Dear nose blowers,
A day can start, end, turn, and release on a good one. You know this. I know this. The rest of the world probably wants you to enjoy your moment less. That whole "ten sneezes in a row equals a single orgasm" thing is a myth. We've been there. We've seen it. The lightheadedness on the other side is an entirely different beast made of clouds of vision fading to black when you're not sure the sneezes are going to stop and you briefly contemplate the distinct possibility that you may die or fall into a coma or spasm to death because everything is firing far in excess of normal operation or even abnormal and there is no way possible to cum in the throes of a maelstrom and then it's over.
Oxygen begins to regain the helm and breath returns stable enough to begin to store and spoons tip against the sides of tea cups. Stone faced gut laughter. Mind rolls body. Cramp. Eye water. Fold.
Sincerely,
Handkerchief URI
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
6/23/16
6/21/16
That Instant
you walk into a tenants laundry basement, having explained to them when they moved in a year ago that their dehumidifier must be run at all times, and the walls are blotched with slimes and buds of mold in all shapes and sizes and the dehumidifier is turned on, not running, and displaying a humidity percentage in the mid eighties and you cannot, for the life of you, understand what the hell is wrong with people that they did not once think, coming and going with armfuls of laundry into a toxic, jungle, health hazard hell, to press the machine's start button after whatever break in its power supply caused it to reset.
6/11/16
That Instant
you've lost all faith in the human race reading comment sections of articles and youtube videos to find insight into the human psyche when you stumble upon another introspective human who understands the charade and extended comedy of performance art littering the social sphere so thoroughly they create a gem and ray of hope that knocks the inevitable march of sadness and futility dead in its tracks. Yes, the world is falling apart etc etc, but with no sense of humor, with no creative eye, with no lens for the absurd, with no imagination, it will be a very short walk off that pier.
For your consideration, a comment by SecondSons left on a music video by Desiigner (Panda) that did not take itself too seriously, though many, many, many of the comments and viewers did:
For your consideration, a comment by SecondSons left on a music video by Desiigner (Panda) that did not take itself too seriously, though many, many, many of the comments and viewers did:
6/10/16
What Makes You Laugh 3
What has been cracking me up over the last few days is a thought problem.
Everyone works to advance themselves in one way or another. What happens when you find yourself in a field you can excel at, but have an Achilles heel for? I am not a negotiator, but the field that I find myself in and doing very well with does not reward merit. It rewards negotiation. You are only worth what people are willing to pay for you. If you would like to price yourself out of their range, you are more than welcome to do so.
The field does not operate in the same ways the rest of the customer service field operates. If you want a job you can have one and if they ask what you would like to be paid you are welcome to write down whatever number you choose and they will come back to you with the starting and only number and you either say "yes" or you say "no." Very simple. Very straightforward. Very easy.
I have been laughing trying to gauge what I am worth to other people. In this field, what you are worth is an algorithm whose nuances run deep, parallel, and cross cut with sudden violence and stark contrast with blood and bone on the line should a miscalculation be made. There is no room for guesswork. Or is it that there is infinite room for guesswork because time is money and time is beholden to whom. For whom does the bell toll these days? For how long can negotiations continue and if you did get what you wanted, when would you feel armored and steeled and learned enough to ask for more? To demand more. Hell, if I know.
Given what I know, where I've been, the way I carry the fire like it is my pants on fire when the client's is, the willingness to tax flesh and artery until the tread falls off to make the date agreed on, I still have no idea what those values register on someone else's Richter scale. I still have no idea what dialing my number means to them when they want something done right, done thorough, and finished to the dotted "I." In terms of valuation, I don't know what I'm worth, but I'm pretty, inexactly, sure I am a cost effective means to whatever ends are summoned.
I am well trained and well versed in many modes. Control is lacking, but only because it is not easy to corral 700 horses in one direction at the same time; we manage. Adaptable, robust, and the commercial ends.
It does crack me up. Folks tell you so-and-so should be paying you "X" amount of dollars. Person "C" should have paid you this-and-that. What is stopping you from paying me what I'm actually worth? I'm not going to say no to money. I'm not going to ask for more. What's stopping you from returning a smile to me the way I gave one to you that you will enjoy much longer than the life span of the paper that passes from my hands to vendors? That is what has made me laugh lately.
You hear the same thing from so many different people and it makes us wonder if my asking for more money will actually change anything in the right direction. You've seen my body of work. You know what I can and cannot yet do. You know what you can ask me to do. I know what I can ask us to do. We are all familiar with one another and are either friends or thoroughly acquainted to a degree that we can rely on one another to follow through on our word. Why don't you trust me yet to do what I say I can do and have done? Why do I have to ask for more?
