Blast of Silence

It’s really interesting, the little nuggets of knowledge these office-drudge jobs impart.  For example in my last job at the Jenkens & Gilchrist mail room I learned that the value of a stamp (.37) when multiplied by a multiple of 3 produced a palindrome of the corresponding multiple of 3.  To wit:

.37 x 3 = 1.11

.37 x 6 = 2.22

.37 x 9 = 3.33

.37 x 12 = 4.44

.37 x 15 = 5.55

.37 x 27 = 9.99

It stops working after 27.  But holy shit, right?

I also discovered the numerical name of God, but was sworn to secrecy by a clique of Kabbalist Vampires.  Sorry!

That’s all over now. I got downsized from The Law Firm of Jenkens and Gilchrist, and guess what fuckers?  The whistle is about to be blown.

What follows is a list of 20 absolute truths about J&G:

1.  Productivity is managed by a bald-pated kettle drummer at the far end of the office.  All who do not work in time to his steady rhythm are tied to stakes, coated with tar and set ablaze to light the hallways with their amber glow.

2. Associate Attorneys, or "Omegas," can be recognized by their bejeweled codpieces. 

3. One can only make Partner after killing and eating the heart of a cougar.

4. One of the most prominent clients of the firm is the rap ensemble Cyprus Hill.

5. The firm employs no Irish.

6. Employees can only marry within the firm.  Those unmarried by age 30 are silently banished to the Labyrinth of Mists.

7.  There is a woman in the Dallas office named Tanis Lickholter.

8.  All the doctors on the company HMO practice Humeric Medicine.

9.  Everyone looks forward to the J&G Holiday Party at Wildfire Steakhouse, where new employees recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards at sword-point.

10. While virgin sacrifice is not "necessary" for advancement, it’s pretty much understood.

11. Regional Office manager Mike Arizzi is Benito Mussolini’s grandson.

12.  Those running over 20 minutes late must call in to the J&G Sickness Hot-line or be fed to Henry Gilchrist’s ocelots.

13.  The J&G office locations worldwide include New York, San Antonio, Pasadena, Washington DC, and Polar Deathbase Zero.

14.  Human Resources Director Dawn Dykshorn stays youthful by bathing in champagne and panda blood.

15.  The best part of the workweek is Cockfight Tuesday.

16.  Managing Attorney Bob Schwimmer’s face is hidden behind an iron mask which covers disfiguring burns from an childhood alchemical accident.

17. Harvey Jenkens’s office is kept exactly like it was the day he died on September 7th, 1983, in anticipation of his glorious return.

18.  J&G is a paperless office, but is responsible for the destruction of 50,000 acres of forest anyway.

19.  Administrative Assistant Adrian White is the niece of Illinois Secretary of state Jesse White, a fact reinforced by that medallion she always wears.

20.  On Casual Fridays, Office Services Clerks are free to wear their denim gimp masks.

I had a really great weekend.  I’ll tell you about it soon Dear Diary.  Swoon.

Guess what Planet Earth!?  I got a new job copying the entire file archive of an insurance company!!  Here ends my deadbeat holiday.  I’m back to waking up early, wearing shirts with collars/sleeves, and eating Honey Nut Cheerios for dinner at 1:30 in the morning.

I’m totally the life of my new office.  Every morning when I flounce in past the rows of cubicles, it’s just a domino effect of secretaries sliding their glasses down their noses to check me out better.  I promise.

I’ve started rereading Pat Barker’s Regeneration about the Craiglockhart Hospital were some of the greatest minds in Britain crossed paths against the backdrop of Great War.  I’ve also begun The Picture of Dorian Gray which is by a gay person. 

Dorian Gray was influenced by Against Nature and even came up in Wilde’s Sodomy trials.  Wilde went to Reading Gaol.  Huysmans became a Benedictine monk and had his eyes sewn shut.

Seriously.  I love my dear, sweet Granny.  She is in her late EIGHTIES, sharp as a tack and overflowing with love and life.  Last month she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Her surgery coincided with the time I spent down in Carolina so I got to see her both before and after, super-market bouquet in hand.  Happily, everything looks as though it turned out fine, it looks as though she won’t even need any follow-up treatment beyond simple medication.

While she was in the hospital, my Death Metal Aunt came over to my grandparents apartment in Chesapeake to cheer up my Grandfather (Leonard) with 3D Burlesque movies.

When we were conversing about her treatment options (removal of lump vs. removal of breast) she was nervously joking: "Take the whole thing!  Leonard doesn’t see me as a SEX OBJECT anymore!"  That’s Doris.  Nothing but love.

