I’m glad I’ve stuck it out. Now that I’m a few chapters into the second part, the narrative is a lot easier to follow. Instead of random circular vignettes that leave you dizzy and lost, things are following a more linear path. Don’t worry, it’s not a linear narrative. There is a musical dance number with lab rats! It’s fucking insane, but at least I know what the fuck is going on.
Most importantly, however, I came to the portion of the novel that got its Pulitzer prize revoked. In this Part II, there have been a few sex scenes, and this particular one didn’t really raise my eyebrows. It’s a standard BDSM scene until… Well…
As I’m reading this part, I’m realizing there are a lot of details that I missed thanks to the obtuseness of the first part. I figure I’ll have to go back and read those 180-or-so pages much more carefully. Nevertheless, it’s a very fun read. It’s funny, fucked up, strange, and not as shitty as it seems (literally!)
The executive building at the Disney lot in Burbank.
I rarely post anything work-related here because what I do for eight (or so) hours a day is really the least interesting part of me, if there is anything interesting in here at all. But every now and again, something interesting happens that compels me to write about it.
On Wednesday, I put in my two-week’s notice at Disney (nee Hulu.) I’ve been looking for a new job seriously since April, and I’ve finally got the match. I will be the Accounts Payable and Purchasing manager for a mental health non-profit (the irony) starting on September 25. I’ll actually post details later about what the last two years of being there was like and what got me to look for a new job, but for now I’m just counting the days until my last day on the 12th.
You can’t imagine the sense of relief I got when my recruiter called up telling me I got the job and then getting on Zoom with my boss to put in my notice. With the whole neurochemical mosh pit going on in my head, I felt free. I can plan vacations again. I don’t have to worry about the stupid shit the Bob Iger says in public. It just feels like a huge heavy burdensome page is being turned, and I can move into the future feeling light. Well, as light as I can be with my fat ass.
But as happy and idealistic as this all sounds, I do know that there will be a lot of challenges at the new job. I’ve worked at a non-profit before, and I’m well aware of the nightmares it involved. I also know what the current situation is there, so I’m not under any illusion this is going to be a cakewalk.
And, in the back of my mind, there is always a cynic there tempering my expectations. I’m always brought back to a Groucho Marx quote: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
But for now, I will bask in the joy of saying goodbye to Disney.
Here is an email I wrote to my cats’ foster mother as they turn two today. She had kept up with them thanks to my Insta, but since I got rid of it she hasn’t seen them. So I thought I would send this over. Also I just bought this cactus scratcher hammock thingee this past weekend, and they both fucking love it. It’s rare that they cuddle with each other, so I had to quickly take this photo. Aren’t they the cutest things you’ve ever seen? They’re MY babies!!!!!
I hope you are doing well. I know I have gotten rid of my Instagram account, so I wanted to share this picture with you as the now named Mama and Baba turn 2 years old in a couple of days. I was logging off of my computer from work, looked over and there they were cuddling together. I couldn’t help myself.
They are doing well. Baba is very much attention-starved and loves his pets and belly scratches. Although he is not a lap cat and does not like to be picked up, he still wants to be the center of everything.
Mama is still a very anxious cat. She still seems to just tolerate me and will run on a dime to hide under my bed if she feels just a hint of fear. For a while she would only let me pet her in three places: on the dinner table; while I’m sitting on the toilet; right when I get into bed for the night. There she loves being pet and her belly scratches. But other than that, she will run away if I try to get close to her.
But lately she’s been more open to me and wanting pets everywhere. She’s also not running away quite as much. She will slow-blink at me, so I know she is comfortable with the idea of me. She does present her belly. So she’s a complex one, that’s for sure.
Both of them are great jumpers. They love to play and love to annihilate the evil red laser dot. Sometimes a fly will get into the apartment, and they are both piss poor hunters.
But they are both the most well-behaved cats that have ever claimed me as their human. They don’t act up, and they seem content to explore all the different nooks in my loft.
Well, that’s the update on them. I hope you are doing well, and I promise I won’t that this long to send you a picture.
Another benefit I’ve noticed in being off of Lexapro is I’m not as tired as I had been. I don’t need the two-hour naps like I had needed the last couple of years.
