Unemployed Ben

When you hit rock bottom a light welcomes you, a light that’s indicates that up is the only place to go. But things can always get worse, you can always die, perhaps even a painful death.

I had a shitty… well I hated my family life. I had a primitive hostility to the conditions in which I found myself growing up. I suppose that I detached quite early. I couldnt enjoy life when my family fought, when my mother drank. The slamming of the doors, the yelling and screaming. Brutal truths were spilled out like a glass of knocked over milk. The complaining, the bitching. Sometimes your fascinated by it, because when its happening your undetectable to them and you just stare, taking it all in.

You withdraw from it but are still affected by it, deeply affected actually, even if unaware.

And when older you realize this is where you drift down to with your acquaintances your relationships, looking to mimic that feeling.

Being close to another doesn’t mean you’re any less alone. But being alone isn’t a bad thing, unless it’s a bitter isolation. I am a solitary person, have been since I can remember. It takes time to…well you know.

Solitude is a natural place for me, my imagination is powerful enough.

I have a proclivity to keep people on edge, is it because of that lack of sanctuary? So cautious in some ways and in others so brash, to my determent.

And now that I’ve found it again, I hope and wish that I don’t lose my inspiration, knowing that it laid dormant for some time…. a great deal of time.

Without the lows can there be highs, if life is easy is it just as rewarding?

I begin today not knowing where I will be a week from now. Part of me wants to run, run away, leave all my possessions behind and begin anew with a new passion, a determination that I didn’t have before. To stop worrying about the consequences of actions. To stop wondering what will happen and instead make things happen. Demand a different path instead of wishing for one.

Becoming one of the people that I have admired and instead of wondering how they got to be that way, just become one of them.

This isn’t about running away and cutting myself off from people but to experience more of it than I ever have. Living like this day will be my last and to give everything a higher meaning because I want to feel that these things, these everyday things have a purpose and a connection to something bigger. To experience everything I can, even if it’s scary, or naughty, disgusting, painful or even heart wrenching. To have the moments that I cannot have, or wouldn’t have had from a couch… a chair or a bed. Not from TV’s but from books, the written word. Being able to read an eloquent line and then to pause and see how it feels, how it relates to the way I could or should express myself.

To write, to be the person I didn’t think I could be, the person that my past wouldn’t let me be. To break all my fears and cross all the self inflicted boundaries. To cross the line, to be out of control and misunderstood, but in the good way. To open up the things I have closed down.

To talk about the hard things, so that I can enjoy the good things.

There are days, many many days. And within them are moments of joy and happiness. There are days that can be forgotten or hardly even remembered. Then there are days that are memorable not because of drama or because of life changing events but because there was an awareness of something out of the norm. The days where you come to conclusions or even resignations about yourself. These days can happen on a beach watching a sunset when it felt like a loud sound came crashing down on you, smothering you and then replaced with a deafening silence. A day that seemed like all others doesn’t end that way, not at all. Defining moments are few and far between. These moments will only be this way if looking back upon them you can connect to that one moment in time. Will it or wont it be? Only time will tell.

Was this one of those days? If not when will it come, the one day unlike all the rest?

Recently I was watching a History channel special on the letters that Albert Einstein sent to FDR on the atomic age and the importance of the government funding the efforts of Dr Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi to create the first nuclear chain reaction, which of course led them to conclude an atomic weapon was possible. The rest is of course history and almost to a man they all regretted the work they did and only justified it by the fear that Germany would discover the weapon first.

This led me to read a little about Einstein and some of his thoughts about energy and his expanded thought on Newton’s ‘Theory of the Ether’. Which is the existence of another kind of matter, the ether. This was of course controversial as it was essentially the proof of life after death, thats because if energy is constant it simply moves to another parallel universe or next world.

It basically proved that ether carries light waves and energy, and creates a mass of matter systems by making waves. When positives and negatives collide they may die; but more often than not they multiply like computer viruses. Then they join at T-junctions and form a matter-system like a neural network with its own built-in power supply. It is therefore capable of acting as a vast memory complex. It has all the ingredients needed for evolution to a conscious entity.

In Einstein’s own ‘Theory of Relativity’ he had allowed for no possibility for death survival.
Because of the breakthrough of E=MC2 the scientific establishment has promoted ‘Relativity’ and dismissed Newton’s ‘Theory of the Ether’. As a result they have had to exclude anything which may show life-after death because it didn’t fit their theories.

Einstein on his 70th birthday said, ‘Now you think that I am looking at my life’s work with calm satisfaction. But there is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm. I am not sure that I was on the right track after all.’

This is why even though in direct conflict with his theories he concluded that energy was constant and that in essence Newton was right.

In a 1920 address he delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leiden on the contradiction of Ether and the Theory of Relativity he states:

It is only with reluctance that man’s desire for knowledge endures a dualism of this kind.
We may say that according to the general theory of relativity, space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time , nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.

Some point to this as a confused state of mind on his part and it was dismissed. That is until recently when ether was found provable by physics, this permits all paranormal and religious experiences - and materialisation. An intermediate frequency exists which can mix with our ‘live’ and ‘dead’ body forms. Materialisation - and therefore survival after death - is proven mathematically.

