Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I hope the Second Coming of Fear arrives soon.

A nation of late night ads for increased size to improve my non-existent love life’s performance, has gotten me thinking about the 1930’s. The last time we went through this rough of an economical period we only had 48 states, men only lived on average till fifty-eight (lucky fuckers), and pecker pills were far from anybody’s imagination or concern. We were a nation of Cowboys, soldiers, and workers not text messaging meterosexuals living in plastic debauchery high on or controlled by magic pills and faux communication.

Fear died in the 1980’s while on a cocaine binge in a hotel room in Des Moines, as an actor who once filmed with a monkey became our President while the baby boomers plotted the assassination of America’s grit. Their parents struggled, fought, and rebuilt America for one last eight second ride on horse named moderation. The crowd cheered, the cowboy held his head high, and god smiled down upon his one and only nation under his watchful eye.
These heroes who walked the dark side and paved those dark roads for us knew that in order to prevent strife from reoccurring they needed to educate their children about what they saw and give them a better chance with books and a degree. They praised them while teaching them that they needed to prepare for a cloudy day holding back excess yet never allowing selfishness. It’s a fine line but they knew how to walk it since they’ve played on both sides.

The old timers were conservatives and I don’t mean the bullshit political definition we’ve eroded the word to mean in the text message generation. I’m talking about the real deal, the proper characterization, what America was and what it was built upon - a simple concept that we should always apply the lessons of the past to the struggles of today. The knowing that our forefathers, like our grandfathers, and like our fathers actually had wisdom from their experience and all we had to do was listen.

The problem was that when you hold back fun and excessive behavior by means of authority, punishment, and fear you create massive want and a need for frivolous freedom from that oppression. Like a catholic girl in her high knee socks and a plaid skirt living freely in college now without the nuns sternness they frolic in a world of orgies, sexual decadence, and drugs. Ummm dirty catholic girls so wild, so free, and so experimental no matter the culture or the generation. It’s really no different than a dog getting into his bag of treats and eating till he vomits all over the floor, just to eat the vomited food back up in pure bliss.

These wild children let their hair go long too mock their parents and their ways - a cultural revolt turned into a war of generations, ideals, and turbulence. I wish I was young and alive for those days because it must have been so amazing, so free, so drug fueled as entire nations young born from nervous lust by fearful and calloused parents flashed their titties, gave the uniformed and suited swine the finger, and told the nation they were in charge now. The old timers were too old and too tired to fight another war especially with their kids.

Mass numbers, and thanks to their parents struggle now much more advanced educated they quickly like arm ants swarming in numbers and aggression over took the government and assumed their thrones in the business world. They learned to stock pile and save from their parents, and then they survived revolt and drugs from their wild years leaving them all knowing and never wrong. They were told drugs would make them crazy and kill them, and they didn’t their parents were wrong or they lied to them and now they knew. Ten feet tall and bullet proof justified in their rightness of their experiences and travels it was time to change the way we did things. Clearly their uneducated parents and their small time thinking was wrong and they were going to right that wrong so that no generation would ever have to follow those crusty and rusted rules and regulations.

I was lucky (maybe) to be raised in the 1980’s when we had a plethora of plastic action figures and absolutely no fear. War was something in the movies and dreadfully boring we wanted no part of. If you had a problem, and nobody else could help, and you can find them…maybe you can call the A-Team. Things blew up but everybody walked away, nobody died and the good guys always won. "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall!"

My mother was a single mother without a college education but yet I still had it all. We all did, well except for those black kids on the side of town we never visited. But what did they matter its not like one of them would ever be in charge. Our parents bought, they spent, they sold, they snorted, they advanced, and they expanded.

Their parents thought too small we needed bigger, we needed faster, and we needed it now. To own a restaurant was a failure, to own a chain was an ever producing goldmine. Give a man a fish and your undercharging him, teach him to fish and your creating a good source of labor, educate a man to franchise and now we’re talking. They pumped, and pumped, and pumped, till it looked like it was going to blow. They drilled, and drilled, and drilled until it looked as the well had gone dry.

