[269] Screed City

[269]

11/13/2023 Monday. Papers Box. Crisis Incorporated HQ. Studio 253. Ridgewood, New York.

Greetings from the new place!

[Insert Studio Picture]

It's not much, but it's mine. $540 a month plus a $10 processing fee and $40 a month insurance. I have a mailbox. Access to two, count 'em, two slop sinks that spit out very gross and greasy water that comes with paint flakes. Which means I have to buy my Ticklers water from the store. $7.10 for four gallons. A four lb bag of sugar is $2.89. So I can make a bucket of the good stuff for under $10 still. The place is a little odd. The other artists belong to the nerd herd. I have 24 hour access. A skylight. A 12 minute walk from home and soon I will have and ice machine. A birthday present from Professor Curly. She just got back from Sweden. Reality [Italics] is over there at the film festival fighting for it's life. Just joking, I mean, I don't think it's fighting for it's life, it is in the running for an award though. Soon it's going to be at the Gotham Film Festival here in NYC. I can't go though. Typical. Cheap cunts over at [Redacted] can suck it. Oh, I probably shouldn't write that. Not that you can tell, but I redacted the thing after I wrote it. The one limitation to writing. HAHA, if only that was the one limitation.

I read the other day that there is this book club that has been reading Finnegan's Wake [Italics] by What's His Butt Intolerable To Read Jackson. They have been doing the book club every month for 20 years. Two pages at a time. Just finished. A story that I liked while I was reading it. Mostly because I like that people take literature seriously sometimes. But they make the book sound like garbage. And the pictures of the people in the book club look exhausted and bored as hell. And they included an quote from the auther saying something like, 'I picture the perfect reader of my novels as somebody that dedicates their entire life to understanding my work.' I mean, fuck you? I mean, imagine spending 17 years writing cryptic notes in a notebook and then publishing it and then having the hubris to think that what you did was so brilliant that you thought that random strangers should devote their entire lives to making sense of it? That statement alone makes me know, KNOW, no matter what, I don't have to read a single thing he has ever written. I mean, if the idea of writing is to share your interpretation of being alive and human. That certainly is not it. I mean, I should publish my masturbation journal in response. I mean, call that art. Shoot it on a canvas for 17 years. I mean, I personally would find that interesting, gross, yes, but interesting.

I went to the grocery store today. As I was going around this woman in the dairy aisle she didn't notice I was there. She bent over and suddenly her ass pushed me into the shelves of beans that were there. I couldn't believe it. My crotch pushing into her ass as she bent over. She looked back like it was me that had molested her, as opposed to the other way around. I didn't even engage. I scooted away and fondled the sticks of butter on sale. I mention this not because of my supposed masturbation journal, which I do not actually have, I keep that all in my head, you know, I have a pornographic memory, but because life it bizarre and things like that happen. They are kind of worth reading about. You know, because of society. But instead, what if I sat around in my studio with my pipe and a quill, pontificating about made up things that have some reference, possibly, to events that happened at some point in history and because of that I wrote something 'Experimental?' a work of genius that deserved 20 years of dissection? I understand, I get it, 100 years ago things in art were pretty fucking stupid. I personally just get annoyed about it. How come I have to take this shit seriously? I love experimental writing. I live there, on the cusp, non-typical, I don't know why it rubs me the wrong way as the muchachas say [Mathew 25:1-13.] I mean, the bible is pretty experimental. I mean, just vibe with Jesus for a while and maybe you'll understand what I am getting at. Jesus would think James Joyce was a cunt, is all I am saying.

And right! I have been working on a new stand-up routine. "Speaking of grocery stores. The other day I was walking to my new studio. [Polishing my nails, dabbing a little, or is it dabbing?] I came down to Myrtle Avenue. I was waiting to cross the street when the light changed. Suddenly there was honking. One car, then two, then a few more way back. The traffic was not so bad, but because of the lights, the traffic bottle-necked. The intersection of George and Myrtle is idiotic. But it wasn't like anyone was NOT trying to move ahead. The traffic was what it was. If you were in a car, sure, you wanted to be moving, but it wasn't like the person in front of you, or the person in front of the person who is in front of them is keeping you from moving. It's not like there is just some guy way up in the front with a finger in his nose picking a booger forgetting to drive forward. Traffic doesn't work that way. Yet people were honking. Lots of people were honking. Which, sure, that is an option. But what blew my mind as I was waiting to cross the street is, you know, what if you did that shit in other social situations? Like imagine standing in line at the grocery store and it's taking forever. Imagine some dick suddenly piping up, yelling, "Hey mother fucker, what the fuck?!" And some other dick yelling, "Yeah! What the fuck, man! Hurry the fuck up!" And then some guy five people back yelling, "Hey! Fuck you! I got shit to do! Haul ass fucko!" But everyone else in line just kind of standing there acting like it's not happening. I mean, whatever happened to giving somebody the benefit of the doubt? Is the problem that people are just assholes in their cars? I mean, what is the old muchachas saying? Everyone driving slower than me is an idiot, everyone driving faster than me is a maniac? I guess it works with traffic too, but it seems like a breakdown of society. Maybe that is why the computer works the way it does? It's not a town-square thing, it's a stuck in traffic thing. Right? You can fart, listen to whatever you want to on the radio, have whatever conversation you want to with whoever else is there with you, but once somebody gets in your way and is annoying, you thrash out."

I don't know. It is a work in progress. You'll see. One day. When I don't feel like I want to stab the world every day, I will finally calm down and start doing stand-up comedy. Open a hot dog stand. Make love, not war.

I have about a million plans to do a million things. Instead I stand around like James 'Honking In The Back, Smelling His Own Farts' Joyce. Allow me to be esoteric for a second while I force your teenager high school mind to gargle my pretentious bullshit. I got an electronic mail today from some asshole that is trying to sell me a plaque because The Publisher entered me in this 'Good Writing,' contest that there was no way in hell I would ever win. I mean, maybe if I had waxed poetic, experimentally, about living in Vermont, I would have lured the coveted 65-75 year old fans of pre-cubist Pablo Picasso, also a very insufferable cunt, Pablo Picasso, you know, from their youth, and somehow wrapped my typing keys in cotton so their tinnitus didn't get offended, they would have changed their vote over from this other guy that people actually know about and switched it to me, but I digress, the message was insane. Selling me a plaque for $189. A commiseration, participation trophy that I could buy.

[Insert Plaque Photo]

And then art comes around and I don't even know what to do about it.

[Insert Finnegan's Wake Art Film]