misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

The classrooms in my elementary school were always decorated with those lame motivational posters that I'm sure you also encountered as a child. Some examples: The super-cute, reckless kitten hanging from a branch with the copy "Hang in There" or penguins walking close together in a blizzard with the heavily-bolded word "TEAMWORK" . The one I remember the most was a poster with an image of a desk or person at a desk or a dragon or magic metal sphere or something (ok i admit .. my memory of anything before last night isn't so good). The important part is, in big block type across the image was the quote "Knowledge is Power," attributed to Francis Bacon. What better quote to motivate school kids than that one? I immediately set about attempting to gain as much knowledge as possible.

Twenty years later, I realize those fuckers lied to me. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is stress.

Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists all agree that people today have higher levels of anxiety, stress, and depression than humans have ever had at any point in history (i admit i'm taking some creative license by making that claim, but I did read something to that extent in Time Magazine once). A few weeks ago, it occurred to me why we are all so fucked up in the head: Knowledge. We have too much of it. In reality, we as humans now know too much, and all this knowledge is crushing us under its infinite weight.

Example 1: A few weeks ago, I set out to have a cheeseburger and onion rings at the local diner. As it was delivered to the table, all I was able to do was sit and stare at it. I was paralyzed my stress. Why? Because I was not seeing a cheeseburger and onion rings. I was seeing polyunsaturated fats, empty carbohydrates, cow-feed steroids, 924 milligrams of sodium, unprocessed sugars, saturated fats, trans fats, animal fats, fat fat FAT. All of these things stared at me, and made it impossible to even remotely enjoy my upcoming meal. Hunger urged me to eat the burger, while knowledge urged me to eat unprocessed barley kernels instead. Nutritionists, with all their advice and facts, have, without a doubt, added unbearable levels of stress to the simple act of eating food. They have deprived us of the joy associated with eating a good meal. These days, it isn't even good enough to eat fruits and vegetables. You have to eat steamed vegetables, as boiled vegetables steals many of the vitamins. And you have to eat an wide color palate of fruits - all different colors to take in the necessary variety of anti-oxidants and nutrients. I can't even eat an apple anymore without seventy-four facts about that apple racing through my head. I'd rather just see an apple. Any progress my health has made as a result of this dietary knowledge has been reversed due to the corresponding amount of stress of this knowledge. I desire to return to my youth, when a Big Mac was nothing more than a beautifully-tasting sandwich that brought me pure, innocent joy.

Example 2: Each morning after reading the tops stories on Yahoo! News, I know what is going on at every place in the world. I know what is going on in Iran, Samoa, Jakarta, New York, and Argentina. I even know what is going on in the middle of the earth, and outside our solar system. I know where meteors are. I know how many cases of avian flu have been diagnosed in Egypt. I know how roadside bombs kill soldiers in Iraq. I know what little girl has been kidnapped in Washington. After the first ten minutes of reading the news, I'm so concerned with the impending destruction of our world, I'm already thinking about the beer I need. Too much knowledge. Every news story is written in a way to scare the shit out of you. They talk about the need for people to be informed. Just how informed? I've got a ton of my own shit to worry about, before adding on the stresses of the escalating Iranian hostage crisis and rising mortgage rates.

Example 3: With the help of websites like webmd.com, I can know self-analyze any symptom of any disease in the world. Now, a cough is more than just a reaction to a minor irritation in my throat. It is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, or tuberculosis. Those floaters in my eyes are a sign of an impending stroke. And my excessive nose-picking is a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. You look through all the diseases on that site and wonder how the hell you aren't dead yet.

In addition, I can no longer use my debit card due to a "Dangers of Using Debit-Cards" feature story recently on the news or breathe air in a bar due to the high concentration of dissolved keg cleaning chemicals.

So knowledge is power? Fuck off. When I ultimately move to St. Croix to open up a beachside bar and stop reading the paper or watching the Discovery channel, it is because of that other saying that got much less attention in school but is much better advice: Ignorance is bliss.

I wasn't raised to concern myself with "minor" health concerns. It was pretty much male family policy to take trips to the doctor only in the event of broken/missing limbs, skin that was on fire, or violations of my bodily organs by sharp foreign objects (again, this didn't hold true for the women in the family. Debbie was at the doctor once a day, forever convinced she had Barrett's Syndrome, leukemia, or a brain tumor).

