Pot Roast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Share the Project

http://www.arcofrockland.org/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://rocklandsample.org/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cappucino

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://chn.ge/1RX52GW

 

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

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

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

Moose Dog

Me, my Mal, and my ex, in one tiny plane: Ted looked out the window for a few minutes (those are the Coloradan foothills receding into the distance in the photo above Ted's head-shot) and then he fell asleep for the whole trip.

My Alaskan Malamute was epic. He looked like a cross between a polar bear and a werewolf, and he could hunt. He burned through life like you should: at full throttle, and not injury-free. He was hit by a car running across a street towards a playground full of kids before he was fully grown, flung onto a sidewalk where he almost died, and then he made a complete recovery. His first trip away from home was on a little airplane, from the family farm in Oklahoma where he was born back to Colorado with my ex-boyfriend because, at the time, my boyfriend was logging hours towards a private pilot's license. I took Ted's second plane ride with him (with the same boyfriend), from Colorado to West Texas to see my dad and his family. Ted was supposed to be my "huggy bear" during the trip because I hate flying, but once we reached cruising altitude, he immediately fell asleep for the entire trip.

That's not all. Once we landed in the middle of nowhere, we took Ted around to see the sights. First, to my dad's house in the middle of "Nowhere", then to his ranch that's in the middle of "Absolute Nowhere". That night in the small cabin down on the ranch, we made a plan for the next day: we'd follow the wild boar tracks we found down by the stream by tracking the hoof prints in the mud, hopefully finding the big beast after many years of trying, because it was a notorious no-show on the ranch. So, the next day, I found myself with my dad, my youngest bro, my boyfriend, and my big Mal Ted on a trail during sunrise; them with guns in hand, and me with my dog.

Ted did not disappoint. He'd been a naturally gifted tracker since his early days, all on instinct. We took him hiking in the Colorado backwoods one afternoon, coming across a lone Moose in front of us. Ted was brilliant. At just seven months old and not fully grown, he immediately cut ahead of us by a few paces to block the large animal, then he walked slowly up to it, breaking away suddenly into the brush when it disappeared into the woods. We spent a few tense moments between us, wondering if he'd come back at all, or if we had to do a "search and rescue", but just as we said it, there he was crashing back through the bushes, smiling happily up at us. Yeah! You did it!!

For you, "Moose": http://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Pages/LivingwithWildlifeMoose.aspx

After that, we dubbed him "Moose Man" or "Moose Dog": two more names of affection for an incredibly uncommon dog of many names, with many gifts. Back at the ranch, we waited in the pink sunlight, hidden among the thick sage brush for something to happen, and then it did. We heard some noises and some shuffling, without knowing what was moving around out there. Snow dogs take off like a shot if you don't rein them in, so I had my guy on a short leash, but once we got up from our spots to take a look around, I paid out the leash with plenty of slack for Ted to do his thing, which he did. 

He took us to a little hole in the ground where he paced around sniffing furiously, with some more movement. I put my disposable camera to the ground, taking a couple of blind shots of whatever was lying there underground. There was another dash of movement, and then we followed Ted to a small leafless tree in the desert brush. We finally figured out what Ted had so masterfully scented out in the clear, thin morning air. Sitting there between the highest tree limbs was a very large and totally freaked out porcupine, the largest spiny porcupine any of us had ever seen, and my dad had no idea they lived in the area, let alone his on his ranch-land. That was the awesome power of my "moose" dog; a fiercely bad-ass hunter, tracker, and scout. Where would we be without them? Nowhere.

http://bit.ly/1QHxEpa

  

This one's for you today, Betty. 
You burned through it brightly, girl!

http://www.koko.org/node/2172

Right Stuff

This one's for you, boys.

https://www.wwiimemorial.com/Registry/plaque.aspx?honoreeID=333036

Borderline

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

Being an international drug dealer is nerve-wracking work, not that I had great credentials. My asshole boyfriend from Oneonta forced me into it as a student, like the babbling controlling douchebag he really is. One of his older brothers was taller and more handsome than he was, attending school at the same time. His boho musician lifestyle (he was dating John Cryer's half-sister at the time) fascinated his younger brother, without my boyfriend having any genuine talents besides smoking pot and talking on and on and on about it. He works in entertainment as a lawyer now. Being a "bullshit artist" is his true gift, which made him hate the arts (and people in the arts) even more. 
I knew I had to jettison him later on down the line, because of his obvious distaste for skill sets that he could never possess, but that didn't stop him from trying to use and abuse me while he could. 

