Hippie Sunshine Suckfuck and the Grateful Dead

A rotten, woozy, nauseating stench of alcohol, incense, marijuana, and human bodies that have never once known soap, deodorant, or even toilet paper hovered over Madison Square Garden like a fart from the Almighty. Yes, the Grateful Dead were in town. Their loyal followers - "Deadheads" - were stinking up the corridors of my beloved city. I sometimes smell bad too, but geniuses are allowed to smell bad.

Hordes of whiteboys with dreadlocks; portly hippie Care Bears, soft and puffy; grungy, grimy, bummy-looking New Jersey contractors who like reds, vitamin C and Corona. Stumblebum Alert! Stumblebum Alert! Men who look like Jesus Christ, shirtless and everything, dressed in rags; bike trash, truck trash, road trash, trailer trash, white trash. Garbage, Garbage, Garbage, Trash, Trash, Trash. Clean 'em out with a broom! Kill 'em all - let God sort 'em out! Die hippie scum! Creepy longhairs! (Not that, many of these work-a-day stumblebums are real hippies!)

It is amusing to watch them fraternize with one another and introduce scum to mutual scum. A greasy hippie chick introduced herself to a tall, thin man with a beard: "Hi, I'm Hippie Sunshine Suckfuck! What's your name?"

"I'm Lowlife James."

"Pleased to meet you, Lowlife James. Have you met my friend White Trash Crystal? She was born in the back of a Greyhound bus. Her mother used to burn her with Newports if she borrowed the bong without asking."

"Nice to meet you, White Trash Crystal."

"Dude, let's go to Seattle," whined White Trash Crystal.

"Oh, Lowlife James, have you also met Dirtbag Magee, Scumbag Scully, Piece O' Shit Lozinski, Garbage Motherfuckersuckertrucker Mancini, Postmodern Prozac-Tupping Thompson, Fat-Lazy Biker Boyle, and Jerry Garcia Jerking-Off Jim? These are all my friends."

On the train back to Jersey a couple of other deadheads talked:

"So, how's the plumbing business, bro?"

"Good bro! I got this fuckin' Honduran guy working for me. I'm tellin' ya man! Those guys can work their fuckin' asses off, bro!"

"Yeah man... Those guys can fuckin' work!"

"Yeah bro! Work and don't complain a bit, bro!"

"Yeah, bro..."

"Yo, I need a cigarette, bro..."

"Yeah man... They should just let ya' smoke on the train, bro!"

"Yeah bro... That's fuckin' bullshit bro! Ain't no more rights and freedoms in this country no more, bro!"

"Yeah, it's fucked-up bro!"

Ayn Rand would call you collectivists. Ayn Rand would call you collectivists. Ayn Rand would call you collectivists.

And I hate Ayn Rand!

The "yeah man"s and "yeah bro"s killed all of my brain cells.

Laws were made for these people. They are the idiot-morons who need coercion to stay in line!

I guess I do not have swine flu. Yesterday I felt lethargic, even groggy. Last night I was up until 4am with stomach cramps, stomach pains, and projectile diarrhea. I had to talk myself down from vomiting several times.

Uh-Oh, I must have swine flu. As a senior citizen (I'm 28 years old, which makes me a senior citizen by MTV's standards - the only standards that matter) I know my own body pretty darn well. I never get sick in the spring. I've never had a flu, a fever, or even a cold after the month of March. So my discomfort must have been a symptom of swine flu.

To convince myself it wasn't swine flu I took an inventory of everything I had eaten that day: sour grapes, mushy blackberries, buttery eggs, jalapeno hummus, olives, and black bean soup with hot sauce. Okay, it wasn't the swine flu! Thank goodness.

In a way, isn't this whole swine flu thing kind of fun? Okay, the plague of Athens was not fun, but this virus is far from wreaking the sort of havoc described by Thucydides. I've never read Daniel Defoe, but Albert Camus made rats and rampant dying sound like something of a hoot. And let's not forget the best writer to ever live: Stephen King. Wasn't "The Stand" (book and miniseries) a blast? I'm surprised I haven't been having dreams of an angelic old black lady enlisting me in a fight against evil.

The Greeks talked of moira, the fate even the gods were powerless against. Nietzsche likened it to a slate falling from a roof, knocking our purposes dead. Cosmic stupidity. Doesn't something like swine flu activate our vestigial anxieties of the arbitrary recklessness of fate? Of a time - not long ago - when entire towns, villages, and cities were wiped out of existence by plague?

Perhaps the swine flu will serve as a refreshing reminder of what life once was or what it may still be. Maybe people will put down their crackberries and once again attempt to experience that forgotten state known as "life". Your Blackberry is not going to give you a stronger immune system. A virus doesn't care how stylishly worthless you are! It will kill unfashionably worthy and fashionably worthless all the same!

Maybe if people are too frantically afraid of getting sick or dying to frantically plan for a long future of the usual mindless automatism the human race can recapture it's lost soul and dignity! At the very least watching average people confront numinous, unseen terror will be great fun for the whole family!

But I'm still glad I don't have it!

      "Oh, look at that nigger! How would you like to be on the wrong side of that nigger? Could you imagine climbing into the ring with that nigger?"

