work to be destroyed.

At work they just fired

2012-01-13T17:04:00.004-05:00

a woman who'd been here for 11 years. By all accounts she was basically useless as a worker. Also, she is not that attractive which therefore makes her useless as a human being. She has that look of someone who smoked for a long time and probably enjoyed some harder partying drugs that sunk her cheeks in. When being informed of this news, for some reason, all I could think about was that scene from Full Metal Jacket "if I'm gonna get my balls blown off for a word, my word is poon-tang."

The greatest rappers ever

2006-08-30T18:19:00.000-04:00

to come out of Iowa City, Iowa, allowed me the pleasure of investing eight thousand dollars to release their first nationally distributed CD. Overlooking how they were “just a bunch of fucked up Midwest corn-jerkers,” (Spin B+) I figured that the strength of their beats, humor, and occasionally good flow, would propel them to international super-stardom and me to a jackpot. Well, half the critics found the “quirky genius” (Shout NY 3/4) of their “pee pee doo doo jokes” (CMJ) charming. While the other half thought it was the “worst album of the month,” (Vice 0/10), or if you threw “a dart at a map of the continental United States and pointed to the nearest college town, you will find rappers there who are much, much better” (CMJ).

Well, maybe the bad reviews weren't the nail in the coffin. Maybe the nail in the coffin was when I got them to open up for a couple shows with a somewhat not unpopular, not offensive, white-boy/Jew-boy rapper... After their set at the first show people bought every tee shirt and CD they had with them, girls wanted to make out, a hundred people signed their mailing list. And then they got drunk, and then they got more drunk, and after that they got even still more drunk. As the white-boy/Jew-boy was nearing the end of his set, they thought it would be a good idea to get on stage and rap with him. When he didn't find this fun, the drunkest one decided to grab the mic from him, and show him all the fun he was missing out on.

Well, maybe that wasn't the nail in the coffin either. I mean, they pissed off a lot of people, but there were still people who were amused. No... I think the nail in the coffin was when they returned from this tour and decided to get drunk all the time, and/or have babies, and/or buy and run a farm. And never tour as a group again. But I can't really blame them. It is, after all, what fucked up cornjerkers do.

Lazy,

2006-08-21T13:56:00.000-04:00

haze of an inactive mind creates a spiral of getting lazier. Losing money through the same haze, compounded upon the solitude of having no one to really give me a kick in the ass to wake me up. In keeping careful records of my daily output, cash flow, and social calendar; it is interesting to see the ebb and flow of my output, charted against money won and lost, charted against time spent in the company of women, winnings charted against women, etc etc: No women = no winning, no women = no writing, winning = no writing, losing = no writing... Whatever, I am whining, I will stop. I have no excuse. Well no, actually, I have too many of them, and they really are like assholes. But, spending time with Proust and Faulkner of late, working with rock bands again, change of seasons, I start typing again. But, too early right now to have anything profound to say, so I'll leave you with something by Uncle Bill that I've been reading over and over again lately. "Man the sum of his climatic experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire."

I don't believe in luck

2006-07-09T15:43:00.000-04:00

or fate, prophecy, people's intuition. I did for a long time, believing that every feeling I had, every life event was had some prophetic meaning. For example: when I make a bet, twice the size of my rent, at 92% to win, and his 8% card comes, that event should be chalked up to the “that which doesn't kill us” category. Or that when I saw a dude crossing the street, plowed, and (probably) killed by a taxi last month, similar to the horribly fatal accident I saw as an 18 year old; there is also some hidden value that will make me a better person.

But all random systems have clusters of events... Turn your iPod on shuffle for a day, and there will be one artist played way more than anyone else. Look at a roulette wheel, you'll see a long string of red or black numbers. It's not God trying to tell you something, it's just what random systems look like.

So, is it bad luck that I was a block away and saw that dude killed and couldn't sleep for a week? Or, is it good luck that I wasn't the one killed? Is it bad luck that dude hit his 8% card? Or is it good luck that my brain is better at poker than his, and took far more money from him in the subsequent months?