Part of this was due to the time my dad served in a US Navy medical ward - he had solutions for most every minor problem. If I had the flu, I was covered in Vick's Vapor rub and a towel. Sprained ankle? We'd go to Walgreen's to purchase crutches. Stress? My dad would hand me a paper bag and instruct me to breathe deeply from it. I even once slept overnight in a tub of vinegar, in response to the skin blistering I received upon falling asleep in the San Diego sun with a body full of Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil (i thought that stuff just instantly gave you a dark island tan, no matter how white you were). My father's techniques almost always solved the problem at hand, so my experience with doctors or hospitals early on was, luckily, limited. From this I gained the sense that if sick, I should be able to solve the problem myself. Further that with the society-taught notion that true, tough men never ask for help from anyone (just look at Rambo III, when Rambo sealed a gunshot wound by digging out the bullet with a knife, then sealing it shut by igniting gunpowder), and I've somehow managed to earn a certain distrust of doctors and medicines. To some extent, I believe dealing with a certain amount of pain makes us all tougher.

This sentiment has changed as i've gotten older. Not only does aging start to affect your bodies in ways you've never had to deal with, but the time you've spend dealing with minor annoyances begins to wear you out. You want solutions. You want comfort. You want your quality of life to improve. You want to know how to properly clean your 12" penis.

In response to these needs, I went to the doctor a few weeks ago. In addition to the general check-up, I wanted to discuss matters with him that I've dealt with pretty much all my life, but out of fear of weakness, never thought merited a doctor's advice. Suffice to say, these problems piled up over my twenties, leaving a laundry list of things I needed to address. That said, so as not to overwhelm him, I decided to limit myself to only telling him two items on the list: heartburn and constantly-shitty sleep (which, if solved, might help alleviate my 3rd most pressing problem: stress).

All of you who read this know i've had stomach issues forever. In my early 20s, it was constant nausea, in which I puked about once or twice a week. I self-diagnosed that problem as directly correlated to the amount of onion rings and shots of jaeger I had the previous night, and thus was able to correct the problem without a doctor's input. In addition, I've always had heartburn. It was just one of those things I accepted as the cost of being a guy who likes beer and fried mushroom. When younger, Tums usually helped, though the past five years, it has grown beyond self-treatment options. At least two or three nights a week I'm up because of it, and have to sit on the couch for a few hours before it subsides. It feels a bit like satan, the dark lord, has shot a load of steaming hot semen down my throat, to mention nothing of the sensation that Rosie O Donnell is standing on my chest while holding a few suitcases. Suffice to say, it is mildly uncomfortable. Time for some medical treatment, I figured.

After telling the doctor my lifetime of symptoms (which, in turn, was after him caressing my testicles as part of my "normal" checkup), he said my problems were beyond normal heartburn symptoms. It was possible, he said, that I had a hiatal hernia. Nothing major, it is when part of your stomach protrudes into you esophogus, causing problems of the sort that I have. He couldn't confirm it himself, so he wrote a phone number on a prescription pad and told me I needed to go to a specialist for an upper endoscopy.

Umm, upper endoscopy? I did not like the sound of that one bit.

Some internet research has revealed the following. An endoscopy is when the doctor shoves a fiber-optic camera, with robotic arms, down your throat. The contraption that is put down your throat looks like this:

I will confess, I have a very serious problem with this contraption. Maybe it is my time in a Peruvian jail, but I have a basic fear of large, long, black objects snaking their way through my throat. They don't put you under, and give you nothing more than a throat anesthetic to soften the gag reflex. Sorry, it'll take more than that for my body to accept a fucking garden hose placed down my throat for 10 minutes. And what's up with the robotic arms? What the hell are they doing in there? One look at that picture, and I realized my symptoms maybe weren't quite as bad as I have thought. Maybe I just needed more tums. And less beer. Anything to avoid that thing checking out my insides. Suffice to say, I haven't called the number on that paper. Next time, I'll keep my mouth shut, and mention only the things that don't involve big black snakes - like my sleeping problems. Which have, in course, gotten worse after seeing the above-referenced photograph. I have nightmares of large black men raping my mouth.

For now, I'll stick with vinegar baths and paper bags. Maybe not as effective, but then, I've again remembered the reason for avoiding doctors and hospitals whenever possible: Big Black Dicks with Claws.

