I am a bad blogger. Bad.

I've been scrambling for freelance work and I've finally hit my stride, so that's good.

Now, blog:

Ruby was playing dress up today with... a crutch.

She was putting on scarves, underwear and old baby clothes on this crutch.

Here's her monologue: "Yes, don't worry Mrs. Jones... our clothes will cover your boobies AND your vagina. Our clothes are very good."


Also:
I am working on an animated short, starring none other than our good friend the Nude Fat Man Eating Cookie Dough. A commercial producer friend of mine forwarded Mr. Nude's entry on to an animator, and he's a fan. So we developed a six minute script, and it looks like it's happening.

Which terrifies me. I don't know why. But it does.

So I got shit-canned.

Meh.

It happend Thursday. My spidey-senses had been tingling for a while (not exactly an amazing feat of prescience in the wretched whore shitbag of an economy we are living under, I know), so I was packed and was gathering work examples for my portfolio for a few days before the I was touched inapproriately by the Invisible Hand.

I had sent an email to the person who manages assignments, a "what the fuck, woman. Give me some work" email on Wednesday (I was pleasanter than that. I am not a barbarian, after all). I didn't hear back, and me being a genius, thought that didn't bode well. Then Thursday I received a suspicious meeting maker to "catch up" and I packed the last of my shit.

Sure enough, the HR hachet woman was milling around outside, and the creative services manager was crying.

Jesus.

As reported to me by my boss and creative services manager, It was:

-- A numbers thing
-- Nothing personal
-- heartbreaking
-- VERY hard on them

And that I was:

-- so very talented
-- and so very funny


Well, gee. Thanks. So I guess funny and talented is not part of the new vision. Interesting. Keep 'em guessing. I like that.

People have been coming out of the woodwork with leads, encouragement, contacts, ideas. I'm not worried about finding a job, but it's still insanely stressful.

Poor Paula is cranking on my portfolio like a trooper (Mary a web designer if you want a portfolio site fast). I am fretting and pacing. That's my job. Last night some friends came over and I got a little stink-eyed on red wine. That is also my job.

And truth be told, my nerd futurist side is sort of excited. I'm a few month shy of forty; I'm old enough to have some sort of appreciation of what the world has been and I'm young enough that I still have enough flexiabilty to be in the thick of the changes the world is going through. Ten years from now is not something I can imagine. That's cool.

I dunno. In the next couple of days I'll be posting my sure-to-be-awesome portfolio (Paula is the greatest of all time), and the hunt begins.

I've already picked up a little freelance assignment, basically writing gags for a series of web videos. I'm going to try to experiment with cautious optimism and realistic positivity.

In the meantime, I'm going to the plasma clinic.

My grandmother's religion, as reimagined by Millions of Dead Cops

I came across a truly awe inspiring religious website, Death to the World. It's a the site of a Russian Orthodox Hardcore 'zine based here in Cali, and it is blowing my poor cracked little mind.

I was raised Russian Orthodox, and the church I attended was more Russian than Orthodox. The joke was Russian Orthodox Christian, in that order.

The Russian Orthodox Church I grew up in was full of pinched faced little old ladies (one of whom spit on the exposed toes of my then-sister-in-law, who had the satanic-inspired chutzpah to wear sandals in church, driving the men to distraction with her ingrown toenail). It was sighing about a Russia that never existed by people who had never been there, or were last there when there was a Tzar and St. Petersburg was called Petrograd.

The kids were pale, puffy kids from the Avenues in black derby jackets, -- the official jacket of Bay Area rockers/stoners/low rider/cholos, c. 1982 -- with discreet AC/DC patches. They spoke with Russian accents, despite being born in California.

We suffered through lent, through liturgies and vespers chanted in Slavonic, through weird feast days on which you weren't allowed to eat anything. It was old, old, old, not American, not fun, kind of seedy and tired.

It was not punk rock.

That's why this site is so jarring.

Interestingly enough, two members of the best Stoner Metal band in the universe, San Jose's very own Sleep were Orthodox monks at different times.

