Darryl Joel Berger this is how i got defeated

From: Janet P <janet_p@pellmail.com>
To: Joey Shepherd <livelongandprosper@trekmail.com>
CC: invitation list
Subject: MISERY GUTS

Dear Joey,

You’re at work right now. I should be at work but I’m at home. In fact, I’m sitting with my laptop by the front room window, in the sun, wanting to be on the other side. I look at passing cars and their clouds of exhaust and imagine myself caught up in them, some strange man driving me away. Maybe to the woods. I know, that’s me all over, always looking and thinking and wishing beyond. But that’s not why I’m writing this.

Part of me wants to apologize for doing this in an email, but then other parts – more the grey matter parts – remind me how much thought I’d have to put into leaving you a note, because you’re always saying I never leave notes in the right places, and even a sure bet like the tv screen is only a certainty in the eventual sense, although you do watch a lot of tv, and it’s not even good tv, just all this old crap from the space channel, stuff you’ve seen a thousand times, and you know every episode by heart, but for you it’s like comfort food, just the sight of Captain Kirk makes you smile more than I ever could. Anyway, this isn’t about me writing notes or you watching tv, although they are connected in this warped timeline kind of way – two people out of sync, so many days I felt like I was just floating around this invisible universe, leaving particles of skin in the air.

And then I think maybe I shouldn’t be cc-ing this to all your friends, but they were witnesses, after all, to what happened last night. And if you were able to behave like you did and not be embarrassed in front of your precious ‘guests’, then this second act should hardly be a problem.

To the point: you should not have yelled at me, you should not have got in my face, you should not have called me ‘misery guts’ in front of all those people. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

Yes, I do hate your dog. I hate all dogs, as a matter of principle, but I really hate small dogs. They yap, and they smell, and they’re useless. A small dog cannot rescue you from the ocean. A small dog cannot defend you from a bear. Why not just get a cat? Or a turtle? Or a rock?

To be honest, it’s not the dogs themselves that fuel my animosity – it’s the idea of a dog in the context of a pet. Because a pet is a product, and pet owners are just consumers of that product, and they’re consuming that product because they have some need, and that need is almost always to make little gods out of themselves, to have this halfwitted creature who sees them as their entire universe.

There’s this whole part of my life when I can’t remember anyone talking about how Buster or Bailey or Slobberchops was feeling. But now everyone talks about this kind of thing all the time. Someone should examine the archaeological evidence to see if this is what the Romans did, just before it all went to pieces. Like when Caligula made his horse a consul.

So I put your precious Scotty outside. So it’s winter. So what? It was a party, and he was in the way, and the backyard has a fence, and he’s wearing a fur coat. This is what I get for moving out east to be with you. Second place to a Dandie Dinmont.

Why did I turn my life upside down for you? Was it supposed to be good for me?

I *hate* change that’s supposed to be good for me. Like when everyone is all excited about spring, and all I can think is how much I hate all the rain and mud and weather-smashed garbage. I hate the coming pressure of summer, when everyone starts asking what you’re doing with your holidays. I’m not taking any holidays, I always say. It’s a matter of principle.

I also hate it when my office building burns to the ground, and then they build a new one, and the new guy in the new cubicle next to mine keeps trying to talk to me, because then I make bad decisions about moving across the country to be with some jackass.

I also hate metal-grated bridges. And guys who stand around in hard hats.

I’ve always hated the Maple Leafs.

I hate it when someone at work sells cookies or chocolates to fund their kid’s two-week bus tour of Europe. I never went to Europe. Why does some idiot twelve year-old get to go? I can see the blog entries now: Europe is soooo cool!

I hate people with big heads. I hate everyone I went to highschool with. I *really* hate Florida.

I hated the way your brother put his hands all over me in the elevator of the Ambassador Hotel last Christmas, but only because he was so rough with the two fingers he pushed inside of me.

But none of this makes me miserable, Joey. Too bad I can’t say the same about you.

Time to beam out of here.

Goodbye,
Janet
p.s. I put the dog outside.

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This story originally appeared in Knock, The Dead Friend Issue.

Drew/designed a new cover this week for the ebook version of Dead Beautiful, which C is publishing through Upstart Press. Ebook covers are extravagant icons, since half the world is looking at them on small or handheld devices.

