Stand Up Act 11

Stand Up Act 10

Some people stick by the words in line with the idea of everything you need to know you learn in kindergarten.  Be nice to each other.  Don't drop your pants in public.  Share.  Be quiet and listen when the time is right.  Take time to make things.  Take naps.  I don't know what the whole NY Times best seller's list was, but you get the point.  Coming to grips with the fact that I will probably never dunk a basketball has brought me an up to date version of that book.  In no particular order:

Everyone gets old and dies and the best you can do is be a little worse than your worst the day before.  That's right.  At some point your body stops growing and starts failing.  Bit by bit.  Part by part.  Sure, you may beat the odds and be one of the few freakish human beings that cannot be destroyed through attrition and must be struck down with sudden and violent illness or circumstance.  The chances are very good that you are not.  Once you hit your mid thirties, that's pretty much it.  The next decade or so, you may hold serve or at least keep even with your physical abilities the day prior, but it all ends in a gutter.  If you haven't dunked a basketball by now, you probably never will without a trampoline or other marvel of engineering.

You can't be whatever you want to be.  You can be a version of what you want to be.  You can be somewhere in the ballpark of what you wanted to be.  You cannot be whatever you want to be.  Well you can be whatever you want to be inside your head.  That is absolutely attainable.  However, you may wake up inside a very welcoming dormitory environment where breakfast always comes at 8:30 and bed time is 9 sharp and a guy keeps pounding his head against the wall loud enough to interrupt your 500 piece puzzling and your pants have no pockets and the shower always smells a little bit off.  You can't be whatever you want to be.  There are always outliers in great numbers because it's a perceptual lens.  Think of the planet as an aircraft carrier.  There are, I dunno, 150 pilots.  There are always 150 or so pilots.  There are 6000 other people doing all of the other stuff to make sure it doesn't crash or sink and feed the people that help the people that help the people that feed the people that help other people make sure it doesnt crash or sink so that the people that fly the planes and fix the planes can fly and fix things and make sure it doesn't get blow'd up.  Chances are really good, if you're born on that carrier, you're not going to be flying anything unless you steal it or are a pilot's kid or pilot's friend's kid.  If you aren't born with the genetic ingredients to Chia pet out into a frame capable of dunking, guess what?  That's right, you can work your ass off and add 6" to your vertical leap, but your wingspan and height have already conspired to make sure the best you'll achieve is a left handed layup with your finger tips grazing the rim.

Allow your passions to lead to your goals.  Your goals cannot kick start your passion.  That element of life is a one way valve.  You may not be able to dunk, but you do enjoy the game.  If you like to play with smash and grab abandon, get good at it.  Embrace it.  Set your goal to being the best slasher in the neighborhood.  Cut defenses to ribbons and bounce off the low block to grab rebounds because your game will never be above the rim... doesn't mean it can't be wicked fast.  When you set goals apart from your passions, your hearts never in it.  Doing things because you want to do them and doing things because you cannot not do them are too very different things.  There is an "I think I can" gray area muddled in there.  A little bit of chicken and egg, what came first, questioning, but for the larger part, save your mind the wear and tear.  Gravity will still be gravity tomorrow, and last I heard, the ability to go from zero to "don't blink" is pretty rare in itself.

The list goes on, but you get the point.  Along those lines, I was considering going back to trying to rip out a poem every day.  Just one.  There's the whole idea that you have to dig through the trash and start tossing things off of the top of the stack to get down to what you really want to weave and work with.  The thought behind it is that every time, every instance, that ends with the idea of "hey, I should write that down" is the lattice of your brain adding a new bit of graph that gets buried and grown in and grown over with the events and experiences that come after it.  And then you hit another branching point where you say to no one in particular "I should write that down".

By the time you actually get to the point of sitting down, all is forgotten.  Not really forgotten.  Buried.  Grab a shovel  You've got two choices.  Try to hammer and chisel all the way back to the fly in the center of the glacier, or sample and blast it apart, while mapping and scaling and measuring and cataloging it.