When I told him I would be attending art school in some way in the near-future, he decided to act like I was a cruel deceiver to him that he could thwart by transferring to McGill University as a SUNY student first, like my life existed only in relation to him and his ego. Along with his weird baby-style head games came a huge host of other insecurities he had a very long list to, that he found extremely exciting to bore you with in overwrought detail, like how his musician bro could lure women to him, because he was a lover. It seemed to him to be this pretend magnet that other people had, as a greater superpower he couldn't deconstruct for himself, no matter how hard he tried.
I basically gave in to him and his whining, if he carried on long enough (he's the youngest of six children), like a harried exhausted mom with toddlers would. Yeah, fine, let's move on from this, will ya? 

And that's exactly how his hare-brained scheme involving pot came to be. Once he found out that I was willing to take a train from Grand Central Station all the way to Montreal, he thought he had a real "live" one on the line. He seized onto this idea that his classmates would be driven wild with fan appreciation over his securing real weed for them, because all they had in Canada was hash, and I knew by the way he drove me to it, that he had a real hidden agenda, which was this: getting me arrested and derailing my college career by getting me thrown into jail, because I got into a great Ivy League school, which proved that I'm smarter and more talented than him, despite all the tall tales he'd been feeding to his friends up there, where he thought he could lie his way to success, and that's exactly how it went down. 
He thought he got "the jump" on me by using his superior mental powers to browbeat me into buying a quarter bag of pot that I carefully hid among my stuff. 

Sure, it was a tense half an hour or so of waiting, when the train stopped at the borderline between the states and Canada, but, of course, he'd actually schooled me in their exact time frames (because actual criminals are not as smart as the cops who catch them, in real life), because luckily for me, he couldn't resist the urge to prove to me how brilliant he was in his plan, by actually talking me all the way through it. Sure enough, Border Patrol came through with bomb/drug-snuffing German Shepherds and everything, but because my suitcase was stowed high above my head on the racks above me (and out of reach of anyone else), the cops took one look at my angelic little face, read my passport and paperwork, and then moved on down the line. 
It took awhile for them to go down the entire length of the train, but scour it they did, until the final lurch of the car that signaled we were moving on. Whew! I made it! 

He'd also done the same strange contest with me about pot in Amsterdam during a summertime trip to Europe, hoping that I would get caught and he wouldn't, but all that happened was that he smoked pot over the rest of his summer at his family's home in Bay Ridge, while I rode it out empty-pocketed in New City, because my pot portion was nabbed by a stoner mail carrier, and his was not. That was it. Once I got to his school in Montreal, all that happened as a result of my pot stash was that we got high with his friends while drinking Canadian beer, instead of smoking hash in Oneonta while drinking New York beer. Like, wow, dude. It was kind of like driving across the border to buy beer with a higher alcohol content in Canada, and then driving it back to O-town: all we did with it was have a party. That was it. 

He tried his hand at a few other petty con games, like saying that his rather ugly (but, like, wayyy smarter) Canadian friends had given him the bad news that I was incredibly beautiful but, like, unfortunately for me, not as smart as him, like they were some college board I hoped to "ace", but that the good news was that they could totally see why he was attracted to me, which he delivered in a rather sour, downcast way, like a doctor giving his patient bad news. Awwww, that's too bad, Bart....<insert frown face here> In another unfortunate coincidence for him, I was already accepted into the best art and design school in the world with the lowest admission rates on Planet Earth (as well as every other high-ranking art school I applied to), while his "brilliant" friend Jean-Paul was relegated to a small-time Nova Scotian art school for his next college degree, in this highly ironic Acadian twist that's all me and my true grit, done for you in this century, y'all. You in my country now, boy! And that's exactly how it all goes down in this girls' real life "Game of Thrones": game, set, match. Done! See you on the beach 'round the bonfire, mes amis. This mama's coming home.

