KISS Me I'm Stupid!

KISS is short for keep it simple stupid, stupid.

I need to be more straightforward. More serious and to the point. Hone in on my message and make is so simple anyone can understand it, rather than rambling and jumping all over the place. I was thinking earlier that I'm a post-9/11 renaissance man: a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. In today's age of specialization, I could be left out because I simply am not great at any one thing. People want to be able to summarize other people in a paragraph or less. They want to say "ok, he's a racist plumber," "she's a black lawyer," "he's the artist who paints butts," "and so on. I don't want to be "the arrogant kid who thinks he knows everything and is better than everyone" anymore. (Mom--I'm growing up. YAY!)

I don't know what my epithet is. Am I really a self-loathing arrogant-asshole? [ed.--Or do I just play one on tv?] Who am I? Geez, I don't even know anymore. I can't say it in a paragraph or less, but I'm trying. I still can't do it now no matter how hard I try. That's why I'm trying to document the process on my blog in the hope that it might help someone someday, even if that person is just my future self. I'm getting exhausted writing all this. I'm internalizing way too much, becoming more introverted when I should be more extroverted. I'm thinking too much--I should get out and start doing. I need to talk to real people, not just myself.

And then one day I will wake up, and I'll be forty-seven, and I'll stumble on this blog thing I wrote when I was twenty-seven, and I'll have a mid-life crisis. I will re-read this craptastic blog, and have an epiphany that will change my life forever, and I will become the next David Sedaris. The serious writer writing about my generation that I know I can be. But I can't do it now. I'm still telling and not showing. I'm still trying to run before I've learned to crawl. I need to get out and learn the rules, I mean really learn them this time, before I start breaking them. God, I hate to say it, but I need more schoolin'.

Enough! I'll have no more of this talk of returning to school! I don't need no education! I'm not another brick in the wall! School forces you to narrow your mind, focus too much, until you develop tunnel-vision. You become a myopic nerd with glasses like me. Oh, wait........Ehh...I give up. I don't know what's what anymore. I don't know what's real. This writing thing is driving me crazy. I keep going around in circles...Let's see if this helps:

Some ground rules for my writing:

1. No more parenthesis, semicolons, dashes, or brackets. Sentences must be simple. No more asides or editorial comments.
   
2. Focus on one medium at a time. If I'm doing a writing piece, no photos, and vice versa. Let each medium speak for itself.
3. Outline and plan a course of attack, don't just improvise. Figure out what you're trying to say first, and then find the best way to express it. Don't use the spaghetti method, and just throw a bunch of crap out there and hope it sticks.
   
4. Write several drafts. Don't just assume what comes off the top of my head is pure gold.
5. Don't trust my gut. If something sounds funny to me, it probably is just funny to me and no one else.
6. Don't be afraid to be unoriginal. Appeal to the lowest common denominator by using cliches that everyone can understand, i.e. KISS. You want your message to reach the widest audience possible, not the narrowest.
7. You are not special. Don't think you can break the rules just because you're different. You're not. You're a biological social entity just like everyone else.
8. Bad art should not be mixed with good art under any circumstances. Either be good or bad, but not both at the same time. Avoid mixed messages.
9. Bad art should not be confused with a personal style, or artistic voice just because it's the easy way out. It' s too hard for most people to know what's good bad, and bad bad. And good bad is almost impossible to do. You have to be bad, then good, then finally good bad, but only a select few reach that point. There are no shortcuts.
   
10. Don't assume people know who you are or what you are talking about. Assume the only thing they will ever know about you is what words you write.
    

God, my rules are stupid. But I need them, for now so I can sleep. It's 3:28 am. I have to work a double tomorrow. Goodnight.

Peace.

This Week on Best Week Ever: My Passions / Wednesday: Comedy

I think I'm going to try something new this week, something a little different. This week I am going to focus on my passions--what I love to do on my days off, and what I would be doing if I had a million dollars and never had to work again. I remember my guidance counselor in high school said to figure out what you want to do in life, just imagine what you would do if you had all the money and all the free time in the world. If you'd go fishing, then become a commercial fisherman. If you'd paint, become an house painter. If you'd drink beer, become a construction worker, and so on. Once I have found my passions, I am that much closer to growing up and landing a real job that will make me truly happy. And following your passions is the meaning of life, so I'm told. Here we go...

WEDNESDAY: COMEDY


You know what, forget this week-long blog thing I'm trying to do; it's a stupid premise. Who am I kidding?--I can't commit to anything seriously for one week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, start off with some triptych about your subject, then write six paragraphs or so on the topic du jour. Make it a double parody of Best Week Ever and Passions by exploring who I want to be. And try to make it real serious, like. But people won't get it no matter how hard I try. Not unless I screw the subtlety and bang them over the head with my ridiculous message. It's not their fault, but mine. I need to simplify my message for these post-modern times. Nothing lasts forever...

So all I have to say for today is go here. Right now. Words cannot describe the hilarity...the interchange between me and Dapkeo...the comment from Jim Gaffigan...the Weird Al music...I think I might have actually found my voice. On myspace. Who would have thought a platform for hooking up pedophiles with teenie-boppers could launch my career?! I sure as hell didn't. Oh, and sorry, Melody, for "cweeping" you out. I'm sure you're really a nice gal who's just obsessed with some guy from some comedy group that you don't really understand because you were once young like me...Give it ten years and you'll get it. You'll find your voice. Just quit spamming my inbox with stupid shit about what you did today!!! You aren't funny (just yet)!!! You're teenie-bopper friends might think you are, but I don't! Wait 'til your 27. Or 18. Eighteen is legal in Iowa....

(Tune in tomorrow for more Passions. Like any good soap, I'm gonna save the best stuff for Friday Wednesday...)


Peace.

This Week on Best Week Ever: My Passions / Tuesday: Pleasure

I think I'm going to try something new this week, something a little different. This week I am going to focus on my passions--what I love to do on my days off, and what I would be doing if I had a million dollars and never had to work again. I remember my guidance counselor in high school said to figure out what you want to do in life, just imagine what you would do if you had all the money and all the free time in the world. If you'd go fishing, then become a commercial fisherman. If you'd paint, become an house painter. If you'd drink beer, become a construction worker, and so on. Once I have found my passions, I am that much closer to growing up and landing a real job that will make me truly happy. And following your passions is the meaning of life, so I'm told. Here we go...

TUESDAY: PLEASURE


I used to come home from work every day and follow the same ritual: take a long hot shower, smoke a bowl, take a couple shots of Jager, chug a few beers, eat half a large pepperoni Pizza from Papa Johns, pass out on my couch between three and four am, wake up at five am to puke, and then again at seven, then sleep until two in the afternoon. I got wasted every night. And I wonder why I gained over forty pounds after dropping out of college. The problem was I liked to feel good whenever I could. I was a party animal alone in my one bedroom apartment.

I felt like I was making up for lost time: I was raised by born-again Christian hippies, and was never allowed to watch MTV or do anything fun with friends because 'God was always watching.' Candy and soda were restricted for special occasions, and I couldn't even enjoy pop culture such as He-Man and Scooby Doo growing up because the cartoons dealt with 'the occult.' When Halloween came around, my mom wrote notes to my teacher excusing me from class, because Halloween was considered by my parents to be a 'celebration of the devil.' If we were allowed to go trick-or-treating, we could only dress up as two things: a clown or a princess. When my parents got divorced when I was thirteen, we stopped going to church and I met my new Muslim friend Moe. I thought of converting to Islam to fill the void left when we gave up Christianity, but I decided against it. In college, I gave up religion completely. I told myself 'God isn't watching me,' 'their is no such thing as the devil, or boogeyman' and the 'occult' is just stupid. [ed.--Though I have been reading up on Buddhist philosophy recently].

But when I turned 21 and dropped out of school, I was looking for something, anything to fill the void inside of me that had been formerly filled with a naive devotion to God as a child, and in school a devotion to being a good student. I wanted to please other people, but when I dropped out of college, I had spent so much time being good, I desperately wanted to please myself by being bad for once. I wanted to fill the void inside of me with alcohol, food, and weed. I wanted to break all the rules; I wanted to party. That's why I took mindless jobs that I hated like the ten months of hell I spent working at Taco John's were I met a couple of stoners named Wayne and James who introduced me to weed.

I had to do a lot of research online for myself to make sure that weed was safe [ed.-The jury is still out on that one, but I still think weed is no worse than alcohol--maybe even better because an overdose of weed won't kill you. But if you drive while stoned, you're an idiot. I don't need a research article to prove that.] before I took my first hit when I hung out with my Taco John's friends after work. I spent my first 'kegger' at Wayne's place getting drunk, high, and playing GTA until I passed out on his sofa. I woke up several times to puke in his bathroom, and promised myself I would never do that again. But I did. Several more times, in fact.

But just like video games, I can't do weed anymore; it's boring. It might not kill me, but it will keep me from growing up, much like the older members of the meaningless jobs I work at. I can't remember the last time I smoked weed. I don't know if I'll ever touch the stuff again. I used to think smoking would make me more creative, but the reality is now that I have learned the lessons I needed to learn from Mary Jane, and can silence the inner critic without getting high, I can quit weed with confidence. I don't need it anymore. Beer is a different story--it's more socially acceptable to drink. I'll continue to drink in moderation on occasion, but I won't drink until I puke every night like I used to.

Food is different. I still need to eat. And since I need food to survive, I can't exactly give it up completely. But I don't look to food to fill the void; I'm trying to eat less 'fun' meals full of healthy things like vegetables and minerals, not cheese and pepperoni. I don't just eat as much as I can whenever I can anymore, I eat what I need to be healthy. And that leads me to the lesson that I needed to learn in the first place--moderation and self-discipline. People would tell me that drugs are bad, that alcoholism is a deadly disease, and that being overweight is detrimental to your health, but I needed to learn how to cope with life on my own without turning to other substances. I thought I could escape my problems by binging and getting high at night, but when I sobered up in the morning, my problems were still there, plus a couple new ones: an empty wallet and a killer hangover.

I've cut back on my earthly pleasures. Now I only order Papa John's to celebrate a real success like making employee of the month at Red Lobster, not just getting out of bed. I'm trying to drink less than a twelve-pack a week. And I haven't touched weed in a long time, and I don't know if I ever will smoke again. I've learned my lessons. I've made up for lost time. Now it's time for me to be serious. Time to grow up. I can't just feed my immediate hedonistic desires and expect to feel good forever. I've learned this lesson, and it's time for me to be a mature adult now. It's time for me to kick my bad habits and find my real passions to fill the void. It's time for me to get high on life.


(Tune in tomorrow for more Passions. Like any good soap, I'm gonna save the best stuff for Friday...)


Peace.

This Week on Best Week Ever: My Passions / Monday: Vid-G-O Games

I think I'm going to try something new this week, something a little different. This week I am going to focus on my passions--what I love to do on my days off, and what I would be doing if I had a million dollars and never had to work again. I remember my guidance counselor in high school said to figure out what you want to do in life, just imagine what you would do if you had all the money and all the free time in the world. If you'd go fishing, then become a commercial fisherman. If you'd paint, become an house painter. If you'd drink beer, become a construction worker, and so on. Once I have found my passions, I am that much closer to growing up and landing a real job that will make me truly happy. And following your passions is the meaning of life, so I'm told. Here we go...

MONDAY: VID-G-O GAMES


I used to want to play video games all day. Every day. So I used to want to be a game tester, but then I found out I'd have to play just a small part of the game over and over again ad nauseum looking for bugs. I wouldn't get to play any full games, because they aren't finished testing them yet. Being a game tester would take all the fun out of playing video games in the first place, so that idea was out.

Then I thought I could be a game designer. But I don't really have any good ideas for games. I told Jeff at work that we should make a game based on being an Expo at Red Lobster. Kinda like the old-school Burgertime, only slightly better. You'd have to run around avoiding the servers who get in your way doing all the broiling, grilling, microwaving, and frying at first, but later on in the game once you'd completed enough tickets (and got enough bonus points for successful combos for getting all the food out at the same time, making the servers, guests, and managers happy), you could hire a broiler, assembler, and fry guy to help you out. But like all NPC's, the AI would be a little weak, and you would get messages on your screen such as "Your fry guy has wandered off," and "Your broiler has fallen asleep--kick him to wake him up." The goal would be to make as much money for Red Lobster as possible, and your character would get a small percentage of the profits (>.001%), just like in real life. But I don't have the slightest idea of how to make video games. Jeff does--he says he's moving to California in six months to start a career in the video game industry as an artistic director since he recently graduated with an art and film degree from the University of Iowa. But he didn't seem all that interested in the idea of producing the Red Lobster All-Stars video game with me, so that idea is out too.

When I got laid off from Copyworks, my first 'real' job after I dropped out of college, I played video games all the time because I was bored and had nothing better to do. Three months later, when I hadn't even started looking for a new job because I was too distracted killing people in my favorite video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto, I got a message from my landlord saying he would have to evict me for nonpayment of rent. So I decided to look for a job that day, and the first place I went to was two blocks away to Taco John's to get something to eat. After I placed my order, I asked for an application. "What the hell," I thought. "It can't hurt to apply here, just in case I can't find a better job today." I didn't expect the owner to come to my table mid-bite and ask me when I could start. I was so shocked, I didn't know what to say. I had a mouthful of food, and mumbled something incoherently. "Great! Come back here and we'll get you a uniform!" the owner said. The next ten months can only be described as Hell on earth as I learned the in's and out's of working in a fast food restaurant. One day I became so depressed and suicidal that I decided to walk out mid-shift before I did something stupid. I spent the next two months looking for a job and playing video games all over again.

Then I landed a job at HandiMart, a now defunct local gas station/convenience store chain in Iowa. I got to know almost every single person here in Coralville who stopped in to fill up their car or grab a soda on their way to work. I also learned that when people enter a gas station, they are hedonistically evil. They only care for feeding their immediate desire to be a good consumer and buy impulse items at ridiculously high prices. They could care less about the feelings of the clerk behind the counter, and when feeding their vices for smoking, drinking, gambling, eating junk food, etc. are content to take out their grievances with their life on the clerk on the other side of the counter. "These cigarettes are too expensive!" "I don't want ethanol gas--I heard it rots your engine!" "It's too hot outside!" "This soda is too cold!" "I want to turn in these dirty cans so I can buy a lottery ticket!" are all conversations I imagined pedestrians from HandiMart saying in Grand Theft Auto as I ran them over in my car. So I quit HandiMart and again spent a couple months playing video games and looking for a new job--this time one that didn't involve working directly with the public. I wanted to be hidden in a back room somewhere doing menial tasks, not out front making small talk with people as I rang them up just so I could hear them bitch about their lives.

I currently work as a line cook at Red Lobster, and will be training to Expo once Jeff leaves for California to develop video games. On my days off I don't play video games that much anymore. I'm usually too busy with my new hobby blogging my life for all to see. I'm happier now when I get off of work, and even on the busiest days I go home I don't hate people. As a line cook the worst I ever have to deal with is servers screaming in the window for their food. But since I see these servers every day and have formed casual relationships with them, I don't mind the screaming as much as if it came from a stranger. I understand their frustration. Servers are on my side. We're fighting a losing battle against the increasingly frustrating consumers whining for their food. I often feel like we're feeding mindless consumers, human cattle, working at Red Lobster. But it's ok, I don't have to ever see these fat cows. I don't have to imagine them as I run over pedestrians playing Grand Theft Auto anymore. I bought the new GTA: Vice City Stories for my PS2 for $20 a few weeks ago when it came out, but I hardly ever play it. I'm happier now, and the cynical side of me is melting away now that I'm growing up. I'm realizing once you get to know people, they aren't that bad.

So now I'm trying to figure out what else to do with my life. Video games are out, now that I'm maturing. They're too distracting and can take up too much time if I'm not careful. It's easy to have no life and play video games all day to forget your problems, but I don't want to do that any more. I want to find my real passions and live a real life, not a virtual one trapped inside some video game killing people.

(Tune in tomorrow for more Passions. Like any good soap, I'm gonna save the best stuff for Friday...)


Peace.

Mauschwitz

First semester of college, I was a biochemistry major. I wanted to study neuroscience and find a cure for Alzheimer’s, so midway through the semester I thought I should sign up for a work study program working in a real lab to better my resume. So I attended a Job Fair at the Student Union in mid-fall and met a man named Ron Hrstka who told me about his lab at the Gene Targeting Core Facility (GTCF). The GTCF “provides technical and research services to investigators on the University of Iowa campus and elsewhere for the generation of gene knockout mouse models,” Ron told me. “Hmm…Lab Assistant at the Gene Targeting Core Facility, wow, that would look great on my resume,” I thought, so I went ahead and signed up that night.

I got a call from Ron the next day, and I started the following week at five thirty in the morning. Ron told me that I wouldn’t be working in a normal lab, with beakers and test tubes, per se, but rather in the ‘mouse colony,’ which housed over ten thousand mice. Since I had a copper-hooded pet rat named Copernicus as a teenager, I thought working with mice would be a similar pleasure. I would be responsible for feeding, or ‘grueling’ the mice in the morning, and then once the mice were fed, I would help Ron’s assistant in the mouse colony enter data about the mouse litters into a computer.

For starters, mice are separated into cages according to litter and marked soon after they are weaned. A hole punch is used to gouge a small semi-circular hole in the ear of the mouse according to their assigned number. No punch is number one. Upper right ear, number two. Lower right, three. Upper left, four. And finally, lower left five. If the litter is exceptionally large, a combination of ear-punches and toe-clipping is used. Toe-clipping involves completely removing one of the fingers of the mouse’s paw, and in this way a large number of mice can be accounted for. This was necessary since the particular lab I worked in housed approximately ten thousand mice, separated into cages of five. A labyrinthine system of hallways connected each room.

