Spencer Lund

One of the more underrated things about an overrated city is the subway system in New York. Yes,...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:51:07 -0500

One of the more underrated things about an overrated city is the

subway system in New York. Yes, even writing a sentence about New York feels fatigued, but the subway is both the most New York thing about New York—insofar as it represents the city’s rushed and wedged commuters flailing about—and also a pretty jolting stimulant. Which is what New York is supposed to be, or at least attempts to be—I think.

There is nothing like battling the 6 train crowd at 7:15 on a weekday or a 2:00 AM Saturday morning L train heading to Canarsie as the pleading, concubine of last call. It’s an agoraphobe’s nightmare where the phrase “teeming humanity” seems like an understatement. The body odor alone at 6:23 PM on a Thursday will make anyone familiar with the aroma wrinkle their nose with remembrance.

Or the homeless person that’s been napping since they got on in Cony Island. Their plume of forgotten egg sandwiches can send many a hungover bruh bro straight to the train gap for a quick retch.

Then, there are the good nights. You’re heading home after a particularly numbing day of computer things and phone calls and 20 minute meetings that make your skin scratchy, and you catch the eye of someone on the train just as a piece of music from your headphones crashes into your ears as you smile at this enchanting stranger haloed by the tune.

Or you’re going somewhere: a party in the UWS domicile of a kid you knew from high school, and you’re 20 minutes removed from drinking and snorting some molly. So your head lolls at an angle and a sly smile creeps out from behind the city transit mask and your body is charged by the people out; really out for a night of drinking, smoking, dancing, chattering, flirting, fucking, tooting, puking and grasping at the idea of New York we read about before we move here.

There’s a song on your iPod or iPhone that can sway with the clattering train and your ears pop under the East River as you briefly think about all the corpses that have been dumped directly above you; you wonder at the engineering marvel of the train tunnel where workers were able to pour enough concrete to stem the pressure crashing all around them—and now you.

The same pressure of New York, the New York of no jobs, and passive occupations and active incarcerations. The pressure to simply keep that roof above your head. Unyielding and clautraphobic, the pressure is ubiquitous with the city and the trains. Most can’t handle that pressure without a few tips of the bourbon, or toots of the yey or tokes from the battie.

We’re all drug users in New York City. Just look at the person next to you on the subway.

I almost died this morning

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:29:38 -0500

The corner of Humboldt and Metropolitan Ave in East Williamsburg almost turned into the scene of my death this morning. I was listening to Robyn, and wearing sunglasses, so when I made the turn to cross Metropolitan, I didn’t see the incoming truck until it was almost too late.

“Until it was almost too late” could have been any number of sentient beings that have a brush with “cruel” death. The distance between that truck and my vulnerable body, the “distance on the look of death” doesn’t flash anything (like childhood snapshots mingled with teenage fantasies), or bring one’s life into sharper focus; it’s merely an almost end. An ellipses of consequences I’ll ponder until I forget.

The “almost” moments once drove me to consume bourbon at 11 AM on a Monday morning. Now I’m just left with a feeling we all get at some point: it’s pointless, this fleeting thing called life.

If I had died this morning, I would have left: roughly 5-10 friends in hysterics; one upset lady; one set of parents numb from grief; a twin sister alone with an aging family; a set of sentences untethered to anything resembling completion; a life, barely flickering towards a largely uncaring world.

I almost died this morning, and absolutely nothing of import would have changed. Once you figure out that humble point about your insigficant gait upon the world, then you’re truly free.

In other words, nobody gives a shit. You’re dead. Try and enjoy whatever the hell happens then.

We’re not Whitney Houston, and I’ve already turned down “the hard stuff,” so the end won’t happen with a pipe and rock, but it will come—hopefully later rather than sooner. The point driven home this morning during my “almost death,” is “when” doesn’t matter so much as the inexorable almost’s that dot one’s brief moments of corporeal existence.

The fire flickered in Plato’s cave as that truck came chugging by and the exhuast plumed in my face; for a moment there weren’t any shadows on the wall. All was nothingness. I’m cool with that: I’ve looked that Tyger down, and the Sheep was just as alone in the end.

The truck didn’t miss God; Now shut up, and get off the curb. Looking both ways isn’t necessary.

I never understood why Adrenalin Junkies confused, or worse, terrified the people more apt to...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:12:25 -0500

I never understood why Adrenalin Junkies confused, or worse, terrified the people more apt to “playing it safe.” Every time I’ve seen someone squirm as a person does some BASE jumping, skydiving or bungey jumping—most likely this squirming happened while we were watching said activities on the television—I can’t grasp their fear for this stranger.

Certain individuals subscribe to Wallace Steven’s edict that “Death is the mother of beauty,” and as such they’re likely to take that line to its inevitable extreme: playing with death to augment a life littered with banal activies.

You wake up, brush your teeth, shower, go to work, eat, work, go home, eat again, brush your teeth, and maybe read a book or go work out, then fall back asleep. If you’re lucky, maybe you’re doing the sex to someone you’re in love with in the middle of this every day routine. But then, you still rinse, and repeat.

Obviously human beings are hardwired to find routines in order to deal with the avalanche of things we can’t control (this is why some people have such a hard time on airplanes—its placing control of one’s life in another’s hands). I get this side of “playing it safe,” and I even often subscribe to it myself, but some people simply can’t live that way.

These Adrenalin Junkies are hardwired to only feel real joy when faced with the the ultimate punishment: sloughing off this mortal coil. It’s a natural extension of Steven’s line. Death makes everything in life more beautiful. The yin and yang complimenting each other; you’re only truly alive inside when they’re risking life itself in some dangerous stunt. After overcoming the risk and surviving, everything else is simply a waiting period until the next time you face what may be the final chapter in your life.

When some people take drugs to numb themselves against the awful routine of life, they’re not much different from these Adrenaline Junkies. Both sects of people aren’t content with the prearranged trivialities most of us place such an importance on. They’re combating a routine that’s safe, but also claustrophobic.

I don’t think there’s a “right way to live,” but combining the routines and extremes seems like a good place to start. Too much of one or the other and you’re liable to grow unhappy or dead.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go jump off my 5 story roof with a parachute before getting back to work :)

“Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He...

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:01:00 -0500

“Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien”

-John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” 11-14.

Route 1 along the Pacific Ocean hearkens back to the vestiges of adventurers and madmen that dared to explore beyond what was known to European, African and Asiatic nation-states. It’s not that Columbus or Spanish Conquistadors discovered the pastoral wonder and ironic, arid practicality of the soil along the Pacific coast, but you can’t help but wonder about an omnipotent being where there is so much beauty and power stemming from a landmass nestled behind various precipices and bluffs buttressing the Sea. The adventurers stared into the abyss of the unknown, and set sail.

It’s like Dr. T.J Eckleburg is peaking at you from beyond the horizon as you make your way through the cavernous mountains, sprawling farms and apathetic livestock of San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Carmel, Monterrey and Big Sur. It’s a place that is both contemporary and antiquated; the land appears untrammeled by the humanity that’s forsaken Mother Earth during its manifest destiny, but also resigned to our presence with concrete hugging the cliffs.

