| CARVIEW |
The prestige of having been employed in the same entry level job for seven years (without promotion) has lead many of our readers to seek my advice in career matters[1]. Traditionally I answer via private correspondence, mostly with biting personal commentary and ugly sexual innuendo, but a recent wave of joblessness amongst my cohort has convinced to disseminate my wisdom in a more public fashion.
My time in the business world has taught me exactly one thing: context is more important than content. Being able to frame information in a self-constructive fashion is the entirety of the battle; master the spin, and you win.
Let us examine a few common errors of phrasing and context and explore stronger alternatives.
***
(Originally posted at SAM THE TURTLE)
The Statement: I’m not afraid to cut a mothafucka if he gets too close!
While this assertion could potentially establish your street cred, your interviewer is unlikely to draw any positive inference from it. Additionally, if the interviewer does haphazardly wander too close, you will need to cut him or risk losing any previously accrued street credentials[2].
How you should couch it: I have a strong commitment to personal space and am a highly motivated self starter, with a strong appreciation for the importance of reputation.
***
Educational Wherewithal: I am wholly illiterate. This is a conscious choice that I have made at great personal cost.
The reading world is unkind to the brave. Incomprehensible forms are presented, signatures demanded, and pictographic resumes rejected out of hand. Fortunately, the higher up you go in the corporate world, the more literacy becomes a liability. Complete sentences, proper syntax, and using one metaphor at a time are the province of lesser me forced into coherence by their low station in life.
A proper obfuscation: I’m a big idea guy…a do’er who doesn’t waste his time on navel gazing. I delegate effectively to remain focused on high concept execution.
***
The admission: I got fired from my last job for sexually assailing, like…three coworkers. But at least two of them clearly wanted it.
A hard pill to swallow, indeed. This is a classic case of providing too much information and applying value judgments where none are needed. Let the courts decide who was in the wrong, your job is to sell your product. You!
A more refined sentiment: In my last position I took on additional unpaid management duties that created some friction amongst my co-workers. In hindsight more effective communication skills would have smoothed the transition, but in end we all benefited.
***
Matters of Health: I got hit with the Dim Mak touch a couple years back…so I’ll likely be taking a lot of sick leave.
Health issues can raise all sorts of red flags in prospective employers. Try and downplay the debilitative impact of your condition, while emphasizing the benefits.
How to Frame it: Instead of mentioning your lack of positive Ki, emphasis your abundance of negative Ki. Explain how you may die and become a Revenant…perhaps one driven to work extremely hard for a limited wage.
***
The freestyle portion of the interview:
My rage is ringing like a phone, bitch you better answer
My life is full of pain, like your wife is full of cancer
A little hostile, but you’re on the right track. Rapping, along with collating and synergizing, form the core triumvirate of effective office management.
An Alternate flow:
I am assertive and capable, in a straight forth manner
I always meet my deadlines, as I’m a effective planner
I’m sorry to hear about your wife
***
The Situation: The King of all Centaurs is my sworn enemy. There will be attacks; some to kill, some to capture. Mostly during office hours. The dead will be the fortunate ones.
While it is not uncommon to have unresolved obligations from past employment, it is important to inform potential employers of any pre-existing scheduling conflicts. You are not well served, however, disclosing past acrimony that might cast you in a negative light.
A more optimistic interpretation:
Past cultural exchanges have allowed me to form strong, if complex, relationships with non traditional markets. This will almost certainly facilitate a variety of networking opportunities for myself and my coworkers…possibly leading to extended placement in outside positions.
********
[1] Our readers are as lacking in judgment as they are to soon be of gainful employment.
[2] And who knows, he may be quick with a blade himself. What a terrible outcome it would be to lose a potential employment opportunity and the better part of your spleen.
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(Originally posted at SAM THE TURTLE)
I do not have children but my friends do. Children are, by their nature, quite stupid and prone to dying. My friends are very tired and would prefer their children be alive and smart, but often settle for alive. Eventually the kids start talking and demanding answers to questions of such volume and frequency that it breaks the human mind.
I do not have children, but I have answers. As a public service I have decided to dig into the backlog of questions that my friends are too exhausted to answer, and fill the gaps in their children’s knowledge . Each parent emailed me a list of queries and promised to read my response to their child in full, without editorial interference. I do not believe in speaking down to kids so some of the terms and concepts may go over their heads, but I’m confident that the essential truth will make its way through.
***
Is the tooth Fairy real? Why does she give money for teeth?
Brandon
Age 7
Savvy question, Brandon. First rule of the Grift: If you can’t see the angle you’re the rube. Why would an assumedly immortal being invest the time, opportunity cost, and massive change outlay to acquire half rotted baby teeth? The second rule of the grift: goodwill comes at a price. She’s not buying your teeth, she’s buying your trust. She’s establishing a relationship and a precedent.
Do you know why you don’t feed bears? Because it makes them hungrier and braver and less satisfied with the food of the wild. You think she’ll stop at teeth? Maybe down the road you tear off a toenail in a door jamb, decide to throw that under your pillow, and find a fresh ten spot come morning. Pretty soon you get real careless,this time it’s the whole toe you toss under the pillow and lo and behold a brand new X-box One jammed beside the bed. A year later you’re a torso on a skateboard, paddling down the street with a broken pool cue that you’ve duct taped to your arm stump.
Keep them teeth bro, you can’t win a rigged game.
***
How do I get all the pokemon? I have a bunch but my friend David won’t trade me the ones I need.
Joshua
Age 9
Well, Joshua, the first step is divesting the last few shreds of human decency that remain and accepting the darkness that drives you to attempt the capture and enslavement ,and eventual trafficking, of fellow sentient beings. And not just some of them, mind, but all of them. Can’t have a few uppity stragglers running around free, putting proof to the lie that they exist only to serve.
Maybe your friend David is trying to do you a favor and slow your inevitable slide into sociopathy.
And I know what you are going to say “But they can only say their own names, how smart could they be?”. I’ll tell you what, Josh, why don’t we round up all the mutes and deaf kids and shy ass mumblers you know and force them to fight to the death in my basement. And don’t worry, we’ll let them know that all of this can stop if they can just explain…why it should. Cause’ that your standard, isn’t it Josh? You can’t suffer if you can’t talk. You son of a bitch.
And a little aside to your hero Pikachu.
Oh sure, you riding on the shoulder now, you a real fine House Hamster, but when your charge runs low, and you find you find yourself in Uncle Toms Pokeball, and Squirtle breaks a bottle in your eye for starring too long, don’t pretend you don’t know why that hard rain is falling.
]]>It is thus that we begin our series examining the history, menace, and broader cultural connotations of each nation’s monsters. Let us begin.
Loch Ness Monster
(Originally posted at SAM THE TURTLE)
Overview
A pile of old rags strewn across a log, or, a dirty Scottish plesiosaur too stupid to find the ocean? In the darkest of legends, if they can be believed, a guy was once down by the lake and saw it kind of swimming around…and then it left, only to be seen by another guy a few years later. Each time it was seen it did a little less, until those who were drawn by its antediluvian malice were condemned to stand by the shore, with not much going on, until they got bored and bought an over-priced souvenir.
Country of origin: Scotland
Is it scary:
If being dangly and feeling social anxiety were enough to inspire terror math clubs worldwide would be places of unspeakable horror. Under the best of circumstances all the monster does is glide about in the water. It’s essentially a big swan, except swans attack people all of the time.
Ironically a pile of old rags and stray logs would be more threatening, as you could at least tangle your prop on the rags and maybe drag a log ashore to dry and then carve into something intimidating. Like a swan.
What does this say about Scotland
Allow me to reiterate, a driftwood swan is scarier than the Lochness Monster. Its tale is really one of victimhood and dislocation more than anything. When even the monsters of your culture are lost and afraid it doesn’t speak well to the health of the national psyche. Joseph Campbell would have them on mythological suicide watch.
What is the lesson: Don’t bother leaving the house, there is nothing going on anywhere, and even if it was it would just be depressing. Bad job, Scotland.
***
Banshee
Overview
The Banshee, or Bean Sídhe if you’re proper Irish, is a lady of the Fae that wails in mourning of those about to die. They don’t kill them, per se, but they blight the last moments of the soon to be departed’s life with the bleak certitude of death…which is kind of a dick move. And just try to get insurance.
Country of origin: Ireland
Is it scary:
On the surface they are no worse than a doctor holding an X-ray that you’d rather not see. Peel back the myth a little, though, and the true face of Banshee makes itself known. And that’s the end of the Banshee discussion, Have a fine evening one and all. Oh, and could the lads hang back a sec, I think I grabbed the wrong shoes and want to sort it out before I leave
***
Of course we all understand that the Banshee was a cautionary allegory used to warn young Irish men, in code, of the horrors of a relentless nagging housewife. An excerpt from the secret history of Irish.
“One night Seamus stayed late at the pub, as the boys were in fine form, and you could hear a wail across the moors…”you’ve got three boys and a job at the docks…you can’t be out all hours like a Tom-what-have-you.” And Seamus lit out like the Devil had his heels, and when next he was seen he was dead eyed…and carrying a box of hats, children hanging like lice from every limb, and none spoke of him or to him again.”
Terrifying, to be true, but no more so than a dry keg or an honest days work. Still, a creature that eats your freedom and leaves your flesh is enough to test the sternest man’s stew.
What does it say about Us [1]
God give us the depth of our charm to hide the breadth of our faults, and a love for freedom that would make a Frenchman fight in the face of mild opposition. The Banshee brings certain death, but it is the certainty that terrifies, not the death. So we drink.
What is the lesson
Irish men shouldn’t men marry, and Irish women should move.
