everythinggoodisgone.com

31.10.02

halloween when you're young is all about getting dressed up and getting buzzed on sugar. at some magical point it becomes about getting dressed up in some sexy outfit & going out & getting buzzed on alchohol instead, which is the same as sugar, only fermented, right? anyhoo. somewhere along there i lost interest in dressing up. i mean, not dressing up as in dressing well, and not dressing up as in dressing like any number of stylistic choices one makes on a given day. i mean specifically a "costume," although that word is tricky too because that's what they used to call outfits.

getting "dressed up" every day as a fully-functional, somewhat average member of society is exhausting enough, much less dressing up as something else entirely.


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Jason Mizel, aka jam master jay, the dj for everyone's favorite addidas admirers, run dmc, was shot & killed by a .52 caliber bullet @ approximately 7:30pm this evening in the waiting room of a recording studio in Jamaica, Queens.

bummer.

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*sigh* sometimes the best thing for a nasty bout of too much thinking is a healthy dinner, a glass of red wine w/ a high alchohol content, & some t.v.

i wonder if it makes me a less intelligent or thoughtful person to take part in the supreme pleasure of escapism? hope not. whether television, a fine book or a good movie, it's a lovely antidote.

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two best searches of the day that resulted in someone visiting right here where your very eyes are crawling across the screen:
search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=fear of differance

search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22embraced it and made it my own%22


yeah, baby. "fear of differance?!!!!?" that's awesome. now every time someone needs to beat their head against a wall because derrida is squirming around in there like a bad worm eating at their brain & they search for kindred spirits online, perhaps they will find me. how lovely. [not that i'm afraid of derrida or anything. in fact i kinda have a crush on him & i'm pissed that i missed the opportunity to meet him @ the film forum recently when they screened a documentary about him, called simply enough, "Derrida."]


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"Reporters Without Borders is publishing for the first time a worldwide index of countries according to their respect for press freedom. It also shows that such freedom is under threat everywhere, with the 20 bottom-ranked countries drawn from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The situation in especially bad in Asia, which contains the five worst offenders - North Korea, China, Burma, Turkmenistan and Bhutan.



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google search of the day that gets you here:
www.google.com/search?q=specific diffuse space advertising&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=40&sa=N

specific diffuse space advertising, huh? go figure.


there's no diffuse space in my head right now - it's completely occupied by nastiness....ugh.

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***the story you are about to read is true. the names have been changed to protect the innocent. then again, you'll know who you are so what-fucking-ever.***

i have just created a new game with myself. i post things to the blog, realize they're silly, and take them down again. but in the process get to check via my counter whether or not anyone was fast enough or stumbled along @ the right time to just sorta read my embarassing missive. ah......how cathartic & totally un-implicating. :)



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i've been thinking a lot about the michael moore film, "bowling for columbine." he posits the concept of a "culture of fear" [introduced by a professor from UCLA wandering with him in south-central LA] as the basis for why americans kill each other more than any other country, despite the fact that there are others that have just as many guns... a friend of mine wrote in his blog the other day about being afraid to run over the brooklyn bridge due to paranoia regarding bombings, terrorist plots &c, and i immediately thought of the film...nice that he saw this as a function of the "culture of fear" as well [after seeing the film].



moore spends most of the film examining gun laws, racial tensions, & the presentation of "news" as cultivating this "fear..." but i've been thinking about it in a broader spectrum as well. that is... last saturday the new york times ran this article discussing how the political advertisement in South Dakota is so overbearing, in a race with few swing voters, that voters wonder incessantly _why_ the ads continue.


recently in new york, i find myself facing the same kind of problem - tom golisano, the independent candidate for governor, runs ads against his two candidates, Pataki & McCall. they in turn run ads against each other, & half the prime-time advertising spots are golisano v. pataki v. mccall v. pataki v. golisano. it's ridiculous, & the only issue that seems at this point to separate them is that of medical marijuana - and golisano is the only one to say "i'm for it."


at the same time, i'm watching buffy the vampire slayer on tv, where these political ads [which hold the most costly positions at the beginning of the commercial breaks] are back-to-back with Fisher Price spots & this one Mitsubishi ad which i think i liked for the music originally but saw a minimum of 10 times last night...