Prehistoric Pangaea curves outlining the coast where a lone roadway now rests remind us of our insignificance as a species, while also stridently fighting to matter. Some probably view Route 1 as simply a road to traverse on their way to some destination, but when Apollonian horses gallop towards the rim of our ken, we can exhale and breath in our existence commingled with the sea air.

Talking to my fictional kid about booze

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:32:40 -0500

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”-Henry David Thoreau

Dear kid I may or may not have at some point in my life (for now, condoms are a must),

First off, congrats on being created! The amount of drugs I’ve gobbled in my adolescence means your very existence is a small gift from, well lets not get into the God discussion quite yet.

I love you little man or woman, but I may have passed on a genetic trait that predisposes you to dangerously manic behavior that manifests itself under the influence of alcohol. That’s not to mean you can’t drink, but you’ll have a preternatural affinity with “the sauce,” and that can lead to some problems.

As such, there are some steps you can take to combat alcohol’s effects in your every day life. First, don’t drink a ton of alcohol during your development. This will adversely affect your biological maturation, but more importantly, your idea of self-worth will be tied to the effects of alcohol.

When you’re discovering who you are, during puberty and the time after, alcohol can sometimes be a crutch used to navigate the often tricky, and never easy, passage through high school and college. You’ll find yourself more willing to open up, and engage with strangers if you’ve had a couple bourbons.

Don’t let this fool you. You’re gonna be a gorgeous and righteous kid, and no amount of alcohol will augment that. If anything, it will only stunt your development—both psychologically and physically. So take it easy during the high school house parties. You’ll be a cool little boy or girl, and won’t need to imbibe to overcome a crushing self-loathing because me and your mom will love the shit outta you. You’ll evoke confidence in everything you do, and even if you don’t, you’ll still know we got your back no matter what.

Then again, my parents loved the shit outta me, and that wasn’t enough. It may not be enough for you, but in the end, you’ll do fine. Just remember to never lose your curiosity.

Curiosity is a funny thing. Curiosity about the world can lead you to experience some of the greatest joys life has to offer. Curiosity about the dampening effects on emotion that drugs and alcohol can produce is often a dangerous game, and I’d just as soon see you earnestly emotive, than closed off and cold because you’re stoned as fuck.

Drugs and alcohol can be excellent experiences in your life too, but they shouldn’t become your life. That’s sounds convoluted—and it is—but I’ll be there to walk you through it. In the beginning, I’ll make sure you read plenty of the Transcendentalists—including Emily Dickinson—as well as listen to a ton of Marcia Griffiths on cold, winter days. Thoreau and Emerson will teach you about self-reliance, and there’s nary a mention of creating a gravity bong from old soda bottles.

The sun is always out, even when the sky is overcast; it’s best if you remember this when you’re deep in the sludge of the world. I’ll be around the whole time, so you won’t have to figure it out alone. I didn’t.

Exactly 1 Year Ago Today

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:47:46 -0500

I woke up in a New Orleans jail without any knowledge of how I got there. It was the end of my final bender before I quit drinking, and I went out the same way I’ve always imbibed: excess bordering on the mad; Rimbaud at 19 in a hash and mezcal haze in a forgotten barn, except in my case, there was no literary output or even a soupçon of intelligence.

I’m glad one of my best buddies took me to New Orleans for that final weekend of 2010. I wanted to quit drinking and getting arrested in a city like New Orleans ended up representing par for the course during a drinking career that started way to early.

In the year that’s passed, I didn’t have a single drop of alcohol, but the rest of life trudged on. I lost a job, I didn’t get two jobs where I had a tryout, and I’m still underemployed and poor. But, I’m happy.

That’s really the important thing because I’ll be able to figure out the rest of life without the four fingers of off-color brown muddling my brain. When I sipped from the low-ball glass that was a constant presence in my hands for more than a decade, I was watching life unfold through a jaundiced prism of my own making. But, NO MAS!

I hope everyone has a goddamn cocktail for me because I’m done with them. It will continue to be a crazy life, but now, I’ll remember all of it.

Happy New Years Tumblr, but don’t pour one out for me, drink that shit down and remember there’s a lot more to life than the substances we anesthetize ourselves with to forget “the suck.” Booze works for a lot of people, but not all of us. Maybe someday we won’t have to medicate ourselves so heavily in the face of all the horrible in the world.

"Feminist" is not a pejorative

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:10:00 -0500

I love boobs and sex and loathe the chaste philosophy of Stephanie Meyer’s narratives, but my sometimes piggish objectification of women as sexual objects doesn’t change the fact that if you can’t understand why a feminist perspective is important to every man, than you’re either woefully self-centered, or you’re a covert misogynist (I’ve been called, perhaps rightfully, a “passive misogynist” before).

All the #ShutUpSlut comments are shrouded under the guise of “I just want to make dudes laugh,” but they’re not helpful or even funny (most of the time). A feminist simply seeks to “advocate social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men,” so how is that a bad thing?

Jokes about feminism are fine, but every time someone neglects a woman’s perspective during the never-ending gender wars, they’re as narrow-minded as Meyer, and that’s what a feminism joke infers: Women’s opinions aren’t important. The bros that joke about feminists aren’t rabble-rousers “bruh,” they’re cloistered boys in a man’s body.

I don’t think feminism’s critical eye is unworthy even when it seeks out topics and tropes that have long since been overcome. Most people reading this live in a patriarchal society and if a woman sees sexism in something I can’t spot, I’m smarter for having heard that opinion, even when I don’t necessarily agree with it.

That’s not to say feminism hasn’t been wrong before, but it’s always worth noting what women think about a particular artist or piece of art. Oftentimes the feminism portrayed in movies or popular culture has become a buzz word for overreactions or overly emotive responses, but many times it’s more accurate than the mainstream, male-dominated opinions espoused.

I’m thinking of Tyler the Creator, and Maura’s exegesis of his song: “Suck Dick Bitches,” when I think of critical analysis that some would label feminist, as a dismissal, without realizing the hard truths are correct.

Maybe I’m lucky to have a twin sister and feminist for a mom, and if I didn’t, I never would have learned—and I did have to learn—why discounting feminist opinions was to my own detriment as much as it was to the writer or thinker I was ignoring. But whenever someone calls a woman a femiNazi or Bull Dyke or any other slang bros ham up to make other bros giggle, they’re seeking to discredit a woman’s perspective simply because she’s an outspoken woman offering her own opinion. I wince at what I used to laugh about.

Denigrating someone for being a “feminist” is not helpful, even if it’s true, and if it is true, we’re using the word wrong. As my sister told me once, “I love when people call me a feminist because I’d probably describe myself as a feminist.”

I was at a holiday party a good friend threw a couple weeks ago (Dodai throws an awesome party), and during the course of a conversation, I told a couple people my mom used to correct my friends when they called her Mrs. L__d. She kept her maiden name and so she wanted to be addressed by that name. My friends at the time initially thought my parents were divorced.