A mother I dated,

2006-06-12T15:51:00.000-04:00

lived with her baby's daddy. He'd sometimes be watching the kid while she was over my apartment. Although, “dating” is a stretch, as our dates usually usually began with a 2:30 AM phone call “are you with anyone now?” but, for a year and a half my, answer to that question was “no, come over.”

Her baby's daddy was a construction worker, or a biker, or a prison warden, or whatever the shit it is that white trash people do in Revere, MA. He had a gun that she liked telling me about. She would often have bruises on her legs and stomach, which she'd never mention, and when asked would say was from playing with her four year old son. She was pretty hot though, nice Portuguese olive skin, punk rock dyed black hair, lip ring. A head turner in real life, but at all-boy music school a black hole of stares. I do have to hand it to her, that even after having her baby in the middle of her first year, she actually graduated in four years with good grades.

The life lessons I learned from her: 1. How to efficiently eat pussy. 2. While testicular satisfaction can not remedy loneliness, it makes it nigh impossible to care enough to do anything about it. 3. How to be pleasant to women I don't care about but want to bang.

“Nine Inch Rich” was not an attractive nerd.

2006-05-25T21:56:00.000-04:00

Neither his Young Einstein hair nor thick glasses helped in this matter. I assume his skin and bone physique was gotten from his 8AM to noon sleep schedule, as his diet was almost wholly Devil Dogs and soda.

He came to school a trumpet player, but hated the sound of the trumpet, never practiced, and of course failed or dropped any class he had to play in. He tried to switch to piano, but abandoned this with the realization that he'd have to practice that too.

We bonded over me routinely beating him at Magic. Although losing so much sometimes caused him to shriek and throw his cards across the room, he took a lot of pride watching me kick ass at the local comic store. Since we both couldn't stand our original roommates we decided to share an eight foot by ten foot dorm room our second semester. While our combined personal hygiene was lacking, I would like to blame the majority of our room's odor on the never washed aquarium where his pet frog lived.

During our first month of college, he managed to lose his virginity to a not unattractive coed. Maybe he pulled this off by intimating his nickname refered to something other than his obsession with Nine Inch Nails. However, as she'd yet to adorn herself with the extra twenty pounds of gut and ass she'd have at year's end, she had many suitors, and dumped him after about a month.

Of course, not practicing and sleeping through your morning classes, does not a good student make, so, he dropped out and became a security guard during our second year. I'd go over to his apartment on occasion. He'd moved on to playing Warcraft, and obsessed with Anime, and his conversations became tediously centered on the minutia of both. I hung out for as long as I could stand him.

Any seventeen year old boy getting laid

2006-05-18T12:36:00.000-04:00

by a pretty, blond, Russian girl with magnificent double D's, would find it nigh impossible to not be convinced he was in love with her. And she said she loved me too. But, nor can we fault her for being seventeen.

Her first month away at college she told me she made out with a dude, asked me if we could see other people. But I freaked out, because I “freakin' love yooooou! GET IT?! I! FREAKIN! LOVE! YOU!” So, she stopped telling me.

But going to a music school, with 5% women, where a typical weekend “party” is bong hits, porn, stumbling back to your dorm room to take care of your hard on; it's difficult to not obsess over the only piece of ass you've ever had.

Our last summer together, she got an internship in North Carolina. Regales me with tales of her officemate, “whenever we're alone in the office, Jeremy tells me how he can give the best head.”

I started calling her a few years later, we'd talk every other month. Eventually she got comfortable enough that when she was in heat, between boyfriends, she liked talking about the good old days. Eventually she told me about inviting Jeremy over “to ask his advice on some new work outfits,” which turned into a strip show for him. Now a days, when I find myself in the dire situation of having to jerk it without porn, I sometimes wonder what Jeremy thought of those magnificent double D's.

If my journals are evidence,

2006-05-04T19:32:00.000-04:00

it seems that I was in love with a woman at one point, I was young, unemployed or over-employed, lived somewhere besides here, stewed in an abundance of semen and spleen that kept my dick hard, my mind vigorous but scattered. And if my prose is evidence, this was enough to vomit out a few hundred decent pages.

