The Joke on Prince Street

Chronicles of a Fuck-up

I Think an Unwritten Smiths' Song Just Happened to Me

So I'm walking down Prince Street on my lunch break and this girl who's too attractive to smile at me, smiles at me. I smile back very surprised. But then again, she smiled with her mouth open and a nod, so really...an attractive girl on Prince Street laughed at me. I have no idea why. She had some funny looking dog and shades. She walked normal so I couldn't see anything that she or her dog may be doing that she'd laugh at when being noticed by another person in the act. Maybe I gave her dog a funny look, I won't rule that out. I did take a small hop-step from the sidewalk to the street, which I didn't think resembled a misstep or trip. Maybe she was laughing at that. Maybe she was just a crazy person. Typical. Maybe I knew her and just didn't recognize her and she was delivering one of those, funny-running-into-you-here-of all-places sort of laugh greets. Or maybe its the most obvious, me walking down Prince Street on my lunch break is very quite a laughing matter. Comedy.

Confessions of a Crap Artist: I Just Wanna Say...

I try and try to fit all my thoughts into words. I try to make speech a conduit to brain, a channel from where one is able to express itself through the other. I don't know how to talk out loud...I stop sentences short...I trail off and change topics awkwardly and...its all bullshit anyway. I can't make sense of how anyone can do it...I premeditate the words and it sounds so good, so exact and confident...it makes sense and I'm definitely in control but then its like the words aren't really words; like liquid and solid, the same but not the same. Better yet gas and solid. My thoughts are like some gas that floats and lightly obscures but one could walk through...words on my tongue are solid blocks with weight, height and mass, texture and density. You can't walk through it, you can't make it float and reshape it like clouds at the slight inspiration of wind, once its spoken a word is a word. A thing jumping out of you and you can't have it back...but you can add more words to direct a thought. I'm no good at directing spoken words. Maybe on paper or text/edit when the words are not quite solid, writing is the liquid phase of communicative matter.

Pac Man: Domestic Ghosts (Episode 001)

Pac Mac walks into his home. He can hear the kids running upstairs, the living room's a mess. Mrs. is cooking, she blows her husband a kiss. Pac Man smiles though he notes its no longer up to him. He smiles everyday when they repeat that same ritual. Mrs' kisses aren't even really there, they're just a reaction, like slapping the air for an annoying fly. Pac Man heads upstairs into the bathroom and sits at the corner of the tub's rim. Holding his breath for a good minute before letting it back out. Breathing heavily, like he used to when something exciting would happen to him.

Confessions of a Crap Artist: If You'd Been a Dog...

KNIVES OUT

Job searching is depressing, I'm quite unmotivated; and what some might be shocked to hear is that I'm okay with being unmotivated. Just to be clear, I mean unmotivated with job searching, not life! Life is very inspiring but job searching is like walking around looking for an available knife to be stabbed with. Only no one wants to stab you unless you are a certain type of bleeder, better yet unless experience has proven you to be a certain type of bleeder. So even if you are what they're looking for, it counts for nothing unless someone else says it for you, like a previous knife that can vouch for you.

I still haven't mastered how to pretend to be excited about being bled. Analogy aside, there is nothing that I want to do as far as jobs are concerned. Not only is there nothing I want to apply for but there's also nothing I want to learn, or study to develop some sort of career in a certain field or another.

I'm sick of the whole affair. I got to figure something out because a man gets to certain age where he deserves the face he wears, and I don't want to deserve that face that might await me on the other side of that mirror. Its a tired face, an accusingly cold face, with regrets hiding in every wrinkle like water collecting into erosion.

Frozen Cast Away

What it Feels Like to be in Overdraft

So I'm on an island. I'm stranded there. I like the peace but it isn't a nice tropical island, abundant in food and resources; its more of a suspended iceberg, an island with a heavy layering of frosting. Everything that could truly be of use to me is buried under heavy, deep sheets of ice. I try to leave, I try to get out of there; even successfully built a raft after months of gathering parts from what I can. Its an awful looking raft but its all thats available.

Now, I've been trying to escape...but the waves. The waves push me back and I'm freezing. Its too cold and the waves crash and the further out I get, the larger and stronger they react. I, under their mercy, as they slam down on me like a hand to a mosquito. And its so cold. I've been trying week after week but to no avail, the waves are always there, proudly roaring. Yet, they pull back into the sea, as if calling me out to that calm escape I see miles away. Perhaps, they're taunting me.

I can't find a way out unless I travel under the waves. But how does one hold such a breath, or ignore such a cold? Surely, there are not enough resources available to transform my raft into a submarine. But it might be my only hope to try.

I Feel so Tongue-Tied

My Monthly Aresian Horoscope

March 21 - April 19

My thoughts are misguided and a little naive. I twitch and I salivate like with myxomatosis...

At the end of the summer, a friend of mine was off to the west coast; a farm in northern California. Before he left we hung out a bit and he introduced me to the idea of Saturn Return. In astrology, this is a period in an individual's life that occurs approximately every 30 years coinciding with the full revolution of Saturn around the Sun.

I got edited, fucked up...strangled, beaten up...

