So I’ve been thinking about PlayStation 2 for a while now. Destroyed mine back in November, couple days after the Phils beat the Rays in the actual World Series, because I got angry about losing a ball game after growing far too comfortable with winning. The attack totally blindsided me. Didn’t see it coming. One second I’m trying to control what seems like a moderate bout of anger and frustration — totally misplaced as it is — and literally the next I’m rising from my chair, striding toward the console beside the tv set, grabbing the console, smashing it against the coffee table. Repeatedly. Once I finished I felt calm and peaceful, and that was it for baseball and me. All winter I went without playing, recalling my incredibly stupid fit of destruction whenever I suffered an urge for a game. But in mid-February, when spring training came around, I started getting real hankerings.
I can’t say my anger management is better than it’s ever been, because I’ve been here before. I’ve been anger-less, or rather destructive-behaviour–less, for long periods of time, and I’ve always kind of stopped being vigilant, stopped seeing whatever shrink I was seeing, stopped worrying about anger management. Stopped being honest with myself, shut down communication lines. That’s when the destructive behaviour returns. And I never seem to expect it. Thus the risk of getting a new PlayStation. This time, though, I’ve continued my vigilance, continued seeing whatever shrink I’m seeing, continued working on anger management as a moment-to-moment thing rather than dealing with it only as or after it arises. I’ll continue to be proactive rather than reactive.
In this headspace, I’ve been thinking about that PlayStation for a while now. A few weeks ago I resisted an impulse to go out and buy it. I waited. And waited. And waited. And then last Friday, my day off, weekend before MLB opening day, I went. Now lemme back up a moment. In the weeks leading up to Friday, I’d also been pricing the system. One-twenty-nine plus tax, same as the one I’d gotten in 2006. So on Friday I went up the street to that blue-and-yellow consumer vortex, BestBuy, and discovered that the system’s price had that very day dropped twenty bucks. Sure, what’s twenty bucks. Well, hey, I’ll tell you, I’m on a tight budget. Well, no budget really, but I do have very little money to spare these days. Spending way too much on booze and dope. You didn’t read that. So I’m thinking, Cool, twenty bucks in my pocket. Just for being patient. Heh heh, when I’m done here I’ll just pop next door into the liquor store.
Anyway, a blue-shirt comes up to me and introduces himself, Dave, and assures me he’s not on commission, and I say, yeah, I didn’t think the commercials were lying, and he laughs, and I tell him why I’m there and we get into a discussion about PlayStation and baseball video games, and I discover he’s as much of a video game baseball junkie as I am, and he used to play the very game I used to play (EA Sports 2004 MLB something-or-other, the one with Manny Ramirez on the cover), and we talk about that game’s fun points and glitches and then he tells me about MLB 09 The Show, how it’s the same as the other one only waaaaay better, etc etc etc, until I tell him I’m sold. And even then, because he’s not on commission, we continue to talk about video game baseball.
As we’re going to the register to ring up the transaction, Dave asks what happened to my previous console. I pause, wondering if I should tell him the truth. Then I just say it. Anger management. He offers a knowing look and we get to the register and he says, This is what I’m gonna do for you. This warranty covers any damage your console might incur. Not including anger management, he adds with that knowing look. You just call this number on the brochure and they’ll send you a gift certificate for $109 to cover the cost of the system. I’m throwing it in at no extra charge. Now I do have to ring it in to activate it, and it’s twenty-nine ninety-nine, but what I’ll do is I won’t charge you for the game. So it’s a wash.
Well I’m overcome with gratitude. All I can do is thank him. Several times, until he says I can stop thanking him. Let me just say, Dave from BestBuy, if you’re reading this, you’re absolutely right: this game is the same as the other one only waaaaay better. Graphics, realism, play-by-play soundtrack, statistical supplements, degree of difficulty, everything. I’m using it to practise patience. And I’m getting tons of practice. Because whereas on the old game I was a star, kicking rawhide ass and winning every MVP and World Series, on this new one I can barely hit the strike zone or for that matter the ball. But I’ll practise, I’ll get better. I’ll practise. I’ll get better. It’s an ongoing process, requiring patience and honesty.
9.4.09
4.3.09
Stop the Presses, Cuz Ain’t No One Ever Heard This Shit Before . . . Have They?
Dunno what to write. I’m empty. Just finished a 10,000-word story. Sucked everything outta me. Dried me up and tossed away my husk. Now here I am, trying to revitalize. Trying to regain my wind and start from scratch. I know it’ll take a few days. But I want it now. That’s my generation’s defining complex. Perversion of entitlement, I call it. That’s us, that’s Generation X. Subsequent generations, too. But we started it.
(Warning: sweeping generalizations to follow. Maybe one or two already.)
