Tag Archives for sick-o

Sunny Central Park Stroll With My Demon

As I’ve mentioned before, a good deal of my brain activity in any given day is put against speculation of what dark deeds other people around me are scheming or engaged in at that moment. Typically, I don’t have to work very hard to fabricate exactly how their actions are going to impact me, directly or indirectly. These individuals aren’t always out to get me specifically, on occasion I’m sure I am only fated to be the collateral damage of whatever plans they have for someone else that day. It isn’t always about me, but as of late, I find myself wondering more and more if maybe I shouldn’t turn additional attention towards myself. What things am I doing daily that serve to destroy me?

I’m a big believer in the Shadow Self. Carl Jung defined the Shadow Self as “that which we think we are not.” To shed a touch more light on the concept let me just plagiarize a bit with this little nugget from the interwebs: You may believe that you are not like your neighbor who does this or that bad thing, but if those negative qualities you judge, were not also a part of you, then they would not trigger your emotions. You might be nodding in agreement, you might also be nodding the other direction in disgust or boredom–wondering how come your gracious author isn’t just talking, per usual, about something like, how he thinks the recent uptick in the number of hangover cures, morning-after recovery kits and beverages, is actually all part of a big brother style black-ops operation to slowly rid the world the chronically underachieving. Perhaps I’ll post proper about that little gem over the coming weekend, and so if you aren’t into a more meta post right now, I encourage you to come back in a few days for something only seemingly more disturbing that what follows here.

Part of any proper recovering addict’s or alcoholic’s Shadow Self, would be the disease of addiction itself. AA oldtimers are big fans of the saying, “While I’m in a meeting, my disease is out in the parking lot doing push-ups.” My knee-jerk reaction to the utterance of that phrase is usually something along the lines of the silent version of this sound, “Pffffft.” Most likely because the disease itself wants me to believe I’ve been cured. One need not look any farther than Zelda Rubinstein’s declaration, “This house is clean” to understand that if you’ve had demons, those suckers aren’t really ever leaving for good. And if you don’t keep making smart decisions (for example, in the case of the family from Poltergeist, moving out of the house immediately after that supposed victory) the spiteful little bastards will speak to you from time to time, coaxing you back into the very hell you left, with promises of renewed, consequence-less good times. They, or in my case, the other me, is shrewd. And I’ll be damned, because yet again, those cutesy bull-shit-phrases that litter the walls of the rooms of recovery are wickedly on point.

My life is a sensational dream; I couldn’t ask for more than I have, and my gratitude for all of it is through the roof. And yet, as recently as yesterday, just mere moments after finding near peace with everything going on in and around me thanks to an hour on an Upper Eastside couch, the voice of my demon was as loud as it had ever been. Wondering–almost aloud–as we strolled through Central Park on such a lovely day, “What would it be like if we made an effort to throw it all away? Wouldn’t that be quite the experience? To go deeper down the rabbit hole of madness and filth than ever before, if only to see if we could resurrect ourselves yet again.” My Shadow Self knows the way to my heart; my disease knows I’m always up for a challenge, and as twisted as its coaxing might sound to the average Joe, I found myself drawn to the idea. To destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to create, just to rebuild it again–from scratch, heck, without even scratch to get started. That’d be something.

On the other side of Central Park, we could get started. We still knew a few bars there from our first six years in New York City. We’d be well on our way into this new journey before lunch, and any of the various paths it might lead us down would only serve to strengthen our own understanding of what is at first hedonistic and sinfully enjoyable, until it also further educates us on what it truly means to be without hope, scratching from dark corners, without so much as a dime and not a friend left. With rapt attention, I listend to my disease, the demon within, as he held me close, shielding me from the beauty of the park and twisting the reality of what I have, while feeding me truths about many of the world’s injustices, the worst in people, reading me the troubling and sensationalistic headlines from the discarded rags that pass as news that we occasionally found underfoot. He had my curiosity, he had my attention, he had everything but my smart phone–which buzzed in my palm, only to tell me that someone had hearted the picture of my cat that I had posted on Instagram earlier that morning.

