People will sometimes ask why I'm such a depressing individual. "You can be a downer," I am, at times, reassured. There is cause. It is career grief. Unending. I used to work in a men's store (1978, post-disco reconstructrion era. Scars. Fading vistas.) for precisely the minimum wage, no commission on sales, which wouldn't have mattered, except the boss had this specially ancient sales method of having me approach the customer and then he takes over the sale, in all cases as if he was showing a whelp how a professional duds salesman does his manly, dignified profession. Hated the asshole. But this job had the double uglies for reasons beyond. It was the beauty contest nobody won, staged for all the flaming assholes in Pandora's box. I've had other shit jobs, but mark that one year as it's own ring of down under the boneyard. Poo. Bad carma. So unremitting.
But I'm not sad. No frail spirit is sad. Only tragically cuff marked. Also, the store I was selling, in essence selling, anyway, being used as a prop in an annoying process of obliging the customer, was far along in the process of slow failure, was sad, sad, sad. A vestigial cow pie left over from the practice of long term economics. A small store front business could last at least a century or more, if referenced by Meadville in 1970, not now, no how, but during my tasks measuring bulbous inseems, it was still possible for a business to lose for years. The local economy was worsening by the season, and it had been stable and lovely for so long, such a sweet social model of community and business. The store closed for good a few years after I got my cute ass fired. I was being a smart-A towards the end of that rancid working relationship, doing my utmost to piss off the dickhead owner of the failing little men's store. He was a prick. I was so puerile. It was a depressing coctail of outside circumstance and interpersonal small-minded meanness. But shit, you paid your nickel to see this side show...so here's more misery on a plate. Here's a deformity in a pickle jar.
The boss who had been making my life shitty as best he could short of being jailed had been rooked most cruelly by the original owner of the store. That fellow was a shrewd small business bastard of better days, when a small store front suit and tie and trouser shop could make a load. Horse choking. Big lurid sweaty wads. The prick I got to work with for a year had been, first, the clerk, then the manager of that same little men's shop. The luckier of the two men sold his manager the store, at a premium, and left for Florida. Not that it's funny because it's sad, but the US was fishtailing into now, leaving stores like the one I worked in wedged between the treads in a speeding muscle car's tire. But it's my bag of sour grapes, right here, and among juicy red and green ones, the transition from long term, to short term, ecnomics has meant the very reincarnation of failing small business, only more in franchised and calculated working models of clip joints. Makes ya' proud. Not. My career has been one of jocky on a horse that goes out of business.
Anyway, to sum up my experience as a name in labor statistics files, it's been shit. Just shit. But it's happens faster and faster. Makes ya' dizzy. I always am.
Let the fishing line in the River Yesteryear snap, so your birch bark canoe can take it's freedom in the rapids, and in the rare calm waters, too. Be light and agile. Take extra time to be a prince. Add cheesy existentialism, the new applied philosophy, to your skill set. Ride a simple wagon down hill.
"Yowza. Tweet tweet." said both Ben Bernie and Gordon Lish.
2.Forgot to tell you the basement. You should know the basement. Upper floors, too.
But below the men's shop I worked for a year and got my ass fired from, there was a perfect rectangle of space in sanintary commercial concrete, of clothing that had never been sold, or that was no longer rented. The old prick, who could, in my opinion, really used a boot in groin, had closed out his rental business (tuxedos, evening weear, franchised formal wear geared for store front chicken shit) though not before paying a separate mortgage to the prick who first owned the shop, the lousy pricks boss for thirty years, from junior high till he found the balls to buy the dump. The prick paid a separate mortgage for the rental franchise, along a much bigger one, for the store itself.
Here was teensy, cheap vindication. Revenge. Come uppance. I loved that basement. I was in fashion history Valhalla when I was pretending to clean and rearrange the basement. I'd tell the prick that I was going down there to perform some menial work on behalf of INVENTORY SACRED HOLY ELEMENAL MATTER OF BUSINESS HENCE GOOD GOOD GOOD. I'd hide down there trying on tuxedos and white evening jackets, also there were oversize apple caps like stereotype beatnicks once wore, also syphlitic young newspaper hawkers, and there were racks of brightly colored two and three piece business suits, which, in the 1940s, 50s and 60s were sold to African American customers. They had an industry term for those suits, but it can get you kicked out of the United Nations for saying it, so I'm not.
3.
A case could be made that African Americans were harmed by the fashion industry, as were women. By changing style each season, each year, people feel compelled to buy the latest. This business strategy keeps poorly educated people spending above their means, while separating them, aesthetically, from the conservative establishment, which favors consistent styling, which makes for better resource management, and ultimatley world domination.