Saturday was my film team's 2nd entry into the NYC Midnight 12-Hour film race. You get a theme and item at noon via email, and have 12 hours to write, film, edit, and score a short film involving that theme and item. Last year, we won the audience award, and 3rd place from the judges. This year, theme was "Fortune" and the item was "Egg". This is what we ended up with. And yes, I'm aware it totally random, which is why I'm quite proud of it:

Due to my languishing career, I have had well-too much time for blogs, which has resulted in the Moby Dick-esque length you have recently experienced. I'll keep this one short. I've been combing through Citysearch and Menupages to find the right restaurant to take Jill's parents for dinner tomorrow, as they are coming in to town. While reading reviews for the expensive, trendy restaurant Mercer Kitchen, I came across this comment from gqleone:

celebrated my 24th Birthday here with 25 of my closest friends. A definite "must eat". Try the chocolate cake- Ill make the trip to Soho just to order that.

25 of your closest friends? There are so many things wrong with this superficial declaration, I can only point out a few, as I promised to keep this blog short. First of all, nobody on this earth has 25 friends, even if you include both close and distant friends. Hell, you could even throw in all of your enemies and still not reach 25. Secondly, by stating only her "closest" friends were there, she is implying she has many more friends, probably over 100, all with different titles. Closest, close, somewhat close, lost touch with but still love, not-too-close, and distant. Apparently, ggleone is so popular, she was only able to invite her "closest" friends to her birthday. Thirdly, if someone thinks they have 25 "close" friends, it is painfully evident she has incredibly low, superficial standards for what constitutes a friend. She is like those girls I used to come across in high school and college who'd call you their best friend within three days. I guess you could have 25 "close" friends, if you included co-workers, landlords, people who work at Chili's, and pigeons. Ggelone, I would argue, probably has no real friends, and no real depth, but does has a lot of people who go shopping with her that she considers close. Close friendship isn't hard when you have only about three thoughts to share with other people.

And you guys wonder why I'm pissed off all the time. Fuck.

In any event, the question for tomorrow stands as this: Do you take Jill's parents to the cool, trendy, loud, busy NY restaurant so they can have a NY experience (Mercer Kitchen)? Or the overly-touristy, gimmicky, "cute" restaurant that tourists flock to (Oyster Bar at Grand Central)? Or the quiet, but affordable, neighborhood restaurant (Alonso's Steakhouse). You have twenty minutes to place your vote before a decision is made. At that time, I'll have to call 25 of my closest friends to get their opinions.

Congratulations, Reverends Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, Oprah Winfrey and all you other activist black people. You managed to get a 66-year-old cantankerous, racist, old white guy fired for making a stupid statement (even though the whole reason people listen to him is the first place is because he makes stupid statements). It is good he was fired. Why? Let the intelligent Al Sharpton explain, "We cannot afford a precedent established that the airways can commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism." And as Jessie added, "No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation."

Really? No one should use airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation? Or just white people? Because if we are going to enforce the idea that the public airwaves shouldn't be used to transmit racism or sexual degradation, let's go all the way. Let's wipe all hip-hop off of every radio station in the country. Let's take a single sample from a 50-cent song that blasted the airwaves a few years ago, "P.I.M.P": "I holla at a hoe til I got a bitch confused .. Man this hoe you can have her, when I'm done I ain't gon keep her .. Man, bitches come and go, every nigga pimpin know .. Bitch choose with me, I'll have you stripping in the street." That is pretty much representative of every hip-hop song in the past 10 years. If you need more examples, feel free to request them. I have hundreds.

Is it just my white, racist perspective on the world, or does 50-Cent seem to have a lot in common with Don Imus? He calls black women hoes, black people niggas, and, as both Jackson and Sharpton can agree, transmits racism and sexual degradation on the public airwaves. Funny, though, I've never heard either of them complain about 50-Cent.

And let's keep the public airwave cleansing going. Let's wipe out every black comic, especially Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Dave Chappelle, for spreading the same racism and sexual degradation. Let's wipe out any interviews with black athletes of any sport. And any movie made by a Wayans brother.

For all the talk made about how racist and stupid Don Imus is, it sure seems to be a one-sided argument. At some point, it became ok for a black man to be racist and sexist, but not a white man. Sharpton's entire essence revolves around defending the rights of black people everywhere, and yet he never seems to protect them from themselves. Where do you think Don Imus learned the term, "nappy headed hoes"? From a hip-hop song, most likely. Or from a Eddie Murphy joke, which is where I learned most of the black stereotypes I have today. I'd suggest Sharpton and Jackson spend a little less time invoking furor over the stupid, ignorant statements of some old white fucker, and a little more time on the people that everyone actually listens to.

