Dear diary,
You don’t wanna write anymore, but you didn’t receive training in any other trade; that’s the dilemma. You’re addicted to writing, but you’re all out of ideas, so you end up filling page after page with nothing.
That sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I’m frankly jealous.
Before we begin, tho, first I wanna share this Paid Ad that I imagined:
You claim that U.S society is crumbling; where’s your proof?
Here it is: a fragment of society that broke off when I gripped it. It looks just like a piece of ancient Rome.
OK that’s the end of the Paid Ad — now, on with the nothing...
*
I can’t believe that some people have jobs. I mean real jobs, not this jockeywork that I do. “Jockey (verb): struggle by every available means to gain or achieve something.”
Think about it: Some people are journalists; some are comedians; some are prosecutors; some are administrative assistants... Some people work in upper management. Some are even executives. A rare soul is important enough to land on the top of a sky-high building in a helicopter — I’m thinking of that scene from the movie Margin Call (2011).
Let me take these farces separately and in succession, starting with journalism:
'Journal' just means 'diary', as in the phrase "Dear diary, I couldn't help noticing that you don't wanna write anymore, but you didn't receive training in any other trade" (etc.); therefore the term should really be DIARYISM. — My list above, by the way, is not entirely random. Of course, it’s partly an attempt to offer what seems like an array of varied professions, but it’s also secretly a record of my recent obsessions. For I’ve been dedicating the lion’s share of every day to journalism, as of late. By saying this, I wish I meant that I’ve been interviewing bystanders and passersby on the street, with a handheld microphone and camera-ready appearance. But in fact my focus on journalism as a career path — and thus as a topic to equivocate about here, to you — stems from my couch-potato laziness: for I’ve been watching much news. Right now in North America we have what’s called corporate news, also referred to as the mainstream news media (MSM); and, on the other hand, there’s this whole barrage of individual news outlets that operate on shoestring budgets and are independent of ultra-moneyed overlords: often they’re just regular citizens moonlighting. Well it’s these independent outlets that I am in love with. They represent the democratization of rumor.
Moving on to the next-listed profession: Comedian. What a strange idea: that your whole duty in life is to try to make people laugh. I wonder if they enjoyed comedians in biblical times. When did biblical times end, by the way? I say they’re ongoing, that biblical times never expired (how could they stop? for “stop” itself is a time-bound word, which would require an encompassing flux to permit its termination), therefore the answer is YES, we suffer comedians here in biblical times, in the Year of Our Good Lord Two Thousand Years Plus Nineteen.
But you know what I mean: by biblical I mean ANTI-Modern-Times: not 2019 but rather back in the days of king Ahab and his gorgeous queen Jezebel. When I lived with them during the spring of 840 BC, in the royal arcade, if I had wanted to abandon my official position as Chief Prophet of Baal and instead become a stand-up comedian, would such a career change have been possible, or would it have necessitated extensive schooling that I couldn’t afford? The answer is YES: lively nightclubs flourished during that first millennium prior to the advent of Christ. The inhabitants of that era possessed knowledge of the Seven Spirits of Alcohol; and, as they say: Where there is alcohol, there is laughter. Moreover, the schooling requisite to become Officially Funny was steep yet reasonable; as opposed to nowadays, when you’ve gotta be a virtual millionaire to get yuks on TV.
Next we have the job of prosecutor. What exactly is a prosecutor? It’s a public official who institutes legal proceedings; a lawyer who conducts the case against a defendant in a criminal court. This occupation was on my mind because, here in the U.S., the Mueller Report recently was released, and its author Robert Mueller (did he really write it?), whose name has been frequently bandied about by the above-mentioned news outlets, is often, when he’s referred to, labeled a prosecutor. At least I heard one news guy call him that. Here’s a little detail, for any aliens not yet in-the-know:
On May 17 of 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The purpose of the allegations and investigation was to give the U.S. public something to rage about during the span between elections (we have new elections every couple years, for the sake of diversion), so that the national topic of conversation would not be “Why do the majority of citizens, right & left, including now the bases of EACH party, despise those parties’ respective establishments?” If we’re all busy arguing about whether or not foreign influence occurred, we can more easily avoid having to admit to ourselves that the domestic influences of the aforesaid establishments are arguably eviller. But back to the topic of prosecutors:
If, as we noted at the start, the job of a prosecutor is to fight against the defendant in criminal court, then this position is what the Bible calls an “accuser of sin”: it’s synonymous with the notion of “legal opponent” or “adversary”; in other words, a prosecutor is a “satan” — that’s what that title literally means. (And just as it changes the meaning of a word, depending on how many of its characters are capitalized, so that the all-caps title LORD differs from the merely front-capt Lord, which differs from lord — just think how many prayers you’ve wasted on your apartment complex’s landlord — the same goes for SATAN, Satan, and satan; on earth as in heaven.) So the question is: Would I, Bryan Ray the author of this diary entry (did I really write it?) — I say, would I make a decent satan? And the answer is YES. As I did in preparation for my stint as an ancient comedian, I’d simply attend a good school, get the proper training; & master the law — I’m already adept at crafting language to persuade half-listening juries to perceive the guilt of their brethren and punish them mercilessly. So, yeah, I think I’d be among the finest satans.