You've seen me operate enough times. I've worked with you enough times. If you believe I am some sort of benchmark to keep, you are mistaken. I am skewing the market low. What really, what really, cracked me up (because I had no option beyond cackle laughter) was thinking about all of the over paid clowns you rowd and rail about. Wondering why this clown is somehow ten times more efficient, ten times more reliable, 60 times more faithful, five times more communicative, 100 times more driven, and ten times more accessible and somehow.............. somehow.......... worth less to you than the other, menial, infantry clowns you employ.
Grade S infantry? "No, I will settle for grade D and pay them like a scientist apprentice."
Maybe, I'm just not cooperative enough. Eventually the question will boil over and we will have a discussion to resolve points that our sextants align. In the face of heartache, the only option is irrational, hysterical, laughter.
///Stereolab - "The Free Design" live
Everyone works to advance themselves in one way or another. What happens when you find yourself in a field you can excel at, but have an Achilles heel for? I am not a negotiator, but the field that I find myself in and doing very well with does not reward merit. It rewards negotiation. You are only worth what people are willing to pay for you. If you would like to price yourself out of their range, you are more than welcome to do so.
The field does not operate in the same ways the rest of the customer service field operates. If you want a job you can have one and if they ask what you would like to be paid you are welcome to write down whatever number you choose and they will come back to you with the starting and only number and you either say "yes" or you say "no." Very simple. Very straightforward. Very easy.
I have been laughing trying to gauge what I am worth to other people. In this field, what you are worth is an algorithm whose nuances run deep, parallel, and cross cut with sudden violence and stark contrast with blood and bone on the line should a miscalculation be made. There is no room for guesswork. Or is it that there is infinite room for guesswork because time is money and time is beholden to whom. For whom does the bell toll these days? For how long can negotiations continue and if you did get what you wanted, when would you feel armored and steeled and learned enough to ask for more? To demand more. Hell, if I know.
Given what I know, where I've been, the way I carry the fire like it is my pants on fire when the client's is, the willingness to tax flesh and artery until the tread falls off to make the date agreed on, I still have no idea what those values register on someone else's Richter scale. I still have no idea what dialing my number means to them when they want something done right, done thorough, and finished to the dotted "I." In terms of valuation, I don't know what I'm worth, but I'm pretty, inexactly, sure I am a cost effective means to whatever ends are summoned.
I am well trained and well versed in many modes. Control is lacking, but only because it is not easy to corral 700 horses in one direction at the same time; we manage. Adaptable, robust, and the commercial ends.
It does crack me up. Folks tell you so-and-so should be paying you "X" amount of dollars. Person "C" should have paid you this-and-that. What is stopping you from paying me what I'm actually worth? I'm not going to say no to money. I'm not going to ask for more. What's stopping you from returning a smile to me the way I gave one to you that you will enjoy much longer than the life span of the paper that passes from my hands to vendors? That is what has made me laugh lately.
You hear the same thing from so many different people and it makes us wonder if my asking for more money will actually change anything in the right direction. You've seen my body of work. You know what I can and cannot yet do. You know what you can ask me to do. I know what I can ask us to do. We are all familiar with one another and are either friends or thoroughly acquainted to a degree that we can rely on one another to follow through on our word. Why don't you trust me yet to do what I say I can do and have done? Why do I have to ask for more?
You've seen me operate enough times. I've worked with you enough times. If you believe I am some sort of benchmark to keep, you are mistaken. I am skewing the market low. What really, what really, cracked me up (because I had no option beyond cackle laughter) was thinking about all of the over paid clowns you rowd and rail about. Wondering why this clown is somehow ten times more efficient, ten times more reliable, 60 times more faithful, five times more communicative, 100 times more driven, and ten times more accessible and somehow.............. somehow.......... worth less to you than the other, menial, infantry clowns you employ.
Grade S infantry? "No, I will settle for grade D and pay them like a scientist apprentice."
Maybe, I'm just not cooperative enough. Eventually the question will boil over and we will have a discussion to resolve points that our sextants align. In the face of heartache, the only option is irrational, hysterical, laughter.
///Stereolab - "The Free Design" live
That Instant
you are familiar with as many addictions as you have fingers on two hands and somehow cigarettes are the only one you have no control over. Kiss the sky, float away, war speed, cuddle song, cube puzzle, there can be only one, everything balance, diagram, organic symbiote, flare gun, brush fire, assymetree city planning, and for some reason, some way, some how, cigarettes remain a stand alone complex.