***
[1] While I’m not Irish of birth, I’m Irish of blood and spirit enough to use the we instead of they and the us instead of them.
***
Overview
Spring legged, spine backed, befanged sucker of goats the Chupacabra’s origin and appearance vary on the telling. Some see it as an undiscovered animal driven into farm lands by urban sprawl. Others, mostly Mexicans, believe it a particularly unambitious demon from hell, delivering the kind of low rent carnage one would expect from a cartoon fox.
Also, there are some white dudes, vigilant despite their active social lives, who’ve identified the Chupacabra as members /minions of an alien race who sucked as hard as they could at home and so crossed interstellar distances to suck elsewhere.
Country of origin: Mexico
Is it scary
I suppose If I had a goat I’d prefer not to lose it, but it’s on par with someone stealing my bike. And the sucking thing? Pfft, I’ll suck a goat right now. I’ll suck two goats at once in front of their parents. These are not things I want to do, but they are within my power. Despite these capabilities the Latin world is oddly sanguine about my continued existence. Though three local petting zoos have declared me persona non grata.
Assuming the extraterrestrial version? Admittedly petty, but fairly benign as alien incursions go.
What it says about them
This is why the Mexicans don’t make cars
If I asked you to close your eyes and describe the most dangerous creature you could imagine, and you came back with “It’s something so dangerous that it can kill a goat…by sucking it” you would lose the right to play the “Close your eyes and imagine things” game. How can a people that came up with so many bean recipes be this uncreative?
Still, I can’t blame a man for valuing his livestock.
What is the lesson
Just, keep an eye on your fucking goats. It’s too hot today.
***
]]>The following is a roughly chronological rundown of questionable verse written in the last half decade.
Let us prepare our palate with something appropriately bitter.
A blameless life
I wonder what would it be like
to lead a blameless life
and have my brittle pieces cut
but never fall
What was I trying to say?
“You do thoughtless things and never hold yourself to account for them”
Though it amounts to: How about that, you’re the nameless antagonist in poem you will never read…who’s pathetic now!
What was actually going on
This falls under “Fuck you, you made sad so I’m going to slander you from the bully pulpit of an obvious poem that I don’t have to be accountable for” school of narrative verse. See the collected work of Mr. Trent Reznor for further reference.
Technical merit:
Not as bad as I remember. Nice cadence, flows well, efficient, conveys the inner state. Good effort linguistically, poor effort dignity-wise. As a general rule the person writing accusatory poetry lost the relationship on all cards.
The things that could have been
Beauty tried, and beauty failed, then never rose again
To make a better world without making better men
————————————————————
Dreamers looked, and dreamers lied, about wonders never seen
Searching for their failures in the things that could have been
What was I trying to say?
I did the best I could with limited means but ultimately the world failed me by forcing transcendent love into an ordinary context.
What was actually going on here?
I’m fairly sure this was referencing a series of aborted hookups with a girl that I was not especially compatible with, but had talked up in my mind to such an extent that I couldn’t reconcile the reality with the expectation. Replace Beauty with Judgment and Dreamers with Whiners and it becomes a fundamentally more accurate recounting.
Technical merit:
The first stanza is decent and vague enough to be generously interpreted. The second is wooden and mopey enough it weighs down the whole piece. Brevity folks, it gives the illusion of competence.
After the Dragon
If I lay down by the dragons side
and neither fought, and neither died
just slept the night, so awful tired
could I still think myself a hero?
And would it be enough I tried
to hang the day, in mercy mired
forget the flesh, and thoughts acquired
at least until we awoke as strangers?
What was I trying to say?
I suppose I was trying to romanticize a fairly banal, if unhealthy, fling into something epic by evoking overwrought imagery. Note I make myself seem noble and heroic…by stating that I am noble and heroic. Subtlety thy name is AJ.
What was actually going on here?
Look, this was not a proud time in my life. This is the literary equivalent of gathering one’s Transformers to have them chant praise for your dignity and sexual prowess, and it still somehow devolves into tears and accusations.
Technical merit:
Oh man, I was tempted to skip this one. It’s a shameful trifecta of embarrassing lack of craft, bad faith, and transparent self serving imagery. If Lewis Carol and Kim Jong Il had a child with mild autism this is the sort of poetry he’d write.
I suppose it rhymes, which is something, but it’s so trite and manipulative its only real value is that of cautionary example.
Rope burn
Sometimes letting go means adjusting your grip
and others, falling away entirely.
The trick is figuring out which
before you forget what you’re holding.
What was I trying to say?
Just that.
What was actually going on here?
I’m using the sophisticated metaphor of letting go of something to express my conflict in letting go of someone. My next work involved a river as a metaphor for a journey.
Technical merit:
The only thing that makes this a poem is the spacing. I’m just blandly stating an obvious sentiment without nuance or allegory. Not so ambitious.
I’ve slept with friends and woken up with strangers
Before our bodies hit the bed
the bookends bled
and strangers made their pardons
for the time they were mistaken
and things they’d soon forgotten
What was I trying to say?
I’ve been reading this for ten minutes trying to figure out what the hell bleeding bookends have to do with anything. Was this a careless orgy where the spectators got there heads busted open and developed retrograde amnesia?
What was actually going on here?
I honestly have no goddamn Idea. I barely remember writing this, let alone what inspired it.
Technical merit:
Well, it’s short.
Beautiful Failure
We offered up beauty with two broken hands; the gathered best slipped, trembled from stiff fingers. And every “I love you”, became “I cannot explain”, how far we’ve wandered, and where we have changed. Still we reached, as far as we could fail; in the hope something made it through. Some word or consolation, to show that we were there, that the less we became, the more we tried to care.
What was I trying to say?
The dear and clumsy awkwardness of two people trying to set down something precious, but past its time.
What was actually going on here?
I had just amicably broken up with a lovely girl who was a wonderful influence on my life, and was trying to explain how the awkwardness that had crept in at the end was a product of position and timing, not value.
Technical merit:
I like this one, though the line “Still we reached, as far as we could fail” still reads awkward to me. It just misses the sentiment I was going for, and disrupts the sing-song cadence the rest of the piece has.
The first night gone
Last night I reached and turned in a clockwise search for the borders of our bed, where soft skin and cold feet set the limit to my sprawl. But there was none, no limit and no center, so I spun and wondered at the space. The time it took to sleep and the rise of unfamiliar springs against my back; how light she must have been.
What was I trying to say?
That I couldn’t sleep without her, and couldn’t reconcile her absence, or properly express how dear she is to me.
What was actually going on here?
This wasn’t technically breakup poetry; my girlfriend was just abroad for an extended period of time.
Technical merit:
When I’m trying to define a moment instead of defending a choice old prose carries a lot more weight. There is no axe to grind, no cross to bear, just a situation expressed.
An Apology
This girl once said that I could only see women as hopeful shapes on the horizon. That up close I saw too little of myself to hide my disappointment. I’m paraphrasing a little. A proper transcription would be artlessly and unfair. It stung. I hated feeling solved and ordinary. I suspect she wanted me to argue. To push for something that left us less diminished. And I would have, but I couldn’t understand that she was asking, tell me why I’m different. And she was.
What was I trying to say?
I imagine this as the opening statement of the class action lawsuit my ex girlfriends will eventually launch against me. The title says it all.
What was actually going on here?
I used to be a really shitty boyfriend. I still have my challenges, but there is degree of maturity and self awareness tempering them. This was actually pieces of several conversations with some significant artistic license on my part, but the indictment was genuine as was the apology.
Technical merit:
This exists on the borderland of artful prose and blank verse, perhaps to its deficit. The sentiment is affecting enough to hide some of the technical flaws, but it likely would have been better with less structure or more length.
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My name has been stolen. Or at least my sites name has. Japanese cyber squatters made off with it while I was planeward bound to the tropics. This is why I don’t leave the country. The individual pieces remain, but feel somehow disconnected and unclaimed. The memories of a man erased. On a technical level my links are busted and google has forsaken me, but more troubling is this sense of a dispersed locus of being; an idea that somewhere in the heuristic tangle of bad punctuation, prose, angst and running jokes a vestigial personhood had formed and been lost. Damn.
I translated the front page of the new Beatsentropy [1], it felt very much like google stalking an ex’s new boyfriend. It appears to be an employment scam for aspiring Japanese sex workers. Or perhaps I’m being unfair and it’s a genuine recruitment center, I’d feel better about that.
An Exceprt
“Miss sex work
Speaking of high-paid jobs, sex is the best.
However, many of the girls’ work in sex is disgusting! “I think that.
So, what’s bad manners because of work.
“Nantes sex but not a boyfriend can” “do not want to touch a stranger!” I think that many people think.
Such feelings can certainly understand that, if you’re really looking for high-income part, this is not the better part.
For example, my friend has sex with Miss Gotanda.
And $ 10,000 in revenue each month in the city of Gotanda.
In the same college may be very bright child.
Gotanda is a city child is
Though I appreciate the absurdity and beat poetry cadence of my usurper I can’t help but feel wronged by Miss Gotanda’s hunger. While arguably classier than many of our posts, it lacks the wit and profundity of our profanity. And why the hell is a Japanese company stealing such an esoteric English phrase for their name? I shudder to imagine the context that Beats Entropy has been hamfistedly translated into. Jerks. I guess I’ll have to think up a new name.
[1] I haven’t felt so bad since that time I discovered my arch rival A.J. Valliant, the albino Irish soul singer. Though, maybe, in this time of deepest woe, we can mourn together. Take it creepy AJ
At some point clarity lost its legitimacy to subtlety, and ironic disaffection and apathy became the cultural currency of the hip. Never having been hip, or subtle, it is hard to say when which gave way to what (which actually is hard to say), but the end result was irony becoming the key social moderator. About the same time reading became not so popular, which is a bit of problem when your locus of cool is a fairly slippery esoteric concept. What are the retro clad and bearded masses to do?