But... the spleen and semen have subsided. Nor can I recall anything I didn't write down: I have two pictures of her, I have a few contracts, my name in a few liner notes; just facts though, the feeling of self destruction and insanity elude me completely. But, regardless of what I feel there are those couple hundred pages of good vomit, and a few hundred of bad vomit, that only need a bit of fermenting to become good. My family thinks I've given over to delusions of grandeur, my friends have come to accept my frequent distractions, my brother hates my guts most of the time... for good reasons? I'm never sure. And so I keep typing, because what else can I do?

But... it's spring now. And I've just won a lot of money. And I'm getting laid on a regular basis. And I have a new iPod, and I downloaded the new Sopranos, and I just got a good delivery service. And, each morning, I lie in bed a little while longer, knowing if I snooze again I won't be out of bed until one, I won't be at the library until three, which is always too late or early for anything you want to do. So I do nothing until it's time to box and gamble.

But... a book is master, then tyrant, then monster. Mine is a hydra with familiar faces. When neglected it attaches its weight over my entire being: My tongue is too heavy for conversation, my brain too dense for cards, my body too heavy to box, or have sex. Eventually it constricts me, allowing only writing or heavy drinking. And so I keep typing.

The owner of the card room I frequent

2006-04-26T18:00:00.001-04:00

is an interesting fellow in general: ex cop, former Judo champion, made enough money playing poker to open the card room. Last week he starts talking about how surprised he was at liking the Kid Rock concert his girlfriend took him to. Which is indeed surprising as he's at least 50. "Hey, she must be really young, nice work man." "Yeah, she's 26. You want to see pictures?" "Sure." He pulls out his phone, navigates to his pictures and hands it to me.

The first one is a head shot of a cute woman, "hey, pretty cute." "Yeah, just hit the down arrow to see more." I do, which takes me through a Penthouse style pictorial of her getting undressed on the very card table I was sitting at. Ending with the money shot of her bent over, asshole and vag taking up the whole frame.

I did like playing in rock bands.

2006-04-25T16:57:00.000-04:00

And eventually during music school I convinced a bass player who had perfect pitch, and a drummer who had perfect rhythm to play in a band with me. Both were better guitarists than I was (by music school standards). But they liked my songs, and my style of playing. They even allowed me to sing. In my head, my voice was Chris Cornell; my riffs were Eddie Van Halen. Recorded, my voice was an out of tune David Byrne; my riffs were slightly better than Chavez (ok, maybe that's being generous).

We played a total of five shows. The e.p. we made got one middling review in a local zine. And then I decided I didn't like playing guitar, hated our songs, really hated our band's name, hated the bass player, and above all despised our recording. And thus the end of this band.

I liked playing guitar so much

2006-04-20T16:14:00.000-04:00

that in ninth grade I decided to go to music school. My high school guidance counselor commented “I don't know why he wants to do this, he's so smart,” I think my parents had similar thoughts. But, at fourteen, all I wanted to do was play guitar and listen to “Women and Children First.” So, my high school career amounted to getting out of advanced placement classes, and coasting to a B- average. And playing guitar. And by “play,” I mean as in not practice. So, I came to music school only with the chops my teacher forced upon me, I could hardly even sight read. Even still, I was better than most freshmen. However, the ones who stuck around practiced, and got better than me quickly. So I became a music business major, got out of performance classes, and coasted to a B- average.

The first time I was knocked out

2006-04-17T10:55:00.000-04:00

I'd just started kickbox-sparing a week before, it was the first time I was fighting with the head coach. I threw an absurd turning-spinning-movie style kick that managed to hit him hard in the head, garnering cheers of my onlooking fellow students. The coach's face lost his smile. I was able to block a few of his techniques, but eventually I thought his hook kick coming hard at my chin was a sidekick at my stomach. I did one of those wobbly knee/glassy eye things and slowly sunk to the ground. The second time, I was in my first kickboxing fight. I was beating this kid for the first minute, but after I'd put him down for the second time, he gets up and catches me with a left hook squarely in the jaw. I fell quickly. The world looked like it was broadcast to me from a dropped video camera: his face, the ref, the ceiling of the auditorium, the ref standing over me counting. The third time I was robbed in a boxing match. I was beating this kid pretty good for the first minute, he hit me once, and I put my hands up to defend myself, but wasn't throwing punches, so the ref gave me a standing eight. When I put my hands on the ropes, the ref thought I was in a daze, and stopped the fight.