As children, we had everything we could want. Our baby-boomer, doctor-lawyer-executive parents had caught a virulent strain of the (North) American Dream, and we Gen Xers grew up with the symptoms: two-car garages, cottages, kidney-shaped pools in the backyard, two- and three-figure allowances, computers, video games, VCRs, pay-tv, bitter divorces, two birthdays, two Christmases . . . in short, excess. And lots of it. So we Gen Xers coasted into “adulthood” in the recession-riddled nineties, and it was like the carpet being pulled out from under our feet. We may have been educated up the wazoo, but really, we were facing a dead end: no job prospects, no savings, no property, nothing. Just that education up the wazoo, maybe a corresponding student debt, and the parent(s) we could always go back and live with for a while, just until the cloud passed . . . yeah, yeah, the deceptive lure of home’s stunting comforts . . . How could we establish new places to call home when we had neither moolah nor moxie enough to leave the homes of our parent(s) for ones of our own?
(Warning: totally arid and possibly spurious generalizations to follow.)
The answer: We rented. Rented for years. Put close to a hundred grand into someone else’s mortgage over the next decade without coming close to actually owning anything. Lived paycheck-to-paycheck, knowing that if the bottom ever fell out, we could always — sigh — move back in with the folk(s). But so long as we didn’t, so long as we could afford to stay away, we Gen Xers forged homes of our own. Even if we didn’t have two-car garages or cottages or kidney-shaped pools in the backyard, we had the Internet. We had video games. Home entertainment systems. Satellite TV. Five- and six- and even seven-figure salaries. Bitter divorces. Two Christmases (plus Hanukkah and Kwanza). Cellphones and ATMs and fast food on every corner, for every other meal. We had everything we wanted. Because we’d been conditioned to want shallow and technological and sarcastic and chemical distractions. Not just want them; expect them. Even with time, such early and effective conditioning is tough to break. Some of us strive for advancement or enlightenment; many of us avoid any attempt at improvement if it requires real effort, falling back on a default assumption that without lifting a finger, we’ll somehow still get what we want: shallow and technological and sarcastic and chemical. (Perhaps there’s an equation in nature, a ratio — crudely put — of deadbeat citizens to conscientious citizens. The relation seems to be consistent across human populations.) That’s us, that’s Generation X. Which now we can presume stands for Generation Expectation. Perversion of entitlement. We started it.
(Warning: sweeping generalizations to follow. Maybe one or two already.)
As children, we had everything we could want. Our baby-boomer, doctor-lawyer-executive parents had caught a virulent strain of the (North) American Dream, and we Gen Xers grew up with the symptoms: two-car garages, cottages, kidney-shaped pools in the backyard, two- and three-figure allowances, computers, video games, VCRs, pay-tv, bitter divorces, two birthdays, two Christmases . . . in short, excess. And lots of it. So we Gen Xers coasted into “adulthood” in the recession-riddled nineties, and it was like the carpet being pulled out from under our feet. We may have been educated up the wazoo, but really, we were facing a dead end: no job prospects, no savings, no property, nothing. Just that education up the wazoo, maybe a corresponding student debt, and the parent(s) we could always go back and live with for a while, just until the cloud passed . . . yeah, yeah, the deceptive lure of home’s stunting comforts . . . How could we establish new places to call home when we had neither moolah nor moxie enough to leave the homes of our parent(s) for ones of our own?
(Warning: totally arid and possibly spurious generalizations to follow.)
The answer: We rented. Rented for years. Put close to a hundred grand into someone else’s mortgage over the next decade without coming close to actually owning anything. Lived paycheck-to-paycheck, knowing that if the bottom ever fell out, we could always — sigh — move back in with the folk(s). But so long as we didn’t, so long as we could afford to stay away, we Gen Xers forged homes of our own. Even if we didn’t have two-car garages or cottages or kidney-shaped pools in the backyard, we had the Internet. We had video games. Home entertainment systems. Satellite TV. Five- and six- and even seven-figure salaries. Bitter divorces. Two Christmases (plus Hanukkah and Kwanza). Cellphones and ATMs and fast food on every corner, for every other meal. We had everything we wanted. Because we’d been conditioned to want shallow and technological and sarcastic and chemical distractions. Not just want them; expect them. Even with time, such early and effective conditioning is tough to break. Some of us strive for advancement or enlightenment; many of us avoid any attempt at improvement if it requires real effort, falling back on a default assumption that without lifting a finger, we’ll somehow still get what we want: shallow and technological and sarcastic and chemical. (Perhaps there’s an equation in nature, a ratio — crudely put — of deadbeat citizens to conscientious citizens. The relation seems to be consistent across human populations.) That’s us, that’s Generation X. Which now we can presume stands for Generation Expectation. Perversion of entitlement. We started it.
