[294] Screed City

[294]

07/25/2024 Thursday. Papers boxes. Crisis Inc HQ. Ridgewood, New York.

Back in the Rotten Apple. Happy to be back in the Rotten Apple. It has been a couple weeks of astonishing anguish. Kind of. When I tell you that work is a four letter word, I mean it. Its crazy what I do for money and then I have very little to show for it. And so much driving, so much driving, so much driving. Every night asleep by 9p. Every morning awake by 3p. Worry and dread and dreams. Anxiety. You ever force yourself to go back to sleep at 3a because you have to get up in two hours? Why do I have to be to work at 7a? Nobody can tell me, aside from the usual, That is when work happens. Whose work? What work? Yours and mine, they say. Oh, yeah, right, that clove hitch wont tie after 8a I guess. Fuck your logic. We dont work outside, and even if it is hotter in the gym-torium later in the day because the roof isnt insulated, so what? Getting to work at 7a doesnt change that. I guess the idea is that you get some free time in the afternoon? For what? To take a nap because you got up at five in the fucking morning? I find it truly baffling. Then again I have been working full time for a few months now, I think. Its really starting to get on my nerves. I try to stay positive, but I would like to wring somebodies neck. Mostly my own, with the few extra dollars I have, maybe I can braid them into a rope of some kind and use that early morning clove hitch that is so desired in my profession.

Sorry that was dark. I didnt mean it. The brutality of being working class is relentless and sometimes there is no release valve. I have a million art projects that need attention and funding and I thought I would be way more ahead by now. I am not. I was supposed to work tomorrow. I am not. One of these days I am going to get a real job, youll see! Then you wont be able to push me around no more! Mostly because I will be at work all day and you will have to wait around and then when I am finally done youll be eating dinner and will forget to push me around and then when you are done with dinner I will be somewhere else doing something fun because I wont have to worry about money any more because I will have a job and youll have to figure out some other time to push me around and will probably forget about it and one day we will be friends again.

The other day I was in Kingston, New York. Well, Saugerties, the hotel I was staying at was in Kingston. A Holiday Inn Express. It was one of those ones that you find sometimes while travelling where everyone is kind of pissed off and a little odd, you know what I mean? Like the management is bad somehow, and everyone that works there seems overworked and stressed out and flustered and short tempered. Like they expect you to be an asshole to them for no reason. The kind of Holiday Inn that the rooms arent ready by 4p like they promise because they cant hire enough cleaning staff. The kind of Holiday Inn whose pool is closed because they cant get anyone to service it. The kind of Holiday Inn that is the physical embodiment of compromise because nobody is happy and everyone feels like they have been duped. The kind of Holiday Inn where everyone who works there smokes, who run into the building when they see you lugging your luggage from the work van, and then the person checking you in is getting trained, and the person training them is also being trained and you have to call your company to make sure they sent the right paperwork because the people at the front desk cant find it, although you are in the system and the room is already paid for.

Well, I got upgraded to a suite because I wasnt a dick about anything. Which is like being upgraded to first class on an hour and half domestic flight, the sentiment is appreciated, but who the fuck cares? It was funny though, when the lady told me that I was being upgraded I thanked her, and the guy next to me got curious. Jealous. He didnt know that was an option. He was checking in with two teenagers and his wife. He assumed the room was maybe two rooms with a door in-between. He said as much. The lady had to tell him that, No, its just a room with a little area by the window. And thats all it was, a room with a little area by the window. That, ironically, had an electric, "fancy," blinds system that didnt work. It wouldnt open or close. Which meant that whoever wanted to watch a middle aged construction bro walking around naked in his room they could. I mean, I am pretty strong these days and I have grown a few lbs of crotch weight, but Im still sporting a farmers tan from the shirt sleeve down and the neck hole up. Otherwise I look like a well hung ghost. Translucent and satisfying, like that Bowie song.

The next morning though, after waking up at 3a being worried about the job that day. After getting sent to the shop to get, "Whatever you think we need," to do a type of job I have never done before at a space I had never seen, waking up feeling like an idiot, walking to the window to look at the moon and then some tourists were taking naked photos of me for the computer. Did I tell you that AI is having a problem? That its reached a limit of learning and cant reproduce human input? That there is an inconvenient and problematic asymptote causing all the models to essentially feedback loop into nonsense once they reach that limit? Whether or not you care or pay attention to that shit, just know that whoops, Silicon Valley is wrong once again and it was all just a bunch of bullshit all along. Which, I know that I shouldnt sidebar my stories because that makes people as irritated as I am with work, but it will apply to where this story is going, so stay strong, keep your heart open and invest in Tesla. No, I meant the other one, Madoff Investment Firms. See, here is where the joke I was trying to make actually ruins the other joke and then hurts my feelings. I loved Bernie. RIP [heart emoji]. Fucking Robin Hood. But that Tesla douche? One more time, it needs to be said and it always needs to be said, TECH WILL NOT SAVE US-----TECH WILL NOT KILL US. It is a Ponzi scheme, it will always be a Ponzi scheme, and it has always been a Ponzi scheme.