I laughed to the people at the party about how young and foolish we all were, and how women are keeping their maiden names all the time now. A guy corrected me and said, “no, they hyphenate now—your mom is still ahead of the times,” and we argued for a while because I thought it was more common these days. Then, a married couple I had talked to earlier at the party came over, and the women told me she kept her maiden name, and didn’t think it was so strange either.

I didn’t call her a feminist, but she is, and that’s a good thing.

Eventually, eventually happens

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:02:39 -0500

Eventually everyone has to clip their finger nails. Whether you’re a once-a-weeker, or just whenever you catch them on something, everyone has to cut their fingernails (except those strange and depressing figures in Guinness World Record books).

The same could be said for “catching up on life.” You put off grocery shopping or laundry and eventually you have like 10 things to do and only enough time for 8 of them. Those things need to be done. There’s no getting around them.

Life is filled with those things you have to do, but don’t consciously think about until whatever errand or appointment you have, arrives. Check your prostate, clip your sideburns, shave your legs, clean your bathroom, dentist visit, or simply brushing your teeth every night before bed.

Like your fingernails, you’re constantly trying to get on top of whatever little “things” you have to do. Sometimes, you think ‘OK, I have nothing to do,’ but the moment you think that, something else percolates into your brain and you HAVE to do that too. You just gotta do stuff. It’s called life.

Some people bite their nails or pick at them when they’re nervous. It doesn’t matter because unless you have a serious oral fixation with your nails, they will have to be cut. Just like you’ll have to get haircut, eventually. Or you’ll have to eventually do karaoke (even when you tell everyone you’re awful). Everything comes to pass, eventually.

Even death.

Except, with the distance on the look of death, procrastinating isn’t such a bad thing.

College happened a long time ago. The not-quite-a-man sat...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:17:00 -0500

College happened a long time ago.

The not-quite-a-man sat quietly outside a UPS Store in NW Washington DC, and scribbled in a notebook. The man was pale and skinny, having acquired a nasty booze habit at 14, and another nastier habit for cigarettes a year before, he was gaunt and pale, and not even abusing cocaine or ecstasy—his preferred party drugs. Now he sat, and continued to scribble in a notebook no one would ever see.

Earlier in the afternoon, the man had played some Sonic Sum, Galapagos 4, Anticon, Freestyle Fellowship, Typical Cats and Rhymesayers while rolling a perfect Phillie blunt he had cracked himself. It was one of the few things the man took a small measure of confidence in.

He and some friends scooted off campus and enjoyed the sticky-sweet odor wafting up into the ether at a local park.

They all wore backpacks, and were slim. Some sported LRG tees and baggy jeans. Others rocked a sideways cap featuring a crate of vinyl records. Vinyl dominated the proceedings on most nights when they were weren’t in the park or out on drugs, but it wasn’t because of any retro return to the record. It happened because a couple of them DJ, and a crate is a crate is a crate, as long as you find the dope beats on Beat Nuts record. “Torturing the fader, the Tech 12 freaka.”

Some of them shyly began a cypher of varying degrees of amateurishness, but they all enjoyed the pacifying effects of simply being away from the dry campus and overbearing Resident Assistants. It had gotten so they were all on probation or about to be expelled. Such is the life of a college student. Especially these college students that sweat THC and stepped on cocaine and swear “Scotch, neat” is the only thing to order at a bar.

Then it was time for work, and the man grabbed a notebook from his room, threw on his large headphones and sauntered over to the UPS store. He scribbled some more things, then “ripped out these few ghastly pages from” the “notebook of the damned,” and said hello to his boss.

In college it was OK to dream. Not anymore.

On Keeping Things I Don't Use

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:00:00 -0500

In college, I owned a double-bed made of wood that featured a hard, flat surface which worked for my nonchalance about thread counts, or any comfort associated with a contraption for sleeping. I didn’t sleep much anyway, and when I did, it was mainly to pass out.

But with a narrow double-bed, women did not sleep over, and if they did, that meant I slept on the floor (STILL OK), or on the living room couch. Fine fine, but a lot of women (OK, a few women) complained both about my absence during sleep time and the associated back pain if you’re unused to sleeping on a hard surface.

Whenever their cries of “Spencer, how the fuck am I supposed to crash here?” rang out, I politely offered my bed and moved to the ground. This caused no small amount of chagrin among the more cuddle-prone lady friends, but I always added the retort of “My old man built that bed, I’m keeping it for as long as it stays upright.”

Then I met a lady friend that made all other lady friends insignificant, and disclaimers about my father having built the bed sounded even more ridiculous. I wanted to spend the night with her in my bed, but the narrow frame combined with our accumulated heights, led to some uncomfortable post-coital interactions.

Eventually THE lady friend came to visit my family, and after a few Sambucas, it was revealed my old man did not, in fact, build the bed. He built my bunk-bed, but the narrow double was unrelated to my father’s carpentry skills (we had a sauna he made in the basement throughout high school).

This led my lady friend to decry my, now obsolete from familial nostalgia, bed. It would be gone within a couple weeks of our having returned to DC. I bought a new bed, and we enjoyed many nights together with it’s comfortable box spring and lavishly wide Queen frame.

I also own a television set. It’s an anachronistic television set, without a built in antenna, but also without a cable box set up since I don’t have cable. The television sits in my living room attached to nothing. It just sits there, lonely as my bank account.

My grandfather on my mother’s side purchased the television set and a VCR for me before I went off to college. Shortly thereafter, he passed away. I can’t bring myself to sell it or throw it away. It’s from my grandfather.

I don’t want the TV set, and its girth makes transporting it a huge assignment. I’m not even sure it survived my move from Harlem in working order since my DVD player and VCR both broke during the move. So why do I keep it?

Aside from the American flag he was given during his burial ceremony, and a swath of pins from his time in WWII (he was a sniper who fought in the landing at Normandy, Battle of the Bulge and North Africa), I don’t own many keepsakes from my departed grandfather.

So I keep this relic of a television set, and I even feel his presence on occasion; which is something because of my strongly secular brain. The television set might be with me for the rest of my life. A humble reminder of a simpler time when there were actually television stores (my grandfather worked at one during his retirement to get out of the house).

Maybe I’m crazy, but the television set stays while everything else swirls around me with no significance. I can cuddle just fine with the lady friend, and the TV doesn’t have anything to do with it. Miss you grandpa.

The Schadenfreude Towards Happy Sober People

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:32:00 -0500

The irreconcilable confusion some people have felt towards my happiness as I avoid imbibing alcoholic beverages, is the most shocking thing about being sober. It’s not the clarity I have recalling nights at the bar; it’s not the energy I now have on weekends, or the frequency I can make it to the gym; it’s the apprehension people have when they’re in my presence and I’m enjoying myself. Especially so when they’re with me at the bar: that dingy place where alcoholics are never supposed to venture.