The Demon, smart SOB that he is, didn’t curse me out, didn’t continue trying to talk me into something other than heading to the subway to make a beeline to work, and didn’t let out some twisted tortured yelp as though I’d vanquished him once and for all–nope, he simply wished me a good rest of the day, and right before he left said, as casually as my very best friend might, “I’ll see you around, Rosch.”

Customized Abduction Vans for any Occasion

It goes without saying that right now, as you read this, somewhere out there in those United States of America, at least one van is being used as what I–and I’m sure many others–have coined, Abduction Vans. Yep, if you do the math, and I haven’t, but if you did the math, I’m sure you’d come to the same conclusion. Below is a collection of all sorts of Abduction Vans that predators, mafia, kidnappers, the world’s most twisted souls and those who aspire to be them, might be using right now for a whole host of different reasons. I was kind enough to scribe at least one reason that each of these Abduction Vans is special underneath each photo representation. It was my pleasure, so sincerely, no thanks are necessary. I take great comfort in knowing that you’ll now join me in never being able to see a van as simply just another van. Oh, and yes, it goes without saying that each shot snapped put me into harms way, even as hundreds of hipsters were milling about the same streets of Williamsburg. No predator likes his methodology of abduction photographed, and they certainly don’t care for the careful analysis of the reason or reasons for their choice of vehicular man-slaughterers.

With the exception of the industrial locks (a must) and the extended cab (a nice touch for the abduction of more than one) I’d say this is your standard everyday run-of-the-mill abduction van. Complete with creepy, almost-useless, tinted circular window that comes standard in most AVs.

This darker colored model comes complete with an almost completely illegible company name, in this case for a supposed Locksmith. Nothing says, “I’m totally not trying to throw anyone in my van for later-date-torture,” like faded/peeling low-brow blue-collar Americana signage. Nothing.

This sinister ride comes complete with not only the decoy signage, but also a heavy-duty gate lift for those predators who prefer bigger-boned folks to quench their blood thirst.

The truly bold fiends apparently aren’t beyond telling the world exactly what they’ve done, or perhaps announcing their intentions. This predator has either already taken 7 Ricks, plans to Take 7 Ricks, or is only allowed to Take 7 Ricks in total or all at once.

If you are only planning on ever committing one abduction, than perhaps it is best to just pay $19.95 for a one day rental, possibly two, rather than spend a bundle on something you’ll never use to abduct ever again. Don’t kid yourself into buying a van for just one abduction by pretending you’re going to redo your backyard deck, and lie to yourself with fibs like, “It will come in handy later for making trips to Home Depot.”

Why bother securing a facility to store your abductee or bringing him or her back to your spiffy, OCD-clean apartment? Maybe you like Mother Nature and are feeling like performing your cerimonial amputations in the great outdoors. You’ll need a Camper Abduction Van for that. Heck, you can scoop someone up and hit the road for quite sometime–putting ample distance between the two of you and their loved ones as well as the search party they’ve surely formed back home. ROAD TRIP!

A sure fire way to keep suspicion of your misdeeds to a minimum is to perform your abducting in a van too stupid looking for anyone to suspect anything other than the notion that you have abysmal taste in modes of transportation. Nice play Ol’ Boy!

This one might appear to be just another fake-company van, but it is actually soooo much more! A van that features a wonderful word, in this case, “Majestic,” plants a subliminal brain-clouding worm of doubt, creating feelings associated with the meaning of lovely words, before potential worry-warts can even get their paranoia going–leaving them feeling fuzzy and wonderful inside even after you’ve snatched them!

Interested in grabbing tons of tikes off the streets or old relics of bygone eras that are fans of The Partridge Family? Or Both? This is the abduction dream you’ve been waiting for!

Maybe you just want to try a few first with tiny dogs or cats before you make the big leap and pricey, but necessary, purchase to go after bigger game. Why not a make a few bucks advertising local businesses on the side of your pre-human-serial-killing-exploits dream machine?!