Eventually you may get all the way back to the granule of the thing you thought you should write down.  Nothing along the way will be known or preserved or brought into consideration to cut the journey or work shorter the next time around.  If you slice it up and hold it up to inspection and hang the samples on slides along the route, you've not only achieved the point of origin- you've possibly stumbled upon data for further examination and perhaps other points of interest that must be investigated before the entire land mass melts into the polar seas of your own consciousness.

Scary as hell, the prospect, no?  Oh yes.  In years of your decaying brain you've lost so much.  It's alright though.  Breath easy.  Release your testicles back out of your stomach and unclench your pelvises.  It's never too late to start getting some exercise and start tagging the fauna living inside your head.

Speaking of things living inside the mind, I've been up late a lot of days thinking about whether or not I should pursue a mate.  You know the whole mating thing.  The whole pairing off with other people to raise other littler people to become good big people to raise more little people to become good big people or horrible little terrors.  That whole thing.  I don't want to do it to raise other little people.  Let's get that out of the way first.  Maybe.  I think I would either be a great father or a horrible father, but there's no gray in there.  Trust me.  I've been over the idea drunk, sober, high, smashed, apotheotic, grounded, slippy, glowing, based, depressed, you name it.  It's going to go one way or another and frankly I don't care to flip a coin everyday hoping I raise someone who doesn't want to kill me every day of its waking life until I do actually die.  That shit is terrifying.

I want to do it for a companion.  A second voice, because the angel and devil on my shoulders like to play dress up so sometimes I glance over and there's a teddy bear and a bowling pin on the other side or a pacman and a doily.  What the hell, indeed.

I don't hate company.  This is how it all boiled down; I'll give you the most obvious that occurred to me last first.

While browsing reviews of Tinder and Grinder, I realized that my apartment, though of a healthy square footage, is laid out like one giant room with a side room (full of weight lifting equipment.... it's essentially a regularly used gym so that I don't have to pay to go to one).  I have enough space to house one person.  Exactly one person.  Trying to pack another person into this space will lead to a violent civil war, ultimately.  I don't live alone.  I'm in my apartment with me and the rest of the machinations and defects and words and whispers and screams and general artifacta of my minds functioning.  It's a packed house already.  Where am I supposed to go to escape if the side room is occupied and I can't go outdoors?

The second thing is there must be sex.  If you live with me, we have to fuck eventually or someone has to go.  Not immediately, but eventually.  If we don't have sex, that's fine, but you'd better be prepared for gratuitous nudity because I cannot stand clothing.  I hate clothes.  Once they've served their function it's time to discard them.  They're uncomfortable.  If I'm wearing something, I probably had to.  If it's something I enjoy wearing it's because if you're going to wear clothes, you may as well wear something you can have fun wearing or need to wear to bring happiness to the act of dressing my pretty innards.

I didn't live to the ripe old age of 30 to hear "don't touch me there" "it's four o'clock in the morning" "I'm tired" "I just ate lunch" "I want to shower first".  I don't care.  You can use me when you want to as well.  It's a two way street.  I damn sure am not going to catch flak for masturbating at midnight when they've turned in early.

I don't care if it's bad sex or the kind of sex you tell your friends about when I'm not around where you know I think I rocked the house, but really I fizzed about as pleasantly as having an ashtray dumped on your tongue, getting to wash it off, and finding grit behind your molars the next morning.  It's gotta be there.  I am a contact person.  When I know I can't touch you, things get weird.  Things get real weird.  Ever found a sheet of a paper folded in half six times inside your purse?  Ever found three razor blades in your wallet?  Ever found your jacket on the same hook except literally inside out?  Ever found everything that could possibly be unplugged unplugged?  Ever found everything you brought over laid out to the level of where your hands might swing as you picked up an item and progressed onward toward the door?  Ever found your car keys behind your head when you woke up?

