On That Ass

"Tangible evidences of prowess--trophies--find a place in men's habits of thought as an essential feature of the paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the raid, come to be prized as evidence of preeminent force. Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression."

Thorstein Veblen

A Life In Tiny Placards

100% Trash (Mixed Media, 2009)
Ryan Fitzgerald and Brendan Hill

Fitting with his stated mission of wanting to "poop in...everyone's...mouth," 100% Trash explores Fitzgerald's varied and lifelong fascination with the insatiable consumer and the inevitable result of his consumption: refuse. "The detritus we shed is more clearly indicative of who we are, socially, morally -- more intellectually honest about the self we inhabit than if we were to compose something with any consideration of style or forethought," frequent collaborator and noted thugonomicist Brendan Hill was quoted as saying in The Schooner Review.

Possibly originally titled An Happy Accident, suggestive of a smiling toddler, sitting proud in the bloated fecundity of his diaper, this pastiche (with materials as diverse as nonsense and falderal) is part of the "lazy and untalented" school that rose to prominence in the early 21st century. Combining a cultivated lack of ambition with the anarchic disinterest more commonly found in the glassy-eyed scrawlings of alcoholic mongoloids, 100% Trash is best understood as a culmination of Fitzgerald's callow period, also noted for works such as the conceptual piece, Playing Grand Theft Auto While Unemployed For Two Months. Unveiled as the centerpiece of the infamous "Saloon des refuses," the artist added to his reputation as a clear leader of the avant-garde by explaining his masterwork only in finger guns and mouth explosions.

While its intricacies continue to provoke debate among critics and scholars alike, the question of why it took more than one person to make this piece of shit is perhaps best left to history.

Strange Knows Strange

That summer he fell in love for the third time, by his own count, and this time it was to be the last. The feel of final love was like grass. Like plain green grass that sat on lawns and needed mowing. It was well regulated and even and never struck him to be portentous in any way whatsoever that he could notice. The penultimate love was something of the same, carrying with it not a hint of what was to come. But he had fallen in love for a third and final time and attended to the duties involved therein with the same motions he had learned from the previous two. Where to place the hands. How to cut with the knife and fork. The thing to say to the mother. Not so much the father, to whom there was never anything really to say that wasn't an apology.

They went to the movies and didn't talk about them afterward, which left him feeling scandalized, that the transition from silent darkness into pavement daylight didn't jostle opinion. She would not participate in his rites in this way. She would grapple with his hands in public, wrenching them away from each other, holding them firmly and sometimes tugging him to follow like a boy in mittens.

When it ended, the only answer was to be dead from it all, as this was his last love and now he knew it all along.

Given to overstatement, he threatened to drink himself into a coma, as if he even knew what that meant or would entail, what kind of slow organ-death that would require. Little things burst bit by bit, spring leaks that empty into the various pits and pails of the main-guts before seeping out into the glommy passageways and getting pushed back into the dense meats until they stopped squishing and contracting. The kind of real damage that can only result from something as misguided as tough self-love.

These are the reasons he didn't kill himself: The mockery to follow. The glib way he talked about dead acquaintances and their contributions to the culture, his culture, his immediate world. The thought that it might be met with indifference, derision, photoshopped pictures of himself with dick in hand, in mouth or worse, no one there to object or delete them. It was only the thought of more shame that pushed him forward, ever. Pressed on by the promise of paranoia, by the thought of suicide at all. It breathed a kind of surreal glow into the otherwise unremarkable life of a stranger, not so strange, but just alive as everyone else. Just as odd awake and unsure of the measurements of sleep.

