Indirect Deposit

I'm going to let you folks in on a well guarded secret no one cares about.

It's not easy being me.

I repeat, its not easy being me. In fact, even I at times have difficulty managing such a show. Take for instance today, my first payday at the new job. Here, I must admit that the actual payday was Wednesday but no one bothered to tell me. This entire post would be about what I've blown my first paycheck on if that sweet slice of information were disclosed to me earlier enough to be convenient. Anyhow, I thought today was payday and when I got to work and asked my co-worker, East Euro T (real name withheld) about who I was to see concerning my check, he mumbled through whatever he was eating at the time. After a clearing and an extra moment for me to climb over his accent I realized he said, "We got paid Wednesday." He showed me who to ask and repeated how bi-weekly paydays function. I politely nodded and after receiving my check became excited about cashing it.

Its been so long, the last 2 1/2 months were financially awful. I was eager to get to a check cash place and buy a metrocard, some lunch, and walk around some more with that paranoid feeling that someone's going to rob me. I hadn't felt that last one in years, I haven't cashed a check since 2005. The plan was to avoid the bank and the account currently blooming in overdraft. At lunch time, however, I figure let me walk into the bank and see what the damage has been, I make it a point to ignore my account when its in poor shape.

"We all are, act accordingly..."

At the bank I discover my account is -$192. Not bad, I thought to myself, so then I got to further thinking. The wheels in my head were turning despite LeFou's warning of such a dangerous pass time. It shouldn't be too bad if I deposit the check here after all. I'd be saving a walk and a lot of bulky paranoia. I walk in.

I walk out, account with its belly full you would think.

But not quite. No, not at all so very quite. If I'm to follow through with the dining analogy, it was as if the food was prepared and served but the account was not to have a single bite until tomorrow...Tomorrow? But I just deposited the check...Look! Its right there, the remainder is right there, under the overdraft that appears to be the only thing available. Do I really have to wait a day? I spent the last 10 minutes before leaving my apartment this morning, combing my shelves for $2.25 in quarters; to pay for the single ride to get to work.

Maybe it just takes some hours to go through...Lets ask Google...Not good. Why? Are you serious? I have to wait a day? Fuck that I won't except it, I'll just go back after work and ask somebody, what the fuck does a search engine know anyway? A search engine doesn't even have a posable thumb...Its not even a real engine, how the hell did I expect it could motor the comprehension necessary to understand this ordeal?!

There was this one time...I was younger...I thought it'd be cool to pretend I'm drunk. I'd walk around carrying a drowsy disposition, slurring words and walks, laughing through lips and half shut eyelids. I put on the act for a few minutes when Snap! I caught a fish! My "friend" Spaceman bought into it, at least he was willing to entertain the notion. I was working for my Oscar nomination that night. Immersed into character, I let Spaceman take me to the neighboring block. Bad idea...but whoa was I ever a good drunk...subtle, not a caricature...more like a drunk person trying to act sober. I didn't even take the time to notice the first rock hurled at me, or the second for that matter. It was probably the third or forth that kissed my eye. Sharp pain, a flash of red and the sense of sober fear gripped me like a girlfriend. I thought my eye was hanging out the socket, I kept asking what happened and specifically asking if my eye was still in the socket...I felt stupid, once the pain was set in place, once the assessment of damage had been made, I only felt stupid; drunk with stupidity.

Moments like those...all you do afterwards is imagine that one decision that could've voided the rest of the accident from happening. An abortion that never came. I don't like dwelling on these phantom parallels, instead I just sit and swear to myself never to let it happen again. To always trust the first instinct that says "I don't want to do this." The problem with that instinct is that his voice is so weak and boring. No one wants to listen to that guy, especially while Cunning Logic is scatting and doing voice impressions of all your heroes and they're all convincing you that Instinct is just scared and not taking into consideration the spoils of success. It shouldn't surprise you that I listen to Cunning Logic too often, always attempting to take advantage of spontaneous situations. Sometimes I win, fewer times I lose. Today, just as back when my eye literally got rocked, I lost.

I had to play that move where you stand by the turn style in the subway and ask someone with an unlimited metrocard to swipe you through. I was lucky to find that Samaritan after asking just twice. She was sweet about it, a true saint and on my way home I regretted not asking her name since I was already planning to write this post. Thank you Samaritan.

Confessions of a Crap Artist: Can't Get Over Overdraft

About Not Having Money and Overdraft

Modern Marvels should one day include the bank concept known as Overdraft. Concept is an underplay, Phenomenon would be more accurate. The Phenomenon Known as Overdraft. Nice ring to it...could be, a one day title to a literary work of genius. A coming of age tale about some hero and his dire straits.

Jokes aside, I find it nothing but interesting that without a single cent in my bank account I will have paid my phone, web hosting, and metrocard. Of course there's the overdraft charge as nothing in life is free. When the bank covers you (or at least, when my bank covers me) there is a $32.00 or so charge that is taken from your account. Now being that there is no money in the account (that is why, after all, the account went into overdraft) this brings your account into the negatives. So when you start to fill your imaginary piggy bank, its to get your account to zero before you can actually have any real number in there.