We wanted to tell them, but they would never listen to us they were smarter than their parents and we clearly had not lived the lives they had. We did not have the numbers nor the motivation to stand up to them. Oh shit man, it’s about to blow somebody listen to me!! You know I could go outside and shout it but its too fucking cold and I got a TiVo to watch.
God damn, it busted and they are to blame as they didn’t want to listen to their parents. They needed to understand that evil fucking prick known as greed consumed them. The snake in Garden of Eden, the Midas touch, the ability to supersize for under a dollar more - greed. Thank god they made a movie about the seven deadly sins or nobody would know what the hell I’m talking about. Stories of our past talk about it from the bible to fairy tales yet these stubborn fucking egotistical cockroaches refused to listen.

My generation, our generation, is left now to fight for control while our parents refuse to let go. They were motivated and still are, and we are not. We are lazy. We’ve been sedated by television, video games, movies, and all the music and porn you can think of now available for no cost and damn near instantly. We have it way too good, and, without fear we will fail. So we let them continue to sell us out; waiting and hoping for them to die, to grab what little of the inheritance they didn’t snort, sail, or sink in the stock market.

We have it so good that even in the worst of times the hardness and struggle of our lives are less of a concern the hardness of our peckers at three in the morning on the History Channel.

Maybe tomorrow we can find that reason to stand up, until then its bed time and I’ve over indulged in alcohol and fried fatty food.

Go figure.

AFL

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Bored

Oh Jesus I have to get up.

I want to keep sleeping but after ten hours my body wants to do something, it doesn’t know what but it needs to be actionable. I’m comfortable and well rested in my Sterns & Foster, one hell of a bed – a bed I used to sell. The crack in the window tells me it’s cold outside, which being January in Chicago is a fairly normal state of affairs.

The dirty clothes that litter the floor leave a musky dirty sock aromatic smell to my life. It’s a bit of depression, and a dose of laziness, compounded by reality and unemployment. Hell it isn’t so bad when it’s your own smells. Well nothing left to do but roll out of my luxury day and meet the cold dark day.

I’ve been unemployed for four fucking days and the boredom can only be described as being tied down by socialists and forced into watching Al Gore read live on Book TV at three in the morning. Kill me now Christ, if you have any salvation left in your heart. After two days the vacation ended and I’m ready and willing to go back to work. Sitting at home doing nothing is truly the worst experience of my short drug fueled life. I think my mothers suicide was more pleasant then this bullshit.

People don’t understand that being out of work isn’t a vacation paid for by the government. Vacations are filled with sun, sex, drugs, beaches, museums, site seeing, and gallons of alcohol. I can’t afford any of the above so as Kristofferson once wrote, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, nothing ain’t worth nothing but it’s free.” I finally get what he was saying.

I have been unleashed by the restraints of society and free to roam the world and do as I wish. It’s just I don’t have the money to fucking do it. I can’t go to the museum that costs money, I can’t afford a drink at the bar, and it’s too fucking cold to sit on the rocks of Lake Michigan. It’s a vicious and evil torture mechanism created by the weasel that saunter in the darkness.

No time to think about it any longer I have a shower to take. The warm water and slippery soap feels good on my skin. Its oddly one of the last pleasures that still provoke an emotion beyond numbness and I want to make it last. I shower like a rape victim scrubbing hard and letting the water wash away the filth. Time for some TV and the comfort it brings.

If you don’t think our system is broken take off a day of work and watch the mockery and decadence network television produces for the out of work, disabled, and delinquent. Hours upon hours of judges dishing out ‘justice’ with quick wit, simplistic advice, and stern structure. Christ, is this what our system has become? Is Judge Joe Brown the pinnacle of what our forefathers imagined? I sure as hell hope not.

Fishing used to be a term that described a necessity to life activity. Teach a man to fish and he never will have to beg again we’ve been programmed. Well the lawyers got that memo and now all of them fish in ads seeking out the unjust injured who NEED to sue, and helping fools part with their money giving them lump sums instead of the prearranged pay outs. It’s rough out there.

