Expired Milk

It's only been three days.
Yesterday the cereal tasted fine.
Tomorrow the coffee will be good.
Besides, the heat will destroy the bacteria.
The mold?  Bacteria.  Viruses come from living things.
Living things?  I'm pretty sure.
It's only been six days.
Someone has to smell it.
It's probably still good.
The coffee will be fine tomorrow
and besides, one more day is all
until more cereal is bought
along with another quart of milk.
If it doesn't pass the eye test
We'll toss it.  Sometimes the carton
can make it smell weird.
It's only been nine days.
Yesterday the tea tasted fine
after ten cigarettes
and no one was violently ill.
The shake test will tell us
all we need to know and besides
It's only been ten days.

Commercial Pitch A43-1 "Great Day"

Has your day gone incredibly well?  Have you set out successfully, avoided traffic, made it home in reasonable time and been fairly productive while at your work site?  Do you feel fairly confident in your abilities to produce results that justify your employment and pay and are you satisfied with what you have accomplished and ready to relax the night away?  Well, have we got the product for you!

From the makers of "It turned out my car keys fell under the car and were not locked inside", "I locked my front door after all", and "The stove was not on while I was away," comes the absolutely ground breaking "Today went so well I can't wait to relax!"

With each order of Tow Sow Lax you will receive a full sleeve of 25 medical grade razor blades and an easy change safety handle.  That's twenty five blades that a surgeon would be exceptionally impressed with.  These blades are so sharp they can cut through balsa wood simply by dropping them edge on.  Along with the 25 blades you will also receive one magnifying monocle with comfort grip foam eyepiece so that you never have to worry about it slipping away from your furrowed brow.  Also included is one 1000 lumens, rechargeable head lamp.  That's right, 1000 lumens that will follow your gaze wherever you direct it that will easily charge in hours from any USB port to full strength within hours!  Any USB port!  That means your wall charger for your phone, your computer, your monitor, your laptop, anything that has a compatible standard sized USB receptacle.

With all of that you don't need to ask what's more!  We'll tell you!  Included with your sleeve of 25 medical grade razor blades, easy change safety handle, comfort grip magnifying monocle, and 1000 lumens quick charge head lamp, comes a full assortment self adhesive, self sanitizing bandages in 8 different colors to fit whatever your style or mood may be.  Not only are they self adhering and sanitizing, but they are also water resistant and breathable!  With all of this included we will throw in with every order our patented easy open jar of foot glass.  With two different sizes of dispensing holes you can sprinkle along your walk paths in your apartments whatever sized shards of glass you want!

When you come home and feel absolutely stricken with a sense of general well being and feel like today went so well that you can't wait to relax, Tow Sow Lax is there for you.  Sprinkle a little in the kitchen before leaving for work, sprinkle a little near your bed when you wake up, pour a bunch into the carpet on the stairs to your laundry room, apply some to your slippers or your bath mat.  Come home after work, kick off your shoes, and let that good feeling melt away in eye watering stabs of agony and disgust.  And for a few cents more on the dollar we will throw in our extra Tow Sow Lax for tires and sneakers.  Don't have time to take off your shoes or slippers?  Going for a bike ride right after work instead of into your home?  Tow Sow Lax XL will have you sitting for hours going blind from brilliant light trying to find that tiny glimmer of glass between swiping blood from between your toes only to find you cannot see a damn thing once again and have in fact forced it deeper into your flesh.

Tow Sow Lax!  Keep on digging (tweezers sold separately, shipping and handling extra, cash and checks are not accepted).

Conor McGregor Versus An Alarm Clock

"You try to come at me, but you have no idea what you're in for.  I don't sleep like an ocean.  I don't sleep like a stone.  I don't sleep like a mountain.  I sleep like death.  If you want to try and touch me, if you want to try to test me, understand you are coming to death's door and I just might answer.

Come at me as many times as you want.  Five minutes from now, ten minutes from now, 24 hours, a week, or a year from now, the results going to be the same.  You try to get under my skin with your chirping and whining about what should happen and how things should go and complaining for attention.  Well you've got it and trying to push my buttons is about the dumbest thing you could've done.  You jump up and down about how the next minutes should go, so let me tell you how they will go: you're going to scream and shout and dance around with your flash and noise and I am going to reach out with my reaper's fist and put you to death faster than switching off a lamp.

If you want a rematch, I expect it.  I'll be ready.  When you think you're big and strong and start pounding at your own chest, shouting "look at me, hey what about me", I will be there to bury you again, and again, and again until I get tired of your nuisance.  When I do, don't expect me to simply switch you off.  Expect me to break you into bloody pieces and scatter you to the wind so that no one will have to hear you run your sorry mouth ever again."