In an effort to keep the smug barista and spoken word poetry industry from grinding to a halt Beats Entropy is going to drop a little knowledge.
Let us define our terms:
Irony= when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect or contrary to some intrinsic quality (real or inferred).
Things entirely devoid of irony
It gets dark at night
Surrender is a word of French extraction.
Ugly people are often sad
Now I could get all fancy and suss out all the gradations of irony through a series of complex logical syllogisms, but we both know that sort of academic hokum proves nothing. The only legitimate method of exploring such a topic is a peer reviewed, toast backed, scale from 1-20. Let’s get down to business.
Beats Entropy Irony Scale:
0. Toast being delicious
1. A pony eating a pumpkin [1]
2. Rain on your wedding day [2]
3. Accidentally shooting your self with the shotgun you were cleaning during your daily suicide readiness check.
4. My three failed attempts at spelling wedding (weding/weeding/weedding) in a sanctimonious piece about correct language use.
5. A pedophile accidentally molesting a very small adult
6. Fire ants freezing to death
7. It is more difficult to get into an accredited Carny school that it is Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. [3]
8. Vegan fists fights [4]
9. Getting dumped by a heart surgeon/getting treated well by a proctologist
10. A lifeguard drowning [5]
11. Every line in John Lennon’s Imagine is painfully on the nose
12. My He-man figure Stinkor smelled quite pleasantly of new plastic and gasoline, while my Mossman smelled like a nutsack with an infected tooth. [6]
13. Getting your arm stuck in vending machine and starving to death
14. French toast somehow being more delicious than regular toast (7)
15. Mocking birds are surprisingly understanding and excellent listeners (8)
16. Being in such a hurry to attend a pro-life rally you forget to take the coat hanger out your pants. (9)
17. To punish us for being evil god crucifies his only begotten son. [10]
18. Accidentally shooting yourself with the flower garlanded shotgun you were brandishing to ensure the safety of your suicide prevention parade float.
19. A very small adult molesting a pedophile
20. A rollercoaster pinning you down and just screaming the day away
***
1.+8 if the witless half- horse has coincidentally stumbled upon a jack’o lantern with a tableau of pumpkins eating ponies carved into the front of it.
2. Moderated if one happens to be marrying a sun god (barring recent divorce from more powerful rain god).
3. It takes over 5000 tickets, two amber alerts, and one verifiable deformity to get in.
4. Part the uncharacteristic aggression the act implies, part the implausibility of two vegans having the strength to stand upright for that long.
5. +3 if the lifeguard was on dry land. +2 if they were running or engaged in horseplay.
6. I also lost all of the detachable pieces of my Modulok figure, leaving me the rough narrative task of trying to insert its limbless torso and head into villainous playtime roles. He eventually became Skeletor’s beloved disabled brother who was mangled in a head on car crash with a drunken teenage Prince Adam. Hmmm..all of that is actually more ironic than the entry to which this is a footnote…meh, I stand by it.
7. Though I suspect it is its shameful defeat at the hands of butter and eggs that facilitates this.
8. Killdeers, howerever, are implacable foes of all split hoofed mammals.
9. The gender, fecundity, and velocity with which said person might apply pants is subject to reader implication.
10- This is akin to punishing someone for stealing your wallet by kicking in your big screen TV. That’ll show him!
***
OTHER ASSESSMENT SCALES
]]>It is with this mind I present you: Logically unsupportable beliefs I have…and stand by.
Let’s get down to business.
The Claim: Coffee keeps milk from spoiling
Details: I often leave half full cups of cream laden coffee on my filing cabinet at work. For days at a time. Then I drink them. When questioned on the advisability of this, from a spoilage standpoint, I assert that once mixed with coffee milk will not spoil.
Supporting Rational: I suspect the heat and caffeine of coffee Hortonizes the milk to such an extent that any bacteria present becomes wired and agitated past the point of cooperation. Sure some of them want to hold hands and make poison but they can’t stop talking about this record store they’ve always wanted to start up downtown near the hipster district where their ex works across from the vintage clothing store that she used to buy scarves at where they always played prog rock and shit the court of the crimson king was a good song. I’m pretty sure my immune system is up for the challenge.
Reasons it might not be true: I’ve gotten pretty sick a few times from drinking old coffee; once so bad I shat in a garbage can while throwing up in a toilet. I might have even cried a little.
Conclusion: I believe that in the few cases where I did get sick it was the cold temperature of coffee that dangerously lowered my core temperate, leaving me vulnerable to outside contagion. If anything it was the nutrition in the sanctified milk that kept me alive.
Next: The Claim: Men with weak chins are untrustable
]]>
Last night I reached and turned in a clockwise search for the borders of our bed, where soft skin and cold feet set the limit to my sprawl. But there was none, no limit and no center, so I spun and wondered at the space. The time it took to sleep and the rise of unfamiliar springs against my back; how light she must have been.
Last night I reached and turned in a clockwise search for the borders of our bed, where soft skin and cold feet set the limit to my sprawl. But there was none, no limit and no center, so I spun and wondered at the space. The time it took to sleep and rise of unfamiliar springs against my back, how light she must have been.
I rarely go out. The dictates of my gym job and domestic inertia keep me in a fairly tight home-work orbit. This Halloween, however, I grew a fine old-timey moustache for my Turn of the century Irish Strike Breaker costume and felt the need to show it off in unfamiliar confines. My buddy Ben suggested crashing a stranger’s house party, I obliged.
The first half of the night was pleasantly unremarkable.
Introduction.
Keg.
Banter.
Repeat.
The conversations were light, bouncy, and forgettable. Until I met Chris(1); a young man enjoying a brief island of freedom between recent and forthcoming incarcerations. I learned of his legal woes in a fast moving five minute chat that began as workout advice, transitioned into recounting of his troubled youth, and culminated in the revelation that he was soon to return to the joint for continued indiscretions.
A better (or less lubricated) person would have taken that moment to bid him good luck and started up a less challenging conversation with the stocky lass in a cruelly unaware Strawberry Shortcake costume. But I was drinking. And I like to give advice. So I confided in him a largely fabricated criminal past and proceeded to advise him on how to survive in prison…which in the moment I felt wholly qualified to do.
It went as such.
My five point plan for thriving in prison, which I dispensed like a father whose son was matriculating into college.
1. Find the sweet spot between enough pushups to remain imposingly buff, but not so many you will be too fatigued to defend yourself.
I even worked out a training schedule to ensure maximum progress. While complete nonsense this was the one area I have any sort legitimacy within.
2. Even if you don’t have a knife, spread a rumour that you have a knife, it will keep you safe. Because people are afraid of knives. Hmmm.
3. Become a Muslim: people think they are dangerous. That was the entirety of my advice. Even the soon to be reincarcerted young man thought this was xenophobic and without nuance.
4. Learn to sing, because there is no music in jail and they will respect you for it. This assertion remained curiously unchallenged. I assume the crowd was either cowed by my wildly implausible criminal background or had simply written me off as an amusing buffoon.
5. If you get into any serious trouble, mention my name, because I’m known on the inside. That’s right, at this point in evening I had gone from a run of the mill small town thug to a career criminal of such renown that the mere mention of my name could quell a riot or stem a rape. Probably a little irresponsible on my part.
Other random claims I made about myself over the course of the evening.
Step to me and get punched in the neck…
Which acted as something of catch phrase/personal motto throughout the conversation. A slogan I adopted after claiming I punched my old probation officer Lewis in the neck…I assume for stepping to me at some point. I repeated this often enough that by the end of the conversation I could just say the “because when you step to me” part and the rest of the kitchen would chime in “you get punched in the neck” like an inebriated Greek chorus.
I used to be 6’5 but I fell down some stairs when I was eleven.
I refused to elaborate or clarify the statement in any way, but I told four people this. Upon deconstructing the claim the next morning I realized the unspoken explanation involved damaged growth plates and a degree of time travel paradox.
I had been fired from three jobs to refusing to adhere to daylight savings time.
While a complete lie, this sort of quixotic morale stance genuinely resonates with me, and I do hate daylight savings time, so I feel that some essential truth was served by the deception.
[1] Name changed out of basic courtesy. As to the exact nature of his crimes, I‘d rather not say. Though it was a strange, drunken, ill advised confidence…it was still a confidence. And this is a tale of my failings more than his. Let’s just call it a non-isolated incident of moderate thuggery and leave it at that.
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I watched this thing on ADD. It’s long, and irrelevant for most, but it shook me.
There is this resistance to being given a determinist explanation for such an essential part of my nature; to have a material cause for being in a sustained transient state; to go from ephemerally detached to simply broken.
There is a protection in the damage that unravels as you repair it. There was this haze that left moments separate and weightless; that uncoupled failure from consequence and lent just enough buoyancy to drift. As that haze dispels a sense of weight and connection has sunk in, and I begin to realize I’ve spent my life crawling. It is, I can only assume, what responsibility feels like to other people.
]]>Initially, when she told me she was paying an arborist 700$ to kill my baby, I said I supported her decision but that it seemed a little pricey. When she explained she was cutting down my tree I was heartbroken. Its unkempt sprawl and towering virility were proof of my own. I made the smallest part of my case.
“Where will I hang my hammock?” I asked.
“String it up between your wasted youth and failings as a lover” she said.
And then were will your Harpy friends perch? I thought, but didn’t say.
“And what of the shade? A good three blocks know the joy of endless night thanks to our Norway Maple.“ I said.
“I have rickets, A.J….and I’m tired of you diving between my legs to avoid talking about doing your taxes. The Tree is coming down.”
