In 1840, Charles Dickens conducts the first public reading of a novel, addressing a packed hall of excited followers, leading to chain of events, that, 159 years later, resulted in some twit taking me and 20 others hostage in a bar for 52 minutes, reading an excerpt from his novel, which included the word "buttjuice."
Recently seen on the citizens review board of Amazon.com, regarding three different volumes:
The popularity of this book stupifies me—do people like it because they think they are supposed to?
This book was a peice [sic] o’… you know and wasn’t worth the time or effort to read.
Classic or not, I don’t care for this book.
These reviews are for major, major bestsellers, and so perhaps you were thinking they refered to the latest Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, or Harold Robbins, even though the old cokehead died a few years ago.
But no. These (real) reviews are for Goodnight Moon, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and Babar, respectively. Yes, classic children’s books. These reviewer-parents say the books are of inferior literary quality and are not appropriate for our nation’s youth—I kid you not.
Things only get better from there. Curious George is panned because it promotes cruelty to animals. Other experts slam The Very Hungry Caterpillar because it teaches children to overeat and telling kids that butterflies emerge from cocoons (as opposed to moths) teaches bad science.
Worst of all, my all-time favorite children’s book is taken to the woodshed because it 1) promotes anarchy; 2) will scare children because animals in the book talk and are human-sized; and 3) isn’t about promoting imagination or literacy but is instead a subtle examination of id versus superego and the dynamism of the ego.
I chanced upon this gems of critical insight after searching for a training potty for Baby-Tot, being that he keeps saying things like "made a poo-poo" and "I’ve got a wee-wee! I’ve got a wee-wee!" Modern parent and writer that I am, I also bought several "how-to" books on helping kids learn how to take a proper dump, and ultimately landed upon the reviews mentioned above.
What is perhaps more odd than the reviews themselves—hating Dr. Seuss is like hating ice cream—is why anyone would bother. Does one really think their review will stop people from buying (and their children loving) Cars and Trucks and Things That Go? In my earlier, feckless days of youth (I was in my mid-thirties), I would post an occasional review on Amazon, mostly of music and movies. I once slammed a well-known music album that I likened to the vomitus that emerges after doing battle with a bad batch of raw seafood.
This is your id on drugs
Why did I embark on this endeavor of nastiness, full well knowing that it would not make one iota of difference in the greater artistic consciousness of the world? I can’t say for sure, but I remember feeling a distinct sense of self-righteousness when considering the work in question: These people love a total piece of donkey dung! They are deluded! They are wrong! I am right! But at least I had reasons for these (admittedly) juvenile criticisms.
The beauty of the Internet is that it gives a voice to all, and the horror of the Internet is that it gives a voice to all. You don’t have to go farther than the comments section of most news Web sites to see the bile; if you really want to feel the hate, go to a sports Web site, scroll the comments section, and see why fans of a certain sports team are inherently inferior to fans of a competing sports team based on the fact the former fans were born in Chicago and the latter in St. Louis.
I carry no brief against the amateur critic, but when some nimrod weighs in and slams, say Great Expectations ("The fool author made it up as he went along") or One Hundred Years of Solitude ("Don’t waste your time or money"), it brings the death of literary fiction that much closer. These claims are in the minority, of course, but that somebody felt their empty thoughts were even worth writing down shows some serious hostility to some of the greatest works of literature, like, ever.
That was exquisitely awful
This is not a grad student expounding on a blog or a well-read civilian actually having insights into the book in question. This is like Rush Limbaugh saying waterboarding is not torture or Wall Street bankers don’t earn enough. Or, more to the point, this is just like Rush Limbaugh.
So if you don’t have anything intelligent to say, just shut the fuck up. Which I really, really wish I could make happen to Rush Limbaugh.
When the lovely and fetching (and brilliant) Voix asks me to blog, how can I say no? Even if she wrote this, like, six months ago.
There’s some good reasons I haven’t blogged, and some not-so-good ones as well, and I will dispense of the latter before getting to the good stuff.
Bad reasons for not blogging: I haven’t blogged because the Cubs are the Cubs, because I’m still mad about Bernie Madoff, because I’m being disappointed in advance for President Obama, because Republicans still suck ass, because I’m really unhappy with my keyboard, and, finally, I haven’t blogged because a Irish wolfhound looked me in the face and told me if I ever blogged again, he would have to kill me.
Real reason for not blogging: For the first time in my life, I have a Blackberry.
This came with my new job, which I was fortunate enough to land in February and start full-time in March. I will not go into more detail about it save to say it is an excellent position, they’re working me harder than a Marine grunt in basic training, and I’m grateful to be working, as grateful a man who has regained the ability to walk.
So there’s that. Also, we have to move 800 miles away in July as part of my new employment. "We" being me, Wife, and Baby-Tot (ne Baby). We were in my new city of employment a couple of weeks ago and signed a lease for an apartment, thus "sealing" "the deal."
(Anybody in the market for an overpriced, underloved, and never-will-be-purchased-in-time place to live? Mention Bookfraud.com to the realtor and I’ll give you a 3 percent discount. That’s three-fucking-percent! Off a place nobody is ever going to buy!
My vote for Obama is paying off already!)
Also, my mother was visiting us in April, took a spill and her temple introduced itself to the sidewalk, ended up going to the ER, got stitches, had trouble breathing later that night, went back to the hospital at 2 a.m. in an ambulance that got lost, got a buttload of chest scans, found out that she had pneumonia, and ended up extending her stay a week. A week in an out-of-town hospital, in isolation, no less.
(Did I ever mention that pneumonia was what felled my father? You might imagine I had a little stress no-sleep thing going there.)
After I started my new job—I’m really grateful to have it, did I mention that?—I became just a mite scared of blogging, if only of my new bosses discovering it. (Why they would suddenly discover it is beyond me, but I still had the fear.) Also, a minor point: I’ve been working nights, weekends, and sections of the morning marked by hours lower than "6."
Waldman: Loves Michael Chabon this much
And if it was not just my inability to find the hours to sleep, not to mention blog, I was about as active in the blogosphere overall as Ayelet Waldman is withdrawn and sane, which is to say, not at all.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take, honestly. If I loved Wife more than Baby-Tot, like a certain writer currently in the news, then I guess I could put the little bugger up for adoption, which would have the copasetic effect of giving me time to shower, cut down on the number of communicable diseases I contract, and save expontentially on the food bill. But when I entertain such ideas, Baby-Tot will do something like say "Delicious!" when eating dinner, will ask to hear Yo-Yo Ma, or runs up and gives me a hug, his arms wrapped around my knees.
Plan B it is, then. Baby-Tot will stay.
Maybe I’ll write something in another week, or another six months, or something. Don’t stay up for me.
The blight known as Facebook has now foisted upon us the "25 Random Things" chain letter, in which people post 25 random factoids about themselves, and tag other Facebook friends to do the same. That bloggers have been doing this type of thing for the last five years appears not to have impeded the popularity of of "25 Random Things."
Being that a) I was tagged, b) I try to avoid Facebook like light beer and Republicans, and c) I think everyone is getting sick of this, I post my own list, all things that are bad, humiliating, or have other negative connotations. Except for two, one of which involves the greatest TV theme song ever played.
25 RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME (ALL TRUE) YOU WOULD JUST AS RATHER NOT KNOW
1. The first time I got high, I urinated on something, but I can’t remember what it was.
2. I used to listen to Simon & Garfunkle’s "Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine" on my parent’s turntable and imagine I was on television singing it, dancing and gesticulating to my imagined, adoring life studio audience. I continued this behavior from age eight until sometime last year.
3. I’ve gotten in three car accidents, but only two were my fault, and one was when I was 18, so it doesn’t count.
4. My sister made fun of my lousy efforts me during my quixotic quest to be a soccer goalie in high school. In anger, I threw a piece of chicken at her. Like most of my athletic endeavors, it missed the mark.
5. The closest I’ve come to dying, metaphorically speaking, was when a friend and I were driving to a basketball game in high school when a cop pulled us over—my friend was about to light up a joint in the car. The cop, enraged we did not stop immediately, searched the car, padded me down, and gave me three tickets. He didn’t find my friend’s pot. But I saw my life crumbling before my eyes.
6. When I was a teenager, I was a total loser when it came to asking girls out on dates.
7. When I became an adult, I remained a total loser when it came to asking women out on dates.
8. Codicil to #6: Masturbation.
9. Codicil to #7: Masturbation.
10. The number of inappropriate women I’ve slept with far exceeds the number who were actually appropriate. If you’re reading this, and I’ve had sex with you, that means you were definitely appropriate.
11. Once, when The Who were on tour back in the 1980s, they tried to make a stop in a city I was living, but the only night they could play, Billy Joel had booked a concert at the only suitable arena. Joel, who could have moved his concert a day, refused, making 12,000+ wieners happy in the metropolitan area. So if you think Billy Joel is better than The Who, I can’t be friends with you, and I think you suck.
Joel: don’t get me started
12. I have urinated on the basin of my toilet in order to clean it. Try it some time—the remove the blackish buildup from three months of not cleaning, aim right for the heart of the stain.
13. You’ve entered middle age when you have to trim your ear hair. Not that I would know.
14. Next to deaths in my family, the worst two days of my life was when I was eight and my puppy ran away. I cried non-stop over a weekend. I’ll never forget opening the front door and seeing a person in the neighborhood holding my dog. That was probably the happiest moment of my life. The following year, she had puppies, and she lived another 16 years.
15. If you try to tell me about the superiority of cats to dogs, not only will I question your judgment, but your sanity.
16. Jobs that I’ve had include: horse-carriage driver, costumed pizza parlor mascot, pizza delivery driver, McDonald’s indentured servant, camp counsellor, civil servant, cafeteria worker, window washer, hospital policy manual writer, the guy who tries to sell you an apartment when you walk into the front office, pseudo-software writer (fired), twice a busboy for a day (fired from first place, didn’t show up for my second day of work at the latter), survey taker, and temp office worker (I tested out at 90 wpm). Amazingly, none of the jobs panned out as a career.
17. I would tell you the time I was most humiliated, but there are far too many candidates to choose from.
18. There are people in my extended family I don’t like very much. You know who you are, except that I don’t talk to you and you don’t know Bookfraud exists.
19. I have nicknames for bowel movements, including Thunderdump; All-Star Crapathon; Human Shitstorm; Laying a Lincoln Log; Tossing the Whole Bakery, not Just a Loaf.
My favorite, however, has a literary pedigree: Turdgantua.
20. My formula for life: (Times Having Sex*Number of Partners2)+Money When You Die+Number of Children Who Don’t Hate You5/(Number of Major Disappointments Involving Women, Money and Publishing+Hospital Visits3)+(Years in Therapy*Money Spent on Therapy). If your number is > 1 when you die, you’ve had a successful life.
21. I watched so much television growing up that I knew each night’s network schedule. As a result, I do not speak a foreign language, play an instrument, cook,mountain climb or participate in any activity that entails paying any attention for more than 15 seconds. However, I know what "Book ‘em, Danno" means.
Also, I will say without equivocation: the theme song and title credits from "Hawaii Five-0" are the greatest in television history. I mean, that song totallykicks ass. And the tracking shot when they zoom in on Jack Lord at light speed is totally badass. Totally.
I will look for any excuse whatsoever to run this
22. One of my grandmothers was a country Baptist girl who got a nursing degree and made something out of herself. But I was sometimes ashamed of her, and didn’t want her around my friends out of fear she’d say something embarrassing.
23. I have visited blogs because the subject was sexual. I’ve visited porn sites for the same reason, believe it or not.
24. On more than one occasion, I have reduced someone to tears.
Ah…just what the hell are you doing here, anyway? Wearin’ that fancy suit ‘n piece a’ silk ‘ya neck?
Oh, that. I got my ass fired from the place where I worked for over a decade.
Blimey, I understand. It’s just that we don’t get too many older ‘uns from the 21st Century here. ‘Specially those who sound like they come over from the colonies.
The United States hasn’t been a colony of England for over 200 years. And I don’t understand the dynamics of the space-time continuum myself.
What the ‘ell are you talkin’ about?
Oh, I meant, "I don’t understand the dynamics of the space-time continuum meeself, sir."
That’s better, laddie. Oliver Twist, it is?
I’ve been called worse. Of course, I’m not a fictional character or metaphor for a street urchin.
Stop talkin’ in ya’ fancy-pants Cambridge talk! Get the feck out of here, you slimy Yank!
Just can I have something to eat? It will serve as a metaphor for feeding my hunger for approval, now that I’ve been unemployed for several months.
Off with ‘ya, I say!
A week later…
You sure have a funny way about you. What’s with all the fucked-up dance moves?
Why, I’m the Artful Dodger.
I hate the Dodgers. They swept the Cubs in the playoffs. Get the fuck out of my face.
What? I’m gonna teach you the ways of the streets, m’boy.
Do I look like I need your help?
As a ‘atter of fact, you look a bit downtrodden. There’s a stain on your scarf.
What is it with you people and ties? And that stain is soup. From the orphanage. But I’m not an orphan. I’m Bookfraud, 21st Century Writer and victim of the financial malaise gripping the world.
Financial crisis, you say? Why, I know just the bloke to help ‘ya! He’s a Jew!
Guinness as Obi-Yid Kenobi
Don’t tell me—his name is Fagan, he has an enormous hook nose, and he makes Shylock look like Jesus.
Egads, the man reads minds! How ya’ know?
I was an English major, what else?
Upstairs in a hidden attic, the Artful Dodger leads Bookfraud to a dark corner where a deformed old man with a nose the size of Queen Victoria’s left buttock is counting his money.
Stay back, I say! Stay in the light where I can see ya!
Uh, OK. How come I have a feeling I already know you?
Shat up, ya’ pathetic ragamuffin!
I’m 44-years old. Do I look like a "ragamuffin"?
Well, blimey, you are a bit on the old side to be doing this type of work.
I don’t steal stuff, if that’s what you’re talking about. Even if I wanted to pick pockets for you, I’ve got the manual dexterity of an office chair.
What?
Just forget it, old man. I’m not going to steal for you. I’m a writer and I’m looking for a job.
A writer? No wonder ‘ya don’t ‘ave a job! Nobody knows how to read, everyone knows that. And if you did read, why do you need to hire someone to write for ‘ya? It’s bloody stupid, I say.
I guess things were the same in the 1850s as in 2009.
You do look like you shouldn’t be here. What you same your name was?
Bookfraud—it’s a pseudonym.
You do fraud on books? You’ll fit just nicely ’round here, just nicely!
No, I—
You a regular ‘ookkeeper with a crooked streak to ya? We could make so much more with you ’round.
No, no, I chose the name because…oh, never mind. Let’s just say I’m not a crooked bookeeper…crooked bookkeeping…why does that ring a…hey—now I recognize you!
Oh, don’t tell me you’re with the police? I never done nothing illegal in my life!
You’re supposed to be Fagan, Dickens’ anti-Semitic character in Oliver Twist!
What are you talkin’ about? I don’t know any Dickens, but me name is Fagan—
You’re not Fagan! You’re Bernie Madoff! Shit! You’ve done more to set back Jews than anyone since Barry Manilow! I hate you! You’re the reason I’m going to reattach my foreskin!
Off with ‘ya! Get out of my attick, you non-interest-paying traitor!
With pleasure! I hate you, Madoff! You’ve given anti-Semites around the world more reason to hate me! They hate me even more than I hate me! Thanks a lot, you fucking wanker!
Bernie sucks
Why, you…people gave me their money, you buffoon! I only took from other Jews! They were just too stupid to question the returns—
Shut the fuck up! I’m outta here. But I have one question.
I like football as much as the next guy—probably more than the average fan, in fact. I covered my college team for the school newspaper, and still follow them with some fervor. And, being that my best friend in high school’s father worked for the Chicago Bears, I got tickets to games and other assorted ephermera (on which I will elaborate later).
Walter Payton, the late, great Bears running back, is one of my few true sports heroes. I can name the starting lineup of the 1985 Bears, which was one of the greatest NFL teams ever. Some of my fondest memories have to do with football.
So it is not the game of professional football I hold a brief. It is the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today’s SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! leaves me flat, unmoved, uncaring. For it is no longer a football game, no longer a bunch of oversized men headed for multiple joint replacements slamming into each other. It is our own secular holiday. It is the most-watched, most-advertised event in the United States, making the ratings for Obama’s election and inauguration look like a 3 a.m. weight-loss infomercial.
It is a the source of parties, celebration, sorrow.
It is the pinnacle of human achievement.
It is the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
say it again, with feeling:
SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I have a specific image in mind for this. A muscled, bare-chested man, arms raised to the sky, beseeching the gods to grant the SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to mortals. Kind of like Achilles’ screaming at Zeus, or me screaming at my computer when eats a document, minus the muscles and bare chest .)
Now, this is not to judge those of you attending pre-game parties, watching the game for the commercials, football fans interested in the game, or if you are actually a Pittsburgh or Arizona fan. Nor any of you to watch the post-modern "bowl within a bowl" like Bud Bowl, Lingerie Bowl, Puppy Bowl, or Heroin Bowl. Have fun, get drunk, don’t make a pass at your boss’s wife.
That kind of minor innocence is lost on the legion of sportswriters, TV "analysts," programming executives, and any other person with a stake in promoting damn thing. There have been millions of words spilled about the game, both in print and television, micro-analyzing something worth about 10 minutes of pregame.
For it is then it morphs from merely a big game to SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hype isn’t even the right word for it: deification is more like it.
If you ever think that some people do not take this seriously, I submit to you the following:
I don’t know what is worse: this fan’s bathetic response to the collapse of his beloved Giants, or his unfortunate resemblance to Jonah Hill.
OK, OK, enough of the post-modernist, pseudo-intellectual, uninteresting blather. Here’s the real reason I’m writing this: Pat Summerall, and an incident that illustrates this hot, overhyped mess much better than my hot, overhyped hyperventilating.
For those of you too young or unlikely to have seen Summerall, he is an ex-player who was an NFL sports announcer for CBS and FOX for years, having reached some modicum of fame, particularly with his work with John Madden. Summerall was known for his laconic, terse delivery: "Montana drops back in the pocket…to Rice…touchdown 49ers." He had the type of voice that lent itself to this kind of thing, and was actually quite good at it.
In any case, because of my best friend’s father, I was able to attend the NFC Championship game the year of the glorious ‘85 Bears. As part of the package, I got to attend an NFL party the evening before. It was quite the swank affair, with a band, open bar, ice sculptures. Impressive to a college kid like myself.
Among the luminaries attending the party were Pete Rozell, the NFL commissioner, Madden, and Summerall, who would call the game the next afternoon. It was January in Chicago, and the forecast for the next day’s game was well below freezing. But Summerall was dressed like his name dictated the weather: lemon khakis, a white buttondown shirt with open collar, and a cream sportsjacket with thick green tartan stripes. It was as if he were stuck in 1974, about to step on a plane to Bermuda.
I approached Summerall, thinking, what the hell, this guy’s famous, he’s by himself, why not chat him up? Standing alone, Summerall was holding a drink of an amber hue and staring at the scene between sips. I introduced myself, and said I was the guest of B_____. Summerall glanced at me, nodding slightly, saying nothing. My friend’s father had been a sportswriter in a prior life, and I said I was thinking about becoming one professionally as well. I said that B_______ was kind of a role model.
Summerall: You too
This seemed to stir Summerall, for he looked at me with heroic intent. There was no gleam in his eye, nothing but stoic earnestness. He then turned away and stared into the distance.
"If you follow B_______’s footsteps," he said, "you too will be a champion."
And then he walked away to refresh his drink, his tartan sportsjacket flapping in his wake.
Those were the only words Pat Summerall said to me. It was the greatest, weirdest moment of my life. So as you plunge your chip into your salsa, slam down your eighth beer, or begin to cry like Jonah Hill above, remember to follow B______’s footsteps. You too, will be a champion.
Great. I just updated Wordpress, and now all the comments are gone. Technology giveth…
Long before getting food poisoning last Sunday night and its subsequent vomitus Monday morning, before there was Sarah Palin or "Obama Girl," before Baby had been conceived or Bookfraud had made its debut, before Steve Bartman had his date with infamy, before the non-plague of Y2K or the real plague known as "Bush Cheney 2000," even before Girlfriend became Wife, I saw a Neil LaBute film called "Your Friends and Neighbors."
Besides seeing Ben Stiller with a goatee, "Your Friends and Neighbors" was notable for the music accompanying the title sequence: disturbing, basso profundo violence of what sounded like a string quartet whose instruments were on ‘roids. It was loud, cacophonous, and was the most memoriable aspect of the movie (other than Jason Patric playing football with a baby doll).
Move ahead 10 years, to Saturday, 36 hours prior to consuming the extremely bad scallops that led to a 5:30 a.m. technicolor yawn. A friend of Wife’s is a cellist, and upon learning that Baby is about a music-besotted 21-month old as can be, graciously lugged her instrument to our home and gave Baby a concert that included a Bach cello suite, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and several cat-death notes created when Baby tugged on the strings.
For some reason, I thought of "Your Friends and Neighbors" and the soundtrack. The cellist friend didn’t know what I was talking about (though we did note that a group she was in and Kronos Quartet both had covered "Purple Haze").
Following further research that day, I finally discovered the source of the music after a decade. It was a trio who play heavy metal on the cello.
Yes, that you read that correctly.
Apocalyptica (see pictures above and below) are three classically trained cellists (I imagine there’s no other kind) plus a drummer. Of course, they’d have to be from Finland.
Though I am not familiar with Apocalyptica’s entire body of work, and will not become familiar with Apocalyptica’s entire body of work in this or any other lifetime, they are known for playing covers of Metallica songs, including "Enter Sandman," the song from "Your Friends and Neighbors" that had perplexed me all these years.
Even longer before I had seen this movie, I had written in a stupdendously bad novel (one of three stupendously bad novels that have flowed from my fingers) a scene involving a tuba quartet:
“Gerard’s Tuba Quartet No. 3, ‘The dance of the piglets’” the program read. “A T.U.B.A. command performance.” Yves Gerard’s third Tuba quartet, The dance of the piglets, c.1989, represents a return to form for the great French composer. It reflects Gerard’s obsession with livestock and the deconstruction of agriculture as metaphor, a theme reflected also in his Tuba Concerto in C-major (the “Farmer St. Jean” Concerto) and his famed “Barnyard suite.”
I don’t repeat these silly lines to show the craptastic nature of my writing, but to illustrate that no matter what I or anyone else writes, reality will trump it. Philip Roth’s famous screed that fiction writers cannot compete with the news of the day ("The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist") is made flesh each day: reality beggars the writer’s imagination.
Look at this picture; try not to laugh
This is really why I like to blog, not only to comment on the literary life, because given my literary successes, this would have been a short blog indeed. It’s things like Apocalyptica—I mean, if I had made up such a thing and put it in a short story, the derision from my fiction workshop would have been palpable.
After several months of unemployment, things are looking better. I’ve got a few job leads and some steady freelance work. The worst president since Harding (Nixon included) is gone. Baby is healthy and happy, and Wife hasn’t left me (yet) for the gainfully employed. It’s only a month before Spring Training and the cycle of happiness-despair known as the Chicago Cubs 2009 Season.
In other words, I don’t have a reason to wash myself in the bathos of self-pity, a state that allows me wide leeway not to blog, not to write. You see, I’ve tried to blog; I even wrote some heartfelt encomiums to our new president. But the writing wasn’t any good, and it wasn’t anything you couldn’t have read in 8 billion other blogs.
It’s because of things like Apocalyptica that remind me just why I do this.
So let us give thanks that Obama is president, and greater thanks for heavy metal cello. Rock on, Eicca, Pavvo, Perttu, and Mikko.
They said that while the stress of not drawing a paycheck might wear down my fragile psyche, it would be worth the short-term financial burden. For not having to clock in each morning would afford me the time to reflect, to meditate, to discern the true nature of one’s self.
They said I would have time to write. They said I would have time to read. They said I would have more time with Baby.
Of course, they lied.
"They" being friends, family, career counselors, headhunters. To a person, they all said that while getting the axe sucks ass, at least I’ll have the time to catch up with life.
Apparently, all of these people are employed.
In the 21st Century, looking for a job takes far more time than actually working at one. It is more time-consuming than the pursuit of sex, reading Tolstoy in Russian, or trying to find the perfect pasta lifter. Looking for a job is not something you can do in one’s spare time, like, say, blogging or relieving oneself.
Add the fact that jobs are about as plentiful as Mormons in favor of gay marriage, and I am an extremely unhappy fellow.
They also say that a project expands to the amount of time allotted to it, and for this, they are correct. The ironic thing about searching for work in this Internet-dominated, 24-7 environment, is that what makes finding job leads so easy makes actually getting a job so difficult.
Take job hunting in the Dark Ages, when I was 22 and a freshly minted college graduate, in the late 1980s. One interviewed with companies who sent recruiters to campus. You found a few companies you liked, and sent your resume off and waited. If you were a loser, you scoured the newspaper’s help wanted section.
The Dark Ages
Or, in my case, I sent out my resume and writing samples to several newspaper editors, one of which apparently laughed at my clips so hard he suffered a seizure and inadvertently hired me.
These days, it’s not so simple. Looking for a job is like starting a relationship. You are completely paranoid about every single aspect of the search. You obsess about the things you said, and worry about the things you didn’t say.
Did I apply to the right job? Should I update my resume on Monster.com? How many contacts can I add to LinkedIn? What additional research should I do on Company X, in addition to the 18 volumes I’ve already downloaded?
Even as I write these words, I think of e-mail to write and answer, Web searches to do, resumes to upload. And that doesn’t even count the calls I need to make and the meetings I’ve been trying to schedule.
Is there an echo chamber in here?
Now, I know everybody here wants to know what I think of Roberto Bolano’s 2666, the death of the literary best-seller, and the sorry state of short fiction. You want to know about what I think of our nation electing an African-American president (holy fuck! It actually happened!), the long-term prospects for the Democrats, my learned opinion on Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
It’s not that I don’t have opinions, or that about 9,334,222,798 other blogs have written more and better words on these topics than I could ever hope to do. It’s that I haven’t had the time. I mean, literally. Anybody reading this who has a blog and who I haven’t visited or commented — that would be all of you — I don’t apologize, but rather say, give me a job, please.
Not because I simply need the money (I do). It’s because I need a life.
This is less a blog entry than an exercise in that thing called writing, which I’ve done precious little of in the past three weeks.
Fun times in Bookfraud-land:
Trapped in a conference room with a nice, perky lady, a moribund old guy wearing a hearing aid, and a librarian who gives "cliched" new meaning.
A poor schlub yakking for ten minutes about a computer patch management system.
Half the room clearing out after lunch.
The worst computer tutorial in the history of the world.
Suicidal thoughts.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, this was my introduction to "outplacement services," or a three-month tour of duty that’s supposed to help me find a new job. My previous employer paid for this service, though I would have preferred that they had given me the cash outright.
I arrive early one morning, find a seat in a crowded conference room, and think about ways I can leave gracefully. Enter the perky lady, once an airline employee (no, not a flight attendant), who will be our instructor for the morning.
Our instructor introduces us to the office managing partner, an older fellow who reeks of wisdom and Fixodent, for a pep talk. He tells us that he knows what it’s like to be unemployed, for he’s had to change jobs four times in his life, but there’s positions out there, if you know how to look. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack, he says. Though with this economy, "the haystack is twice as big," a comment that effectively reverses the happy caffeinating effects of my Starbucks in a millisecond. I look around the room for a samurai sword to impale myself upon, with no luck.
Then, all the enthusiasm sucked out of the room, we go to work.
The morning features a couple of highlights. First, as a matter of "defining" our skills, the patch-management dude talks about a work-related "challenge," and how he overcame it. How any of this will help anybody find a job I don’t know, and the homunculus residing in my left temple starts tossing pain-tinged darts at my brain.
Not before or after: instead of
Later, everybody has to write a two- or three-sentence explanation of who you are and what you want to do. Stupidly, I volunteer to read mine.
As I should have expected, it’s ritual humiliation. Double for me, as I’m supposed to be an expert in the art of communication. It’s not punchy enough. It’s got too much information. It just sucks.
We break for lunch, when I wander around the lobby for 45 minutes in a catatonic state of Faulknerian realization that my job is gone left for parts unknown for budgetcuttingpinheads lopping off the department, the interstices of brain and soul and bodyspirit, the accursed soil, bookfraud without direction is bookfraud without faith without hope without…
After a security guard slaps me, I find a sandwich shop and whomp down a lunch of indeterminate matter (carbo, protein, sliced vegetables) and a Diet Coke, then return to a classroom now one-half full, the rest of our former classmates apparently going to job interviews, finishing that novel, or having sex with tranny prostitutes. Then, the fun begins.
The outplacement agency has a members-only Web site to which we will have access. An older, bespectacled woman who looks as if she stumbled out of the dictionary’s entry for "librarian" addresses us, which is appropriate, since she’s the company librarian. Her hair is curled in a helmet, her pantsuit is bright and generous, her shoes are, of course, sensible. The librarian is wearing a pin in the form of a jack-o-lantern, which I somehow feel is a bad sign.
And it is. The librarian gives a presentation on how to use the Web site. Apparently, the presentation has been geared towards first-graders. The librarian tells us how to sign up. How to choose a password. That you have to fill the fields with asterisks and if you want to see another part of the Web site, click on its link. Now in an extremely ungrateful (and unfair) mood, all I can think of is, "How come this idiot has a job and I’m unemployed?"
They’re not lining up to vote
After our computer savant is done, we are released from purgatory. I’m about as fired up as a Frenchman, Jew, or a person with a college degree contemplating a Sarah Palin presidency. It’s grim.
Things will get better. Two days later, I meet my counselor, not the perky not-a-former-stewardess lady. This person is calm, empathetic, smart, and has several excellent ideas. I actually have some hope here that I might find a decent-paying position.
Then, as I ride the elevator downstairs, it occurs to me. I know what I’m going to do. I envision a job in which I have to work hard, hustle, be creative, but make gargantuan amounts of money. It’s completely legal, and I don’t need to get anyone’s permission or even get hired to do it.
I’m going to become Baby’s talent manager! He’s cute, he’s got a fabulous smile, and has an excellent vocabulary for an 18-month old, including "cheese," "yellow," "boat," "bear," and says "clock" and "flag" without the "l"s. As they say on "American Idol," we’re going to Hollywood!
A number of you perceptive folk have asked me, "Bookfraud, it’s been weeks since you posted. What the fuck?"
For this I have no answer, except to tell you I was laid off last week after 11 fun years at my job.
Yay capitalism.
The following post is far longer than my usual fare, but I feel weirdly entitled to do so, as my job, retirement money, and what reason I had for getting up each morning have now evaporated.
It was a Saturday morning, and I was about 10 years old, furitively watching Memphis Mid-South Wrestling. This show was strictly prohibited in the Bookfraud household, but my father was out of town, and my mother was watching my brother and sister in parts unknown.
A wrestler of great local import was addressing the camera. "I’ll wrestle anyone, anytime, anywhere!" he said to a hapless emcee holding a microphone with an unsteady hand.
"And that includes…" the emcee said.
"Yeah, and that includes the heavyweight champion of the world — Muhammad Ali!"
"And I understand you have an interview with Ali you want to show."
"That’s right, Lance. Now, I haven’t seen this yet, but I guarantee you that I will whip this man in the ring — I don’t care who he is!"
Lance grimaced and nodded, as if he’d seen this type of ridiculous gamesmanship before. And he had. The wrestler, Jerry "The King" Lawler, had a long list of local enemies — Jackie Fargo, Tojo Yamamoto, Dutch Mantell, Bill "Superstar" Dundee. Every week on Memphis Mid-South Wrestling, Lawler, who was currently playing a "heel," would yammer and rant about he was going to put Fargo in the hospital or Dundee out of wrestling.
But this was not Jerry Lawler challenging Dutch Mantell, a man whose body hair could support a wig factory, or Tojo Yamamoto, who was actually Hawaiian. This was Muhammad Ali — The Greatest. The Greatest of All Time.
"Let’s take a look," Lance said, gesturing to the camera.
Ali was standing at an airport gate, wearing a gray trenchcoat buttoned to the neck. It was a couple of months after he’d regained his title by knocking out George Foreman. A small, elderly man with white hair but deft movements held a microphone, standing in front of Ali. (Sadly, it was not Howard Cosell.)
"We’re here with Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion of the world," the man said in a nasal voice that sounded as if he was chewing gravel. "Muhammad, first of all, congratulations on reclaiming your title in October–"
"That’s right, Leo. I shocked the world again, didn’t I?"
"You certainly did, Muhammad. Now, I understand that another professional wrestler, Jerry Lawler, has sent you a challenge to meet him in the ring."
Of course, I had seen Ali before on television and in the papers, but today he looked benign, his face a little cheekier than I had remembered.
“Well, let me tell you something, Leo,” began The Greatest, his voice laconic and knowing. “Every day I get telegrams and phone calls and letters from ordinary folk sayin’ they want me to fight them. Now, I ain’t afraid of any man, but I don’t want to fight no Jerry Lawler King or whatever he says he is. I’m sure he’s a good rassler and all that, but I’ve done finished fighting with them rasslers.”
“O.K. Muhammad,” Leo said in all earnestness, "but Lawler says that you’re scared to go down to Memphis, Tennessee, and fight him. He says you fight him and he’ll beat you, and you’ll no longer be the greatest.”
And then came that grin, wide as a ship’s berth and teeth that seemed to shine on cue. I got shivers.
“Awww, Leo, don’t be givin’ me no jive now.” Ali’s face lit up, his eyes spread wide.
“No, no, Muhammad, he really said that.”
“Well, let me tell you something. Is that camera filming me so that Jerry Lawler King can see me? Will he be able to see this here film? Good. Now everybody watching this, stop talking NOW. Pay attention. I ain’t afraid of nobody, and I’ll fight any man, any time, because I am the greatest fighter, not just of this time, but of all times.
“Is this going out to Jerry Lawler? Do you hear me Jerry Lawler? You think you know something about boxing, Jerry Lawler, you big ugly hairy wrassler? You don’t know a damn thing about steppin’ in the ring with a pro boxer. And I am a pro!
"You’ve been reading about boxing in all the wrong places. If you want to know any damn thing about boxing, don’t see no Jimmy the Greek, don’t read no Ring magazine, you must come to me, Muhammad Ali. Like I said after I whupped Big George in Kinsasha, Zaire, I am the scholar of boxing! You just some rassler! I am the greatest fighter of all times! I told you all that I was the greatest when I whupped Sonny Liston, and I’m still the greatest!”
Ali crept towards the camera, Leo gamely stepping forward with him. Ali’s features came more into view: round face and bushy eyebrows. He had a wide nose with flashing nostrils but what really got me were his eyes, heavy with intent.
“The goverment took my title away because of my reglion, but God, Allah, is more powerful than any government! I was ready for the Rumble in the Jungle! With Allah’s help I beat big, bad George, and got back the title they took away from me. And everybody—EVERYBODY—said I was gonna get whupped, he was too big, too strong, too powerful and I was gonna get hurt!
"But you see what happened? Allah will make any man, even George Foreman, look like a baby! I told you I would knock out big George! I told you I would shock the world when I beat Sonny Liston! You all said I coudn’t do it! You said I was through! But I’m fast, I’m pretty, I’m the heavyweight champ-ee-on of the world! I must be the greatest!”
Now Ali was throwing punches, slashing uppercuts, tight roundhouse rights, and that famous left jab faster than an eyeblink. Despite his buttoned overcoat, there was a fluidity to Ali’s movements that was breathtaking: one could even tell that he was moving his feet beneath the camera’s range.
“Jerry Lawler, you ain’t nuthin’! Nuthin’! You think you so bad? Let me tell you something about people who are baaaaaaad. I’ve fought Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and whupped them all! They’re baaaaaad men! And I beat them all! All of them! Because I am badder! I shook up the world! I am the greatest, Jerry Lawer! I am the greatest fighter of all times! Of all times! OF ALL TIIIIIMES!”
Lawler and Russell: Childhood heroes take a fall
The tape ran out, and the TV went back to the studio: the audience — almost entirely white – had gone wild, laughing and screaming and clapping more furiously than they had for any match that I had seen. Jerry Lawler stood next to Lance Russell, his body angled to the camera; in my eyes, there was suddenly something vaguely inconsequential about him. Lance Russell shook his head, grinning, unable to contain something approaching glee. “Well, King, there you have it,” Lance said.
“Lance, let me tell you something. If Ali comes down here, I’ll show him who’s the King of professional wrestling.”
But it was too late. Lawler tried to keep his stature or even his dignity: he cast a I’m-the-meanest-son-of-a-bitch look at the audience and then at people watching at home. But it was too late. The audience knew it. The viewers knew it. Lawler knew it. Lance Russell knew it. I knew it.
“If Muhammad Ali is too chicken to come down and fight me—”
But his voice couldn’t be heard: the crowd was chanting, a one-word, two-syllable call that cast a spell upon me and made Jerry Lawler awash in resentment. “ALI! ALI! ALI!”
“Now listen here!” Lawler barked.
“ALI! ALI! ALI!”
“I want to say something here! If you rednecks—”
“ALI! ALI! ALI!”
And so it went for the next 20 seconds; Lawler would try to tell the audience to shut up, or say something about The Greatest, but the crowd would drown him out, each time hiking up the volume, as if in rejoinder. They cut to a commercial on auto transmissions.
I can’t really describe how radical a scene this was. This was Memphis, only six years after Martin Luther King Jr. had been assinated at the Lorraine Motel. This was Memphis, where you couldn’t spend a day without hearing the word "nigger." This was Memphis, rich with African-American history and thick with bigotry.
And you had a studio full of white, uneducated folk who wouldn’t look a black man in the eye giving Muhammad Ali their love and affection.
This was before I knew of Ali’s cruelty, of torturing Floyd Patterson in the ring for 13 rounds because Patterson called him Cassius Clay, of calling Joe Frazier an Uncle Tom and well before calling Frazier "a gorilla" for the Thrilla in Manila even after Frazier had once paid Ali’s hotel bill because he didn’t have the cash for it, of imitating punch-drunk Jerry Quarry long before Ali’s gift of gab had left him because of boxing-induced Parkinson’s syndrome.
I did not know that Ali had said, “Man, I ain’t got nothing against them Viet Cong” and he had made a stand of conscience that cost him his title, nor that he had four wives and that Angelo Dundee had called him a “pelvic missionary.” I did not know he had repudiated Malcom X under the orders of his spiritual leaders, nor that he later said he regretted that more than anything he had done. He had yet to lose to Leon Spinks and Larry Holmes; he had yet to drop out of the Nation of Islam and become a Muslim. I didn’t know that he’d beaten Sonny Liston and shocked the world. Angelo Dundee, Bundini Brown, the Louisville Syndicate, Elijah Muhammad—those were just words.
I simply saw the most charasmatic person alive, the most alive person alive, someone who Jerry Lawler could not begin to challenge in word nor deed.
There was something outside of my life that was greater, more interesting, more full of life. I needed to find out.
If not for the "Why I Really Write" series, I would title this blog entry "Caught in a Morass of Baseball, Politics, Economic Meltdown, and Mind-Melting Sleep Deprivation."
The Cubs, my team of personal preference, have the best record in the National League, and if they are not prohibitive favorites to reach the World Series, nothing less would entail a defeat of soul- and spirit-crushing dimensions. Being that this is the Cubs, I should prepare for said crushing.
I have also found solace in wasting time "following" the presidential elections, which is another way of saying that I’m surfing the ‘endlessly for 1) comfort in polls saying Obama is winning; 2) comfort in polls saying McCain is losing; and 3) any and all information on the hot mess known as Sarah Palin.
Did I tell you that after the last week’s economic events, I plan to retire when I die?
And for a kid who isn’t yet 18 months, Baby has quite a loud voice. (He also seems to learn new word each day, much to his parents’ delight. None of the words are of the four-letter variety, much to my amazement, since he’s essentially mimicking me.)
Yes, these are excuses for the improper preparation precipitating piss-poor performance on this blog, not to mention the blogs of many others. They’re the same excuses I have for not writing, except in that case, I only have to lie to myself.
Sorry to have to do this, but let me tell you a little about my history of neuroses:
1. One night trying to sleep when I was about eight, I came to the horrifying realization that one day, my grandparents and parents would die, leaving me all alone in the cold, dark universe.
I started to cry, and my father came in to my room; between sobs, I told him of my overwhelming fear. My father explained as best he could that dying was part of life, and that nobody was going to die for a long, long time — certainly not him nor Mom. He gave me a hug and a kiss, and I soon went to sleep, comforted.
I daresay that if that was not one of the defining moments of my childhood, I certainly won’t forget it.
We’re gonna Zoom, Zoom, Zoom-I-Zoom (to my doom)
2. A couple of years after my father staunched my tears, he betrayed me. A children’s television show had debuted on the local public television station featuring a covey of young children as its stars, sort a local version of "Zoom." I harbored a secret desire to be one of the kids on the show. Unfortunately, I had let my father know in passing.
My mother, who was a budding musician at the time, wrote the theme song for the show, so we were invited to a fundraising party for the station. The director of the children’s show happened to strike up a conversation with my father as I stood next to him, and, much to my horror, my father said to him, "[Bookfraud] has something he’d like to say to you about being on the show."
We were standing near a wall with curtains, to where I promptly retreated. I mumbled something through the curtains about wanting to be on the kid’s program, which the director must have interpreted as, "This kid is insane."
3. Every time I asked out or tried to asking out a girl on a date: projecting calm, internalizing agony.
4. When I was in graduate school, I took an undergrad theater class in comedic acting as an elective. As part of the class, each student had to do a 15-minute stand-up routine before a live audience.
Suffice it to say that the five hours preceding my performance were some of the most agonizing minutes of my life. One can interpret this as mere stage fright or, perhaps, wish fulfillment. Despite the fact that my routine went smashingly well, I can’t say it’s was an experience I would want to repeat, despite the fact I loved being the center of attention.
Rock: Not neurotic
5. Also, consider all the rest of my neurotic embarrassing public moments, too many to recount in this space, though if you buy me a few beers and give me a shoulder to cry on, I’d be happy to share them.
If you don’t understand the gist of these anecdotes in relation to writing, you’re probably a well-adjusted, intelligent, and reasonably happy individual who is probably wildly rich and successful.
But if you do understand without further clarification the connection between one’s neuroses and writing, you’re probably a writer.
Congratulations. Or condolences. Whatever is appropriate.
Given the tone and tenor of this presidential campaign, I thought this would be the time to publish this entry.
Also, I don’t have anything else to post.
Being a "creative writer" with lots of "fans" and acolytes, people invariably want to know "Who are your influences?" If I’m in a buoyant mood, I’ll say "Faulkner, Ellison, Atwood, Dickens, etc."
If, as is more likely, I’m in a pissy, angry, enraged mood, about to kill myself or a conservative, I’ll say, "My influences are beer, sex, professional wrestling and extra-absorbent Pampers, and just go away, I hate stupid questions like that."
Actually, nobody has ever asked me about my literary influences, but if they did, I’d probably lie and give them the usual suspects, adding, at the end, "and of course, Chekov."
One name I might not mention is George Orwell, because he isn’t "literary" enough in some quarters, and also because I’ve read only 3 ½ of his books: 1984, Animal Farm, A Collection of Essays, and half of A Homage to Catalonia. And I read the first two books before I was 18, the third when in college, and the last half-volume when I was in my mid-20s.
His work all had its particular impact, but his masterpiece "Politics and the English Language" resonated on the tabula rasa of my young brain unlike few essays before or since.
In short, Orwell decried the decay of language in public discourse in "Politics." In order to hide the truth when it can’t be hidden, politicians and bureaucrats will turn to obfuscation via language. And when language goes bad, liberty will follow.
Torture: it’s not just for despots any more
Orwell lists several examples of bad writing, and then enumerates why they stink. But the key to the entire essay (at least for an impressionable 21-year-old) was just how language related to political argument, circa 1946:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
It’s an easy jump to the present.
Take, for instance, our current jokers running the White House and their attempt to hide the truth regarding torture. "Enhanced interrogation techniques."* "Black sites." "Extraordinary renditions." "Illegal combantants." These proclamations are bogus and designed to obscure the truth, and when the public accepts them at face value, you get monstrosities like Guantanamo, warrantless searches, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, kidnapping, and out-and-out torture.
Or one can turn to the current election — oh, can you ever — and see lies being turned into "truths" through the currency of language. A know-nothing, incurious governor suddenly has "executive experience" that qualifies her for the vice presidency, for instance. Twisting the meaning of a phrase like "economic fundamentals." And so on.
Unfortunately, we’re fighting a losing battle. Falsehoods like "collateral damage" and "downsizing" have made it into the daily lexicon. Citizens blindly accept bogus language as long as it doesn’t challenge their preconceived notions of wrong and right. People are careless with language, and worse, they don’t seem to care if you make something plural with an apostrophe s, much less use euphemisms that hide meaning.
Waterboarding, skateboarding, what’s the difference?
Now, if I were a true intellectual, I would have repudiated Orwell as a overrated socialist hack, pointing to the ordinariness of his diction as a sign of his simplicity.
But I’m not smart enough to be considered an intellectual, and Orwell’s ideas are still rattling around my brain like an atom in a particle accelerator (or some other clichéd simile that Orwell would have loathed). Orwell may not have been an intellectual either, but he was a brilliant writer, and was so brutally honest as to be painful.
If it didn’t inspire me to pursue writing, Orwell’s essay changed how I view language and how I use it. I think about "Politics and the English Language" every time I write, even if I’m not aware of it.
*It has been pointed out that the Gestapo used the same phrase – "verschaerfte Vernehmung" — to describe their torture techniques.
I am really the last person on earth who should be writing this.
I can’t add to the blizzard of encomiums for the late David Foster Wallace, who died of an apparent suicide Friday night. I have read precious little of his work, had not met the man, and have no claim upon recognizing anyone’s greatness, even among those authors I have read widely and idolize.
And the title is a misnomer of sorts — it is not specifically because of Mr. Wallace’s genius that I am inspired to write, either in appreciation or disdain.
In short, I am woefully equipped to write about the man. But since I heard the news of this awful event, I’ve felt sick to my stomach. It’s as if someone I personally knew had hanged himself.
By all accounts, Wallace was a generous soul. Among many works he left behind, his now-famous commencement address to Kenyon College is a testament to his open-mindedness and degree of intellectualy honesty. His interviews, magazine articles and essays displayed a remarkable range and brainpower. His 2000 feature story on John McCain, "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub," is required reading for those following the 2008 presidential campaign.
Of course, his magnum opus, "Infinte Jest," is certainly one of the most well-read cerebral novels of all time. (You usually don’t get many people to read 1,000-page books with 100+ footnotes.) In a sense, he was the Thomas Pynchon of his generation, or Pynchon had been the David Foster Wallace of his generation. He displayed more literary talent and smarts in one short story — hell, in one page — than I could ever hope for in a career.
But, as mentioned above, I have no expertise in assessing Wallace’s life or literary production.
I have a little experience with depression, however, and the more I read of his life, the more depressed I have become. He published his first book at 24, won a MacArthur "genius" award at 35, and could write for any publication he desired. Wallace had a teaching position in California and was beloved by students and faculty.
Having it all was not enough. Wallace had struggled with depression for two decades, and the last episode was too much for him to bear. He was all of 46. Through all of his pain, he wrote. He persevered until he could no longer.
So I do not write because David Foster Wallace inspired me through his style, intellect, wit, or otherwise. It wasn’t because he could turn a simple feature story about tennis into a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Derrida, considered one of the better pieces of sports journalism the past decade. Nor is it because of his unstilting committment to probity, his questioning of widely held truths and striving for something not confined within the boundaries of the page.
It was the fact that this man, so blessed with talent and the will to turn it into art, did this despite the agony that daily living could present to him. He didn’t just churn stuff out because of his depression, though he could have, and he didn’t quit writing because of his depression, though he could have and nobody would have questioned him.
He kept writing, and kept his work at the highest possible standard because, I imagine, truth mattered more than anything. We should all be so enamored.
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I like football as much as the next guy—probably more than the average fan, in fact. I covered my college team for the school newspaper, and still follow them with some fervor. And, being that my best friend in high school’s father worked for the Chicago Bears, I got tickets to games and other assorted ephermera (on which I will elaborate later).
A number of you perceptive folk have asked me, "Bookfraud, it’s been weeks since you posted. What the fuck?"