Today, my right middle knuckle is swollen, the bridge of my nose is crooked, my left knee aches when it rains, and my neck is constantly stiff.

My college roommate's huge cock

2006-04-07T15:44:00.000-04:00

was made apparent by the frequent screaming by his girlfriend. At first I thought he was beating her up, or she was in some kind of pain, as she would make these absurd squeals “AAAAHHH.. O O O O O. OH MY GOD.” Far more absurd than anything you'd ever hear in a porn. Anyway, despite her bragging, and him sitting there all smug, he'd never show it to me “Come on, it's not gay, it's just like, you know, science.” But he refused.

Once, however, he showed it a girl that I was sort of dating, that he knew and wanted to bang long before I got the chance to. “It's like a football!” “Really?” “Yeah, ohmygod. It's not that long, but it's like this,” makes a circle with her hands to show a good three inch diameter. “Heh, did you fuck him?” “No, I showed him my tits though.” “Oh.” “I mean, I wanted to see it, after hearing so much about it, and I had to show him something.” “Yeah, of course.”

The ball punching porn

2006-03-30T19:44:00.000-05:00

my brother IM'd me was our a reconciliation of a month long fight. He sometimes decides to vanish for a month or two; and sometimes, I feel the need to see if I can get him to come out of his hole sooner. And so, knowing him as I do, it's easy to goad him into a fight. Kind of like Werner Herzog getting Klaus Kinsky to throw a fit when he thought he needed to throw one. But, of course, we are not making a film, and so, I am usually just pissing him off out of my own general malaise and boredom. And this time, it resulted in him not talking to me for a few weeks. But, last week, he's all like “hey, you have to see this” (NWS). And then, how can you be mad at someone when you're sharing a belly laugh over a dude getting blown, and then punched in the balls?

A shiksa goddess

2006-03-24T10:39:00.000-05:00

with platium blond hair, with amazingly slender legs that she liked showing off from a mini skirt, with a sizable trust fund, and a larger salary from being a lawyer; told me I was her “hobby.” As in “something you do a few times a week, but don't take too seriously.” But, man, what a pair of legs! Did I mention her legs? Her men before have houses in the Hamptons, apartments in San Fransico, BMW's, receeding hair lines, pot bellies. And so, me, with a nice smile and a full head of hair, but neither house in the Hamptons, nor money to buy it with, was a hobby. Of course, every night with her would take a couple hours of negotiating to get to a 15 minute session of well instructed cunning linguistics, rewarded with thrusting into a motionless body.

On the town,

2006-03-22T14:19:00.000-05:00

drinking, trying to talk to women, “what do you do?” “I'm a poker player.” Which, strangely seems to be about the truest thing I've ever been able to tell anyone. In a nightmare once, I was a computer programmer, in that dream I would say “I write business applications for large companies,” which did not get me laid. In a dream of the future, I will say “I'm a writer.” “What do you write?” “I am not sure, it's massive, it's genius, it's the greatest intellectual undertaking in the history of human beings, everyone thinks so. Have you ever seen a Pulitzer?" But tonight, her reaction will be suspicious, and I will be as perplexed as she is beautiful, wondering how to make small talk, making another flirtatious woman uncomfortable, or at least befuddled, possibly angry. Home, drunk, life is made bearable through downloaded pornography.

My ex-business partner,

2006-03-17T10:27:00.000-05:00

who I am contractually bound to not disparage, now profits on the remarkable musical taste, foresight, diplomacy, and all around good business sense I had. While it's nice having evidence of my talent, and I'm happy for the success of this band, my skin crawls knowing he gets this credit.

