Archive for May, 2009

Angelina unbound

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Angelina-Aphrodite, fresh from the sea

Angelina-Aphrodite, fresh from the sea

She stands against a deep blue sea and an azure sky, does Ms. Jolie. Stands visible from the breast up (a bust and then a bust, we might say) and giving us, her adoring public, her panting men-children, the once-over. Her hair is slicked back, wet with ocean; the moisture glazes the skin of her face and naked shoulders; her eyes are narrowed, under arching brows, and though the pupils barely show, floating just under her long lashes, she is looking down at us — down on us — from the height and hauteur of her beauty, of her unavailability, of her aquiline nose, her slightly parted lips (the lower plump and sensual).

Her lovely face is pointed — that is, her nose, her chin, and the down-driving angle of her regard, and they’re pointing us in a direction too. Her naked shoulders and chest, her chest and the tops of her breasts, are driving us, relentlessly, over the cliff of some decision we will regret (this is an awfully beautiful woman and a clever photographer / image manipulator). What else can we say of the tattoos — the locked black horns, or antlers, delving down, pointing low, just above her declivity, and the twin pink roses, cum leaves and tendrils, gracing the heaving top of each breast cupped in the black retro bustier one-piece? Except that the head of this deer, this buck, this black buck points down, like the head of the phallus itself, toward the proving ground of our pleasure.

Yes, she’s just risen from the ocean, this siren. And our best chance is to strap ourselves like Ulysses to the mast.

She is saying, says a student of mine, a frank and horny young automotive technician, “Eat me!” And no doubt this is true. She is saying eat me up, you swine. Feast on me, you lowly beggars, and despair. Buy my images. See my films. Worship me from the dirt where you writhe, you worms. Eat me and secrete me through the sweat piss shit that pour from you as you make your painful way through life’s dirt, which is your portion and not mine.

Eat me, vermin, and then die.

Champagne, anyone (upon defeat)?

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

I had a friend in St. Paul, where I used to live, who insisted on celebrating with champagne occasions that most of us would take as bleak defeats, especially being fired from a job.

He’d seen enough of the organizational world, this every man jack (whom I’ll call Jack), to know that every organization has something of General Motors about it. It’s massive, unwieldy, uncomfortable with creativity and the (merely) personal. It won’t move gladly off the mark, which is the spot it is used to sit.

Jack celebrated his own firings and mine with insistent cheer and regularity, always producing a bottle of serviceable champagne to mark the occasion (no, not Pieper-Heidseck but not Andre’s either) and a stogie too for good measure.

This is the end of that disaster, he proposed, and the beginning of a brave new adventure.

I’ve known enough organizations to know the sad, slow dysfunction at the heart of the beast. It moves unwillingly, it thinks unwittingly. It sniffs out and coughs up those that don’t give every sign of assimilation.

Still, there’s this matter of “emotional intelligence,” as it’s been called. We can’t go on and on getting shit-canned, can we? The world doesn’t have enough champagne to float us in perpetuity! We don’t have enough peace of mind to stand in perpetual dissent and opposition. (What’s the point of fighting your whole life like the Tamil Tigers only to be done in, violently, at the end?)

So we choose our battles and bide our time, serving the beast and looking forward to the day when it will swallow us and not cough us up in a cannonade of chewed bones and wet feathers. We look forward to serving such a beast as sees a bigger picture than the near-term bottom line and Wall Street’s fury when the gains don’t meet expectations.

(For more about champagne and its association with both victory and defeat, go to http://salsabravagrill.com/a-toast-to-champagne-and-sparkling-wines.html.)

Spring garage sale: Just another way to make no money

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

If in these rough times you wish to make less money than you’re making now, hold a garage sale.

My wife and I just finished up three days of trying to foist our junk on an unsuspecting public — three days of exhaustive waiting in a lawn chair for motivated, monied fellow-citizens to hurry on by and stuff their trunks and attics with stuff we really don’t need and they certainly don’t either.

There are lawn hoses past their prime, there’s landscaping fabric, there’s a scrap of insulating blanket from the hot tub and an old hot tub pump. There are books both popular and esoteric (no one reads anymore), plus desk accessories like take dispensers and paper clip holders. There are antiquated media like VHS and audio tapes. There are my wife’s Eileen Fisher skirts and sweaters (not junk, but not cheap either). There’s an old Nintendo game (gets the kids drooling, sure). There’s an old chain saw (gets the old boys engorged, but I’ll make ‘em buy a book if they want the toy and report back within two days with a 500-word book report).

Considering that the sale took about three weeks of preparation on our part (well, my wife’s anyway), and that we sat out there in the garage and the driveway for 16 to 18 hours over three days, and that we took in, what, maybe $300-350, I’d say we probably made about $2.00 per hour.

So unless you have a lot of really cool stuff that you can sell for a really fair price (not give away), you’d do just as well to give your old junk (valuables) to charity and take the deduction. That way, you’d save your labor, salve your conscience,  and contribute to the greater glory of man and God.

Alternatively, you could supplement your sedentary labor in the lawnchair with some obstreperous and obnoxious work, on the main drags, in a chicken costume. You’d strut your stuff on the public thoroughfare, cunningly and necessarily disguised so none of your respectable neighbors will know you, squawking, “Buy our junk! It’s all for sale, cheap! Move it to your attic, please! Get it out of our lives! Please, take it away! You can have it for nothing!”