I fuckin’ love bars, sometimes clubs and certainly lounges (who doesn’t enjoying lounging?), but this is supposed to be where I’m at my weakest. That’s simply not the case. Sure, when I first stopped boozing, I stayed in a lot more, but I realized I’m uniquely capable of enjoying the pleasantries and hedonism that flows through the crowd at a drunken bar on a Friday or Saturday night—or at happy hour during the week.

There are a lot of alcoholics that don’t feel this way. Their friends tell them things like: “Oh, you were so much more fun when you were drinking. Here let me get you a round.” Thankfully, except in situations where they simply forgot, my friends don’t say or do this. If anything, now people have to ask themselves whether I’m fucking with them. It’s all well and good to say outlandish things when you’re wasted, but do so when you’re sober and people are going to be genuinely perturbed—unless they actually know me. Unless they’re not exhibiting schadenfreude at my happiness—as quirky as it may be.

This happiness confuses people and does so even more when I tell people I don’t go to AA; although, I have been to a meeting where everyone was very courteous and cool, and it really does help some alcoholics, it’s not my thing. There are about 1000 more words I could write about how some people don’t take your sobriety seriously unless you’re in some program, or going to meetings every couple days and going through the steps, but that’s not what this is about.

Instead I’d like to focus on those people who are secretly rooting for this whole sobriety thing to make me feel like I’m missing out on something. Why? Is it because I was always the barometer for indulgent, hedonistic and ultimately damaging behavior and no matter what someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend did during the course of a night out, at least they could fall back on the knowledge “Well, at least they’re not S_____r.”

Is it because someone had a secret wager I wouldn’t be able to make it this long without a drink of my beloved Makers Mark? Maybe people think I’m secretly judging them for their imbibing? I’m not! Far from it. In fact, I generally encourage people to drink more because it’s fun and they’re more open to the quasi-ridiculous, covertly taboo conversations that occur when you’ve been drinking. Or, they’re more willing to discuss the three most interesting subjects to talk about while at the same time also being the most frowned upon in “polite society.”

The Holy Trinity of Bar Conversation Subjects (not necessarily in this order):
Politics
Religion
Sex

I love talking about those three things. LOVE IT! That’s probably why the whole 9-5 cubicle thing wasn’t very much fun, but it’s also why I love going out to where people are drinking. People are more relaxed when alcohol is involved. So, why is it so unfathomable to comprehend that I would still feel this way too?

Do people think I’m thrusting my sobriety onto them? Not so dissimilar from judging drinkers, does being sober and happy mean I’m somehow better? FUCK NO! You’re the lucky ones drinkers! I would never, ever tell someone they’re an alcoholic. It’s something you arrive at on your own. So why are you so freakin’ annoyed at my delight in life without the bourbon goggles?

I get it, I think, but it’s hard when so many people are rooting against your enjoyment. It’s not easy to stay sober in a bar, but it’s not entirely difficult for me either. I just don’t drink. I order a lot of seltzer water, root beer, ginger ale, Redbull, Coca-Cola Classic etc. and move along to a conversation.

This is not some master plan. I did not go through steps, I did not submit myself to a higher power because there is no higher power than myself and my own free will, and my free will is telling me “Don’t drink man—you’re happier without it.” So I don’t.

Why the fuck would that decision not be encouraged? And why should anyone complicate it with their own convoluted theories on the subject. The only ones that can lecture me, and they NEVER would, are fellow alcoholics. But alchies don’t do that shit. We’ve spent too much time on the receiving end.

Now go get your drink on, and lets talk about “pegging.”

How to Survive an Entire Day Without Wearing a Shirt

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:47:00 -0500

First, you should probably be male. Our puritanical forefathers have instilled in Americans a fastidious abhorrence of nudity, and that continues today (see also Janet Jackson). That nudity we loathe goes double for an areola and teet on top of fat on top of a pectoral muscle. Sorry ladies. But, if you’re male, you can go an entire day without wearing a t-shirt in November. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

The weather outside is frightful in November, unless you’ve been blessed with balmy temperatures like New York has over the last couple days. If you’re a smoker this is doubly challenging since you’re probably not smoking inside your apartment. You might not be a card carrying Polar Bear Club member yet, but even when it’s balmy out, smoking shirtless draws unwanted stares and it’s still pretty cold —regardless of the forecast—in the month of November.

Then there’s the issue of work. If you’re attempting this on a weekend, great! But also—you need to find more things to do on your weekends without work. For unemployed people or better yet, freelancers or bloggers that work from home, you’re all set.

Do you have roommates?

I do, and both of them work from home too. One of them teaches guitar lessons, so random people are always coming over to our apartment. This means I have to plan on being in my room at certain moments if I’m shirtless. As my roommate once explained to me: “I can’t have your tatted torso all over our living room when students come by.” Point taken, so I move into my claustrophobic bedroom every now and then. No big deal. If you live alone, even better.

Food. You should be well stocked with grub for your day without anything covering the upper portion of your body. If you HAVE to go out to get something to eat, then you better be sure the “no shirts no shoes no service” policy doesn’t apply. I ate eggs, ramen, more eggs, and some oven pizza with pasta. Yes, I’m glad you asked, I am poor.

Most people who work from home go outside to break up the monotony of their day, but you’ll have to make do with staring out the window during this day without proper attire. Unless you want to stroll around your neighborhood shirtless in November. Again, if you’re like me and you smoke, then you get your outside time with the bonus of nicotine. Unfortunately, people will always stare at a shirtless person because going shirtless in November is a stupid and childish thing to do—and also a ridiculous thing to blog about (to an audience of zero).

Do you have central heating? Do you pay your utility bill? How securely do your windows close? These are important questions to ask yourself before attempting this feat of idiocy. That’s because a normal, lets say 68 degree apartment, isn’t warm enough to go sans shirt. Also, very little in life is as painful as catching an inflamed nip in a closing refrigerator door or the edge of your desk.

In a perfect world, I’d live near a beach and spend all day, every day, without a shirt. I don’t particularly care for them or any sort of constricting clothing, but they’re necessary 99.99% of the time, in the actual world. Men and women have been living with a layer of fabric covering their torsos for centuries. But why? Seriously, why? There aren’t any hygienic issues in play when you’re talking about exposed genitalia, so why do we always wear shirts? Again, these stupid questions aren’t directed at women because in some states women aren’t legally allowed to go without a shirt.

Matthew McConaughey, besides being a shitty actor with impossible to duplicate pectoral and abdominal definition, was also on to something with his naked bongo playing. I’m not saying go naked or even play bongos, I’m saying at least take off that shirt. But, I’m not Matthew McConaughey, and chances are pretty high you, the reader (haha—someone actually reading this), aren’t him either. So we’re left with our t-shirts, flannels, sweatshirts, blouses and the dreadful tank tops instead.

All that being said, with a little preparation, you too can go shirtless for an entire day. Good luck, dorks. Now go get a job or pitch a tent (heh) down at some random park near a building that’s supposed to symbolize power.

Be Careful Bloggers

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:01:00 -0500

The blogger had filed 20 or so stories surrounding Zuccotti Park and the denizens that make up its protest/movement. The various stories filed, and one story in particular, meant the reporter had developed a massive following on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. They’d been able to capture multiple incidents showing the NYPD violently barring non-violent protestors from remaining on privately-owned public space.