Saturn takes about 10,759 Earth days (29.5 years) to orbit the Sun. So every 29.5 years Saturn is, hypothetically speaking, in the exact same degree of orbit that it was when you were born. In Astrology this is meant to signify a crossroad for the individual, a time when things break apart for the personality and are soon rebuilt, leaving behind that which hinders one from their blah blah blah (astrological end for which the astrological means are justified).

I saw A Serious Man yesterday and I met a woman named Tuesday on Friday. I am a person who finds conspiracies in all things but not rationally, that is, the information doesn't add to anything but an irrational future based on an irrational past. Yet, it is interesting to collect the information, each like random decorations. They are pretty to watch but these decorations never end, so there is no celebration only a perpetual preparation.

I sat in the cupboard--I wrote it down in neat, they were cheering and waving, cheering and waving, twitching and salivating like with myxomatosis...

Cheering and waving...

It all starts to fall in place, you find your pace and you're better able to sort out that which you've spend the full occupation of the past to wind yourself up in.

But everything is here, right now and I just can't hold on to anything...it all just passes through me. What's worse is that I am aware--my consciousness, like a lighthouse that watches the sea, spotlights every ship that passes by my shore. And the ships, never stopping regardless of how bright I light them. "You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity."

You should put me in a home or you should put me down. I got myxomatosis--I got myxomatosis...

It could be a Saturn Return but I'm not into the Stars as Psychiatrists, Jung was a man with some ideas and opinions and Saturn is a dense planet with a diameter about 9 times that of the Earth. Oskar is a drummer and I, a mongrol cat in a cupboard waiting for a nurse. I practice how magnificent I'm going to be when she pulls open the doors and beholds the pale ghost.

I would like to be A Serious Man, light a ship for the sole purpose of swimming out and catching it, or perhaps light the way for my own ship, out into the night's sea. Will it matter where Saturn watches me from?

Cheering and waving...twitching and salivating...

I don't know how, this is after all, my first time living. Still that isn't new, who's to say its ever gotten right. That it is gotten, is all we can be sure of, and its the best any of us can do.

Still, I'm just pulling at a thousand leads, bound by all the land I've wrapped around my lighthouse to keep it standing straight...the decades flying by but my--how the days are long!

Myxomatosis, I got myxomatosis.

Floggings for the Privileged

So I received a phone call earlier today. A call back from a job I applied for sometime in September. Its a retail store, specializing in women's interests. I applied for one of the overnight stock/receiving positions yet I suppose it doesn't matter as all applicants will be interviewed in groups, regardless of positions applied for. They have informed me of a specific set of directions, which I was suggested to write down as if it were a formula. I was to arrive at least 10 to 15 minutes early on this week's Thursday for an 11:00 group interview. I am to dress professionally (because retail is a profession?). I am to bring a copy of my resume and references so that in a small group, I may compete with others for a job that is nothing more than a check and a waste of my personal energy. So from here to Thursday it is my duty to sharpen my personality, blade-like, and indirectly dissect others open so that they're flaws may be as visible as my strengths. I hate this!

They dress the job up and make you go through all this hullabaloo, as if the job you're applying for is as important or even interesting as you're polishing yourself out to be for their benefit. Thats all they're after, they just want to screen out those who do not wish to cooperate and thoroughly inspect the sly ones, like myself, who do not agree but walk in with that sheep's wool and fangs hidden under lips. If you can get past them, they tend to not care that you do not agree, because you understand what it is they do not wish to see, that is, your mind. They probably feel the same way you do and so long as you know it isn't acceptable to express it in your work, they could care less about feelings, yours or theirs.

I predict a very cold, lonely winter. I predict preparation and fatigue, taxing efforts and hatred as fuel, love as negative space, I predict exclusivity of myself from others and the continual exercise of shortening the passage from mind to mouth. If all goes well, I'll smile at you on the other side, on that lovely spring from which I first arose. I'll look upon you and reward you, I'll know exactly what to tell you and everything will be fine. Fine, but I'll be twice as lost, four times as free, and certainly not concerned with the thoughts that are going to bother the hell out of me from now 'til Thursday and even more so if I actually do get the job.

Confessions of a Crap Artist: A Punctual Failure

When I was in high school, I was an awful student. I do not mean that I was the rowdy, back-talking, antagonistic teen who threw erasers or batteries at teachers and stole homework from other students, etc. No, it was far simpler than that, I was just inattentive and genuinely disinterested in school. Unique? No. I was one of the many who felt exactly the same way about high school during the most unsure years of our lives.

To make matters worst, I was also very punctual. I held a nearly immaculate attendance and rarely was ever late to class. In class, however, I'd space. I'd travel in my mind and every 45 minutes of a period would be a vague hallucination, a mirage at my peripheral while I'd spend my daydreams on more relative matters such as, girls I had constant crushes on, what I'd do with superpowers, and becoming the best hip-hop lyricist before reaching eighteen years of age. I didn't cut class regularly until senior year (you'd think that'd be the year I start sharpening my act) and even then not as often as others, who, starting far earlier than myself had by that point dropped out or only made monthly appearances maybe out of boredom.

