that expensively advertised their version of classics from English literature. They were ridiculously pompous about a rather simple business model, which was disseminated by my old work mentor who I ran into at an industry function, into one neatly condescending sentence: "Oh, right. They do domain-free stuff." It was so right-on, I instantly remembered why I found myself grateful years later for her stewardship as an apprentice.

Yeah! Basically, they had some compulsive low-paid editorial assistants work the annuls of public domain in the NYPL for previously-printed material that lapsed from its original legal copyright protection to become free for public usage. Of course, we still have to pull the material into something as beautifully cohesive as a finished bound book in this century using our technology, but that's essentially it: reprinting old works that they paid nothing for, as a company. 

The only real investment was upfront in the manufacturing process and labor costs associated with the edition's making, which means that they sold the book to B&N at a profit already, and yet, when I began with them, they had absolutely no profit-sharing programs available to their employees. They didn't even have a decent 401K for the employees to roll-over any of their older plan monies from other businesses into a retirement fund, but as their resident "Art Star", I guess they thought I wasn't supposed to know the business at all, even though their VP of Production and Design had already verified and tested my bona fides in New York City media, and they are real.

My first day was a complete set-up, because no sooner had I taken down the photo to scan, than I was immediately beset by the old publisher's crazy old wife, because their rabid Israeli-born receptionist played games with people all day long, and I guess she thought I was an easy mark for her. Uh uh. After she had her bitchy way with me over some uncommonly douchey photos fashioned after the portfolios of professional actors and most definitely not publishers, I ratted her out to the program manager who asked me to do it. He was a dick, too, so I watched their power struggle from the sidelines of yet another business I would pick apart to put back together properly. 

Another day at the office. Ho hum. But, the crazy old man's wife played a key part in their inabilities to handle their business well, because their family pockets always came first, and they married into their family those employees that they thought they could bait on the hook with a guaranteed steady income in uncertain times. It's the same old economic ruse that pulls the chain of every starving would-be artiste who gets their ass kicked by the city. They had a lot of out-of-towners and spoiled suburbanites in their small office, which culturally signified to me that their world was mine for the taking, and their overtly nasty behavior proved to me that they already knew it. 

After a few more exceptionally douchey encounters those first days, I got the message quickly. We don't like you: we need you. Okay, fine! I don't really care for any of you headcases, either. This is just a job to me, in your rented office space. My content belongs to me and my brain, and after the old man's bitch got her head ripped off that very first day, she stayed away from me on purpose. I'd hear her jabbering away to their crazy bitch of a receptionist (before she made her move as a false "frenemy" that I played to the hilt) about how to do it, too.

So, they gave me a lot of room for the practiced tactical strategy that I needed to clean up their imprint and own it through their insanely orthodox marketing bitch at B&N, a woman infamous in the industry for being a cold hard bitch. But, she wasn't me, so I played her, too. Eventually, they all figure it out. My program=my rules. No? You want more fucking money? Do it, bitch! It kept me hands-free for the first few years, until the wheels came off their secretary who dared to infiltrate my world by elbowing into it unbidden. People get hurt around warriors, know what I'm sayin', and she most certainly did. I wrecked her for anything else but rehab and a psych hospital forever.

The wife thought she was safe from me because of her husband's money, but I knew too well from my family that money comes and just as easily goes. She played evasive tight-lipped games with me when she was forced to be near me in physical proximity, thinking she was avoiding my careful scrutiny, and she was somewhat right. She's not really important enough as person (or a pampered Jewish housewife) for me to be outright concerned with her deviant behavior. She knew from her husband that messing with me carried a stiff price. Messing with me messed with their money, and they loved money really badly.

It bought them coveted committee seats on prestigious theater boards, so they could press their dip-shit daughter's work on people as some phoney "playwright", and she was a total bitch, too. She treated me like a copy machine once (ONCE), which landed her in her father's office for the next "hands off" speech. I also got their very own son put-out to pasture as bogus IT support who couldn't hack it in the real world of professional publishing, because I introduced our more sophisticated machines into their work-flow properly, and not as some fancy wonky sideline to entertain arrogant art fags with. He blew his lid after a a few months under my tenure, as I reoriented their work queue to be at my scheduling through my production manager, by dividing the workflow equitably between the two imprints. Done! Next!