The overt violence displayed by the NYPD had been a major rallying cry for the protestors and for impartial observers around the world. The reporter had seen their popularity in the media and on message boards across the web rise with each new story, video and picture. In short, the reporter had become a sensation, much to the chagrin of New York’s finest.

One particular incident served as a microcosm for the reporter’s stunning rise in the media, but also for the rise of the #OWS movement as a whole.

A young NYPD officer had been caught pepper-spraying a small college student while she lay prone on the ground in a position similar to a crucifixion. The picture and video of the incident reverberated across the Internet with alarming frequency; quickly amassing over 5 million page views for The ___ ____ ________, hundreds of thousands of retweets, posts on tumblr and countless facebook fan pages. The YouTube video had shattered pervious records and now had over 2 billion views, with millions more each day.

There was literally no place on the web that didn’t showcase the story as a symbolic representation of all that was wrong with the OWS retaliation and at least part of the reason people were so encouraged by the movement while not really understanding its aims.

There was talk about awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the young blogger, aged 23, still fresh from NYU’s undergraduate journalism program. Daytime and Nighttime talk show hosts called and emailed the blogger for numerous interview requests for statements, but all were denied. The young blogger always said the same thing when asked to comment: “No comment. I’m just a reporter—not the story.”

The girl who had been pepper-sprayed was a freshman at Oberlin, and unlike the reporter, she had graced the talk-show circuit for weeks, calling for others to join the Occupy Movement and take a stand against the power structures of America. Occupy movements around the country saw a surge in numbers and resources every time the girl appeared on television, and the reporter’s video and pictures were replayed for a nation of millions.

Major movie companies vied for the rights to tell the story, and both NBC and ABC were already developing television shows about the reporter and the victim. Zooey Deschanel was set to star as the aggrieved Oberlin student. Barbara Walters and Oprah interviewed the student, and she was writing an account of the historic picture to be published by Random House early in 2012.

All the largest publishing houses had offered money to the reporter to tell her story in a book. One advance was leaked to have been in the 8 figures. Still, the reporter refused to comment on the story or the video/pictures, and could still be found at Zuccotti Park and Foley Square—albeit in disguise since an innocuous picture from their facebook profile had been leaked.

During a time in America’s history where the future is shrouded in fear and the unknown, the young Oberlin student became a martyr for the movement and an inexperienced blogger came to represent the 21st century’s Woodward & Bernstein. Truth to power was and is the motto trumpeted by both the reporter and the victim of police brutality, and it’s be broadcast all over the world.

Last night however, the story took a nasty turn. While purchasing a Big Mac extra value meal at the McDonald’s just off Zuccotti Park, the reporter was approached by a young, off-duty police-officer in civilian’s clothes.

The officer, it turned out, was the one who had inadvertently pepper-sprayed the young Oberlin student. He had recently been reprimanded for his actions and faced expulsion form the force if found guilty of negligence before a review board of his peers. The department simply couldn’t handle another allegation of “protecting their own,” and the officer would be made to become a symbol for the NYPD’s new approach to the protesters and the cops near their demonstrations.

The conversation between the reporter and the officer quickly escalated and they ended up engaged in full-fledged fisticuffs while horrified McDonald’s patrons looked on. Even though the blogger was larger than most ___ ____ ________ reporters/bloggers, they were quickly over-powered by the police officer with a background in pugilism before he became an officer.

Eventually a couple of savvy McDonald’s customers recognized the incognito reporter from the circulated photo, and pulled the officer off them. The police officer sprinted out of the McDonald’s and the reporter left before they could give a statement.

No word on where the officer is now located, as he was still missing as of the filing of this story. The reporter has also not been seen or heard from even with repeated phone calls to their residence and emails to their employer.

We’ll keep you updated as the story progresses.

[inspiration]

Visiting the New York State Department of Labor on Fulton Street

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:14:00 -0500

The man waited patiently for the G train. He waited and waited while reading his phone. He waited some more and tried to covertly read The New Yorker magazine. The discretion he employed upset him, but an innocuous joke on Twitter had made him self-conscious about reading the magazine in public. Finally, the G train arrived and took him south towards Fulton Street near the A,C lines. After exiting the station, he walked past a couple delis and a Subway, and arrived at ___ Fulton street.

The New York State Department of Labor’s Division of Employment & Workforce Solutions operates out of a nondescript, midlevel grey building a couple streets southwest of Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. It’s the meeting place for unemployed Brooklyn residents looking to find a job.

The man walked through the doors and looked around at a long, slow-moving line with SSA signs everywhere. He didn’t think he was supposed to be at the Social Security Administration, so he walked back out to Fulton and found a Department of Labor sign a door down to the east. Another man on the street made the same mistake.

When he walked in the door, he was greeted by a large security guard and further down, a metal detector with a line forming. He side-stepped past the intimidating security guard and waited in line. As he grew closer he took his wallet, lighter, cigarettes, earplugs, phone and buckle off. His pants sagged, and he remembered the last time he’d been in jail.

Currently, the unemployment rate in New York City has remained at 8.7% through August and September. This is down from a high of 10.4% in January of 2010 (via).

The metal detectors at ___ Fulton Street are similar to the kind the man had seen at La Guardia or any other airport in a large, metropolitan city. The man checked the right breast pocket of his button-down flannel to make sure the one-hitter caked with hash resin wasn’t sitting where it had the night before. It wasn’t, and the man breathed a sigh of relief as he passed through the metal detectors and reclaimed his belongings at a circular table past the metal detectors.

The man took the elevator up to the 4th floor and signed in at the security desk. He then waited in another line for around 15-20 minutes. While in line, the man overheard a middle-aged black woman say “We can at least thank God we all woke up this morning still breathing.” In response, another woman in line said semi-audibly “But then reality strikes,” and the man could hear a couple “Amen’s” as the line murmured their agreement with the second woman’s rebuttal.

The man waited another five minutes and then a cherubic, bald man with a flared collar like you see in cartoons said out loud to the line: “If you have a ‘request to appear’ form please go to room ‘C.’” The man, and three others, filed out of the line they had been standing in, and headed down the unmarked hallway. After searching for a sign that said ‘C,’ and only finding a room marked ‘B’ the man and the small group split up. Eventually, after a couple of turns, the man found room C, and he went back to show the others the way.

Once the man found a seat along the wall, he filled out a short questionnaire with 9 questions he saw others fill out. The questions read:

What was your last job title? How many years of experience do you have in your field?
What was your most recent salary?
What job title are you currently seeking?
Do you have an updated resume? If yes, has your resume been professionally reviewed? Has your resume been submitted to SMART2010?
Please indicate the highest level of education you completed and also list any other certifications, licenses, etc. that will help you on your quest for re-employment.
Do you have a valid driver’s license? If so, please complete the following.
Do you have any issues that will prevent you from accepting a job at this time? Please check any that apply.
How have you been searching for work? Please check any that apply.
How do you feel your job search has been going? Have you been making progress in your search for work?

