The War Project Versus the Nice Project

The War Project is interfering with the Nice Project. Here I am, sitting and practicing being nice while no one is around in the middle of the night, and memories of war shake in my bones.

Upstairs, it's the War Channel. It's on most nights. Screaming and yelling bloody murder. Hate and rage, crashing and smashing, mad screams of insane people. This is normal. The War is normal.

There's an Hispanic couple upstairs who are at war. There may be others at war too. I think people are on drugs. I hope no one is armed. I hear them screaming and yelling bloody murder at each other, crashing and burning across the room, like a herd of antelope on an African plain. The cops got called. A couple of times.

Inquiries are met with smiles. There are no blows exchanged, the woman is a fighter, everything is fine. Don't believe it. When people scream like that, fists and objects fly. They are trying to kill each other. Nothing will happen until some day, someone may end up dead. This is how these things tend to end.

Next to them, upstairs, are Black people. A young Black woman and her huge Black boyfriend are trying to kill each other, or at least trying to beat each other up.

It was on earlier tonite, the Fights. You can turn on the Fights here just about any nite. Just open your ears.

The war went on on the sidewalk before, earlier in the night, but I looked outside and could not see. Only voices, I heard, disembodied voices. Fighting, fighting, yelling and fighting.

The war went on outside, earlier in the evening. The police pulled up outside my window, three cars, stayed there half and hour, talking to some young Hispanic men. I opened the window and watched the friendly people in blue.

The news just came in, two local kids locked up, the War goes on, two soldiers off the streets. You cheer for the blue men who take away 16 year old POW's. Where? Anywhere but here. Anywhere.

The gangster rap pounds away a good part of the day, from computers and radios. It's not exactly a message of peace and love. It's a message of hate, rage and crime, sociopathy packaged as art. It gets into your bones if you're not careful, your inner psychopath emerging in your tensing veins.

You shut all the windows and tell everyone not to look outside. The world out there and the world in here, and never the twain shall meet, or at least not tonight.

Dammit, I'm trying to be nice.

How can anyone be nice in a place like this?

Video killed the radio star, and the War Project is killing the Nice Project. What's a guy to do? Pour another glass.

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The Counselor Project

Well, had my first therapist appointment in quite a while the other day. I didn't even want it, and I was totally paranoid about it. Why had I been given this appointment, anyway? How the Hell did that happen? 

I went back inside a doctor's the other day and a secretary said wearily, "What is it now, Robert?" like I'm some miserable idiot who can't stop worrying, which is true.

All this fueled the old paranoid thoughts, and I restarted the Get It Together Project again.

So I went in. Middle aged Hispanic female, and I hate female therapists. In fact, I typically refuse to ever be seen by one. I got sent to counselor due to being on meds and admitting to smoking weed a few times last fall. Real easy.

I'm convinced that I am insane.

"So, do you think that I act strange, weird, bizarre, odd?" I actually believe that all of this is true.

"No, not at all, you seem quite normal. Why do you ask?"

"Do I seem really nervous, anxious, wiry, like I can't settle down?" I actually believe that I am way too nervous and non-relaxed.

"Actually, no. You really do seem quite relaxed here." Points to my relaxed posture.

"Hmm, so do I seem hostile?" I actually believe that I am totally hostile, cruel, evil, mean, and low down, like a bipedal 6-foot rattlesnake with a permanent bad hair day and an immortal resting bitch face.

"No, not at all. Actually, you seem friendly, and if you were hostile, I would simply order you out of the room."

"So, do I seem unfriendly and not warm?" I am convinced that this is the main problem these days.

"No, not at all. You actually do seem like a friendly person."

Therapy goes on.

I tell her I am worried about checking out hot young chickies because I am afraid they will think I am a dirty old man and they will file a public complaint against me.

"Go ahead and look all you want! You are a single man, of course you want to look at all of the pretty women!"

You know, sometimes I just love Hispanics. They are so backwards on all this sex stuff, and they just assume that all males are total pigs when it comes to sex, but they figure that it is hopeless and we are incurable, so they just chalk it up to nature.

She then informs me that I may be lacking in social skills.

"So, do you think that I am lacking in social skills in here in right now?" I am convinced that I am one of the biggest social idiots on the globe.

"No, no, not at all, your social skills are excellent. Why do you ask? But perhaps elsewhere, there are problems in the social skills."

Ok, now my head is really spinning. 

I need to stop doing weed. 

I need to stop drinking. 

"Why do you have two glasses of wine a night?"

"Why do you go to the bar?"

Well, I quit? 

"Oh, the bar, the bar, why do you go to the bar?"

I don't anymore, but I am broke.

On and on it goes.

She points out that I'm hardly even trying to meet anyone. I think I'm busting butt night and day on the Woman Project. Really, where are you going, she asks? I tell her I am going to the Catholic Church Project to work on the Woman Project.

She almost starts laughing. "You expect to get laid in church?" I think she says.

"Sure." I say, lying as usual. "I just tell em I am God, and that they will worship at my cross because God wants them to. Works every time."

"Plus, most women who go to Catholic Church are in religious ecstasy, and that usually means they are also horny," I offer pitifully. 

"They want to have sex with God. Just tell them you are God to them, and you're in like Flynn," I suggest dubiously.

She's laughing. "You expect to get laid at a church? What are you, a fucking idiot? No ever meets anyone in church. Church is one thing, fucking is another. Two different planets," I hallucinate, hearing voices.

It's very nice to meet a woman who is aggressive about sex and has a man's best interest at heart, which is getting laid of course, as nothing else in a man's life matters at all. Most female therapists are totally insane about sex, which is why I never want to deal with them.

Doctor wrote I was depressed. Was I depressed? 

Course not, I scoff. 

She looks surprised.

Have I ever been arrested? Twice for pot, possession. 

Have I ever been in prison, as if this is the most normal thing to do? No, thank God. 

Have I ever been charged with child molesting? No, I have not, nor have I ever been investigated for it by the police. 

Have you ever attacked anyone? No, not really. I mean I did, but they all deserved it, you know?

Have you ever attempted suicide? No, we don't do that. 

Have I ever been suicidal? Not for 23 years! I say proudly. She looks dubious.

Have I ever been hospitalized? No, we don't get hospitalized, and I will never be hospitalized, unless I get about 20 times crazier than I am now and I just can't function at all.

The Hospital Project is never going to happen. Nor is the Kill Myself Project. The Kill Others Project has, sadly, been put on indefinite hold for the time being. The Molest Kids Project never even got going, thank the  Lord above. The Criminal Project is way back in the hippie dope-dealing past.

My whole life, nothing really grievous or monumental or devastating or audacious has occurred. Truth is, I have been a bit of a bore, the guy who lives in town 15 years and the cops yawn when someone asks them about him.

The Counselor Project is over. I'm fine, nothing is wrong. The Counselor Project will be continued into the future, with uncertain results.

And they don't believe in chemical good times, because they only see the bad end that I have almost never seen in my entire life.

The Counselor Project is just something to be played, like everything else in life. You play the Counselor Project or it plays you, one or the other. It's nothing, really. Anyone can do it.

Trolling IRL

I think I committed a crime tonight, or was a conspiracy to one.

Oh, no, that brings on the Cops Project. Bad trip, bad trip, no way. Last time I was in Cop Land, I got thrown against a wall and got my head banged into the car roof and got the cuffs twisted on my wrists in a failed attempt to cause wrist damage for a lifetime.

The cop stood over, and threatened to grind my brains into the pavement. It was a pleasant moment, to be threatened with murder by a cop with your hands cuffed. If only he would try it, then I might have died and you would not be reading this.

Oh God, cops love to fight. I've been arrested two whole times in my life and both times I was a Goddamn psycho. Once I screamed as I was being bailed out, "FUCK YOU!" with acrobatics, while the people who bailed me screamed at me to shut up. And I didn't even get re-arrested. That shows we have an incredible amount of civil rights in this country.

In the one jail, it was entertaining. There were these guys, White guys, wasted out of their minds and in jail, of all possible places. It was at the beach, where I always lived and hung, of course.