Does it Bother Me?

Not really. I mean...in principle it sort of does but the bother doesn't really amount to much. Now that I'm working it'll sort itself out, I'm not going to waste my time and energy being angry about a few dollars here and there. Some people get really worked up over such matters. My mother for instance, was furious that I was being charged overdraft. She in a very sweet and scary, overprotective mother fashion took to shaking her fist, cursing, and snickering at the bank who handles my account. As if they could hear her from her kitchen. My mother gets excited about being angry, her temper is short, her gall is tall, and her subtlety is as bad as her english.

I don't get too angry because if you really think about it. I shouldn't have been able to pay with money that isn't really there. But I did and I was charged for it. Is it a scam? Of course, Life is one big scam and we're all scam artist...its all about who finds the best medium to work on.

Just Because I'm Losing Doesn't Mean I'm Lost

The Truth is that which is there, it is the extension of reality. About reality, Philip K. Dick wrote it is, that which does not cease to exist when you stop believing in it. After watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the second time, I find myself sitting here in bed, thinking about a certain truth. Mortal Truth. I think about age, I think about time, circumstance, direction, ambition; I think about motivation, determination, strive and fear. At my hands, do my eyes fall, searching for younger layers of youth, curious of future layers of age. I sit here on this bed and more or less think about Death and all his Friends.

I see this place in terms of Universe. I don't live in an apartment, street, city, state, country, etc...I live in a universe. It has to be that sparse, that complex, otherwise I'm not impressed. Life is too large, too interwoven with multi-facets to be limited in the frame of planet or solar system. Life would burst the seams, compromise the foundation, if such the idea would be to attempt its maintenance within so small a border. Life needs an entire Universe in order to operate.

I hold sacred that every moment is in fact a new universe, an infinity of combinations and codes, endlessly spiraling, with no two moments ever universally repeating. Thats my definition of Life. In this manner it can be said that no one is ever really one person or ever even in the same place twice, we are all cosmonauts, ever changing like scramble suits, indefinitely traveling throughout a universe in a ship called Life that so happens to also be an ocean.

But Life ends. The Universe might have no end, Life does. The Ocean dries up, concentrates into a powerful drop that eventually also departs, evaporates, fuses with the rest of time and space. Its the best you can do to make every moment the Prime of all its possibilities, of all its potentialities. You'll never know if you're right or wrong, there will be no judge, no guideline, no examples from which your recourse will be contrasted to and decided whether you played the right card, took the right door, were at the right places at the right time and so forth. Sure, on Earth others can judge these things, on Earth we have formed opinions about what feels good and what doesn't, what a good life is and what a good life isn't. However, if you're not careful you might fall into the idea that another person's opinion, because it seems more generally observed than others, is a fact. But here I say to you my opinion: your universe and their universe will never be one. There is no right choice or wrong one, there is only the choice...and having made it, you have changed the universe and if it feels right to you then you've made your right choice.

29 Days of Perky Pat

Today is the day Philip K. Dick died, 28 years ago. Its easy to keep count of the years because I'll be 28 this year, Philip K. Dick died 29 days before I was born. I wonder how much can happen in 29 days? I'm sure the answer is plenty. In any case those 29 days were the only 29 days in 1982 where neither Philip K. Dick nor I, were presently alive on earth. Sure, I was alive but in my mother's womb. She, my mother was presently alive on earth, I was presently alive inside her.

Those 29 days are somewhat of a trade-off between the world Philip K. Dick experienced and the world I'll experience once born. Funny thing is, he'll filter his way into my world, subtly unveiling his mind to me piece by piece; and I through my own experiences was shaping my own mind to, when the time came, understand his mind as if his thoughts were in fact my thoughts.

I wish I owned the Cold Souls DVD, maybe I'll watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Burn After Reading, its weird how most of the Philip K. Dick adapted works to film are so far off the mark, while anything written by Charlie Kaufman reads like a lost volume from the PKD bibliography. By the way, Charlie Kaufman wrote a Scanner Darkly script some years ago. I should finish the night with Bladerunner but so much in so little time...I might just have to settle for rewatching Roy Batty's death scene. I wonder what the Coen Brothers would do by way of loosely adapted film to a Philip K. Dick novel or short story, or a group of short stories made into a novel?

Benji the Hater: The Perversion of Perfection

Benji Says

I hate car commercials, not just because I'm a dog and I can't drive (thats what you think!). Not just because I have no idea what the acronym, APR stands for, or why terms like "0% finance" should make me stain the carpet. I'm just not that impressed by them. Sure, some of the music is good; better than most commercials actually but I also love the soundtrack to a lot of god-awful 70s and 80s films, it doesn't make the piece of shit any better!

Here's the commercial that I just saw:

Forward Living, huh? I'd rather live my life in reverse like my man, Leonard Shelby. Seriously, who wrote this?!

SCENE - Man in Lexus stops at Wolf in a city street at night. They regard one another, in an ambiguous, pseudo-gay, we-used-to-be-ex-lovers sort of way. They pass one another and corny European Coldplay-esque music cues.

