hi hi 2009

First post of the new year. I'm even more intoxicated and more tired. I'm happy to see that Dick Clark has stuck around for yet another one, and amused as always to note that the annual decrease in the quality of the pop stars he surrounds himself with continues unabated. The Jonas Brothers...Kelly Pickler...a self-serving and utterly pointless spot documenting Miley Cyrus' sweet 16 party (like, who gives a FLYING FUCK?).

Ugg, as the ugly boots say. Here's hoping that 2009 is the year that Ugg boots go footwear hell. Happy New Year.

bye bye 2008

Last post of the year. I am a little intoxicated at the moment, a little tired. The others are in the kitchen with The Twilight Zone marathon on SciFi, a bunch of cheese, caviar, and acoholic refreshments on the table. I, meanwhile, am here on the iMac listening to a cool, very early Genesis single ("A Winter's Tale/One Eyed Hound") on 45junkee's channel on YouTube.

I suppose I'm ending the year on a marginally better mood note than I have been lately. As long as I can keep the money situation under control, pay the bills and all, I suppose I'll be okay.

Here's hoping that 2009 will be a better, happier, and somewhat easier-to-live year for me, Cherie, and everyone else. What are the chances? Stranger things have happened, you know.

Now listening to another 45junkee vintage single, this one by Love Sculpture featuring Dave Edmunds.

Music like that makes me happy.

Funny thing; back then everyone, just like today, lamented how complex and awful life had become and waxed nostalgic for the simpler, happier times of the past. Do good old days really exist, or is that simply another kind of illusion, like the mp3s that have replaced physical records like the vapors that sublime from a block of ice? I don't know. Time moves in only one direction, unfortunately. It would be nice for people to rediscover the virtues of simplicity and sincerity and respect, but that's so last century.

Celebrate, and be careful driving, folks.

Merrie Hollidays

Best season's wishes to all of you who who are or, more likely, aren't reading this blog.

I apologize for my last few, extremely unhinged postings. Once again, I find myself in Moogyblog territory--this blog was supposed to be fun. Once again, I need to get my head screwed on straight.

Fortunately, lately I've been in a marginally better mood with the holidays coming up and a lot of work to keep my mind occupied with things other than misery. I've also been taking my Wellbutrin again, which must help some. We had a Secret Santa at work today; my gift, to one of the dudes in the coffee bar, was a copper-colored martini shaker to which I applied a little, retro-looking handmade tag that stated: "For use with COFFEE ONLY!" I thought this impromptu holiday gift idea (there was even a thematically related card that I found) was pretty damn clever, considering I walked into Target with the vague idea of a hat/scarf/mittens combo that another coworker suggested to me and the shaker idea didn't hit me until I saw the thing on a display table and a flashcube* in my head went "pop". Cherie commented that she liked seeing me in those now-rare occasions when I get excited with a creative activity. I designed, drew (with Prismacolor markers--they still work after a decade!), and cut out the tag in about an hour. I still have it in me, at least, that much is evident.

For the time being I am going to concentrate on putting financial worries and bill stress and general miserability out of sight except when I'm dealing with them. We've decided that we are getting rid of our car in favor of something cheaper; what and how, we don't know yet, but Cherie constantly reassures me that we'll figure it out. Meanwhile I have to send goddamn CitiFinancialAuto another payment. Oh well. I'm not looking forward to opening our latest electric bill from PSE&G. It was $60 last month. We couldn't pay it. Wonder what it is this month, what with that "security deposit" racket they tack on to every delinquent bill. Or wait: no, I don't wonder. I'll deal with it after the holidays. I want to be merry for at least a few goddamn days, or at least as merry as two hours of sleep a night will allow.

*In those happier, simpler times before electronic strobes were built into cheap consumer cameras, people inserted these crystalline cube-shaped devices into their 126-format Kodak Instamatic or clone. Each face of the cube contained a one-shot flash bulb of the old-fashioned kind, filled wih a tuft of combustible magnesium wool that would burn when you tripped the shutter; the whole cube rotated when you advanced the film, so you had a total of four flashes before you had to pull that nonbiodegradable cube out and toss it for a fresh one. (With some, you could even set them off by jamming a key into the slots in the bottom of the cube.) You didn't pop off three dozen lousy photos in a row of your friends making stupid faces in those days. Most of my family's photos were taken with cameras and accessories like those just mentioned. Illuminating my cute little mug probably accounts for at least a few cubic feet of earth filled with spent flashcubes, products of a long-gone, laughably ignorant age.

up and down

Just a quick post to let you all know that I haven't offed myself. I've just been too busy and/or not in the mood to post anything. Again--stressed about money and bills, homesick a lot, more crying fits, you know the routine. And it snowed and sleeted heavily today. My tires are nearly bald, you know. On a car that I have to pay $325 on. We're gonna try to get rid of it within a month, and hopefully come up with something that costs less. We came up with that plan, with Cherie's mom's help, after Cherie and I had a big fight because we discovered that we didn't have enough money to pay for rent and the car and some other stuff. Selling more of my stuff was mentioned, and quickly, categorically, taken off the table.

Anyway, one nice thing I did, after we amicably made up, was set up my old Farfisa organ in the living room...one of the things that I refused to consider selling. Glory of glories, the old lady still works, although the accompanying F/AR (the organ's combined power supply/preamp/reverb unit, if you're not a combo organ fan) sounds like it has a bad capacitor or transistor somewhere.