"Whaooooooooo! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you!"

It was a song, you had it admit. They sung it to a tune. The jailers would come by once in a while and order them to shut up, and then the band would start again.

No one sympathized with me. I told everyone I knew that I got arrested two times for starting fights with cops who bugged me, and everyone agreed that I deserved to get popped and that I was an insane and stupid scum of the Earth moron.

Actually, I thought it was a glorious act of defiance.

The cop knocked on the door of the car. I looked out the window and the cop was there. I knocked the cherry off the joint, made sure it was dead, and swallowed away, no problems. Most everyone to this day insists I was insane for doing that. It was smart, I swallowed the jay, and the evidence was gone, ha ha piggers good one huh?

There is another crime called destruction of evidence. I had never learned that, but it was pure theater anyway.

I spit at the shoes of the cops that towered above as I sat. I spat right between their shoes and missed and missed. I was informed that if the spit hit the shoes, I was going to die. That made it even more fun.

The Get Arrested Project worked, twice in a row, and now my whole world hated me. It was supposed to be a joke, but now I had a criminal record.

Andy Kaufman Died For the Lulz

On May 16, 1984, one of the finest comedians and performance artists of our time, Andy Kaufman, reportedly died at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

Or did he? A blog, Andy Kaufman Returns, appeared right around the time of the 20th anniversary of his death. The blog was reportedly written by Kaufman himself. He describes how he faked his death, faked his supposedly having cancer, and arranged for another dying man to placed in his hospital bed in his place.

He then described what he has been doing since he faked his own death and has been living in hiding. The blog is actually pretty hilarious, and after the most recent post, there have been over 900 comments.

Soon afterward, a new blog, The Real Andy Kaufman, appeared accusing the previous one of being a lying, cheating fake. The new blog claimed to be from the real Andy Kaufman. Tony Clifton, the abusive Vegas lounge singer who was one of Andy's comedic personas, also has two new blogs up. It appears that he did not die either.

There is an entire elaborate website up called Andy Kaufman Lives. It has quotes from many of Andy's friends saying that Andy told them how he planning to fake his death and how exactly he would go about doing it if he did.

Some of them then describe how he did indeed fake his own illness and death as they watched. He shaved his head and went on a starvation diet to look like a cancer patient. Then he got some dying guy to fill in for him at the last moment to take his place on the deathbed.

There are reports from witnesses who spotted Kaufman soon after the faked death in Jamaica, a report from someone in Taos, New Mexico, who says that Andy is actually living there quietly incognito, a report from someone else saying that Andy was pretending to be a Venice Beach bum in the late 1980's, quotes from his nurse, who confesses that Andy was not really ill at all, quotes from friends who were at his bedside admitting that his death was a fake, on and on it goes.

The site claims that searches of Kaufman's death certificate online reveal a blank record and that Kaufman's Social Security number has continued to be used in the 20 years since his death in a variety of places in the US. The site is also looking for witnesses to testify that Kaufman is still alive for reasons of some insane lawsuit that I could not figure out.

Apparently, all of this is just a gigantic put-on by some of Andy's old friends on the 20th anniversary of his death. It's apparently true that Andy did discuss faking his own death with some of his friends as the ultimate prank. He realized that if he did it, he could not tell anyone, as faking your death is apparently a crime.

The Snopes site reveals that Andy Kaufman actually did die on 5-16-84 in Los Angeles and offers persuasive evidence that this is in fact what really happened.

Andy Kaufman would have been quite at home in the Internet Age. He was a great troll, and he just about invented trolling IRL. In fact, that was his signature style. And everything he did, he did it for the lulz.

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World's Greatest Art Project

Art project of the year. People are up in arms already. Good. I wonder if she is trolling IRL. She is listed by Encyclopedia Dramatica as one of the world's top IRL Trolls. Sort of seems like it, huh? If she's serious, then I think maybe she has problems? This sort of stuff only makes sense if it's a joke. If it's a joke, it's the best one of the year, and she's as good as Andy Kaufman! I'm laughing so hard I can't even type!

More like this!

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