Still never been to Lady Liberty. Walked past that subway museum on Livingstone a hundred times, always marveled at the entrance, not once stepped down. People speak highly of the Brooklyn Brewery and apparently Jackson Heights is the hottest thing since silicon tits, but it's the same refrain. We're approaching some serious T-minus territory here and the thought looms about some great, existential checklist for Things To Do in New York City. God forbid I move from here and somebody shames me for not doing the pantsless subway ride.
I've uprooted my life with less planning that many people put into a picnic in the park. More like, there's some careful deliberation that goes into making the decision, followed by the implementation of the necessary ingredients, but there's no pen and paper and chin-scratching. Step one and done: Set a date. Then do what has to be done. There are details, but those are just details, and they fall under what I just said.
So it should come as no surprise that I have no Bucket List for the Big Apple. I will go to Ellis Island and I will go to Maine to eat lobster within view of a lighthouse, but that's about it. If there's something I haven't done, and I've had seven-plus years to realize it, it's hard to say it belongs on any sort of list now. It is no more than a momentary distraction, an opportunity for accomplishment when everything going on around me is about loss.
The whole goddamn concept of a Bucket List, be it before a departure or death, is a persuasive Exhibit in the proceedings for what is wrong with this society we live in. Like forgiveness and atonement, it is a powerful tool to feel better about the person you could have been but were not; the things you could have done but never did; those words that should have been said but never came out. Going to the Meatpacking District after a Knicks game won't be my opportunity to Do It Right. Ain't nothin' hanging on the walls of the Whitney that's going to make me a better/worse friend than I've been. There are things that matter; the rest is comprised of one giant, fragmented distraction.
The final sands of this time have me feeling like an old dog. Prospects for adoption aren't looking too good, so maybe it's best to just find my trusty place in the rug and sniff the familiar pant legs of the ones who take care of me. Maybe these owners will take me on a familiar walk, and maybe they'll engage in my sentimentality for what it was like to walk that trail years before. Eat some familiar chow. Get my ears scratched. Sit in my own shit for a little while. Ain't no sense running this old hound any further. Just let the days pass and the eyes sink 'til it's time to move on to the next place. There's a list for ya.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Predictions
Election Night 2012 was far from the bloody Apocalypse we all feared, though no nearer to the elated and unhinged Fuckfest the best of us aspired for it to be. In the executive race, the black guy edged out the very personification of evil with the political equivalent of securing a close victory with a last second pick-six. In the upper chamber, one side couldn't entirely toe the Anti-Rape party line, so the Good Guys picked up a handful of cushiony seats in the world's most useless institution. If you think a modest advantage in a body designed to protect slavery will make a difference, I hope you end up on the other side of my next automotive transaction. As for the lower chamber, that sweatbox has been gerrymandered to a point of predictability that even Bruckheimer would find trite and offensive.
Which is all to say that it's exactly the same. We'll have fewer commercials and some of my bookmarked websites will see fewer clicks, but the architecture remains. The status quo preserved. The same hands grasp the same levers. And yet it was a monumental election.
Not in the sense of Abe or Franky, but something more akin to the election of Reagan or the end of Reconstruction. It will be the end of one of those chapters at the end of the textbook that students will not see because History classes rarely even make it to WWII. But it will be in there. Last Tuesday was, officially, the end of the George W. Bush era, which was, ostensibly, the grossest and ultimate in the Ronald Reagan era. A Black man ran for a second term with an 8% unemployment rate and a pledge to raise taxes while every single citizen had resigned themselves to the reality that the rest of their life will be worse than had it occurred a generation before. And he won. Not because Americans had some epiphany and saw that the Mormon would do the same shit that got us into this mess, only worse. After all, stupid is as stupid does and it ain't no accident that movie was a sensation in this country. He won the first term because he won the semifinal with Hillary that put him in the place to be where any Democrat would win. He won this round on his own, even if a larger chunk than we'd care to admit pulled his lever with their noses plugged.
Which leaves us with the future. Obama's second term? He'll solidify Obamacare, which should be a huge hit for the coming generations. He'll appoint one or two more female justices to help overturn Citizens United in the immediate future and serve as a sturdy firewall against numerous potential disasters in the long game. He'll get the wealthy to pay higher taxes, likely win a battle on the defense budget, and oversee enough modest economic growth to retire as the President Who Got Us Out Of The Recession. He'll be remembered as another Clinton or Eisenhower, maybe higher because he's Black. On merit alone, he won't deserve Rushmore.
