The Disapproval of a New Friend

Flickering lights above the panty store. An irreversible march towards summoning a black car T6 something something something. So many thoughts you can’t separate them, you can’t even pick a handful. A damn shame the weather so nice and why you sitting there quart container full of acid reflux in your lap. Alone. Waiting to help out a friend with a fetish. 

You’re not clever, you know, when you speak like that. You’re not clever, you know, when you talk to yourself like that.

Wouldn’t have noticed the battery on edge if I didn’t pull up Spotify looking for Travis Scott. Never heard of this dude till the other night, I swear. I swear I never did! I don’t watch what you watch, everyone. I don’t do the things everyone does!

Hahaha fuck it. Yeah I do. I’m a classic man. I’m an average man. I’m a man in a bench with a stomach ache and cartilage in my teeths.

Inhibitor

I laid down in bed and started to write the post that I don’t want to write. I don’t want to write this post, not because it’s going to be different than other posts in some disturbing way, but rather because it’s going to be very quotidian and bland. So I started to write this post that I have been putting off writing all day, which I am only going to write because I said that I would post every day for the rest of this year and I never do the things that I say I’ll do. I never do the things that I don’t want to do. So now I’m writing the post I didn’t want to write and I realize that I can’t even type it properly on my phone because I’ve wrapped my thumb in a band aid.

Some Words I Typed

What am I even fucking doing today? I don’t know, y’all. I been trying to make this shit more readable, but I don’t even give a fuck right now. I’m sitting in bed with cat hair all over me. I got this hoodie from American Giant or something like that.

Morgan left the house to go out and play basketball. I didn’t see it coming but I’m ready for this dude to be out of my house. I remember when I lived with my other brother, and that got bad enough I think and he had his own room. This dude is just living in the living room. Playing the newest Kid Cudi album while we’re looking for a place for him to live. Took up all morning again. Then I’m washing mad dishes. I don’t even give a fuck about washing dishes these days. I’m all about it. Not like the old days. But damn. Life is off kilter.

It doesn’t even really matter, I guess.

I’m trying to help him pay all his bills and shit on time. Looks like I’m going to have to figure out which bills can wait after all. He can’t make money fast enough. Shit I’m sleepy, too. I’m bout to take a nap, fuck it. Least I can go to work refreshed.

“It’s so chill,” said the girl. But it’s different now.

Whatever Happened to Leon Trotsky?

What’s good? I been drinking too much again. I have not been writing too much, but what I have been writing I’ve been writing with pencils. I went to the pencil store and got some pencils. It’s summer and I’ve had a lot of visitors. I woke up this morning with that vague feeling that I’d embarrassed myself again. Achievement, success, is the goal of life! I always took issue with that statement but I’m starting to give in. Nothing else thrills as much.

I’m just going to have to go back to being vague again, and I thank you for reading, because even I don’t know what it means.

The Whole World Smells Like Garbage

I’m home again and it smells bad just like the rest of New York and its noisy just like the rest of New York and I can’t seem to escape the violent assault on my senses. Sister has Gordon Ramsey or Dinner Impossible reruns blasting on her tinny laptop speaker and has made some fermented tofu mold stir fry. She’s walking up and down the floor asking no one, “where is it?” In a hoarse whisper.

The situation is bound to degenerate further as Brother-in-Law from out of town is due here any minute in a surprise visit.

I am insufficiently equipped to deal with this threat as I’ve spent today and yesterday eating different kinds of sugar and not sleeping and entertaining my good friend and besides I’m never ready for the cataclysm that is my Brother-in-Law.

The First Paragraph of This Post is Mildly Interesting

What am I thinking about today? The tyranny of time and how to usurp the throne. Perhaps just get rid of all the clocks in the house. If only I didn’t have a job I could just do things whenever I wanted. Or perhaps have one clock with tape over the face of it set to the time that I need to go to work. Is there a way to get rid of the clock on the computer though? I don’t know, but I could set it to the wrong time. No I’d figure out the difference in time soon enough. Maybe just put a piece of tape over that part of the screen.

I’m always worried about how much time is passing and if I’m doing the right thing. If I could just forget about time I could do whatever I want without feeling guilty or whatever.