      My Dad was awed by Mike Tyson. So was I. When Mike Tyson was in Atlantic City he liked to eat at the White House sub shop on Arctic Avenue, just off the beaten path of the casinos. He was as real as the rapidly-drying cheese between the chewy steak. The White House had the best cheesesteaks on earth. Frank Sinatra had them flown out to his place in California.

      My parents drove into the thick of Atlantic City at night to get those cheesesteaks. I remember a little black girl with corn-rowed hair. I remember how scary Atlantic City was, a dark, scary slum. The apartments had too-white interiors lit by fluorescent lights. The residents walked down the streets and made weird noises.

      Mike Tyson was associated with the grit of Rocky's Philadelphia, of bell-bottomed hoodlum "creep" and ice-skating rinks closed on Thanksgiving.

      Today I was at the Time Warner Center on 59th Street, one of my favorite places in the world. I educated myself there. Through the summer of 2004 I went to the Time Warner Center's Borders and read everything I could get my hands on for hours on end. The Time Warner Center was my college.

      A group of rowdy black kids were behind me on the escalator. We're so post-everything we are even post-nihilism. Though I think New York City is as big and bad as it ever was, it certainly is not the NYC of the "Crocodile Dundee" movies. There are no muggers approaching people on 42nd Street. "Hey man! You got a light?" Pulls out a switchblade: "Now give me yo' wallet!" There are no longer bad-asses in Michael Jackson get-ups.

      The fact of the matter is that in my time kids were KILLERS. Not only that but they were FUCKERS (literally and figuratively.) Or they were DRUGGIES. Or they were into something WEIRD or ANTI-SOCIAL or WEIRDLY ANTI-SOCIAL.

      Let me state this emphatically:

KIDS NOWADAYS ARE PUSSIES!!!!!!!

KIDS NOWADAYS ARE PUSSIES!!!!!!!

KIDS NOWADAYS ARE PUSSIES!!!!!!!

They are too busy texting and tweeting!!!

They don't even know what FUCKING is all about...

If I see one more black kid on a skateboard I'm going to join the KKK!!!

Everyone should be an 80s Cliches, an 80s stereotype. Why not? There's no such thing as originality anyway. I'll be Patrick Dempsey from "Can't Buy Me Love". I'll be the nerd who gets the girl at the end.

The fact of the matter, my friends, is that we are simply evolving into something else. We're evolving into ADHD-suffering Sensation-Mongers. We will soon only be individual bags of sensations. The fact of the matter is that we can simply go on in this automaton state forever. It can last for eternity.

So I think of Mike Tyson and I think of how "out of style" I am. How am I going to stand up to the relentless march of progress. And should I? Really, do I suffer that much! No, I don't! I've made myself suffer by resisting life. Think of Nietzsche. Think of myself. Forget others. Perpetually become one's own self. See cancer, see light, see darkness, see progress, see stagnation! (I had a short story today - it popped into my head around the time the texting, skateboarding blacks made all that noise and I forgot it! How could I forget it! I've been so blocked lately and a writer is not supposed to write about being blocked but I have been blocked. I had an idea for a short story.)

I saw the New Yorker on sale at Whole Foods. Now they're talking about neuroenhancers. I need to read my Hegel. We're evolving into something new and lately I've been feeling like I've been left behind. I have bitterness toward metro - or at least toward the scumbags who now edit it. But could I even write for them anymore? I don't even know what's going on anymore? What would I write about? What's a Twitter Tweet? Oh, I just want to separate all the mucky-muck from myself. 

What was I thinking of today? How could I have let an idea pass me by?

I stood in line at the supermarket. A middle-aged white fellow in front of me was buying pound after pound after pound after pound of ground beef. Pound after pound of it. He wore latex jogging pants. What's the point of jogging if you're going to be dead of "bovine spongiform encephalopathy" in ten years? Save the jogging and live it up. Have more orgasms. Really, how can people eat ground beef and still plan for a long-term future? You're eating a 15 year BULLET that will blow your brains out just the same. And ground beef is particularly dangerous because there is more of a chance of brain and other nervous tissue being mixed in to the mess and all it takes is that one undesirable protein - and that's it! You have a ten to fifteen year timebomb in your body just waiting to go off.

"Mmmm! What kinda meat you got there?" said the black woman at the register.

"Beef and plenty of it!"

"Oh, I see that!" she chuckled.

What a lewd conversation!

I had a nightmare not too long ago. I was sitting in my chair and eating handful after handful of parmesan cheese. Parmesan cheese contains rennet which is made from the stomachs of sheep. In other words, parmesan cheese is a Mad Cow hazard. I woke up sweating!

"Oh, thank God! It was just a dream! I didn't really eat all of that parmesan cheese!"

I have not been this close to outright veganism in years. At least I know that, with all of the precautions I take, if I somehow end up with Mad Cow disease (from a certain kind of dairy or a contaminated utensil, etc...) everyone I know and love (almost all of them are rampant and unapologetic beef-eaters) will turn into a Mad Cow zombie along with me.

There is some comfort in that. We'll all waste away and go out together! But, if by some ironic twist of fate, I end up with Mad Cow disease (while all the beef-eaters are as healthy as non-infected cows) please - my dear, dear friends - inform everyone of how brilliant I was!

EqualityCocaineFuckShit3000

      "Yo, let's get to-getha and consume tonight, ai'ight?" the 18 year old black boy said to the 19 year old white girl.

