[302] Screed City

[302]

10/21/2024 Monday. Microwave. Room 216. Holiday Inn Express. Cicero, New York.

Work. You know it used to be that one could make it through the day, the week, the month knowing that one day there would be an end to this. That you would eventually punch yourself out of this wet paper bag with sheer will power alone. That your bootstraps would finally catch onto something and you would start to make strides. Leaps, bounds. But then one day you find yourself living in Syracuse, New York for a month. On the edge of the 30 year anniversary of the day you dropped out of high school and suddenly you begin to wonder where it all went wrong. Was it that day? Was that the day I chose to be right here, standing in front of a microwave, standing on a greasy carpeted floor, writing a missive about how I never caught a break? A bucket of hotel ice, a bottle of Ticklers and the sun setting over the beautiful I-81 just outside your window. The cars screaming by, six burritos you made in the fridge and the exhaustion of five hours of driving and a full day of work behind you, telling yourself you have to stay up until 9p otherwise you will wake up at two and won't be able to get back to sleep because you have trained your body to ignore any signs of tiredness because a day working is a day lost making art. So therefore, if you don't make some sort of art you have wasted the day?

I don't know. I doubt it. I doubt it was that day. In many respects that was the best decision I ever made. Aside from making G happen in the world and tricking Professor Curly to meet me for a date all those years ago. I don't regret dropping out of school. I don't regret what I did afterwards. And I don't regret having to work for a living. In many ways, because I had to work for a living, I was forced to streamline my process with a huge amount of personal discipline. I don't think I was ever meant to be a bohemian if that is how the bridesmaids say it, but I know in my bones that if I was better at making choices, I would be writing a screenplay right now, not doing self care trying to process the insane amount of time and effort I have to devote to somebody and something that could give two shits if I never showed up ever again aside from whether or not the work got done. It's an odd thing, this capitalist system we live under. I am the American Dream right now. Not right now, like I am what the American Dream has become, but what the American Dream is supposed to be. Work all day for the man and then work all night for myself. To go to bed so spent that I wake up startled when my alarm goes off and I get up and do it all over again because money.

This morning I got up at 5a. No problem. I took a shower last night and was packed and ready to leave the Ridgewood apartment by 5:15a. I had coffee made as well. Water to drink. Burritos in the fridge that I left a note for myself to remember to grab. Also to grab my toothbrush and my computer. I drove to the gas station near my studio. Got gas. Stopped at the studio to haul the air conditioner that was in the back of PC's real estate wagon up the stairs. Moments later I was back inside the car and typing the address of the school where I am working into the map app. I laughed when I saw that it was taking me right back to our apartment before making a left. Usually it takes me down the Jackie Robinson because, I don't know, traffic? But the route I chose was the preferred route I wanted. I wanted to go through the Catskills. To drive up 17 until it became I-81. I double checked my route twice. Pulled over at one point to check it a third time when suddenly I was in Long Island City driving past the I Weiss shop. But by then I finally understood why it was taking me where it was taking me and I let the map app lead me. But this is why I am bringing this up, how it pertains to America and the American Dream and capitalism. My route, the route I wanted to go, added a few nominal minutes to my driving. Not a lot. A very little. There was another route that was quicker. I did not want that route. It took the most brutal, ugly and dystopian hellscape asphalt a pretty boy like me wouldn't be able to handle. I-87 up to Albany and then over on I-90. To save, like I said, a couple minutes.

The trip was five hours of driving. For the first two hours if not more, the map app continually tried to take me off course. "We've found a faster route. Do you want to take it?" That's nice, right? How nice of them to be looking out for me, right? Wrong! That fucker, if you don't tell it to fuck off, it puts you on the faster route without your consent. And then when you notice there is nothing you can do about it because you are driving and alone and it is early in the morning and there are deer everywhere and people are driving like assholes and you don't want to get into a crash so you have to let the Artificial Un-Intelligent bully you into their dystopian idea of how efficiency is the true way to live.