Now, the monastic aspect of the Orthodox faith IS deeply profound and aspects of the theology (which I didn't pick up on until after I stopped going to church) emphasize a break with the world. It's sort of Augustine, but more Russian -- the world of human is damaged and broken, so human institutions are naturally corrupt. We are all sinners, no getting around it, but we can indirectly experience the holy through reflection. That's why Russian churches tend to be so otherworldly; to force a conceptual break with the world.

I've met a few monks growing up, mostly at a church camp run by a more liberal branch of the Church (more liberal? Hard to believe, I know) and they were the real deal: beatific guys with ZZ Top beards leading simple lives. I remember one was actually a Romanov and a wicked first base man in softball. He played in his hassock.

It's interesting that someone Orthodox had the idea to draw the in the teen angst rejection of the world (I'm being flip. I'm sure the kids that are involved are smart and earnest) into an ancient spiritual traditional.

Who knows how it would have affected me if someone had made that connection when I was listening to hardcore. I might be sporting a ZZ Top beard right now.

Innocence, enemy of Tact

Kids are watching Shrek.

Ruby: "Dad, you remind me of Shrek."

Me: "Oh, yeah? Why?"

Ruby: "Well, Shrek is fat... but you're not fat."

Me: "I'm sorta fat."

Ruby: "No! No, you're not!"

Owen: "You're the best!"

Ruby: "Anyway, Shrek is ugly. But you're not ugly."

Me: "So, if I'm not fat and not ugly, what qualities do I have that reminds of Shrek?"

Ruby: "Other... things... that are part of his character."

This is why I pace.

I'm in LA today. I'm in LA, and not at home, where I should be.

I mean, I should be in LA, because me being in LA is directly related to me bringing home some money every two week.

But I don't like it, none the less. It's been a long trip. And at home, contractors have started: they've ripped out the water heater, torn up the back yard (dug a pit actually) start tearing things up and chopping things down. Cleverly, I'm sure.

And I'm in LA while Paula deals with all this. This makes me anxious.

I am ESPECIALLY anxious, my beloved reader, ESPECIALLY anxious because of the phone call.

The phone rings, and I waddle out the studio and it's Paula.

PAULA: "Um, I need to talk to someone RIGHT now because I am going to explode if I don't. I just talked to the contractor, and he found... he found out that...."

ME: "...."

PAULA: "He said that the surveyor said OUR LOT HANGS THREE FEET OVER INTO THE NEIGHBOR'S THE ENTIRE LENGTH".

This is math and money. This a work stoppage, with a starting from scratch sort of vibe to it. Like new plans, new money, new ways of acquiring money, woe, pain, suffering and no hot water for a long time.

PAULA: "We going to have get new drawing, new permits, we're going to have to pay for the work done, we're going to have to live under a tarp. We're not going to get a new bathroom. We're going to lose our side garden. We're...." (YOU SEE WHAT I WAS UP AGAINST YES? YES?)

ME (LAMELY): "Could we get... a new surveyor? Like a second opinion?"

PAULA: "Maybe. Maybe we do that. That could be something we do."

We're doing something. So, good. We are affecting our destiny.

We aren't doing shit.

I wander the hallway of the production company stunned at the instantaneous total claim on my life this data had (okay, I'm being a baby. But it had just happened, okay?)

FUCKFUCKFUCK

I looked at a fake lizard attached to the wall (for whatever reason this production company has a Mexican village interior design scheme) for a minute to gather myself and get back to work, when my phone rang:

PAULA: "Nevermind. The Contractor misunderstood. We're fine."

Oh, what the fuck????

That's a bad magic trick, Mr. Contractor Man.

Take it away, Senator Davis:

The no-sleep silent irrational passive aggression blues

I am in New York right now. Just checked into my hotel and I have a fucking bastard eyeball headache.

I got up at 5 am to walk to BART to catch the train to get me to my 8 am flight.

I was in coach, and foolishly gave up my aisle seat so a pair of young Quebecois in love could sit next together and coo about poutine.

I was now plopped in the center seat and to my left is a surly hunking flat-nosed bastard. Actually I know nothing about him, other than he dropped his newspaper under the seat and did NOT give up his seat to the Quebecois couple. So he is obviously Hitler in hell. And I was so, so tired. I can't sleep on planes.

So, I've had five hours of sleep deprived resentment fester in my core by the time the plane lands.

And this is an actual thought I had when I noticed the bastard to my right not craning his neck to see the Manhattan skyline like everyone else on the plane:

"You're not looking out the window to see Manhattan so you can read USA Today? What a goddamn asshole."

I didn't say it out loud, and I'm glad I didn't. I'd look sort of insane.

Our new corporatist state!! Warning: might be dull.

First of all, I don't know what I'm talking about. It's just a bunch of half understood concepts jumbled together at 11:00 pm.

And I don't make many political posts, because they're usually pretty shrill and they aren't interesting after a week or so (and I am writing for the generations to come to show them what it meant to be fuckin' classy), but dang, the 700 billion is some crazy ass shit.

It's just so bonkers that we're on the edge of becoming a corporatist socialist state, and it's not really being discussed in those terms. And just so we all know what I mean by corporatist, I DON'T mean it in the sense of the folk "EXXON BLOOD FOR AMERIKKKA PIGS" neologism that a hippie can paint on a large puppet.

No, I mean historic corporatism, the economic system of Fascist Italy, and an way of organizing capital that exists in some lesser form in more or less every modern economy. In corporatism, the state might become the main client or minority partner in firms that serve a crucial role in the functioning of the state (this vastly simplified). In pure corporatism, industries are organized into cartels called corporations, and firms, while still owned privately or by shareholders, act as much as agents of government planning as they do as independent actors pursuing their own interests. Firms are guaranteed a certain share of government business, and the capitalists are allowed profit, while risk is absorbed. The government controls capital through licenses, patronage and in some cases, direct partnership.

It's interesting, because we have under Bush seen a social form of corporatism, in the form of Faith Based Initiatives. In pure corporatism, the state, through a process of licensing and deputization of social, religious, or popular organizations as actors of state policy, effectively co-opts their leadership by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy.

So: profit and "good" risk stays private, while real risk is assumed by the collective. It's socialism for rich people. And like any economic system where the government attempt to fill in the gaps, reliable economic data gets smothered and we end up a lot more blind about about the state of the economy, local capital needs, even sociological trends. A bubble forms, it pops, everyone is screwed. An extreme example of this is the U.S.S.R. A more mild example was is the current Japanese economy, which has never really recovered from the 90s doldrums.

Now, outside garage sales, there are no pure free markets in the world. There are no pure socialist states. The people of Earth all must follow some degree of regulation, just as they all pay taxes and receive some benefit, whether simple capital improvement, or services, or full cradle-to-grave social benefit. Good, bad, what the hell, it's the modern state and it's here.

And while we throw around a lot of rhetoric about being the freest market in the world, we've been, de facto, a mildly corporatist state since the advent of modern capitalism.

So, here's what I'm thinking: let's stop pretending, Republicans, that your party represents borderline anarchism, and Democrats, that your party has anything to do with Jeffersonian anything. Let's drag our corporatism out into the open, and see where it leads us.

Vive Il Corporativismo!

Crap, that was long and boring.

Och, Chewie, we hardly knew ye. But then you bit a kid like a dumbass.

Chewie is going back to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, because while he's perfectly lovely to Paula and me, he is an asshole to every other living being on the planet.

Not entirely true. He is tolerant of our kids, other than growling at them from time and time and nipping at Owen.

So, wait. Maybe he isn't good to have around the house, since he views our still smallish children as growl-at-able.

The incident that led to his banishment wasn't even entirely his fault. Owen and his little friend were antagonizing him with potato chips or cheese puffs or something, basically baiting him with treats and snapping them away at the last minute. Owen's friend put his face up to Chewie's, put a puff on his own nose, and said -- haha -- get the treat. Now, if you are attuned to the rhythms of small boys and small dogs, you know what happened next, and you are rubbing your nose right now. The kid was okay, but it was a little too close to disaster.

My heart is heavy, because I do love that little dog. If we had a barn, I'm sure he'd be a champion ratter. But our kids are too prone to casual scientific enquiry for a dog like Chewie. He's not up to the task of being a constant experimental subject.

Sigh.

I am not MArk Hausmann

At Safeway, they issue these little discount cards to customers. You save a few cents here and there.

My card has long since gone the way of my library card, gym membership card and social security card, folded into some eldritch aperture of space/time. Or my sock drawer.

Anyway, I don't NEED my card, because I can punch in my phone number, the same phone number I've had for ten years.

Here's the problem: I have Mark Hausmann's phone number, or he has mine. And so I face a cheery, "Have a nice day, Mr. Hausmann" every time I use cash to buy something at Safeway.

If I use my cash card, my name shows up in larger letters at the bottom of the receipt in purple dot matrix glory, so I get a cheery "Have a nice day, Mr. Miles!" (Miles, Mills. Close enough.)

The thing about Safeway is that there are lots of folks working there who have a hard time with Germanic names, specifically the "au" dipthong. So, I find myself correcting the pronunciation of another man's name. (I feel an profound connection with Hausmann because of this. I am joined in his battle, and I feel I know him through carrying his burden.)

The couple of times I've brought this up to the clerk, I've been met with the sort of calm, scan of my eyes that tells me "You're kidding me, right? Do you know if I leave my station I am breaking several Union rules and the paperwork involved...I'm not even sure that paperwork exists. This is some marketing voodoo from corporate, and down here, where we sell groceries and sundries, that sort of backend database wizardry is just so out of my ken and job description that I can only stare at you like this, like I know that you know that I know you should know better, Mr. Hausmann."

So, at Safeway, I'm Mr. Hausmann. Unless I use my cash card. Then I'm Mr. Miles.

39 years of this shit, and I still don't have no goddamn Bentley.

Where is that shit? I'm 39. THIRTY NINE. Christ was dead and resurrected by this age and me? Today I was looking at D&D dice online, because it would be funny to get some. THIRTY NINE.

I was thinking about renting Heavy Metal the movie. THIRTY NINE.

I couldn't read my notes from a meeting at work, because I had drawn pictures all over them. THIRTY NINE.

I'm staying up late because I'll all like... no one tells BABY when he's going to bed. THIRTY NINE.

Thirty nine.

That's like fifty.

Oh, fuck OFF with your goddamn composer bust.

Unless you are a piano playing motherfucker, why have a goddamn composer bust in your house? Really?
As I was walking to work this morning, I passed this crappy office furniture store and in one of their displays they had the giant bronze bust of Beethoven. What the fuck? What. The. Fuck.

Busts like that are good if you are Roman or a Howard Hawks-style forties wise guy that keeps a bust of Longfellow around the office to toss your fedora on in a gently mocking fashion.

Of course, in my belief systems Fedora = MASSIVE douche, so yeah, we’re back to zero on the Mills Douchebag Scale.

I think part of my problem with the composer bust thing is there like seven guys that appear over and over again: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Chopin (for your piano playing types), Tchaikovsky, and I dunno, Brahms or something. Never someone like Schumann or Rachimaninoff. Probaby because they lack bitching locks.

Who knows, I might be into a Satie, or Debussey, or Ravel, or a nice Varese. Someone weird. Stravinsky! That'd be a cool bust, if only because people might confuse him for Groucho Marx.

When I was a kid we had a lumpy Beethoven and a tiny Chopin. (Sister was a piano player.) The Chopin was the perfect size for jamming the marzipan eyes of chocolate rabbits into. We may have a had a Tchaikovsky with a broken nose, though I may be confused.

I guess what bothered me most about the Beethoven statue was it was in an office furniture store. What is that supposed to say about you, oh mid-level sales manager, that you have a Beethoven head? What Beethoven brought to symphonic expression, I hope to emulate in my spreadsheets. When I look upon Ludwig Von, I find the power within to crunch numbers with nuance and power. Dude was motherfucking DEAF.

"Hey, Bob. Before we dive into the Q4 numbers, how about we spin the Eroica Symphony, just to set the mood."

I'm an ass.