I'm sure the world is a better place now, and a little less racist, now that Don Imus has lost his job. God forbid jokes or alternative opinions exist in this country. Jackson and Sharpton are ensuring that. We live in a world where everyone is so fucking sensitive that anything said by anyone is grasped upon by publicity-hungry reverends and fat talk show hosts. Forgive me if I don't have immense sympathy for people being called a name. I've been called names since I was old enough to hear. Right now, Al Sharpton can announce on his radio show that Mark Kenneth Anderson is a chalk-white, big-eared, rhythm-less, pear-shaped piece of shit. And I could care less. Maybe that is because I'm not famous? Well, I'd argue he could get on air and call Steve Nash the exact same thing, and still, nobody would complain. (who could argue? are there even white equivalents to Al Sharpton? white reverend activists?)

I'd like to end with a quote from Oprah Winfrey, who was kind enough to host the Rutgers woman's basketball team on her show. In her usual patronizing, arrogant, full-of-total-shit manner, she finished her show by saying: "I want to borrow a line from Maya Angelou, who is a personal mentor of mine and I know you all feel the same way about her. And she has said this many times, and I say this to you, on behalf of myself and every woman that I know, you make me proud to spell my name W-O-M-A-N."

This quote actually has nothing to do with what this blog, but, I mean, is it me, or does she just suck something awful? Personal mentor? W-O-M-A-N? What the fuck are you talking about, Oprah? Can't you tone down the smugness just a little? And what does spelling woman have to do with anything? Proving you can spell? If Maya Angelou is your mentor, you might wanna get a new mentor that has something to say other than spellings of words. In typical Oprah fashion, she says something as if it is deep and meaningful, when in fact it means nothing. Unfortunately, she wasn't fired like the white dude who was actually twice more entertaining.

Anyway, I'm out. Like snoop dogg likes to say, "Hoes recognize, niggaz do too." Such insightful lyrics need to be referenced more. That's where Don Imus went wrong -- If he wanted to make a stupid statement, all he had to do is quote the people who are first to condemn him.

As per your requests, here is an apartment update:

Stephen has degraded into his previous self, which is to say, I regularly pass him on the stairs, as he crawls down the steps, pantless, smeared in vomit, mismatched slippers clinging to his toes, hair like dead worms writhing from his scalp. He grips his dark wood cane, white-knuckled, as if he'll float up into the sky if he lets go even for a moment. His face looks like the grim reaper ejaculated a pound of ash over his skin. He's always headed to the corner store, for two more big, cold cans of Foster's. People in the building have tried to talk to the corner store cashiers, but they still sell him the life juice. What do they care? Two Fosters brings in 6 dollars every time. His sobriety lasted about a week after he got out of the hospital. Most of us in the building don't even have sympathy for him anymore. He's throwing his existence away, and none of us have the training or desire to intercede. I'd rather spend my time working on something or someone that can actually improve. Now, when I come across him, I either push right past him shaking my head in disgust, or, when in a bad mood, yell. "Stephen," I say, "what the fuck are you doing to yourself? It's fucking sad. You're fucking sad. We tried to help. What can we do?" He doesn't reply. He just looks at me blankly, with eyes smeared by the opaque crust of alcohol. I hear him during the night again, falling, puking, dying. The only positive lesson here is that the human body is clearly a tough son-of-a-bitch. This guy is deliberately trying to destroy his body, and his body is defying him. Almost like it isn't even part of him. Mind over matter, my ass. The only thing keeping Stephen alive is his body, which refuses to let his diseased mind take it down with it. I almost feel more sorry for Steven's body and organs than I do him. His liver, kidneys, muscles, must be frantically trying to deal with everything, doing the best job they can, trained by millions of years of evolution to survive at all costs. But they are being betrayed by their owner. Is every life worth saving? It calls to mind the discussion about brain-dead patients, or terminally sick people. At what point is a human life beyond redemption? At what point is the pain of living worse than the fear of death? Stephen is toeing that line, and those of us in the apartment are woefully ill-equipped to deal with it.

On a lighter note, the characters in our apartment continue to grow, beyond Steven. Future installments of this blog will describe our gay, rich, incredibly eccentric neighbor Rudy, a 65-year-old man named Lou who never leaves his tiny apartment, even though he has $550,000 grand in his savings account (I've seen his bank statement), and the ghost of a grotesquely fat woman who lived and died on the 5th floor. I've walked my right into a movie manuscript, and I'll use this blog to record all the details.