To be ’scientifically proven’, two things are needed.

1. Repeatable experiments to show a thing exists.
2. Mathematics to prove a thing exists

It mets this criteria but there has been a great resistance to this finding because of the huge disruption to science, the establishment and the church which will result when these findings are accepted.

It would essentially blow everything previously establised into oblivion and no one would know what to believe. Fear, the same fear that created Einstein to write the letter that led to the atomic bomb, is the reason for this immense conflict.

Consider this, the FBI recommended that he be barred from immigrating to the United States, alleging that Einstein “believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches a doctrine which, would allow anarchy to stalk in unmolested’. They seem to be as on target back then as they are today.

It is amazing how far ahead of his time he was and will continually be.

I have a cousin named Mikey.

He loves animals right? Anyway, last week he’s drivin’
home…the fuckin guy loves animals, and
this is the last person you’d want
this to happen to.

He’s driving along and this
fuckin’ cat jumps in front of his
car, and so he hits this cat–
–and he’s like “shit! Motherfucker!”

And he looks in his rearview and
sees this cat tryin to make it
across the street and it’s not lookin’
so good. It’s walkin’ pretty slow at this
point.

So Mikey’s like “Fuck, I gotta put
this thing out of its misery”–So he
gets a hammer–out of his tool box,
and starts chasin’ the cat and starts whackin’
it with the hammer. You know, tryin’
to put the thing out of its misery.

And all the time he’s apologizin’ to
the cat, goin’ “I’m sorry.” BANG,
“I’m sorry.” BANG!

And this Samoan guy comes runnin’
out of his house and he’s like “What
the fuck are you doing to my cat?!”
Mikey’s like “I’m sorry” –BANG–” I
hit your cat with my truck, and I’m
just trying to put it out of it’s
misery” — BANG! And the cat dies.

So Mikey’s like “Why don’t you come
look at the front of the truck.”
‘Cause the other guy’s all fuckin
flipped out about, watching his cat get brained.

Yeah, so he’s like “Check the front
of my truck, I can prove I hit it
‘cause there’s probably some blood
or something”– –or a tail–

And so they go around to the front
of his truck… and there’s another
cat on the grille.

He brained an innocent cat!

Came across an interesting tidbit in a newspaper today, it outlined the Waiter Rule. It states that how you treat your waiter defines the kind of person you are. A number of fortune 500 CEO’s were surveyed and almost all of them agreed with this analogy, which is a shock in itself as many of these people have never agreed about anything before.

This was a new thing for me to discover and as I come from the service background it was something I had quietly thought was a good indicator of person personality. One of my biggest pet peeves is dining with people that act like they don’t know the steps in placing an order with a waiter. You know the ones that are shocked when the waiter asks for the order and they are like a deer in headlights. My sister is the exact opposite, she is a waiters worst nightmare, not because she is rude or is even a bad tipper, nope she is both inquisitive and demanding. She asks for substitutions, combinations of two different meals to be made into just one meal, requests for extra everything, and worst of all needs to know the status on the free refill policy of the given restaurant. I know that when Im dining with her that it will be an adventure but that didn’t help me prepare for the one day at a dinner celebrating my birthday she actually asked to be given samples of the various sauces that came with the pastas.

The waiter was stunned silent, while my jaw dropped far enough to hit the table with a resounding thud. My brother a chef in his on right, had the combined look of constipation and intense astonishment wash over him. Once the waiter shook off his awe struck look I tried to alleviate the tension in the room.

‘Don’t mind her she’s had severe trauma to the head recently’. This got the table laughing and seemed to avert the disaster and it has actually become a running joke whenever I have to dine with her.

‘Hey Liz, you think we can get a sample of the Lobster here, or maybe just a taste of the filet mignon’
‘Hey Liz, ask the waiter for a taster of the 89 Petrus’

Now on the occasions when my mother joins us at well, I just tried to hide at the back of the table and not make any eye contact, hoping I wouldnt be remembered in case I ever dine in that establishment again. She is one of the aforementioned diners that is shocked by the waiters announcement of the taking of the dinner order. ‘Oh my, I don’t know…let me see now…oh what a big menu, hold on…. well umm wow there is a lot to absorb here’. At this point you hope that she is isn’t the last one ordering so that she is allotted some extra time, but if this isn’t the case its like pulling off a Band-Aid slowly that rips hair out with it, both painful and hard to look at.

Luckily when this happens its usually at some god awful place like The Olive Garden, a place I only go with them, a place that will accommodate any guest request including a hand job in the bathroom by one of the hostesses. Ok that might be an exaggeration but I’m not sure, as I haven’t asked for that yet. One time they actually gave my sister chicken alfredo tossed in both cream and tomato sauce, separated of course. They actually seemed ok with this request.

I had the misfortune at working at a private club where no request was denied. Baked Alaskan not on the menu? Didn’t matter we made it. Chateaubriand? No Problem. Chocolate souffle? Absolutely sir, the chef would love to accommodate that request, thank you sir.

