[199] Screed City

[199]

09/28/2022 Wednesday. Carboard Box. Hampshire House. Portland, Maine.

I mean, I don't know what I mean. I have very little to report, but for two reasons I am writing tonight. One: tomorrow is Scott's birthday, so Happy B-Donk, Dog! May your pipes stay as clean as a canal flume in Wyoming during the Winter. And Two: on Saturday I am doing a reading in Brooklyn, and I will write the night before, and the Screed will be the very honorable and spectacular Screed #200! I mean, I am mostly excited about it because I haven't once in the nearly two years I have been writing this, checked the word count. And, I mean, it has to be at least half a million words. I mean, half a million words devoted specifically to myopic bitching? Talk about contributing to Society!

But, I mean, since we are here, let me regale you with what I have been up to. Dangler [Italics] is coming along. About to reach the climax. In the literary sense. Which is fun to write. But I haven't decided yet which way I am going to go. I mean, I know where it should go, but I am not sure I want it to go that way. I mean, I had a dream about shitting maggots the other night that kind of put me in an odd mood until I looked it up on the computer, and I think, I mean, if my instincts are correct, this is a good sign, and much like Donkey [Italics] my subconscious is sending some pretty big signals that I am heading down the right path. Both with life, and with the writing, because, somehow, the two are related. Imagine that. Writing about things you know. How novel. Literally. [See what I did there?]

I mean, this work in Portland, I mean it is going to work out. It really is. I mean, all of Brother Luke's hard work finally paid off for me. And luckily, I happen to be at the exact moment of my life where I can take full advantage of it without being a succubus. I mean, I am building this bar. Like, not the bar itself, but the bar itself, if you catch my drift. I mean, the bar is called Cellars at [Brewery.] But the bar inside the bar is what I am building. And instead of everything actively working against me, the opposite is happening. I mean, they are giving me all the time and resources I need to succeed, and for the first time in forever, like exactly never. I mean, I have not GoldBricked a single minute this entire week. And I am paid so well that it almost, ALMOST, embarrasses me. I mean, if shit keeps up, and the jobs keep coming, I may just get my god damn affairs in order. You know? Drag myself out of the fucking gutter. By my boot-straps, naturally. I mean, who would have thought, against all odds, that a guy like me could work and work and work at the same kind of job for 25 years and finally, FINALLY, be paid just barely above what he thinks he should be paid for doing the work that he has honed and sweated and destroyed his hearing and body for, all for the sake of someone else's profit? I mean, I was thinking about this today. 1996. The first time I picked up a battery operated screw gun at St Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO, Brooklyn. I mean, back then, making $18 dollars an hour. $18 dollars an hour with ZERO skills. I mean, the going rate for that same work in NYC right now? $20 dollars an hour. And if you are lucky and work for somebody that is fighting for the working artist, $25 dollars an hour. Can you see where I am going with this? A $2-$7 dollar raise for unskilled labor over 26 fucking years? I mean, back then, rent on a three bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan was $1,200 dollars. I mean, my point, my exact point, is that this idea of inflation in America is really a joke. A total dog shit joke. We are not experiencing inflation, not in the way that is connected to reality, it's just that the Working Class is finally getting caught up with the rest of Society, and instead of the powers in charge accepting this reality, understanding this reality, I mean, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt, but they are acting in bad faith, and I know it, and you know it, but instead of understanding this, they are actively sending the economy into a recession in order to punish the Working Class in a way to get us to become desperate again. To accept jobs that are not living wage jobs. So we can't buy things, or afford rent. Because why? I mean, back in the late 90's I worked that job for like three weeks and I didn't have to work again for months! It was fantastic. And then I got hired to be the liaison to the Shakespeare Theater Company from England. Where I met Mark Rylance, who is a great guy, by the way, I mean, whatever, he was nice, but my job was to just make sure they had like drinks and stuff. I mean, I am mixing up times, but the general time frame is true, and, I mean, my point is; paying an extra $.30 cents for black beans and canned corn is not the tragedy that the Corporate Media would want you to believe that it is. I mean, yes, people in America are still poor as shit and the small amount of money sucks to be added to an already dwindling amount of income, but as a thing and big THING, I mean, things are not more expensive or are getting more expensive, they are becoming the true cost. AND, as somebody that has been poor my entire life, I would rather deal with the true cost of life as it is, then to have some Damocles bullshit that the FED decides needs to hold over my head at all times in order to get me to go to fucking work. I get it! We all get it! We have to work for a fucking living. Boohoohoo. I mean, I don't expect any relief anytime soon, but the fact that they would tank the economy in order to get me to go back to work makes me want to go berserk! The economy is a circle. Not a curve. And if you clog a point of that circle in order to make a faster stream for the wealthy, you only create a clog, that yes, things in the immediate will stabilize, but the balloon you create on the back side will not just spit out things faster, it will instead explode. And if you think that making people fight for jobs that already didn't pay the bills is a good way to go, you are an idiot that needs to open a single history book, any history book, even the Jesus rode a dinosaur history book, because when you force Society to compete for bread, I mean, it's not the people in the Society that get hung up from light posts. Or find their necks sliced asunder.