Philosophy 101

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

Much like those oft-repeated stories about typical human corruption and still-horrible wastefulness, hurricane season comes every single year, though if you rely on most t.v. networks for schooling, you'd think that they just dropped out of the sky for the very first time. It's baffling to me as to why some people think that their audience is the same drug-addicted moron with ADHD (off their Ritalin), wide awake at four in the morning, and yet, the scam continues. Until network executives understand that we're not all dumb, rich, and white like they are, we will continue to suffer under the same delusional fantasies that persist with the mentally ill and their limited perceptions about, say, storm clouds, with this confusingly modern science called "Meteorology", something so insanely difficult that apparently only magical people with special superpowers can decipher its secret coding.

Until that one day when recognition finally dawns over the features of the disordered, we must suffer through their hypnotic cloud of confusion. With my friend Lisa, there aren't even the basics of "A,B,C" and "1,2,3", because German-American farm daughters from rural/suburban Minnesota apparently skate by on their finely honed bisexual cheerleading skills from high school, chased with copious amounts of alcohol. I didn't mind it, as much as I totally don't get it as a lifelong cultural reference, because drinking coupled with her perpetually confused pansexual identity questioning just ain't my bag, baby, in any century. She was (like most RISD-oids from that time) functionally illiterate, with a much lower IQ than the average college student, which made me continually question the high price tag attached to my supposed Ivy League education, but it's been cleared up in this century, thanks to pioneers in education like me. 

RISD students can now study Liberal Arts concurrently at an accredited Ivy school like Brown University, along with their art and design studies (I made my own program between my SUNY school of choice and RISD back in the day, because there were no programs for people like me), making for that essentially well-rounded student who needs to be multi-faceted to be a genius in this world. My former classmates don't have those star qualities, but they did(do) have inflated senses of self that blew up like the strong winds buffeting us as we walked around College Hill in the fall-time. 

Lisa is one of those farm girls who tries her hardest to appear sophisticated (she naturally adopted the typical "Art Fag" look that's necessary for Midwestern bumpkins who are in way over their heads), by pretending that she wasn't actually a country bumpkin from the Midwest, which only works if you're around other lying, cheating art school students who are Idiot/Savants* like you. I have no such luxuries in this life. Self-deluded behavior does absolutely nothing to further my cause. Needless, Lisa boasted about her scholarship in Fashion Design, because it's one of the least popular majors at RISD (why go there, when you can attend F.I.T. or Parsons for fashion), but it gave her an ego both crippling insecure and wildly arrogant at the same time; a manic/depressive rollercoaster ride that seemed to be up-and-down like the weather outside, except that the weather always wins, if you are ever dumb enough to challenge Mother Nature to a contest, which she is.

Me and my Armenian friend from Massachusetts wanted to go outside in the electrically-charged air for a thrill-ride, which Lisa tacked onto, like she did with all of my friends. She's that awkward third-wheel kind of kid who's too retarded to understand that you want to be alone for awhile, or "vibing" with your East Coast friend, or on a solo date with your boyfriend. She was exactly like that as an older, near-30 undergrad we took care of. And so, with eyes rolled, we let Lisa tag along with us. Like any kid, she was happy and a little freaked out at the same time. She enjoyed the really strong winds that blew the leaves and water directly into our faces, laughing at the static charge that put our little hairs on end. She found an old pair of jeans blown up against a wrought iron fence that drove her delirious with happiness for awhile, so we were glad. While she was occupied with her new object, we could talk and enjoy the spectacle in our more experienced fashion.