3.3.09
Update
Good evening and welcome to Channel 12 News at 6. In our top story today, a plane did not crash into the Bay of Bengal, not killing all 155 on board. According to reports, the plane made a safe and routine air crossing of the Bay during its flight from Madras to Mandalay. Said the pilot, “I’m sure glad I know how to do this, otherwise it mighta been difficult.” One passenger, wishing to remain anonymous, revealed that the in-flight meal was a choice between kidney pie and tilapia.
In our top local story, this afternoon at a west-end subway station a woman was not pushed in front of a subway train. Please be warned that this story contains graphic images and descriptions. Several witnesses claim that the woman was standing on the yellow strip, close to the edge of the platform, as the 4:12 eastbound entered the station running ninety seconds late. A witness describes the moment: "Here comes the subway, and there she is, standing right on the yellow strip, watching the subway get closer, minding her own business, and all of a sudden no one pushes her! It’s an image I’ll live with forever." The woman, who survived the ordeal, went to a nearby Emergency Department seeking a sedative. The subway crew will receive trauma counselling, including the driver, who was inches away from the windshield when the woman’s body didn’t splatter against it. No one has been apprehended and no motive has been suggested.
In gun news, several people around the city were not shot and killed today. Our voice on the street, Richard Drizzle, has more. Richard?
“Thanks, Ming-Poon, yes. In this amazing development, each individual in question apparently suffered the same fate, namely, not getting shot and killed. I’ve spoken with several of the non-victims, and each one has a different story. I’m just going to play some quotes from my tape recorder here.” (click)
VOICE (woman’s): You hear about it happening all the time and you never think it could be you.
VOICE (man’s): Used to be that you could walk these streets without worrying about not getting shot. Now when I walk these streets, I worry.
VOICE (man’s): I ride the TTC every day. All of a sudden, these last few months, all these people not getting shot on the TTC, not getting pushed in front of trains, I’m thinking maybe I’ll find another way to get around.
VOICE (woman’s): As if parents don’t have enough to worry about, now they’re constantly living in fear of the possibility of their children not getting shot at school.
“As you can hear, a lotta fear and frustration. The citizens of this city have been crying out for something to be done to make the streets unsafer. And if they don’t get what they want, this being an election year, Mayor Milker might be looking for a new job soon. Back to you, Ming-Poon.”
Thank you, Richard. God knows I’m not paid to editorialize, but what the kelly is happening to our city? Anyway, turning to sports, here’s Ratso.
In our top local story, this afternoon at a west-end subway station a woman was not pushed in front of a subway train. Please be warned that this story contains graphic images and descriptions. Several witnesses claim that the woman was standing on the yellow strip, close to the edge of the platform, as the 4:12 eastbound entered the station running ninety seconds late. A witness describes the moment: "Here comes the subway, and there she is, standing right on the yellow strip, watching the subway get closer, minding her own business, and all of a sudden no one pushes her! It’s an image I’ll live with forever." The woman, who survived the ordeal, went to a nearby Emergency Department seeking a sedative. The subway crew will receive trauma counselling, including the driver, who was inches away from the windshield when the woman’s body didn’t splatter against it. No one has been apprehended and no motive has been suggested.
In gun news, several people around the city were not shot and killed today. Our voice on the street, Richard Drizzle, has more. Richard?
“Thanks, Ming-Poon, yes. In this amazing development, each individual in question apparently suffered the same fate, namely, not getting shot and killed. I’ve spoken with several of the non-victims, and each one has a different story. I’m just going to play some quotes from my tape recorder here.” (click)
VOICE (woman’s): You hear about it happening all the time and you never think it could be you.
VOICE (man’s): Used to be that you could walk these streets without worrying about not getting shot. Now when I walk these streets, I worry.
VOICE (man’s): I ride the TTC every day. All of a sudden, these last few months, all these people not getting shot on the TTC, not getting pushed in front of trains, I’m thinking maybe I’ll find another way to get around.
VOICE (woman’s): As if parents don’t have enough to worry about, now they’re constantly living in fear of the possibility of their children not getting shot at school.
“As you can hear, a lotta fear and frustration. The citizens of this city have been crying out for something to be done to make the streets unsafer. And if they don’t get what they want, this being an election year, Mayor Milker might be looking for a new job soon. Back to you, Ming-Poon.”
Thank you, Richard. God knows I’m not paid to editorialize, but what the kelly is happening to our city? Anyway, turning to sports, here’s Ratso.
24.2.09
big brother's watching from our bellies
Sometimes I wonder if my person or anything in my house is infected with an RFID chip. According to media sources whose veracity I have no way of determining, these chips are in banknotes, consumer products, car tires, passports, even livestock. Thankfully I have no cows in my house. Fun fact: RFID-implanted cows are subjected to retinal scans to confirm their identities in slaughterhouses.