The point is this:  I realized I don't own enough space to support two people to the point where one person can disappear from the other person's engagement and forget for a time that they are now part of the other person they are living with and dive into their own engagements.  I'd have to add a floor at best and another two rooms at the least so that I or they would not know exactly where to find me, because knowing exactly where someone is hiding is the same as having them immediately present.  You need only to recite the incantation to summon them.  There has to be some mystery and trial and error to at least give them a chance to relocate and make it interesting.

The other point is that I own enough stuff to support exactly one person.  There are enough chairs to support one person and an occasional party.  There are enough dishes and cups and utensils to support one person who makes their own meals and washes their own dishes.  Enough bedding for one.  Enough closet space for one.  Enough food and fridge space for one.  Enough toiletries for one.  Just a matter of fact.

Not that there's been no effort to expand the coffers.  There has been.  Through the strain and the strife and the good and bad times, the covering radar is still only big enough to account for the airspace over a single atoll.  Above and beyond that controlled airspace, all bets are off.  Everyone and everything flying in or out is at its own risk.  There simply is no room in the budget for fighter escorts and first response marines and a space program and, hell, the DPW is backlogged by years, not months or days.  Years.  Bringing someone else into the equivalent of District 9 is not going to end well for anyone who doesn't live somewhere near or lesser than there already.  This may be an open hoodrat invitation.  It's not.

Recognizing where my passions are, we can make this work.  I gotta acquire more space at some point if I want another human being around or, adding another human being, there will very quickly be just one.  We can work out the details after the acres.  Plus it'll be good to have places to bury things and plant growing things to just walk out on my porch and sit down and peer across the field and say to no one in particular "I remember when that tree was a foot tall," kick my feet up on a flat basketball , take a little sip of gin and apple juice, scrawl some notes, and tsk tsk at online dating messages I still receive, setting aside the gems to tell you when dinner rolls around and we play two handed hearts to see who sets the menu and who does the cooking that night.

No Country, No Courtship. The Noble State.

I don't understand this country. At all. It's not my country. It's goals aren't my goals. It's means aren't my means. It's ends aren't my ends. I suppose "ends" are also covered by "goals", but bear with.

I had a bad day. Everyone has those. Tuning my bicycle has been first and foremost, most recently, because it is the gateway drug to planes of existence I cannot reach and enjoy without it. Tuning the bicycle has been very important. At first tuning it was important because, as hobbies and fascinations go, playing with and exploring the machines performance is a risk/reward, work in/pleasure out, formula that is so often reserved for lesser and greater intellectual pursuits. What you put in is what you get out. What you risk is proportional to how far and away from the initial investment you will potentially succeed. The nice thing about the tuning is being able to feel and play in that sand box with your hands instead of just your head.

Well the bad day ended, or maybe continues to roll beneath the surface like wave functions through deep water, when I realized the tuning was important for other reasons. A machine powered by, and linked so tightly to, your body has to be properly tuned or one or the other will suffer damage at the interface. Well I damaged myself and didn't realize it until taking a shower and swiping at my nether regions to find I was raw as hell, but didn't realize it thanks to how hard I ride and all the adrenaline soaked hours I put in. Seat post is about half an inch too high. High enough to max out my strokes and stride, but too high and high pressured for my nuts. And the gear shifts for the drive sprockets are about a quarter inch to tensed, hence several agonized seconds spent trying to lock in high drive and pull away from a bus that ended with me having to bail and pull the bike up on the sidewalk after stripping the skin of my knuckle trying to engage the shifter. After that I didn't try to do anything else above the call of duty. The requirements of the moment. So maybe the bad beat is over. Maybe the adjustments will work. Maybe I'm just not making any sudden moves so I can't really know if things are tacking the right way or not.

The whole day was a lot like getting ripped out of hyper space with the boards lit up red and having no reason to believe anything should be that wrong. What the hell happened. Why are we stationary? Why now? We haven't gotten to the next destination. Not even close. And all the why trying to remember the lines and lines and lines of information in the manuals that tell you what all the little lights mean and how to fix them and they're related, but it's all over whelming when it strikes thirty at a time. So we troubleshoot and wait, dead in space.