I’m writing today from Manteo, NC, on the shores of the brackish Albemarle Sound!  It’s 5:30pm, dark, and the little tourist town is deserted and sleepy save for the few teenagers who, like me at this time of evening so many years ago, are holding a candle-lit poetry readings on the marshy boardwalk by the aquarium.  Or, like the ones who are not like me, attaching KC lights to their monster trucks so they can have light by which to cockfight.  Manteo is a town of extremes.  One might say, X-tremes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since I stepped out of the taxi at my Granny’s house yesterday morning, I’ve had the feedbag on.  It is absolutely wonderful.  I pause from eating shrimp ‘n’ grits and pea spoup and brickle cookies only to stand up and high-five Norman Rockwell.  I spent this evening, no joke, helping my mom bake an apple pie.  X-reme!!!!!!!!!!!

My parents are super great, and my sister is less passive agressive than usual.  Just a moment ago she was admonishing me for not knowing how to type without looking at the keys.  It took every once of willpower in my body not to wrestle her down and give her the Indian-burn of a lifetime.  She is, in my opinion, a poop face.  Sometimes.

Today I took a walk around Manteo’s quaint downtown, drank coffee and read Against Nature (I’ve got Huysmania!), saw a dog sleeping in front of the barbershop, killed sometime in the library, and pretty much hit Manteo like a Hurricane of fun.  X-treme!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Three days ago I got downsized.  So until I have a new job/a computer, I won’t be able to blog it up as regularly.

I’m free!

This past Friday I took the 6 Bus down to Hyde Park were my man-at-arms Irv Gotti was holding court at his co-op house, getting 19 anarcho-marxist vegan grad students ready to put aside their polemics for an evening of ravey fun in honor of Dia de los Muertos.  While there I ate tasty Indian food, had a terrific brain-pick with a young lady who practices the Millinery arts, danced all slutty with a bunch of physics students and artist’s models, was generally drunken, and basically stuck it to death all night long. 

The following morning it was clear that I had overdone things:  Head shrieking with pain, crumpled sideways in a homemade wicker chair, my trousers around my ankles, saytan in my hair, Wealth of Nations in one hand, a bottle of sweet vermouth in the other, and "Smash the patriarchy!" scribbled on my privates in red Sharpie.   

After sleeping off my hangover I accompanied Irv through the Saturday morning fog to a little french bakery where we sipped espresso and nibbled art nouveau pastries.  I don’t remember what we talked about.  Probably chix. Later, we wandered over to the best record shop in Chicago, where Irvin chatted boisterously with the one clerk while the other wearied herself with eye-rolling.

After saying good-by to the co-opers, Irv and I boarded a train to eat a sumptuous meal in Chicago’s Chinatown, including (giggle) curried fish ballzzz.  The restaurant was super small and packed, and we sat right next to a couple that was gabbing about some recent surgery.  Yum!  As we wolfed down our meal, Irv watched them depart, commenting, "they talked so we didn’t have to."   

This Tuesday I saw The Lords and Scalpels play at the town hall pub.  It’s a tiny little bar with a ancient jukebox providing nearly all the lighting and an distinct odor reminiscent of Charles Bukowski’s laundry basket.  Scalpels were a band of stylish little nerds who played echo-y guitar, Cherokee drums, and fuzz bass.  They were fronted, or rather middled, by a girl in a puffy coat who sort of Gregorian Chanted into the delayed mic.  It was a lot better than I’m making it sound.  It reminded me of Isis mixed with Excepter.  D-D-D-Dorkset!!

After the Lords played a set in front of a Matterhorn of amps and speakers.  (So loud I got a toothache) I hung out with some of the guys from Scalpels watching Friday the 13th VII: The New Blood.  We participated in the novel practice of providing our own commentary and dialogue to the muted film, the results of which were simply charming.

I also got to share a few words with Mary Ann, one of the tattooed punk girls from two posts back.  I complimented her on a bow she was wearing in her hair by saying it made her looked cartoony.  Then I kissed her hand and rode away on a stallion. 

Hey!  Look up above!  I made a lame music equation!  Y’know, "It reminded me of Isis mixed with Excepter. "  It’s a fun game to make these up about fake bands and then repeat them drunkenly at concerts.  It makes you look like a real champ, I promise.

"You heard Off Duty Astronauts?  Well, they’re pretty much like Tilly and the Wall crossed with Morbid Angel and Chopped and Screwed."