We took a turn through Providence's infamous Roger Williams Park, with me contemplating a lift over the tall fence that girded the park so I could stand on the edge of the statue, underneath his big outstretched hand for an unusual, impromptu, hurricane-season-only photo op (we decided against it after one or two tries, because it was way too tall for our short trio), so we turned around to leave the park. In a rather unfortunate (and also highly fortunate) coincidence, one of the biggest oldest trees in the entire park slammed down loudly to the ground, right in the spot where we had been standing just a few moments earlier. Uh oh...me and Ed were delighted with this rare sighting, with me present-minded enough to crack a joke about some broke-ass Philosophy 101 class at my SUNY school, when I took on the idiot Professor during his lame "tree in the forest" exercise, because it means nothing to an actual thinker like me: "There you go! Proof positive that trees actually do make a sound when they fall down, even if no one is around", or something like that. 

I love the wildness of our forests and raging Nor'Easter storms** like they are the salt in the blood that runs through my veins, but Lisa took a turn for the worst. No more giggling over an old pair of discarded jeans, no more joking about the current you could feel in the air...
no, she was like my young niece during a family ferry ride to the 
Aran Islands: at first all happy bouncy giggles, until that first brutal seasickness sets in. She grew pale and shaky, like the cushioned Midwest girl she really is: "Guys, I don't like hurricanes anymore. 
I want to go inside", less than a block from the big old house we were renting. OK, sure, no problem. Ed and I burst through the door to tell our stories to my housemates, excited as energetic young people always are, but Lisa was rocked to the core. 

She shut up quickly, nursing her de facto cup of organic hippie tea that's essential for nursing a person with such a delicate sensitive nature like hers through nervy encounters with big storms, in this brush-up with reality that her types do everything to avoid, like moving to the West Coast to assume a totally new identity, but that's a story for another day. Today belongs to the wet wilderness of this gloriously tempestuous, wildly beautiful East Coast Autumn that holds an eternal truth for me, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. Not one single thing. Enjoy the Fall weather this weekend, my dear friends, come rain or shine.



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome
 ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nor%27easter

Happy, happy, happy

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

Happiness is weird if you have a paranoid-schizophrenic, obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, bipolar-personality identity disorder (with marked petulant/suicidal/narcissistic/psychotic features), like the company receptionist at the small Jewish family business I worked at for awhile, with her typical "Office Cow" dreams of fine art glory and Rockefeller-like wealth; her make-believe, handsome, and very supportive shiska husband standing by her side, just like her first generation Israeli parents who worked blue collar jobs on Long Island prepped her for. Right? No?! Oh, well, then let me try that again. 

Ahem...she was delusional, but people who do bottom-feeder, highly repetitive service jobs are usually like that: arrogant, petty, snippy....you know the attitude. She was bored, and also a totally ignorant loud-mouth, with a completely over-inflated sense of self about her life and her skills, only tempered by her "down" cycles filled with dramatically petulant sighs that widely signaled her "Woe is Me!" boredom, interspersed with frequent hits off the big blue bottle of Listerine in the ladies room, because it has some alcohol in it.

She avoided me for many months, because I was extremely busy and she was busy getting her "best friend" from high school fired from her high-paying executive administrator job, because that's what you do to former Architecture majors who come from the same small Long Island town as you, former shul classmates who are also bipolar and very brittle: you stab them in the back whenever it's necessary. Right? Oh....okay, let me try that one again, too: our former "Office Manager" was one of the biggest fucking bitches any one of us had ever met in the sometimes semi-professional world of big city book publishing, and this was a somewhat gay-friendly media business in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, which is like saying that West Hollywood is "kind of gay". Yeah, like that.