I’ve exhausted the internet and have driven every road of the information super highway worth traveling. I’ve gathered information, jerked off to porn in the seedy cites off the highway, and read screeds of fantasy in the world of politics. Everything I’ve ever wanted from the internet I have seen and now it’s nothing more than a drug. I need my daily fix of faux information, ego driven postings, and dirty, dirty women.

I got to get out of this place the walls are closing in around me. Television leaves me numb and I take no enjoyment from movies, shows, or news. It’s too fucking cold to go outside but if I don’t I’m afraid I will slowly go insane here in my study. My little refrigerator, my microwave, and my radio which used to help humanize and soften my work days now clutter the little space I have, no longer welcome at my former job. Jesus Christ even the autographed picture of Johnny Cash seems to be staring at me with a look of pity and disgust.

No time to defend myself to the leering legend in black time to get out of this shit house fast. I throw on my stained white sweat pant and I top my long underwear shirt with a Willie Nelson T-shirt. Where to go? What am I going to do? Where do the people go with no money to stay from going insane? Am I insane? I don’t know anymore. Get a grip Larcher your losing it, and losing it fast.

A light snow purifies the dirty city and turns the gray streets white. It’s not as cold as I thought it was seems like things are turning around for the better. I walk past one of the stores I used to work at but the drone inside was a stranger and not worth the conversation. I pass by the deli’s full of old Italians talking about the old country. I watch as Mexican kid plays an old arcade game as his parents wash their cloths at the dirty laundry mat.

I come to an old familiar place my bar where Homeless Pete sits and drowns his misery. I tell him I’ve been laid off and he informs me I’m talented and will land on my feet. Funny thing is Pete is a pretty sharp old sage for a fifty something homeless drug addict. Wisdom knows no wealth and anybody who thinks otherwise is probably fairly wealthy criminals and really don’t need to believe it. Money dives everything.

I hate beer but now is not the time for debate of intoxicating spirits. I down it fast as Pete bloviates to me his struggles and how he needs a ride to get a new ID so that he can seek government aid. I agree that if he can get the cash together to get the ID, I would chuffer him around Friday. What the hell better do I have to do but help my fellow traveler? Besides it could be a great story for you folks as our adventures never end without something happening.

I can’t afford more than one beer, and worse then that I don’t have the cash to fix the sickness that the jukebox has caught. Somebody gave the damn thing an STD and it’s irritating my ears. Fucking people and their bad taste in music, and their grotesque money to dictate what the rest of us have to listen too. Me, when I have money I’m a benevolent balladeer of musical brilliance. But not right now I have to get back outside and out of this den of depression.

I hop a bus and watch as the strange people stare at me like I’m the strange one. Just because a man wears sunglasses on a cloudy, snowy day does not make them strange. Peculiar I’ll accept, but strange - NEVER! I walk into the book store a mass consumer paradise of literacy and strong coffee. Perhaps the surreptitious of employment lies on the shelves, perhaps a tale of bravery and strength will inspire me, perhaps it’s too late.

I pass by a shrine of books to our lord and savior Barack Obama. I make the sign of the cross to him as it seems like the appropriate gesture at the appropriate time in our history. It made an old lady angry, a conservative grind his teeth, and a liberal grin. Fuck’em all! Nobody really has any God damn passion anymore and that’s the biggest problem with our nation. Where is the civil unrest? What happened to student unrest? Where the hell are the bathrooms I have to take a Blagovich bad.

After a righteous BM it’s time to fill my mind with words of hope and promise. I settle for a magazine with half naked women as I grab a coffee and sit down in the lounge area. A strange crowd has gathered as two nerds in their twenties play chess. Who the hell in their twenties goes to a book store to play chess? Losers I proclaim in all my genius. Two Europeans gibber next to me in their strange tongue the female creature is looking at a photo book while the male creature is looking at a BMW manual. Fucking trash. College students work and type with great vigor hoping that their chosen field will lead to security and long term enjoyment and fulfillment. That is if they are the lucky ones.

Wow the girl in front of me a thirty something with a balding oaf reading a jogging magazine gets up and has a great ass. I’ve lost focus again. It happens even to the best of us but I must continue on something has to happen here as my boredom is creeping back in. Political correctness has destroyed the excitement of America leaving us with just the scrapbooks of yesteryear.