She'd make scared small talk with me when she had to in the company kitchen or the bathroom, places where her obvious ignoring didn't work because it was too obvious a slight to me. I knew the crazy old man fired a lot of employees on the spot for no good reason because they are a family with serious mental problems, but as rich pseudo-intellectuals, their pomposity suited my purposes fine. The old man outlaid the cash I needed to perform and then out-perform them, which is the poser amateurs greatest fear: discovery.

Marlene would only speak to me in vague little mutterings made to simulate a doddering old lady, until the one day when her act actually took hold for real, because old age catches up with everyone. We had a brief exchange in front of her office, because I showed her how to attach a file for submission to some poetry contest for nobodies, and it wasn't even fresh: it was old stuff from the 60s, after her very first ejection from career life to mommyhood, which she must have chafed against as a pompous Baby Boomer Art Fag. She was the very last person I'd want for a parent, and you've read about my crew.

Turns out, I hadn't noticed the stiff arm of hers that she never used, and she was proud to show that off to me, as recognition of some sort of prowess on her part: "Oh, that's because I compensate so well that you don't realize it!", in a fake sing-song voice that marks a poor teacher who condescends to the very children who sit in front of them. Ah, that was her first ousting from real New York business, then. Okay. Over the next few years, she'd elaborate in small bits that she hoped I couldn't digest into a whole, but I did so anyway.

She told me a good bon mot after I helped her use the paper-clip thingy on her computer's PC-based email software to attach a file to an email (basic, bitch) so I could see that she could type well, too! Wasn't I impressed? Huh, so, yeah, how did you lose use of your arm? She knew by now that I grew up with a handicapped mother, and her MS trumps anything this poor old rich bitch has. Trust on that, peeps. She began speaking to me with her usual vaguely flute-voiced routine "Oh, you know....." No, I don't, and I looked right at her, which their disordered staff hated. More scrutiny, you see. "Well, I had a bout with breast cancer years ago...."

And? What? Bad surgery left you with no arm? That's a libel suit! Well, no....Okay, still no answer. Cough it up, bitch, I have work to do. She had very small time windows with me, by then. What happened? She thought she staved off discovery until today, when I write to you that the crazy old bitch didn't lose the use of her arm from a badly-done surgery years ago. No, that crazy old bitch had paralysis brought on by the "trauma" that must come from successfully surviving breast cancer, just like my mom and her two sisters did, sans limp arms. She had to back-off from me then, because her big winning story about survival was just that: bogus as any day-school business model I could've written in my old black-and-white notebook, back in the day. Booyah, bitch.

When you see disease in one limb, just look to the source. In this case, it was their very own family tree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder

How they did it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content

Where's your non-disclosure now, huh? Yeah, just as thought. Silence.

Gawker-Stalker

For many years I've been subject to almost daily stalking and harassment, both covertly and overtly done. Some of it's harmless, like the kids who come to see me at the library, but most of it's malicious: popular actors driving around town (or who happen to be conveniently filming nearby) seeking me out so as to copy my mannerisms for the purposes of selling copycat versions of me to the media (not gonna happen, so drop it), or those seeking to gain an insight into the mindset and habits of what they desperately want to be their personal Shakespeare that they can kiss up to, or once again, to rip me off (also not gonna happen), or disordered lesbians"on the nod" publicly and desperate for any kind of attention, or just your average everyday psycho with nothing better to do than harass beautiful women.

Envy has dogged me with its vicious shadow all of my life, which made me the warrior I am today, while happily causing extreme frustration among the local psychos seeking to hurt, with the unfortunate progression (for them) of making me into a human weapon who can crack open their weak jaws any time I want (thanks!), which would then unfortunately open up my family to lawsuits over medical bills perpetrated by your addicted watcher of drunk housewives off their meds (with all the hype over their misplaced sexual aggressions), combined with the rise of court t.v. shows and a proliferation of law firms that cater to the seeker of remuneration by any means possible. 

Our neighborhood nut-case has taken to using a cane whenever it's convenient for her to do so (like visits to Public Assistance, or pissing off a samurai), as a means of fobbing off the retaliation brought about by the physical attacks she instigates because, like any real nut-job, she's a total coward when it comes to facing the consequences of her abuse, which fits neatly into her well-observed psychological patterns.