Before you entered a room in the mouse colony, you had to first enter a small 10x10 foot room in which you washed your hands up to the elbows, donned an aqua-blue surgical mask, hairnet, apron, surgical gloves and booties. I felt like a real neurosurgeon scrubbing up getting ready to enter the ER. Before you touched the doorknob to open the door, you had to use the spray bottle of alcohol on your gloved hands, and before you could step into the room you had to spray the bottom of your booties. Inside each room housed the mice, five or six rows of cages with five or six levels each, and an examination table, or ‘hood’ where the cages were brought to feed and examine the mice. The hood was about waist-level, and was encased in Plexiglas and had a vent over it suck out the possibly contaminated air, and had another Plexiglas door at the front. I was told in the unlikely event that any mice escaped from the hood while being examined, I was required to stomp on them so they couldn't get out and contaminate the other mice. This would be difficult for a fugitive mouse to do, since the door of the hood was six inches higher than the floor, and the lowest level of cages was two feet off the ground. Also, a five millimeter gap separated the door from the floor, so escape into the other labyrinthine labs was nearly impossible.

The mice came in two colors: white and black. If the gene knockout was successful, the mouse was white with black spots. If it wasn’t the mouse was all black. Black mice were of no use to the researchers and were killed. My job on Fridays was to dispose of the mice. The workers who cleaned the cages in the mornings before I arrived would separate the black mice and put them in a cage in the main office of the lab. Wearing the usual clothes I wore to class, sans surgical gear, I covered the cage with an aqua-blue surgical apron and walked a couple blocks to the medical lab that housed the gas chamber. Since the mice were going to be killed anyway, it didn’t matter that they might get contaminated by their first venture into the outside world; the cage was covered so not to upset the other students in the Med Labs. The gas chamber was a small lab that resembled a doctor’s office, outfitted with several large tanks of CO2, similar to the helium tanks used to inflate balloons for a child’s party. Next came the hardest part of the job. I had to dump the mice in the cage—the black mice who were no use to the lab, along with breeder mice that had gotten too old to reproduce—into a white five-gallon bucket lined with a blue plastic bag marked “Hazardous Materials.” A lid with a two-inch hole in the center was firmly placed on top, and a hose running from the carbon dioxide tank was placed securely in the hole.

Once I was sure the seal was airtight, I turned the nozzle of the tank and counted to thirty. One-Mississippi…two-Mississippi…three-Mississippi…rattle-rattle-in the bucket…four-Mississippi…squeak-squeak in the bucket……ten-Mississippi…rattle-rattle-in the bucket……twenty-Mississippi…silence in the bucket……thirty-Mississippi. Then I carefully opened the bucket away from my face, and backed away for another thirty seconds so I wouldn’t inhale the escaping vapors. The smell inside the bucket was a nauseating mix of mouse urine and feces. I was required to shake the bucket, and if there was any movement, repeat the gassing process as many times as necessary. I remember one breeder mouse that looked a lot like Copernicus took three gassings to finish off.

Once I was satisfied that all the mice were dead, I knotted up the blue plastic bag like a common bag of trash and walked it back to the lab. There I tossed it into a special freezer reserved for mouse carcasses. I never found out what happened to the mice after that.

***
Sometimes I dreamed of rescuing the poor little mice. After all, the mouse colony staff didn’t care what happened to them once their usefulness ran out. I thought of freeing the mice somewhere in the woods, since the University of Iowa Hospitals are located adjacent to a wooded area, but figured the poor, simple city mice wouldn’t know how to fend for themselves. They had become accustomed to a daily regiment of brown gruel, and wouldn’t know how to forage for food in the wilderness. Born a lab mouse, die a lab mouse. I considered taking a few select mice home with me to my dorm, and stealing some gruel from the lab to feed them, but since there was a strict no-pets policy in the dorms, I decided against it.

I estimate in the three months that I worked at the lab I gassed almost a thousand mice in the same five-gallon bucket. The Nazi’s killed almost six million Jews.

***
Today, mice are killed so that humans can live. Billions of mice around the country are gassed each day so that cures can be found for diseases such as Alzheimer’s. But I can’t do it anymore. Every time I gassed a new batch of mice, I remembered the graphic novel we read in high school titled 'Maus.' Each gassing reminded me of Mauschwitz, and a tear would weld up in my eye as I remembered my pet rat Copernicus who would sit on my shoulder who later died from pneumonia at the ripe old age of four. Better to leave the gassing to the real researchers, the future doctors and surgeons of America. I’d rather write about my experiences as a survivor of the mouse colony concentration camps.


{Peace}

John