And so it is: A flawed but favoured son will my die on my watch.
In memory I present this photo retrospective
I used to be pretty good at this. Writing, that is. The ability has atrophied a little these past few months. It’s not just that I’ve barely written or read; I’ve barely thought. I have been so immersed in the physical being of others and my own, whole levels of processing have fallen into disuse. I told a dude at the mall that a calliope was a word that sounded like its meaning…which I suppose it is, but not in the definitional sense he was looking for. A subtle error, but the sort of semantic minutia I used to excel at.
I have this theory: you can only spend a certain amount of aptitude at once. It’s not so much a function of time as it is karmic allotment. You don’t get to be good at everything. There is this tacit agreement between brain and the superficial body that the interest of one will be served before the other. My brain has taken the dozen or so hours of intense working out a week as a clear sign its services are no longer needed. Sadly I now lack the wit to convince it otherwise.
In the past three months I’ve gone from moderately fit to conspicuously buff. There is this place between a six and eight pack where your physicality becomes this aberrant social marker: people assume you’ve either just finished a long bid in prison, are sublimating hidden rage, or work in the sort of job reserved for gym class standouts/high school dropouts. You become this enviable, if marginal, species that couldn’t possibly be of consequence. And dear lord is it seductive: that peculiar mix of unearned worth and low expectation. To have clearly realized some small potential; it’s the sort of thing one could happily live down to.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
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I recently received a submission response [1] from an established Sci-Fi/ Fantasy publisher. It was a reach, but I was hoping more for constructive feedback than I was expecting publication.
A paraphrased excerpt from said response:
The term: Hasidic shit farming Wop was used quite early in the story; this took me out of it. In total you used the word fuck, or some derivative, 51 times in 32 pages: when you factor this with the numerous other profane words and terms, some of which appear to have been created whole cloth for the story, it stretches the boundaries of realistic speech.
I enjoyed much of the story but the profanity was so excessive and the tone so base it continually jarred me from the narrative. You need to consider your readers (and potential publishers) sensibilities when shaping the verbiage of your characters dialogue.
My initial response was mild dejection mixed with personal affront. The speech of the main characters was patterned after my own, so them reading as implausibly profane is somewhat of a knock on my own gentility. More concerning was the question of audience: is there a niche for R-rated magical realism? Is the vulgarity and absurd violence a crutch in lieu of careful plotting? Did that strand of Panda seamen really serve the story?
It bears considering.
***
[1] Other might call it a rejection letter.
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I was recently the Bestman at my friends Jay and Vanessa’s wedding. In lieu of an in depth and respectful accounting of the happiest day in a couple’s life… I give you a photo essay about myself. This wrong of me and I’ll likely die eating cold soup in an abandoned playhouse as a result. Let us begin.
The day began with the male side of bridal party milling about in mild alarm. Note my sultry lip licking and vacant expression. I was born to be a shill in some home food dehydrator infomercial. To think of the hundreds of dollars a year I throw away on store bought dried apricots!
***
Fearing I’d failed to reach to the mindless but handsome dolt demographic I adopted an air of sophisticated European bewilderment. Such boyish folly.
Note: The bride and her parents are middle right. Fine, fine, tolerant people.
***
Despite my apparent credulity I retained enough guile to sidestep my girlfriends attempt at baiting me into admission of my terrible fashion sense.
***
Then Jay and Vanessa got married. I have nothing clever to say about this one. They are dear people and I might have been weeping a little at this point.
***
I cannot explain the disparity in our expressions. Jay chose warm unaffected joy; I’m projecting a kind of murderous bookstore owner vibe, Kenji, a demonic uptown gigolo.
***
In retrospect it was mistake to begin my speech with a ten minute whistling solo. In the end it was well received though.
The Speech in question
***
Having exhausted the last of my mental energies I temporally lapsed into complete mental retardation. As such I cannot explain the pink feather boa the groom is wearing.
***
This is the last clear memory I have of that night. Note how my eyes are staring in two different directions: I may have actually had a mild stroke.
***
Bonus
The owners of the B&B we were staying at had a three legged dog. While a tremendous gentleman in his own right I primarily loved him because he reminded me of my favorite ever Strongbad email.
***
Previous Happening/Ain’t Happening’s
Happening/Ain’t Happening: Back from the grave
Happening/Ain’t Happening: Artistic Differences
Happening/Ain’t Happening: Ain’t looking good
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There is a certain cat to person ratio where they cease being an adjunct to human life and begin puttying their own tiles into the domestic mosaic. And not just dictating the agenda, but shaping the culture. My lady friend is currently on sabbatical in the wilds of Delaware, leaving our home and catfolk in my capable (?) hands. For those keeping score at home that is three and one half cats-to-one disheveled and malnourished A.J. The tide turned quickly.
It has been three days since Sally left and the language spoken in our home is no longer person. At best it’s a loose pidgin of English, Cat Chinese, Clownspeak, crazed baby talk, and various feline noises. There are daily races down the stairs, invisible moth hunts, and gang naps at questionable times of day. I find myself trapped in odd staring contests with unspecified but forbidding stakes.It’s gotten so bad I need to take three Xanax before cleaning to deal with my crippling fear of vacuum cleaners.
This morning Felica meowed and meowed until I turned the downstairs stereo to the CBC. She then sat in front of it until a story about the decline of agribusiness finished, glared at me to suggest the policies were somehow my fault, and refused to eat until I picked the baby tomatoes from our garden. Rarely have I felt so defeated.
Seven days to go and I feel madness around the edges. Pray for me.
THE ENEMY
The renowned Felicia
The Rotund Sweetie
The Elusive Scooter
Our Dear Friend Stephen
*The above picture is the aforementioned half a cat: our three toothed diabetic neighbor and dear friend, Stephen. He’s doesn’t live with us, but his frequent visits are cause for great celebration.
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As the doctors tell it I have Attention Deficit Disorder. ADD. This is not a new diagnosis. I was tagged as soon as the fad hit in the late 80’s, medicated for a time, and then spent the next twenty years railing against it. I felt blaming my poor decisions on some loosely defined structural flaw was a cop out; a cowardly dodge. I still largely feel this way, but I’ve read enough literature to realize there may be some correctable flaw in my wiring.
I discussed this with my childhood doctor and he suggested a regime of exercise, quality sleep, and daily amphetamine use. The entire consultation lasted ten minutes. It amounted to “Hit this crank and call me in three months”. Curious, but not unexpected.
Now, in fairness, the kick is more a sustained first cup of coffee buzz than it is the jittery cracktessence of a recreational high, but it’s still knocking back a hit of speed with breakfast: unless you are driving big rigs or tuning band amps for a living that strikes me as fairly marginal behavior. But, you know, doctors orders.
And does it work? Well, it has only been three days, but it does seem to be doing something. It’s hard to quantify. It’s like there is this taut cable connecting me to the world that keeps me from drifting; with occasional bursts of exhausting electric focus. I have a clearer sense of the passage of time so I get bored easier and wind up doing things, often productive. My short term memory and prefrontal associates have improved, but the heuristic bounce of my long term retrieval seems to have flattened a little: the immediacy and randomness of my internal process seems more distant.
There is good, to be sure, but I still haven’t gotten a handle on the cost.
I’ll keep you posted.
A.J. Valliant
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On my way home from the gym I stopped at a street light beside a father and his daughter. The father ignored me. The little girl[1], however, locked eyes with me, stared for a few seconds, then raised an accusing finger.
“You have bum-bum hair” she said.
Admittedly I had just finished at the gym so I wasn’t finely coiffed, but not to the point it should elicit cruel personal attacks from preschoolers.
“Pardon me” I asked, thinking maybe I’d misheard her.
She turned, tightened up her mean little face, and repeated.
“You have bum-bum hair”.
Then she stuck her tongue out at me like I was the one giving her the business! At this point the light was close to changing but I needed clarification: was bum-bum hair just a general indictment? Did she dislike the style? The color? The curl? Or had my pants just been riding low and she’d managed to catch a glimpse of my amply furred buttocks? Only I was pretty sure I had been walking behind them.
“Are you talking about my ass?” I said, pulling the back of my pants down a little to illustrate the hair in question.
At this point the little girl became non-communicative. Her father, who was still ignoring me, also decided suddenly he needed to walk on the other side of the street. I felt the need to make my case.
“Your kid said I have Bum-bum hair…that is rude and vague, sir!” I shouted after him.
No answer. I decide my only recourse was to respond in kind.
“Hey kid, you got crooked feet and your shoes are ugly”.
To her credit she did not respond, but I did see her try and straighten out her walk a little.
I think I’m going to get my hair cut tomorrow.
[1] I figure she was about four or five years of age.
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In an effort to be more productive I’ve been framing whatever I get done from 8am to 5pm as my daily legacy. My delusion has progressed to where I see these tiny, short-lived, diurnal archeologists floating in the periphery waiting to judge what I’ve wrought come the end time of dusk. While no more productive [1], this has made me vastly more paranoid and guilty. Additionally: I’ve been forced to consider the broader legacy of my life.
At 33 years old I have spent at least one third of the AJ dollars I have been karmically allotted: it is time to take stock of how well that money has been spent. As is our custom round these parts I will organize the deeds of my life into a highly scientific ascending scale of significance. The lower the number, the less impact the deed had in terms of my overall legacy. I will not assign the deeds a positive or negative score; my judgment will be the prerogative of history alone.
The Beats Entropy: AJ Valliant’s Legacy scale
- 1-Prepared a mountain of delicious toast
- 2-Once left a newspaper on the bus for the next guy to read
- 3-Was reigning King of the Hill for three straight winters recess’s, until I was brought low by treachery and yard duty teacher malfeasance
- 4-Never spawned an ugly brat, nor did I slap its gap-toothed face with cruel vigor.
