Yes, I know the
4th of July is gone. Thank the heavens. I have a thing about
expendable holidays. I think Americans are a little too liberal with their celebrations and after Mother’s Day, Labor Day, Father’s Day, and Memorial Day I’m pretty fed up by the time the 4th comes around. Besides, it’s the beginning of the
HEAT in Dallas that will last the rest of the year. A friend from up north wrote and said she hopes the heat wave will pass soon. I told her it will… in
February. And though I love
fireworks I’m not really into standing around watching things explode surrounded by drunk, smelly, obnoxious, sweaty rude strangers. What is it about the 4th that brings out the inner “
Deliverance” hillbilly in most people? Ugh. Oh, well, God bless Americana….
As for all the
celebs dying lately, you know these people had to go sometime. It’s not like it’s the fucking
Black Plague or anything. Anyway, I’m all for thinning the herd. And who best to go than
fucked-up celebrities? I don’t care what you think about
Michael Jackson’s legacy, the dude was a fucking
ALIEN. And the universe, or at least our solar system, is a lot safer with him moving on… And if I hear
Man in the Mirror one more time I think I might choke myself.
Carradine was the strangest. I mean, what’s a 70-year-old man doing hanging from a pole in a closet with rope around his
genitals? Ah, never mind, I don’t really want to know. Sounds like the beginning of a
Tarantino film to me. As for
Farrah Fawcett, poor thing. What kind of karma would you have to pay to have something eat you alive from the ass outward? (ah, no snickering out there, please…) She should have married
Ryan O’Neal when she had the chance. As for
Steve McNair, that fucker
deserved it. I mean, cheating on your wife with children at home is one thing, but fucking a
psycho-billy 20-year-old WHITE GIRL is like kneeling in front of a subway train begging to be run over. Stupid. Motherfucker.
Karl Malden was one guy who I’ll miss. Good actor. And who the fuck really cares about
Billy Mays, except maybe his family? I mean, really, do you people watch
THAT much television to have actually bonded with the spokesman for
Oxi-Clean?? Come on. NO ONE made a stink when
Dave, the guy from
Wendy’s, died a few years back. What misplaced priorities… And
Ed McMahon will be missed, surely. What a recognizable voice and face of the
Tonight Show long before Mr. Potatohead
Jay Leno and
Conan O’Brian stepped up to the plate.
I was talking to my dear friend about the glut of
social media conferences offered out there by these self-proclaimed gurus lately. The reality is you people need to get a fucking job. And your new career choice of ‘media guru’ is
appalling at best. I saw an advertisement that said for
ONLY $695 you can come and be part of a
MEDIA EVENT in Chicago. No,
airfare is not included. Nor
hotel. And I’m sure
alcohol is not included either. That’s just to get your pimpled ass in the door. And why? To listen to a LIST of “
media professionals” talk about how social media is changing the world. Seriously. In many ways you all are simply
prostitutes, making money off the delusional, ill-informed, and under-exposed. Now more than ever the adage stands true: those who
can,
DO. And those who
can’tTEACH… social media. You’re all a bunch of snake-oil salesmen to me. Actually, I take that back; it's unfair to the snake. At least I can
jack off with snake oil…
Are you ready for the truth, children? Wait for it… Ok, here it comes. Sitting down, lovers???
ATTENTION WALMART WRITERS:
Social media and the internet has
DESTROYED our way of life.
It has destroyed the economy for media professionals (and by that I mean
REAL PROFESSIONALS who actually
PRODUCE CONTENT, not the
mommy-bloggers nor the
gurus who are raping people for the right to regurgitate the same information that can be found on
everyone else’s blog). The Internet itself has crippled the human race
sexually (by the introduction of over-the-top porn),
socially (by alienating us from real human contact), and
psychologically by giving us delusions of grandeur by feeding our egos three squares a day plus snacky-snacks in between. We are all now
OBESE MEDIA GLUTTONS.Technological
freedom has truly become our
slavery. The thing we cling to the closest is what is destroying us. By embracing this quantum leap in communication technology, as much as you hate to admit it, we have doomed ourselves. And every time I read one of you people’s aimless, cutsie blog entries I realize that I am the
Omega Man surrounded by the
living dead. And I’d rather shoot myself in the head than be one of you.
I am a writer. Like
Milton. Like
Chaucer. Like
Henry Miller. Like
Lovecraft. I have life experiences (and some prejudices) which
far exceed most of you and I’m able to communicate my thoughts and stories in appealing diatribes that entertain, educate, and inform. I do
intense research even in my fiction to make sure that it is viable and not some
convoluted shadow of truth that my sick ego just happened to deem real. And what is
YOUR work based on? What are
YOU writing about? Most of you aspire to be the
Rachel Ray of social media when your characters (meaning your personas) are less than human, more of a stereotype, an
amalgamation of humanity , than a true representation of the many facets of the human psyche, really.