She was an obvious bitch from a company that broke its back hiring other Jews and relatives, so much so that it was sometimes good clean fun to watch the crazy old people who hired these disastrous amateurs justify their secretary's insane bullshit, which got wackier and wackier as time went on. The wife of the owner talked through her anxiety over scary machines by talking back to the copier machine whenever it did any kind of banal action whatsoever; they told me she used to be an elementary school teacher. Huh...wonder what happened with that. Yeah, I knew. Like so many other business, the phony lines that employees used on each other could possibly pass muster under less legitimate circumstances than the real professionalism I brought to the table, which is kind of a bummer if you're an incompetent drug addict. I worked with plenty of those, too, educated or not.

Like any other uptight, self-righteous, hippie dippy, Jewish art fag, she scrutinized me through narrowed eyes every single time I walked passed the reception desk (in case I ever bothered to wonder how she felt about me), and if I was working for "too long" on my own, in her bizarre estimation, she would find an excuse to violate my workspace with her rancid beer breath, usually with a question so fucking stupid, I wondered how she breathed air at all. Sometimes I gave her the answer (the same dull ones, over and over and over again), and sometimes not. I am the Master in any studio, and so whatever I feel like teaching my staff is up to me, at any time I want to, and if anyone disturbs me, they're gone. It's simple: no me, no money.

And so I didn't worry about her neurotic bullshit too much, so successful was I at putting distance between us, while she nursed the same pit in her stomach everyday that she would choose to blame on other people, places, and things, weather permitting or not, like the special UV light bulb she needed because she also has S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder), in addition to the many other serious brain disorders we were forced to ignore under threat of firing, which grew into a more serious threat with each passing fire. As the company grew smaller, she stood out more and more, and not in any good ways. One afternoon, she stopped me walking past her with her disordered teenage bullshit to ask me a vaguely stupid "self help" type of question, because, like, why do other people feel things that are, like, different than her? You know? Like, why?

I had time to kill that day because I just made my deadline way under budget for the umpteenth day in a row, and by that time in my employ, I had the whole company in my pocket. They stopped working to listen to me speak, as they passed around my emails and cover designs like I was Mick Jagger at a mall signing autographs (because they couldn't stop themselves from gossiping about me within earshot), and they followed me wherever I went online using the company's network. In short, I owned them. If I used a famous media site as a starred commenter to slice-and-dice some would-be intellectual, they knew about it. If (and when) I hit it "out of the ballpark" again with my designs, it became company news within seconds. I had their complete and utter attention, short as those spans could be at times. Why their stupid ugly bitch thought to fuck with me on that particular afternoon, after all the schooling I'd already given her, is still beyond me to this day, besides good old fashioned mental defect.

She hated any outward signs of happiness we showed as we went productively about our days, as baffling to her bad brain as if I was the resurrected Pharaoh Queen Nefertiti herself walking around in full Royal Egyptian dress. It was envy mixed with hero-worship, mixed with misplaced desire, and what serious scholar would want that tossed their way? I sure as fuck didn't. You hired her, you deal with it. End of story. By the end of my time there, they tried to railroad me into taking their special bitch "into therapy", that brilliantly inept Jewish band-aid on a disease so bad, people die from it every single day all around the world, by deliberately setting me up as their "fall guy" for their bad hire. Nope. Nice try though! I deflected every single scheme they threw my way, monied up and lawyered-up as they were over me as their paltry advantages, but in the end, all they were left with was this: I'm better than you. That's it, and no banal amount of talking would cure it.

So, to finally answer fully your question, Ye Ole Stupid Bitch of Work Days Past, ("Why are you always happy, happy, happy all the time?"), I'm "happy" because I'm everything that you are not, and will never be. How's that for the truth? Oh, and failing that, click on the fucking link under the pretty picture above, you ignorant piece of shit. Yeah, that big yellow one with the smiley face. I won.

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

Lord of the Flies

All across the nation, American voters cast their ballots in hopes of voting into effect those necessary changes that will help us reach what we define as our "Manifest Destiny*": hopes that each and every one of us have about the future world we want to live in, by passing those values onto the next generation through our right to vote, even if we don't live to see those helpful changes put into place. We see this vast land that we live in as part of G-d's sacred covenant with man, an unbroken promise about delivering us into "The Promised Land", so that it's more to us than some petty pissing contest or ego trip. 