"Did you see Magnus Ollyykker last year at the Booze Chamber?  Yeah, it was like Kelis had a baby by Will Oldham, and they named it after the bass player from Marcy Playground"

"Did you listen to the new Crumbly Crumbly remix?  It was like Wilson Pickett backed up by Silver Mount Zion and Swans."

"Oh man! You like Swarthy Rainbow!?  They’re basically Deadeye Dick as seen through the rose colored glasses of Donovan." 

"Chippy Fairweather sounds like Mortiis discussing Missing Persons over tea with Harry Chapin."

"You’ve never heard The Kolumbine Kids Klub?  Okay, think The Incredible String Band in a Merzbow sandwich with Erase Eratta and Whodini."

"A young mack, but I don’t think I’m all that

I just can’t sweat another brother’s bozack

So what the fuck, y’all movin on up

Gonna swim in big bucks, like Scrooge McDuck

And if ya don’t like and you wanna step up

Then open your mouth, and suck my nuts."

-Guru of Gangstarr, from the song Words form the Nutcracker

It’s been a while, by bloggo.  I blame David Eggers.  I got as far as the Real World interview section of AHWOSG before the book imploded under the weight of its own irony - I tearfully declared myself a citizen of the 20th century and fell upon my upraised bayonet. 

Fuck that guy.  Now I can’t write about myself without feeling the chimera of narcissism gnawing at my back with her venomous fangs.  Being in your mid-twenties is difficult y’all.

Also, not a lot has been going on.  I’ve been drifting from one locale to another and keeping my damn trap shut.  I ate mashed potatoes with some punk girls with matching Shell Silverstien tattoos.  I ran into Marcy again, and embarrassed her by remembering her name.  I burned a bushel of CDs for my technotarded friend Ben, who, If I wasn’t there would have found a way to set himself on fire with my roommate’s iBook. 

I’ve been constrained because I’ve been broke, broke, broke and making sure everyone knows it.  If it hadn’t been for complementary meals at the office Halloween Happy Hour (just too much fun!), White Sox Victory Celebration, Evangelical Church Carnival (not kidding), and Comedy Writing Workshop (Premise + Punch = Laughs-a-Million) I would be boiling my own shoe leather. 

If you kept the right company, you could survive on free foodstuffs 4 life!

I got paid yesterday and treated myself to an evening snack of Boddington’s Pub Ale and Marmalade on Saltines.  I’ve got ricketscurvey.

I gave them the tape on Monday, and one day later the review is "Your tape was crazy."

Alright, no false modesty.  This morning when I went in for coffee, the baristas looked up to see me and let out a banshee wail of unrequited passion.  Immediately all three vaulted over the counter, upsetting a pyramid of cinnamon-chip muffins in their desperate haste.  Frozen with surprise, I suddenly found myself pinned to the cafe floor, hands tearing at my clothes and hair.  "I will devour him and steal his power," cried the girl with orange hair and septum ring, "that tape destroyed my brain and replaced it with candy!"  "I want to love him as only a woman can!"  squealed another, her stocking-cap askew, "That tape made me feel like I was sweetly ravaged by a Kodiak Bear!"  Adding,"He’s mine!"  The skinny gentleman with the Rotary Club tank top shook me wildly by the collar.  "Why do you walk among us!?  No man who made such a tape can be mortal!!  That mix makes Guernica, look like whale shit!"  With a bellow, and a burst of adrenaline-strength I wrestled to my feet and lurched for the door, each limb towing the body of a weeping employee.  I finally shook them off and ran for the train, dodging volley after volley of tossed underwear.  It’s a fucking miracle I escaped with my life.

Crazy.

This Sunday I went exploring, and around noon found myself down in Daily Plaza watching an acrobat.  She was doing a rope routine, tangling and untangling herself 50 feet above the concrete.  The acrobat was dressed as a sexy witch.

I then made my way over to the Cultural Center, where I saw some screen prints and photographs.  I don’t know if you knew this, but war is everywhere and it is bad.

I then took the Blue Line over to Wicker Park and the Damen bus back to Lincoln Square.  Halfway through the trip, the driver began loudly dispensing child-rearing advice through the open door to a woman walking alongside the bus.  During the ride, I happened to be sitting across from the female Peter Lorre.

I ate lunch at the house of Wah Sun, a Chinese restaurant that looks like a Pizza Hut crossed with a condemned barn.  Indoors however, the atmosphere is surprisingly cozy. 

Then I went to Evil Clown and bought this. 

But should have picked up this.