- 5-Fell down so many flights of stairs my life could have been used as an outtake reel for the Battleship Potemkin. [2]
- 6-Failed to avenge having my marbles spilled in third grade [3]
- 7-Never once uttered “we can still be friends”; nor did I ever respond in positive fashion when the offer was made.
- 8-Popularized the slanderous nicknames: Stinkopotamus and Ho-larm clock to the point the recipients own parents began using them.
- 9-Had a mullet so awful that I subconsciously maneuvered myself into setting a field on fire, that the purifying flames might fuse it into a roll.
- 10-Kept my jaw slack and breathed through my mouth like a spaz until I was 13.
- 11-Delivered at least three profoundly righteous punches to the face.
- 12-Received one profoundly righteous kick to the head that knocked me unconscious.
- 13-Have never released a secret from the vault without permission
- 14-Never possessed a Drivers License, Passport, Credit Card, Plane Ticket, Positive Credit Rating, Crippling Bone Disease, or Handgun.
- 15-Took 11 years to graduate from a three year psych degree.
- 16-Historically treated strangers with far more decency than I do lovers
- 17-Slept walked through my 20’s in a office job I still don’t know the duties of
- 18-Somehow incited an entire subculture of strangers that swap “AJ” stories of questionable validity. [4]
- 19-Was generally a pretty solid dude.
- 20-Wrote some things I was quite proud off
[1] I actually spent the first half of yesterday pouring tiny cups of gin for the watchers, hoping to subvert the integrity of the judgment process. The second half the day was spent writing back-story for the lead archeologist. Dusk was spent mourning his death. Too soon, my brother, too soon.
[2] I actually tend to fall up the stairs, more than I do down them, but there are no iconic silent movie sequences of mother and child racing up steps for no reason, losing their footing, and crashing back halfway down.
[3] But I assure you, my friends, this debt will not go unpaid.
[4] I’ve been at parties where people unknowingly related to me exploits from my own life. It was surprisingly alarming.
OTHER ASSESMENT SCALES
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Thirty Three years ago I was born and almost died. I was two months and some weeks premature. I was a twin for three hours, and then I was not. At some point, when I was very young, someone showed me his tombstone: I’d not yet learned to read and remember thinking if I could just understand what was written on it I would know some part of him. But I could not, and it seemed too much to ask the grieving adults around me, so I never found out. At the time I assumed it was an explanation for why he had died, and I had not.
I learned to read soon after.
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If you haven’t been reading about France this week, you’re probably not alone. Given the political uproar in Iran, and the pending strike by employees of the LCBO (that, for our non-Ontarian readers, is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario – who are the sole legal purveyors of hard alcohols in Ontario), it would be pretty easy to miss the news pieces on French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s exciting foray into feminism this week.
At a state dinner on Monday, President Sarkozy – whose feminist credentials up to this point are pretty much limited to having sex with wife Carla Bruni – declared that the fully body coverings favoured by some conservative branches of Islam (the niqab and burka) had no place in french society, or France. Specifically Sarkozy said:
“The burqa is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement — I want to say it solemnly… …It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.” (source)
The statement by President Sarkozy comes along with the commitment to have the French government consider legislation that would outlaw, ban, or otherwise render illegal the wearing of niqab or burkas.
Leaving aside the basic civil liberties argument that no government should be able to mandate something as simultaneously mundane and personal as one’s clothing, and the clearly prejudiced orientation of a decree that takes aim at Islamic attire over other potentially problematic practices, there is something even more unsettling about the French President’s comments.
Now I will be the first to admit, there is also a dangerously seductive quality to President Sarkozy’s statements. From my own personal perspective, I am uncomfortable with the branches of Islam which necessitate the wearing of niqab or burkas. That said, I am also uncomfortable with the branches of Judaism which condemn the touching of women (even one’s wife) during their menstrual cycle, and the branches of Christianity wherein ultra conservative nuns are forbidden to be alone with men – including their own fathers and brothers. In short I am uncomfortable with a great deal of religious practice, and I find myself always wondering if those who grow up under such regimes really have a choice in accepting them or not – can someone brought up in such an environment choose not to believe what their entire community has taught them to believe?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
However, and this is very important, as arrogant as I am, I am not willing to suggest that I am certain that anyone who believes differently than I believe (with regards to religion or more broadly) somehow is lying to themselves, or has been brainwashed, or has internalized regimes of domination, or what have you. This is one of the most dangerous slopes in modern thinking: an argument that comes down to the notion of false consciousness.
The argument, at least in its contemporary form, comes from Karl Marx, who (while probably one of the most interesting and factually accurate critics of modern capitalism ever) might well have invented the most terrifying idea in the modern world when he came up with the concept of false consciousness. The argument is simple. Some people, by virtue of their position in a group or in society at large, are unable to grasp their ‘true’ interests. Conditioned by a ruling ideology (series of ideas presented by a dominant group meant to reinforce an existing order) the group is unable to see what is ‘really’ happening around them – and therefore may not appear to want what is ‘actually’ in their best interest. For Marx, this was a simple way of explaining why some of the proletariat (Marx’s name for the working class) might not grasp their situation as exploited workers they way he foretold they would.
Again part of the idea makes sense – groups can be lied to systemically and therefore not understand what is really going on. However it is also a very dangerous idea, because it means anytime you disagree with someone, you can simply claim not that they are wrong, but their own ideas of what they like, need, or want are simply the product of a false consciousness. They can not be trusted to know what they want or need.
Famous political theorist Isaiah Berlin also touched on this concept in some of his early writings. He noted that some understandings of freedom and liberty were not oriented not towards conditions enabling opportunity, but instead towards more abstracted notions of ‘fulfilling potential’ or reaching ‘true’ personhood. Those visions of freedom he warned were potentially dangerous, as they offer an opportunity to make choices for others for ‘their own good.’ As Berlin famously says:
“Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, to oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, performance of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfillment) must be identical with this freedom – the free choice of his ‘true,’ albeit often submerged and inarticulate, self. ” (Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Freedom)
The point here is not whether one likes the practice of wearing niqab or burkas. The point is not even whether one thinks that such practices are denigrating to women. The real issue here is whether one is willing to argue that women who choose to wear niqab and burkas are all suffering from some kind of delusional self-identity, that they are unable to understand what’s ‘best’ for them, and therefore one should disregard their ability to consent – effectively removing their voice from any debate or discussion.
As I said, I am a strong opinion person who is confident to the point of arrogance, but to be perfectly frank, I find the articulation of a ‘false consciousness’ argument to be nothing shy of fucking terrifying.
Because, and this is the really scary part, the only one who can ever really know if one is suffering under false consciousness or not, is the very ‘enlightened’ or otherwise ‘self-aware’ person acting to take away one’s right to make choices by virtue of that very claim.
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I slept a stink so bad last night I had to take refuge on my girlfriend’s side of the bed. A stink so bad I must have died, rotted, and then been forced back to life to answer for the olfactory crimes of my passing. There is no natural explanation for the persistence and pungency of the odor: I checked the sheet for shit stains three times, to no avail. Whatever substance I’m emitting is as colorless as it odorous: some invisible taint to my sweat or dreams.
Oddly, I smell of fresh meadows and whimsy in my daily life; or at most speed stick and quiet determination. Even my former sleep sweat has been of the regular musky gent variety. And yet, I don’t know if I’m pregnant, or host to a less native parasite, but there is something seriously off in my body chemistry. My cat Felicia, whose purest joy in life to sleep pressed against human folk, now spends her nights alternately rubbing fresh cloves into my skin and trying to find a belt strong enough to hang her self.
I am hoping this is just a response to the sudden rise in temperature, and a couple incidents of celebratory binge drinking. Should it persist I may need to start sleeping in a bathtub full of baking soda just to preserve the few sources of human contact I have left. I ask not for your pity, but your prayers.
The Mangement.
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Isaac waited in the rushes, the dank smell of bog and rot and summer shortening his breath. He watched for bubbles and golden eyes above the scum. He was patient, attentive and calm; there was nothing of the frantic boy in this staid and quiet hunter.
The soft plip of one breaking the surface froze Isaac. He willed himself part of the reeds, part of the water. More surfaced; he marked each skirt of ripples, figured his reach, then struck smoothly, a series of muted splashes the only disruption. The first few lacked the fullness Isaac preferred; their slender, crooked bodies squirming out between his fingers. He let them leap free to the water, his quick hands beneficent. He crouched deeper, toes splayed in the silt bottom; waiting for the pond to forget him. Minutes passed, the boy’s sun heavy back pushed him closer to the surface, near inches from crayfish returning to feed. Minnows darted in the shadows of his feet. He found a guilty peace in this part of hunt, something fraternizing in the communion. Years later he’d mourn these burrs of empathy, and how they’d fueled his cruelty.
Isaac was uncompromising in his predation. He avoided the bark and mossy cowards: their timidity and disguise marking them ill-suited for his purpose. The few he’d bothered to catch had been martyred in hot ash: the heat and soot arresting them, grey and statuary, in some fantastic torment. The Bulls he left alone. They were regal and resonate, too few, and too sure of their place in the pond, to be taken. But the leopards, fierce and lucid and numberless, were ideal participants for his game. He moved in careful increments away from the bank, seeking out telltale spots in waist deep water.
***
Isaacs’ slow progress trailed no wake; his arms held high above the water. The pond deepened in the middle, precipitously in places, so Isaac sounded the bottom with shuffling feet, avoiding the sucking mud and sink holes. Leeches gathered sporadically about his naked waist: fat black motes hanging in rough constellation along his back and hips. Isaac let them feed until they fell of their own accord; he was greater than their hunger. More connected. The pond bottom pitched downward, the reeds rose up in his periphery, edging out the tree and power lined horizon. His world securely contracted, Isaac shook the weight and distraction from his shoulders, immersed himself in the deeper waters of the hunt.