We are actually crafting the very world we live in. It's a very active culture to participate in, one that has defined us as being the world leader for freedom in action, by granting every citizen the exact same vote of "one". Today, all across America, you are an "Army of One", as holy and united as any other land that has come before you, or that will exist into the future. With that in mind, I expect you to rise above the phony posturing that has defined media culture in modern times. You are not voting for "pretty", although you should look to pleasing human symmetry as a sign of good health. You should not vote for "rich"; you should vote for someone who is willing to reach deep into their own pockets to do what they say they will, just like I do.

It goes without saying that your votes should count towards our shared visions of good health and happiness for those who come after us, and if you know of people on the ballot who do not openly share those hopes about a shared good future, don't vote for them. If you have only one option to vote for, then ask yourself why more people haven't come forward to put themselves in the spotlight with the money required to become a candidate: how bad is the corruption around you? Are you passive? Do you do nothing in the face of corruption? Then, you are the very problem we seek to address through these public acts of voting and legislation. If you are too incompetent to vote, then you have to ask yourself why you are even an American citizen, so lazy and complacent as you are in the face of citizenship.

Many people have lived and died on much less than the principles that you are putting into action today. We have been instructed by His Holiness in Rome to vote into office those officials who actively support our unified goals about the preservation of our Earth, as our birthright from The Creator. You do not have the right to destroy this planet, or any of the lifeforms on this Earth. Witness this: I have an infestation of fruit flies in my current apartment, in part due to the noncompliance of the law by those people in my direct environs, in part due to the natural biochemical process by which organic matter breaks down, because that's exactly what happens when you recycle all the plastic and metal that you use. You only have food garbage leftover as trash.

So, answer me this: why am I the only person who cares enough to follow the law in this household that is not exactly of my choosing? How can a supposed "wealthy" man be foolishly considered a prominent business owner, respectable enough to own property, lording this power over his tenants by using them as puppets in his mental games that openly flaunt the laws we live by? How can he be considered "rich" in our society?! He stands for everything we despise: he's arrogant but illiterate (I had to talk him through his own business contract, which he then breaks), he's delusional and cowardly, he hides behind the people he depends on for money, like mocking the openly drunk mentally ill women who pay him Section 8 money from the state every month: how can he be better than them? He can't be.

And so, just like the representative from the sanitation department at Pearl River Day who stonewalled me by not giving me any straight answers about composting** in New York State, this one lowly man is deceived into thinking that he can openly disparage my efforts at recycling by myself without censure, when he and every other tenant does not recycle according to our very own laws, every single week, right underneath your noses. If you do not enforce your own laws, you are part of this corrupt system that we will replace. And make no mistake about it: you will be voted out, because today, on this day in November 2015, we (the truly elect of this world you live in) have drawn a dividing line between the rotten and the righteous that cannot be undone. Take comfort. You are not alone.

http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/8799.html

*    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny
**  http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/294.html

Bad Brains

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

Believe it or not, New York has always been ranked first in healthcare and medical research, because as one the biggest metropolises ever to exist on this planet, we have populations suffering from an enormous amount of illness and disorders, with many that are still unnamed, untreated, and undiagnosed. Because we live such public lives, real working lives that revolve heavily around public spaces, New Yorkers are pragmatic about the world we live in, rather than pretending that bad things happen somewhere else, because if it's weird in human, it's probably already happened here. We've seen it all, barring gross inhuman criminal activities that are clearly not supported by the average American lifestyle.