The first escalator was a carnival ride at Coney Island.

So there I am, 6:30 in the morning, at the breakfast nook, at the Holiday Inn Express in Kingston, New York. Im feeling a little dusty because I have gone to bed at 9p after driving for a couple hours, working for quite a few hours, driving some more to the place to buy threaded rod and then spending an hour checking into my hotel room and then self medicating by writing a new chapter of this book I am working on instead of doing actual work for the seven million books that need to be edited. Its complicated, but I was not in a very good mood when I went down into the breakfast nook.

I cheered up though. Everyone who was milling around was wearing riding pants. Horse riding pants. The like tan ones, if you know what I mean, the knickers of sorts. It was cute. I didnt understand why, Kingston is quite the distance from Saratoga Springs, but maybe there was horse things nearby? Or maybe that hotel was the cheapest? Or, I dont know, I really dont, but it was cute to see everyone in their riding pants.

I put all of my luggage next to an empty table looking at the television. I made a breakfast of a toasted bagel and an omelet and bacon and apple juice and black coffee. As I sat there gnawing away at the victuals, there was this couple with their back to me arguing. The woman kept telling the man to stop saying what he was saying. It wasnt funny. I couldnt tell if she liked it or not. Like if she was just finding his jokes irritating because it was six thirty in the morning or if he was actually threatening her. As I watched them I watched the television. There was some sort of earth wide computer outage that was causing issues. It seemed serious. I thought about the day before, the afternoon before, when I was checking in, I hadnt given the lady at the desk my number for my points, the points that one day, when the apocalypse comes, I can use to get a suite in heaven. I left my luggage and breakfast behind and went to talk to the new lady at the front desk. I said:

"Hey, I meant to give my number for the, uh, miles or whatever, the points yesterday but I didnt, can I do that now?"

"I wont lie to you, my computer is down, I was about to send and email about it."

"Oh, right, that thing I was just seeing on the television."

"What do you mean?"

"Its worldwide, the computers are out worldwide."

"Really? So I dont have to send this email? Thats great! Im gonna go smoke and check google!"

I went back to my table and drank my coffee. I should have been leaving for work but the couple fighting seemed violent and I felt like I should stick around just in case. The guy was obviously drunk. It was 6:30a in the breakfast nook of the Holiday Inn, Kingston, New York, and the guy was drunk. I assumed the wife was drunk too, but she wasnt. Or if she was, she didnt show it. Nobody can be drunk that early and in public without showing it. Drunks are quite obvious. You can hide a hangover, still drunk, but actual drunkness, the guy was drunk. The wife was not drunk. And it was odd. They seemed normal. They looked normal. Mostly. Clean hair and washed clothes. The guy was maybe early 40s? The wife mid 30s? But then the guy threatened the wife in a way that she didnt like. So much so that she scooted her chair back and was going to walk away. She said:

"Of course a woman can be president."

"A woman cant run a hardware store."

"But thats a mans business, a woman doesnt need to be involved with all of that, a woman can of course be president."

The guy went back to grumbling into his wifes ear about things violent. I could tell because she kept insisting he was taking it too far. That if people heard what he was saying they wouldnt like it. He threatened her one last time and as she was getting up to leave the drunk guy turned to the woman who was sitting in front of me, under the television and said:

"What do you think? Can a woman be president?"

"I dont, leave me out of this, I dont know." She said. The wife walked to the elevator. The guy wobbled in his chair, shoveling cold eggs into his mouth with a black plastic fork. A few days before the ex president Trump had been shot at while he was giving a rally. The second news after the computer news was about the assassination attempt, but it was just Trump at a rally being vitriolic. The drunk guy looked up from his cold eggs and started chanting:

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" Everyone in the breakfast nook turned to look at him. They were very weird in their riding pants but it was 6:30a in the breakfast nook at the Holliday Inn Express in Kingston, New York. The guy didnt stop after that, though:

"You can either have a country with a border, or you can have a country without a border, you have to decide!" Whether or not he was making good political point to the audience he had I dont know, it was barely dawn and nobody wanted to hear it. A lug like me, who had come down to get a couple coffees to take back to his room told the guy to shut up, that he was asking for it. The guy ignored the lug and started weeping. Literally started weeping, to Trump, on the television at 6:30a in the morning at the breakfast nook at the Holiday Inn in Kingston, New York, the guy, weeping, said:

"I love you, man, I love you so much, I love you so much!" He slammed his hand onto the table. The cold eggs bounced on his plate.

He was weeping.

[Insert Gen Demo Photo]