On Saturday, I spent the day out with Madd. We spent the day with a late breakfast in Manhattan Beach at the Kettle, hung out until her mom and dad picked us up to go to the Grove and ate at La Piazza. I got home at 10 and didn’t feel tired or fatigued.
And Sunday was the deep scrub of the bathroom and completely cleaning out the drawers and cabinets. Armed with my Mr. Scrub sponge, Bar Keepers Soft Cleanser, Clorox Clean-Up All Purpose Cleaner and Bleach spray, Sprayway Glass Cleaner spray, Dawn Powerwash spray, Clorox Toilet Bowl Cleaner, a microfiber cloth and shit tons of Bounty paper towels, I eventually got it done. Granted I took a lot of breaks in between, but I did not take a nap.
I did find it odd that I was sleeping so much — I’d sleep eight hours a night and then take another two-hour nap and feel exhausted the time I was awake. But I was too tired to care all that much.
Of course, like with the tweakiness and how goddamn fucking horny I am, I just wonder if it is just my brain readjusting to the lack of drugs. I’ll see how things are in a month or so. In the meantime I’ll just bask in the liberation however temporary it may be.
This fucked me up real good. Translated as Sleepwalker, this Japanese band pissed me off that this is only an EP of four songs. I want more, and like Veruca Salt, I WANT IT NOW! You hear the thrashy black metal throughout, but they used collaborators around the world who recorded vocals and elements of classical, folk, jazz and other fucking insane elements without knowing the context, having it mixed after the fact. According to their Bandcamp page, this album “focuses on the notion of self-reflection, intuition and the outward and inner manifestations of phobia as they relate within that singular world.”
Being on the listening end, it was a low-level terror that I get when I’m about to try something new and don’t know how it will end up, whether I will like it, whether it will be worth it. Whether the guy will leave me in a pile of heaving tears with a smile on my face, or whether I will just be lying there wondering why I took the time and effort of douching and prepping just for that.
Moris Blak – Burial + Void
Moris Blak teams up with GenCAB, Kofin, S Y Z Y G Y X and Rabbit Junk on this six-song release that threatens to get my decrepit bones onto a dancefloor or stripper’s pole. I don’t know what “industrial bass” is, as I’m told that this is the genre. I always had a problem drilling down or caring about the sub-genres. The only that really matters is whether it strikes a chord with us, right?
There is a good range of beats from the album-opener “The Abstract” with GenCAB, a safe dancefloor romp, which makes its way into the more aggrotech “Malevolent” with Kofin. Whether it makes you move ethereally or get stompy stomp on the floor, the beat is what gets you to move. “House of the Fallen Suns” with Rabbit Junk is my favorite since the intro really reminds me of Sølve. I still don’t know what characterizes “industrial bass” by this one release alone, but it just makes me note that I need to listen to more Moris Blak.
I’ve been taking Lexapro for about three years, since the aftermath of the LAPD’s fascistic response to the Black Lives Matter protests in late May 2020. I was stuck in a horrible spiral of bad thoughts where I was paralyzed with the conviction that our vote later that year was useless and that the Tangerine Nightmare would invoke martial law and lead a coup. Although I turned out to be a little correct (I didn’t count on His Combover’s complete incompetence and fucking stupidity), I needed something to help me get past those thoughts and live my quarantine life. I found that showering once a week and just staying in bed was probably not the healthiest way of dealing with shit.
After the initial tweakiness as my brainmeats adjusted to the new chemicals, things were fine. I started working at my desk everyday rather than just staying in bed all day. I hosed myself off on a regular basis again. And then once lockdown rules eased up in 2021, I did have a little ho-ish period to make up for lost time. Things were okay. I figured I was lucky that the decreased sex drive from Lexapro didn’t hit me.
But in 2022, I lost my sex drive. At first I thought because I was getting older and my body was producing less testosterone, shit happens. I would get people texting me to hook up, but I just couldn’t be bothered. Then I got to the point where I couldn’t even count the days/weeks/months since the last time I masturbated. Hm. That’s a little alarming.
