THE NEWARK DAILY: INTRO, p.2

2009-06-25T15:46:36Z

My parents raised me with pretty conventional values. They had a fair degree of common sense. I'm not sure what drove me to some of the challenges I sought out as a kid. I was poorly socialized. Not that I couldn't make friends, just that I didn't want to be forced to spend time with people I didn't know or care about. I guess I just don't think you can raise a kid in The Big City in any way that's truly organic, beyond the kids of the family's friends who were, for the most part, older. The five years between 10 and 15 are a bit longer than the difference between 35 and 40.

Point is, but for the kids I knew at school and from the neighborhood, I didn't really learn to integrate. I think it's a problem unique to city children. By the time I hit high school, I was a mess. I'd cleanly left any capacity to imagine God behind me but for what would become a young addict's compulsion.

And the funny thing is, I never used any seriously addictive drugs. I was addicted to the feeling. I was addicted to the potential of touching something tangible beyond my perception. I never indulged because I wanted to be socialized. My parents, lovely people that they are, did something many parents do -- they forgot they were raising a person, not a show dog.

They did get one show dog from the two of us, but as soon as I realized religion was a farce, I became the junkyard mongrel. I became a watcher and a seperatist. There was a small cabal of people I hung around with, and none of them came from the same money I did -- as Mom used to tell me, "We're not rich, dear, we're well off."

Yeah, not rich when compared to multi-millionaires, but then we get into the questions of scales and perception, and today's not the day.

What I should be talking about is this LJ project.

I did not flounce from the Interwebs. About a year ago at the apartment complex where I was living, Verizon was installing their fiber optic system and jackhammered into the powerline of my building. The resultant surge fried my power supply on the computer and my motherfucking Xbox. Granted, my online prescence had cooled because I was adjusting to a five day a week job, which, frankly, I'd never really had. Some of you out here let me know how you felt about that, and one of my best friends told me soon after my employ at my current position, that our circle of friends pretty much agreed with my own self perception of being a loser before taking this job.

Now, I'm not proud that I was able to coast as long as I did. All I can say is that I had the facility to do it, and I did it. Any one of you would do the same thing. It was presented to me in the form of, "Well, why wait for us to die before you have access to your inheritance?" and I didn't turn down work opportunities, I just didn't seek them out with quite the verve that someone fending for their own would. I didn't have to do it.

But now I am that guy, scraping by just under the line. I'm working a teen ager's job that I'm grateful to have, the money's spent, and I find myself at the age of forty wondering how I could have made such a mess of the whole damn thing. I used to have an identity, a belief system, a heart beat. Now, all I am is walking meat selling cheap junk to self-entitled assholes, mutants, and the fatally ignorant.

If I had my way, I'd kill a lot of you. For a lot of reasons -- not a single one that has to do with religion or politics, which may surprise some of you. I may get into particulars in a later verse, but for now we're going to take a little ride on this side of perverse.

Do you suppose that murder is like suicide in that if you only talk about it you're not serious?

But my question has always been, why do I think like this? This isn't kitsch, I'm a fucking measured soiopath. I didn't just start feeling this way. I thrill-killed some animals, kid shit. why was a sixth grader in a decent catholic private school fantasizing about being able to turn into a wolf to maul the "progressive," elderly nun who taught math and was a, how you say, cunt. Why was I all conflicted about God and all the rest of it? And no body even tried to answer my questions. I got a lot of pat answers and deflections.

(--- Well, crap, Morristown ... again.)

Ramblings of a Desiccated Mind

THE NEWARK DAILY: INTRO, p.2