No one protests, no one fights, no one gets in trouble, and nobody engages in conversations with strangers anymore. We have become a nation of not caring. We have become a nation of I. Money controls us and in no way is anybody going to risk losing their security by engaging in anything that doesn’t benefit themselves. The 80's had it all but culture and good times just like anything else eventually rot then die.

If you think I’m wrong you’re an asshole and I really don’t care. But given the fact you’ve read this much I feel the need to point a finger and for a prime example of which we are look no further then my honorable Governor Rod Blagovich. Its true most politicians whose names make you think of peckers are usually corrupt; Dick, Willie, Rod, Spitzer. It’s an odd fact we should all read into more.

I don’t have a job and I don’t get a paycheck but the honorable Rod Blagovich does. This deceitful scum never served anything above his own self interest. Usually in a situation like this, with as much damning evidence as there is against this Dracula clone would resign. However I don’t think this man will. He knows he’s not going to jail, and we know he’s not going to jail so why resign? He’s already been disgraced why not milk it, cash as many checks as possible, and then write a brilliant book painting himself as the victim.

Today the guy who Blagovich picked to replace the messiah in the United States Senate showed up in Washington like Will Kane for a face down on the hill at high noon. This modern day cowboy marched to the capital building with no support from his posse and little help from his friends. In his eyes he’s a black man fighting for what is right, no different the Dr. King or Rosa Parks but the reality is he’s just a Hench me in the evil gang of Blagovich and we all know it.

His march was not one of history but one of disgust and disgrace. I don’t blame him as he’s just an opportunist seeking his opportunity in the land of plenty. But this is not a race issue he’s not a nigger we hate because of skin color he’s a qualified politician, a fellow man, and he just like us being used as a pawn by a money/power hungry honkey. The most dangerous of all the races is the white man in a suit.

Blagovich understands the racial side of the game and is playing it perfectly replacing the country’s only black Senator (now the first black President) with another qualified black man. To shut this man out of office is to shut a black man out of office. Remember what I said about nobody caring anymore? Well this is one of those times where it will work to our advantage as nobody is going to see him being shut out as racist but rather what it is, a weasel cum rag criminal Governor playing games.

I’m disgusted that I’m here with nothing, and he lives in a Governor’s mansion still. Is there any hope for guys like me? Is the American Dream really dead? Has democracy fallen to indifference? Are we that frightened of power we don’t protest in outrage anymore??

Jesus Christ this is only my fourth day of boredom.

More to come…

Monday, January 5, 2009

Oh Well

I started Friday searching for something to write about while sitting at work. My thoughts went to my New Years Day bus ride to work on which was packed with anxious Hockey fans heading to Wrigley Field to see the winter classic. I was going to compare how much I hate the bus being packed with Cubs fans, but didn’t mind it as much when it was the blue collar hockey fans. By the time I got half way through this horseshit attempt at trying to write something witty and interesting I knew the piece was forced, fake, and just me trying to be something I’m not.

I made a promise to be as honest as I can as your humble investigative reporter of our times. I was doubled up at my job Friday which was a bit weird because the store was small enough to just have one mindless drone running it alone. As a matter of fact my schedule next week had me doubled up with this guy a few times. We talked about it and figured it was just the company trying to give us a paycheck as they have over hired do to a uneducated power hungry Oprah wannabe reclaiming her castle. Turns out like me he was a fan of old school wrestling and we bonded on that note.

I figured I could write about pro-wrestling as it’s currently relevant with the great reviews for the movie ‘The Wrestler’ one in which I also enjoyed. I figured that would be my default story but it being Friday I’m sure in my travels home or my day off on Saturday I could find something interesting to connect with you my fellow travelers.

About an hour before close my regional manager came in from the cold. He was in a down mood but given the number of sales lately that was understandable. He asked the other guy to step outside because he needed to talk to me about something private. Now being the egotistic asshole that I am I assumed it was one of two things. Number one being I would be getting my own store as my last one closed in September, and I was told January they would give me a new one and he didn’t want to hurt the other guys feelings. The second being I did something wrong and needed to be talked to about it. No big deal.