No, I'd appear every day to class to attend my failure. I was there for every step of the decline. I didn't care for homework or well prepared studying, eventually I didn't even feel embarrassed for not caring, I'd stare teachers in their disappointed faces a bit proudly and say, "no, I didn't do the assignment." What a stupid kid. It would've been nice to have been interested. Most of the teachers that really taught me anything were around for my elementary and middle school years but by the time of high school I was of the idea, 12 years of schooling is a bit much. Needless to say the thought of college horrified me, the idea of even more school after all this high school business is finally over. In fact after 4.5 years of high school (you didn't really think I graduated on time did you?) the only thing I was grateful for were a few friends, fewer free lunches, and my handwriting, which I stole from U.S. History's Mr. Garabidi, and that was in night school.

The ironic thing is, everything they taught in school that didn't interest me, I later read about or learned on my own through books, films, music and people; and so, I was fascinated by history, math, science, and literature at one point or another but all these points follow one another, only after high school.

It still amazes me that I sat in class day after day, writing rhymes or sketching while the teacher mumbled a lesson in the background. I'd be there for the only reason that I had nowhere else to go, nothing better to do. Retrospectively, its not something I'm too proud of. I should've had somewhere else to go, something else to do. If school was a waste I should've left it instead of wasting my time failing classes. Since then and possibly also because of "then" I have developed a hatred for time wasted. Yet I can't help to think that I'm starting to feel these current days are waste. I feel like I'm sitting through my current present life daydreaming while a lesson is being mumbled in the background and I'm punctual as fuck, I'm there for every second of the blasted thing yet I'm failing but I won't leave, I won't cut or skip out, I just sit there disinterested, inattentive and passing the time.

Confessions of a Crap Artist: Monetary Diet

I should get another job. Something that I could use to pay rent with or pay for a plane ticket or some synths and midi controllers. But I can't stand the idea of dressing up a resume or the nerve sucking anxiety of the commute to an interview, the pretense, the forced smile that sticks in place like a stiff neck, I don't know how to convince someone that I want a job when I actually really don't.

"So what would you contribute to

this company to help it grow."

I don't care about any job, I just want the money and I'll gladly pretend or at the very least keep my thoughts to myself and refrain from any difficulty towards allowing my employers to get out of me what they want in exchange for what I want in return. But I can't say that in an interview and its getting really hard to keep my mouth shut, trapped tight within in a smile.

"I won't bring anything to the table, I'll just do whatever job

it is I'm applying for and I'll do it well. I really don't care for

it but it pays decent enough that I could do the things I

want on my off time and forget I work here."

If My Mind Has Been On My Phone All Day And My Phone Is Lost Then My Mind...

So I've misplaced my cellphone today. Its in my apartment because I haven't left the front door today until about 15 minutes ago for a breath of less steamy air, which is apparently all thats available in my apartment. I noticed that the cellphone was misplaced sometime this afternoon, it is now 10:18 PM. I remember waking and unplugging the little cretin from the charger, resurrecting the mini-christ from the death that disconnected me from my friend the night before. I remember reading the text sent by that friend asking about my disappearance, as I went stealth, a crucified silence. I got up at about 11:12 AM, my first trip to the bathroom was met by failure as it was occupied so I visited my niece in another room before heading back to the direction of the living room and distracting myself in some form of thought. I may or may not have relocated my copy of the novel I'm currently reading; this may or may not be a clue to reproduce that mysterious strand of memory that is giggling in some dark recess of cranium.

I'm upset. Much less at the possibility of a missed call or text or desire to, myself, text or call someone. I'm sure there were no calls as I'm sure there is no one I'm in any particular need of contacting. In the case that I would really worry about either, I could easily email or use the house phone. No, the possibility of a missed contact doesn't do much for my disposition. My issue is more about not being able to find a piece of personal property. It is my cellphone, my possession and I should know where it is, it should be in my memory which is also of my disposal to recall such information. Not being capable to do so, exhibits within me, a paranoid manifestation of self-consciousness and lack of self-control; not being able to know where your possessions are, and not being able to establish an adequate mean for retrieving these belongings.

A vexation that has taxed me all throughout the day under a scorning sun that has dismissed a sky of clouds and a ground of shade. At the end of my thinning tether with no more success than the night has had against the heat the sun left behind, I have finally decided to write about it. How frustrating to be played into a puzzle one can't ignore? For I must find my phone, especially since its misplaced location is so limited. It could only be in the apartment from which I, and the others who were approximately about at the time of the victim's disappearance, have not left. Its a simple enough crime with only a few likely suspects, that I have thoroughly interrogated with both hands and eyes, both who wore trench coats and hats with a shared, antiseptic, cold, film noir wit. However, to no avail. My room, the bathroom, and my mother's bedroom are these suspects, and apparently, I am Inspector Clousseau.

I've become tired of searching the same areas over, and all the more so angry at the discouraging result this strategy is so hurriedly committed to repeat. Regardless of my stubborn inclination to review these re-searched areas to obtain a fresh look that may now be less attached emotionally than earlier when the incident occurred, these areas insist on offering me no success. Apparently things remain missing in the same places from which they were missing, regardless of how mad you are or aren't.