The I-ho ch’üan (“Righteous and Harmonious Fists”) practiced boxing and other calisthenics, believing this would make them impervious to bullets. It did not. They started the Boxer Rebellion anyway, and the British and Germans and French all machine-gunned them down in clouds of coal and pipe smoke. There was too much money to be made from opium to let a few flashy but deluded quasi-nationalists get in the way. Even then, the markets were everything.

ottawa race weekend, in which i ran 5K out of spite

[the drawing above is entitled daddy’s heart attack]

Overcast and holding Saturday morning, out to do the groceries. People in the supermarket wander around, a kind of wide-eyed look, staring up in a crooked way, trying to think of everything all at once. Etiquette to cart traffic — make a little back-and-forth motion to indicate you need to go by, do not say vroom vroom. People always claim not to see you. I don’t know why they play Pat Benatar to a crowd of over-40 white people at 8:30ish in the morning, but I’m sure they have their studies.

Leave for Ottawa late morning. Yawning, could go to sleep on the 401. Bad idea. Oona denies wanting or needing a nap but is snoring by Brockville. Go for lunch once we reach the capital city, one of those peameal bacon places where the waiter writes his name in crayon on the brown paper tablecloth and they play the kind of music that you’ve heard on the radio a thousand times but cannot place a name to. Sammy Hagar’s B-list. Also, my cola arrives in a mason jar.

While C is excited at the prospect of the upcoming race, brother-in-law Nicky is dreading it, even though he’s the only one who’s really trained for it. I have trained least of all. In fact, my ‘running’ has amounted to little more than practicing what running feels like. It feels bad. In fact, I am only running out of spite — because Nicky had already broken several promises to run with C (5K’s, 10K’s — even a half-marathon) and he was going to get out of it again until we goaded him and he said he would do it only if I did it, and I said fine. And while time has borne down on me, and conspired against me, to bring me to this day, I still believe in spite. Spite, bellicosity in general can be a great motivator if you really get into it. Understand that this is different from blind rage — fury being about blindness and destruction, while spite, at least to me, has always been more about a stubborn, perverse, wholly unreasonable willingness to die on the ramparts.

Catherine is also supposed to run, but she bows out with a bum knee, so by way of punishment we make her babysit Oona.

The race itself is a mob in positive-thinking and spandex. Because no one wants to look bad, we all run too fast in the beginning. C and Nicky long gone. Fine. As soon as I see enough people start to walk, I take my own walking breaks. Not like my running is any faster. After that it’s not so bad — run a little, walk a little, run a little bit more. In the end, I probably run about three-quarters of it. More importantly, I do not die. My time is 42 something. Like I care. I pour a few cups of water over my head and remark to C that it’s the farthest I’ve ever run in my life. Everyone gets a medal anyway, although I’m disappointed not to hear Europe’s The Final Countdown in the finisher’s area.

How to be a Bad Designer

O let me count the ways: here’s three. I could give more but graphic designers, as a group, are notoriously poor readers.

1) Be pretentious. As graphic design software gets cheaper and easier to use, and everyone around you seems to have keys to the shop, and even your babysitter considers tinkering with logos and posters and web pages to be “fun”, and the entire design industry wanes, withers and dies around you, like some kind of priesthood to a god that no longer exists, now is the time to get arrogant. O yes. You are the zen master. You have a process. You make art. Whatever work you do is a gift to the client, and they should be fucking grateful to accept it! Sure, they might have their stupid business to worry about, but only you understand taste and style. Go get your backlit headshot as soon as possible.

2) Concentrate on the software. Make yourself a specialist. Sell yourself as a scientist, as a technocrat, as a wizard of special effects. Show off your skills! You can make type look like wood, stack layers and filters in soul-deadening arrays, make everything spin and glow. All buttons must be clicked. Certainly, this is about as far as you can get from what originally brought you to this field, which was the desire to be creative and engage with inventive ideas. But so what? Back then, you probably even had some actual pen-on-paper drawing skills. Still, fuck it! If the only way to stay ahead of the zombie horde is to be a super zombie, then so be it.

3) Teach at the college level. Ah, safety! Now you can be pretentious and a technocrat and no one will call you on your bullshit. Nineteen year-olds know nothing! A little I-understand-the-industry here, some if-you-want-make-it there and voila! A bunch of kids who look up to you and actually believe that they’ll only have to do graphic design until they make it as illustrators. Psyche! Not only are you safe from having to do any real design work, but any design that you deign to do will be worshipped by a group of semi-desperate children. Now where’s my latte?

all all gone
mixed media on canvas; 6 x 6 x 1.5 inches; in the shop

Walking to work, listening to the news. An election in Egypt that’s supposed to be important, regardless of the fact that the army will still run everything. More demonstrations in Montreal, something bigger now, Charest says the new laws are no different than Toronto or Paris, which is a bit like comparing your backyard dung hill to the garbage tip down the street. CPR workers go on strike, which will make everyone angry, in a general way, because it’s easy. A Toronto woman dies while descending Mount Everest, the newsworthy aspect being that she had never climbed before. Three other climbers also die.