Put me down on the murmur side of the column.

I share a large MAXI-Cube with three women. We each have our own decent-sized alcove with our own little cell and bookshelf that we can arrange our little fillips to individuality.

This is fine. True, I am an anti-social swine and my days are mostly spent weaving elaborate revenge fantasies against my enemies (people who speak loudly on the train, or the tourists riding the top level double-decker bus who dare peer at me… you know, ENEMIES, but these three women are modicums of tolerance. They are always considerate, kind and appropriately friendly with me, a sort of vile Quasimodo-like bastard. Nice, nice people. Very charitable.

But here’s the thing; they whisper. Not about me. About work. This is because, I think, they work in a different department then I do, and do not want to throw their garbage in my yard. They also share managerial duties over a fairly large group of people, and so obviously and correctly must maintain discretion.

But goddamn, the whispering gets to me. If you have ever lived with mice in your walls, you know the feeling; the high frequency skittering that picks at your brain when you’re at the edge of sleep.

I’m all for murmuring. Murmuring happens at the frequency of conversation, so it doesn’t ring some reptilian brain bell, alerting you to the fact you are about to swarmed and eaten alive by scores and scores of fangy little mice. (They go for the eyes first, you know). Murmurs don’t rustle, or twitter. They rrrrollll and bump.

If I were a spy or a cat thief, I’d murmur.

But here’s the rub, and something tending toward a point (as close as we’re going to get in this post): how do you, or do you even, enter that conversation.

“Hey yers, just a point of style… could you murmur? Sort of like this: murmurmurmurmur? I respect the gravity of your communications, but the hissing found at the peaks of your delivery has on occasion shown me the shores of insanity.”

Seems churlish to me.

Also, C., a fellow copywriter, laughs very hard at his own jokes. It bums me out.

Four rubber doughnuts of death!!!!

At the market today, I was idly looking at my car tires and noticed two were one mystery brand and the other two were another brand that I had never, ever heard of. Then I realized I couldn't remember how I got them and when.

I am riding on four instances of unknown.

What the hell? What if they're made out of compressed laundry lint or something?

I dropped my goddamn phone in the toilet.

How's that for a fine howdy do? Meanwhile, the California coast has been lashed -- LASHED -- with hurricanish wind and horizontal rain, and I kept my Motorola as dry as a sparrow's egg in the nest. The worst of the Pacific couldn't moisten my phone, but somehow I can't negotiate indoor plumbing.

There is something deeper here, something about the violence the civilization metes out on the human soul being fiercer than the worst degradations of nature (the toilet being symbolic of the civilization). Maybe not, though.

All I know is I dropped my goddamn phone in the toilet.

A must-see film!!!

Who the FUCK came up with the phrase, "A must-see film!!!"? It's not even language.

What fascist impulse is driving the yahoo that uses this phrase. I don't have to must see anything, you ass. I got shit to do.

Speaking of ass, specifically mine, my wife has entered my overweight ass in a HALF-MARATHON (13 miles! 20.9 kilometers! 11.3 nautical miles!) taking place this february. 13 miles! One three! Lots of miles!

This worries me.

How I should be doing things.

Looking accomplished is the way to go.

Wear your clothes loose, and orally fidget with a unlit Schimmelpennick, moving it to the corners of your mouth when you talk (don’t take it out!).

Walk slow, stop and look at random things in the street and then shake your head in a world-weary and bemused fashion. Carry an unloaded shotgun and a glass of Pimm’s everywhere. Particularly the video store.

At the video store, ask the clerk if they have popular American films dubbed into other languages, or are at least subtitled.

Shake your head in a world-weary and bemused fashion when the kid shrugs. Go to the Dairy Queen, order a banana split and douse the thing in Cognac. It’s up to you if you want to light it on fire. If the clerk is attractive, wink at them. Come in next week and give him or her a limoge box filled with cocaine as a tip.

Eat at quiet bistros, reflecting on the beautiful sadness of life. Get drunk and order everything en flambe, even the bread. Sigh, then get a hot lather shave from the waiter.

My should, life is better now, isn’t it?

