Unemployed Ben

No I am not getting a flaming skull tat, instead I will something far different. I will have a contrast material (a dye that can be seen on an CT Scan) injected into the fluid-filled space around my spinal cord. At which point the table is tilted to varying degrees to help move the contrast material through the spinal canal to the desired area. And now for the exciting part, due to the invasive nature of the proceedure, I will experience headaches, possible serious allergic reactions, and or other ‘minor’ side effects.

If the test is said to be “concordant” I will have a 6 inch incision carved into my lumbar region and then some titanium screws, rods and plates will be inserted to help stabilize the spinal column. Then a bone graft taken traditionally from the iliac crestto to help with the spinal fusion.

Some of you may be asking why the hell I am doing this. Its simple really, chics dig scars!!

I am kinda bored today, this holiday weekend has been filled with rain. Because of this I am a sad panda, so of all the things I could write about today I have decided that I will compare myself with a friend of mine (nicknamed Da Professah). He is employed, worldly and sophisticated. I…well you know what I am, no need to rehash that. But I am adding a twist, I shall be using the slang that all the kids are using today (provided by my 15 yr old cousin) to be describe our differences and then I will translate the verbage into recognizable english for the over 25 crowd.

Da Professah - a Salary man (definition: Has gainful employemnt)
Unemployed Ben - Shops at the Slavy (definition: Buys undies at the salvation army)

Da Professah - He’s got hella skrilla (definition: He has a savings accout)
Unemployed Ben - He has to field grounders (definition: He has to search the ground for already smoked yet salvageable cigarette butts)

Da Professah - He macks on some serious high budget (definition: Dates highly attractive women)
Unemployed Ben - That fool scams on grizzly chickens with hail damage (definition: Dates Ugly skinny women with cellulite)

Da Professah - Gets stuff on the arm (definition: Obtains free items and comped meals)
Unemployed Ben - He’d have to gank his own momma for grub (definition: Has to obtain material through force and trickery)

Da Professah - He’s a straight up Garfunkel (definition: Outgoing and entertaining person)
Unemployed Ben - That fool is always stuck like chuck (definition: To be both extremely intoxicated and obnoxious)

Da Professah - Rolls in a Bucaneer (definition: Has a nice car)
Unemployed Ben - Has to ride trunky monkey (definition: Must travel in the trunk of a car)

Da Professah - He likes to chuck’em (definition: Knows how to fight, not a man to be trifled with)
Unemployed Ben - He went green and got banked on (definition: He betrayed his friends and got to kicked, punched, and attacked)

So to recap, I am Unemployed Ben and he is not. And for that he is eternally grateful.

Some of you seem concerned about my recent blogging patterns but I wish to mantain my right to emotional safety. What does that mean? Fuck if I know but I read it today so I wrote it in this blog today. Are you seeing a certain pattern forming? I told you all a few months ago that I would be trying to find a narrative voice and in so doing would be writing some short stories. These stories are simply based on whatever I have been reading and all I am attempting to do is put my own spin on their particular style.

So to set the record straight I havent been on a twenty city tour, am not a whiny beotch and I didnt have a bad childhood. I made that shit up ok! Maybe I smoked too much of the Gonge and should have stopped at just one hit of acid but I didnt and those are the mistakes we all have to make to learn about lifes little lessons.

Like the time I woke up next to a girl that looked as though she had put her makeup on with a shotgun. What did I do? I ran out of the room (my room by the way) and then left the house for 3 hours hoping that when I got back she would be gone. My plan worked and to this day I havent had any more Southern Comfort.

There are many other lesson I could tell you about but you wont listen so I wont bother telling you about the perils of using saran wrap as a makeshift condom, no this is just something you need to find out about on your own.

So to sum up or to recap do not take the shit I spew out too seriously as I am still a man with no money, woman, car, or job. The world shouldnt take anything I say to heart, just live your life and if you see me in a bar one day buy me a drink and I might tell you a funny story about the time my friend Paul fell off a roof and had the propane tank he was carrying hit him in the head.

I’m out and I’m gone so ya better kick it on and on.