I'm also watched secretively whenever I work off an Internet network anywhere in the world (which is just about all the time, because I work transparently), which was (as was intended) highly disturbing to me as a young single woman living and working alone, though after consulting a very savvy publishing player I'd known for years, I realized that I could take his advice and use abusive workplace peeping as my main media outlet for their aggressions, because according to him, that's part of what we do. Of course, as a relatively unstable head-case himself, his advice was always delivered in these pseudo-mentoring tones of condescension over my continued surprise about commonly occurring workplace abuses that he relishes as a bizarre part of "playing the game", over say, being masterful as an artist instead, but whatever.

I used their peeping to establish a strong underground media presence online, with loyal haters and well-meaning followers, in between my now-infamous cover designs submitted and taken on the sly over the same network violations (designs slyly rejected, too, as part of a group peeping protected in an employee manual for "managers" to do whenever they wanted to see our work on "their" equipment), through commenting on several well-known "gawking" media websites under an appropriate fighting pseudonym, so as to deliver blows during the day that I could audibly hear resonate throughout the small office space I masterfully directed. Whenever I made a comment online about bizarrely bitchy behavior openly displayed with overt symptoms of mental illness at work, with clever oblique references that my abusive co-workers couldn't sue me over but knew the references, nonetheless (haha, I can write better than the "pro's, too!), I could hear sharp intakes of breath (that was questioned, too, because I milked my "deafness" for strategy like the other art director did), followed by many pleasurable hours of manic ranting that had to be done sneakily under-breath, so as not to invoke the same obsessive managerial attention.

My old contact was right! Publishing is fun!! I should enjoy, it. His point was that I should feel "flattered" that people cared enough to harass me, but given his hatreds and pettiness as a rather generically unattractive designer, his point of view only went so far with me, which was part of the intent, too, because he flat out told me as an apprentice that he would cut off helping me at work and then hunt me openly in the industry, because he's threatened by talent. Oh. He also told me over a few cocktails we had next to my dojo that was getting media attention for launching the careers of several fighters into the then-exploding UFC (and what handy timing my training there was, too), that the teachers there looked "gay" (and I agreed that they kinda did, becauset homo-eroticism is built into the sport as a sales tool), in a classically offensive posture that I already knew.

He then told me a tale about one of his former design assistants, now the founder of Twitter (wow!) many years before he started the company and how rich he is, after selling out (which turned out to be a total lie), but not after he grilled me about my thoughts first. I told him the app seemed immature, stalker-ish, and for young people with ADD plus a severely limited word count, and that I hadn't yet figured out what to do with it as a new media, but that I had bookmarked an account with my name on it for future use. He laughed, and said that it sounded a lot his former assistant. It jarred a memory I had of him from years ago, after I contacted him during my re-entry into the world of New York City media. He's always an insanely trendy adapter of any new technology and indiscriminately so, so he can brag about waiting on line for hours to buy the latest gadget with a million other people who think, act, and buy just like he does. I'd find out during our last evening meal together at an outdoor restaurant popular at the time that he'd finally begun therapy in earnest and that he'd been officially diagnosed with adult ADHD, after years of office abuse and the obvious symptoms of a ten-minute attention span, with loyalties as fickle as a toddler at a playground, now on a Ritalin.

He'd told me about social media years before, though, fresh from out west as we walked around after work on a warm spring evening looking for a place to drink and eat that called out to us (we're both great city walkers), saying what fun it was and that I should hop on the bandwagon with them, because a guy in his design studio just "tweeted" (with handy new marketing lingo for teens and the "Peter Pans" who love them - yay!) that the blond guy from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" was having dinner at a cafe nearby. Uh, okay. So what? Millions of people were eating dinner in the city at the time, and then we passed by him as we walked by the outdoor cafe, which he then had to point out to me, too, because I don't notice "stars" unless they make a big show of harassing me, bringing me full circle to being right back here at a Rockland County library, where I work their sometimes silly media outlets; more gawking, and ever more stalking. Don't let that be you. Don't turn into some media tool made for marketing lies selling fake shit. You're better than that, and so am I.