The man filled out the questionnaire in 7 minutes. His handwriting wasn’t perfect, but he made sure to avoid the longhand/print mixture he’d developed since handwriting had ceased happening (aside from the occasional letter to his grandma or scribbled interview notes) when he graduated from college 6 years prior.

New York State has developed a SMART2010 program designed to connect unemployed workers with jobs electronically. The Department of Labor’s April 2010 Press Release states:

The Department of Labor’s ground-breaking, web-based Skills Matching and Referral Technology (SMART) 2010 program analyzes resumes for skills and work experience, then electronically contacts unemployed New Yorkers via e-mail, recommending job openings in their areas to them based on their past work history, experience and skills.

Basically, you submit your resume and you get a daily email blast with job leads. That’s the idea anyway.

After filling out the questionnaire, the man tried listening to music and writing in his notebook. Intermittently over the next hour a Caucasian would peek their head into the rapidly filling room and ask: “Does anyone here need the Spanish form and can you speak English?” There was a separate room for Spanish-speakers, and they were escorted out of the room.

Forty-five minutes passed, and no one came into the room. Another twenty minutes passed and the man wondered if his group had been forgotten. Five minutes later, a woman with a heavy Russian accent similar to Natasha Fatale from Rocky and Bullwinkle came into the room and said this was the Spanish-speaking room, and if you wanted the English-speaking class/tutorial you had to come with her.

The man looked around in wonder. Most of the people left the room with him and followed Natasha down the hallway to room ‘D.’ Once the group of 30 people settled into their new room, this time with a view of the rocks on the abutted roof. The old room had been windowless. The man felt sorry for the people in the Spanish-speaking class. He quickly reversed that feeling when he heard Natasha try and explain what they were going to do.

One woman a couple rows to the man’s left said during the opening introduction from Natasha that she had no idea what the woman was saying. The man and most of the others in her vicinity nodded in agreement. The woman spoke for an hour and a half going through a one-sided sheet of paper with the topics: SMART2010, Resource Room, Workshops, Training & Education (including Info on free training resources and section 599 that stipulates you can receive benefits while attending training sessions), Counseling, Veteran’s Services, Services for Ex-Offenders, and a bullet-pointed list of recommended websites.

During the presentation, a few people chimed in and said the resource room, workshops, training courses, and websites did not work. They also said SMART2010 is a joke and they never get job listings. The man had never heard of SMART2010 before this day and did not recognize any of the websites on the sheet, so he was not in a position to agree or disagree with the people’s complaints.

After Natasha finished going through the sheet, which again took 90 minutes, she began to see each person individually in a separate office adjacent to the classroom. Natasha said they could not leave until they met with her one on one. Each meeting with an individual took between 5-20 minutes. The man timed it on his phone. The man, with little to do that day aside from an internship and looking for work, let others go ahead of him.

Finally, after an additional hour of people filing into the office of Natasha for one on one help passed, the man grew catatonic with boredom and an itch for a Camel Light. He eventually asked the remaining 5-6 people in the room if he could go next. He lied and said he had a job interview to get to. At the time, he was in such dire need of a cigarette and felt so claustrophobic in the classroom where he had been sitting for two and a half hours, the lie didn’t seem like it would hurt anyone. He went in and explained to Natasha he was looking for work, and that yes, he had given the DOL his resume before, and they had told him he didn’t need any help and should just leave and “good luck.”

The woman, Natasha, said something he couldn’t understand. He nodded like he did, dropped his resume off again and left. Once outside, the man took a catalog of everything he’d done since high school and wondered how the Occupy Wall Street protestors had so much free time to squat in a privately-funded public space all day. The man went back to his home and started applying for jobs again and writing for the internships that didn’t pay.

The Best People Go Too Soon

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:12:00 -0500

A friend of my sisters, and someone I haven’t spoken to in more than a decade, just lost their mom this week. It came as a shock to the family and to everyone that knew them. She had been a Methodist Minister in my hometown and everyone adored her.

Even though I haven’t seen or spoken to her in more than 10 years, I’ll always remember how kind she was to me when there was little indication I was a good person. It’s easy to be genial to happy and solid people, but I was an asshole in high school, and she somehow saw past that teenage anger to whatever is good in me.

I don’t know why this is so hard to comprehend, but the suddenness of her death led to such an intense sadness for her family. She was a charitable and tolerant person, and to have her abruptly taken from this corporeal plane seems unfair and unjust. I wish I had stayed in contact with her daughter, so I could have told her all this.

I’m sure she’s looking down from Heaven aching to relieve her family and friends of the suffering they’re experiencing right now. That’s the type of person she was when I interacted with her: selfless and kind. She will be missed by many, and I wish God or whatever omnipotent being controls such matters had taken someone else. But she would have never wanted that.

She is probably leafing through some informational pamphlets from God about Angel duties right now, but she’s already had the job for a while in my mind.

She will be missed by all—even someone that hadn’t seen her in a long time.

An Overdue Appreciation for the Handjob

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:16:00 -0500

The handjob. A hand. A penis. Some rhythmic caressing, usually in a masturbatory motion then, climax. It’s a move as old as time. It’s also a sexual maneuver usually performed under the age of 20. After that point, most of us have had sex a few times and a handjob, whether giving or receiving, feels a little puerile. That’s why it’s an excellent word for a lighthearted quip.

The actual act of a handjob is strange to think about. Most men are perfectly capable of achieving onanistic fruition without the addition of a different person’s hand. It’s not like it makes men blind. Plus, there’s not much pleasure for a woman; although, for the orally squeamish, this might not be the case. That’s why it’s such a perfect joke.

No one is getting emotionally scarred by an innocuous handjob joke. You can use the pithier HJ to make jokes that are more ridiculous than if you used BJ as the noun. Blowjobs ruin lives. Handjobs just make you laugh, or if you’re 16 they make you quite horny. When you’re 16 everything makes you horny.

Handjobs aren’t the fashion for my age demographic (almost a decade over 20), which is why demanding a handjob from someone is so utterly hilarious. It’s like you’re saying as an adult: “No, I do not wish to copulate with you. Instead I’d like your less-than-expert attempts to initiate the “feeling” of vaginal/anal sex with your hand(s).” My gay friends agree as well. HJ’s are so passe, they’re retro cool.

Plus, at a certain age, we’ll all take something that brings us back to our youth. What’s more youthful and hysterical than a man’s first hand job? Every first handjob story is a laugh-fest. Go ahead, ask any guy you know. They’ll be sure to regale you with an amusing anecdote about some terrified girl or guy attempting a handjob. There’s nothing sexy or titillating about a handjob. The vary existence of handjobs is awkward. That’s why it’s such a perfect forum to talk about one’s sexuality during childhood and the various embarrassments it has provided everyone in some form or another.

Handjobs. Lets give them a hand.