I despise people that say that’s funny or that’s hilarious. Laugh you arrogant bastard. Stop observing and start interacting. Your from Hollywood aren’t you? Get the fuck off of my airplane or I’m releasing the snakes.

I’ve begun to notice all these people trying so hard to be oh so clever on their blogs. Illusions that some publishing house will happen across their precious little corner of the blogosphere and be so impressed by the witty satire on display that they schedule a Brinks truck to stop by your mothers basement in hopes of enticing you to put all these insightful observations into book form for the benefit of all humanity.

And let’s not forget to mention all the insider blogs. The ones from assistants to some high profile movie exec that lay out all the tortuous tedium that exists in their day-to-day lives. Who knew answering the phone and running to Coffee Bean was so multi-dimensional and could be broken down into so many levels of inhumanity. Should we care if your boss yelled at you for being a fucktard? Shouldn’t he talk down to you if you are beneath him? You with your MBA from Brown but with about as much real world experience as a newborn. If a monkey can do your job you shouldnt be sharing your duties and responsibilities with the world. And by the way everyone knows how to use a BlackBerry, so sending sms’s to your best friend that’s obsessed with My Own Private Idaho doesn’t make you a techie or a unique snowflake, it just means you have opposable thumbs and a functioning brain, the same basic requirements you need to work at Wal-Mart.

And what about the people with all the advice, the ones that say they’ve made it in tinsel town, the screenwriters with no credits to their names but claims of rewriting 10 scripts a year, scripts so atrocious that they had to hire someone else to fix your eloquent world changing prose. That being the only reason you offer on why you didn’t get the credit and why your name shows zero results on IMDB. The advice so well meaning and insightful about all your “secrets” like to be a writer you must write everyday and must treat it like a job. You are so right, that’s how great art is usually created from 9 to 5 using Google and Wikipedia for research.

And what about me? Yes I have a blog, ive had about 5 of them and have been doing it for a few years. The reason that doesn’t make me an asshat is because I don’t care if people read it, if people share at their insights in the comments, because the average person surfing for entertainment from blogs is a fucking moron. Americans on the whole are stupid mofo’s. They cant find Iraq on a map and if you point that out the them they will respond with saying something ignorant like “I aint be going there so why do I need to know where it is?” They are part of the 40 million people watching American Karaoke. 40 fucking million people!!! Please go out to the garage start up the car and sit there for 30 or so minutes with the windows down and do us all a favor.

Have you guessed that my inner dialouge is a litte angry? Maybe its due to the fact that I heard today that more people voted for their favorite karaoke artist than they did in the last presidential election. Hey Canada hold the elevator cause…I’m ready for my cleansing and some of that KGB you are famous for.

I am one small step away from starting to pretend that I have no siblings, my sister being so crazy that she has some sort of advanced social paranoia that when in groups larger than three becomes convinced that the world is out to get her and that her idyllic childhood is to blame. She needs to ask her therapist for a refund or at the very least a ‘still crazy’ discount.

My brother in rehab for the…fuck I don’t even have that many fingers and toes to count that high, and has begun to think that because he has done the 12 steps before he should be immune this time. This from a man of 36 that has a liver so pickled it should be marketing by the Vlasek corporation and sold in a salty brine for world wide consumption.

And anyway it sounds better when you say to others “I’m an only child”, what it says could be one of two things: One being that I was so hideous and such a disappointment that my parents never wanted to touch each others happy places again or second it might be that I came out so damn perfect that they knew they could never do better so they stopped at one child to avoid the therapy costs of my younger siblings and the massive inferiority complexes they would develop.

Some might think being me is great, trust me it is, but that doesn’t mean you can be me. I am barely me some days because it takes so much fucking work. You think its easy to look unshowered and wear clothes that look stained and unwashed? Being so ridiculously charismatic and good looking that the only way I stand out is to look like I just spent the day at a rest area off I-5 giving $10 blowjobs to all the meth’d out truckers. Whoa that might have been an overshare but I had a point…what the fuck was it? Oh that’s right, just be yourself the world doesn’t need two of me.