I was thinking about that for a while. Last night I got pretty drunk and spent some money to celebrate GF’s graduation. Last night I did not sleep well, or rather this morning I didn’t. I guess I went to bed at 2:30 and didn’t wake up at all until 8 or something and then I was in and out and uncomfortable and had really stupid dreams, like one where I was just searching in my bag for my shoes and I just couldn’t find them for what seemed like hours. And then another one with these weird fashionistas riding enormous unicycles down the street and smiling down into our cars and asking if we liked their clothes in a somehow menacing manner.

There are people everywhere sawing shit up and scrubbing shit down and making spring improvements so the street is filled with noise. It’s perfect out there except for that.

We saw these girls in a Volvo convertible waving to everyone and reveling in their lives and saying “Wooo!!!!” They were really annoying.

I want to read more novels.

I feel bad for staying inside when it’s nice out. Up to this point I have spent all day outside though. I got some iced coffee and a sandwich at Cutty’s. Then we ate them in the common.

Now I’m trying to think of something to think about.

I also dreamed that my brother worked at the 7-11.

About Today

Readability Index: Unreadable

Ok I finally put in some laundry. I had to try to shove the quarters into the machine like three hundred times. I set a timer for my French Press before I went down into the basement, four minutes, and it went off not halfway into my struggle. But it finally worked. There’s a note on the wall from 2001 saying that we tenants should let the landlord know if there are any problems with the machine, but I feel like we should probably have said something by now, so I’m definitely not bringing it up at this point.

I had some thoughts:

I should be a journalist

I should just read books all of the time

I should be a famous bartender

How did that guy on Top Chef get to be famous

The owner of that noodle place

He makes me think I could do some shit too

He just wants to have a good time

Wouldn’t it be funny to start a story with this guy’s next door neighbor lets him in the house, like inivites him over and the guy is kind of weary of the situation because he pretty much likes to be by himself anwyay…but then the neighbor says, “You want a beer?” and he says, “Well, by God, I would like a beer!”

Ok I’ll talk about that stuff later. Maybe.

So I left out of here to go get some shit done and I gotta say it did feel good. Getting shit done just feels good. I don’t know why. I was thinking about it at Stop and Shop while waiting for the bus. It’s like that Bob Marley song, Pass It On, “Live for yourself, you will live in vain, live for others, you will live again.” Well, I really don’t understand that shit at all because you are the only person you know, but then again, we’re all made out of the same elements so we’re really all the same thing, we’re all one, the universe just experiencing itself subjectively. I am everything that has gone before me. And yet I have an ego and can block the world out if I want to, and parts of me want to, one part. You know I’ve never read Freud or Jung. Should fix that. But I did read some Ruth Reichl on the bus, and you know I never have before. Well it was great. She’s awesome. But so Bob Marley, I should watch that documentary again. Marley was the creative title and it was the shit.

But I was thinking, that some of these errands, well I wouldn’t run them if it was just me. I wouldn’t probably run any of them if it was just me, but it was for my girlfriend. Well, not exactly. Like I had some stuff at the library, but so did she, so that was sort of for her. Really I only went because she asked me if I was going to go and I felt stupid saying no since she’d probably be like, well what the hell are you doing all day then?

So being productive. I’m sure it feels good because my mother was always all about being productive. Rather she still is. And so I grew up in an environment that reinforced my getting things done, or however Dr. What’s-his-face would say it. Skinner. BF Skinner. That was a fascinating read, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. If we’re not controlling the environment then we’re simply leaving control of the environment to someone else, because the environment will control the public. Or the society. Something like that.

All the muddled notions one arrives at by way of a thousand books one only read as fast as they could so they could say that they read them…could they be dangerously incomplete? Well. In reality I didn’t read them so I could say…well some of them, perhaps as many as half, could’ve been read that way…for that purpose rather. But mostly, like today, I just start a book and I get so wrapped up in “what happens next!?” that I can’t slow down to appreciate the way it’s done. Like the first page of Garlic and Sapphires, I was like, wow look how she does that, and look at all that alliteration and consternation, this is a beautiful piece of writing, and look at that formatting, but by page 3 I was like hot damn this shit is intense! Is she going to give Le Cirque a 3 star rating? 2 stars? Will she fold? Shit! And before you know it I finished the damn book and it’s two weeks from Friday and I don’t remember a damn thing.