The sodomizing finance industry will largely stand when he's done. Employment will continue to be tied to corporations and boards of directors. Our infrastructure will see no injection of care. New York and California will look a little brighter. Detroit too. Places without oil or any meaningful resource or economic sector will shrivel and become sources of strange violence and weird culture. Some of the latter will be bad.
But I started talking about the Pivot, didn't I? That comes in 2016, then really in 2020, when Democrats have a couple more wins under the belt because Republicans can't quite shake the Let's Be Total Cunts strategy. They'll get close, but modest electoral gains in 2014 will reinforce their obstinance, when it's really owing to the backwash comprising the off-year electorate. They'll keep Obama's greater ambitions in check, but will really be digging their own grave for 2016, when they lose the next Big One. That President will be white and win by huge margins, and therefore have a mandate. Their mandate will do Real Good, and they'll be rewarded by huge swaths in the off-year of 2018, then in their reelection in 2020. And that's when new House districts will be drawn.
The ensuing ten years will be an era of Progression such as we have ever known. So long as the India-China Resource War doesn't kick off, drawing in alliances from several other simmering conflagrations further exacerbated by The Warming of the Planet, all of which is probably the safe bet, then Prosperity will ensue. How's that for a good night's sleep?
Which is all to say that it's exactly the same. We'll have fewer commercials and some of my bookmarked websites will see fewer clicks, but the architecture remains. The status quo preserved. The same hands grasp the same levers. And yet it was a monumental election.
Not in the sense of Abe or Franky, but something more akin to the election of Reagan or the end of Reconstruction. It will be the end of one of those chapters at the end of the textbook that students will not see because History classes rarely even make it to WWII. But it will be in there. Last Tuesday was, officially, the end of the George W. Bush era, which was, ostensibly, the grossest and ultimate in the Ronald Reagan era. A Black man ran for a second term with an 8% unemployment rate and a pledge to raise taxes while every single citizen had resigned themselves to the reality that the rest of their life will be worse than had it occurred a generation before. And he won. Not because Americans had some epiphany and saw that the Mormon would do the same shit that got us into this mess, only worse. After all, stupid is as stupid does and it ain't no accident that movie was a sensation in this country. He won the first term because he won the semifinal with Hillary that put him in the place to be where any Democrat would win. He won this round on his own, even if a larger chunk than we'd care to admit pulled his lever with their noses plugged.
Which leaves us with the future. Obama's second term? He'll solidify Obamacare, which should be a huge hit for the coming generations. He'll appoint one or two more female justices to help overturn Citizens United in the immediate future and serve as a sturdy firewall against numerous potential disasters in the long game. He'll get the wealthy to pay higher taxes, likely win a battle on the defense budget, and oversee enough modest economic growth to retire as the President Who Got Us Out Of The Recession. He'll be remembered as another Clinton or Eisenhower, maybe higher because he's Black. On merit alone, he won't deserve Rushmore.
The sodomizing finance industry will largely stand when he's done. Employment will continue to be tied to corporations and boards of directors. Our infrastructure will see no injection of care. New York and California will look a little brighter. Detroit too. Places without oil or any meaningful resource or economic sector will shrivel and become sources of strange violence and weird culture. Some of the latter will be bad.
But I started talking about the Pivot, didn't I? That comes in 2016, then really in 2020, when Democrats have a couple more wins under the belt because Republicans can't quite shake the Let's Be Total Cunts strategy. They'll get close, but modest electoral gains in 2014 will reinforce their obstinance, when it's really owing to the backwash comprising the off-year electorate. They'll keep Obama's greater ambitions in check, but will really be digging their own grave for 2016, when they lose the next Big One. That President will be white and win by huge margins, and therefore have a mandate. Their mandate will do Real Good, and they'll be rewarded by huge swaths in the off-year of 2018, then in their reelection in 2020. And that's when new House districts will be drawn.
The ensuing ten years will be an era of Progression such as we have ever known. So long as the India-China Resource War doesn't kick off, drawing in alliances from several other simmering conflagrations further exacerbated by The Warming of the Planet, all of which is probably the safe bet, then Prosperity will ensue. How's that for a good night's sleep?