      "Oh, yeah dawg! I want to consume tonight too! Let's consume!"

      Racial harmony. Everyone still wants to pick on the KKK and the Aryan Nation, but let's face it - the ignorance of racist whites is as out of style as pet rocks, literary fiction, good sex, and authentic existence. To pick on a white racist would be like picking on the lone guy who still believes that the earth is flat or that global warming isn't happening. Racism is over. People today are now EQUALLY mediocre. Race is no longer a factor in social interactions. We are united in MEDIOCRITY! Nazis suck!

      "Yo dawg, I only exist to consume," said blonde white girl.

      "Damn sis, me too."

      The black kid was named Drone2000. The blonde girl was named BlondeWorthless901. Both were students at Brookdale Community College. They were soon joined by their Korean friend No-Personality Magee.

      "Yo, what's happenin' No-Personality Magee?"

      "Hey Drone2000. Did you just say 'what's happenin'? Don't you know that slang like that is from the 1970s and we're not supposed to know about anything that happened before last month? Knowing about history is gay."

      "Yo, I apologize dawg."

      Their Hispanic friend HotRodRacerHickSpicwithNoHistory joined them. 

      "Yo dawg, let's drink Fuckshit3000Cocaine Energy Drink, dawg, and watch wrestling and talk about cars and talk about hot babes and eat cheetos and smoke blunts and watch the 'Fuck and Furious' movies dawg."

      "Sounds good to me," said BlondeWorthless90l, "Let's be as worthless as possible."

      Then they were joined by their friend ProvincialHardWorker111. ProvincialHardworker111 was studying radiology at Brookdale.

      "Hey, would you guys like to go out to Jenks and get wasted?"

      "Hell yeah!" they said in unison.

      Then they were joined by Unimaginativeandcooltothekidsolderguyguidokindalikeablebutonlytotheherd2009. The only difference between the young kids and Unimaginativeandcooltothekidsolderguyguidokindalikeablebutonlytotheherd2009 and the younger kids was that Unimaginativeandcooltothekidsolderguyguidokindalikeablebutonlytotheherd2009 was that Unimaginativeandcooltothekidsolderguyguidokindalikeablebutonlytotheherd2009 said "dawg" with a touch of irony.

      "Hey everyone," said Unimaginativeandcooltothekidsolderguyguidokindalikeablebutonlytotheherd2009.

      "Hey Unimaginativeandcooltothekidsolderguyguidokindalikeablebutonlytotheherd2009! What's up, dawg?"

      "Nothing much! I just heard God is coming back to earth to claim the living and the dead! Other than that nothing else is new!"

      "Oh, really? God is coming back, dawg?"

      "Yeah, son. Do you know who God is? God is that corn-rowed guy 'Riff-Raff' from the MTV show 'From G's to Gents'. Well, anyway, it turns out that God has really good taste in gold chains and diamond-studded grills. Riff-Raff is actually God and he's coming down to earth to judge the living and the dead, dawg. You know how they say the meek shall inherit the earth, dawg? Well, it's true dawg... Artists and other strong personalities who care about living and creating and building great civilizations will be sent to a hell of loneliness while we get to all you know, Herd together for eternity dawg. You know that movie 'Idiocracy' was a biblical prophecy, dawg? As a matter of fact, the creator of this fictional world in which we live (which seems like reality, dawg) - Will Johnson - feels like he's ripping off 'Idiocracy' right now, dawg. But that's cool, dawg. Because he's giving us what we want, g. An eternal playa's club, an eternal thug mansion of brand names and mediocrity. Shit dawg, the whole world will be like the wigger scene of suburban St. Louis, dawg."

      "I'm ready to go..." said BlondeWorthless901.

      "Let's go find God aka Riff-Raff."

      They skipped down the Brookdale walking paths.

      "We're off to see the Wizard, the Riff-Raff Wizard of Mediocrity! We're off to see the Wizard, the Riff-Raff Wizard of Mediocrity!"

Pee-Wee Herman and Pornography

I do not like to think that Umberto Eco was right: that there are only a few essential moments in life and the rest is commentary. Stay in Malkuth, because the world is so beautiful. Study is important if one wants to separate from the Herd, but don't let the weight of the overly intellectual topple one over.

One of my early psychic bedrocks is the film "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure". As a completely obscure open-mic comic put it (I forgot his obscure name): "Pee-Wee was our JFK."

The premise of the film is this: Pee-Wee's beloved bike is stolen and he goes on a cross-country adventure to recover it. Along the way he meets hobos, thieves, cowboys, biker gangs, and ghostly truckers (who could ever forget the Large Marge scene? "Ten years ago... On a night just like tonight... It was the worst accident I'd ever seen..." The face she made gave me nightmares for weeks! "Tell 'em Large Marge sent ya!" To see the clip go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RryZV8NK9-Q) before stealing his bike back from a Hollywood film lot and saving animals from a pet store fire.

The quaint Americana of "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" through Tim Burton's commercial-weirdo lens was the Americana I have always loved. Think South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina: vending machines, animatronic gorillas, and concrete statues of giraffes and sausage dogs. Some would call it "tacky" - I call it Paradise on Earth: restaurants, fireworks stores, and motel rooms with heart-shaped vibrating beds and dirty movies. Why not call a place like S.O.B. (South of the Border) what it is: class. Who is to say that sophisticated New Yorkers are the only people with taste? The America of "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" is the America that I love. I don't even know if South of the Border even exists anymore. Last time I went there it was sadly diminished. I guess S.O.B. is getting old - just like the rest of us.