Anyway. I have been working hard all week. Getting paid. Doing a good job. No, a great job. And it has been funny. Mostly because I am my own CAD program. The ins and outs of this job are quite complicated. And because I have enough experience, I can just shoot from the hip, ATBMS. I have a single purpose. To build this bar. And I know how big the bar top is. And from there, I can extrapolate what I need to do to make the thing work. I mean, imagine the scene. Just joking. That is from a movie I once stared in. Where I was reading from a novel I wrote called, GraveDigger [Italics] where Detective Zone was trying to have sex with his bent dick. The movie was supposed to expose me as a White, male, asshole, who couldn't get his shit together and was fucking shit up in American Society because White men are pure garbage. But the director didn't know that I was not, in fact, garbage, and instead of the thing being about how all White men suck, it made me look exploited and abused and the director looked like an exploitive asshole, so she spent months and months...okay, I am going into territory I am going to pull out from now. My only point is; the movie went to Sundance, and is now scrubbed from the internet because it backfired. But for a minute there, things were exciting. I mean, you can only get so far when you throw coins at the bum making him dance for so long before it's not funny anymore. And frankly, it was never funny in the first place. But you can only go so far pretending that being an abusive bully is actually DownTown art before you get found out. I mean, my critique aside, imagine the scene: I know where the bar top needs to be in the end. And then, I know what materials I need to get there. And then, after those two things are decided, I have to make it happen. I mean, it's a complicated amalgam. And because I am basically a one man band, ATBMS, it is basically a sculpting adventure. Which is cool. I mean, to think of all times in Joe S.'s shop, when he would go over to his computer and work on the drawings and then bring something over to me, help me understand it, and then, all the million questions I had. I mean, I don't know how he did it, I don't know how anyone does it. The idea of just handing somebody a drawing and saying, "Do this." I mean, the nature of the top down structure we use to make anything, ANYTHING in this world happen, baffles me greatly, but to have entire control over it, with nobody there breathing down my neck, just letting the cool vibes flow. I mean, I know I am waxing philosophically here, but still, I mean, guess what? I haven't fucked nothing up. Not because I didn't make mistakes, mistakes happen. Pobody's Nerfect, as Josh Nylon would say. I mean, if what I was doing had been drawn on a computer, or even on a piece of paper, it wouldn't change a single thing. Yes, you need to account for the concrete backing that will allow you to put the tiles on the facing. Yes, you need to remember that the plywood is 3/4's inch. Yes, you need to think about how the bar needs to float an inch above the floor, but so what? I mean, I am not pretending that I am creating David or whatever. It's not the Sistine Chapel. Not that that thing was a carving thing. But my point is this; I am building a thing that holds a bar top that somebody else built, and as such, I am making the structure complicate. And, I mean, there is no telephone happening. It is my ears to god's whispering. And as complicated as it seems, it is just a platform. And because I am going to be the one installing the fucker, I get to make the decisions. I am the decider. And tomorrow I will dry-hump the thing, as Scott would say. Which is different from a wet-hump, when you just do the work as is and hope for the best, the dry-hump will tell me if I am right, or wrong. A contingency as such. And guess what? That is actually how shit works. I mean, the economy of work is based on playing a game of telephone, ATBMS, which is fine, just FINE! I mean, really, it is fine. Money is a construct, none of this matters, not a single bit, the job is just a job that makes other jobs, which is why rich people need to pay the taxes we poor people pay because it is all the same fucking circle that makes the economy, but still, to have the middleman truly knocked out of this scheme I am doing, I mean, imagine the scene, I am not saying I am a sculptor, I am saying that in this exact moment, I am exactly a sculptor. And because nobody stood around watching Michelangelo saying: "Why are these guys with the buckets of water just hanging around all day? Can't we get them to go over there and dig a ditch for the toilets? We are already paying them, right?" I mean, fuck you, first, but secondly, labor doesn't work that way. And imagine Michelangelo waiting for the laborers to come back from moving 20 buckets of paint from the piazza two streets over. Saying: "You okay, boss?" While Michelangelo stands there, chisel in hand, needing to shift the scaffold?

I mean, my only point is that I have eradicated the middle-man, and the boss at the same time, and, not to toot my own horn, ATBMS, work, for once in my miserable and long suffering Working Class life, is kind of okay, and I don't feel abused or exploited and I plan to use this new feeling of independence to parlay my life into the next phase. A phase where I have a whole bunch more control then I have ever had. And, like a hiker, cresting a mountain, I plan to see some pretty good vistas in the distance. And as much as the people in charge of the economy seem to be actively destroying the thing for the benefit of the wealthy, I am hopeful that the labor contingent of boot-strap economy are fighting back. And these push for Unions that seem to be happening all over America keep gaining traction. And even though I am the opposite of that, I am the anti-thesis of that, I only benefit when the worker benefits. I mean, to put it in baseball terms, I am batting clean-up. And that is really the "Rising Tides Lift All Boats" reality of the American Economy. Because nobody in hell is going to see people making a living wage and not suffering is going to say: "You know what? I would rather starve than let these assholes eat." It just does not work that way.

[Insert Reading Promo]

[Insert Ticklers Photo]