and i'm wondering to myself - what makes the south dakotans so different from any other battered television viewer? whether in a political race where moderate candidates [their "friends," regional & national parties not to be exempted] spend millions on ads saying what they did or didn't do in comparison to what their moderate competition did or didn't do, where automobiles are advertised by their fluency to move through various stages of life [all with a sexy techno underbeat] &/or save lives [new volvo commercial] while being "cool" & fun, [but still having side-impact protection airbags just in case you get drunk & stupid from watching too many coors light commercials], with news-updates regarding snipers & beatings & rapings & murders [oh my!] pushed in-between ever-shortening segments of hyper-real sit-coms & dramas, WHY WOULDN'T YOU BE AFRAID?! afraid of deamons or monsters, or their "real" incarnations, of shootings & muggings, why wouldn't my friend worry about getting blown up on the brooklyn bridge? why wouldn't i walk more quickly down a darkened street?


some people say "better safe than sorry." i agree wholeheartedly. but living your life like this is akin to what we used to say growing up about the risk of getting hurt doing some sort of stupid skiing or snowboarding or biking or sledding stunt - "yeah. and you could get hit by a meteor walking across the street." & i guess this whole little rant is more about how _angry_ i am that I AM AFRAID. that i have been subjected to this hyperactive fear, have embraced it and made it my own... but more than anything, it's about how the fear is EVERYWHERE. it's not just about watching the news, or watching television, or reading the paper, or reading a book, or seeing a movie. it's about recognizing that american culture is one of fear. and that has not just "appeared" but has been exacerbated by the events of 9/11 and what has happened since...in the same way that McCarthyism was based in fear, that the Japanese internment camps during WWII were based in fear, fuck it even killing the native americans...all fear. and the cultural imperialism that is america's global m.o. is about the fear of _difference_ [i could get all derridian and say "differance" but i'll refrain] & eliding that difference - here, there, and everywhere.


no wonder political campaigns are so boring & moderate & negative. no wonder advertising is so crisp & clean [& still focused on the fear of not fitting in, not taking the risk, having a pimple, or not having the right toy for your child to grow up smart & strong & afraid]. no fucking wonder.



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everyone in the office today is listening to bizarre female vocal-driven ambient stuff. it sets a very strange tone to the space, somewhat alien & diffuse. perhaps good for mondays. perhaps bad for mondays, when everything feels a little alien & diffuse anyway.

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there's something really lovely about the weekend. not just for being able to go out & get blotto & then sleep all day, although that is quite nice - it's the way that the "weekend" is an enforced period of rest - there is a psychological imperative to DO NOTHING, or as little as possible, with the knowledge that once Monday arrives, you'll be waking up and going to work & doing _stuff_ non-stop for another five days. the time to clean your apartment [& wash windows that are covered in probably years of grime], to sleep in, have tea & toast for breakfast in front of the PBR Bull-riding championship on CBS, to know there is nothing that i simply _must_ do today. goodness, that's a relief. it's an elimination of pressure...as long as i stay in my house, i spend no money. and there is just so much to do here, but with no necessity - i can clean, or not. i can read, or not. i can write, or not. i can drink tea and stare off into space while listening to weirdo "technoclash" music in direct response to the hispanic samba or whatever it is that has been blaring incessantly from my neighbors' stereo all weekend. i can look out my window [through the protective grate] at the spectacular light shining on the northside.


when you're doing nothing because there is nothing to do, it is boring, frustrating, & generally irritating. when instead you are doing nothing because you feel like doing nothing, it is instead some sort of *sigh* and relaxing wonderful experience. this is similar to that "alone v. lonely" feeling, or the "anxiety v. excitement" one. rather - circumstance & one's own frame of mind do in fact affect so greatly how you feel about your life &/or what's happening in it, as well as how much control you feel over those things... yes i know preaching the obvious to the converted masses. but nonetheless, we forget these little things until we're sitting at home genuinely "relaxed" on a sunday afternoon, when we have the time & the space to reflect thoughtfully on our lives in general, and the last week in particular - & then again the thoughts appear, & you say to yourself: "yes that is in fact a truism, though it may not be very profound." and isn't it nice to remember that the most truthful things are, more often than not, the least profound & hence the most - like some sort of attempt at buddhist simplicity - sitting in a forest can be frightening, but if you begin to think of what it is you are afraid, suddenly it has instead become a place of peaceful reflection.