As I reached puberty and my hormones kicked in another film imprinted itself on my soul: "Encino Man". "Encino Man" was one of the greatest films in the history of cinema. I'm not being ironic. If happiness is the ultimate aim of human life, then it holds true that "Encino Man" surpasses "Citizen Kane". What good cheer in "Encino Man"! The film's setting, Encino, California, was familiar to me: sterile McMansions, the televisions turned to Heavy Metal videos, the pools in the backyard, the hyperreal theme parks (ours was Great Adventure) and the suburban High School social structures. "Encino Man" captured my world. If only I had dug up a frozen caveman!

Pauly Shore and Sean Astin's characters were like my best friend Eric and I, respectively. Eric was most definitely "The Weasel", the laid-back Pauly Shore-esque (but huskier) dinner mooch and I was Sean Astin's David, the unpopular lovesick teen with a crush on the prettiest girl in school. In the end, not only does the "Encino Man" (Brendan Fraser's caveman character) find his long-lost cave girl, but Dave ends up with the prettiest girl in school. This never happens in real life, but who wants real life?

Reality struck when I first saw Metallica's "One" video. Metallica's song "One" was based on the film "Johnny Got His Gun", which was based on the novel of the same title. Metallica did a video for the song, one of the eeriest rolls of film I have ever seen in my entire media-saturated life. To this day I cannot watch that video.

For those of you who don't know, "Johnny Got His Gun" is the story of a WWI soldier, Joe Bonham. Joe Bonham steps on a landmine on the last day of WWI (what luck, huh?) and loses his arms, legs, and face. He is also deprived of the ability to see, hear, or speak. He is kept alive in this condition in an Army hospital.

What a contrast from "Encino Man"!

The video contains a lot of visual and audio from the grainy film. The inner whimpers and monologues of this stump of a man superimposed over Heavy Metal guitars makes for an eerie viewing experience indeed. Check it out for yourself on YouTube. Just type in "Metallica, "One" video".

But, still, there is something pubescent about this video too. It was something I wanted to share with the pretty girls in the class (my potential love interests) so we could both be made aware of our common human bond. Human beings sometimes end up as stumps!

Pornography links all three "bedrocks" together: "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure", "Encino Man", and Metallica's "One" video.

Pornography was the only constant. Pornography linked the three (one of many of my Holy Trinities) together in the following way: Paul Reubens, the man who played Pee-Wee, was arrested for lewd conduct (jerking off) in a porno theater; "Encino Man" was released on stolen Pay-Per-View (we also had the stolen Spice channel) around the time I had my first orgasm; and the "One" video reminded me that we are all human, even the beautiful naked porn star (her uncle could have been a stump person.)

So there you have it: three pieces of early psychic bedrock tied together with a rope of pornography. 

My sleep is seldom restful. Freud does not have to tell me that dark, dangerous, primal forces rise to the surface.

Hypnagogic hallucinations! Are they hallucinations? "Come here, Will, we want to talk to you." Voices down the stairs. Crashes. Steps. Creaks. Settlings. Barely audible voices from the corner of the room, like a rogue radio frequency. Voices from outside my cranium, next to my ear. The sound of a woman screaming.

Insect intelligences scan my brain in a rote fashion, moving from one manipulative lever to another, mocking me without understanding the concept of human humor. Once I've rejected one ploy the drone moves to another.

Every night, only 20 minutes into sleep, I wake up in sheer panic. I don't know who I am or where I am and I cannot breathe. My throat has constricted. I gasp, groan, moan, whimper, and scream. Truly egoless I am nothing but the purest primal terror head to toe, nothing but pure animal fear.

Nightmares are easier. A gray alien will stare at me, stare me down, overpower me with its large, almond-shaped eyes. I'll wake up, uneasy but not as scared as I think I should be. Sometimes a presence will linger or a ball of white light, perhaps followed by the sound of crashing cymbals.

I will experience one or more of the above phenomena on a given night. Oftentimes I will not go to sleep until dawn. I will blare every lamp and light in the house and stand sentinel over myself and every corner. I telepathically make it clear that I will kill any intruder.

What if I turn around and she's there, the Virgin Mary with long, skeletal fingers and the face of a gray alien, the face of a big bug, or a human face with those black almond eyes? What if she's right behind me, or standing in the kitchen? What if I'm rushed from the side, grabbed by my arm, taken away? What if I look in the mirror and see the face on the cover of Whitley Strieber's "Communion" staring back at me? I remember my Grandfather's copy of "Communion" and how everyone thought of it as a "weird" book, a "scary" book. "Weird" and "scary" - how alien faces appear to the conscious mind. But those faces mean something to us. Almost everyone has a strong reaction to a picture of a female gray. At the very least it has a profound significance in our collective unconscious. What is even generally accepted reality? Perhaps reality is very far from everyday conditioned reality. Even if it isn't it is! Perhaps we are more at home in a bizarre, alien, serpent world - if we are not somehow there already.

