SARASOTA, FL-

When I first heard the words “bipolar,” I figured the shrink thought I lived on the North and South Poles. That may sound like bullshit, but I also wonder whether there really is any such thing as bipolar, except in the most obvious cases (you wake up and dress like Hitler, making speeches in town square, which no longer exists).

I just don’t know. Rapid cycling? I don’t ride a bicycle.  Doesn’t everybody have rapid mood changes?  Listenting to grocery story music can send me into a mini-depression during the length of one Elton John song. Sorry has to be the hardest word? No, “You’re a billionaire with the world’s worst wig” is not a word, but it’s much sorrier, and to pare it down to the analogy, I’m sure “wig” would do the trick for you. (more…)

SARASOTA, FL-

Sometimes I wonder. I wonder a lot. “Why?” is almost always a futile question, with one answer contradicting another, if any knowable possibilities exist. And in this case, I’m not sure they do exist. I used to wonder about the “Why?” of my own failed ambition. Then I realized where publication had gone and how it could only descend into an even worse abyss. “I was addicted to cocaine” must be the first line of a thousand memoirs. (more…)

SARASOTA, FL-

The global economy, like it or not, doesn’t like you. If you’ve acquired a job in a third world country, congratulations: You’re one step shy of a slave. If you’re an American, you can work, live and die at Walmart, which will soon offer funeral services next to the produce department. Are there, you Americans ask, no careers vouchsafed from the global suck? It depends. Do you possess sticktoitiveness and a can-do attitude? Are you a no-getter? Are you willing to take personal responsibility where you have none? Then the answer is, “Yes!.” Jobs await you, some already available, others waiting in the wings of hell. Love it or leave it, except you can’t afford to leave: Trust me, I tried. Here, then, is the future, and your opportunities within it. I have randomly numbered these jobs, for none are better than the others, though some are worse.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

How tired of thinking, how sawed off my seeing, how heard my hearing, how tasteless my tasting, how senseless my ability to smell, how unfeeling what I touch. Just the same, so easy to relearn how to think, see, hear, taste, smell, touch. It’s only a forced illusion, a child’s card trick. Yet this deception serves as a thicker pair of glasses, a re-tuned hearing aid and…an artificial brain, nose and tongue.

Rotate the crops, Kierkegaard wrote (laugh, but I have ethics; I keep the neighbors at bay and love them when they’re on the other side of the ocean). I may not believe in a god, but I know fear and trembling. They’re hobbies of sorts, the kind that irritate oneself for the want of something better to do. But if the crop is the imagination, yes, rotate it, a degree, 360 degrees, or some degree between.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Conspiracy humbuggery plagues the Internet, but not all conspiracy theories are tricky cells in the information supervirus. Via thorough research into the Barney Milleresque filing cabinets of my imagination, and from reading blogs that remind me of why I don’t document my day-to-day life, I have investigated thousands to a couple of conspiracy theories and absolutely believe everything I read when I agree with it. Therefore, I will attest that the following conspiracies are relatively factual to the best of my limited knowledge, if I remember ever having or claiming to have that knowledge.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

The American dollar is worthless garbage.

That’s about it.

However, I suppose I must provide further details as to why I reneged on my promise to leave the country. I owe that much. Apparently, I owe everyone something. I’m pretty sure I’m collecting interest on myself. I’m definitely more interested in myself, but then, I’m a misanthrope, with four or five exceptions. As Lautreamont’s Maldoror put it, we’re breathing corpses. That’s why I smoke.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Given the hyper-capitalistic drive to sodomize every American, it’s a wonder gay marriage and anal sex aren’t condoned. In fact, I suggest that we all bend over in front of the nearest flag and wait for the creditors to bang us in the ass three times, once for the interest and twice for the mysterious penalty charges. Freed from criminal liability, the banks have managed to legalize ass rape. “Oh,” they cry, “but the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the plaintiffs’ attorneys!” (more…)

GRAND BLANC, MI-

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

In a word, inequity. As capitalism continues running amok like a rabid dog, I simply cannot take one day longer without a plan for escape, my fingers caked with mud from the tunneling. While a Democrat may very well become president, he or she will inherit more problems than Bush inherited wealth. That only makes sense, for Bush certainly wouldn’t favor distributing the only thing of which he has an abundance, that being wealth. Still, months to go before I sleep and my awakening in a land that, at this time, I care not to disclose.

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SANIBEL, FL-

No matter how closely you followed Superbowl Sunday’s corporate cumfest, statistics abound that were missed even by ESPN analysts. That’s why I, with exactly one football game a year under my belt, must provide a more thorough analysis.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

I will start by giving the straight facts about AA. The program helps many, and adherents attribute their sobriety to it. I take them at their word. As I see it, whatever works, works. Nevertheless, AA is clearly a religious organization, steeped in Christian theology, with many of the meetings subtly reassuring the nonbeliever that he or she will, in time, come to pray on their knees, as I so often was told.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Somewhere along the way, I lost myself in ambition. Ambition seems a noble thing but never remains so, especially in publishing, when it becomes ignoble. One sells to the plebeians after passing the judgment of would-be nobility. As such, I succumbed to the whims of agents who wanted my work to sell. The result: It didn’t sell at all. What fire the second or third draft contained was extinguished. I made the choice to succumb, as I’ve made so many other poor choices, simply because I lusted for an almost sexual success, the kind of success for which many, including myself, sacrifice actual sex. It’s easy to understand why: Fulfilled ambition can be more euphoric than sex and lasts longer, too. However, it eventually dissipates, sucked into the very sky from which it was pulled to the ground…the human level. 
 

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Forget Christmas and the rest of the holidays for a moment, or at least put aside the idea these dates coincide with this post. They have nothing to do with this post. I am on to something else. And that is…

…What are you doing right now? When I say you, I include me. It’s a thin line. Are you anticipating tomorrow, next week, next year? Are you remembering twenty years ago, ten, five? Is there a kind of film playing in your mind, in which somehow all these strands — now, tomorrow, yesterday — play at once, in the dark or light, bereft of parents or your own parental mind and its nagging? 
 

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Recently, I drove myself to what recovery parlance calls a relapse. The term “relapse” is borrowed from the vocabulary of disease. One cannot prevent a relapse of cancer. One cannot prevent a relapse of head injury symptoms. One prevent a relapse of so-called addictive behavior. The disease vocabulary has become so accepted that it needs to be clarified and then eradicated. Calling alcoholism a disease is like calling a sidewalk a highway. Further, one makes a choice to merge onto a highway. If one closes the eyes before making this decision, an accident becomes unavoidable. Still, one made the decision not only to merge onto the highway but to close the eyes.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Like almost everyone these days, I’ve been diagnosed as bipolar and with OCD.  Big deal.  It confers no status on me, has no effect on whether I consider myself a good or poor writer.  Perhaps the OCD suggests a propensity for an intensity of thought, while being bipolar indicates a tendency to better understand the depths and heights of existence.  On the other hand, I wonder if reality itself is not obsessive-compulsive and bipolar.  In that case, and by that measure, those not bipolar and experiencing OCD are maladjusted.  I am both honored and disheartened to discover myself normal.

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