And finally, and exactly how I’d roll personally–if I had any intentions of joining the time honored tradition of People Hunting for Sport–the Abduction Van that absolutely screams, “I am an Abduction Van,” so loudly, in fact, that any passer-byers will immediately dismiss it as far too obvious without ever giving it a second thought. Though, I can assure you I certainly gave it one, if not two, or possibly six more thoughts before I got home.

Beep, Beep. She’s Dead.

I run to clear my mind. That makes me one of millions who do it for the very same reason. Just how much crazy can actually be removed during a run of three or four miles is debatable. Most days, if I’m blaring my music loud enough and mimicking the structure of what the guitar player in each track is doing with his hands, with my own left and right hand, I can put a good deal of my lunacy off for the duration of the run itself. But, somedays–like yesterday morning–no amount of music, pounding, increase in speed, or anything else will remove the thoughts I’d rather not have. And, again like yesterday, too often the impetus of something disturbing only occurs to me because I am out there running in the first place.

I’ll admit, yesterday morning I had the music down pretty low. I was already feeling a bit skittish about the possibilites of either vehicular manslaughter or early morning muggery. So, let’s call the volume of my iPod Shuffle a four out of ten. My wife was out running as well, which is also the norm, but had left sometime after my own start–so I had no visual on her, and due to our recent return from vacation (cat burglars, you missed your chance. our cat is still here by the way) Ariele’s house keys were still at the sitter’s. Girl is always on my mind, but knowing I’d have to keep a keen ear out for her return to our abode was the thought leading the majority of the crazy parade marching within my skull. Would I be showering? Would I be on the roof? Is the buzzer broken, and how long would she be locked out? Basic stuff.

As I crossed an intersection, with the light, a lone black SUV with tinted windows sat awaiting the green indication that would allow its driver to proceed to their destination. For no particular reason that I can figure, the driver honked his horn–beep, beep. There wasn’t anyone else around at that ungodly hour, this is Williamsburg, Brooklyn after all and hipsters–even the ones who jog, and many do–don’t usually patrol the street prior to seven AM. After a quick scan for the intended recipient of those devilish toots, I made a quick spin to see if the driver was trying to flag me down for directions, or if it was even someone I knew using their horn to say, “good morning.”

Couldn’t make anyone out, there were no additional honks, and so I continued on my way. So did the SUV, making a right turn at that intersection and fading off into the distance behind me. Panic set in, and in less than two seconds my brain decided it knew exactly why the SUV’s driver had made those honks. Clearly the driver had Ariele bound and gagged in the back, and either she had managed to scream my name or, and far more likely, her abductor had been tailing us for sometime and already knew that I was her husband. Being the sick twist that is an entry level requirement for purveyors of such misdeeds, he had decided to take the game up a notch–in his head, his own thinking was, “I’ll give this guy a sporting chance. I’ll honk the horn, if he has either the courtesy or balls to come over to the SUV to see if I need something, I’ll release his wife and never bug them again. And if he doesn’t, well, then what happens to his wife is meant to be–I gave him a chance, one last chance to save his bonnie lass (he’s a Depp fan apparently) and he blew it.”

I didn’t bother spinning around to chase the SUV to at least get a plate number, something I might have done a decade ago. Nor did I spin around and attempt to immediately find my wife out there, to verify her safety–zig zagging up and down every block at double speed in the hopes of catching at least a glimpse of her to reassure myself that my brain simply hates me and gets a kick out of making the rest of my body perform ridiculous tasks. Ohhhh… if I didn’t need that brain for other things, I’d give it a good punching for certain (shake of head to self).

Ariele made it home of course, which was a real relief to our cat, because in the time between my safe arrival home and hers, I had informed our cat that it was possible her mother wasn’t coming home that day. Laying the ground work for the kitty version of the seven stages of grief–after all, they are like twenty stages in human stages.

Done in by a Chicken Wing

I wish I could say yesterday was the first time an object fell from the heavens only to crash land within feet of my person. A quick mental countdown of all the items that have either accidentally made that trip, or were intentionally thrust from the city’s rooftops and windows, has the total tally at about eight or nine. Once on the Lower East Side it was a butcher knife. That is probably tops on the list if ranked in order of most deadly, beating out the plastic cups, glass, pennies, toys, water bottles, small building bits, water (possibly pee), and food items, which brings me to yesterday’s chicken wing–full sized chicken wing too, not some baby Buffalo Wing.

For good measure, let’s call it ten incidents total, not including the water (possibly pee)–because that happens too frequently to include, over the span of sixteen years of urban living. That’s less than one a year, and so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my daily list of possible life-ending outcomes doesn’t include a stunted stay in this world due to some drunken ex-frat-daddy’s decision to hurl bar-b-que’d pork ribs off the deck of his cookie-cutter condo. It is all too possible that yesterday’s chicken wing wasn’t discarded by anyone of the sort. This is Williamsburg, Brooklyn after all, and I suppose hipsters can and will be just as ignorant. In my experience, all types of people can be ignorant–I’m not sure why my brain constructed an image of a backwards ball cap wearing beefy-sloth as the culprit. Obviously, I have issues.

The difference between yesterday’s incident and all those prior, was I finally had a relatively decent idea of the item’s origin. There is basically only one large building on that particular block, and its vast rooftop decking is primetime party-time during the warmer months of New York City living. With this certain knowledge, I finally was able to do something about it, something that had not been possible, and maybe even less wise, when that butcher knife nearly took me out back in ’07. I decided to tattle.

I told my wife to wait just a moment, and then I beelined to the doorman’s desk in the lobby of the behemoth and said sternly, “I just thought you should know that someone is tossing chicken wings off the rooftop.”

He took a long look at me, scanned the little security camera TV screens in front of him, and remarked. “People are idiots.”

I was pleased he agreed. His remark validated a line of thinking I’d carried silently for far too long. Inside I was beaming–I finally had an ally in my cause to rid the world of degenerate revelers. But, that’s where the conversation ended. For one, I wasn’t really sure what I was demanding be done at that point, and two, I don’t think he really had any intention of getting up to go investigate unless he witnessed it first hand. The triumph ended awkwardly, and I shuffled back out onto the sidewalk to rejoin my wife and head home.

In the remaining hours of that day, I hadn’t given much thought to falling items being capable of hurting or killing me, but I spent quite a few minutes going over all the probable outcomes of me being a sneaky little snitch. For all I know, the doorman was a good buddy of the chicken-chucker and I started to think it was possible that he’d have me on the lobby camera’s feed now. With that he’d not have to work very hard to describe me to his friend from that roof-top, who most likely lives in that building just one short half-block east of our own. The individual who tossed it was probably already enraged with the near-miss, and upon hearing the news of my squealing would make it his mission to see me done in. Or at the very least, bloodied, bruised, and humiliated. All in the name of stopping people like me from attempts at curbing his favorite pastime of launching half-eaten meats off of rooftops.

Will I take an alternate route to the train on my way to work this week? Not likely. Will I dye my hair and sport a different pair of large shades? Perhaps, but only because my band is doing a radio show tomorrow morning. Will I spend too much time scanning faces on that block, in an attempt to see him coming before he sees me, and then get mugged from behind for my iPod by another unrelated idiot because I’m too focused on trying to stay one step ahead of my newest enemy? In my mind, that seems most likely.

Soul Selling 2.0

I’ve often wondered who exactly it is the devil chooses to visit with his prepackaged seven year soul swap deals. I know I’ve never been offered one explicitly. I’ve not had any mysterious strangers approach me, the kind with an unholy twinkle in their eye, and make any grand declarations as to what they could do for me if only I’d sign here, here, and here. My logic behind not having had this encounter usually revolves around the notion that before he would ever take the time to introduce himself, he’d have studied up on you to make close to ninety-nine percent sure you were willing to sign the contract. He’s probably busy, and no less pleased than any of us are when he puts too much time against something with no results.

It occurred to me recently that maybe these days he deals in smaller deals. Perhaps we are all too jaded for him to present immediate fame and fortune by just signing a piece of paper. His own anger at the endless stream of scam emails promising prizes, inheritances, and lost fortunes that bombard spam folders must leave him fuming. Those people have only helped create an even more suspicious population, and it has left him having to hustle in ways he’d rather not. On the other hand, maybe given his prowess at all things dastardly, he’s harnessed the power of the internet and is moving even more souls into the sold column by using tweets, likes, and pre-populating sign-here-forms that one finds when they are making hasty decisions related to getting the stuff they want.

There was a time–a long time–in which if a service on the internet required any information about me, I’d balk. Save for a few services like Gmail, Amazon, and maybe The Levi’s Store, if some entity on the web wanted so much as a phone number from me I’d simply leave the site and figure whatever it was I wanted could be gotten by other means. But as of late, let’s call it the past three months, I find myself plugging all manner of personal information into those little boxes. Putting my information out there bit by bit, by bit, in hopes that the promises sites claim to provide for little or nothing from me are somehow going to help me further my own agenda: getting people to read my book.

Every new social network, cheapie tweet promotion service, sponsored banner, and pay-for-blankity-blank are all a carefully crafted system by lucifer himself. All designed to slowly bilk me of my soul one tiny piece at a time. And perhaps when things like great interviews, good reviews, and incremental sales of my book occur–they are the riches that have been promised to me. The devil no longer needs to make huge deals to get you to sign, he only needs to promise an extra like on your Facebook page. It’s possible he sits back laughing maniacally each and every time some fool purchases one of his, “buy 25 likes for your page” services, because he put it there and he knows that you are making just one tiny step closer to fulfilling your end of the bargain soul swap deal. He doesn’t have to make everybody a rock star, movie star, or immediate celebrity based off of some non-existent talent–nope, he’s working a different angle these days. One where he takes a small part of my soul every time I click the yes box without having bothered to actually read the details, policies, and implications of joining another Me-Me service.

My hats off to him. And I’m sure he knows that I’ve figured him out, but isn’t really bothered buy this development, because who takes the paranoid ramblings of a part-time blogger seriously? Check the “yes, I’ve read” box below if you do.

Dial M for my Mom

I’ve never been all that keen on answering calls from the unknown on home phones – and only home phones. Put in front of an office line, no worries – I’ll pick it up and chat with strangers to the point of making them wish they hadn’t phoned me in the first place. But something about a home phone ring-a-ling-a-ling gives me the willies. Having been without a home phone for many years had temporarily squashed that feeling for the better part of a decade. But, the other day, while staying with my in-laws, their home phone belted out a familiarly haunting tone late in the evening, and I felt just a hint of that ol’ home-phone-terror-tinge. Got me to thinking about reasons and rationale for such a thing.

Growing up on a cul-de-sac in a Leave it to Beaver suburb of Dallas/Fort Worth didn’t really come with many obvious horrors. There were few hooligans, pervs, con-men, and only one ‘boogie-man’ known as ‘the goat man.’ That said, during my youth, my father did a lot of travelling for his job. He’d leave my mom, brother, and me home to fend for ourselves three or four days a week at least once a month, usually more. And without fail, every single time, on the very first night of his absence, our home phone would ring – usually just a touch after midnight. My mom would pick it up, only to find – each and every time – a dark grumbling voice, insistent on detailing all the disturbing things he’d like to do to her – more specifically, her body and its parts. We referred to him as ‘that sick-o.”

This went on for years, and in the early going, when i was just a wee-lad, the call always lead to the following: my mom would come grab my brother and me from our slumber, put us into her bedroom with her, behind a locked door, and on occasion a medium-sized dresser infront of that door. There we’d make it to another morning trying to go back to sleep, while watching some 60s re-run to quell our nerves. We survived all of those witching-hour visits from our creepy phone friend, whose disturbing commitment to always calling on the very first night my father was gone seems admirable now. Well played cretin, well played.

Sometimes we re-tell the story of ‘that sick-o’ amongst ourselves or to new family and friends, and offer our ideas on who it might have been making that timely ring-a-ling-a-ling. Due to the precise placement of everyone of his calls, I usually deduce it to be one of the following people: a co-worker, a neighbor, or possibly my old man himself. We had a weird neighbor or two, and certainly they seem the more probable culprit – but I won’t be terribly shocked if my dad makes a deathbed confession owning up to the action – because that’s just how my brain rolls.