Please Kill Me

RRRRRRRROCK AND ROLL!!!! CHECK LIST FOR THE NEW YOU:

[ ] MAKE BELIEVE A PERSONALITY

[ ] LISTENING TO YOUR MUSIC VERY LOUD

[ ] PUNCH THINGS THAT DO NOT PUNCH BACK

[ ] DRINKING ALL NIGHT

[ ] DRINKING WHISKEY ALL NIGHT

[ ] DRINKING CHEAP WHISKEY ALL NIGHT

[ ] SMOKING CIGARETTES

[ ] PRETENDING TO BE POOR

[ ] ACTUALLY BEING POOR

[ ] DO SEX WITH EVERYONE

[ ] SHOOT HEROIN INTO YOUR FRIENDS

[ ] PEE WHERE THERE IS NO TOILET

[ ] DIE

YOU ARE NOW A ROCK AND ROLL STAR

there was also a movie about a guy who was in jail and there was a guy outside of jail killing everybody

IN DELAWARE

I saw a movie once!
With, uh
there was a button
and if you pushed it, you got a million dollars
but it murdered, uh
it killed someone.
You push the button and you get a million dollars
but someone's gotta die.
A million dollars.
Man, I would push that button.
Are you serious? For a million dollars?
I don't fucking care. I'd push it.
I don't fucking care. A million dollars.
Man.
You could --
you could like, uh, live on that forever.
You could!
I'd get my mom set up, I'd buy her a house.
Take care of her.
In Delaware they got houses real cheap.
I'd buy her a house in Delaware
and they have these dirt bikes there
these dirt bike courses.
Man.
We'd be riding dirt bikes in front of the house
and just sitting outside
smoking weed.
In Delaware.

The Beers Got Bigger

First, the beers got bigger. It was hard to object. The mouths, wider than ever before, stretched out obscenely, forever twisting into new, more aerodynamic shapes; vented slats cut into the lip for easier pouring, mistakenly assuming it would ever see a glass. They were a boon. They explained their ease. With the bigger beer, more was less. Keep your cash. Feel the flow.

They always had nicknames before, loutish, undignified. Cold One wasn’t specific enough and Brewski vaguely ethnic. But tall boys, sounding like soldiers, stood solid in rows, towering over the past, nearly blocking it out entirely, dwarfed only by the intemperance of the still-menacing 40 ounces.

Commuter beers. For the train times. Your half-hour to be brown paper bag, slumping against your own weight, watching Westchester unfold, buildings shrinking down into chimney and grass, two story things. It wasn’t hard to become a regular.

It threw numbers into disarray, first of all. Six was a stealth twelve. You could say, “I’ve had four,” to people of a certain advancing age and leave them dumbfounded, dreaming of their own abandoned addictions, unsure of how much they smell on everyone’s breath as their stories become increasingly unhinged.

It became a society doubled in all respects, always punchy and full of gas, bloated and back on its heels. Fights broke out more often, with less incentive. Dry, dispassionate affairs, with enthusiasm a poor substitute for real anger, the punches were less accurate, but visually very impressive, every one a haymaker, every connection drawing twice as much blood.

Wine couldn’t keep up. Meant for meals, its existence buoyed only by palettes undiluted, it became a sauce component at best, but more often suffered the humiliation of being little more than a juice drink, boxed with straws attached in plastic wrapping. Sommeliers found themselves pushed into the streets, sitting in circles sniffing corks in rotting row houses. Even water was called into question.

One of the kind surprises of this new world was how the politicians reacted. The first round of boiler makers hit without much interest, or, at best, derision. And rightfully so. This wasn’t a smooth undertaking, drinking straight liquor on a national stage. Even the most poised, the ones that made everyone laugh on the late night talk shows, twisted and half-sneered as it went down. Short dark men in gray suits scuttling around, whispering percentages into their ears.

“Here’s to you!” they said, toasting from the top shelf.

They won with the percentages and forced an important concession from their opponents:

“Now I’ll eat anything.”

The Mustard

HARUSPICES, or

A LIFE IN THE ARTS

Holding a grudge,

a palmed pigeon,

head thumbed down under wing

but breast open

two thumbs through feathers thrust

in and under ribcage just like splitting a crab and you lay it out on the table.

Guts sigh on the altar;

sigh steam jarred in bottles, sold as souls

to tourists and bird-watchers. Kings

ask you to let little lungs sing

ask you to sift truth from bile,

aubergine honesty from the very ducts of the thing.

No talent

that’s innate

just a solid sense of self.

Rum-drunk at your desk all day,

finger picking through bird plop,

telling everyone else what to do with their lives.