And so, back in the days, when niggaz had waves, I was venerated by sycophantic hipsters, music business people, and bands we worked with. I miss a few of them who were forced to choose between us, but no one important. I miss the instant social scene, having interns plan my weekend, and getting laid without much effort. Inevitably, thinking about this drifts into how I shouldn't have settled the case, brought him to court, and ruined his life. But I know I got what's mine. And so, I don't give a fuck about dissn' these fools, 'cause they all scared of the Ice Cube. And so, I hope sometime in the near future I will stop reading his web site.

Today, at a 20% profit

2006-03-14T15:29:00.000-05:00

I sold my shares in the Chinese stock market index. While all indications point towards a good year for the stock, after reading this and listening to NPR recently, I could no longer ignore the human rights issues. All the companies in the fund are primarily state owned, so I was investing directly in the Chinese government. I have no politics, other than my parents, who have no politics other than their parents, who have no politics other than the common politics of middle class north-east Jews. I wonder if I grew up Catholic in a backwoods town in Mississippi if I would hate gays and abortions, or if I was in Cambodia in the late 70's if I would have murdered and pillaged for the Khmer Rouge. My friends, watching the last election, feeling hope and optimism for our latest better-than-that-guy, made fun of the red states. I'd just finished a contract at the UN; my boss just back from Afghanistan where he was convincing warlords to join parliament, down the hall from the Sierra Leone tribunal, emailing the peace keeping mission to Liberia. Aghast as the results come in, we sit on a comfy couch in a heated apartment with working electricity and running water, ordering pizza, wondering what John Stewart would look like in high def.

The most beautiful woman I ever dated

2006-03-08T13:29:00.000-05:00

wouldn't look at me during sex, never laughed at my jokes, and did her best to avoid talking about anything intimate with me. A model for a little while, the obsession of my ex-business partner, the beginning of our rift; she did have a face that could send armies to war, or at least build enough animosity allowing petty entertainment mogul wannabes to sick lawyers on each other sometime later. Anyway, even though she wouldn't look at me, and I often wondered how many others there were, the sex was amazing; her vagina tasted like Splenda, and she pressed it so hard into my face as she came. Although I don't masturbate to her, this taste and her sound comes to me in dreams sometimes. The last time we had sex we hadn't seen each other in months. She called to meet up for drinks on a summer afternoon, that turned into an entire weekend mostly spent in her bedroom. Sitting Indian style, watching her perfect ass ride me in her bedroom mirror, I leaned back a little to watch her face as she came. Lying next to her, every cell of my body satisfied, feeling uber-masculine at having satisfied her, we had nothing to say.

When they fired me from my last job

2006-03-06T11:22:00.000-05:00

my terminal-cancer-stricken boss sat misty eyed, too choked up to interject as the owner of the company told me how it wasn't working out because I wasn't "a team player. " I nodded, and agreed with everything he said, thanked him for the three months severance, shook hands, handed my key in, gathered the two personal items from my desk, went out of my way to shake more hands as I walked out of the office. Outside, sprinting down Park Avenue, screaming at the top of my lungs, finally exhausted, panting, the only thought I had was how annoyed I was she was crying. All those months watching her brave face as she clutched her stomach in agony, returning from surgery as soon as the doctors let her, working on wireless from her hospital bed; I couldn't help but be revolted at her empathy for a man who took advantage of her illness to do as little work as possible.

The man who taught me how to play poker

2006-03-05T13:17:00.000-05:00

asked for a loan because hasn't been able to pay rent for three months. He knows the odds but can't resist the long shots, the bluffs, the look on people's faces when he turns over an unlikely hand. I wonder if he's playing for the stories. But even his blog is boring. I wonder if he'd be a better card player if he stopped listening to horned rimmed indie rock, reading McSweeney's irony; picked up the Dillinger Escape Plan and Mahler, maybe some Beckett, I'm sure Kierkegaard would help too. Maybe then he wouldn't be, as Bobby Fischer put it, such a weakie. I think I'll offer lessons instead of money.

Why blog?

2006-03-03T11:25:00.000-05:00

1. Boredom.
2. To test the hypothesis that I am a better writer than everyone.
3. I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.
4. Boredom.