Pomade things. Pomade your hair straight back and encourage your teeth to buck out. Wear colognes made from things not generally acknowledged to smell all that nice, like old polo mallets.

Take tango classes, and insist on carrying a bowie knife in your teeth as you dance.

Carry sheet music, Debussey, and ask grocery clerks if they can read music, and if they do, ask them to hum a few bars of Debussey. “I am willing to pay whomever to have this service performed.”

Bring a saber to Home Depot and hack away at two-by-four made of exotic wood. Explain: “I’ll pay for this. I enjoy the smell of steel on teak. Reminds of my time in the legion.”

That’s the life for me.

How I should be doing things.

Looking accomplished is the way to go.

Wear your clothes loose, and orally fidget with a unlit Schimmelpennick, moving it to the corners of your mouth when you talk (don’t take it out!).

Walk slow, stop and look at random things in the street and then shake your head in a world-weary and bemused fashion. Carry an unloaded shotgun and a glass of Pimm’s everywhere. Particularly the video store.

At the video store, ask the clerk if they have popular American films dubbed into other languages, or are at least subtitled.

Shake your head in a world-weary and bemused fashion when the kid shrugs. Go to the Dairy Queen, order a banana split and douse the thing in Cognac. It’s up to you if you want to light it on fire. If the clerk is attractive, wink at them. Come in next week and give him or her a limoge box filled with cocaine as a tip.

Eat at quiet bistros, reflecting on the beautiful sadness of life. Get drunk and order everything en flambe, even the bread. Sigh, then get a hot lather shave from the waiter.

Life is better now, isn’t it?

Pomade things. Pomade your hair straight back and encourage your teeth to buck out. Wear colognes made from things not generally acknowledged to smell all that nice, like old polo mallets.

Take tango classes, and insist on carrying a bowie knife in your teeth as you dance.

Carry sheet music, Debussey, and ask grocery clerks if they can read music, and if they do, ask them to hum a few bars of Debussey. “I am willing to pay whomever to have this service performed.”

Bring a saber to Home Depot and hack away at two-by-four made of exotic wood. Explain: “I’ll pay for this. I enjoy the smell of steel on teak. Reminds of my time in the legion.”

That’s the life for me.

Brother Theodore

If you're a regular reader, and have wondered what I'm like in person, this isn't to far off:



My favorite Brother Theodore quote:
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sincere wish that immediately after my death, my head be severed from my body, and that it be replaced by a bouquet of broccoli. It's the artist in me."

People want me dead. Why? Because I'm DANGEROUS.

Got my first death threat email the other day. Man, was that exciting!

Here it is:

SUBJECT: I DON’T DEATH THREATEN PEOPLE

BODY: Dude. I am not playign. You are going to stop giving me grief.
There are some fools in eugene, oregon.
Stop. You’ll be sorry

My goodness! I was mildy creeped out when I first read it, then, sad to say, wondering if this guy was a regular reader of my blog. Then I saw a bright, shiny object and promptly forgot the whole thing until this morning, when I received the following email”


SUBJECT: it's obivious that I am an idiot sometimes

BODY: You are funny shit, and I am letting fools work me (not you, I don't even know you)
So I'll learn to deal with it, punch my wall, or just leave it alone all together, but I won't send threatening
e-mails to strangers.

I fucked up


So, I can no longer say I’m on someone’s death wish. And my life is a lot poorer because of it.

At least I'm "funny shit".

I will remember this date as long as I live

Historical dates, like July 4, 1776, or October 14, 1066, are actually the mark of a half-life, some dialectical mid-point in the shift from one historical trend to another.

I recently experienced a reminder of historical flux, thanks to an email thread. See below:

From Peter C. to Greg Mills
Subject: Metal!
10/13/07

Both Boris and Om at Amoeba SF tomorrow at 2:00. Interested? Lost me cell (and with it your number). Our house phone is xxx-xxx-xxxx

Best, Peter

***

From Greg Mills to Peter C.
Subject: RE: Metal!
10/13/07

Pete --

Dude, I can't. I gotta take the kids to a 5K Fun Run, then we have to go to a playdate.

Mills