Of course when this request was brought back to the kitchen the shit hit the fan. Baked fucking Alaskan, the cook would yell, do you know how hard it is to whip one of those out on the fly? I actually felt bad for the waiters that had to tell the kitchen. I remember once we had to send a busboy out looking all over town for a 8 live whole main lobsters…the table would wait until we found them. This was 15 years ago and this isnt Maine so he had to go to 3 different stores to get all eight. Only when he got back with them did they inform the waiter they wanted Lobster Thermador. Or as I like to call, the biggest pain in the ass meal ever invented. The reason is that you have to put the lobsters in huge pots and start out using cold water so that they survive as long as possible. The shock of boiling hot water is too ‘indelicate’. They take forever to make and thus ensuring a late closing for the kitchen.

Some advice I can impart.

Do not show up at closing (especially if the place is near empty)
Why? Because everyone from the waitstaff to the kitchen is probably cleaning up preparing to get out of there. A late table can mean the cooks have to stay an extra 60-90 minutes. You do not want angry, tired cooks, preparing your meal.

So the next time you go out, remember be nice to the waiters you never know who could be watching and if that person serving you today could be your boss tomorrow.

From time to time I actually have a lucid thought and in a recent glimpse of sanity I pondered the following question:

Why hasn’t the flask thing caught on?

It looks cool, anyone that pulls out a flask is given James Bond status. It impossible to not look smooth as hell when sipping on one of those chrome beauties.

It is convenient. It is small and fits easily into a inside pocket, the design is even curved to fit better and be more comfortable.

It carries liquor in a clandestine manner. This alone should give it instant cult like standing.

Sure there are other devices that have come after the flask, like the Camelbak, that might hold more and be easier to sneak into a ball game but they will never have the cache’ that the flask has. Its much cooler to flip that baby up and then back down again in a stylish manner than to offer someone a long plastic hose to suck on that is coming from your back.

I think that cigar tubes are in this sphere of cool as well, they generally hold one or two fine cigars and one of my last . Now if both are used by the same person on the same occasion this immediatley puts that person in a elite group of god-like immortals.

Sure some might say the Zippo has the same appeal but I disagree and as this is my blog I win you lighter fluid smelling mofo’s.

So come one and come all you Fonzie* wannabe’s, let us all buy flasks and be as cool as a fool in a swimming pool.

The Tools of the trade

*Leather Jacket not included

Today my brother told me he could kick my ass, now this reminded me of the last time he proclaimed this.

It was Monday Night Football game back in 1998 that I was enjoying with my roommate, Robert (R-Bo) and my brother Steve (Stevo). I drove my brothers car as he is a drinker and it was my time to be the designated driver. The game was going well except I noticed that my brother was getting drunk…very drunk. Its fairly obvious when he reaches this level of intoxication and his mouth is left open, he stares off into space and cant carry on a basic conversation. This didn’t really matter to me, as this wasn’t an untypical circumstance of going out with my brother. We watched the game and headed out to the parking lot and over to his car where there appeared to be a ticket on the windshield. It was on the passenger side of the windshield so Stevo grabbed it. As soon as he read it, his face turned red and he got pissed off and crumbled up the paper and asked for his keys.

Of course I told him he was too fucking drunk to drive and then asked him what the note said. He repeated his previous request for the keys only louder this time and said the note was from his girlfriend, he then went into a rambling story about a fight they had earlier in the day and how she accused him of cheating on her because she saw him hugging a girl. He denied it but she didn’t believe him and then I came over to pick him up at which time the fight was interrupted much to her displeasure and we left for the game.

Then R-Bo grabbed the crumbled up sheet of paper and read it shaking his head then handed it to me. It said something that only a woman could write:

To get back at your cheating I went and fucked my old boyfriend. It was great to be back in the arms of a man that knows how to please a woman.

At this point I knew why he was going psycho but told him it was just a ploy on her part to ruin his night. He was inconsolable and stormed over to me fists clenched tightly and demanded his keys. I told there was no way I was going to hand them over and the only way he was getting home was if I drove him there. This angered him even more, at which point R-Bo came over to him and told him to get in the back seat so that we could get him home. This seemed to calm him slightly and he got in the back seat while R-Bo climbed into the shotgun position.

As we pulled out of the parking lot he began yelling ‘Give me my keys’ over and over again. He was full of rage. I simply ignored him and R-Bo was starting to get a little nervous as a man this angry can only do bad things. Unfortunately it was a long drive across town to get him home so it allotted him even more time to scream variations on his continuing theme.

Give me my keys
Give me my keys you asshole
Give me my keys you fucking prick
Give me my keys, its my car
Give me my keys you dick
Give me my keys now
I said give me my keys

He must have said about 40 variations of this same statement and it became apparent that when this car stopped at his place something was going to happen if I didn’t give him his keys.

We pulled into his driveway and we all got out, he ran over to me and screamed about as loud as person can humanly scream, GIVE ME MY KEYS!!!!

I knew that I was in a no win situation, I looked at R-Bo and it was obvious he had no answers as well. So I looked at Stevo right in the eyes and told him, you are not getting them tonight…you’re too drunk. This is not the answer he was looking for and screamed his mantra over and over causing lights all around the neighborhood to turn on and for people to look out their windows at the commotion. As he was pacing around in anger I knew that I would have to do something fast and an idea came to me so I put it into action by moving closer and closer to the rear of the car. He was not about 10 feet away and was in a frenzied state yelling to the sky, I took this opportunity and hurriedly opened the trunk, this caught his attention, he then froze in his steps and stared right at me not knowing what I was doing. I then threw the keys into the trunk and slammed it shut.