All I know is that my fear and insomnia would not be so bad if I was not so lonely. I could camp in the New Mexican desert if I had close friends with me. Nothing is worse than sleeping along.

And that is why I do not sleep until dawn.

I'm not a Playa (I just stroke a lot)

"Vain, greedy, and with very little wisdom. - Your desires are greater than your reason, and your vanity is greater than your desires - for such people as you are a great deal of Christian practice and a little Schopenhauerian theory would be a very good thing." - Friedrich Nietzsche

I suppose I used to be a "playahata", but not anymore.

I think of a guy who goes out to trendy or semi-trendy, cheesy or semi-cheesy clubs and picks up a different girl every night of the week.

He may have taken home over 200 women, but has he ever done anything fun, like tickle stinky feet? Spankings, maybe?

Or why not try bi? What could be better than being with a beautiful man and a beautiful woman at the same time?

These "playa" guys tend to be as rote as U.S. education. The ol' in-out and that's it! They do know conformity better, but who wants to be a Herd Animal? The Herd exists only as a chisel for my use. Would you like to be my chisel?

Why compartmentalize sexuality? I think of a suburban leather daddy buying vittles for his cat. Why be a cliche? Why not sleep with girls too? Are you trying to be Mr. Slave from "South Park"?

I must have been Caligula or some artist-tyrant in a past life.

The Five Circles of Hell

I've never taken hallucinogens, but the school for children is an acid trip on wheels and a half, a goad to indulgence in Hysterical Realism!

Aesthetically it has all the charm of a concentration camp/suburban High School. Tunnels in the basement for ritual abuse. Shiny, antiseptic floors. A one level building. Hallways with lockers.

The fuckshit Hell next to Tyco's corporate headquarters known as the School for Children is divided into five circles, each one containing horrors equal or greater than those described by Dante.

Circle I

The first circle of Holy Hell on Earth is a preschool. Farty moms! Farty moms! Farty moms, many with pregnant bellies, bellies full of buttoned-down seed. They loiter in the hallways, chatting with the teachers, chatting with the aides, dressed in sweatpants, smelling like corn chips, blfarrrting between the creases of their New York Giants sweatpants - just like my mom.

The mothers sprinkle Prozac on raw beef and cowbrains and say: "That's right! I'm a bovine! I'm a bovine cannibal! I want to be more bovine! This is ritualistic eating! Make me more bovine! The Prozac is an added supplement! Let me eat at that shit!"

Today, one of the mothers turned to me: "I want my unborn child to be a Mad Cow baby!" She then ripped out her breast and squeezed out a spray of mucousy off-white milk: "You want to taste my human/cow milk, you faggot? I didn't think so! I'm a bovine! I could make any man a homosexual!"

"Listen, lady - I don't want your milk," I said.

"You get out of here, you creep!" she screamed. "I don't want my child to pick up on your free vibes! You might convince my little son Bradley and my future witch-burning daughter Kayla to be more than just consumers! Get out, you sicko!

At this point Kayla came out of the classroom, pointed to me, and said: "Mommy, who is that mean man?"

"That's a man who likes cranial freedom and as we all know, freedom is bad. He wants you to grow up to be less than a perfect consumer. I want my beautiful little Kayla wayla to grow up to be the best consumer ever!"

"I will, mommy!"

"You better. Because I could never love someone who wasn't a perfect consumer."

At this point the collective mothers shat in their hands, smeared it on their faces, and chased me down the hall.

Circle II

The next circle of Hell is known as Kaotic Kaka Kindergarten. Children are tagged behind the ear with a microchip, tattooed with a scannable bar code, fed Prozac-laced gummy bears and forced - like a Muslim bowing toward Mecca - to recite the consumer pledge three times daily: "My only purpose on this earth is to be the best consumer possible."

If any child resists consumer indoctrination he or she is taken to a "private room" where they will be forced to eat a concoction of goose shit, dog urine, human snot, milk, ketchup, and cigarette ashes. While they do this a metal fork is shoved up their rectum and they are told: "This is what happens to non-consumers."

Circle III

The next circle is Horror High School. The High School classes are more advanced. The classes are divided in two. The "rebels" get to choose a socially acceptable counterculture identity, a "counterculture" identity completely compatible with consumerism. The "good kids" are allowed to choose one of several mainstream identities, each one completely compatible with consumerism. They are forced to recite the advanced consumer pledge three times daily: "The only purpose of an education is to get a just good enough job and to be a just good enough worker. I will keep the system running and contribute to the only worthy system: that of mindless, unquestioning, drone-like consumerism." Any teenager who shows the least bit of non-compliance is branded on the forehead with the letters HB. HB stands for Human Being and actual Human Beings are to be denied all food and shelter until they agree to comply.

The teens are allowed to openly drink, do drugs, and have sex, all while singing one of their battle hymns: "It's okay to drink, smoke, and fuck as long as you're a consumer!"

The teens run down the hallway! They spraypaint the walls with slogans like: "Racists suck" and "Celebrate African-American History" or "White kids should celebrate Kwanzaa" or even "Frederick Douglass was a better man than Shakespeare". The teens dress like hippies, skateboarders, and commercial punk singers and say "Racism sucks! We hate Nazis! Peace, Love, Consumerism! We can have our 60s and eat consumerism like locusts too! Eat that cake, Zizek - someone we never heard of!"

Circle IV

It gets worse. The Fourth Circle is the Hall of Retards. After all, retards should contribute too! Down Syndrome cases walk back and forth slapping themselves in the head. Microcephalics say: "I like to spend money. I like to spend money. I like to spend money." Mangled re-re's in scooters and motorized wheelchairs drawl: Doo doo doo doo ga ga ga ga..." The all wear signs that say: "America won! We beat the commies!" The re-re's are adults, there to get job training, to learn how to host at Applebee's. Conformity training at all levels. "We smell like poopy! We smell like caca! Doo doo doo doo! Ga ga ga ga! Neeki-neeki!"

Circle V

The Fifth Circle is the most fearsome circle of all: The Rehabilitation Room for Intellectually Normal Adults who for Some Reason or Another have Not Become Consumers.

I have been sentenced to this circle. They simply call us CH's: the CHRONICALLY HUMAN.

To them we are frightening and monstrous. The fact that we are still human makes us nothing but circus freaks to them.

"You're 28 years old and you're still not a perfect consumer? How does that happen?"

In the Fifth Circle, the counselors are just there to help, to rehabilitate. Perversely, they use what was learned from the 1960s to assimilate rogue humans, the dangerous incorrigibles, those who simply cannot stop living, loving, and feeling.

All five circles of this Hell are a particular chaos that would give Bosch a run for his money. The cacophonous din reminds one of a dungeon/torture chamber/nursery/hospital/rehab center/bus station/homeless shelter/country club/bacchanalia/clusterfuck/traffic jam/desolate wasteland/William S. Burroughesque-Kafkaesque bureaucracy/Fellini orgy/bourgeois tea party/suburban tupperware party/biker rally/Hip-Hop concert/Rihanna and Chris Brown dance contest/three-ring circus/county fair/Nuremberg rally/be-in/love-in/acid test/casting call for old vaudeville performers/everything you could imagine.

And in the middle of all of this hangs a framed picture of Barack Obama.

In the fall of 2002 I lived in the Bronx. One day a week I commuted to Jersey to attend classes at Brookdale, home of the Jersey Blues (how "apropo" as they would say!) I squeezed all of my classes into one day to cut down on commuting costs.

I was not talking to my mother at that time either, so I would stay the night with my Dad before heading back home to New York the next morning.

My Dad lived in the Atlantic Manor apartments, a dreary apartment complex. This place was desolate beyond anything Sam Shepherd could imagine. 70s-style. The walls and hard brillo carpeting was a dingy yellow.

Our neighbor was a middle-aged bearded buffoon with a mullet. He dressed in a suit and tie to go to a cubicle job. He looked like the "Cowbell" guy from that Will Ferrell SNL skit.

One warm, humid Spring morning in early 2003 mullet-man was up at 6am, jamming on his electric guitar. Cliche as could be, he pounded out the opening riff of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" over and over again.

In moments like that I know why I've always wanted to be famous. I've always wanted to be a movie star or a famous foul-mouthed comedian; a screenwriter or director; shit: I even auditioned for RYAN SEACREST's job! I'm not making this up! Now - let's face it - I am trying to earn at least a modicum of fame as a writer (the great thing about being a writer is that I can have fame AND anonymity.)

I was worse when I was younger. When I was a kid I would have learned to dunk a basketball or hit a baseball to be famous. I would have killed people to be famous.

Why did I want mega-fame when I was younger and why do I still want a modicum of fame now?
Well, I suppose I was always afraid of ending up like the mulleted buffoon: working a cubicle job, living in a dreary, dead-end complex, occasionally having an overnight visit from a female friend. My entire life I have always been afraid of that sort of "Nowhereism". Mulletman's brand of "Nowhereism" was a rather common kind and, to me, the most frightening. Fame would give me the only safeguard against "Nowhereism" and the only grip I have ever had on anything!

Now I know how pathological it is to yearn to be a public figure, fit for consumption. For the first time I am learning to fully appreciate the WORK. And if I can get just a modicum of fame, then what the hell?

In a free for all, volunteer-taught creative writing workshop there is always the oldster war veteran.

Will there be one tonight?

The Hallmark cliche-spewing housewife, all cuddles and kisses.

Will she be there tonight?

The young, mopey, uber-sensitive wannabe writer. (I HOPE TO HELL I DON'T FALL INTO THIS CATEGORY! Nah. I'm something different.)

Will he be there tonight?

The "in-crowd", the cool clique, the ones who know people, the ones who know people who know people who know people who met Poet Laureate Billy Collins; the spider-like pseudo-scholars, the worst of the worst, mocked by Nietzsche. The sort of people who make one want to hang out with the uneducated.

Will they be there tonight?

I know one thing: I will be there tonight.

As a writer (as an artist, as a human being, as a dasein) I have become lazy and sloppy.

When I was 23 years old I at least had my finger on the pulse of the world - and I felt old and washed-up THEN! Now I really feel old and even the people who seemed so much younger than me back then are old too (or at least older.) Has our time come and gone? Has our time passed? Are we passe? I've fallen out of touch with the latest in consumer and media chatter since 2004. As a matter of fact, I've fallen out of touch with everything.