Well I had to take a break here because my girlfriend came home and now I feel less on a roll. She’s pretty awesome, she just walked right in and made chicken stock. And gave me a chicken taco. Then I washed the dishes. Now she’s taking a shower. I made some more coffee because she said she wants some. She has a lot of reading to do which is awesome because it means I can just keep writing and writing. And finishing that damnable laundry.

But shit, what was the point. Yeah so just going out and doing errands, running them rather, well that was enough to make me feel pretty accomplished. At this point that feeling is starting to wear off. But at the time I didn’t feel anxious about whether I was wasting time and whatnot. I guess those are the kinds of things I feel are important. Daily drudgery type things that have nothing to do with art. I don’t know where I got the idea that working at art was a waste of time but I guess it’s down somewhere in my psyche because I don’t make time for it. Of course I have made plenty of time to blog. But then that’s not true, I had all the time there anyway. I just stopped doing a lot of other things like sleeping late, watching porn, watching movies, and washing the dishes, not to mention eating and reading about cocktails, and then all of the sudden I had all this time to blog. So I guess it is true, then, that I made time by clearing away those activities. What is it about blogging then that makes it ok?

Well I guess I haven’t given up entirely the idea that one can make money at writing. Even though by God I have tried. Merlin’s beard. I’ve tried to give up the idea. But it just seems right that I should make my money writing, even though I’ve never sold a damn thing I’ve written, or even tried to. Shit that’s not even true, now that I think about it! I sold a story on Amazon. I think I sold two of them for 99 cents each. Well there you go. That’s progress for you.

One of my favorite proverbs goes something like: Be not afraid of moving slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

Of course I spent most of my time going backwards. Or so it seems.

Where is all this leading to? What’s next?

Reminds me of that scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Damn that was a good movie. Hunter Thompson is everyone’s favorite. And Johnny Depp is my favorite actor. The scene at the hotel when he’s tripping out and trying to check in. “What’s the score here? What’s next?”

Well, I was thinking I could become a food writer. Or a journalist of some kind. I love writing, but I just love typing and typing and never looking back. Maybe I could send it in and someone else could edit it or something. Ah shit. But that’s how Thompson did it. Just let it go. Maybe if I spent enough time practicing, I could do it something like Jack Kerouac. But well that’s completely misunderstood. He worked really hard. I just finished reading a biography that came out recently called The Voice is All and it was by a Carol…something…Carol Johnson..shit I don’t know but it was damned interesting.

I shudder, I sit at my own dining room table, someone else’s dining room table for that matter, this furniture is a rental from the real occupant, I sit shuddering here listening to the demons all around. And by demons I mean those bastards that live upstairs and those bastards who live downstairs. I can hear their every breath. It’s a good thing they’re not big talkers or I’d go mad. No chance of that now. Not at all.

But God damn it. What is going on. I’m positively giddy with the notion, the idea of spending hours just typing random bullshit. I could even get down with typing Random Bullshit Random Bullshit Random Bullshit over and over again. You know, that’s a damn good way at getting better at typing, because the more you type one word the harder it becomes to do it without fucking up.

Positively giddy, where did I pick that phrase up? Either a book movie or TV show that’s for damn sure. Used to be I would pick a phrase or a mannerism up from one of my best friends. But I have moved away from them now, so whatever I say is probably from books or moving pictures.

Everything is unimaginable.

Ah, but damn, I need to get good at everything. Read all kinds of books about food and educate my simple palate. It doesn’t pick anything up at all. Lemongrass? What the fuck. I’ll tell you what an apple tastes like if you can tell me first. Like Ruth Reichl says, food writing is very subjective, to the point that I can’t be absolutely sure that what you taste when you eat an apple is the same thing as what I taste. Just like with colors and all that.

Well, shit. I think I’ll look at comments for a while.

I’m obsessed with myself. That’s for damn sure. Everything on this post has been for damn sure. I’m tired of that.

You know I really like looking at my stats. What for? Shit the writing is the fun thing right? But really, we only write so someone else can read. I never knew that before. And you’d think I didn’t know it now, the way I spew shit on the page like something I don’t want to talk about.

Damn, and I had a million ideas I wanted to talk about. And they all were me. I should write something that adds value to someones life. How do you spell someones? I don’t know. But I learned what a consomme is.

Oh yeah, but I was at The Breakers in the gift shop looking at all these boring ass books and thought, shit, I could be entertained for years just reading these dumb ass books. I should just bartend, make money, and read books.