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what a totally bizarre two days. i am finally beginning to feel as though i have a _life_ here in new york. & it's not just about going out, getting stupid w/ people - it's about feeling as though i live in this strange little town, doing my strange little thing...finding my space & place in this environment. & i feel more at home here than i have felt in a long time, anywhere - whether living in the town in which i grew up [which has categorically made me feel alienated & weird], in the city where my family lives [which has bad mojo oozing from the cracks in the sidewalk], or just being transient... it's also about feeling as though not only do i live here, but i _want_ to live here, to be here, amongst the drunks & the bums & the confused bizarro characters whom i encounter on a daily basis. it's about going to "work" every day & feeling like i'm _doing something_, despite the fact that i'm not getting paid. it's about taking a deep breath & knowing that i might actually be happier than i've been in a long time. not because everything is perfect - it's far from that - but because i know this place will challenge me in ways i never expected, make me feel comfortable in ways that i couldn't have guessed [it's done so already] - so that i will always be on my toes, but always certain that in a very specific way, i belong here. i may live to rue the day i wrote these words - but for tonight, this crisp fall evening in october 2002, i am happy i moved to new york. happy i took the risk of saying fuck all & bought a plane ticket, that i left what i thought i knew to come to what i know i love. *sigh*

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check out this strangely useless website. it's a good day for strangely useless websites, for sitting inside while the weather does its thing outside, for watching movies & curling up on the couch, for snuggles & warm cognac while wrapped in a cashmere afghan. too bad i'm not doing any of those things right now.

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blah. bored today...doing work & being busy, doing my thing, & feeling, well, bored. i have no idea what i'm going to do with myself where i will be engaged all the time... yikes. a difficult task indeed. i'm not sure if i'm being noble or stupid here... still wish there was someone who could just tell me what to do.



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my sister found this neat thing called nyc bloggers. it's a blog directory for new york organized by subway stop. cool.

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a friend of mine received the following from an anonymous email address. it really does exceed the oddness of traditional spam, & i'm not sure how i feel about it beyond that it freaked him out...perhaps because he identifies with it...


They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis." It is when you
stop going along with the crowd and start realizing
that there are a lot of things about yourself that you
didn't know and may not like. You start feeling
insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or
two, but then get scared because you barely know where
you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that,
maybe, those friends that you thought you were so
close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have
ever met and the people you have lost touch with are
some of the most important ones. What you do not
realize is that they are realizing that too and are
not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but
that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job. It is not even close to what you
thought you would be doing or maybe you are looking
for one and realizing that you are going to have to
start at the bottom and are scared. You miss the
comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with
the same people on a constant basis. But then you
realize that maybe they weren't so great after all.

You are beginning to understand yourself and what you
want and do not want.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what
others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more
than usual because suddenly you realize that you have
certain boundaries in your life and add things to your
list of what is acceptable and what is not. You are
insecure and then secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your
life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly
change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the
past with dear life but soon realize that the past is
drifting further and further away and there is nothing
to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You feel like you are still young, but at the same
time panic at the thought of getting old, the thought
of approaching the big 30, but strangely look forward
to your contradicting thoughts. Because you know in
another 30 years, you will be able to retire.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you
loved could do such damage to you or you lay in bed
and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough to
get to know better. You love someone but maybe love
someone else too and cannot figure out why you are
doing this because you are not a bad person. One night
stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and
getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to
look pathetic.

You go through the same emotions and questions over
and over and talk with your friends about the same
topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans and money and the future and
making a life for yourself and while winning the race
would be great, right now you'd just like to be a
contender! What you may not realize is that everyone
reading this relates to it.

We are in our best of times and our worst of times.



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i realized after finishing another book yesterday that i've been reading a lot of novels about new york. a lot of people i know here read a lot of novels about new york. i wonder if this is because they find their lives in new york to be less interesting than the novels about the streets they wander, the characters on every corner... or if it is because it gives them insight into these things? i think i've found it an interesting way to navigate the city. it has introduced me to this place in a very odd way, by somehow occluding the difference between fiction & reality in a way that appeals to me, as a bit of a book worm. it's kinda like how i find myself thinking in the cadence of good writing after i've put it away. also somehow similar to the disjointed clarity one feels after drinking just enough to have a light buzz after lunch... you walk the streets and notice things you otherwise wouldn't. the light seems more cinematic, somehow... perhaps it's just that i enjoy the notion that i am a character here too - that my life, my stories, my wanderings are themselves a kind of narrative...


i read a great text while a senior in college – it was benjamin’s “Arcades Project” – a compendium of thoughts, observations, and quotations about Parisian arcades at the turn of the century…[the 19th]