The concept of the noble state struck me today. We are all familiar with solid state being, as I am absolutely obsessed with it. The phase of existence that is pure beingness. Zero wetware. Pure production. Pure interaction. Zero latency. Zero sleep. Zero diversion. This bad day has brought to my table another state. A state with much in common with the noble gases. A state of zero sleep, latency, diversion, and interaction whose mode is one hundred percent wet with zero production. A mode of existence predicated on pure focus to the maintenance requirements of the wetware to keep it functioning and spinning in place and whose pured focus requires the abandonment of all production, whose main symptom is not the decision to interact or not, but the incapability to do so. In the same way noble gases cannot react. A natural cross terminal reaction to the remediation of solid state existence. The "one step too far."

I have been gripped by the noble state recently and I'm trying to break out of it to that happy middle ground of balance. Which brings me back, in circuit, to the titular object. This is a place I cannot understand. Here's why (or at least the most recent example):

My work ethic got my friend promoted. I was happy to be part of it, but I didn't realize until now how large a part I played. My ability to do my job is par infinity. The intensity and strength and focus I brought to my work place is without equal. Literally. There is not a single person in the building who can do what I do, as well as I do it, as often as I do it, to be found anywhere. The manager who is getting deposed, failed to take advantage of what I do. The coworker who is being appointed successfully ascribed his name to what I do and is getting appointed to a higher position that pays double and more. I am, easily, more capable than both of them combined. However, the organization that staffs my place of work prizes seniority, and so my coworker who is half as capable as me but more senior by six months will reap all of the benefits of my toil. Which I was okay with, until the true degree of the leap frogging came to light.

I applied to the program to train managers; an opportunity to enter a phase of employment that would evaluate my ability to manage through an 8 week process. I was denied what amounts to an opportunity to participate in an opportunity to possibly enjoy greater success and use my skills to better the organization as a whole. Because, and as a direct result of my work, my coworker, six months my senior and half as capable, has been called in to fill out paperwork that will assign him to managerial status at another store. So what's wrong with that?

One: he did as little work as the current, temporarily deposed, interim manager. Two: he was the keyholder for the store when the falling temporary manager was not available and I still fulfilled all of the duties with greater fidelity than he did. Three: it was my ridiculous work ethic that got shit done in the face of call offs and short staffing and heavy (1000+ case orders) that made the store immaculate each day. Four: I had to actively manage his incompetence on a regular basis to make sure things ran relatively smoothly (the guy didn't even know how to turn on his two way radio). Five: when the shit hit the fan and there were four people available to put up one thousand cases, more than ten thousand individual items, to shelves, I was the one governing and delegating and executing the processing of the order so that when the peons came to work everything would be laid out correctly for them to do their jobs.

It is just massively aggravating that, in the face of everything that transpired he is instantly appointed, through a few moments of paperwork to a position HE DID NOT EVEN APPLY FOR. I did the paperwork, I went through the three stage interview process. It was something I wanted. I was denied for having "interpersonal issues" that "once resolved and signed off on" would allow me to reapply and be re-evaluated on. He gets to skip all that. Despite constant video surveillance and consistent day to day review of the tapes by the head honcho he still gets credit for "motivating" me? Despite the fact that even with incompetence of the interim manager and the steady output, the steady, ridiculous high numbers I put out, with no direct supervision ever, he gets credit for somehow working magic when it was that morons incompetence that failed to complete the days order after I left?

I don't understand the courtship dance that I'm not doing. I don't know where the "i"s are that I'm not dotting and the "t"s I'm not crossing. Just tired of getting passed up. I would be less jaded if the person skipping all the bullshit I had to go through to get the door close on my foot wasn't white. I would be less jaded if he wasn't ten years older than me. Less jaded if he wasn't six months longer in the bullshit of a union we're forced to join by accepting employment. Less jaded if I didn't do both of their jobs better than them. Less jaded if the only knock on me was having "interpersonal issues". Less jaded if we hadn't been written up the exact same number of times. Less jaded if the videotape, supposedly reviewed daily, didn't show I did twice the amount of work of them both combined. So, I am jaded and disappointed, despite myself.