The fashion industry favors skinny men, while hating women like a closet sadist. It forces women to worry about their weight, size, shape and all aspects of physical person, making her self conscious, and subjecting her to capitalist mind rape. But I'm a histrionic little fashion plate, in my polyesther sans-a-belt wrinkle free slacks.
Nightie.
But I'm not sad. No frail spirit is sad. Only tragically cuff marked. Also, the store I was selling, in essence selling, anyway, being used as a prop in an annoying process of obliging the customer, was far along in the process of slow failure, was sad, sad, sad. A vestigial cow pie left over from the practice of long term economics. A small store front business could last at least a century or more, if referenced by Meadville in 1970, not now, no how, but during my tasks measuring bulbous inseems, it was still possible for a business to lose for years. The local economy was worsening by the season, and it had been stable and lovely for so long, such a sweet social model of community and business. The store closed for good a few years after I got my cute ass fired. I was being a smart-A towards the end of that rancid working relationship, doing my utmost to piss off the dickhead owner of the failing little men's store. He was a prick. I was so puerile. It was a depressing coctail of outside circumstance and interpersonal small-minded meanness. But shit, you paid your nickel to see this side show...so here's more misery on a plate. Here's a deformity in a pickle jar.
The boss who had been making my life shitty as best he could short of being jailed had been rooked most cruelly by the original owner of the store. That fellow was a shrewd small business bastard of better days, when a small store front suit and tie and trouser shop could make a load. Horse choking. Big lurid sweaty wads. The prick I got to work with for a year had been, first, the clerk, then the manager of that same little men's shop. The luckier of the two men sold his manager the store, at a premium, and left for Florida. Not that it's funny because it's sad, but the US was fishtailing into now, leaving stores like the one I worked in wedged between the treads in a speeding muscle car's tire. But it's my bag of sour grapes, right here, and among juicy red and green ones, the transition from long term, to short term, ecnomics has meant the very reincarnation of failing small business, only more in franchised and calculated working models of clip joints. Makes ya' proud. Not. My career has been one of jocky on a horse that goes out of business.
Anyway, to sum up my experience as a name in labor statistics files, it's been shit. Just shit. But it's happens faster and faster. Makes ya' dizzy. I always am.
Let the fishing line in the River Yesteryear snap, so your birch bark canoe can take it's freedom in the rapids, and in the rare calm waters, too. Be light and agile. Take extra time to be a prince. Add cheesy existentialism, the new applied philosophy, to your skill set. Ride a simple wagon down hill.
"Yowza. Tweet tweet." said both Ben Bernie and Gordon Lish.
2.Forgot to tell you the basement. You should know the basement. Upper floors, too.
But below the men's shop I worked for a year and got my ass fired from, there was a perfect rectangle of space in sanintary commercial concrete, of clothing that had never been sold, or that was no longer rented. The old prick, who could, in my opinion, really used a boot in groin, had closed out his rental business (tuxedos, evening weear, franchised formal wear geared for store front chicken shit) though not before paying a separate mortgage to the prick who first owned the shop, the lousy pricks boss for thirty years, from junior high till he found the balls to buy the dump. The prick paid a separate mortgage for the rental franchise, along a much bigger one, for the store itself.
Here was teensy, cheap vindication. Revenge. Come uppance. I loved that basement. I was in fashion history Valhalla when I was pretending to clean and rearrange the basement. I'd tell the prick that I was going down there to perform some menial work on behalf of INVENTORY SACRED HOLY ELEMENAL MATTER OF BUSINESS HENCE GOOD GOOD GOOD. I'd hide down there trying on tuxedos and white evening jackets, also there were oversize apple caps like stereotype beatnicks once wore, also syphlitic young newspaper hawkers, and there were racks of brightly colored two and three piece business suits, which, in the 1940s, 50s and 60s were sold to African American customers. They had an industry term for those suits, but it can get you kicked out of the United Nations for saying it, so I'm not.
3.
A case could be made that African Americans were harmed by the fashion industry, as were women. By changing style each season, each year, people feel compelled to buy the latest. This business strategy keeps poorly educated people spending above their means, while separating them, aesthetically, from the conservative establishment, which favors consistent styling, which makes for better resource management, and ultimatley world domination.
The fashion industry favors skinny men, while hating women like a closet sadist. It forces women to worry about their weight, size, shape and all aspects of physical person, making her self conscious, and subjecting her to capitalist mind rape. But I'm a histrionic little fashion plate, in my polyesther sans-a-belt wrinkle free slacks.
Nightie.
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