I'm trying to become who I once was. Not to be cliche, but I am standing at the very edge of the darkness and I am afraid of once again being sucked into the black hole of almost complete depression and despair. I feel like dope is leaving my body, 24 hours a day. I feel like all of my small but significant gains are hanging by the thinnest thread. I have the most tenuous, precarious hold on an actual feeling here, a moment of well-being there - and I don't want to lose it.

I'm going to a writer's group tomorrow. Maybe they can help keep me on point.

Binghamton, New York and Marlboro Light-infused Quiche

I was in Binghamton, New York almost two years ago. It was July of 2007. Even 2007 seems like a while ago. And before that 2005 seemed like quite a while ago. Each year seemed more innocent than the last. Except for 2008. Now that it is 2009, 2008 does not seem innocent. 2008 was the worst of the void. I don't think I accomplished much of anything. But at least we elected a black President. 

I was basically driving a stolen car through the scenic hills, mountains, and valleys of Upstate New York. It was a loaner car from my Dad's dealership. Some kind of drag-racing special, the price decals on the window. I was working at the dealership at the time (cleaning up gumballs and cigarette butts from the driveway), so it was not that big of a deal for me to borrow a car. However, it would have been a big deal for me to drive it all the way up to Syracuse, New York. I was hoping they would somehow not notice the extra 500 miles on the gauge. What is it called? The odometer?

On the way back from Syracuse I passed directly through Binghamton. My girlfriend at the time and I stopped at a Wendy's in Binghamton to use the rest room.

What struck me about Binghamton was how thoroughly "hillbilly" it was. Young, idle hicks sat on the beds of trucks. They had the look: trucker hats and flannel shirts. They were smoking Newports, chewing tobacco, drinking brewskis, fooling around with Wendy's paraphernalia they had filched from inside. Blowing Wendy's straws at each other. Kids out of "Footloose". Small-town kids about to go cow-tipping. Kids who have nothing better to do but drive around town and get high, hanging out in parking lots, seeing and being seen. Future meth or oxycontin addicts? Who knows. The rest of America is scary. The rest of America could make anyone appreciate New York City.

What is the future of a Binghamton loafer? It's bad enough for me. I have to fight my way out of desolation, out of being another nobody with no real friends. Thank goodness I do have real friends. Thank goodness I have some sort of permanent structure.

The problem with Binghamton kids is this: What if one or more of them does not have a "permanent support network"? Without civilization to bolster them, what would become of them if they lost everything, especially essential loved ones? Alcohol, meth, future dead-endism, or just having one (0r more) depressing family/ies? Would they become as rootless as the traveling salesman, with a family in every podunk city?

When I take my rides out to the sticks (I'm overdue) I am reminded of both my own hipness, my own coolness, my own cosmopolitanness, my own closeness to celebrity and worldwide fame. I am also reminded of my own anonymity and insignificance. After some time in the sticks I am eager to go back to the library and study. I want some kind of hold on the world. I'm ready to kill someone just to be famous. I'm ready to kill immigrants in an immigration center. I want stability. I don't want to end up as nobody, nowhere, doing nothing. I don't want to end up in a nowhere town with a fat, ugly wife. I do think it's too late for that (the house and wife), but even if I made a strong turn into homosexuality most small-town fags are as cliche as quiche. Moustaches, gaudy rings, Marlboro Lights, and recipes for Marlboro Light-Infused quiche. Why do most small-town homosexuals look and act like Buffalo Bill from "Silence of the Lambs"?

When I was at the Binghamton Wendy's I was distinctly afraid my girlfriend would be snatched from me by depraved hillbillies.

When traveling through the sticks I find it is best to travel with a beautiful girl from civilization. See, when traveling through the sticks with a beautiful girl who makes her home in civilization, she is acting as your tether and you are her tether.

Once we were back in the car I felt safe. I didn't have to worry about hillbillies abducting her.

Back to the beautiful girl... I would like, once again, to go to South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina with a beautiful girl. That would be a honeymoon. I did it before, with Zipporah, but there was too much baggage with Zipporah. I am READY now for a serious relationship with the right girl. I would like to go to South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina with this perfect girl.

South of the Border IS America.

One of my happiest memories: Driving to Florida with my parents when I was a Sophomore in High School. Because I've been filled with spiritual cancer for a while now, I have expressed bitterness toward my parents on many an occasion. But I do have to admit that not all times were bad. There were good times. When I smile the world smiles with me. 

Yes, February of my Sophomore year of High School. I was doing particularly well in school that year. Each and every day my individuality was being recognized. I was extraordinarily POPULAR. I was even talking to quite a few pretty girls. I had a ton of very cool friends. I was in like Flynn with the cool crowd. What made that year special was that I was popular just for being myself.

There was this girl in my art class. Her name was Brynn. She had a tremendous ass. I remember fantasizing about using her ass as a pillow. I mean, actually going to bed on it at night. Throughout the night she would blow farts in my face and I would savor each one. She was one of many. There was this Puerto Rican girl, Leila. I fantasized about her nursing me, suckling me, nourishing me with her breast milk and then allowing me to eat shit out of her ass.

I was on the verge of actually getting a girl, some girl. One girl or another. I was popular. I was appreciated. Each and every day in art class I created paintings that were much admired for their sheer bad taste alone! Who mixes orange, pink, green, and black and makes it "work" in the most hideous way imaginable? The paintings were nauseating, like eating pickles with a tall glass of chocolate milk! 