Conor McGregor versus A Big Mac

"You're old.  You're done.  You're days are finished.  Look at you, you cannot even stand up straight.  If the king of burgers is what you are, then I am the God who shot you out of his left nostril not thinking people would come across your smear on my universe and take any interest at all.

I'm here to tell you that I am here to clean up this nonsense.  I am here to wipe you out of existence and the mat is my kleenex.  Don't talk to me about longevity.  Finishing you is going to be the saddest ten seconds mankind has known in ages.  When I'm done with you, there'll be nothing but a shell and I'll smash that too.

If you people want to see a fight, come to my locker room and watch me @#$% this thing... this garbage... out of my ass.  Big Mac, when it's over, you're not coming back, because this time I'm going to remember to flush."

That Instant

you realize your sense of humor has dried up and, while experiencing humorous thoughts, the window has closed and those thoughts are going to land face down on the street below, shoved through that closed window in a spray of glitter and entrails and, though funny to you, the humor is still upstairs inside your room, the end result being a cryptic crime scene and you will have to wait for the window to open again.

The Unwritten Beard Manifesto and Subsequent Referendum That Never Happened

Here's why:

I'm not against shaving.  I just hate it.  I say that shaving is for pussies.  Its a joke that cuts both ways.  If you don't see the humor in it, you're an idiot.  If you don't see the humor in it, allow me to clarify.  Shaving is for pussies, as in weak people that feel they have to present a certain image of themselves to be attractive.  Beards are awesome.  Lady, if you've got a mustache, the only thing weirder is shaving every morning.  Everyone sees your five o'clock shadow.  I dunno, bleach it or something maybe?  Okay, fine.  Shave it.  Laser it.  Laser the hell out of your face.  It's a complicated issue, I know.  Shaving is for pussies, as in pelvic areas, as in the vulva, is a joke.  It's sarcasm.  Can you imagine walking around with razor burn on your crotch all day, everyday, with the most confining underwear known to mankind?  I can.  I once completely botched a ball shaving job with an electric razor and didn't realize it until my scrotum was on fire in a pair of fine mesh black panties while sitting at a bus stop in the middle of summer.  It was ten o'clock in the morning.  It was one of the worst days I've ever experienced hygienically speaking.  Oddly enough, when I do it right I can shave my crotch with great ease and never have the problems induced when shaving my face.  If I had pubic hair for a beard I could shave every day, easy as pie.  However, I could never grow a beard because I would have pubes on my face and a full forest in my pants and that's just asking for all sorts of smelly sweaty awfulness down there and who wants a pube face?  I mean, than I would absolutely have to shave every day and that's just a hassle on another scale.  Shaving is not for pussies.  Trimming perhaps, but not baby smooth shaving.  That's just weird and hazardous to your health and safety.  Beards are awesome.  They keep the wind off of your face in Winter.  They shimmer in Summer.  They're low maintenance.  They let the world know you are a sexy beast.  They let the world know you are not a child anymore.  They make a statement.  They give you a chin if you don't have one.  They give you something to play with and tug on and snuffle into.  I'm not against shaving.  I just hate it.  I hate it like I hate Nazis.  Okay, I hate Nazis more.  Slightly more.  There should be an extra notch above hate so that I can hate Nazis more, but there isn't so I have to hate shaving slightly less than I hate Nazis.  So I don't actually hate shaving.  I just strongly strongly strongly dislike it.  Why set your face on fire everyday?  I don't like anyone enough to go in for that no matter how much they like a smooth cheek.  How's that working out for you now?  What do you mean you don't want to nuzzle my horribly broken out, bleeding ingrown haired face?  Wasn't that what you wanted?  Aw, go to hell!  You don't know what you want.  I want a nice thick beard, thank you ma'am.  Shaving is not for pussies, its simply not for me.  No need to spark a revolution.  Grow a beard or do not.  I won't love you less, but you may find I love you a little more.

Reason #439 Why Pancakes Are Evil

Let's just say, hypothetically there is an electromagnetic pulse attack that blankets the East Coast, or wherever it is you live, some terrible afternoon.  Not that the afternoon was going terrible for you, but obviously after an EMP attack things probably went down hill pretty quickly.

Let's say following the EMP attack was to come a nuclear strike on the place, town, coast, whatever, your apartment building, and we know this because before the EMP attack wiped out all unprotected and delicate electronics we saw the missiles going up and were like "oh, damn.  That's not great."

Let's say right before that horrible afternoon, you had the morning off from work and figured you would hit up the diner, because most of the time you cannot even stop to smell your coffee on your way to work.  While you were sitting there, that beautiful and limitless morning you decided to go with the bacon and eggs and half bagel.