Fortunately I wasn’t on a high dosage of the pro, so I decided to stop taking it last weekend. I figured if shit gets bad again, I’ll start using it again. But I found it interesting how my sex drive is back and with a fucking vengeance. I texted R last weekend and met with him a couple of days later where he flogged me for a little over an hour. I had a smile on my face the whole time and was completely aroused. (There was no penetration involved since my last sexual contact was in 2021 and I need to open myself up and R is hung like a motherfucking horse.) You don’t know how fucking wonderful it is to feel sexual again. Even though it didn’t affect me one way or another when I was on the pro, having a libido again in a liberation. I should probably write a novel and have Oprah produce the film adaption of it entitled How Jimmy Got His Groove Back. (Rated NC-17 because, duh.)
Now, I am experiencing the tweakiness again, but I figure that’s my brainmeats readjusting to the new chemical composition or lack thereof or whatever. I’m also emotional as hell. The other night I watched Bros and Shortbus, and tell me why the fuck was I teary-eyed during both movies? Although I do get emotional when I watch movies, that reaction was a little extreme. It’s one thing to be happy about a woman finding her orgasm, but it’s another thing to be shedding tears over it.
Around eight years ago I finished David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, so I thought it was about time to get to Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. I’m getting towards the end of the first part of the book, at around page 150, and all I can think about is, “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?”
GR is a fucking slog of a tome. My Penguin paperback edition is 776 pages, and unlike IJ there are not over 100 pages of endnotes. Also I started reading this on July 31, so I’m not getting through this easily.
The problem: I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. It was a very bad sign at the very beginning of the novel after it’s famous opening lines, “A screaming comes across the sky,” we are presented with a mass evacuation of civilians in what I eventually surmised to be London at the end of WWII. The folks are taken to a old hotel outside of the city when all of the sudden we are introduced to Pirate Prentice and his… um… I don’t know who they are to be honest. His flatmates? His coworkers? His army squad? Come to find out that the evacuation scene was a dream, but I went back and tried to see where that was implied. I don’t know. I guess I see it after looking at it a million times, but fuck man. This is just the first three pages.
But no. I’m determined to finish this because we’ve been told that this is the best postwar novel, period. It won the 1973 National Book Award and is allegedly should have been a unanimous Pulitzer Prize winner but was rejected because it was deemed to be obscene among other things. Now THAT is reason enough to get me to finish this motherfucker. But as I went on, with characters coming in and out like a revue, stories jumping around that I didn’t notice had jumped around until I was already knee-deep and completely lost, it’s tough. Like I said, I have no idea what is going on.
Not to say that the writing is bad. It’s really funny and mischievous that you have no idea if the facts Pynchon presents are true or Trumpian. I mean, there is a character who is running around the bombed-out London wasteland with a toilet stuck on his foot. And, from what I’ve read, one of the characters who is meant to be central to the narrative, Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop can predict where a V-2 rocket strikes based on where he fucks bringing up quite a discussion on whether his hardons are a reverse-Pavlovian response.
This isn’t my first rodeo with Pynchon. I’ve read V, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, so I’m well aware of his style and humor. But this one is going to take a few readings to even begin to understand which brings up this question: Is it my fault it’s difficult or is it the author’s fault? Also, if I don’t see the genius in this, does this mean I’m stupid? Well I know other things I do and are ignorant about make me stupid, but is this another reason to add to the list?
When I was last in Vegas in January, a cabbie and I were bemoaning how expensive things have gotten in Vegas. Gone are the days of the $5 prime rib dinner, cheap show tickets. Now the buffets are over $70 per person excluding drinks. Table minimums are ridiculous. Even “penny” slots make you play $5 a spin if you want any chance of winning something worthwhile.
Just spitting out my normal word diarrhea, I told him that the biggest problem with Vegas was getting rid of the mafia. Sure the mafia were violent, had very subjective takes on morality, but they knew how to take care of customers to ensure they kept coming back. Sometimes you had to forego some short-term profits in order to ensure the long-term profits and sustainability.