I wish I were that Wolf in the street I would've fucked that dude's life up! I'd make meatloaf out of that dickbag's face!

You heard it from me, Benji!

American Idlers

Yesterday I went to see a friend perform live at an open mic showcase in the lower east side. It was an interesting night. However, I came to a rather obvious conclusion based upon some of the other acts of that same interesting night. There are people who are purposely attempting to become pop stars. This is a no-brainer if I'd only stop to consider today's entertainment, Making the Band, American Idol, and other shows that turn nobodies into pseudo-stars overnight. It shouldn't surprise me then, when a girl heads on stage half-naked with back-up dancers at an open mic. The back-up dancers, shocked me more than the see-thru nylon bodysuit. All she needed was a headset microphone and flashy lights. Of course the song was generic and the performance was an insincere attempt to ironically "dress up" the otherwise boring song.

The notion of chasing fame is not a new one, I'd just never experienced it in person before. Half of the acts in this open mic event were doing just that, purposely promoting themselves to become the next copy of whatever pop artist is currently the representation of their respective genre. I'm not angry, nor am I passing judgement, I'm only a bit confused. I don't understand why someone would purposely want to become that big. I guess to me, I only see the bad side. Tabloids, Paparazzi, E! Hollywood stories, stress, claustrophobia, or even simply not being able to do everyday things without people freaking out about it. To each is own, "one man's waste is another man's soap." I suppose being rich and influential is enough of a compensation but thats only if you're poor. Once you're rich and influential, where do you go from there? No Human is satisfied once they're dissatisfied. All it takes is one grievance to get the dominos tumbling. Any brief moment of accomplishment is only going to bring about more confidence to attempt new accomplishments; ones you never even desired before becoming rich and influential. And the higher you climb the harder you'll fall, and if you fall too early, you'll try so hard to get back up and in the Entertainment Industry, which drools out new versions of what's Popularly Acceptable weekly, you'll find that you've been replaced even before you fell.

But Fame and The Pursuit of Fame is a talent. It really is, its hard work to be safe and relevant during an entire career. It takes energy, innovation, and an uncompromising will to try to "make it" in the commercial music industry. My problem is that I usually expect an artist to use this energy, innovation, and uncompromising will on their music itself. I don't care about the gimmick, because more than anything I listen to the music, not the recording, not the video, or stage extravaganza. But listening alone, is no longer enough, we have passed that point where listening is stimulating enough; we need that television from Back to the Future II, the one Marty's son is watching with like 12 channels on at once. We need phones that can be used as the media equivalent to the swiss army knife. Ours, is the ADD-Age, in addition to not being able to stay interested in one thing for too long we need a sum of everything at once. Sadly, its nearly impossible to thoroughly appreciate anything through such simultaneous over-indulgence.

The Past Must Be Heard (Loudly)

Conclusions by Luigi Russolo

from The Art of Noises (1913)

Conclusion 1

Futurist musicians must continually enlarge and enrich the field of sounds. This corresponds to a need in our sensibility. We note, n fact, in the composers of genius, a tendency towards the most complicated dissonances. As these move further and further away from pure sound, they almost achieve noise-sound. This need and this tendency cannot be satisfied except by the adding and the substitution of noises for sounds.

Conclusion 2

Futurist musicians must substitute for the limited variety of tones possessed by orchestral instruments today the infinite variety of tones of noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.

Conclusion 3

The musician's sensibility, liberated from facile and traditional rhythm, must find in noises the means of extension and renewal, given that every noise offers the union of the most diverse rhythms apart from the predominant one.

Conclusion 4

Since every noise contains a predominant general tone in its irregular vibrations it will be easy to obtain in the construction of instruments which imitate them a sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quarter-tones. This variety of tones will not remove the characteristic tone from each noise, but will amplify only its texture or extension.

Conclusion 5

The practical difficulties in constructing these instruments are not serious. Once the mechanical principal which produces the noise has been found, its tone can be changed by following the same general laws of acoustics. If the instrument is to have a rotating movement, for instance, we will increase or decrease the speed, whereas if it is to not have rotating movement the noise-producing parts will vary in size and tautness.

Conclusion 6

The new orchestra will achieve the most complex and novel aural emotions not by incorporating a succession of life-imitating noises but by manipulating fantastic juxtapositions of these varied tones and rhythms. Therefore an instrument will have to offer the possibility of tone changes and varying degrees of amplification.

Conclusion 7

The variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simply imitative way, but to combine them according to our imagination.

Conclusion 8

We therefore invite young musicians of talent to conduct a sustained observation of all noises, in order to understand the various rhythms of which the are composed, their principal and secondary tones. By comparing the various tones of noises with

those of sounds, they will be convinced of the extent to which the former exceed the latter. This will afford not only an understanding, but also a taste and passion for

noises. After being conquered by Futurist eyes our multiplied sensibilities will at last hear with Futurist ears. In this way the motors and machines of our industrial cities will one day be consciously attuned, so that every factory will be transformed into an intoxicating orchestra of noises.