The high static buzz of crickets built around him, muting the birds and babble of the nearby stream. Isaac admired the defiance of the song, how something so vulnerable would surrender its cover to be known; to announce its place. He considered a roar of his own, but knew the voice in his chest was so much smaller than the one in his head. And besides: there was business at hand. Isaac folded away the little hurt, the angry swallow, and cast his eyes across the pond. He sighted a Leopard. A slow fury percolated up from beneath his hunters mask.
Thick and emerald grey it sat on the tallest branch of a drowned tree. The black spots on its back congealed into a Rorschach crow, or, some oddly winged bison. Isaac considered, wary there might be some message, some meaning, in the shape. He circled right in the chest high water to get a better look: the wings were vestigial, but clear; the rest of shape was illegible; something hunched and ancient; denied flight and crueler for it. The Leopard shifted under his scrutiny, turning its glyph covered back to the northern bank. There was an omen here, but he couldn’t figure it. This was a significant creature.
Isaac pushed away his misgivings: he’d take extra care to honor it once it was caught, but he couldn’t worry about its importance now. His standing in the pond was at stake. The leopard watched him approach intently.
***
Isaac circled west and towards the sunken tree; the Leopard moved higher up the branch, calling a slow “rrrrrrRRRRPpppppp” at his approach. Was there recognition in it? Reproach? The Leopard narrowed its glassy, golden, eyes into unreadable slits. Isaac hung in the water, unable to proceed, this placeless frustration tightening around him, fouling his instincts: Did it know why he was there? Would it run?
The Leopard shifted, bowing in its crooked back so its belly faced the sun. Its eyes closed in bliss and Isaac felt slighted. Diminished. Less careful now, Isaac stepped up from the earthy bottom and onto the slick tangle of the trees submerged roots, turning his body until a heavy shadow covered the basking Leopard. Algae smeared beneath his feet, snails burst in crystalline pops of onomatopoetic horror. The tree shuddered as its base loosed in the muck; the Leopards eyes flashed open. Isaac slipped backwards on the root, a low branch drawing a deep scratch across his chest. He did not cry out. He did not splash or claw for purchase. He slid quietly back into the water and waited for the Leopard to jump, the distil haze of his blood vanishing around him.
The Leopard held its ground. Imperious, it roared again “uuuuUUURRRPppppp”. A dozen lesser calls sounded in return, louder for their chorus. Isaac bobbed in the murky water, trying to mark the hidden singers: he’d have words with them when once the Leopard was caught. The next verse began, the callers arrayed in a rough circle around him. Isaac felt the water cool suddenly; sickly strands of weed coiled and clung to his legs: something had changed and he felt unwelcome. Then the Bulls joined the chorus: regal, and resonant, and terrible. Isaac settled deeper in the water, treading slowly, leaving just his face and hands and crown exposed. He knew now he’d been there too long, but the hunter’s demands were upon him. He struck his hands across the water in a loud slap, stilling the choir, and then lunged forth towards the Leopard.
***
Weeds tore away in brutish separation, Isaac’s lunge ripping them from body and root. The water seemed to recede as much as Isaac rose; the world falling out from under his leap. Alarmed, the Leopard sought the air; Isaac reached and reached, forcing the hollow of his palm into the Leopards path, his long fingers closed shut around it .The world returned with force, sending the tree stump hard into Isaac’s stretched and open ribs. The branches pulled long strips from his side, the impact splintering his breath painfully throughout his chest. Isaac gasped and clung to the Leopard as both tumbled into the murky water.
The pond’s chorus returned; a spray of birds and grasshoppers taking flight punctuated the rising keen. Isaac was too focused on his prize to note the change in song. The alarm.
Isaac swam to the bank, sore and slowed by his clenched fist paddling. The Leopard made an indistinct gurgle in protest of its capture. Isaac loosed his grip and peered through the gap between finger and thumb; The Leopard “urrrpp’d” a final warning. Immune to appeal or epiphany, Isaac held the leopard tighter: a hunter did not give up his prize. Letting out an exultant whoop Isaac began to scale the bank.
The first rock sent the hunter spinning away. The second dug a deep groove in the side of Isaac’s head. Isaac touched the wound and couldn’t make sense of the blood. A third rock grazed his cheek.
“Fucking freak…the fuck you doing in our yard!”
A pack of older boys burst through the reeds, their long legs churning the shallow water to mud. Isaac tried to explain, to show he belonged, but they were too many and too suddenly upon him. The first punch closed his eyes and spilled the Leopard from his open palm. Nails raked his neck and back, Isaac stumbled and was forced down into the water. The muck of the pond filled his throat; the bottom refused him purchase to rise.
Slow knees thudded into his ribs and pressed him down into the mud. Even crushed into the silt he could hear their raucous laughter, their taunts, deeper for passage through the water. A sick frustration burned in Isaac’s chest. Eventually, the weight of the older boys lifted; Isaac dug his hand into the bank and fought to keep from rising, gasping in stinging lungfuls of water: let them be murderers. Isaacs’s chest burned, black spots filled his vision; panicked hands clawed him from the bottom, pulled him roughly over the bank, through the reeds, to the neatly manicured lawn beyond.
The boys gathered in a cluster around Isaacs twitching body. The oldest fought past Isaacs’s thin, flailing, limbs to pound his back. Isaac clenched his eyes against the hot tears, and his jaw against the rising gorge; another hard blow loosed them both. Isaac gagged vomit and pond water onto the grass, his traitorous lungs spasming out the last of his surrender. His defiance. Isaac shook and wept, staring furiously at the ground, wishing he was within it.
The ring of boys fell away like like ash; stirred by the backwash of remorse that sudden cruelty brings. Isaac was left alone and defeated, the pond denied him. He lay a while, wondering at his loss, then crawled to his feet and made his way home. The Leopard was forgotten.
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HEY AJ! Sorry to bother you but I need to write two poems for my college compositional class. Proper poets won’t reply to my emails, so I figured I’d ask you. Can you write me a poem about mans alienation from nature and tendency for self destruction?. If you could make it dark and moody, with a complex rhyme scheme, with a deep thematic counterpoint. I know it’s a lot ask…but what else are you doing these days?
TWO SHEET TWO DA WIND
T-Dot
I have to tell you, Sheets, you’re not much of salesmen. Still, I do have some free time on my hands, and my heart does course with molten poetry, so maybe I can help you out.
Chasing the dragon/My father lament
I put the needle in my arm; a pony bites my fathers leg
I sting and beg the needles charm; who set that goddamn pony free?
Push the plunger oh so deep; dear god he’s got a butcher knife!
The junk it tastes forever sweet; now he’s got my hat, great.
I ride the horse to brown silk heaven; the pony steals my pants and jacket too.
In burnt chrome wash my sins unleven; that better not be a long distance call!
***
Why don’t people like Peppermint? I really enjoy it, and cannot see why others would not.
Patricia,
Worster, Mass
Well, Pat, I could feed you a line about subjective experiences and taste bud allocation…but we both know that would be a lie. The truth is flavor appreciation is predicated on psychic worthiness: bad people enjoy awful flavors. Let us break things down etymologically:
Pepper= hot and spicy
Mint= newly created or of finest condition
The obvious connation: a candy that taste like fresh pepper. That is disgusting, and the kind of candy only incompetent barbers or child predators could enjoy. While I don’t have time to produce a comprehensive list, here’s a quick break down of the more notorious associations.
Terrible flavors and the terrible people who enjoy them
Licorice= Pretentious sycophants that are bad in the sack
Cherry Coke: Vapid hipster that correct the pronunciation of strangers
Black Olives: Sodomites and union agitators
Rice Crackers: Sanctimonious lefties who secretly yearn for the days of slavery
Chowder: Dudes that sing under their breath to other people’s music on the bus
***
I need a two word aphorism to put on my business card. Can you help me out?
Kyle Barstaid,
Winebago, Or
A little glib, but what the hell.
How about one of these:
Beauty consumes
Passion enables
Apathy eases
Empathy erodes
Pajamas unfurl
It really depends of the business you are in and the statement you are trying to make. If you have room you might even consider a short fable about the virtues of hard work.
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I do not like the grocery store. The milling crowds and assorted humanity rile me. Yesterday I waited too long and was forced go during peak hours: a jostling, glaring, patience wearing ordeal. Still, it was largely uneventful until I attempted to pay.
In my initial line there was a 250lb old woman in a tuxedo shirt and pants, sans bra, with no visible feet. What was visible, however, through her sweat soaked formal wear, were her pendulous breasts: cavorting like deflated twin manatees wrestling for food. I tried to ignore her, and them, but they rustled and whispered against the fabric like a double endowed Kuato. I feared their secrets enough I broke my cardinal rule and switched grocery lines midstream. Karma frowned upon me.
At the front of the secondary express line was a forty something woman buying eight huge, custom decorated, cakes. Apparently she had negotiated some side deal with the baker and felt the need to relate the entirely of their conversation verbatim to the cashier…despite the fact the agreed upon price was stamped on the top of each box. I’m not sure if her goal was to impress us with her haggling savvy, or assuage her intense loneliness, but much time was consumed in the process. She then produced a wad of confederate money, two different kinds of cheques, and an expired credit card before relenting and paying in Canadian currency.