I stayed on top of it though. I did not let it win. I hit the dismiss button the second it came up. But you know, it was very early in the morning and dark outside and oddly, very little traffic, it was quiet and peaceful and I became reflective. This was a metaphor for capitalism. For the sake of efficiency I was being forced, bullied, into accepting something I did not want. Sure, I had a choice, this is America after all, but I had made my choice. But my choice was wrong. What I needed was not as fast as I could get it, what I needed was not coming to me as efficiently as possible. And it was up to me to fight back against it. You're going to love it! They said in 2020 when I finally acquired a smart phone. You can get the internet all the time! I don't want the internet all the time. I want less internet, in fact. You can go on social media! I hate social media and I think it is toxic. An anathema to society. But map apps! They bellowed. And I got on board with that. I did like the idea of my phone being used as a map. Maps and Youtube, I bellowed back.

But AI is as stupid as capitalism is. Or communism or socialism. It can't exist on its own. Absolute capitalism just leads right back to feudalism. Communism leads to capitalism and socialism just spins on its heels depending on how corrupt the government is or whether there is a mono culture and/or a democracy involved. I would be very interested in a version of American Socialism because it would be wild. The amount of racism and hair pulling that is already coming from the Right that they would implode in a way so spectacular that I believe America would become a very amazing place, like Brooklyn, but with money. Alas, we missed our chance with Bernie in 2016, see you again in 40 years.

But that damn map app. Up to and until I reached the point of no return it kept trying to get me to take the fastest route. I did not want it, I did not need it and there was no way to tell it to knock it off. Also there was nothing I could do to stop it from doing what it was doing aside from learning a few maps of my own and driving raw dog. I do not like to drive raw dog. The beauty of AI is that it is supposed to help you out. Know about crashes and traffic and shit like that. It is supposed to be an assistant, not some asshole who likes to take the worst route in history just to save forty five seconds. AI doesn't scare me because of this. Even the Matrix or the Mandela Affect or whatever, that we are living in a simulation, I don't care. So what? If it is true, okay, then what? When I brought this up to a friend of mine that is also a Truther about building 7? I don't know. He was like, "We need to be able to fight back!" I said, "Against who?! The enemy in your head? I am an artist just like you, we have ideas, but fuck you if you think I am going to start an army to go back in time to beat up my history teacher in 8th grade. I get what you are saying, but you understand that you are being manipulated, right?"

There is no absolute truth. The reason a lie goes further than the truth is because we are hardwired to make our own reality. Spend one second with a child and you can see what I mean. Make-believe is a defense mechanism combined with the beauty of the human mind. Skepticism is healthy. In a sense. You know, don't believe what you read as the bridesmaids say, but the second you start ignoring facts and let conspiracy take over is the same second you, as an adult, should start to question the information you are receiving, which is why I think it is toxic to think capitalism is a truth. Its a partial truth. But something is missing. It needs to be regulated. To be governed. America is a government. A society. For those of us who think that pure capitalism will figure itself out, I refer you back to the statement I made about how it leads right back to feudalism. Right now, in America, we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else. Do you think anyone rich is using a map app to get to where they are going? Maybe, but they are also using a thousand other things to define their reality. Why I don't fear AI is because it is absolute. It can't decipher what is good and what is bad. This idea that it will one day be able to know better than us whether something is good or bad and will therefore take over the world is a load of horse shit. True, humans are stupid and maybe we would give computers the ability to control every aspect of our lives, but being miserable for four hours and fifty nine minutes instead of being not miserable for five hours is not going to be one of them. This idea that we should just burn through all of our resources and destroy the planet to make billionaires into trillionaires is going to happen for a while, sure, but eventually we will see the light.

America is a government created to help its people. It should be used as such. Voting is not a love letter, it is a chess move, as a bridesmaid told me recently. Also, as my co-worker, Brick-Hook asked me about Vermont the other day:

"What do you guys do up there in Vermont?" I smiled and said:

"Hunt and fuck." He looked confused.

"What do you hunt?" I smiled and said:

"Something to fuck."

[Insert American Flag During Peep Season]

Well, because the internet is bad and my phone doesn’t want to send the photo I took, here is this instead: