By Hook or by Crook

The transition into fall, here and around the world, has been rife with bullshit. Economic, political, ein Mitbewohner, medical, academic : the sort of sieve through which those unable to cope are left, and the the sly asshole Übermenschen of the future take control of the future.

Seeing what has just been endured and what ridiculous crap is on the path coming brings you to wonder the kind of calloused, scabbed-over, tired creature is going to be wearing your clothes in a few years time.

I've seen the models they make them in, and I'm still not sure what I'd want.

Buy American.

Buy Nee.

I've become twenty-two, and this internet apparatus is almost a year old. These two getting-older things are similar in their small, erratic, trivial changes from then to now. Kind of like the ant walking around on a Möbius strip, each little walk seems the same as the last, then he's upside down, and says in a little ant voice, "Fuuuuuuck". It'll be like that.

Like when you were able to identify what nineties culture was. I cut my hair six years ago, and that's becoming a noticeable stretch. Also, I'd like to kick that greasy jerk's ass.

Which would, of course, lead to my own (supposedly less greasy) ass hurting, inviting recursive time loops, chronometric particle bursts, and quantum-regret.

To mark the occasion of my birth, the rest of my family and I went to a hospital's emergency room: the same sort of place where nearly all of us had been twenty-two years prior. This time it was my Dad on his back, with what at the time appeared to be another stroke after the one or two he experienced following his double-bypass in early September. He described the experience multiple times as the appropriate family and hired bedside crew arrived.

There were disappearing clocks, unopenable doors, and invisible people that were really there. There were also abject terror, disorientation, and the thought that it could be the clot that chokes his brain into a vegetative state.

An extremely fortunate visit from a band mate brought him to the hospital, where he regained lucidity and frustration at the condition.

"Break my bones, but don't mess with my brain."

I found out earlier today that it wasn't another actual stroke, but some residual effect from the first one. This is fortunate because there will not be any persisting damage from this event, but extremely unfortunately: it means that this could very well happen again. Save for this bullshit, he is recovering: relearning guitar, wanting to go back to work, and getting really bored at home.

Back here, in my increasingly decorated and secluded fortress of a room, I'm waiting for these and other experiences to collect and accumulate into adult wisdom. Only then can I stop feigning world-weariness, and actually become weary of the world and all its trivialities and atrocities. I guess I could be content in suppressing wonder and naiveté, but I don't want to be a poseur forever.

Even if that means drowning the similes and metaphors in a draught of not-quite-earned adult wisdom.

I've got youth yet.

Serious Adults Doing Serious Things

Shorthand: School is starting and summer ended a good long time ago and my dad went in for a double-bypass surgery and had a minor stroke afterwards that largely affected his right side and he is recovering and will leave the hospital this Friday. He seems concerned about his ability to continue playing the guitar, but nurses and my mother are reassuring.

I've only visited once following the surgery, and will visit again this Saturday when he is moved into my home and no longer surrounded by the machines with tubes and men in blue dresses. I haven't been able to be around as much as the rest of my family, and my schedule keeps me on campus on the other end of town feeling like an asshole. It's familymancing, and I'm not great at it. It's a character test, and something that people will remember forever.

Everything is looking up, though. Family has been and will be coming into town more, so that is one positive thing to bring from this.

My friends have been very supportive and helpful and accommodating in this time, and I know I am lucky to have them and/or be on their good side.

Other subjects of interest that will be bulleted, because this is some web 1.0 shit:

• My roommate Gabe, who is interning at the Soap Factory art gallery, has brought up the idea of making an icy shanty for the annual Medicine Lake Art Shanty show. I went there last year, and it was a ton of fun. Me, him, John, and another Beloit art-type, Lee would be undertaking this project, and I am really excited about it. We have to make an enticing plan and pitch for our shanty (ideas have been going around) to the Soap Factory to secure funding and work space. It will be time consuming and ridiculous, but I could use something like that.
• My German professor this semester is apparently a small-time comedian. So far he has been good-natured, somewhat eccentric language teacher funny.
  
• My new apartment room looks the same as my old one. I am looking into fixing this.
• We had our first Mage: The Ascension meeting for the campaign John has written. It takes place in a slightly different and more secluded Twin Cities. My character is Brad Fairbro, a Bromancer. He runs a frathouse on the U of M Campus, and is the Omega-Bro. The Bro-Prime. The Brosideon of the Brocean. He has the kind of charisma, supernatural and otherwise, that takes hold only on other fratty folk and idiots. He is the latest in a long line of Bros going all the way back to the origins of civilization with the Pharbros, where leaders were no longer expected to be competent or tactful. Blah blah stuff.
• I saw a guy at the bar who looked exactly like me. Then he started to notice. Then I left. ohman.
  

Total Bastard Acceptance Movement

I've spent some time in my life, at various different stages in development, trying to actively construct who I was in, more or less, purely aesthetic ways. This ranged from me wanting to change my name to Mike when I was 8, to trying to wear 3 watches at a time when I was 11, and the dress-like-a-fucking-idiot era throughout high school. Most people would admit to doing this to some extent in their shake-your-head-and-grin-I-was-dumb days, but beyond high school graduation, any accusation of doing this is akin to calling them and their mother a total phony.

Any labeling, even accurate labeling, would threaten to destabilize society by sending every barista, bookstore clerk, and graphic designer into a civil war. You know, if they cared about what your fag hipster mouth had to say.

That's a lot of angry for the post-angst generation*.

I'm not here to swim in that kind of hypocrisy. I've got too much more to consider.

There has been a feeling in my belly sometimes when I have an introspective moment after a few months of thoughtless action on my part. It is the strange acknowledgment and acceptance that one is a total jerk, and sees no real need to remedy this. At those moments, I assumed it was just a part of growing into a man. The fading of anxiety and the general worry that has made a whole lot of being and doing so goddamn hard is going away, and being replaced with the kind of self-appeasement that you see in the grins and expensive suits and ties of truly evil men.

So much of me wants to be them. It can still happen.
Examples:

• One of those sociopaths that lives two lives with two spouses and families on different ends of the same town.
• A cunning plagiarist.
• A marketing executive.

But I'm starting to think that may not be a great idea.
More as this develops.

There was a time at work not too long ago, won't say which job, but:
A man who looked like old modern Neil Young came to the counter and bought a bunch of pencils. As he was leaving the store, I turned to a coworker and said "Man, that guy looked just like Neil Young!". My coworker asked me to point out who it was. I pointed to the old man leaving the store, and said "That guy!". Right at that moment, the man threw up heavy-style.

I knew that the man must have been thinking, "If one more person says I look like Neil Young, I am going to fucking throw up." My message across the collective human unconsciousness must have sent him over that edge. If he does that all the time, the man needs a maid. Hey hey, My my.

(*NO SUCH THING)