Monday, October 21, 2013

Ten days to Halloween. Or is it "Hallowe'en"? Whatever it is, it allows certain novelty shops to exist in buildings that used to contain renowned chain stores. There's a meme floating around that shows one in place of what used to be a major Tower Records installment. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but in my town, the former Circuit City building and the former Blockbuster Video building are now both Halloween "Spook-taculars" or some such play on words. Novelty shops make a pleasant disguise for the scary reality that is our gop-led country and economy, don't they?

"Spook-tacular". I'm awfully sick of these Halloween-themed puns. It's the same ones every year. Halloween's no fun anymore. Everything's been sanitized. Can 27-year-olds like me trick-or-treat? Probably not. Cops would be on me like Anthony Weiner on a mobile device. Or something. I used to be better at hip celebrity/politician jokes. But it's a shame; I think an adult desperately seeking free candy in a bad economy is wonderfully spooky and in spirit. Also a shame that I have no costume party to go to this year; I'd rent a suit and go as a gop. Just as well, though; I ain't got the dough to rent that suit.

Here, have a photo from last year's party instead. The "pharaoh" is a long-time friend and classmate's brother. I didn't really have any ideas, so I just took my old black cape that I've had since I was small enough to trip over it, stuck it over my best tie-dye Dead shirt, and called myself "Super Outsider".



Back to the future, which is murder. ("Live in London" version there; tremendous release, LiL.) How 'bout that government shutdown? I don't have much to say about it myself; it's all fast become a blur to me. Sequester, debt ceiling, shutdown, stalemate, congress — all these words are just noise now — like a parade of garbage trucks on the other side of the front door except nonessential. (Get it?) Things are bad; I know it. I don't have hopes the least bit high for myself when I go to test for a temporary, non-social job on Tuesday, let alone anybody else for longer periods.

Ah, but haven't I whined on here enough about my distaste for this anti-social, roboticized, outsourced western society?

Something I've noticed lately is this:

Almost everybody I encounter, be it in person or via media images, their faces look almost exactly the same. Same features, same demeanor, same style of movements — male or female, black or white, senior citizen or six-month-old. I don't know how well I can describe this face, or expression; it kind of seems like the wearer is in a deep haze of thought — one from which it's highly dubious that they will ever emerge. Often their mouth is hung slightly open; their head smoothly and very slowly bobs. I have no idea what this means, if anything; it's only the last couple weeks that I've really noticed it. Just a passing thought, perhaps, that I'm passing along to cyberspace with the fantasy that a fellow traveler will know exactly what I mean and excitedly say so.

These are the thoughts that flit through one part of my head as another feels nasty sinus pressure that helps prevent me sleeping.

I bid you as pleasant a Monday as you can experience in your current circumstance.

Musing City

I got back from four days and change in Nashville yesterday. Already I feel a need to get back to Tennessee, Jed. The change in scenery — more accurately, the momentary introduction of scenery — was exactly what I likely still need. Lately, I've felt particularly stifled out here in the flatlands. It seems that there's nothing out here, least of all truly friendly people willing to lend a hand, or even an eye or ear. This sanitized plastic land is not the place for me. Maybe the whole country is sanitized plastic by now; me, I'm willing to give the benefit of a doubt to places I haven't fully gotten to know yet.

So I was in greater Nashville for a handful of days. I can tell you this much: whether it actually has it or not, Nashville at least has the aura...of "life". I don't quite know how to explain it; there's just a feeling that things actually happen there. It's a feeling that permeates the rolling hills and the winding roads that must conform to them — roads on which one can easily get lost without a GPS, because there's no workable grid. But getting lost there isn't too bad, because it's very beautiful in the rolling greenery, or green-red-and-orange-ery here in the autumn. At least it is during the daytime; those close, fast-paced winding country roads tend to not be at all lit at night. I say all this, by the way, as someone who is apparently really amazingly good at directions. Pretty much anyone I talk to tells me how horrible they are at directions and navigation. But give me a couple minutes with Google Maps before I hit the road, and I sail smoothly. At least I usually do; I had rather a hard time one night in England in 2006. So maybe I'm skewed by my life in flat, gridded Illinois. But I've done well so far in the Nash. Anyway...