I think I may write some more poetry. Something about homesickness and abject poverty and loneliness You didn't know that I do that?



PS--
Thanks for leaving that comment, Adam. I am so heartened to hear from you--a note from a valued friend from home means more to me than anything else I may get this Christmas. I'll email you privately very soon and hopefully we can talk on the phone or something. I miss you, dude.

I went out and bought a pack of cigarettes. It's the only thing I somewhat enjoy that I can afford.

yeah

Ever have one of those days when you wish you had a nice, solid .357 Magnum so that you could just say FUCK YOU to the cruel world and blow your own brains out? In the grisliest, bloodiest, most painful looking fashion so that everyone would be absofuckinglutely clear on how much you hurt inside. Let your feelings out, don't keep them bottled up inside. How true. If I couldn't get images of my poor mother being devastated out of my mind, a nice bloody suicide would be a terribly attractive option right now. A big FUCK YOU to fate which led me to where I am now--this godforsaken fucking SHITHOLE far away from my family--and I'm a fucking failure at everything and I've proven that I can't take care of my fucking self, locked into an impossible situation and too many people to try to work out pathetic deals with. IWANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE DIE ID DIE IDIE DIEDIDIE DI Έ´I´IÎIΈ´ˆ´ˆç´

And more

I've been crying a lot lately. Every day, practically. I never would have thought that my life in Columbus would be something I'd want back so badly, but here I am wishing I was living on E. Patterson Ave. and working for the YMCA again. I'm trying to like Jersey and everything, but being all close to New York, the Greatest City In The World as the radio station likes to trumpet, ain't doing me any good.

My paycheck (a real one, still not direct deposit) went through today. Not soon enough to avoid another fucking insufficient funds charge when my car insurance posted, but fortunately in time to avoid yet another one when my monthly pay-down-my-over-$1000-over-the-credit-limit payment did. That leaves $415 for my quarter share of the rent, my half-share of the car payment, and everything else that needs paid now. Yeah, everything's going to be just fine. We'll manage.

This Christmas season I have very little to be hopeful for, and not much to look forward to except at least several more very cold months of financial hardship--yeah, for three months I'm gonna be out another $200 a month while I pay the premiums on my health insurance, so we're gonna be even worse off than now--until I hopefully get some kind of raise. That is, unless they announce a wage freeze or layoffs or some other "measures". But at least I have endless repeats of holiday music on the radio to keep my spirits somewhat up for another couple of weeks.

Happy music from happier times.

It's hard to listen to Andy Williams' version of "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" and not think of the relative prosperity of those days--when you could have a family, a nice car, a clean house and dinner on the table in the suburbs, and a reasonably interesting side hobby like ham radio on the side...on ONE paycheck, from a company who you could feel reasonably certain would employ you until you retired. My dad worked twenty-five years at Grant Medical Center back in Columbus, was able to purchase two houses and support a wife and three kids on his measly salary. Until the business school geniuses came in in the late '80s and cleaned house, and I got to eat government cheese for a while. It actually was pretty tasty. Being on de facto welfare to get it was not.

Me? I just have a measly salary, a mountain of debt, and I'm paying someone else's mortgage. And I'm usually too dispirited to indulge in my side hobby and too poor and time-crunched to develop any new ones. I work. I come home. I eat, walk the dogs, and then I sleep. Repeat ad infinitum. I guess it'd probably be the same in Columbus anymore--no more $900 paychecks. I was an idiot. Dad got laid off from his 25 year gig at the hospital--no choice of his own. I actually chose to uproot myself. I could have stayed at the Y as long as I wanted, lived rent-free as long as mom and dad let me, and I gave it up voluntarily. What was I thinking?

WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING????????

A BETTER LIFE. KEY WORD: BETTER. NOT THIS SHITTY FUCKING EXISTENCE.

THIS IS NOT WHAT I CAME OUT HERE FOR.

Crying fits

You want to see how easy it is to get me into tears these days?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUU2ljnS3wY

I found myself watching it over and over this morning, and by the time I was taking our dogs for their morning walk up Hawthorne Street, tears were dribbling down my face. I must have looked crazy or hilarious, depending on the viewer's disposition.

And you know, the thing is, 1981 wasn't even a great time to be me; I was starting third grade at Medary Elementary (RIP) under a mean old hag of a teacher and a bunch of mean kids. But nostalgia has a funny way of working, and one of the pleasanter aspects of life as a 7 year old in the early '80s was that I was an incessant TV watcher. This stupid little 5 second network ID with its splendiferous musical cue evokes a lot of probably irrational memories and emotions in this stressed out, perpetually depressed mind. And tears. At least it seemed like simpler, happier times.

There were other details too. My first Rubik's cube. My original Simon game which, amazingly, I think I still have somewhere in my parents' house. My beloved bottle of blue Magic Sand. My first cassette recorder, an Audition portable from the long-deceased Woolco store at Graceland Shopping Center. Trips downtown with my mom, on the old orange COTA GMC New Look bus, to see the magical Christmas displays at Lazarus (our equivalent of Macy's, also gone).

And to think that I used be contemptuous of nostalgic thirtysomethings for going all gooey for THEIR generation's formative years. A belated apology to all those Boomers I berated.

PS--Come to think of it, at around the time this NBC id aired, the country was in the midst of what was then the worst recession since the Depression, with unemployment near 11% according to this story on The Huffington Post. The fact that I was totally unaware of that is what people mean by the innocence of childhood. Innocence definitely lost in my case.