Sioux City, Iowa; September, 2004---Eleven hundred pounds of pork shoulder was recalled from retail meateries when authorities discovered a tagged “research” herd had gone to slaughter without notification. Oops. But then imagine they hadn’t caught it in time.
Hey Ned, how’s that research herd coming along?
Let’s see here . . . oh my god, Cyrus, the herd’s scattered all over the place!
What the . . . Just pick a random subject.
Okay, let’s see. Here's one. Subject 2468642, where are you? Let’s see. Oh my god, Cyrus.
What?
Subject 2468642 is scattered all over the place. Possibly in people’s fridges and bellies.
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean wow. We can put readers in people’s bellies now?
Heeeyyy, there's some forward thinking. Speaking of which, what're you doing for lunch?
Sioux City, Iowa; September, 2004---Eleven hundred pounds of pork shoulder was recalled from retail meateries when authorities discovered a tagged “research” herd had gone to slaughter without notification. Oops. But then imagine they hadn’t caught it in time.
Hey Ned, how’s that research herd coming along?
Let’s see here . . . oh my god, Cyrus, the herd’s scattered all over the place!
What the . . . Just pick a random subject.
Okay, let’s see. Here's one. Subject 2468642, where are you? Let’s see. Oh my god, Cyrus.
What?
Subject 2468642 is scattered all over the place. Possibly in people’s fridges and bellies.
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean wow. We can put readers in people’s bellies now?
Heeeyyy, there's some forward thinking. Speaking of which, what're you doing for lunch?
18.1.09
The Dreamer
Mel’s leaning toward bacon . . . The ceiling fan twirrhhing along his neck, carrying the smell of hot bubbling grease, frying and deep frying . . . Footfalls of approaching waitress . . . Swivels his head on that twirrhhing trajectory, cigarette dangling from weathered Texan mouth.
“I gotta goda sleep, but I gotta do somethin first.”
Middle-aged waitress with thick amphibious features and natural frown line, doing life in lime-green polyester. Alice sewn into heart.
“Sorry sweetie,” says she in husky smoker voice, “no smoking.”
“Am I smoking? Is this cigarette lit? Listen, sugar, blowin smoke outta my ass here, as usual, with no plan or destination, knitting my scale model of the universe without regard for logistics or realism or for that matter my dwindling yarn supply. As though my tepid, unfocused approach to success were a front, a show, a charade, concealing something deeper, something greater, more important, less fatuous. Much less fatuous. Listen, sugar, I want you to bring me food. I am living a charade, yes, but what if I were also living more than that? Unbeknownst to myself? This is the secret fantasy of just about everyone. Myths abound in every culture, told in oral, literary, movie form . . . Listen, sugar, I want you to bring me food. Not a menu, not some stupid municipal bylaw, food. A cheeseburger with bacon, tomatoes, relish, mustard, earwax, toe jam, brain tissue, and mayonnaise on a kaiser bun. French fries with gravy on the side, a glass of radioactive water now and an orange Windex with my food.”
“Comin right up.”
“Because by god I will produce something. Even a deadbeat like me can aspire to greater things. Glory is not impossible. Not when you have an imagination like a horsehoof in the face.”
Some time after she has left, Mel asks, “Did my food come?”
But no one’s sitting with him to answer.
Live your dreams, folks.
“I gotta goda sleep, but I gotta do somethin first.”
Middle-aged waitress with thick amphibious features and natural frown line, doing life in lime-green polyester. Alice sewn into heart.
“Sorry sweetie,” says she in husky smoker voice, “no smoking.”
“Am I smoking? Is this cigarette lit? Listen, sugar, blowin smoke outta my ass here, as usual, with no plan or destination, knitting my scale model of the universe without regard for logistics or realism or for that matter my dwindling yarn supply. As though my tepid, unfocused approach to success were a front, a show, a charade, concealing something deeper, something greater, more important, less fatuous. Much less fatuous. Listen, sugar, I want you to bring me food. I am living a charade, yes, but what if I were also living more than that? Unbeknownst to myself? This is the secret fantasy of just about everyone. Myths abound in every culture, told in oral, literary, movie form . . . Listen, sugar, I want you to bring me food. Not a menu, not some stupid municipal bylaw, food. A cheeseburger with bacon, tomatoes, relish, mustard, earwax, toe jam, brain tissue, and mayonnaise on a kaiser bun. French fries with gravy on the side, a glass of radioactive water now and an orange Windex with my food.”
“Comin right up.”
“Because by god I will produce something. Even a deadbeat like me can aspire to greater things. Glory is not impossible. Not when you have an imagination like a horsehoof in the face.”
Some time after she has left, Mel asks, “Did my food come?”
But no one’s sitting with him to answer.
Live your dreams, folks.
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