And while I’m barking orders at you on how to act, I have a few rules for how to behave if you are one of the lucky ones that get to see me in person. If you happen to be graced by y appearance dont run up to me asking for an autograph, no stand out by just giving the cool what-up nod. You know, the one that shows everyone you’ve seen famous people and your comfortable around them. Trust me if you do this right you’ll be getting more boy band ass than that Timberlake kid.

At this very moment my driver informs me it will be another twenty minutes before I reach my lunch meeting. So after chastising him for speaking directly to me and not through my agent I lean back enjoying that my feet are being rubbed by the newest Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl. I instruct her to be gentle as I have sensitive skin and am quite ticklish at times. She says something back but by this time I’ve grown tired of listening to all women so she is ignored. So I reach for my champagne glass and find that it is not chilled so I erupt in anger slamming the flute against my newly installed 50-inch plasma, which causes chards of glass to fly in all directions.

So some 10 minutes later after the embedded glass is removed from my agents forehead via my personal physician we continue on down the road to my scheduled meet and greet. Suddenly I wonder if I should have arrived instead in one of those Plexiglass enclosed vehicles the pope made famous. Yep a pope-mobile will be my next whip for sure.

As we arrive at the newest lastest and greatest sushi bar in all the land I exit my stretch Bentley to ponder why all the people in Hollywood look to me to be the same and that no manner of plastic surgery or trips to the spa can hide the despair that years of whorish behavior and emotional prostitution has left in their eyes. Yep id say that is the perfect tone to say goodbye on, now get the fuck off my blog and post something on your own…im talking to your Professah.

Today I sit on my mink covered chaise lounge casually sipping on a Mohito while pouring over the invitations from the ‘it’ people around the world pleading for me to come join them in their self-indulgent lives. So here all alone in my palatial beachfront villa that looks out over the water to the proverbial edge of the world I contemplate my next big move. ‘Alone’ being my entourage of maids, valets and personal butlers and ‘I’ meaning my three personal assistants.

Sure I can still read but I choose not to, it’s far more exotic to have everything read to you. Take restaurants for example, an egocentric person such as myself doesnt want to lift a menu and hold it while having to move my eyes from left to right. How exhausting. No I prefer the waiter read the specials while I look at polished silverware hoping to catch a reflection of my chiseled features. It doesn’t even matter what the waiter says because its not as if I would actually order anything he suggests, no a luminary like me orders ‘off menu’. Over time I have gradually increased the complexity of the meals I order hoping that a chef will one day run out of the kitchen after hearing such a request, a Santuka knife in his clenched fist hoping to exact some revenge for a lifetime of these special orders. Of course he will almost make it too, that is until my personal bodyguards, the ones so big that they block out all solar energy within a 2-block radius, reveal themselves from the shadows and converge on him with a flurry of kicks to the kidney and solar plexus.

But alas this day has not come yet and that of course makes me morose and despondent as I have it all planned out in my head, the manager of the restaurant would apologize for the chef’s actions with offers to dispose the body and comp my meal. I would then demand to have the fallen chefs pancreas made into sweetbreads, as they are such a good source of vitamins and minerals. The manager, knowing that refusing my request would invariably cause my legion of fans to boycott this and every other restaurant bearing its name, will accommodate this demand his only resistance being an indebted smile and a timid apology.

Some day this will happen, as I will demand something as out of the ordinary as pan seared Rhinoceros Tenderloin to the shock and awe of all at my table, all who wish they had come up with it first. You see, when you are as celebrated as I, my every exploit is examined and if I remain this aloof, imaginative, and inspired genius with the body of a Greek God my shiny veneer will never disappear.

‘It has always been very easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool and all that.’
Bruce Lee

Today I finished my 20-city tour, it was enthralling and simply delicious to explore the cultures of a vast array of people.

My accommodations, first class of course. Courtesy of some multinational corporation probably billing me out for $200 an hour while I lounged in the back seat of the car they had hired someone to drive. As if I was far too refined to turn the steering wheel enough to make a complete turn without having someone nearby with a fresh dry towel and a bottle of San Pellegrino. These same people would be shocked to hear that I still wipe my own ass, that is when a Bidet is unavailable and my assistant has called in sick.