I didn't get to manage but a couple interactions with "locals"; I would love to have interacted more. As it is, I stayed alongside my family, except for one night at a bar, finally meeting someone I had known in cyberspace for a while. (Also, the previous night when I tried meeting them and failed, but never mind.) As a northerner in the South, it was wonderfully trippy for me. And from a comment made by the fellow who came to join my friend and me, the feeling was mutual.

I would most certainly benefit from getting out (of town/state) and interacting more often. If only I could find a way to be able from within this cornstalk-barred prison....

****

Here are some things other than scenery and natural beauty that I've seen in Tennessee but not in Illinois that I can recall:

• SPEED LIMIT 70

• MapCo

• Belk

• Stoplights after midnight implementing a two-way stop by having one of the two intersecting streets seeing yellow flashing lights while the other street sees the usual red flashers. I guess that's how that works, based on about two other vehicles that were out at the time that I saw.

• Exxon, though we do have their other half, the most boringly-named Mobil. No "Tigermarket"s here.

• Kroger, except down in the south of the state where I never went until last year. Actually, Bloomington-Normal might have it. I never go there, so I don't know.

• Someone else's outdoor cat coming to visit us and ours, although ours is not particularly a fan

• Shoney's (I'm pretty sure)

• Publix

• Cartoon-esque holes in the ground and a tree or two in the yard. Where are the "critters" that would make such holes where I live? What do they look like?

• An OVERSIZE LOAD passing another OVERSIZE LOAD on the interstate. I'm sure that's not exclusive to other places, just something I don't see every day. Actually, this might have been in Kentucky on the way back.

• Piggly Wiggly. I'd heard that these existed, but I never saw one until this past Monday.

• Quite so many two-or-more-word street names. Seems Tennessee likes to make it absolutely known who their roads are named for. I think the town I live in has exactly one street that bears a person's full name, and it likely helps that that one person is named "Ed". If we named a street for General George Patton, as has been done in a couple places in the greater Nashville metro, it would likely just be "Patton Avenue".

And that reminds me of another thing: Pikes. No Illinois roadway seems to be described as a "pike". We got most every other variety of thing to drive on: street, avenue, boulevard, drive, road, parkway, court (if it's a dead-end or only a block long). Occasionally we might chance upon a "trail", or "place", or something. But no pikes here. Weird.

• Jack in the Box. Another chain that's supposed to be nationally renowned, but if we have any here, I don't know where they are. I don't even know what kind of food they serve, exactly. Typical greasy fast food?

Actually, there are a couple chains like that, or used to be. Chick-Fil-A was totally unheard of here until maybe three or four years ago when one came in to replace the McDonald's in the Illini Union food court. News is that they've opened a few places in Chicagoland since. Also, Chicago has had a White Castle or three — the one at Clark & Ridge comes to mind — but never down here.

• A sign at the end of a dead-end street saying "Temporary Dead End", with another one right behind it saying "Permanent Dead End". The site of a legal battle, my family surmised.

• Someone removing their clothes right there in the bar. It wasn't my friend, and I don't think "Trish" will be, but it was good for a laugh. "Why is your bra in your hand?" "Because I took it off."

• A kitten climbing a tree. Before I went down, my cousin had actually snapped a picture of "Ellie" having gotten on the roof. I didn't get to see that in person, but that can be all right.

• Someone using their fireplace. Matter of fact, the house I live in doesn't even have a fireplace.

• The kitten using the ash-filled fireplace for very much her own purposes.

• And, last but not least, I feel a need to point out that I live north of this. But I'm told I ain't missin' much there.

Class is By and Large Dismissed

Sleepless night on the couch before I hit the road to Nashville for a few days. Being up from 4a to about midnight, you'd think I could sleep more easily for a while. Ah well; time to write.