That year we were going to drive to Florida. My Dad had a timeshare at this place called Orange Lake, right next to the Disneyworld Megalopolis. On the way down all I thought about was how cool and popular I was. The sticks reminded me of both my own coolness in civilization and my own insignificance everywhere else. I wanted an anchor, a root to hold on to. I listened to the Grateful Dead the whole way down and thought of my own popularity. This was all before Prozac. 

I remember when I was 19 years old, roaming the country on a Greyhound bus. I remember stopping at a random bus station in Upstate New York. Okay. I was still young. I was good for now. But WHAT was I going to do about my future? I didn't want to become just another loser. I needed a ROOT. STABILITY.

I wrote all of this because of that shooting that took place in Binghamton. I called this blog "New Will" because I think so much of my nihilism is fading. Don't get me wrong. I still know what's what and I will always know what's what, but I can also be happy and have a place on this earth and I can find the right woman. And I can be a creator. And I can explore new universes without reinventing the wheel. All I have to do is what I have been doing: I need to throw everything and the kitchen sink at this damn depression until it completely vacates the premises. And then I need to chase it away with a stick every time it even thinks of returning.

I don't automatically applaud mass murders anymore.

Female Drivers: Can U Not Tailgate

Today I was driving over the Belmar Bridge and two females in an SUV were tailing me so damn close that if I had to have hit my brakes for even a black person there would have been a ten car pile-up. See, they were doing what I call "Guidoing". They probably have dirty potty mouths too. They probably brag about driving fast on the parkway and cursing, like, way too fucking much! Because if you go JUST the speed limit in Jersey you are inviting all kinds of aggression!

There were two - a young one and an old one. The young one looked like she had a stinky ass. Was probably wearing warm-ups to go play soccer. Probably a cool chick who cursed way too fucking much. The older one was almost a stereotypical guidette type, except... Except, except, except...  I have a feeling she was probably not a smoker. No, she was not quite a smoker. She was not one of those smoky-faced things, the kind who "work hard their whole lives". No, she was a class increment just above the smoky-faced old thing. Anyway, stinky-ass soccer pants was driving, non-smoking (because she is just the taddest bit higher socioeconomically) guidette with blonde frosted hair was in the passenger seat and boy were these aggressive Jersey bitches tailing me, tailgating me, had their SUV rammed right up my rear end. 

So I started mouthing in the rear view mirror. "Hey Cunt! I'll kill you, cunt! What are you doing, cunt? I'll rape you, cunt! I'd love to rape you, cunt! Tailgate me, cunt! I'll rip your breasts off and eat them you filthy cuntwad bitch fuck whores." I mouthed all of this in my rear view. When I made a right to exit, they were for a split second to the right of me. STINKY-ASS SOCCER pants looked at me. The window was down. So I screamed the word CUNT!!!!!! as loud as I could. She looked at me with a look that was somewhere between "What is this guy's problem?" and "What is wrong with this guy?"

No! What is wrong with YOU! YOU were TAILGATING ME!

But my Daily News Horoscope told me to put a positive spin on things today, so I have to REFRAME what I called her, the word CUNT.

So now cunt is Can U Not Tailgate Me.

3 Years of Self-Confidence Training

"I like everything with sugar, lots and lots and lots of sugar..." She poured packets of sugar into her Jack and Coke.

I was never averse to sin. I was up for anything - and then some! Non-conformity had simply deprived me of sin opportunities.

We were in a bar in Newark. Every time I'm in Newark I get a vague Richard Price feeling. Oh, that man can WRITE HIS ASS OFF - and then some! Proud to be in the "Iron Triangle".

The bar was in downtown Newark, a Rutgers hang-out.

I at least had a job at that time, but I had to beat myself up about something. In this case it was that I did not make MUCH money as a UPS handler.

As usual I was in a morbid depression, lead deposits in my face, my body covered with damn poison from head to toe. THIS one was the one to save me.

Her name was Mory and I associated her with Harold's Latina love interest in the first "Harold and Kumar". She was just as pretty. It was March and Spring was JUST getting started, so I also associated her with that tenacious goddess, Hope. Hope Herself. Spring was just around the bend so I did look forward to playing catch with her in the park.

She was a huge Mets fan and I just knew they would have to win the World Series that year. They would have to. It was 2006, 20 years from 1986.

She was the one to bring me back to life. See, she could possibly restore what my life once was. My life was lonely, dreary drudgery. I once again felt like Nobody, Nowhere, doing Nothing. Unfortunately, that's a state I still have to fight against every day.

How could she possibly want me? How could I compete against flashier guys with real jobs?

She had breasts like the Brazilian porn star Chloe Veria. A gap between her canine and the next tooth over (whatever the next tooth over is called...) Was she human? Was she? Could I touch her, feel her, know her? Would I be given the privilege?

She had long, black curly hair and that alabaster skin. She had a face like the face of this girl I grew up with, Tara, the daughter of a bank-robbing cop.

In a way, I am n much better shape now. I'm not as alive, but if she had gone to talk to those semi-hipsters (Newark is a weird NY/NJ limbo) now I would have made some kind of scene. I would have beaten their faces in, or walked out, or overpowered them verbally.

But that kind of confidence can only come from sin-immersion.