THE LAST-MENTIONED GROUPS
Let’s take the last-mentioned groups of professionals together, and consider them as one single-yet-complex category, since they’re all somewhat related: administrative assistants, upper management and executives. What the fuck do these people DO? Nobody knows. They shuffle papers; they wear fine attire; they go on lunch breaks; they smoke cigars; they drive limos to meetings — no, scratch that: they employ attendants to drive them to meetings via limousine. But the highest-ranking executives arrive by chopper.
I admit it: the cubicle environment baffles me. It both attracts me and repels me. It’s so clean and geometric: almost threateningly so. This it has in common with certain hospitals. I like that: I like a nearly inhumanly cleanly workplace.
So that’s the attractive part about modern offices. The unattractive aspects are multifold:
I hate those round glass carafe coffee machines, the cheap kind that make awful drip-coffee that you drink from a styrofoam cup. I also hate staplers: they’re dangerous. I hate graphs and charts (when did we all become so enamored with statistics? just wing it, that’s what I say: trust your gut)...
But I like the office hairstyles. And I LOVE women’s business wear. Men’s, too; but women’s is better. Formal or casual: I love it all. There is no item of women’s business wear that is not fashionable: it is the only dimension of clothing that has found a way to remain everlastingly vogue. It’s like a species that cannot die. But unlike the deathless gods, women’s business wear is not barren: contrariwise it is prolific, prone to mutate, and totally open to fresh innovations (perhaps this is the secret to its success) — new styles and ideas appear almost every single day, and all are welcome. Look at the shoes; look at the skirts; look at the pant suits. It’s all so distinguished, it practically justifies its surroundings (the business-world: this dreaded cubicle farm). If only we could detach the concept of women’s business wear from its origin in officework, then the whole earth would sing out, and heaven would unroll like a scroll and let itself down to us.
I’m saying let’s ditch the skyscrapers and the cubicles and the graphs and charts and staplers, and return to living in flat, single-level buildings, yet keep them immaculate — I don’t even care if you wanna order entirely porcelain decor and brazen-hoofed furniture for the interior — just have a low-lying city of divine females clothed in business attire, and a fair amount of young men, too, but all the males must either be poets or painters (basically me & my friends); and we will do whatever we want, all day. Thus everyone shall walk like models but talk like drunkards. I mean this as a compliment: for show me a drunken elocutionist whose speech is less than hypnotic. It is impossible. Last evening I watched Gore Vidal’s address to the National Press Club on March 1998 (followed by a riveting Q&A), and it left me in awe. Among other things, Vidal confirms the rock-bottom opinion of President Truman which I formed from that documentary series by Peter Kuznick & Oliver Stone: another marvel that I can’t stop raving about (“It’s indispensable!!!”): The Untold History of the United States (2012).
So basically we’d have a city of interesting people who live simple, harmonious lives and dress ultra-sophisticatedly. And right in the midst of the town square there’d be this pulpit, and we’d have just one prosecutor, Attorney General Bryan (I only moonlight as a poet), and the duty of this individual would be to announce, in a loud voice like a football referee, all the unsavory acts that every citizen has committed since the last public disclosure. From nine to five, every day, these deeds would be broadcast aloud to whoever cared to listen. And he’d (I’d) take Saturday and Sunday off: those two days would be called “the weekend”: on those days, I would rest from my work. And God would get his throne wheeled back to the edge of the town, where he would listen carefully to all the criticisms that the Attorney General would bellow, Monday thru Friday — basically my schedule would follow the traditional banking week. However, most of the holidays that existed when earth was just earth (that is, before the heavens descended), would no longer be recognized, as there would be no further need of observing Christmas or Easter: for lo, Jesus is with us now, in the flesh, wearing the same grey suit that Cary Grant wore in North by Northwest (1959); thus there’s no reason to celebrate his birth or death: he’s just one of us now; a well-dressed shareholder of paradise; & we’re all equal here, cuz we installed direct democracy; our collective love overthrew the old dictatorship; that’s why God’s chair remains parked over in that abandoned lot. He just sits there all day & listens to Satan & laughs.
No comments:
Post a Comment