Monday, November 5, 2012
Election
If I'm really being honest, and if I can shed my accumulated morality from years of participation in the American human experience, and if I could conveniently ignore my quotidian hours' long poll-watching fetish, then I could fill in the starting lineup for the ideal United States government. Not in a vacuum, but in praxis. File this under: Shit done, gettin'. In this exercise, both the House of Representatives and Senate would be overwhelmingly liberal. The Senate majority leader would be from Vermont, that of the House from any one of California, Oregon, New York, or districts representing either Austin, Texas or Madison, Wisconsin. All of the swing states would have Democratic senators, but they would be low in rank and influence. The conservative congressmen would be from the most conservative states and not a single one of them would serve more than one term as they would be voted out for not being conservative enough. This way, the collective attention of the Alabamas, the Tennessees, the Idahos would be so consumed in vituperative local primaries that they would have scant energy and focus for the broader races.
The ideal President would be Republican. A Democratic President would be too consumed with the fear of going Too Far, playing themselves Out Of The Map, that they would have to hold back. A Republican President, on the other hand, working with a long-haired-and-Molotov-cocktail-throwing Legislative Branch, would go down in the annals as the Greatest Modern Leader this country has seen. Stymied at every possible move, from the budget to ethics hearings to nominees for everything from the Supreme Court to the Commerce Secretary to the Asst. Postmaster General for the Northern Rockies, the Republican President would have no choice but to play ball with the two chambers. Being a Republican, he (because it'll always be a he) would be so vainglorious as to not give three shits from Thursday about having to compromise his supposed values in executing the tasks which would be his charge. Even his token vetoes would be overruled by the supermajority in both chambers, so he would know it could never matter.
But he would still sign. By his second year, he would sign anything and everything that came from the Capitol because they would be the most beautiful pieces of legislation. His knees would be bloody from begging around the rotunda for more bills, more ceremonies, more hand-shaking on podia. The American way of life would improve exponentially and this Republican, this cocky, shitbag of conceitedness would bask in being the one at the helm when we finally got it right. He would win reelection on a crest of approval in the high 80s and it wouldn't matter if he spent the whole election introducing a scale for the gradients of rape. He would speak to the base, work with the chamber, and sop it all up like it was the last morsel of naan going into the final smear of curry.
But we don't live in an ideal world, do we? We thought we had The Guy, then reality set in. After eight years of drying their bloody grundles on every civil right earned over the past century, then receiving their comeuppance at the ballot box, the Republicans introduced a brilliant strategy. They would become Total Fucking Cunts. Every step of the way. They voted nay, they filibustered, they even explicitly told the press that they would spend the next four years being such total fucking cunts that the American people would vote them back in. Checking the polls on Election Eve, it appears as though they were wrong. But not by much.
I actually think Romney would be an okay President, in the short run. With Democratic chambers, he would probably revert to his role as a moderate and do everything to ensure the government made him look good. In the long game, he'd be more like Reagan in furthering a steady course to ruin. That wouldn't really affect him, so long as the opinion polls in the present were north of the equator. The Gipper showed us all that projecting strength and affability, on top of some modest contemporary appreciation, was sufficient fodder for the forebears to write the revisionist history upon which good posterity rests. This man has no vice, except himself; you have to almost respect a man so transparently shameless.
Alas, I will not be voting for nor wishing in any way, shape or form for a Romney Presidency. If there's one way I can sympathize with Obama haters, by which I mean people who hate Obama, it is in my imagination of a Romney presidency. Because I hate his voice. I hate his fake smile. I hate everything about his myopic worldview and douchebag religion and raising five hindered sons who look like they still run lemonade stands well into their 30s. Having Mitt Romney for a President would be like taking a four-year cruise with some clingy, desperate bitch that attended every bingo game and cocktail hour and Meet the Captain in a mink coat and raspy voice with skinny cigarettes and insisted on asking every stupid question at an obscenely high decibel. You could tell the other passengers that she wasn't really accompanying you, and many of them would quietly sympathize and understand. The best you could hope for would be pity. The worst would be those quiet hours when the casino has closed and you're too worn down to even drink; you're sharing the tiny bunk and the only light comes through the porthole above your head. She's obnoxiously snoring beside you and hogging the blankets as the ship cradles back-and-forth in a gentle heave-haw, and just when you imagine that it couldn't possibly get any worse- she opens her eyes. She turns to find your own and there's a pause. And just then, at the trough of your existence, with six more hours until breakfast, she figures it'd be a good idea to have a chat.