What I’m hearing from potential publishers is that the market is totally
FLOODED with self-help/internet marketing/mommy-blogger-fueled projects. Thank
GOD that is not what I write. However, my question to you all is:
What in God’s name do you Cretins possibly have to write about??
It’s not like it’s one long
Twitter post, folks. A book is a
BOOK. Like
Moby Dick. Like
Catcher in the Rye. Like
Altas Shrugged. What most of you guys do barely makes a decent
crank phone call or
grocery list much less a serious contribution to the
human legacy. Seriously, it reminds me when Non-Linear Editing systems came en force to the market about 5 years ago and people who bought them, coupled with a decent digital camera, immediately called themselves
filmmakers. Now, I’m not going to shit on the ‘
less is more’ philosophy of filmmaking, but let’s be real:
Just because you own a Ferrari doesn’t mean you can drive itPossessing the technology tricked these people into thinking they had the
insight, the
nuance, the
story-telling skills, the gift of creating dramatic tension when really all they had was a cool new
toy that they didn’t have the desire to really learn to play with
correctly. Same thing here. Now that
EVERYONE has a blog and enough free time to post the most mundane things they do in their lives, they think people really give a shit. The worse part of it is that you people are actually getting
readers. And it shows more about the
diluted tastes of the internet masses than your
wicked prose skills, believe me.
There is one thing I get from reading the glut of blogs out there simmering in the ether: most of you people are not
individuals. You would be
NOTHING without
other people. You live and work and love and fuck and breed and write and educate and create by
COMMITTEE. All of this activity is not a
literary wave sweeping the nation, it’s a
world-wide fucking support group for geeks, a
global 12-step enabling program for breeders and over/under-sexed ignored souls to flourish their egos and get their 15 minutes of fame. You people are
delusional. And you know why you all are having such “success”? Because your readers are
JUST LIKE YOU. Great pretenders. And that therein lies the problem… Personally, I would rather have one intelligent reader than an army of mental invalids licking my ass. Just saying…
Social media is a tool that must be used with some amount of
responsibility. A Tweet came out a few months back saying that
Jeff Goldblum died. The poor guy had to go on a talk show to prove to the world he was still alive. It’s amazing how
gullible you people are. The more I think about it, the more I believe the atmosphere is totally ripe for another
Orsen Wells to rise out of the mist and fabricate something
AMAZING to scare the quantum shit out of all you people. Maybe not
alien invaders but SOMETHING to shake up our self-righteous and juvenile society. Turn the world inside out, if you will.
I have a brilliant friend of mine who I used to be in a band with over a decade ago. Somewhere during our rise to recognition (and we were good, too, you mothers. It took a while but we were definitely on to something…) he decided that he wanted money instead of fame, left the act, and started singing standards for a living. Now that he’s making 100k+ a year as a glorified
wedding singer, I think it's safe to say he’s probably
miserable. All he wishes for is the chance to do something of
VALUE, something creatively redemptive that will fill those enormous holes in his soul that his wife, his son, and all of his “adoring” fans will never, ever fill:
artistic integrity. Remember what I said 20 years ago, dude: You cannot have your cake eat it too.
Street cred comes from paying the piper, not paying him
off… I will always love my friend but I have realized that he and I are simply natural enemies.
I suppose you could say I’m
smug in the knowledge that I have spent my life
fighting the good fight, not giving into the temptation to dilute my essence and go the way of the masses, trying desperately to please everyone and succeeding in pleasing few, least of all
myself. Yes, I’m a 43-year-old
grown ass man who lives like a
college student but in many ways it’s kept me young and
hungry. Not to trade stocks or currency to make money without ACTUALLY WORKING or any of that shit. No, it’s made me still hungry enough to chase that
illusive dream of
personal success. And regardless what anyone tells you, personal success does not always equate with
financial success. Therefore, I am fortifying my efforts to find a literary agent to represent me as a talent. I
WILL be published within the next two years and will live
ENTIRELY on my own merit. I can’t even imagine getting married, much less having children, when there are scores of goals I still have yet to reach. And as selfish as it may sound, those goals are more important to me than all the
dirty diapers and
vomit and
stuffed animals and
drunk wife episodes under the
harvest moon. At least I'll die knowing that, even if I never make it, that I never gave up, that I put my money where my mouth is, and I lived the integrous life of an artist to the very end. And even if I am never remembered when I pass like so many celebrities that have come and gone, I will know that my time here was
pure and
untainted by the stigma of humanity: settling for something less than what I deserve.
Ok, I’m
done. I don’t feel the need to coddle you today. You are grown-ups. Supposedly. I’m off to do battle with the
world. A fight I am more than happy to engage in…
JC