It took him about two seconds to compute what had just happened but when it did he came at me as fast as his drunken state allowed him to. He got nose-to-nose with me and screamed in my face that I had better get those keys out. I told him the only other copy was at my house (he had given to me in case he locked them in the car) and that he wouldn’t be driving his car until at the very least until tomorrow morning.

He was none to pleased and announced to me, R-Bo and any neighbors within earshot that he was going to kick my ass. He then took a step back and threw a punch that I saw coming from miles away. I simply ducked my head and as if possessed by Rocky Balboa shifted my weight in perfect unison with my fest landing on his rib cage. This not only caught him off guard but seemed to but him in a catatonic state that I took advantage of and hit him in the same spot over and over with each punch having more and more force. One the fourth of fifth shot, he crumpled to that side and fell to his knees. I pushed him backwards and pinned him flat on his back, he was helpless. I looked down at his grimacing face and ripped off his glasses and tossed them aside. Then I did the one thing you should never do in a fight, I hesitated and looked over to R-Bo. This slight delay combined with R-Bo’s look of concern led me to clear my head and take pity on Stevo. I got up and walked away. I am not sure if it was adrenaline or his drunken state but he got up and seemingly wanted to fight some more, he got about three steps when his ribs reminded him that they were the reason he fell to the ground in the first place. He stopped and leaned over on his left side and his hands cradled his aching ribcage.

The fight was over but not the dilemma, in my haste I had left my cell phone in the car which was now locked and inaccessible. As Stevo lumbered into his house, R-Bo and I walked away in search of a phone to call a cab. Luckily a pizza/bar was still open about two blocks away and we were home in 30 minutes or so. What greeted me were 3 messages from my mother and sister wondering why I beat up Stevo. Yep, you guessed it he had gotten on the phone after our altercation and tried to say that I stole his car and beat him up. Of course they both had doubts because of his obviously drunken state but still felt the need to believe him. Luckily I had R-Bo with me to corroborate the version of the story that wasn’t influenced by alcohol and conniving girlfriends.

Of course this situation was made worse by the fact that Stevo and I worked at the same restaurant but he greeted me the next day with an x-ray of his three cracked ribs and an apology. He later told me the sympathy garnered from his painful ribs led him to sleep with the ultra hot hostess that we all thought was unattainable.

But when I reminded him of this story he dismissed it as the past and that he could take me down now that I have a bad back. I informed him that not believing in the results of inertia and gravity didnt make it so and that I was ready anytime he was. He backed down but part of me wished he hadnt as I need to unleash some of the rage of a middle child.

Ever had those days where you wonder if your best isn’t good enough or maybe just not good enough to be the best?

Well I had a moment like that, I had entered a photo contest and I got 2nd place. Some would say that was good and I was pretty happy when I heard but 1st place got 5 grand a top of the line camera. 2nd place was $50 and 10 rolls of film. Yep that one was hard to take as I don’t even have a camera anymore.

And then in a sudden rush all my also rans came to mind.

2nd place at State in the Shotput at age 14. My only loss of the year. My last year competing.

2nd place in 3 straight punt pass and kick competitions. One year I lost by 3 inches. The winner got to compete in San Francisco with the other west coast winners.

Finished 2nd in my Culinary Class, first place got $1200 in Global knives and placement on the wall of honor. 2nd place a set of various kitchen utensils.

Finished 2nd in 7 different Softball tournements, never won the big trophy.

Finished 2nd in more than a few job interviews.

Finished 2nd in too many things. Some might say finishing second is better than finishing last. Those people haven’t finished second. Finishing last is easy, nobody usually notices you. When you finish second you only get asked one question.

But one thing about people that finish second a lot is that they are seldom remembered, seldom taken seriously. One thing I’ve noticed lately is that when a question or query arrises in conversation and even though I know and offer up the answer, no one hears me. I have to repeat myself to get heard.

I guess that this is a familiar thing for the middle kid. I’ve heard that a lot of us start mumbling or even begin to talk under or breath because no one hears us. Enough people ignore you and all you want to do is scream. Ill bet there are many middle kids in prison, they were just venting a little steam. You supress that shit too long and that’s exactly what happens. Yep I’ll bet that a lot of postal workers are middle kids as well.

But then a time when I came in first came to mind……to be continued in Part 2.

People often ask me how it is that I am so suave and sophisticated. It might shock some of you but not all of this is due to my natural abilities, no I had to work at it too. While its true that you may never have my blue blooded heritage, my stunning facial features and my debonair demeanor you can still attempt to look like you werent born and raised in Alaska or some other far off backwater burg. So without further adu I begin with what I will be calling:

Classes on how to not look like asses

Tip #1

Champagne Tips

1. Serve well chilled
2. Ensure your flutes are ‘very’ clean for longer lasting bubbles.
3. Store - ‘laid down’ at a constant temperature, in a dark area away from vibrations.
4. A bowl of water in your wine cellar helps to keep the air moist.
5. Don’t store non-vintage champagne for more than 3 yrs.
6. When opening the bottle - twist the bottle, not the cork.

Tip #2

How to properly deal with a burp

A noisy and sometimes stinky emission of air climbing up from the stomach to the out of mouth, the burp - in western society - is an indecent vulgar deed. If it ‘escapes’, the burp must be hidden, if possible, while the table simulates distraction.

Tip #3

The proper way to eating soup

Soup, usually the first course, shows you off as a savvy diner or someone whose manners could do with polishing! Soup is served either in a wide, shallow dish, or a smaller bowl, resting on an under-plate.

1. Spoon the soup away from you, towards the centre of the bowl.
2. Sip from the side of the spoon. Never put the whole spoon in your mouth or slurp. Noisy eating is better placed in the farmyard, rather than the dining table!
3. Tip the bowl away from you and spoon the soup across the bowl to get at the last bits.
4. After finishing the soup, place the spoon in the under-plate, or in the soup plate at a 10:20 position.

Tip #4

Office Etiquette

Get to work on time
While everyone understands that once in a while you could be caught in a traffic jam, just make sure you turning up late doesn’t turn into a habit.

Never under-dress
Your colleagues and co-workers shouldn’t feel that you have dressed too casually. Also keep yourself updated with the latest reforms in fashion for parties and weekends.

Try to keep your voice down
The occasional laughing or cursing fits you throw can be extremely disruptive to your co-workers.

Stay away from office gossips
There’s a fine line between polite conversations and down right nosiness. We guess you don’t want to get caught in the firing range of all the back stabbing and never ending office gossips.

The office phone’s is not your phone
While most people blatantly use office phones calling everyone and anyone they know, it’s simply not right. Do limit your personal phone calls.

Leaving on time
It’s perfectly Ok to leave on time, simply don’t shut your computer down and sit by your desk waiting for the hour to strike. People notice these actions and it’s not appreciated.

Keep a tab on the volumes
While most workplaces allow their employees to listen to music as they work, make sure you’re humming or singing or choice of music doesn’t irritate the person next to you.

Watch those crumbs
After eating make it a point to clean up. Wipe up the crumbs and spills.

Hygiene habits
Make it a point to flush the toilet after use.

Respect personal space
Don’t force your partner to draw enemy lines. Respect your colleagues’ space. Do not clutter.

Tip #5

Dinner Party

Drink responsibly
Your host may be serving alcoholic beverages to complement the meal, but it doesn’t mean he/she wants to have a group of sloppy drunks on their hands at the end of the party.

Be friendly
Make conversation with other guests. Your acceptance to mingle with others is what will lead to the party’s success.

Do not raise a conversation of a sensitive topic
Especially one that you know will cause dissension among that particular group of guests.

I’m getting farther and farther away from my previous life. There are things that I miss from that place. A hard days work, a sense of accomplishent that is a result of tired feet. Wishes granted, goals achieved. Freedom attained. Self reliance displayed not unlike a cast of sun against a solemn wall. A boastful glee, sprouting confidence. A commencement of the one thing you can’t be given. Dissolving paradigms. Keeping a head down.

Now you can vote: Pretentious Babble or Introspective Nihilism?

And then darkness warshed over Unemployed Ben, darker’n a black steer’s tookus on a moonless prairie night. There was no bottom. He awoke with a clear mind.

There are things I want and there are things I do not want, I will share some of them with you today. Yep you can go ahead and pinch yourself cause its your lucky day you blog reading bastards of the northern plains.

I dont want sympathy. Fuck sympathy!
I dont want a guy telling me that if I dont pay what I owe bad things will happen to my thumbs.
I dont want people to watch American Idol, its karaoke people…seriously.
I dont want to eat the last slice of French Apple Pie because it’s the last one and life is better with pie than without.
I dont want to give a shit about the rules and consequences of overdue library books.

I want to find a suitcase full of laundered drug money and then ourtun the federalis who think Im part of a Columbian Cartel.
I want a cool nickname like Two Guns Benny or Benny the Beard.
I want to make an independent movie in which the characters perform both grittily real and strangely whimsical dialogue.
I want to find the side of me that has unchecked aggression.
I want to share a monster spliff with Ethan and Joel Coen and then talk about why a friend of mine likes french cinema a little too much.
I want to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.

I read the book Survivor today. It was chilling to see how much research had to be done to write such a novel. Its intimidating. Many parts of the book engaged in cleaning tips and the book I was reading had frequent smudges, although it could have just been that it was a used book and the previous reader liked his cheetos, I think it was intentional and done on purpose. It made me feel a little soiled, that I might be touching the spot a diseased transient touched not days before. Or maybe some bored housewife read this exact copy while her husband was going down on her in their mobile home with a sign outside that read: Dont come a knockin’ if this trailer is a rockin’. Or maybe some kid was riding to school on a bus one day and he used it to defend himself against a school bully who wanted to take his milk money. Or Maybe……or maybe…..oh nevermind.

Some local band contacted me today to help promote them. When I asked how they got my information they avoided the subject. When I asked again they didnt respond. Is there some automated system out there helping make crappy bands get more exposure through the gathering of email addresses?

I have 33 dollars in my wallet but no real way to spend it. I am out on the point, way out on the point wondering if there are people out here not unlike myself and needing a new book to read.

These are the voices inside my head, tell me if I should up the dosage because it just seems normal to me.

The other day I wrote a rambling incoherant rant about Kevin Smith and his tendancy to make sweet sweet love with this great nations media. You see I am not very smart, I am one step above Neaderthal on a good day and should be treated as such. His recent writings the past six days have put me in my place. I have dealt with some of the same issues he is talking about but acted with about half the patience and faith that he did and that is probably why the people I treated that way are fundementally the same as they were when these issues reared thier ugly heads.

So for that, I humbly apologize for casting aspertions and doubt upon this noble man. I will go back to writing what I know about, which is next to nothing. I good you bid evening.

Post Script: Someone should repeatedly kick me in the nether regions so that I cannot spawn an equally as dimwitted offspring.

Lately it seems that a certain thing keeps happening to celebrities. Im not sure why its just happening to them but I only see it affecting this small group of people. Maybe its because they are always around cameras when these things occur. Im not an expert on this type of thing and maybe I just dont get out enough to see if these things happen to the “normals”.

If this was a common thing I would just park myself outside a various assortment of sorority houses and wait for the magic to happen and dont think I would be alone, I mean there would be hot dog and beer vendors outside as crowds of men would gather.

Another part of this phenomenon that also puzzles me is why it only happens to women, and attractive women at that. Maybe there are just magical gusts of wind that follow them around, maybe thats where the phrase “they are just full of hot air” comes from. Maybe its just one of those mysteries that shouldnt be examined, because it might provide answers our society just isnt ready for.

Part of me wonders if my examination of this today will cause two goons to show up at my door and hit me with a metal pipe until I agree to pay Paulie Walnuts $4000 a week and keep quiet about it.

Now I was able to find a few of examples of this growing occurence and while some of the names might not shock you: Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Pamela Anderson. Others just might: Keira Knightly, Jennifer Garner, Kirsten Dunst, Sophie Marceau, Mischa Barton, Gwen Stefani.

Maybe this has always happened but it was left in the preverbial shadows before now. However in our current voyeuristic society we cast a spotlight on it for all to see.

In my research I even found it had an acronym OMTPO. What did it stand for? I didnt have the slighest clue but luckily I had by friend at Bell Laps run it through Big Blue and after 23 hours of data crunching my answer was found. It stood for Ooops My Titty Popped Out. I guess that just about sums it up doesnt it?

And here is one person that hopes he never hears that Tom Cruise has formed OMDPO cause I just dont need to see that.

Had an interesting sms exchange with a friend today, the kind of exchange that could only happen with this guy. He mentioned how he hadnt divorced himself from desire, it was in response to a comment I made on Buddhism.

I questioned why desire would be a thing that he would want to divorce himself from. We then began to bat around the differences of passion, desires and temptations. This then led into what for men is the ultimate desire and that is that of women. His take was different from mine as I felt this could be the downfall of man. How the power that man has, can shift into that of a woman when she starts to use it as a pychological weapon thus turning the man into nothing more than sad puppy on a leash.

We have all seen this, an otherwise smart and independant man gets caught up in the quest and starts to put the punani on the pedastal. So when he finally gets some, he is so overly enthusiastic the woman can and does use it against him to gain the upper hand in the relationship. Its the same as having a bad poker face, if your opponent (and yes I did just call a woman an opponent) sees weakness they will attempt to exploit this. Do I fault the woman? Hell no, I mean if a man is too whipped to see what he has become than he deserves what he gets.

I have seen this kind of condition and seen it on a grand scale, Ive even created a song about it in honor of one of my friends invloving my perception that he seemed to keep his preverbial balls in his womans purse. Hey I get it, sometimes it happens so gradually that they hardly even notice, one day they are hitting that thing like it is going out of style, then before he knows it he is married, has two kids and she had left her higher paying job to stay and home and watch Oprah and the rug rats while discussions start about you getting a second job. And some point, mostly likely around his mid thirties, this guy will be looking in the mirror and see what has happened and he will let out a primal scream and wonder what the fuck happened. These are the guys that go out for milk one day and never come home.

This friend of mine thinks that sports can be a great metaphor for life and I agree. Sports can also be a great indicator of a man that is falling under this affliction. At one point this was a guy you went to ball games with, most likely multiple times a year. And then it becomes once maybe twice a year. And then he always has an excuse as to why he cant go but he still watches the games on t.v. so you talk to him about the sports you saw in person and the game he saw from his couch. And then the ineveitable next step occurs, you mention something that happened in the previous nights game and he says that he didnt see it. At first this doesnt register as a problem until it becomes more and more frequent. And then the hammer drops one day when he utters the words you never thought you would hear.

“No I’m not going to being watching the Super Bowl, well, um, me and the wife, we’re going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond if we have enough time, yep… actually a pretty nice little Sunday.”

At this point all you can do is just walk away and find a new friend, because this one is lost to you forever and he will never ever return.

Dont let it happen to someone you know

Ive mentioned it from time to time on this site but for the past six months or so I have been attempting to write short stories that have some type of broad appeal. That is not to say that my intention is to make them commercial but that the readers’ interest would be held. This is the toughest aspect of writing for me as I tend to write from past experiences and they seem to mean more to me than they would for someone else. I know see that the hardest is not the actual writing its the editing. To be able to step back from the story and see how it flows from a neutral angle is about the hardest thing I have done. I’ve researched this process and its as if you have to turn off the creative part of the brain and just evaluate the story on its on basis almost like a teacher grading a paper, its not an emotional thing its more matter of fact.
The hardest part at least for me is editing myself too much and in the process lose what narrative flow I had attained in the first place. The more and more I looked into the writing process it amazed me how scientific it is. In the beginning its starts out as an idea and that’s pure creativity, and then you sketch out an outline of how the story will play out. But after that when it comes to actually telling the story with dialogue it really is quite methodical and deliberate.

Ill give you an example, one day while in the shower of all places I came up with what I thought was a helluva movie idea. Now normally this wouldn’t mean much to me, as I like movies and tend to dissect the way a certain plot played out but now this idea was followed up with a desire to try and put it down on paper. I did just that and really it was just an idea and didn’t seem to people easily summarized so I started to write down what I thought would be needed for it to be made into a movie. Over the course of a weekend I outlined 20 scenes, 6 characters, and what I felt was a fairly complete plot. I didn’t write much dialogue, only when inspiration hit, no this was just how I thought a movie should flow, how one scene would compliment the other. At this point before I went any further I started asking a few members of my family, that were avid readers, whom I thought would be able to give me an honest opinion if the idea would garner their interest. They seemed intrigued which gave me the nudge I needed to continue with this experiment.

So after the scenes where all done I started with what I thought were the key scenes and started to write the dialogue. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to find the voice of each of the characters, and because of this I was able to complete a couple of scenes a lot quicker than I thought I would be able to. I was feeling pretty good about myself so I decided to tackle a scene that I figured would be the hardest, this was because it was about subject matter I didnt know a great deal about and it would require some research. I did just that and over the course of the greater part of an evening I gathered all the info I figured I would need and then formed it into a scene. I thought it was pretty good when I was finished and started getting a little cocky about how easy this seemed. So I had finished about 25% of the dialogue when I decided before I got too far down the road I should find a reference book on screenwriting. I looked around the Internet and one book kept popping up so I went to the library website and they had an available copy so I reserved it and picked it up the next day.

I read the book the next afternoon and I was actually surprised that the steps I had taken to this point were standard practices of writing a screenplay. This encouraged me but then I got to the meat and potatoes of structure and it was like going 10 rounds with Hagler. I had no idea how in depth the process really was. It actually hit me so hard that I couldn’t write for a couple of days, my mind was racing to see if the story I had come up actually fit all the criteria that was now laid out in front of me.

I was trying to find the answers to all these new questions that I hadn’t even heard of before.

Did I have a proper Protagonist and an Antagonist relationship?
What was the Catalyst to the story and was it in the proper part of the story?
What was the Rising Conflict?
What was the Big Event and did it have staying power?
What was the Pinch and did it move along the story along?
What was the Crisis?
Was the final Showdown and did it have a final Realization?
Did I have the proper Foreshadowing?

All these buzzwords were swimming in my head and it overwhelmed me and then I did what the author suggested. I took a break and wrote about something completely unrelated to take my mind off of the other pressure I was putting on myself. I did this and then I went to bed. I woke up with a clean slate and started putting the pieces of the puzzle together and I found that I did have all of these elements in my story and why it seemed so hard before was that I hadn’t written them down in that way before. These were broad strokes and I was fixated on the small details.

So now I am feeling a lot better about this project than I ever had before, I am not sure if anything will come of it but at least its another thing that I can say I did. I still have doubts and apprehensions about ability to convey what’s in my head to an eloquent sentence its at least a beginning and who knows some day I might not be so easily dismissed as being an insignificant blight on society.

Well anyway that’s what I have been up to of late, life is still kicking me in the ass but maybe in the near future I can kick back.

The news that none of you ever expected to hear has finally come to fruition. Yes after 10 months Unemployed Ben is no longer unemployed, yep you guessed it I am now Employed Ben!!

I received an offer to be a consultant for a wireless tech company based out of San Diego. Its pays pretty well and its in SAN DIEGO so it sounds just fine with me. Im starting in three weeks so I will have to sell most of my stuff or just store it as im just taking a one way ticket down.

This has been a long journey that all…ok maybe just some of us has enjoyed but will the site have a purpose now that I have a job? Not sure…..I’m just not sure.

Oh and by the way April fools sucka!!!!!! You didnt actually think I got a job did you? Im unemployable and proud of it.

I had a meet and greet today with the landlord and he apparently thought I was some drunk, drugged out meth head. So I am not homeless on this first day of April. Yep kinda sad when thats the highlight of your day but what the fuck its better than living in Kansas City.

Just grabbed some fresh Red Snapper from my local fish monger and will be making a lovely lemon butter and pan fry it in some Panko Breading. Grabbed what I hope to be a nice Kenwood Chard, they usually make theirs with a nice clean finish which I prefer over the fruity finish of most whites. Well I better start cooking it or my bro will be asleep before its done, so peace.

About 5 months ago I came across Kevin Smith’s blog and I was pleasantly surprised. He was honest, forthright, and sometimes pretty damn funny, but the thing that impressed me the most was how candid he was in revealing the ‘dark side’ of his life ranging from tugging one out, anal fissure adventures and his seemingly lack of technical knowledge on film making.

He seems to wear his life on his sleeve for any and all to see. I also am like this and from time to time it has gotten me in trouble, as most people don’t really want to hear the truth but just a tamed down filtered version of it. Sorry if you’re an asshole than you’re an asshole and I am going to point that fact out. Life is too short not to point out the assholes so in some respect I saw a little part of myself in him (insert penis joke her).

The more and more I read, the more and more addicted I got to his daily ramblings, but then I started to see something that while should have been obvious from the beginning alluded me.

The fact was that Kevin is a media whore.

Now I am not saying that that nomenclature is such a bad thing, in today’s look at me society its important to stay in the spotlight as much as possible so that people don’t forget about you. That’s the way the game is played so I don’t have any problem with playing along.

But it started to become pretty obvious that all his blogging had one purpose and that was to promote and sell the massive collections of products he was selling. It also led directly into his shooting of Clerks 2 at which point the blogging stopped and traffic was directed to a Clerks 2 site that had some videos about behind the scenes stuff. Kinda cool but still there was no indication that he was stopping his daily diary so I kept coming back every couple of days to check on any updates, but they never came. What did come was a massive array of his products. This guy sells everything from action figures of most of the characters in his movies, even the crappy ones like Mallrats. T-shirts of ever type, box sets of DVD’s. I mean there are so many products I am shocked that man hasn’t started wrapping his crap in aluminum foil and selling it with an autograph for $19.99.

On his Merch site he has 74 featured items…SEVENTY FUCKING FOUR!!!! That’s only the featured items, not the entire list.

This really doesn’t bug me either, I mean as long as there are people willing to buy the stuff than more power to him. He even has two stores that sell this stuff so I am guessing he doesn’t even need to make movies anymore and still have a comfortable living. All in all it’s a pretty amazing Dynasty he has built with a little luck and a helluva lot of dick and fart jokes.

But then I started notice something; he seemed to be generating news about himself to get attention. He created so called ‘controversies‘ about what people had said about him or what people witnessed him saying. As he never passes up any type of media request you can imagine that what he says gets a lot of exposure. He even charges $50 a pop for his “An Evening with Kevin Smith” get togethers where he answers questions and tells amusing stories about his life. He is very blunt in these sessions and afterward a lot of people tend to pass on these stories. As with everything these days the stories start popping up on blogs and gossip sites. So how does he react to these obvious amateur attempts at news reporting? He gets all freaked out and starts calling out the media for being inaccurate or at the very least for quoting him out of context.

He seemingly puts on this false facade by linking all the stories he has found on the ‘controversy’ and then explains his side of the story. This of course only inflames the situation as the internet is full of people with lots of free time that only seem to want to do one thing, piss people off. So instead of sitting back and watching the story die, he jumps on it and starts throwing gas on the fire and then the next day wonders why the ‘controversy’ is getting ever more attention than ever.

Now if this had happened just once or twice it might not have been that obvious, it might have just seemed that he is defending himself but you have to take into consideration that he has made a living on dick and fart jokes and most likely isn’t going to matter if someone is calling him a fat, talentless bastard whose films are the intellectual equivalent to watching a dog lick his own balls. Nope this is the kind of person that might just revel in the fact that people are talking about him at all.

You see Kevin is a very clever guy and knows how easy it is to get attention for himself. He also knows the more and more people come to his ever-expanding collection of websites that sell his ever-expanding lines of merchandise, the more money he will make.

The latest episode is actually quite brilliant. He had a public forum at Penn U, so he calls a certain actress he doesn’t seem to care for, the word that almost every woman will find offensive, the one word that when you say it to a woman it immediately becomes aware that you went too far. Yep you guessed it; he used the ‘C’ word to describe the Academy Award winning Reese Witherspoon. Then to top it off he tells a story of Nicole Richey and her bathroom bawdiness with Jason Mewes.

So once these stories start to circulate around the web he jumps on it and creates a post on his now virtually dormant blog site. He links to the story on a site called The Superficial and expresses his disappointment with the current age of internet gossip, where heroic tales are reduced to stories like this one Kevin Smith tells really filthy secrets.

Of course this only adds to the story and creates even more buzz. Then the next day he links to more sites that have commented on the story, even though most are seemingly just lame blogs and the rag that is called the NY Daily News.

Part of me thinks that it is no big deal to manipulate the media like this but my overwhelming emotion is that he is doing it just so that he is not forgotten and that he also has a need to be wanted and adored by his fans. You hear the stories from some people in Hollywood like:

Oh I live here but I’m not a douche bag like everyone else.
I’m not into the superficial me first mentality.
The crime is bad, the place is dirty, the traffic sucks and the air is brown but I have to live here because of my job.

Yep the more and more I saw the more and more I started to figure out that Kevin Smith might seem like a down to earth guy but he’s ‘one of them’ even if doesn’t know he is.

I havent gone Hollywood, no seriously….. NO SERIOUSLY!!!!