Not sure if I was blind to the situation or just plain stupid and didn’t see that writing on the walls wasn’t talking about calling a number for a good time. As a matter of fact in the last ten years I have found most bathroom shit stalls to lack a number for a good time. I guess times are hard all over.

My manager told me I was fired. He continued to jabber on about how it wasn’t my fault, something about budget cuts, and I was simply a victim of life’s circumstances. The average American only listens to one third of what said as it’s the brains natural duty to start formulating a response instead of listening. When you’re fired or encounter any other life changing dialogue your mind goes crazy as all emotions battle out in a 30 feeling over the top rope battle royal.

I felt ANGER. I felt SADNESS. I saw Relief being tossed out by insecurity. I felt like FUCKING KILLING SOMEBODY. I felt like FUCKING KILLING MYSELF. I felt for my supervisor who truly felt bad at what the system was forcing him to do. I felt SICK to my stomach. I wanted drugs, I wanted money, I wanted my FUCKING job back. Then I simply stopped feeling as just like a computer the blue screen of death popped up and my emotions had to reboot as apathy filled the void until a winners hand was raised.

The question was, as I stared in complete emptiness what response would win out in this emotional war. Would it be anger? Would it be rational? Would it be guns blazing? Would it be sadness? I really didn’t know as all control was lost. Then like usual the old cowboy in me took over and I shook the man’s hand and thanked him for a good year and a half. I got my things and walked out into the whipping cold as the hawk wind of Chicago blew my skin numb to match my emotions as I was now one of the 7.3% unemployed.

Now I had something to write about. Now I really had emotion to pour into my words like the secret ingredient in the Big Mac everything was in place to be over a billon served. The rage and demons that wanted to drag me into the depths of their darkness and baptize me one of their own a sick unemployed bitter minion of misery walked along with me. The saints who seek to show me salvation in the toughest of times like the holy book of Job whisper to me it’s all a fucking trial by a diluted and egocentric God whose sick sense of humor I normally appreciate, now not so much.

For the first time in my life I will have to seek the help of the United States government. I will now have to depend on the working for support and help, a position I’m very uncomfortable with. Perhaps a few week of smoking weed, drinking heavily, and engaging in vigorous masturbation well watching Judge Judy may be needed. I don’t know, and I don’t think I can now afford the drugs or the masturbation for that matter. I’ve never really been here before looking up at the world thinking, damn this is a mountain and I’m too fucking tired to climb it.

I did what most do on the day they lose their identity in a world where you are defined by what you do and that’s seek mental dilution. Thankfully the store I was at was near my friend’s house so I stopped over there and immediately placed distance between reality of my world, and the comfort of the intoxicated world with the help of drugs. They took my mind and hid my pain and the joyous, jubilant, jolly; me emerged with Chinese eyes and grass growing around on my brain stem.

The jester took my hand and we went swimming in an ocean of caramel and chocolate as the bats flew over head. Too much of a good thing often turns bad fast and that’s where this trip was quickly going. I got sick on the smell of caramel and the bats were swooping in closer and closer and I didn’t know what they wanted. I knew if it was a loan they were seeking they were swooping around the head of the wrong dude. All I had was myself at this point and that was good enough for me.

I woke up the next day a bit dazed and certainly confused to reality and the sickness that this world can produce. I engaged in another round of drugs before taking the bus home to tell my father that his only son was now an unemployed loser in the toughest of American times since his father’s generation.

Everybody keeps telling me it’s not a big deal. Unemployment checks are like a short vacation, and in there wise sage like advice they tell me that this is a blessing in disguise. Blessings in disguise tend not to be the kind of surprise one should appreciate. It’s a polite way of saying fuck it and move on. Easy to spew harder to swallow if you ask me just like vomit.

It’s true that I know I will be fine as I have confidence in myself and the world around me that this too will pass. But I am angry, I am sad, I am scared, now knowing that my tomorrow is going to be harder than it was just a few days before. Its stability and comfort we all seek and now that is gone.

Oh well.

We’ll get through this, we always do.

More to come…