The ideal President would be Republican. A Democratic President would be too consumed with the fear of going Too Far, playing themselves Out Of The Map, that they would have to hold back. A Republican President, on the other hand, working with a long-haired-and-Molotov-cocktail-throwing Legislative Branch, would go down in the annals as the Greatest Modern Leader this country has seen. Stymied at every possible move, from the budget to ethics hearings to nominees for everything from the Supreme Court to the Commerce Secretary to the Asst. Postmaster General for the Northern Rockies, the Republican President would have no choice but to play ball with the two chambers. Being a Republican, he (because it'll always be a he) would be so vainglorious as to not give three shits from Thursday about having to compromise his supposed values in executing the tasks which would be his charge. Even his token vetoes would be overruled by the supermajority in both chambers, so he would know it could never matter.
But he would still sign. By his second year, he would sign anything and everything that came from the Capitol because they would be the most beautiful pieces of legislation. His knees would be bloody from begging around the rotunda for more bills, more ceremonies, more hand-shaking on podia. The American way of life would improve exponentially and this Republican, this cocky, shitbag of conceitedness would bask in being the one at the helm when we finally got it right. He would win reelection on a crest of approval in the high 80s and it wouldn't matter if he spent the whole election introducing a scale for the gradients of rape. He would speak to the base, work with the chamber, and sop it all up like it was the last morsel of naan going into the final smear of curry.
But we don't live in an ideal world, do we? We thought we had The Guy, then reality set in. After eight years of drying their bloody grundles on every civil right earned over the past century, then receiving their comeuppance at the ballot box, the Republicans introduced a brilliant strategy. They would become Total Fucking Cunts. Every step of the way. They voted nay, they filibustered, they even explicitly told the press that they would spend the next four years being such total fucking cunts that the American people would vote them back in. Checking the polls on Election Eve, it appears as though they were wrong. But not by much.
I actually think Romney would be an okay President, in the short run. With Democratic chambers, he would probably revert to his role as a moderate and do everything to ensure the government made him look good. In the long game, he'd be more like Reagan in furthering a steady course to ruin. That wouldn't really affect him, so long as the opinion polls in the present were north of the equator. The Gipper showed us all that projecting strength and affability, on top of some modest contemporary appreciation, was sufficient fodder for the forebears to write the revisionist history upon which good posterity rests. This man has no vice, except himself; you have to almost respect a man so transparently shameless.
Alas, I will not be voting for nor wishing in any way, shape or form for a Romney Presidency. If there's one way I can sympathize with Obama haters, by which I mean people who hate Obama, it is in my imagination of a Romney presidency. Because I hate his voice. I hate his fake smile. I hate everything about his myopic worldview and douchebag religion and raising five hindered sons who look like they still run lemonade stands well into their 30s. Having Mitt Romney for a President would be like taking a four-year cruise with some clingy, desperate bitch that attended every bingo game and cocktail hour and Meet the Captain in a mink coat and raspy voice with skinny cigarettes and insisted on asking every stupid question at an obscenely high decibel. You could tell the other passengers that she wasn't really accompanying you, and many of them would quietly sympathize and understand. The best you could hope for would be pity. The worst would be those quiet hours when the casino has closed and you're too worn down to even drink; you're sharing the tiny bunk and the only light comes through the porthole above your head. She's obnoxiously snoring beside you and hogging the blankets as the ship cradles back-and-forth in a gentle heave-haw, and just when you imagine that it couldn't possibly get any worse- she opens her eyes. She turns to find your own and there's a pause. And just then, at the trough of your existence, with six more hours until breakfast, she figures it'd be a good idea to have a chat.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Sandy
I, Solipsist. Where were you when.....the Challenger exploded? .....9/11? ......the Black President was elected? We chain ourselves to history with exaggerated tales of what we did and how we felt when events far greater than our meager, insect selves transpire far beyond the ant house. We cling to it because we want to matter. We want to be safe in the moment, threatened in hindsight, and greeted with open jaws and wide eyes when we spin our tale in the future.
I have to admit: I had a pretty good hurricane. I can check the box for being in the storm, and I'll have the opportunity to embellish the wind's howl and light's flicker. I won't admit to being scared, mostly because I wasn't, but also because I slept better that night than I had in at least the previous month. I'll tell anyone willing to listen about watching the live feed of images on various websites showing that many of my citizens were having a far worse time of things. I come away with only praise for BBC's Sherlock.