The news on the television behind the counter was interesting.  The commercials were funny.  Your booth was clean.  The coffee was smooth.  You even dropped a piece of bacon and it landed in a crease of your jean pant leg instead of on the floor.  A real "hell yeah" of a morning.  Even the wait staff was chipper and topped up your cup of coffee without you asking.

They ask you if you would like to try a few pancakes with syrups and flavors and chips in them and the day is going so great, and you've got the time off to take a little nap when you get home, and you say an emphatic yes.

Now lying there on your couch, people sprinting through the halls of your apartment building, policemen at street level with horns and whistles shouting the way to the nearest bomb shelters, fists pounding on walls and feet banging echoes down fire escapes and stairwells, and your belly full of more pancakes than you've eaten all year you know there is no way you can possibly get up.  There is no way you are making it off of your couch.  There is no way you will be able to run anywhere for at least another 4 hours, gripped in a carbohydrate coma the likes of which you've only heard stories about.

Nodding, resigned, that terrible afternoon; you always knew pancakes were going to get you killed one day.  Pancakes are evil.

Work and Workarounds

Cued: writing music and word inducing fluids to maybe produce some super fluidity. So lets get through this in one piece, because time is precious and hacks do two takes. I kid. But seriously, there's a lot less to worry about when you know your nose keeps bleeding because you've been snuffling coke. There's a lot more to worry about when your nose keeps bleeding and as far as you know you've kept it clean. So maybe it's just the winter crush I've been sucking into my lungs and things will balance up. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just prone to nose bleeds. Maybe I've just been sniffing too much paint. Maybe I shouldn't keep sleeping at 48 degrees. Maybe I should stop worrying because at the end of the day, if I finish up with as many body parts and organs as I started with, things are pretty much as good as it gets.

Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.

Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...

...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.

First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.

It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.

Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"

Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.

I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?


///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy

I Found

So I had this idea about humor. About genuine humor. Not the niggling humor that munches at the ankle of obviously flawed ideas, but the throated humor that vomits little mountains of spontaneity and thought. I was wondering if I could compose some.

I'm not going to try it here. Partially because I know that I am not intrinsically funny. And partly because I haven't forgotten that I didn't want to try it here. Humor is like singing. It's not so much about talent as much as it is about the construction of a head. Some skulls just have crappy acoustics. Most do. But some don't. The ability to hear yourself outside of what encompasses the space of your higher order functions is key to being a great singer and I think the same holds true for comedy.

Remember when I told you I was going to go look for the hissing? I think I do. I found it last night. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. It wasn't scarier either. It just was. It was the heart of a thing, if you can imagine it, a thing large as three story building and as wide as it was tall if not wider. The sound of my teeth grinding woke me up before I could get close enough to really make it out.

It was a strange trip. I didn't close my eyes and there it was. I had to do a ton of foot work, but I avoided the subways because I tend to get lost down there. I stayed above ground and it got darker and darker until it was dusk and I walked for a long time until I reached a great big brick thing. It could have been a wall for all I knew. The city simply stopped and there was this brick wall that could have been a building, but I didn't walk around it because it joined up with the two buildings on either side of the street and it was too dark to see if it terminated at some point above me or if it simply continued on forever.

I went in the door and inside the lights were like setting suns and I went down for several seconds, but I couldn't have gone deeper than ten or twelve feet unless there was some kind of compression happening, which I doubt. I doubt it because - I suppose I actually don't have a reason to doubt it. It's simply been my expectation. It was the feeling. There were no sutures of skips so I assumed. At any rate the staircase ended rather quickly and the floor was so immense that I could see it's curvature, but the light was too low to see anything beyond the immensity of the space. I walked on, directly away from where the stairs landed and after several dozen minutes the darkness began to turn a dull red and then this weird bronze pink and I followed the shifting gradient, keeping the brightest hues front and center, along the curving floor and there was a massive pounding that kicked through the air and thumped inside my lungs so bad that it was starting to hurt and I walked on and on and on until the intensity of the dullness, the sheer missingness of presence was making my head hurt as bad as my chest and I fought to resolve it and it came into focus and then I realized I wasn't breathing and the sound of my teeth grinding woke me up at 5 in the morning. It was awful. I learned nothing.

I'm not afraid tonight though. I guess, a huge part of what makes us fear is the not knowing. I don't need to know what exactly it is, or why it is, all I need to know is where the boundary of safety is. Where the envelope ends. And now I know.

I'll show you tomorrow. Whenever that is.


///Talvin Singh - "Soni" ...and then...