In other news, I’ve been thinking about rationality.

People like to think they are rational. They are not. In fact, they are highly irrational.

For example: if I was rational, I would eliminate sugar from my diet, get more aerobic exercise, quit making art, quit writing, and quit the graphic design industry (the last three for the reasons of: no money, no money and — wait for it — no money). I would have invested early (intelligently, with study). I would never have attended university (college only, in the trades). Also, I would *never* have had a kid (also: no one would have kids, except for people in upper-middle-class-and-above range, because the expenditure-versus-hugs graph is skewed entirely out of whack).

But I am not rational. I have ideas about experience, and the nature of knowing things. I am optimistic about a few (a very few) things while invariably being negative about almost everything else. Cynical, pessimistic. Even nihilistic, on starless nights. There are times when I overestimate some people’s abilities while still continually downgrading my expectations for the rest (in fact, I’m usually surprised when anybody does anything useful or charitable or worthwhile, especially for me). I worry, I get stressed. My Grade Four teacher used to yell at me for being so anxious, saying that I’d get an ulcer some day. STOP WORRYING.

ANYWAY: understanding how irrational I am helps me to sympathize with other irrationalities around me. The militant student strike in Quebec, for example. Or Greece playing the part of Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. These things make most people angry — What are they protesting about? Don’t they know there’s no free ride! Tuition fees in Quebec are the lowest in the country! This is all down to a defect in the Greek character! I never got any breaks, why should they get a break? That’s how capitalism works! — and so on. I love to hear this stuff. I love to hear how incensed people get, with these Quebec students or unemployed Greeks who don’t want to play by the rules of the rational market anymore. Who don’t even seem to understand the game, or else they want new rules, or no rules at all. Don’t they know how the system works? How can they be so irrational?

Easy. They see all the other irrationalities in the system or the market or the game or whatever the hell you want to call it. They see banks sailing along like pirate ships, and governments starting illegal wars, or wars of convenience, or spending billions on boondoggles like the Olympics. They see their wages repressed while credit markets balloon out of any sensible proportions. They see dirty oil and fracking. They see whole swathes of people becoming increasingly disengaged and disenfranchised as they fall by the wayside economically or just grow tired of being lied to (sometimes even by robots).

So why not embrace the irrational? Why not tear up the rule book? If the game seems to be fixed, and the rules are not serving you, then why play along? Having nothing to lose also helps.

Greece can make all the German bankers happy and take it in every orifice for two, three, four generations and *maybe* come out okay in the end (no pun intended). Or they can blow themselves up on their own terms.

Quebec students can stop the protests and go back to school and hope the government acts in good faith and tries to find other savings while keeping tuitions as low as possible. Or they can say, Well, you have the bats and the balls, but we are the players. And if we don’t play, the whole field grows over.

Why shouldn’t tuition be ridiculously low? Hell, why shouldn’t it be free? Oh, I know, because then everybody would go to school. Uh, no they wouldn’t. Everybody still has mortgages. And even if everybody *did* go back to school … well, good. Great. A better educated population. And if it was too crowded, maybe the universities would bring back some fucking standards. You know, make a degree tougher to get, and perhaps even meaningful again? That would be rational.

x} Carl one of those guys who shouts at people at three in the morning, three in the afternoon, seeks out confrontations like switching channels, HEY BUDDY WE GOT A FUCKING PROBLEM, leaping spring-heeled from his porch. Where do those muscles come from, when the only work is drinking? 

x} Smothering layers of still air heat. Let’s not go crazy. Sit in the shade, eat your lemon danish. 

x} The rest of us have things to consider here. 

x} Like talking to a three year-old who looks around you, trying to see the cartoon movie. 

x} Don’t tell me, flat affect. Attentions elsewhere, just watch the reflections.

x} Roll the word over: languid. Lang-gwid. Who says these things anymore? 

x} Did you get that link I sent you?

x} Should have known when I heard my name three times the day before, each time in different locations, around different people, and I could never tell who it was for, just my name out and gone, and Beatrice isn’t so common a name.

x} Is it?

x} Sometimes I go home. Sometimes I just get up from my desk, put on my jacket and go home. Had enough. No one says anything. 

x} No you can’t follow.

x} You said: dark hair in curls, little black shorts, short-sleeved top with collar, and white shirt underneath, sweet jasmine, reminds me of the Persian girls I usually like, thick and shapely, everything different shades of cocoa.

x} But I’m long white and skinny. 

x} You’re not like that at all, not downwind at least. 

x} Go on then. Quicken your pace to keep up with her

x} Listen to you, the philosopher who talks about happiness

x} Just kiss me a little to sleep please.