With the corporate vultures that swooped in to fill the void that the mafia left and “maximize profits to appease the shareholders,” the humanity of it all left town. (And yes, there is humanity in murder — without the humans, there wouldn’t be the murder, right? Fuck, I think that’s a Slayer lyric.) But these corporations really are about extracting every penny by any means necessary short of murder.
The 1986 explosion of Frank Lawrence “Lefty” Rosenthal’s car. Rosenthal was a professional sports bettor, casino executive and organized crime associate whose career was the basis of Martin Scorsese’s film “Casino”. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
I started thinking about this because of the Fulton County RICO indictment of Trump and Co. Giuliani prides himself in going after the mob in New York via the very RICO prosecution that he finds himself under and then “cleaning up” the city. Like Vegas, the mob gave way to this very hypercapitalist nightmare where everything is sanitized and safe. Whatever soul that was there was now replaced with luxury resorts, Michelin-starred restaurants, expensive unattainable luxury shops and day club pool parties.
I just find it ironic that Giuliani’s credibility and career is being ended thanks to the same tool that he used to end the mafia. I guess I should probably complete this thought and think about the ramification of having our former president be indicted and perhaps be reelected and become the first president to serve his term from prison and what all of this means about what Americans want. But that is far too deep and scary, and I just went off of my antidepressants because I lost my sex drive and hadn’t had sex in over a year and go months without masturbating.
That is to say, you know, sometimes the mafia just did it better.
On this, the longest day of the year, I’m feeling a little hopeful. I’ve spent the last few months trying to reprogram myself taking little minute baby steps to trying to feel something close to a human. I’m hoping for more changes to come, and I’m excited to see what happens. Ok, not “excited” excited per se. I’m not jumping around in anticipation or anything. Excited in my normal heroin-tinged jaded blasé way. (Say that five times fast.)
Maybe the elevation in mood could be we had two consecutive sunny days for the first time in seemingly forever (it has to be at least a month.) It’s amazing what a little cancerous ultraviolet rays laced with Vitamin D can do to ones neurochemistry.
It’s funny because I’m not usually as angry as my last few posts have hinted at. I do have angry thoughts, but no one in my real life ever provokes them out of me. It isn’t until I read something that pisses me off enough that I have no other option but to write about it to allow it to pass. Eh, whatever.
But that’s not what this is about. I just wanted to talk about Cormac McCarthy a little since he died this week. I hadn’t read anything by him until I picked up The Passenger, which with along with Stella Maris were his last novels published last year, back in April. I knew about his acclaim, with “Better Than Food” YouTuber Clifford Sargent declaring he’s the best (at-the-time) living American writer we have. While I am skeptical of the hyperbole, I have no doubt that McCarthy was one of the best.
Well, I finished The Passenger last night, and… I don’t know. I can’t say I understood what was going on the whole time. I understood the main character Robert Western, a salvage diver and physics guru, was running away from his past, from something that even he didn’t know. Or he didn’t really seem to care. He just wanted to run towards the end, but he didn’t have the suicidal tendencies of his sister (and surprise surprise) the unconsummated love of his life who was also a math genius. While mostly set in New Orleans, he eventually winds up in Ibiza and… I don’t know? The novel ends.
I had a hard time getting through the book initially. I think because I saw the hype and was expecting it to hook me right away, I couldn’t be bothered with it until it did finally hook be about halfway through. Or maybe it was my own stupid malaise or whatever-it-is-that-has-been-going-on-with-me-for-the-past-several-years. But there were great captivating parts of it. One part that especially grabbed me was in one of Alicia’s delirium scenes (written in italics),
What you write down becomes fixed. It takes on the constraints of any tangible entity. It collapses into a reality estranged from the realm of its creation. It’s a marker. A road ign. You have stopped to get your bearings, but at a price. You’ll never know where i might have gone if you’d left it alone to go there.
p. 297
That hit me like a bullet. I realized that is part of why I don’t write in a journal/diary despite knowing I probably should.
I don’t know if I can say I liked this book or not. Perhaps I need to reread it. Perhaps I need to reassess it after reading Stella Maris. But not quite yet. I need something easier, so I’m going with The Meaning of Mariah Carey (which I hear is pretty damn good.)