Next in line, directly in front of me, was a palsied old man purchasing six tins of cat food. He placed each one on the conveyor with the deliberation of a chess grandmaster; occasionally stopping entirely to remember where the hell he was. He then attempted to remove the necessary change: the first attempt was so lingering, and involved so much pocket jiggling, I half suspected he was trying to barter public self release for wet cat food. The second and third attempts were even less successful. I considered reaching into his pocket to retrieve the change for him, but feared he may have cut the fabric out entirely in a cagey gambit for illicit human contact.
Eventually he paid and I was able breeze through my turn. Though I lament the trauma of that day I know it was not undeserved: never switch lines. Ever.
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Did you read this: https://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/13/genes.patent.myriad/index.html
They are patenting pure human genes, so if anyone develops medical treatments direct at them the corporation has to given their permission first (and wet their beak on any future profits). What the fuck. Where does rank on your outrage scale?
Ethan Morrow,
Former citizen of the Democratic Republic of the United States of America
***
Damn, that is a bigger slap in the face than actually being slapped in the face. The idea that the fundament of our being is property is offensive enough, but that the motivation for making it property is to ensure people can’t treat disease for free: that takes a special kind of shamelessness. It is getting to the point where they will patent the Hard-On and I’ll have to sleep with an elastic band around my junk to keep my morning wood from driving me to financial ruin.
Of course the real crime is not that some scumbag corporation attempted it, but that the government’s response was anything besides immediate trial for crimes against humanity. They have abandoned all of pretense of being an extension of the public will, and become the crooked bagmen of children-stealing ghouls.
As for where it ranks on my outrage scale, take a look-see:
Beats Entropy: Things A.J. is Outraged by Scale
0- Delicious toast being provided in a timely fashion
1– My beloved Sally’s shameful towel hoarding [1]
2- Godzilla being female and taken down with two pitiful sidewinder missiles [2]
3- Couples who hyphenated their last names instead of just picking one
4- Being “Shusssshed”
5- Special Education getting more funding than Enrichment classes
6- Vegans trying to undermine our hard won position on the food chain [3]
7- Twilight having been a best seller
8- Prefacing the explanation of a simple concept with “Basically”, or, a clearly figurative statement with “Literally”. [4]
9- Patenting things in nature that you did not create
10- Filthy Quebecois traitors whining Bill 101 in existence
***
[1] And now I can’t use a beach towel either! This is a bigger slight than the “don’t drink out of a measuring cup” debacle of 1988.
[2] The acceptable methods for dealing with Godzilla
a) Drive him back into the sea.
b) Hope the giant moth/robot/deep sea fangly fish starts running its mouth and aggravates him.
c) Persuade elf looking alien chicks to soothe him with song…that he might return to the sea of his own accord.
[3] You think the Bears aren’t watching for signs of weakness; they are.
[4] No, you did not “literally” jump out of your skin when the dog barked…you lying son of a whore.
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You know the new job I got a while back to replace the old one that I got laid of from: well I got laid off from that one too; Tough economic times and all that. My first proper job lasted eight years, my second 5 months. I don’t want to draw too strong a conclusion from such a limited sample size, but a pattern is emerging. The corporate world and I are no longer compatible. We gave it good try, the kids are grown, and the magic vanished long ago: it’s time to move on.
I should mention this happened a couple months back. I would have said something earlier, but I wanted to set some things into play before I announced my triumphant return to the shiftless underbelly of society. So, shiftless though I be, I have been setting pieces in place: to whit I am now one test away from being a qualified personal trainer. And kind of jacked, as working out is now my sole daily responsibility.
I figure this gives me enough lifestyle flexibility to write and vagabond about, while supplying enough income and social viability to keep from reacquainting my shelter friendships. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The Management
A.J. Valliant
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I was looking at the pictures section and trying to decide just how metro you are. I see a fair amount of shaved chest and pouty face, but you have these terribly bushy eyebrows and reported tufts of shoulder hair. Just how rigorous is your grooming routine?
Sarah H.
Bit of a mixed bag really, Sarah. I’m starting from an odd place esthetically: I’m both uncommonly handsome, and uncommonly hairy. While the two are not entirely at mutual opposition, if left unchecked the hairiness leaves me looking like a down on his luck chimpanzee Hugo Boss model (with oddly small teeth).So I do make an effort to tidy up a little; I’m just not very good at it. Yesterday I pulled a nose hair from so deep there were flecks of brain and bits of childhood memory dangling from the end. I would have kept going but one side of my face went numb and I developed an intense craving for pumpkin bread…seemed a bad sign.
****
What sort of hookup game do you have? Are you a real mack? What is you best pickup move?
Crazy Mitch.
Pomona, California
My best pickup moves in descending order
5. Beat the hell out of the guy she’s with. If she only has female friends I’ll make one of them feel really bad about her shoes.
4. Show her the quilt I made from scraps of former girlfriends clothes and hair.
3. Dress up like her father and then totally ignore her.
2..Dose her with a love potion I make from cable car oil, gumption, and deadly poisonous nightshade.
1. Pull up my shirt just far enough she sees the hilt of my knife.
****
What’s wronger- Intentionally slamming a midgets head in a car door, or, Destroying a priceless work of art? I realize this is a bit of a false dilemma, but I’d appreciate an answer regardless.
Scott Salvation,
The wilderness of the mind
Tough question, Scott. You’re asking me to weigh the cultural gestalt against the singular moral imperative; the worth of pattern over process; the merit of perfected abstract over deformed concrete: this is no simple matter. I suppose it’s a matter of investment:
Do you know the midget?
Did he pass out right away, or did he wail like a stuck hobbit?
How funny was it when he fell down?
Did the art resonate with you?
Was the artist a douche?
Will you regret not being able to burn it at a later date?
There is no hard answer, but in general it is half as bad to do something to a midget (as compared to a real person), so it’s better to error in that direction. Aside from which, you can’t really replace a work of art, while all but the finest midgets can be replaced by a large headed child with a strong work ethic. I hope I was able to help you.
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I was in a grocery store yesterday. One of those stunted downtown locations with poor selection and busted prices. I wanted five things and felt put upon by the rival customers impeding me. The meandering of purposeless shoppers grates on my teeth: they were like a flock or retarded seagulls at the dump.
I watched a man pick up three red peppers and then stare for minutes at the clear plastic bag in his left hand, wholly unable to process the relationship between the two…as if someone else had put it there to trick him. Eventually he put the peppers back and grabbed some prepackaged baby carrots, which he then placed into the clear plastic bag. I can’t explain why, but it felt like a deliberate slight against me.
I was going to confront him, when an older women of middle eastern descent gently took my arm and said
“You remind me of spring”.
She had a fairly of a thick accent, but there was no question she’d just compared me to a season without prompting. It was oddly touching. I wanted to say something substantive in reply but all I could think of was
“Thank you, that’s a good thing to be reminded of”.
She laughed a bit, squeezed my arm again, and said
“Yes.Winter is almost beat”. Like she was giving me some small part of the credit.
I told her to have a good day and continued my shopping, much lighter for the interaction. Strange, but pleasant.
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I’ve historically relied more on providence than protection to safeguard my computer; trusting in the innate goodwill of Latvian movie pirates and Russian pornographers …such was the bounty they brought. There was no legitimate reason that I didn’t use some free anti-virus software, save the thrill of raw information pulsing through my computer, the filthy heat of foreign code. Also: someone likely once advised me it was foolish to do otherwise, forcing me to embrace the contrary position as a point of pride.
It is thus unsurprising that my PC is now more smallpox than blanket; a swaddling so virulent my cat has taken to donning a SARS mask before entering my office. It doesn’t just break things: there is a tangible malicious presence that divines my intent, and then thwarts it. Random program features disappear when called upon, documents writhe and shimmy when used. It creates pretend websites that it funnels me into with false Google links, when it deigns to allow internet use at all. Last night it decided that I no longer deserve sound, and deleted all of my drivers. I fear the next step is blinding me in my sleep.
My attempts to battle it have proved fruitless. System restores were brushed aside. Anti Viruses beaten and emasculated before me. My friend Jay tried to help and it slashed the tires on his car. Though I fear reprisal, tonight I try and format my harddrive. Should this fail I may need to abandon my house entirely. Think well of me.
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1. I learned three things from the death of Ichabod Crane
– Headless Revenants will not cross running water
– It is unkind to throw pumpkins at people
– An awesome name does not ensure a perfect life
I’ve only ever had opportunity to apply two of those lessons.
2. My chest hair has thickened enough it looks like I am smuggling Burmese Mountain dogs about town. When I sweat excessively the patterns it makes can be read like tea leaves.
3. I hate running gags in jokes, catch phrases, and regurgitated humor used as means of social affirmation. If you can’t be witty, at least don’t be repetitive. The irony of stating this in a facebook meme does not escape me.
4. This kid deliberately spilled my marbles when I was eight. A swarm of thieving recess goers surrounded me, and when the ravenous horde dispersed there were no marbles to be seen. Were I to run across the adult version of the marble spiller, I would throw his baby in a well. This is my oldest and deepest grudge.
5. Word to the wise: The handstand armistice I attempted to negotiate between my Morning Wood and Dawn Bladder proved ill advised, and more physically challenging than anticipated.
6. I had a twin brother when I was born. He died a couple hours after our birth. His name was Jason, hence the “J” in A.J. . I suppose I carry a little survivor guilt around that I rarely acknowledge. I’ve not made the most of my life, and I wonder if he could have made better given the opportunity.
7. My teeth are abnormally small; my arms are abnormally long.
8. I am a borderline obsessive Raptors fan. I have different positions I sit in depending on whether they need my assistance on offense, or defense. Should they lose (which they often do) I take it as a personal indictment of my viewership methods, and am depressed for hours afterwards.
9. I am historically a poor boyfriend, and great friend. This often led to my side being taken despite some fairly suspect behavior on my part. Sorry ladies.