It was a bad day. Capped off by a lack of harmony between myself and my machine. I don't understand what it is that I have to do to court America. What it is that I have to do to make it a more perfect union. As far as I can tell it is a thing imperfected and continuing on specifically because it is such. Because if the right people are selected to the right posts all the time, capitalism fails because everyone succeeds and in order for it to succeed very talented people have to be made to fail, not because of their talent or their offerings, but because someone can capitalize on their talent and their offerings at cut rates and generate a psuedo free market, a market free of close evaluation for its emulation of its own ideals warped just here and so to generate enough complacency that the end result is the best possible outcome at minimal costs and subterfuge.

I don't know where that last part came from, but it sounds like the start of a fine and provable thesis. Continuity, profit, and production ahead of ability, common sense, and equitable consideration. In the grand scheme, the scheme of things larger than myself I would probably accept that with huzzahs and go get 'ems and fuck yeah Americas. On the scheme of things in which I exist, however, I the words stick in my mouth in favor of "there has to be a better way." So I settle back into a noble state. And preserve myself. Tooth and nail.



///Muse - "Falling Away With You" I think our lives have just begun. You can feel the guitar climb and claw with the vocals and a scissor dogfight for superiority and it is beautiful. Beautiful in the way the fight for conscious can sometimes be.

Stand Up Act 1

Hi,

This is all improvised. I'll probably never get up in front of a mic because I am an impossibly shy guy, unlike the actual shyguys from the Mario universe. They were pretty in your face and aggressive. Actually I'm kind of like that too. So never mind that whole thing. I guess I'm just self conscious like everyone else who doesn't have enough money to ignore the rest of the world from the second they get pushed out of the womb like that little donut hole that pops out of a whole puncher. Who knew that those things grew up to be people. Or maybe people are just loose leaf paper. Waiting to be hole punched or something. How fun was using that thing. I must have ruined at least three acres of forests punching holes in paper. But I guess it wasn't really my fault. The teacher's were the ones who wouldn't accept paper with holes punched in the middle of it and around the corners and across the sides like St. Valentines day. Stick figures aren't going to shoot themselves. That's what meth and coke is for. Or something. Well anyway, I should probably explain a little more:

I've listened to a lot of stand up on the radio, well, on my computer. Which is the radio of my generation. Or I suppose, just my segment of my generation. The poorer people who got birthday cards with ten dollars in them from their parents. The kind of thing you'd expect from a grandparent who still believed ten cents could get you a sucker and copy of the latest Action comics in color and a trolley ride to the carnival next to the board walk made of gold and pixie dust and where the hell is that dish of Werther's I left to keep my copy of the TV Guide cross word I tore out of that magazine at the doctor's office, because I may be old and out of touch, but I'm still sharp enough to know when to steal shit instead of buying it. Thrifty. Like listening to radio on your computer instead of going to the club and seeing it live, because your poor and, shit, with that much money you could buy a whole mess of bacon and the good orange juice with the pulp in it instead of the food coloring.

Listening to all of this has basically made me as a largely failed occupational, but still pathological, writer want to express things that are funny to me too and hope that maybe like two other people will also think so. I say two, because I always like my stuff and my friend who doesn't really exist, the person who is basically holding down a time share in my head sometimes likes my stuff too so we need at least one more person in on this before it'll get good. Kind of like having sex with that person in the office that everyone has already had sex with, or actually no, it's more like picking up a copy of the latest nude mag, whatever they call, Juggs, or Juggs for black guys who apparently can only be aroused by large jewelry and x and y and z that we already featured in this magazine, but now it's earth toned and somehow more street, well whatever they call it, it's like picking that up and then you realize that "yeah, it's still just glossy paper and your left hand, dumbass. We coulda bought booze with that money you ass. Then, we could have at least forgotten that we were horny in the first place and also apparently do not have internet access." So at least me and two other people. Because one of you is imaginary.