I found myself thinking back to an instance in high school where my intranet account seemed to have frozen up at a rather inconvenient time. I needed to use Word, and I wasn't being granted access. I went down with a hall pass like the ones I always carried through the halls during class when I had to — exactly once, during freshman year, did someone actually stop me to look at it — and talked to the network admin about the problem. The cause was indeed found: My account had been purposely suspended because I had a small bunch of mp3s in the folder.

That was kind of amusing; they were not full songs. They were merely clips of 'em, used in a Powerpoint presentation for Spanish class the previous semester. I used them because I apparently had no clue how to give a Powerpoint presentation, in any language. I considered, and kind of still do, Powerpoints to be excess media. Words on the screen and coming from my mouth? What does that accomplish? So, music man that I am, I just had bits of songs for the audience's enjoyment as they read. And I had explained this at the beginning of the presentation — in Spanish, of course.

But anyway, it evidently took admins a while to discover that there were mp3s (of any variety) in my folder, and they just suspended the account without a notification one day, when I rather needed to use the account for some advanced-placement physics work. I calmly explained to the admin in that basement cloaked in the sort of dull yellow that only schools possess, that the mp3s were old news and could be safely erased. Normality was restored. Still, though, I look back and recall just how terribly bureaucratic the old high school was.

High school was horribly bureaucratic. We weren't allowed to wear hats; apparently, hats are dangerous weapons. You throw 'em like a Frisbee, they can cut through solid metal statues. It was in a movie. Or, I think their explanation was, we could hide other weapons in the spaces between the top of the hats and the top of our heads. Well, by that logic, couldn't we be hiding weapons in all our clothes? We should all walk around naked! That ought to ensure a lack of dangerous weapons. Unless someone figures out how to shoot a laser from within their finger or something; then I guess we're screwed.

But yeah, everybody naked in the Illinois autumns and winters! That's wonderfully in tune with the bureaucracy. And there'll be no weapons. Except maybe exacerbated teenage hormones. But even then, in this age of tight, low-rider jeans on the ladies, I'm absolutely amazed at the self-restraint I had during those years. And at twenty-six years of age now, having still never had even a casual girlfriend, I'm still utterly astounded at the civilized self-control I, and probably a great many others, seem to have.

But back to schools. Last night, on the national news, they ran a story about young women turned away from their own homecoming dance because, in some Utahan's eye, their skirts were too short. They had a picture of the spurned ladies in their dance clothes. I can tell you this: There was absolutely nothing provocative, offensive, or anything of the sort about any of the ladies or their apparel. Who cares about bare legs up to the knees? Legs do nothing for me. The good stuff is in between!

It's all so arbitrary. I think we should find a new name for "schools". Everything else in our society is being made over; just ask George Carlin. But I think I have a new term to describe schools: Human processing plants. Manufacturing facilities designed to convert vibrant and promising young people into passive sheep, accepting whatever they're told and never revolting, despite all the urges to the contrary at that age. Somehow, by and large, they pull it off. Saddening.

Although, there was the one rule during our Freshman year where we all started out having to wear those ID tags with the clips on us at all times. Enough of us rejected the notion that the requirement was eventually thrown out. A small victory, perhaps; we seemed to make the point that someone legitimately associated with the school could wreak as much havoc as someone who waltzed in from outside.

By the way, this last was 2000 — before 9-11. It's possible that the country was always heading this way, and that 9-11 merely accelerated it. Schools can easily be seen as microcosms of this country — people obsessed with security and soulless bureaucracy as a supposedly airtight and efficient enforcement method. I remember one time somewhere after 9-11 when everybody in the whole school got evacuated and crammed into the next-door middle school's gymnasium because someone spilled salt on a table in the cafeteria at breakfast, and someone cried ANTHRAX. Fun times.

But that's just it; schools as national microcosms. If we can change how the schools function, maybe we can change how the country functions. If the presidential debates and surrounding political scene are any indication, the change is quite in order. I say start with the schools. Teach the kids to think for themselves; when to rebel; when to comprehend and accept reason in rules. Who knows, it might catch on. More schools; fewer human processing plants.

Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta rub one off to a fantasy of teen girls in tight low-riders.

Sob Story: Epilogue

It seemed like I ought to check back in after that whole big thing back there. I just wanted to say that I appear to be reasonably secure here at home after all. My family's had a nice talk, following my whole big thing, and the point appears to be made that I already have about all I can handle, and family likewise. Call it "the family forgiveness act". We need each other, without the anger.

Of course, I still have the problems of being unemployed, socially deprived, and soaked in student debt and bimonthly health insurance payments. But at least I'm slightly less miserable. And at least I won't be miserable without a consistent place to sleep and eat.

Still, if you have a good job opening, fill me in, won't you?

Sob Story, Part Three

All right. I want to thank you, cybercitizen, for playing the role of Doctor Freud here for me. Here we go.

Things are good. Father has his television and word-search puzzle book; I have my cyberspace, with its music, virtual friends and useless job sites; things are almost ... peaceful.

Then ... a low rumbling; a subtle thunder.

The quadrupeds explode into a vocal foreshadowing of their own vocal explosion's aftermath. True, they go off for any visitor — sometimes even me — but this particular visitor elicits a unique tone; the howls are louder and in greater unanimity, as if providing a symphony its crescendo. The oldest, in particular, seems to be wailing as she did once upon a time when people left. Something disappointing must be happening; the symphony has reached its end.

They go to greet the visitor in the hopes that their greeting will instill a sense of love in the newcomer. And, for maybe half a minute, there is a kind of high, sing-song quality to the human voice in the other room. But it quickly subsides along with the tapping and sliding of paws on the hardwood floor. And, not two minutes from the dogs' initial eruption, a new cacophony echoes through the house: a blizzard of profanity and discontentment, the biting cold misery settling into the interior landscape. And I do my best to seek shelter from the storm.

Mother's home.

Letting everyone know, among many things, that she hates coming home.

So, I've gotten to thinking that maybe leaving (getting kicked out) wouldn't be such a bad thing — as long as I have a place to go and something to do when I get there.

One friend commented on Part One that I probably want a place of my own. I'm actually not convinced I want a place all my own; I'm fine sharing a place. I just don't want to share a place that's soaked in misery.

So maybe that's why I've written this whole thing: it's a call for friends and/or potential friends to maybe take me in for a while, or at least offer some tips on where to go and what to do. A couple people have made me an offer, but I'm not quite ready to accept one just yet. I guess I want to gather some options.

Today, meanwhile, I'm getting ready to talk with my career counselor at the university. And after that, I'm going to an examination where the university will determine whether or not I'm fit to stand behind a counter and sell candy bars. (I did work four solid years at a now-defunct Baskin Robbins. I miss that job.)

Peace and love be unto you.

Sob Story, Part Two

And I'm back. For a little while.

So I'm a “special kid” (who apparently is cool revealing those details to the world) with nowhere to go and, presumably, nowhere to come from, very soon.

As those of you who've checked out my song “Now What?” posted above and been able to listen to it despite the outside noise that plagues the left channel in particular, may know or have figured out, I'm just out of college. It took me twice as long as it apparently was supposed to have done, but I did finish. My degree? A bachelor of the arts in creative writing, mathematics and technology. I kind of semi-joke that, in other words, I'm a jack of all trades and master of none. I aborted the mathematics and computer science bits of my education two or three years in when I realized that I was neither enjoying nor doing well in those classes. I subsequently tried three or four majors — anthropology, psych, rhetoric — before getting together with a small team of administrators to write up an independent creative writing major, designed with a focus on poetry and an intent on just getting me the hell out of college. It took a lot of effort (in my opinion) and rather a bit of intervention to even get me to realize the IPS (Individual Plan of Study). For a couple semesters, I went as low as one class at a time. The normal full-time number of classes per semester is four. In fact, I seem to recall sitting one semester out entirely, in an effort to shake the pressure and depression.