If you’re thinking of moving to New York City, don’t. You...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:24:09 -0400

If you’re thinking of moving to New York City, don’t. You probably think of yourself as misunderstood, or ambitious, or destined for greatness, or an individual stifled by the cloistered town you live in. You wish to break free of your dismal existence and New York City, the bright lights of the Big City is where it will happen. It won’t. This isn’t some depressing diatribe against New York, far from it. There’s so much to do, and see, and achieve here. It’s overwhelming to be in the epicenter of everything and everyone’s dreams.

It’s not as overwhelming as the press of human flesh on the trains during rush hour. Not as overwhelming as the rapidly approaching first of the month when you have to pay your landlord with money you don’t have. Not as paralyzing as watching other people, prettier people, more talented people, younger people, more “together” people, achieve what you can only hazily dream about: dreams without lucidity. The amount to do here isn’t as overwhelming as all the trouble you can find here too.

Maybe you’re longing to blow a gram of coke throughout the day while you bar hop through the Flat Iron district, schmoozing with the pretty waitresses and hucksters that line your yellow brick road of debauchery. That bacchanal at 4 AM on Stanton and Suffolk streets is here. You’ll get whisked inside and when they frisk you and find the blow and ecstasy you have, they’ll just be glad you aren’t packing a gun. You’ll tentatively creep down the cavernous stairs to the basement packed with a sort of dancing El Dorado steeped in black lights and speakers larger than your body. You’ll pop your pills, and throb in time to the music while sharing blunts with gangsters and drinks with Wall Streeters. Around 10 AM on a Sunday morning, your pills will wear off, and your sweat-caked body trembles out of the basement onto the street. The hidden club’s house music blaring in your ears behind you, you’ll drag your beaten body to the subway on Lafayette, except the train isn’t running, so you’ll trek up to 14th street and hop on the train back to your cockroach-infested pad in East Harlem.

There is that and more. Maybe you write verse and you love to slam tangents you write on scraps of napkins or your iPhone notes. Go to the endless array of readings and meetings that drape the cities pubs and poetry clubs. You’ll find an audience eager to hear your claptrap about home, and the possibility of the city. The city is not beautiful. It is a city. It is THE city. It is narrow flat of earth between rivers and Ocean and old marshland dredged into a river. It is a place where millions of people live. Millions of people you don’t know, and won’t ever know.

That feeling of solitude you feel in your hometown or college town, or wherever you’re thinking of moving from is in the same world as New York City. Except, it’s cheaper, and less arduous on your synapses. Be an individual wherever you are. Just don’t expect to find refuge here in New York City. You’ll be more alone than ever. Individualism is a lonely endeavor by definition, but it’s augmented in New York City. Millions of commuters and neighbors and shopkeepers and co-workers and every which way you turn more people. They’re just strangers. You’re better off where you are. Alienation isn’t just some feeling. It’s New York City, and you’ll do better without it.

“Lord have mercy. Mercy on me.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch into the city.

Dear Proprietor of F__________,

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:26:00 -0400

We have followed your site, F__________ for a while now. We have read your posts and they seem entertaining and well conceived. We think you’ll be a good addition to our staff here at __________.

We can’t pay, but you’ll get your own byline with a bio attached to your website/twitter/Facebook page. The site averages _ million visitors a month, but we’re growing very fast.

Thank You,

_____
@__________
@__________
@__________

WHAT THE EMAIL REALLY MEANS:

Dear Spencer,

Someone that’s a big deal (to us) linked to one of your posts. We noticed your site after clicking on the random link. We don’t really understand what a Tumblr is, but you seem to get good traffic based of your sitemeter (with no way knowing whether this is an accurate assessment of your site’s traffic [ed. It’s not]). It also seems like you write every day for it, but there are no ads? This means you’re naive about the business side of the Internet, so we can take advantage of you.

How would you like to work for free creating content for our site, which only _ million people read every month (you’ll just have to take my word for that since there is no transparent way to prove this to you). You seem to have the usual snarky editorial tone to your site, but directed towards the ___, which is excellent (we think because that is what other successful blogs do too!). Only about 14 people care about the ___, but that could change! Especially during this l______ that has no end in site.

To be honest, we haven’t actually read any of your posts, but we suspect it includes lots of cool photographs (possibly a slideshow or two!), and its editorial content is similar to that of about 100 other ___-centric sites. We’ve already reached out to ___-O________ and G__’__ ____, but they don’t respond to us. Besides, they’re actually quality websites with a clear direction or a group of bloggers contributing. Your blogging/writing seems preoccupied (i.e. poorly edited), but you write at so many other places (often for free), so why not one more?! [ed. the editors of those other sites are talented enough I’ll write for free as long as I get to work with them.]

We figure you’re probably in college because who can afford to blog for free every day except a college student?! As a college student, you possess a limited number of “life” experiences, so we figured a quick email would get you really excited. You’d get some great exposure on the world wide web. Some day, maybe, you’ll even make money writing about the ___. But not for us. Like we said, you’re working for free and the exposure. But, make sure to tweet, facebook post, and digg our posts, so you benefit our site even though we will not be paying you.

We’ve got our fingers crossed that if we let you create original content for us, with nothing but the (hardly quantifiable) exposure to your writing, we’re getting a huge ROI—off your work! If you’re new to this whole Internet thing, you’ll get suckered into this, and believe it will actually benefit you.

We’re just hoping you can do what you’ve been doing for free already; you’ll just be doing it for us!

Thanks (but not really),

_____
@TheSiteWeWantYouToWriteForFreeFor
@AnotherSiteWeEditThatSucks
@AThirdSiteWithAnInnoucuousName

Consider a Job at Barnes & Noble

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:11:00 -0400

Rather than stay on the train headed back to the dilapidated apartment he called home, the late 20’s man decided at the last minute to wade through the mass of people blocking the train door—and in the process hitting a stranger on the nose with his thumb* for which he profusely apologized—and head into the B & N that stood as a testament to the slightly less-than midcult gentrification of Union Square on 14th St.

While casually strolling past the park where he was once cited for trespassing while attempting to have sex with a young marketing rep he’d met while tending bar** on G_____r’s roof deck, he noticed all the people. It was overflowing with people reading books, walking dogs, casually draped over benches or hurriedly walking somewhere. The man wondered if all of these people were in dire financial circumstances like he was. True, it was past five on a Thursday, but he always wondered where people found the time to be outside during the work week. Every park he’d been at throughout the city and surrounding boroughs had held hundreds if not thousands of these unnamed persons during the normal 9-5 Monday through Friday. Were they all living off the spoils of their parents, collecting unemployment, going to school, or did everyone work nights?

Shaking the thought from his muddled mind, the man entered the B & N. His normal feelings (which—on reflection—smacked of intellectual insecurity) of Lilliputian insignificance in the face of so much he hadn’t read, were missing. Instead, he wondered about Housing Works, and the Strand bookstore nearby, and felt slightly guilty, since Housing Works didn’t pay (one of the cool things about HW was their reliance on volunteerism exclusively), and the Strand seemed like the type of place that only hired MFA students, or people who did exceedingly well while receiving BA’s in philosophy from Ivy League institutions.