So I'm gonna take some stabs at being funny until the acts kind of peter out, wherever that is. Maybe it'll be a continuing thing to go with my art. The problem with the world today, one of the many problems with the world today, possibly the largest problem with the world today is that there is so much to do and keep up with and pay for that there simply is not enough time to use these two hands, this one mouth, and these two eyes to generate everything that well's up inside. Which is why massive population extinction will be swell. Less stuff to do. More time to spend drawing on caves. Or at least exploring caves. How fun would that be? Screw this fucking phone bill. Who the hell am I going to call? Dave? He's ten states away for fucks sake. And the only other person alive on the east coast. My geography sucks by the way so if there are less than ten states on the east coast, I don't want to know, because I'll forget and be a forgetful jerk, but really it's your fault for giving me that information to hang on to with the expectation that I would actually commit it to essential memory where I put things like "how to breath" and "do not sleep underwater because that shit will drown you". Well I'm not calling Dave, because last time I schlepped up there it turned out he hadn't found the last post apocalyptic brewery still functioning. It was a fat rendering plant. So fuck this phone, fuck this phone bill, I'm gonna go draw on walls for the next month and get really good at growing shit." And so I figured I would take a stab at it. I mean what could it hurt.

I had this joke actually already in mind on my way home this morning. It was a fictional conversation. Happened in my head. Not fictional. Fictional to you. But this actually happened: "you smell like dog farts again."

"shut up"

"dude you smell like dog farts."

"well, shit. I have been slinging bags of dog food around for the last two hours to feed you"

"dog farts, dude. You better shower when you get home. I don't want you in my bed fartin up the sheets."

"well, shit on a stick, I'm tired as hell."

"have you been fisting dogs all night?"

"no, but that's kind of funny."

"I know, right?"

"Yes, I have been fisting dogs for the last eight hours and that is why I smell like Alpo gas. It's tough, but if I don't fist these dogs, who will? Who will fist these dogs for $7.75 an hour? Do I like it? Frankly that's none of your business. Other job skills? No. Just the fisting. Yes we do get a half hour to eat lunch. Alright then, thanks for your time. Should I wait for a follow up call for that second interview? Alright then, you take care too. Bitch. Click."

That last part was the joke. It was this thing that just struck me as hilarious. How would I explain to someone, because sometimes I am very much compelled to defend my various conditions of dress and stench and dishevelry to people I have to share public transportation with. And that's part of why I hate the bus. It's not like the subway where you can just look outside once in a while and know where you are or count the stops, unless you ride a particular bus line all the time. Your head has to always be on the gopher swivel trying to assess how much longer you can press your luck. Is this the stop I need to get off at or can I save myself another hundred yards, but if there is no stop in the next hundred yards I risk riding this thing all the way to the stop right before the depot because for some reason no one lives or works anywhere near this road for the next two and a half miles, but if I do get off here I'll have pit stains by the time I hit that meeting and I think there was a bridge with no sidewalks after this stop light, oh shit, I should have gotten off. So you're always looking around and making dodgy eye contact and in those few seconds you can read a lot once you've done it enough times.

Yeah I reek of cheap beer, but hey, at least it's not puke. And yes I did sleep somewhere without toiletries so my pits stink, but hey, at least it's not puke. I'm sorry, do I smell like I've just taken a bath in coffee creamer and fisted dogs for the last six hours? Well, guess what? I did. Boys gotta eat lady and quite frankly I'd rather smell like I just did something than like I just crawled out of a vase at the funeral parlor. I don't know where they get that scent, but they all have it. Probably from failed Mary Kay pyramid scheming or is it Amway still? Aren't those the same thing? I bet they were both founded by the same married couple. Rich wives. Pyramid schemes. Started by the richest wife who needed something to do that would still stroke her ego. God, that's depressing. And now part of the cando American fabric. Along with dog fisting for near minimum wage and listening to the radio on your computer. Which is actually not listening to the radio at all. When it's pre-recorded. But what's the difference. The difference is the radio is live. Sort of. What the hell is the difference?