No my driver would the one having to deal with the construction delays and my demands for a vanilla mocha frappachino all the while I would ponder what the unfortunate souls that had to reside in cubicles today would be nuking for their easy made lunches. I pity them for not being me, or at least more like me. I would weep for them if I had any genuine emotions other than the repulsion I feel when my bath water isn’t drawn to a perfect 108 degrees by my butler.

Today tinted windows blocked the sun out, my use of sunglasses was merely for show. My fans would demand my best on this journey and I would provide them with just enough to sate their appetites always remembering to hold some mojo in reserve for the times when I wasn’t greeted with a standing ovation and gleeful shrieks of innocent young girls that invariably blossomed into womanhood simply by being in my presence. Luckily I have yet to use this reserve as I imagine its much like the bikini atoll bomb test, no one really knows what might happen if and when all that power is released into the atmosphere.

The stops on this celebration of all things me, blend together like so many nights entertaining supermodels with amusing stories from my travels overseas and my ability to make love like a champion thoroughbred horse put out to stud. What are these places? I don’t even know…except one thing is constant whenever I pull into these towns I am greeted like a conquering king coming back to the homeland. As if chariots are my escort, I enter the town square where large men in dark suits, and even darker sunglasses hold the throng at bay only because of overt threats of violence and certain arrest.

If it wasn’t for the massive throng of security, my personal manager, my publicist, my agent, and my stylist…I might have notions that the massive hoard of onlookers will move as one and rip the clothes from my supple alabaster skin. But not today as I greet my throng of well wishers with a simple acknowledgment by raising my leather incased right hand, gesturing to all that I welcome them into my bosom forever or at least until my agent allows.

The faces all look the same, an awestruck giddiness combined with pure unadulterated bliss. All their dreams are coming true and all I have to do is show up. I could do almost anything and still garner the type of frenzied applause usually only received by athletes and the first men that walked on the moon. Then my mind raced, what could I get away with? Could I wrap myself in tinfoil and do the robot dance on top of a car? Could I call them cattle and mindless morons only fit to be ground up and made into Soylent Green? Could I get away with killing one of them and dragging the lifeless body behind my chauffeured car as long as I signed autographs? Is that where the phrase ‘celebrities get away with murder’ comes from? Holy shit if I could just get some of my enemies to come to one of these events I could off them in front of my adoring masses and be celebrated for it.

They would probably even show up if the invitation was nice enough, I’d be sure to hire a calligrapher and get the torn paper envelopes that can only be sealed by wax which is made from a rare and endangered whale blubber. This wouldn’t be the time to be frugal, no it would be the one instance where I would toss caution to the wind no matter the cost as it would still be cheaper than the hit men I had gotten some estimates from. Yes, offing ones enemies can still be done in classy and sophisticated manner, I would make sure of that.

I would be the talk of the nation. “Sure he killed twelve people on his latest tour but did you see the invitations? They were simply fabulous.”

This might even help me remember some of these towns. Oh that’s right I eradicated the evil food court manager from my first job in Sedro Woolley, a place that is so very proud of their Steam Donkey, whatever the hell that is. I took the life of my 8th grade football coach in the quaint town of Anacortes where they have the fastest water transportation in the San Juan Islands, a claim that surely comes from people wanting to get the hell out of that town as fast as humanly possible.

If only this is what this tour could really be about I might actually have accomplished something, but alas I will have to settle for the unwavering love and adoration of my ever-expanding faction of devotees. This would probably be enough for most but not me, I want it all, and by all I mean the extermination of all the people that might have crossed me at some point. This will have to remain a dream though, a sweet and wonderful dream at that.

So where do I go from here? I will leave you with the words of a wise and benevolent man.
“Wherever God takes me!”
Neil Patrick Harris

Are we all living the lives that we are all forced to lead? Getting jobs without really knowing why. Are people really fulfilled by their lives anymore? Does it seem to you that people in the past had a larger purpose? Was it just pure survival? They weren’t sure they were going to make it so they had to try that much harder. Was it for their nation? To fight a war overseas so that they didn’t have to fight one at home. To go the extra mile, to make things better in the future.