Benjamin talked a lot about the flanéur – a man whose only purpose was to wander the streets and create stories about the people he witnessed – these were not stories he shared, necessarily – but it was a unique perspective that was distinctly modern, discretely linked to the very time & place in which it existed. people have at times mentioned more current flanéurs, among their favorites the Beastie Boys.

i think that in a way, my desire to watch and learn from the interactions and expressions of passersby is somewhat like this flanéur. though i would hardly flatter myself with the moniker.


i thought after the first time i read the arcades project that it was like the first hypertext fiction. Benjamin’s constant self- & cross-referencing of quotations and thoughts between sections on prostitution, death, flowers, the flanéur, &c, were david foster-wallace-esque… post-modern before the modern itself had even begun to unfold. in a sense, the concept of web-surfing itself is a bit like the flanéur – you pop in & out of peoples lives [especially when it comes to blogs or more personal sites], experiencing this or that little nugget and then moving on either by a link they themselves have created, or another search result, or perhaps the fact that this thing is kind of boring so it’s time to go visit another old favorite.


i saw today a piece of hypertext fiction that i enjoyed. this is a rarity for me – a lot like watching avant guarde cinema and instead of being confused or frustrated or irritated by the experience, you actually feel as though you may have learned something or seen something valuable in one way or another… anyway. it came after surfing a bit from a link off a mailing list i’m on, though i can’t seem to re-trace my steps and find exactly what led me there.


it is this inability to go backwards which i find most intriguing today.


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i'm going to be in a hyundai commercial. this strikes me as rather odd. sorta like these kittens. have you ever been to rathergood.com? it is, well, rather good. also their friends @ b3ta, which i like. they are funny in a way that is so un-p.c. and bizarre, somehow it's only allowed in britain. yes, i'm a recovering anglophile. every once in a while it comes out in strange little bursts. especially when the weather is a bit grey, chilly, and funky out.

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did you know that pickles contain no fat and no cholesterol? my goodness. no wonder they have that "pickled things" diet, where all you can eat is pickles & pickled veggies & i guess saurkraut.




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after spending a lot of today wrestling with my inadequacies as an emotional support system and general inability to "be there" when needed because somehow my crises always concur with those i am trying to avoid on the part of others about whom i care a great deal, i needed a bit of a break. so, knowing that i had planned to go to an "uproariously funny" comedy show made me feel better... at least until i got there.

i picked up my ticket and headed downstairs to the "auditorium," only to find that the show had already started. but wait - isn't it supposed to start at 7:30 and it's only 7:16? but hey - in i go, past a darkened curtain, to find a one-woman show in progress... i didn't really think that anything weird was going on until the one-woman started to cry. and we're not talking hysterical "actress tears" here either - we're talking genuine, heart-wrenching, sobs. and even then... i kept thinking to myself... "maybe all this going on and on about yelling & so on is a build-up for the second half of the show, when we hear about how she found empowerment through lesbianism or something and became a "better person" so that now she can talk about this onstage. but no. it kept going. and getting worse - the description of this relationship with an abusive man, who somehow as a law student and later as a lawyer was just plain icky… until about 1 hour in…when i swear i was just sitting there waiting for it to end so i could ask my friend “what the fuck did you invite me to, and good thing none of my friends who i invited to a fucking comedy show came,” the lady gets to the part about how the “last straw” happens and she tries to kill herself. and of course this is accompanied by the rolling up of the long-sleeved shirt so we can all see the bandages around her wrists. at which point i get up and walk out of the fucking theater. because well…

when you’ve spent as much time as i have around fucked up and ill people, you don’t just go watching theater about abusive relationships and self-mutilation, unless of course its “Secretary” in which case it’s so damn good and it’s on a fucking screen, so you can’t literally see the woman wiping the tears off her face and turning around to collect herself and obviously doing some sort of cathartic “if i can talk about this in front of an audience perhaps i am finally coming to terms with the horrendous experience i just survived” kind of thing, it really is alright.

so i walked out of the theatre and up these stairs into the entrance of the gallery-cum-performance space [which had neat ambiance and an assortment of techno-art-shit that was actually kinda fun], and asked the man behind the counter what exactly was going on.

he proceeded to tell me that i was in the wrong theater, that the “comedy” was actually in another room, and “oh my god i can’t believe no one told you or noticed the ticket times were different” as well as my personal favorite “so wait you didn’t pay for that?” [are you fucking kidding me?!! comedy is free but that emotional horror costs you MONEY?!!!!! what do people think is fucking “art” these days anyway?!]

