A to-do list, and others things, I guess

Fuckin' Mr. Latte once again poses a question that merits a full response:

Two king-size articles on the bounce - is the man Diener back with us...?
To answer your question: No. Probably not. Or maybe. I feel like with the number of people I'm reaching, I could just as easily call everybody on the phone. In a perfect world, this would be my full time job, creating shit, making it available to whatever idiots may care, then move on to the next thing. If I had the technical know-how or the equipment or people who would do all the technical stuff for me, and some means of making a good living off of it, then I'd be yours forever. Maybe someday, but it would take money, and I think if I ever make enough money to be able to support such a carefree artistic lifestyle, I'd probably want more and more and more, just like everybody else. Why settle for store brand foie gras when it's within ones grasp to buy the top shelf stuff? Do I really have the will power to stop at one helicopter?

Anyway, it's a moot point. Only two people have rewarded me financially for my creative efforts, and one of them was you (the other, incidentally, was hotshot director J.P. Woliner--I'm assuming his middle initial is P. Watch his and his comedy actor pals' outstanding new show, "Human Giant," Thursdays at 10:30 on MTV, following "House Full of Rappers").

(12 hours later...)

Hell on a biscuit, I should have been asleep hours ago. It's only 2, which is like noon to you people, but I'm trying to straighten up and fly right. At least, I'd like to, sort of. It'd make things so much easier if I could just act like a person and just get things done the way normal people do. I've made so little effort to find an agent for the novel I wrote last year, it's pathetic. I need an assistant. I'd say I need a mommy, but my mommy would not make a good assistant. Way too willful. But it is silly to think on those terms. I am in no position to have an assistant. I have a little money in the bank thanks to having had a job and from a student loan plan that will make my nearly-settled credit card troubles look like a very inexpensive walk through a very pleasant park, but I do not have enough money where I can realistically start to think about taking on a staff. And I don't see any of you layabouts volunteering.

So I have to straighten up and fly right. I'm not getting any younger, and if this morning's phone call telling me the results of my recent physical are to be trusted, my cholesterol level is at BORDERLINE status. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds very dangerous. I need to get a job, I need to file for unemployment, I need to get a New York State ID or driver's license, I need to do approximately 500 pounds of laundry, I need to finish cleaning my apartment from two weeks ago, I need more than anything to find an agent, I need to keep at this new thing I'm writing, I need to make more time for making music and less time for playing video games that I never enjoy, I need to get off my ass for at least five minutes a day, I need to cook instead of having food delivered, I need to eat unpalatable, healthy foods and stop eating the things I enjoy, I need to stop smoking, I need to stop self-medicating, I need to find a girlfriend, I need to find friends in general, I need to make more of an effort to connect with old friends who live in New York, I need to go to bed at 11:30 each weeknight and rise at 7:30 in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and all keyed up to get out there and conquer the world, I need to have the cartilage removed from my ears so they just sort of flop down, I need to come up with the perfect mixtape for my funeral, I need to learn how to trust, i need to know how it feels to kill a man with my hands and feel the life drain out of him, I need to own my own tugboat, I need to do so many things, and, for whatever reason, just about all of them trump this stupid website.

But, you know, I'm a little pent-up these days, and I'm not exactly working feverishly on the new novel or, for that matter, anything at all. Barely working up the energy to blink these days. Pretty depressed, when you get down to it. I mean, i was getting paid to walk a block from my apartment 5 nights a week, do a little cleaning, and then sit around doing whatever until it got light out. And there were dogs to play with if I wanted. Don't get me wrong, it was a really shitty job and in many ways the most dysfunctional workplace I've had the honor to be a part of of, but it will be impossible to replace its numerous advantages... UNTIL I START GETTING PAID TO WRITE THE THINGS I ENJOY WRITING.

Have I made it clear yet that I care only for money? That my wry wit is but a ploy to distract you from the horns poking through my benighted Jew scalp? Well, you're racist for one thing if that's how you see me, and furthermore you're wrong. It is simply the sad reality of our times that one is no longer able to reject society and its sick hunger for wealth without winding up some filthy vagrant on the street. What happened to those days when a gentleman of refinement could simply loaf about and sustain himself rather nicely on the allowance given him by his dowager aunt?

So, whatever. Life's not fair, and neither are any of you for so much as thinking I should consider placing your cost-free entertainment ahead of my own need to survive in this ultra-competitive age.

p.s. If you'd like, I am willing to email any of you a Word document of my novel-length manuscript, "Trouble is My Gun", for the low, low price of $49.95 (shipping and handling extra and, to be frank, not altogether fair). A limited number of "autographed" copies are available starting at $149.95, price varying based on size of signature. Serious collectors may make inquiries into purchasing two extremely large sacks of smelly laundry, though we are scheduled to begin talks with Christie's later this week, so a quick, knockout bid is strongly recommended.

And with that, I am too tired to continue. Also, I have to be up in 5 hours. Shit.

My Poor, Poor, Beautiful Face

Okay. Unfortunately Wikipedia's entry on the subject is surprisingly thin (or not surprisingly, maybe, given the subject matter) and I'm not about to do any real research, but I did see a documentary once, and I think I remember some of it.

We're talking about the legalization of Marijuana, or wacky terbacky, as it's known on the streets. The history of its criminalization is a strange one, and what I read on Wikipedia doesn't jibe 100% with what was on the documentary, but basically, Congress (sorry, Latte, but you'll have to do you own research into His or Her Majesty's reasons for criminalizing the stuff) passed something called the Marihuana Tax Act in 1937, largely because William Randolph Hearst's papers got everybody up in arms by claiming that Mexicans bring it across the border with them, smoke it, and become deranged. The echoes very strongly the rationale behind criminalizing cocaine (which was banned alongside heroin, opium, etc. in 1914); again, I have no reference here besides my memory, but there was some hubbub over cocaine being a drug that provoked violent behavior in negroes). The Wikipedia article suggests that Hearst sought the ban of weed because of his interests in the timber industry (and also that DuPont was involved because they
saw hemp as a major threat, what with it being the all-purpose wonder fiber that would shake the world to its foundations were the People ever able to learn of its true potential), for whatever that's worth. Anyway, I've done a shitty job here, but you should track down a good history of it, because it really is a strange and depressing story.

That aside, beloved commenter Mr. Latte presented numerous inarguable reasons for decriminalization (sorry, but we use Zs over here, because we bow down before no monarch), so I just wanted to clarify my position. Yes, legalize pot, please. It would do nothing but good (except, you know, make it more accessible to people who are probably ultimately served by not having a steady, reliable source). I just think that if we look at the big picture, the potential for benefitting society is far less than in the case of decriminalizing the sort of drugs that people kill each other over. That's all I'm saying. I've never even been around heroin (though I sure know some people who have), and apart from rubbing a tiny amount on my gums one time after my friends got all hyped up and dashed off to "shoot some hoops" and left my alone in their house with a mirror full of the stuff, I've made it one of my missions in life to simultaneously loathe and avoid cocaine. Maybe one needs to experience it to fully understand it, but from what I've seen, cocaine turns good people--at least momentarily--into assholes. I trust nothing that fills people with instant confidence. It's a disturbing thing to watch. So, in a nutshell, yes, but also no.

What else? Just back from a week visiting my parents. Last Monday, I went to the dentist. They found two cavities, one basically in between my two front teeth, the other in one of my bottom wisdom teeth. Which meant, after probably a decade of putting it off, I finally acknowledged it was time to get the fuckers yanked out. The oral surgeon, as luck would have it, was able to fit me in the next day. That pretty much the story right there. Not a lot to add to it except the following picture. Laugh while you can, jerks.