But now what for us? We haven’t had this great obstacle to overcome, to define our lives with. If life is relatively easy does that make it better? What about now? Haven’t we just grown beyond our survival? Do many people really identify themselves with a larger cause anymore? Now that we don’t have to worry about survival, don’t we all just wonder what there is now? We almost seem to be waiting for some event to happen that will put us on a path that we couldnt found for ourselves.

Do people even need that purpose? Is it not good enough to just live? This seems so prevalent now, this inability to be with the unknown. What will one say at their own deathbed if nothing really happened in their lives? ‘I paid the bills, I worked hard for someone else.’

When is it that we feel most alive? When we are pushing the boundaries, relying on ourselves to make things happen.

Does all this information and technology really make us whole? I try to convince myself that it allows me to stay in contact with people in a way that never would have been possible just a short time ago but it also keeps people at a distance when they might live just mere blocks away. I might talk to 40 different friends in a month but I might only see one or two of them in person.

The other day I left my blackberry at home and spent a whole day without it and I felt strange, almost empty. Like I was disconnected somehow. Thinking about it that way is kinda sad. Maybe its time to put it away and see some friends face to face…no matter how fugly and repulsive I might be.

And yes that is a warning, a warning to all my friends and former hanger-ons, I just might show up unnanounced on your doorstep and try to convince you that all that you need in your life is someone to support financially. If only I knew such a person??

This weekend marks my one-year anniversary of becoming Unemployed Ben. Some might consider this a bad thing I do not. Sure there are times when I wish there was a paycheck at the end of the week but all in all this has been a good year for me.

This is the year I started writing with a purpose, and no I’m not talking about my blog. My blog has become merely an exercise. I try to write about whatever pops into my head and to write quickly, try not to edit even if I don’t like the finished product. The writing I am talking about is about my past and some tough times that id like to forget but in looking at them again I am finally seeing why I am the person I’ve become. This hasnt always been easy.

This year I started reading once again. That’s not to say I didn’t read before but it was almost exclusively on the Internet. I am once again reading books that offer something I have been missing for awhile. This last week I read 5 novels, completely devoured them like a bear waking up from hibernation and seeing a stream stocked with salmon. Its feels better to finish a book now than it ever has.

This year I have come to grips with my medical problems. Sometimes acceptance is the only true escape. This year was the first time anyone had actually seen for themselves how bad it is and can be. It was hard for them to see me this way but it helped me get over hiding certain aspects of my condition. This can only lead to better days.

This year I started to shed some of my perceived comforts. I began to see things as a crutch and hindrance instead of escapism. Began to understand that you need only a few things in life to be happy and fulfilled, everything else is just for show.

This year I saw how instilled behaviors could ruin a person. How deep rooted animosities are as harmful as any other thing in ones own psyche. How change is both inevitable for some and not possible for others.

The strange part about all these changes is that they were done while I was by myself. And yet I thought about something recently that makes me wonder if it can only be that way for a short amount of time. Because when you reach the end of your life, you won’t look back and savor the moments you spent alone.

Ever had a day or even a week where something keeps popping up in your mind? Nothing serious like a death in the family or a loss of employment but something somewhat innocuous. Its been happening to me for about 2 weeks now and it doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to it. Ill be reading a book, watching tv, surfing the net, walking on a beach or just eating an apple and this “thing” will pop into my head.

The “thing’ in question happened about three weeks ago when I was visiting my sister and her two kids over at my mothers condo. It was a typical lazy day with good food and even a little sun. I was really into this book I was reading and brought it with me, I didn’t pick it up until the sun started setting and dinner was still about 30 minutes away. Then my mother broke out some records she had recently purchased and told me to put one on. I flipped through the vinyl and thought about the last time I had looked through records and couldn’t remember, then I came across the White Album and put it on.

I kicked back and started reading my book again as the music played, hadn’t heard the album in a while so I was little distracted. Then I read a line in the book the same time it was being amplified through the speakers. The book had not made a reference to the song but just the words of the song title. I was a taken back by this, as it was one hell of a freak occurrence. “Happiness is a warm gun” is not a common reference, I don’t think I had ever read or heard of it outside of the song. I brought this to the attention of the people in the room, pointing to the line I had just read and the song still playing and they were all equally taken aback.

Not really sure what it was that I was feeling, I thought about the odds of me reading that exact book and listening to that exact song at the same time and it was infinitesimal. But like most things after a few minutes I went back to reading and forgot about it until right before I went to bed that night. I dismissed it as just a freak occurrence and went to sleep.

Then about a week later it just started popping in my head at strange times. After about 10 or so days of this I started to remember something about Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. Its basically what some people have come to call a cosmic coincidence. If you start playing the album when the MGM lion is on his third roar, portions of the movie and the album seem to be interlocked in their themes. Some have said because there seems to be too many coincidences that Pink Floyd must have planned this, something that they have denied.

Im not sure what to believe but at this point I find it pretty odd, perhaps this is just a cosmic coincidence or just the onset of insanity. Do insane people ever know they are insane? Youve seen the clips of people screaming while in straight jackets, not having any clue that they are truly crazy. Maybe a padded room wouldnt be so bad, its got to be pretty comfy while sleeping off those anti-psychotic that make you me ….errr some people drowsy.

I once knew a man named Richard, he lived in the Midwest and loved his Nascar. Few things made him happier than going to the Kansas Speedway and sitting amongst his people, rooting on his favorite drivers. Of course he loved one driver more than the rest. Was it because of his fiery demeanor, his competitive nature, or simply because he could see a little of himself in the man known as Tony Stewart.

How did Rich prepare for such an event? Well he heads down to the local convenience store and buys some generic cigarettes, a jumbo pack of Slim Jim’s, and the finest 12-pack of beer available with his left over $6.32. He then rolls back to his apartment and starts drinking Nati Lite’s, or as he calls it getting fueled up, and tries to decide between either painting his head or chest with Tony’s lucky number 33. At this point he sits out on his deck in the hot sun for about 2 hours with his t-shirt on to insure he has the patented farmers tan that all the ladies go crazy for. By this time the beers and the Slim Jim’s are gone and all that’s left is the desire to see a bunch of guys take left turns for four hours. This is what he calls his race day routine.

The is the exact plan he executed yesterday and it was going well, that is until Lap 66 when his favorite driver tried to fit his car into a hole not big enough for Long Dong Silvers’ attributes. He clipped Kenny Wallace’s car and he became airborne, did a lazy flip and landed on the roof. In seeing this. Rich let out an audible gasp and clutched his Basic Cigs box in his right hand smashing the cheap tobacco to shreds. This was not a time to worry about bargain cigarettes; no this was a time for hope. Hope that Tony would be okay, hope that the car would flip back onto its tires never causing even a scratch, hope that his dismembered head wouldn’t get cut off and fly into the crowd.

And just then Stewart’s car slid down the track on its roof before it was hit by rookie Danny O’Quinn’s Ford Fusion. As the Home Depot car flipped and the rolled into the infield, Rich sat breathless pondering a life without Nascar, he imagined a life without Tony. He would have to stay away from Nascar fans, they would only serve as a reminder of what he so desperately missed. He would avoid the bars they drank in and restaurants he knew they frequented. He would stick to fine dining establishments, the kind of places no Nascar enthusiast would be caught dead in.

There should have been a smile as wide as a canyon on his face that day. Instead, on that boiling hot day all he wanted to do was finding someplace quiet and cry.

Then something happened, was something stirring in that upside down car? Was Tony trying to get out? Oh sweet Jesus this just might be the miracle that Jules Winfield spoke of, a divine intervention where god reached down and cradled the 33 car to a soft landing. Miraculously Tony crawled out of the wreckage and saluted the crowd. Rich screamed out like a girl scout selling cookies and professed his platonic man love “I luv ya Toneeee, I luv down deep man, don’t scare me like dat…my heart cant take it”.

Both men escaped serious injury that day; Tony’s head arms & legs and of course Richards’s heart.

Well I finally got through the weekend of the big move and made it to my new place. Still unpacking but pretty much done. This post signifies my computer is set up and that is a good thing. I am no longer living with my sauce hound of a brother and that is a great thing.

This place is pretty cool and laid back, not really a better place to be on a sunny day than the water. So this summer should be a good one filled with bikini clad women lounging on my private beach.

Other than that dont have much to say so I am Rhett Butler and gone with the wind.