6/2/16
When Is Enough
The difficulty of motivation is obvious to anyone who has bothered to write, or paint, or draw, or work, or invest any part of themselves in an activity or pursuit that is painful, uncomfortable, or plain not easy.
When is enough far enough? What do I want? What do I want to accomplish? What do I need? What can I disallow myself? What must I disallow myself? When I was younger, growing up through early adulthood, I heard so many "no"s. Everyone and every system telling me what I can not do, where I could not go, who I could not speak to, when I must disappear. Molded and shaped by the enclosure, dreams fade. Fade until they're forgotten because it hurt too much to bring it back into consideration every day, every week, every year, to see that not only was I no closer to anything I set out to do to satisfy my soul and mind, but I was further from it than I was the year before. The mind falling apart. The costs of keeping it together steadily rising. People telling you again and again what your ceiling is, not out of a fear of what I could do, but out of a strange compassion for seeing the war fought inside to maintain a level of sanity and "normal" against mental disorders eating away at the fringes of my consciousness.
Can I be content now? What else do I want? To be left alone. There is still a lot of work to do to arrive there. That may be the only ultimate goal. To be left alone with the things living inside my head and a few animals to keep me company. People are out of the question. They can be trusted, but they are out of the question as quarters draw closer and closer. There is not enough space now. That is what I need. I suppose a bit of both. Can I be content now? As long as I can avoid hurting myself too intensely, too viciously, I won't need health insurance. I will likely only live to 60 or so. Would it be that far a leap of madness to arrive to that end 15 years early? No. Would it be foolish to drag my feet to that end 15, 20, 30 years beyond? Absolutely. Don't be absurd.
I can hardly maintain a conscious coherent line of action for 12 hours because I have to lie in bed for 12 hours because I can't sleep for more than two hours at a time before I wake up and need an hour to get back to sleep. To achieve an eight hour work day, I need four hours to prepare and four to undo the damages, eat, unpack the interactions, bathe, and prepare for sleep. Every where I look I am losing time in human maintenance that is impossible to make up elsewhere inside the sweep of the clock. Until I melt down, lose control, and fall apart in a heap of wails, tears, and broken tissue, begging for an end to the insanity of trying to fit myself into these chains of events for money.
How long do you keep smashing your own extremities with a peen hammer before you wake up and decide this is as far as I am willing to go and I am going to learn to live in this tiny cage and make it work because I know I or some around me will die if I try to reach any further. Life is long. Many people can race along it's rivers. I am not one of those people. I've got no use for your money. I wish I had no use for your money, is more accurate. I suppose that is where I am heading. Retirement is another name for being left alone to leave life in peace and enough isolation to prevent anyone around you from being hurt and to be able to let myself live among the shadows in my head openly and happily with everything I need to survive until my body fails. Retirement is a pipe dream. I'll find another way.
When is enough? When I have my own paid off house in the middle of a thickly wooded wilderness or some cottage at the end of a one lane drive to the vanishing point of a horizon plain? When I've found a place in the world where I can not be found? A place to hide and mend and dance with my broken brain and that's all I have to do to continue to see sun's rise? I don't want to think about it now. Enough is not yet. I have to keep chugging along down the damned river, occasionally stopping to fish, at a blisteringly fast (to me) half knot and continue to hope and strive for the best and make due with repairs whenever its engine sputters and dies and hope I don't run out of supplies or the some day passerby who toss me a pipe, wrench, or a handful of wire harness to keep it going until I reach my tributary to one side or the other to glide down and stake claim to a bit of land no one will find for ages after I'm gone.
Who knows when enough is. I do know I am not close yet and as much as I want now to be that place, it is not. Wrestling with motivation won't get you killed. Picking up the hammer eventually will.
///Jon Hopkins - "Candles"
When is enough far enough? What do I want? What do I want to accomplish? What do I need? What can I disallow myself? What must I disallow myself? When I was younger, growing up through early adulthood, I heard so many "no"s. Everyone and every system telling me what I can not do, where I could not go, who I could not speak to, when I must disappear. Molded and shaped by the enclosure, dreams fade. Fade until they're forgotten because it hurt too much to bring it back into consideration every day, every week, every year, to see that not only was I no closer to anything I set out to do to satisfy my soul and mind, but I was further from it than I was the year before. The mind falling apart. The costs of keeping it together steadily rising. People telling you again and again what your ceiling is, not out of a fear of what I could do, but out of a strange compassion for seeing the war fought inside to maintain a level of sanity and "normal" against mental disorders eating away at the fringes of my consciousness.
Can I be content now? What else do I want? To be left alone. There is still a lot of work to do to arrive there. That may be the only ultimate goal. To be left alone with the things living inside my head and a few animals to keep me company. People are out of the question. They can be trusted, but they are out of the question as quarters draw closer and closer. There is not enough space now. That is what I need. I suppose a bit of both. Can I be content now? As long as I can avoid hurting myself too intensely, too viciously, I won't need health insurance. I will likely only live to 60 or so. Would it be that far a leap of madness to arrive to that end 15 years early? No. Would it be foolish to drag my feet to that end 15, 20, 30 years beyond? Absolutely. Don't be absurd.
I can hardly maintain a conscious coherent line of action for 12 hours because I have to lie in bed for 12 hours because I can't sleep for more than two hours at a time before I wake up and need an hour to get back to sleep. To achieve an eight hour work day, I need four hours to prepare and four to undo the damages, eat, unpack the interactions, bathe, and prepare for sleep. Every where I look I am losing time in human maintenance that is impossible to make up elsewhere inside the sweep of the clock. Until I melt down, lose control, and fall apart in a heap of wails, tears, and broken tissue, begging for an end to the insanity of trying to fit myself into these chains of events for money.
How long do you keep smashing your own extremities with a peen hammer before you wake up and decide this is as far as I am willing to go and I am going to learn to live in this tiny cage and make it work because I know I or some around me will die if I try to reach any further. Life is long. Many people can race along it's rivers. I am not one of those people. I've got no use for your money. I wish I had no use for your money, is more accurate. I suppose that is where I am heading. Retirement is another name for being left alone to leave life in peace and enough isolation to prevent anyone around you from being hurt and to be able to let myself live among the shadows in my head openly and happily with everything I need to survive until my body fails. Retirement is a pipe dream. I'll find another way.
When is enough? When I have my own paid off house in the middle of a thickly wooded wilderness or some cottage at the end of a one lane drive to the vanishing point of a horizon plain? When I've found a place in the world where I can not be found? A place to hide and mend and dance with my broken brain and that's all I have to do to continue to see sun's rise? I don't want to think about it now. Enough is not yet. I have to keep chugging along down the damned river, occasionally stopping to fish, at a blisteringly fast (to me) half knot and continue to hope and strive for the best and make due with repairs whenever its engine sputters and dies and hope I don't run out of supplies or the some day passerby who toss me a pipe, wrench, or a handful of wire harness to keep it going until I reach my tributary to one side or the other to glide down and stake claim to a bit of land no one will find for ages after I'm gone.
Who knows when enough is. I do know I am not close yet and as much as I want now to be that place, it is not. Wrestling with motivation won't get you killed. Picking up the hammer eventually will.
///Jon Hopkins - "Candles"
Dear (_____)
Dear Cats,
Puh-lease, please, please, please, please finish shedding. With temperatures in the mid 90's day and night it's already a coin flip to figure out when to sleep, and only able to sleep nude uncovered, with several fans, it's an F1 of cat hair filaments touching skin like tiny insect antennas and legs. Please finish shedding so that I can sleep and you can be comfortable too and we can all not lose our minds slapping and pawing our faces at bugs that don't exist.
Also it would be nice to have some open glasses. That can't be tasty to drink from your bowl either. So, from one over heated apartment dweller to another, let's get finished up, okay?
Love ya,
a cat person
Puh-lease, please, please, please, please finish shedding. With temperatures in the mid 90's day and night it's already a coin flip to figure out when to sleep, and only able to sleep nude uncovered, with several fans, it's an F1 of cat hair filaments touching skin like tiny insect antennas and legs. Please finish shedding so that I can sleep and you can be comfortable too and we can all not lose our minds slapping and pawing our faces at bugs that don't exist.
Also it would be nice to have some open glasses. That can't be tasty to drink from your bowl either. So, from one over heated apartment dweller to another, let's get finished up, okay?
Love ya,
a cat person
That Instant
You can definitively confirm Summer's arrival because you've fallen asleep naked on your back for the second evening in a row spread eagle with a fan blowing from your bow to stern trying to keep dry while your dinner finished baking only to wake up to a cold, over done, and dry dinner hours later and need a cold shower anyway. Then while sitting and chewing your over done and dry meat, sweat beads on the bridge of your nose.
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