So, he walked into the bookstore and stopped at the precipice of the first level unsure of his next step. Where did he ask about an application? He considered the register, but that seemed wrong, so he sloughed over to the Customer Service Desk trying to forget the embarrassment that currently provided his mind’s cocoon. After waiting for a minute, he asked a thin white man, with stubble on his face, where he could get an application.

The man returned a puzzled expression, and so he added “an employment application.” This triggered some recognition (mainly of pity), and so the employee looked in a couple drawers and finally handed him a generic application. The man took the application and turned around. He was embarrassed and confused about whether he should leave this hellhole or stay. He wondered why he was doing this again, then remembered it was less than two weeks before rent was due, and his bank account registered in the double digits.

His squeamishness with the B & N’s clientele almost led him to walk out, but instead he took the escalator up to the third floor. He was determined to just get this over with.

The third floor was dominated by the cafe in the corner surrounded by a rather wide and cacophonous cafeteria area. It was not a Brooklyn library, and who wanted to hire for a library job anyway. His connection*** at B & N had said there were no editorial job openings, and he had resisted the urge to email the connection back asking for janitorial work.

He waited in line, hoping a cup of coffee lent him an air of impartiality w.r.t the application. When he got to the register, he ordered the usual American drivel known as the Caramel Macchiato, and said caramel twice, once pronounced “kár- mal” and once “kare-a-mel” then laughed to himself for his inability to pronounce words correctly the first time.

He spied the bespectacled woman behind the register eying his generic B & N employment application, and swiftly moved down to where he was to collect his coffee. The coffee had cost him more than $3, which made him feel wasteful since he didn’t want any coffee, and he was hungry.

He got lost in thoughts of thoughts mainly having to do with the diction of words like “rococo” and “masticatory” in DFW essays, and didn’t realize his coffee had been ready for a while. He took the coffee and immediately left the midcult white-wash of B & N. He was eager to leave the clinical appreciation of “the right books,” that always annoyed him in school. “Who gets to decide the right books?” he asked the air in front of him. Rather than actually get it over with, he left with his coffee. Down $3 and even more confidence.

On the train home, he debated the initial question on the application, which he remembered from similar applications he filled out in high school. Being of modest means, he had worked as a dishwasher/sometime server when he wasn’t too stoned, basketball referee, candy shop stock-boy, and UPS Store employee in the years during and after high school. UPS Store had helped pay for college, which was ironic now since he’d gladly take a UPS Store job. He didn’t dare take the application out on the judgmental L train where anything save New York Magazine, The New Yorker, a hard cover classic, or a kindle was considered a faux pas on par with a Grisham paperback from La Guardia.

What position WAS he applying for? A register job? Would he even get the position? What entitled him to that job over other people? A middling liberal arts degree from a second tier Washington DC school? His skin pigment certainly helped him fit in at the chain bookstore, but he was so depressed at the thought of standing all day in front of a register scanning copy after copy of Malcolm Gladwell hardcovers for barely sentient 20-30 somethings with jobs in marketing and communications, he almost vomited before he got to his stop. He would have killed for one of those jobs, and so he internally mocked their silly, and largely superficial existence.

When he finally arrived back in Brooklyn, the lack of sustenance save cigarettes and coffee curdled his shrinking stomach, and he decided to lie down rather than stave off the nausea that always accompanied another endlessly joyless perusal of Craigslist and Mediabistro.

Where were the jobs for the passably intelligent writers with ~~little~~ no published writing and zero references with any clout, but with plenty of references that could attest to his lack of punctuality with posts or edits or even basic understandings of headlines or leads (not ledes). Where were the middle-of-the-road blogging positions he longed for. The types of companies that would gladly pay 50K or more with health insurance for a few twitter updates, 2-3 blog posts with 200-300 word counts and barely legible syntax? Then he thought of taking the GRE and going into more debt. Then CUNY schools entered his mind, and he fell into a blissful nap punctuated with interstitial jackhammering from the construction crews outside his window.

Freelancing wasn’t going to cut it. He considered a job at B & N again, and lay prostate on his cot in Brooklyn, hopelessly feeling sorry for himself. It was Thursday.

*If he’d not been the type who cut his nails often, he would have surely drawn blood.

**served free wine and beer and tried to look cute enough to tip.

***A friend’s girlfriend’s sales client, so “contact” is used here in a very loose sense.

You're Littering

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:09:00 -0400

It’s recently come to my attention that I litter. A lot. I’m the type of person to hold on to an empty can of Dr. Pepper or a peach pit (not that one) or the cellophane around my new pack of cigarettes, until I can reach a garbage receptacle to throw them away. I’m not alone. I don’t know anyone that consciously throws their trash on the ground. While this does occur with alarming frequency around NYC, most people are in the same boat as me: we’re indisposed to disposing things on the ground. But this is a fallacy, as every cigarette smoker I know, myself included, litters their cigarette butts between 50-99% of the time.

This is partially because we don’t think to stub them out and throw them away. It doesn’t even register for us. Mainly it’s because we’ve been preconditioned to simply throw them in the street/train track/pool of water/sewer gate/anything that’s not flammable. This is as much a factor of time and convenience as it is a blatant disregard for the social etiquette of today’s pedestrians. America isn’t a 3rd world country; we put our trash in a bin for trash and try and keep our streets clean (both metaphorically—hey NYPD!—and figuratively—). I’m not averse to picking up after myself, but cigarettes simply don’t register.

Back to the why of the question where I postulated time and convenience as the primary causes for littering cigarette butts. Often people are smoking outside. You can’t smoke in bars anymore, and most people prefer to keep their living quarters free of the clinging aroma of a filtered Camel ~~Light~~ Blue. As such, the predominant environment for smoking is outside—just not in a NYC park/beach/sidewalk in Times Square. Smokers have been relegated to the sidewalk corners, rooftops, dirty patios and fire escapes of America to inhale their addictions. This is fine, but it also amplifies the frequency of our littering. Stuck with a cigarette burned down to the nub of the filter, smokers often toss them in the above locales. This is still littering.

The time factor is also interspersed with the convenience problem. We’re hurrying to catch a train, or climb aboard a bus, and flicking the cigarette is a natural inclination when we’re ducking into wherever we’re going. Ashtrays are decorative bric-a-brac rather than pragmatic waste containers. Sometimes a bar will have those tall stands outside their establishment without any clear identifying marks labeling it as an ashtray. So, again, the butt hits the curbs.

You’d think this would be the primary complaint amongst non-smokers, but littering is much further down the the list of offenses. The non-smoking proselytizers whose chorus of cancer and second-hand smoke is mum on the littering, and yet those cigarette butts account for a pretty decent sized landscape for filth. Instead of foisting their passive-aggressive pedagoguery in our direction, the anti-smoking campaign should be guilting us into picking up after ourselves. As gross as our breath and teeth are becoming, the planet is doing a lot worse.

Stop trying to save us, and save your goddamn streets first. Let us die our deaths. We deserve it. The planet didn’t do anything to deserve all our refuse. I’ll try better, but you should curse me out when I forget. I can handle that. Now where are my smokes?