10. I have two Sarah McLaughlin songs on my workout playlist. Aida and Hold on. For some reason they pump me up. I regularly think, while squatting heavy weight: “Aida, I do not believe I will fail you this rep”. Sometimes I start laughing and almost get crushed beneath the weight.
11. I used to have Paint it Black on that same play list…but it made me feel like I getting ready for a serial killer rampage.
12. Obvious rhymes make angry.
13. A.J. has been my name for my entire life and I’m still not sure how many periods are necessary if I use it at the end of a sentence. Is it A.J.. Or, A.J. If it is only one period, I feel I’m being denied my due punctuation. The periods are part of my name, they shouldn’t count as grammar.
14. My paternal grandfather had the bearing of a weathered Optimus Prime: rugged, fundamentally decent, and borne by the moral authority of a kind man in hard times. His name was George, as is my middle one.
15. My cat Felicia has gradually acquired a fame and mythology wholly out of proportion with her 10$ purchase price [Ed: Said fame and mythology are, however, fully in proportion with her physical dimensions]. I have awoken to find pilgrims stuffing notes into her fat rolls. Most were quite touching: the notes, not the pilgrims.
16. I have a medically poor sense of direction. When I tell people this they assume I am overstating things, then mock me the first time my cartoonish disability comes into play.
17. I once dressed a spider up in a tiny suit and told all my friends he’d been bitten by a radioactive man. Two years later he bought the company I worked for and put me out on the street. I learned no lesson from this.
18. I probably have too many chromosomes. I’ve been trying to get a straight answer for years, but I keep forgetting to send the University of Alberta some blood. This troubles me far less than it should.
19. My friend Sulya teaches children to dance. Though that should seem like teaching the wind to blow, I suspect she accounts herself well.
20. I tend to date lively women prone to depression. I’m not sure if this speaks more to my taste, or my company.
21. I believe that events have a certain momentum, so even if you traveled back in time and laid pipe into a few key variables, things would still reach the same general outcome. This realization forced me to abandon a very promising time-displacement device I’d been developing out of a old commodore 64, cast iron bathtub, and about two quarts of mescaline.
22. When I was five I told my classmates that I had found a box full of kittens in a barn. This was a lie. The kids asked that I take them to said barn; I agreed. The closer we got to the theoretical barn the more I tried to downplay the charms of the kittens within “Most of them are pretty ugly. One has an infected eye. There was an owl in there that could have eaten a couple”. Eventually I saw a large wooden shed that could pass for a barn, claimed the kittens were in there, and then ran away when the other children entered the shed. We moved three days later, so I will never know if there were indeed kitten in that shed.
23. In my real life I rarely mention Beatsentropy. I avoid this as I hate shilling, and have this warped belief that art will disseminate into the world of its own accord.
24. I really like this song: https://radio3.cbc.ca/play/band/King-Cobb-Steelie/Rational/
25. I don’t trust men with weak chins or overly round heads. It is a sign of low character. I feel wholly justified in this.
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Over the last week there has been a great deal of discussion over the above editorial cartoon, which depicts two NYC policemen, having just shot a chimpanzee, concerned over who will write the next economic stymulis bill in the United States.
The cartoon, which was printed in the Tuesday February 17th edition of the New York Post (certainly not to be confused with the New York Times), apparently was commenting on two recent events: 1) the signing of the economic stymulis bill by U.S. President Barrack Obama, and 2) the shooting of an escaped chimpanzee in Connecticut.
Somewhat predictably, and I would argue likely to the joy of the New York Post, the editorial cartoon has sparked a heated debate across the U.S. and throughout the various tubes and tunnels of the interweb. Some, like Rev. Al Sharpton, argue that the comparison of President Barrack Obama to a chimpanzee is racist – pure and simple. Others argue that political satyre has a long history of crude, mean, and downright nasty depictions of various leaders – and that this comic would have been printed, in the same way, regardless of the ethnicity of the leader it referred to.
Now, despite being the token bleeding-heart-liberal here at Beats Entropy, I do not exactly side with Rev. Sharpton.
I am not sure I would argue that the comic is “racist” for a number of reasons. First, I am a geek, so I want to use my words very carefully. To say the comic is “racist” implies a particular motive – an ideological stance. Technically the statement attributes this to the inanimate cartoon (which is nothing in and of itself), but obviously this refers back to its creator: the Post’s Sean Delonas. It may be that Mr. Delonas is a racist, I have no idea. But in my opinion, one bad comic does not a racist make. More importantly, it is not the most interesting question one can ask.
What is really at stake here is why and how the comic works. Why does a comic depicting two police officers in NYC, having just shot a chimpanzee dead, and commenting on the recent stymulis package, function on any level? How is it this image even makes sense to us, much less strikes many as a clear racist depiction?
Well, there are a number of things to consider.
1) The NYPD has a rather long and sorted history with the use of deadly force on unarmed and (at least in the depiction of this chimp) relatively innocent people. There is the Sean Bell shooting incident, the Amadou Diallou incident, the Ousmane Zongo incident, or the ever lovely Abner Louima incident. This is, of course, not to suggest all NYPD officers are either racist or evil – however, it is fair to say there is a rather lengthy and troubled history of race relations with the NYPD, punctuated with some of the above momentous fuck ups/acts of depravity. That said, if anything this might be an argument against the cartoon above being explicitly racist, for was the chimpanzee supposed to be a symbolic representation of an African American on the streets of New York, he clearly would have been shot more than twice.
2) The two cops in the comic are white. This means very little by itself, but interesting to note. The NYPD is a quite racially diverse organization…
3) The history of images comparing dark skinned people to monkeys. Here is the meat of things, the image of a monkey is a loaded one. Comparative images juxtaposing or flat our representing dark skinned people as less than human ‘apes’ is part of the legacy of a long used colonial imaginary.
While most depictions as explicit as the one featured just above have found their way out of North American mainstream culuture, the legacy of such depictions continue. The point isn’t necessarily to point to every image and try to dig out the hidden racism, but rather to realize that hundreds and hundreds of years of certain images and comparisons being made have long lasting effects on culture, and its varied representations. Subliminally or explicitly, sometimes the spectres of these explicitly racist depictions make their way into our day to day lives.
Are such spectres always examples of explicit racism? I would argue no. However, it is very important to remember the history of certain images and ideas.
So, where do I stand on Sean Delonas’ editorial cartoon? I think there are three possible explanations:
1) Sean Delonas is actually a very crafty racist. He explicitly resents a black man making it to the Presidency, and figured this was a good cheap shot. He also knows full well he can plead a combination of freedom of expression and ignorance against any denouncements of his cartoon.
2) Sean Delonas is not a racist, but did wish to cause some offense (a legitimate goal of any self-respecting political cartoonist) However, he is completely ignorant of the long racist history of depicting/comparing Africans to various sub-human primates. He is additionally completely unaware of the last 50 years of history concerning race relations and the NYPD.
3) Sean Delonas is a complete moron, and had no intention of suggesting anything accept that even a monkey could write a better stymulis bill – in which case the real perpetrators are whatever sad series of educational institutions Mr. Delonas attended.
For my money, I would put reality somewhere between 2 and 3. Of course, that said, the odds of everyone involved in the decision to print the cartoon falling somewhere between 2 and 3 are pretty slim. Someone, somewhere, probably had what we could call some racist intentions. This is of course not news worthy in and of itself. Racism has a long and proud history in the United States, this is nothing new.
What should be done about it? Well, not ever buying another copy of the New York Post would probably be a solid way to express a dissatisfaction with the cartoon. In terms of stomping such images out of our creative pallette, I have no idea. The best we can hope to do is try to remind people that nearly everything, from words to images, from styles of clothing to styles of music, comes to us with a very particular, and often racialized, history. The more we remain aware of these things, the more we can try and move forward in a way that we each consider viable and ethical.
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One summer I had a job installing pools. For the most part I just dug holes; holes which I would occasionally fill with gravel. The actual pool installation was handled by competent long timers who didn’t ride the wheel barrow down hills. I was about 17 at the time, and had yet to discover the importance of professionalism, or the kind of velocity a wheelbarrow filled with 200lbs of gravel can accrue. The potential downside of my ignorance was magnified by the darting children who played on a trampoline at the bottom of the hill. I never actually ran one down, but their erratic presence was enough to send several loads of gravel airborne, and launch me trebuchet style across the back lawn.
Predictably I grew to hate those children. I don’t usually begrudge people their privilege…but being the hired help tasked to install a huge pool, for a pack of taunting brats, that already owned a giant trampoline, brought my latent class consciousness to the surface. I began burying any random toys I found: stomping Barbies and Tonka Bulldozers into the soft earth beneath their pool. Then one day I stole the little girl’s bike.
I should mention I had to take a dump. We weren’t allowed into the clients house, and our deadline was such we had to work a 12 hour shift with no off site breaks. The situation became urgent enough I knocked on the elderly neighbors’ door and asked if I could use her facilities: she declined, and dialed at least 9-1. My coworker suggested I go to the nearest restaurant (9 blocks away), but I feared I wouldn’t make it that far without publically soiling myself. And then, I spotted a small red bicycle, silver streamered and pink basketed.
I felt a little bad as I rode it manically down the street (my knees tucked against my chest), but it was that or shit in the basket. I made it to the restaurant without incident, and defiled their restroom immediately. Afterwards I jogged back to the job site lighter of spirit and colon, and dug with renewed enthusiasm.
Two days later it occurred to me I’d left the bike at the restaurant. By that point any serious attempt at retrieval would have incited all kinds of awkward questioning, and possibly an Amber Alert, so I chalked it up as a victory for the proletariat and went about my business.
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