We support the right to pursue happiness*, so much so that it is written into our most powerful document called "The Constitution", in our united "Declaration of Independence" given to Great Britain many years ago. We DO NOT (and this is a key concept, one central to our lifestyle) support lying drunks who spit in our faces, because we never have, and we never will. You'd actually be surprised how many people discover that they are, at heart, not actually American after they emigrate here, because fighting for freedom is really hard work that requires near-constant maintenance. You have to, for instance, vote, if you want change, and that means you have (at the very least) a child's understanding of the key issues of the day. It's, like, work, you know? In a way, each private citizen is a "publican"** who serves the state's best interests, and if you violate the basic tenets that govern our society, we fucking hate you, almost.

What I mean is this: we really (REALLY) don't like the type of fuck-ups other countries tolerate routinely, so if you are, say, a corrupt alcoholic schizophrenic warlord who likes siphoning off charitable relief funds and gunning down little boys, we tend to really really frown down upon that. That would be an example of not pursuing happiness. Easy, right? An yet, each and every day, we have to safeguard our society against the worst influences the world has to offer, because that's exactly what the world ejects into our harbors, sending people fleeing across borderlines, risking life and limb. Would you float on a flimsy wooden raft across a wild ocean, if you had a shot at happiness in your homeland? No! You would not, and neither would I. 

Which brings me to today's point about psychoses and the world: how exactly did your people become so inbred and fucked up as yours that brings you here, under my nose, today? We are passionately curious about your disease(s) and we want to help, even if that means wiping you off the face of the earth, if need be. Witness this: every day in my hometown, we have the same handful of dumb rotten drunks committing crime in broad daylight, day after grueling day. They have absolutely nothing to do all day but cause problems, but what to do? I'm not their shrink, and they don't put money in my fucking pocket, so what do I get out of policing them, except as a private citizen? Pay me to tame your fuck up, and watch me fly right through it, with brilliant results. Position me on the sidelines without an army of funds to fight with? No, that I don't do. Nothing in it for me, beside my own personal safety, which I most certainly ensure wherever I am, using the laws already on the books that govern the day.

But that creepy toothless bitch blowing cigarette smoke right into your kid's face? Uh uh, fuck up. You handle that. You birthed those kids, they're your problem. What does anyone get out of enabling other people in their own lives? We just don't do that here. Freedom means you are responsible enough as a mature adult that you tend to your own health (and that of your family's), with the understanding that very smart people like me will help you out in any way we can, without actually holding back your greasy hair as you vomit into the bars' bathroom toilet, bitch. I don't do that kind of social work. Ever. I don't know anyone who does. It's like asking the President of the United States of America to grow organic wheat to spread on all those peanut butter sandwiches he made over the weekend, if he wants American children to eat healthy lunches every day (like our former President Carter***, one-time peanut farmer). Well, he better get started right now, so that your kid eats a good lunch today, right? WTF?!

What I can do is exactly this: publicize the most recent research (and results) that we have in the Year of Our Lord in 2015, knowing that I most avidly support the cure to your alcoholism, personality disorder, sexual dysfunction, etc. And you know what, toothless hag with the bad attitude? That's more than your fat ass will ever deserve from someone like me. But that's why G-d loves being an American, just like I do. Deal, bitch! We deal with you and your stank ass every single friggin' day, and you know what? We're tired of it, so much so, I have thus bequeathed the local ugly bitch with the raging brain disease who serves as our neighborhood cautionary tale for children by donating her hideous body and rotten brain to science, after she kicks the bucket through her daily chain-smoking, beer-swilling, junk-food eating, pill-popping habits, so that we can look at her poisonous dark matter safely sealed behind clear medical-grade glass, safe and sound.

That's the best I can for her and the rest of you, out there in the fun up-and-down carnival that is your Bipolar Disorder Land: the world's scariest ride ever, besides watching her die right underneath my eyes. It's time that we put an end to people's suffering by aiding our healthcare providers in their quest to ease families stricken with mental diseases and disabilities. Join my cause! Volunteer as a subject! You'll be well-compensated for your effort, lab rat:http://www.childmind.org/en/cmi-biobank/rockland-sample/. I promise you that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_S._Kline

http://www.rfmh.org/nki/welcome/kline.cfm

 
*  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publican
*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter