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

Welfare Burger

True punk-rock spirit, as evidenced back in the day. Keep on it, man.

It's hard for our brothers and sisters around the world to tap into our common consciousness, beset as they are in this world by the woes cast upon them through continued war, famine, and injustice. That's why it's so important for us to speak up whenever we encounter wrong, difficult as they may be to do at times, because we often traverse the worst adversities when we are at our loneliest low points in life, but just like that old Christian poem "Footsteps"*, it just seems that way from the outside looking in. It is then when you are carried by The Lord Our G-d, as His Most Faithfully Beleaguered in Faith. As so often happens in my life, outsiders see one reality when in truth, it's the exact opposite of what they presume it to be, and that very deception is what leads them down the wrong path.

I meat a bleary-eyed Ecuadorean the other day on the street while he was waiting for the bus. I'd noticed him from the other side of the street before, because he stared at me like I was levitating across the sidewalk in front of his apartment building, instead of me hatted up and running an errand, sans makeup. In fact, when we crossed paths, I explained to him that I spend zero dollars ($0) on my appearance. But, but...he sputtered, swaying a little on his heels, I'm so pretty! Now that you've gotten to know me better, that sounds funny, right? Like, asking Jesus when he got his last pedicure while he walks around poorly shod in a pair of old worn sandals, but I was charmed by my new friend.

After all, that's what he was raised to believe in. Pretty girl = easy street, just add (+) one man. Done deal! Of course, that's an absurd way to think, because I'm not a prostitute for hire based solely on my looks (not that I mind beauty as a visual artist because it's part of my world) but in many American cultures, beauty is mythologized to such an extent (especially if you're a drunk, divorced, red-eyed Central American grandpa waiting on a cold Northern sidewalk for a public bus that's on slow rollin' country time), that talking to someone like me seems like, how can this be true ?! Oh, it be, brother man. I assure you of that, esse.

You see, when you're out there in the real world, you don't just get a small slice of pie from the same place over and over again (my G-d, the horror of that!), you eat "the whole enchilada" as they say, and that's exactly how me and my crew play this game called life: like it's winning just to be here, because we come across a lot of "walking dead" out there; bombed-out, brain-dead folks just wandering listlessly throughout their days, so unconscious and unplugged from the world as it exists, waiting to die. A nightmare...and so, when we see something we don't like, we say something, because speaking up is an action that leads to other actions, even if at first it's just misguided thoughts (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/06/say-something.html). It's all part of your training.

Most of my peers have already reached the type of early success that puts us in direct proximity to junior staff who need constant mentoring and teaching because we're tradespeople, and giving back to underlings is crafted into our lifestyles. I teach every day that I'm alive, even if it doesn't fit into your misconceptions about relegating learning to some far away classroom staffed by someone else, even though that someone else is probably someone I went to school with, here in New York, and I can also out-teach any day of the week. My creative hierarchies necessitated me into learning many many abilities so well just to stay competitive and on the job, that I can teach you in another language (in your native language, since you can't speak mine), using whatever tools you have handy.

After you do that for many years like we have, you develop a sophisticated routine centered around schooling. And so, when my Coloradan ex-boyfriend decided to take his act on the road by lecturing the Asian liquor store owner down the block from us in our Denver neighborhood, I couldn't have clapped harder for him in appreciation if I tried. It was one of my most favorite characteristics about him: that he used his power and prestige as a high-earning white man in our society to tell people what they avoided hearing through deliberately planned abusive neglect, by feigning continued ignorance about well-known facets of our American lives. On one such afternoon, I guess Kent had enough of the hypocritical bullshit, because he told me that he finally told the Korean owner what was up, and I was enraptured.

Kent liked to buy some booze to put into his little biker backpack that they make just for riders to squeeze liquid into their mouths during a ride (yeah, not the best use of it, but you don't know his full story and it is massively bad), so he could meander around town on the many bike paths that line the area in an inter-connected web that's the envy of older cities, though the common practice of compulsive over-exercise to cover up a serious mental disorder as it is used out west is a whole other article entirely. Suffice to say that he was familiar with the lay of the land, as he'd lived in town for many years, spending his days driving through he streets that he didn't bike, as a Master Electrician with his own junior apprentice to school in the trade.

I guess he figured he'd had enough of the shit show we'd seen play out unfairly in society over the years, because he and I talked about the judicious use of "mixed residential" zoning laws that are the mark of enlightened urban planning in newer cities like Denver, escaping the common traps most older cities succumb to, like the bust-and-boom, up-and-down patterns that characterize the instant ghettos and gentrified private parks with silver key access that define New York City life. We'd seen our native cities go down fast that way, like he had with the council flats in England, and I did with the projects in the city. Urban planning had created instant ghettos that insured encircled and entrapped cycles of poverty that no one could escape from, let alone a terrorized impoverished people who'd descended from the cruel mistreatment of corrupt plantation owners from centuries past.

We had enough, and it was reflected through his band's song titles about injustices that I felt keenly in my life, too. Kent told me back at our place that as he was walking back to the cooler for a cold drink, he couldn't help but razz the wealthy owner into embarrassment. We'd seen him cruise up to his immigrant business in the 'hood with a brand new Benz curbside, strategically placed as it was right across the street from public housing that was clearly demarcated as such with bolted-on plaques across the front row of old brick townhomes, across the street from his ghetto liquor store. Who the fuck did he think he was? What right did he have to come here and pick off the "po' black folk" with instant access to the very poison that killed them and their brains, by walling himself behind a plastic partition like some pussy?

Kent and I had seen him roll up in his fancy car in our urban neighborhood with his clean little prep school boy, all nice and pressed in his fancy private school clothes, but what right did he have to set up shop across the street from the poorest folks in town? Huh? Kent said he just stood there towering over this little guy and his small prep school kid. They played the whole smiling " haha...no speaky engrish" game with him that they'd been taught by the very people they bought the place from, with one very important caveat left unwritten but certainly lived out loud for the whole block to see: American assimilation is possible in one quick generation, you just have to sell out the more beset "minority" beneath you on the totem pole, even though there's no fucking way any Chinese-American can be a fucking minority, when China and the Americas are this fucking big. 

Nice try, though. "Kunta-Kente"**, you're my straight-up superhero, man! Don't ever change, bro, no matter how hard they grind you down. You're beautiful to me, baby. "Papa" this! We did, you know that, right? We really did show that small town what living is all about, be it with this century's immigrants or the very next ones. Still have your passport with your little boy Visa photo? That shit's adorable, kid, even if you did have a rough go of coming and going whilst traveling back and forth from "The Motherland", because someone (ahem, you know who) fluffed your fucking birth date on your kiddie passport, to give you a ride every time you exited and entered the country of your own free will. Who would do that to their kid going into a new country, you know? We do! Don't change a thing, baby. You're perfect just the way G-d made you to be. Amen to you, brother. This one's for you and yours today, baby. We're all red on the inside: http://taylorseafood.co.uk/ and http://www.taylorfoods.co.uk/

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=welfare+burger

* http://www.onlythebible.com/Poems/Footprints-in-the-Sand-Poem.html

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

Righteous Indignation

Killing in the name of!
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Huh!

Killing in the name of!
Killing in the name of

And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
But now you do what they told ya
Well now you do what they told ya

Those who died are justified, for wearing the badge, 

 they're the chosen whites
You justify those that died by wearing the badge,

 they're the chosen whites
Those who died are justified, for wearing the badge, 

 they're the chosen whites
You justify those that died by wearing the badge, 

 they're the chosen whites

Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
Uggh!

Killing in the name of!
Killing in the name of

And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya
And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control (7 times)
And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control
And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control
And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control
And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control
And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control
And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control
And now you do what they told ya!

Those who died are justified, for wearing the badge, 

 they're the chosen whites
You justify those that died by wearing the badge, 

 they're the chosen whites
Those who died are justified, for wearing the badge, 

 they're the chosen whites
You justify those that died by wearing the badge, 

 they're the chosen whites
Come on!

Yeah! Come on!

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Motherfucker!
Uggh!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_indignation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Against_the_Machine