For all the pant-staining induced by the storm itself, it is its wake that inspires true fear. We sit up in our foxholes, life and limb intact, then stand to survey who in our ranks was not so fortunate. With Irene, it was the fellas Upstate. This bitch Sandy will give steady work to every appraiser in Jersey for the foreseeable future and, closer to home, tore a worm-hole into the Big Apple that will not soon be repaired or forgotten. And here in Brooklyn, or, at least "Brooklyn", we get to raise the All Clear flag.
This I saw the day after, chasing the drowned carousel or Superfund waterway spilling onto its neighbors. Beyond the clutter in the bike lanes, there was not much disturbance in the force. So I turned in a Big One, overindulging in marijuana and losing at dice in a not-entirely-cold backyard to some bar in Williamsburg. Had that been the extent of My Storm, I would not be writing this.
Because the next day I looked from light to dark and saw that this was more than just a place of residence. Lower Manhattan was without power, but the bridge was open and I'd just shilled out $30 for a new wheel on my Schwinn Varsity. I went with one friend inside the dark belly of the beast and all we found was electricity. Ever rolled through Mulberry Street and not seen a single soul? Ever only been able to distinguish the street signs in the Financial District because of the full moon? Ever stepped into a candlelit dive bar and known it was ready right then and there to be filmed for a Gangs of New York prequel? Lower Manhattan was like Williamsburg in the early 90s, but with a massive police presence. All the pencil pushers and post-fraternity jabronis fled to higher ground and neighborhoods like Soho, the East Village, and TriBeCa were......authentic? Authentic! Yes! Yes they were! I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on international travel and rarely been so rewarded as I've been the past two nights with my bicycle and a trusty companion.
And as I write the power is back on, the subway is gradually coming back and a massive relief effort is underway. I'm left to wonder if it was all a dream and, if not, then I'm quite confident I'll have one of the better stories when school resumes and we all tell each other What We Did During The Storm.
I have to admit: I had a pretty good hurricane. I can check the box for being in the storm, and I'll have the opportunity to embellish the wind's howl and light's flicker. I won't admit to being scared, mostly because I wasn't, but also because I slept better that night than I had in at least the previous month. I'll tell anyone willing to listen about watching the live feed of images on various websites showing that many of my citizens were having a far worse time of things. I come away with only praise for BBC's Sherlock.
For all the pant-staining induced by the storm itself, it is its wake that inspires true fear. We sit up in our foxholes, life and limb intact, then stand to survey who in our ranks was not so fortunate. With Irene, it was the fellas Upstate. This bitch Sandy will give steady work to every appraiser in Jersey for the foreseeable future and, closer to home, tore a worm-hole into the Big Apple that will not soon be repaired or forgotten. And here in Brooklyn, or, at least "Brooklyn", we get to raise the All Clear flag.
This I saw the day after, chasing the drowned carousel or Superfund waterway spilling onto its neighbors. Beyond the clutter in the bike lanes, there was not much disturbance in the force. So I turned in a Big One, overindulging in marijuana and losing at dice in a not-entirely-cold backyard to some bar in Williamsburg. Had that been the extent of My Storm, I would not be writing this.
Because the next day I looked from light to dark and saw that this was more than just a place of residence. Lower Manhattan was without power, but the bridge was open and I'd just shilled out $30 for a new wheel on my Schwinn Varsity. I went with one friend inside the dark belly of the beast and all we found was electricity. Ever rolled through Mulberry Street and not seen a single soul? Ever only been able to distinguish the street signs in the Financial District because of the full moon? Ever stepped into a candlelit dive bar and known it was ready right then and there to be filmed for a Gangs of New York prequel? Lower Manhattan was like Williamsburg in the early 90s, but with a massive police presence. All the pencil pushers and post-fraternity jabronis fled to higher ground and neighborhoods like Soho, the East Village, and TriBeCa were......authentic? Authentic! Yes! Yes they were! I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on international travel and rarely been so rewarded as I've been the past two nights with my bicycle and a trusty companion.
And as I write the power is back on, the subway is gradually coming back and a massive relief effort is underway. I'm left to wonder if it was all a dream and, if not, then I'm quite confident I'll have one of the better stories when school resumes and we all tell each other What We Did During The Storm.
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