so he showed me where the “comedy” was and i saw the last few minutes, which made me chuckle but feel awfully weird – because when it comes down to it, if something or someone is really good at what they do, they take you with them on their emotional journey – whether or not it’s pleasant. and this woman was fucking amazing. even if it wasn’t the comedy i was expecting… which made it all the more disturbing that i was sitting there watching it feeling uncomfortable. and yes i could empathize, and “feel for her,” and deeply know what she was talking about, so that made me uncomfortable, instead of feeling empathetic or desireous of a happy ending or any of those things…

because all i really wanted, and needed, tonight, was a comedy show. and instead… i went down, out, around, laughed a little, and feel at this point that my concerns are so fucking inane if and only if because i was confronted with genuine tears, genuine laughter, and genuine confusion all within an hour tonight. and now all i want is a stiff drink and sleep, neither of which are in my near future…

*sigh*


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yikes. i was blotto yesterday. i even did that maintaining thing for HOURS and HOURS. wow. hence, feeling a little rough around the edges today... all i really wanted for breakfast was a mcdonalds sausage egg & cheese and i got there FOUR MINUTES LATE so instead i had a bagel from somewhere else, which was vaguely dissatisfying.


today i discovered that the T-mobile wireless networks in star*&$#@ all over the city require money for access. i don't know why, but for some reason i thought they'd do promotional free access for at least a while, instead of charging from the get-go... so all you can see is this terrible coffee-coloured website w/ catherine zeta-jones and ridiculous rates for wireless...it redirects you every time you try to go somewhere else. vomir. every once in a while, pure capitalism disgusts me. specifically when i'm trying to get something for free and can't. heh.

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a friend and i went out and got drunk in the middle of the afternoon [well, five p.m. but close enough] for margaritas and i got sloshy. being drunk in the "middle of the day" lends itself to certain fantasies. life is good. the internship people may actually be offering me _money_ to stay there so i don't have to subject myself to a ridiculous job with no posibility for advancement. "friend" and i went and auditioned for a commercial today.... gotta go to dinner w/ friends. yay! yes, life is good.

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sadness! despair! i got this message courtesy of media bistro's daily media news feed:

ARTS & LETTERS DAILY WEBSITE GOES UNDER
The last remnant of former Lingua Franca publisher University Business LLC has ceased publication.
http://www.aldaily.com/

which i suppose means i now have to take the link off? wow. i've spent the last five years watching everything i like dissapear off the web slowly but surely... whether suck, the standard's media grok, feed magazine, or countless other things that were kinda cool and i appreciated reading, somehow they've all bloody dissapeared. wasn't this supposed to be some free forum for discussion, speechifying, and good shit? where has all the good shit gone? and why does it keep dissapearing?!!!!! blargh.



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home alone on a saturday night... once upon a time this would have bothered me - and though i think i would rather be doing something else, i'm actually fairly hapy about having a quiet night alone. the last week has been a bit of a turn in a different direction. having been forced to actually thing about my long-term career plans, i'm not sure if it's worth the sacrifice of a more noble path simply to make money _now_ in a corporate environment in a job with absolutely no possibility for advancement and a basic day-to-day which might drive me to madness. but what noble path? i told the guy who interviewed me that i want to be a producer. hah! i don't know what exactly i want to be.


if i knew that i probably wouldn't be sitting at home drinking red wine getting steadily drunk by myself.

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a friend of mine is studying for his series 7 exam [to qualify to be a stock broker]. this involves memorizing so many rules & regulations that studying for the AP us history exam seems like chocolate cake. at the same time, you need to memorize many different vocabulary words as well as a shitload of weird metaphorical crap that makes no sense at all unless you create little stories about it. we were talking on sunday & he brought up one concept in particular that is my new favorite metaphor for my life: the zero minus tick. the zero minus tick is when a stock is going down, and then instead of moving, it stays at the same number for more than one ticker cycle. it is the only time when a broker is _not_ allowed to short sell the stock, even though you would assume that the stock will continue to go down...


my personal stock is stuck at a zero minus tick. neither going up nor down, just sideways... a holding pattern based upon my continually dwindling bank account, my frustrations at trying to find a "real job," my emotional confusion resulting from the possibility that joshua may move to new york, that i want to be supportive to my sister who is going through her own difficulties but am having a hard time pulling my head out of my own ass, &c &c &c....

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