I've kind of forgotten where I was going with this. I just put on Court & Spark. I think what I was saying was that I went through all that for...what? A slab that is currently sitting in my gig bag? Oh, and can't forget that student loan debt, which, thanks to what I can only guess is a communication error, is triple what I thought it would be.

That's what I got. No real clues about life beyond academia. No job, and no particular career aspirations. I can tell you that the idea of a career — one thing that I spend my whole life doing — turns me right off.

So what about minor day (or evening/late-night) jobs? Well, who's hiring? Doesn't seem to be much out here. I did have a job for a couple years that I purposely left a couple years ago. They claim to take me back if I want, but, again, I left it for a reason. I tried, for a while, to do a job that requires me plopped in front of a computer all the while. I simply don't have it in me. I'd find myself just sat there, zoned out, accomplishing nothing. Not even surfing the net; just sitting there — even though I sit at a computer nearly all of my “spare” time, basically playing music and messing around mindlessly. And the reason I spend my spare time doing that is, as I mentioned in part one of this extravaganza, I have no social life. Nor do I care much for movies, books, television, or most video games. (I probably could have been a gamer, if games hadn't gotten all 3-D and pseudo-realistic.)

I'm a “mouse potato” with an inability for that would-be profession to translate into an actual profession. Certainly my other natural high points — wit, writing skills, musical knowledge and talent — have no place in contemporary society, at least not in America. I need a job with social aspects. And so I ask again: Who's hiring?

I suppose you all realize that I'm not one who's willing to stay with something that I don't enjoy. This happens to be precisely where I clash with my mother, who stayed at her old workplace that she detested for some sixteen years before being unceremoniously fired for an expletive. She's also sticking with a loveless marriage to my spineless father (who's another story altogether) which just about daily features high-volume arguments. I'm thankful that neither parent is an alcoholic; imagine the destruction that could result from that. Mother knows she can't particularly count on my father for much, so I become a kind of “go-to”.

And, for some reason, she wants me out of the house.

Just a shade more in part three.

Sob Story, Part One

Happy Labor Day weekend, cyberworld.

Like many younger Americans, the exact meaning of Labor Day is deep within a mist from me, so it may or may not be somehow poetic that I'm bringing this up now. And I'm hesitating at the beginning here, considering that, apparently, I really feel that I need to write and post this. At least some aspect of it doesn't seem right. But here it is:

My mother has threatened to kick me out of our house if I should remain unemployed come this month's end.

This, as perhaps you can imagine, is not something I'm having a great time coping with. I've been in my parents' shelter all my twenty-six years. I went to college right across town. I've never known anything else. And despite my mother's half-assed attempts to charge me (her only son) monthly rent for staying here, I'm not the least bit prepared for anything else, and I'm wholly unlikely to make a smooth transition.

Another piece of information that might be useful here: I'm a child of Asperger's Syndrome. Though the affliction was more prevalent in childhood than now, my aversion to minor changes then may perhaps be indicative of my (potential?) aversion to major changes now. Also, it meant that I was not at all social growing up — I wasn't anti-social, I just simply didn't make friends or talk much — the consequence of which is that I have no social group — no clique or niche — that I identify with or conceivably fit in. Though that aspect of me has eased somewhat the last few years, I still nonetheless have no close friends, not even from the last bits of college. Also, I don't drink, which rather robs me of what seems to be the primary means of adult socialization. I have kind of bar-hopped locally on Saturday nights now and then, occasionally casually conversing with a familiar face from days of old and then just awkwardly standing or sitting with nothing much else to say. And, to top that all off, I am an only child. For all the horror stories of sibling torture I've heard, I can't particularly recommend “onlihood”. I might not even recommend first-born-hood, but I suppose our species actually does depend on those. I can sort of approximate a sibling with my only cousin, who is a wonderful perpetuator of peace, love, and a general lack of dysfunction, some three-and-a-half hundred miles away.

Where was I....the Syndrome also means that I take horrendous amounts of time doing certain things that might take non-afflicted people not so much time. Writing is often a good example of such a thing. And I must break now. Back in a bit.