Procrastination Usurpation

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go flying past.”
- Douglas Adams

I have this thesis I’m supposed to be working on. Actually, I’ve been supposed to be working on it since May of ’05. All I have to do is write the damn thing and I have my Masters in English. Instead, I find other ways to pass the time. Sometimes it’s music frenzies … I spend hours each day listening to music (typically the Stripes, Petty, or Floyd … recently the Strokes and the Black Keys have gotten their fair share of time) and playing the acoustic. Sometimes it’s reading. Lately, in fact, it’s reading. Here’s a list of the books I have ordered, or have on order awaiting shipment, just in the last three weeks:
1. Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey - read
2. No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy) – currently reading
3. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) – read “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, currently reading “Life, The Universe, and Everything.”
4. Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy (Robert Anton Wilson) – in transit
5. “The Book of the SubGenius: The Sacred Teachings of J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs” (J.R. Dobbs) – in transit
6. "THUNDERSQUEAK" (Ramsey Dukes) – in transit
7. “Nausea” (Jean-Paul Sartre) – in transit
Because in the end – why do the responsible and desperately necessary thing? Why not get out of your lame, purpose-of-life defying, spirit-crushing cubicle job and come home pissed off to rebel against the thing that might actually help you? The hell with you, thesis. I don’t need you! Makes sense, don’t it?

On the subject of books, I had to take all mine down off the bookshelf so I could put said shelf in the living room now that the Eternal has fled to Carolina. I needed something to take up wall space and serve as a decorative object. So now the books are sitting on the floor in my bedroom in massive piles stacked against the wall. It’s amazing how much perspective changes with the packaging. For instance … while sitting on the bookshelf there seemed to be a large but manageable number of texts. In piles on the floor, however, there seems to be a Barnes and Noble in the making. It’s a mountain of books – which brings me to another problem I’ve been dealing with. This apartment, while immaculate, beautiful, expensive, and beyond anything I deserve to be living in, suffers from a bad case of squatters and freeloaders. These has always been tan colored spiders, and now that the weather is getting warmer I’m dealing with ants as well. How this ties in with books is that I discovered an ant struggling up the southeast face of Book Mountain the other day. I had to pause out of respect for this brave insect as he fought courageously to scale what was a particularly steep and dangerous wall – one of the lesser advised routes to undertake when climbing Book Mountain. He was quite the adventurer, and I gave credit where it was due. Then I called him a mother fucker and killed him with a tissue and flushed him down the toilet. His epic struggle won’t be one for the ages on account of his easily extinguished mortality.

Speaking of these freeloaders, I killed two more spiders last night.

Here’s one for the record books. I’d be willing to bet good money that in the 60-year history of the company I work for, they’ve never been asked to sell their scrap plastic to a New York fashion photographer who planned to use it in a shoot for Vogue. That’d be a safe bet, and I’d be likely to win some money if anyone was silly enough to take me up. Until now! A girl named Morgan called me from New York City with the aim of purchasing several hundred pounds of brightly colored plastic pellets for Piers Hammer, a bigshot photographer doing a photo-shoot for Vogue that somehow revolved around shoes, but required junk cars, boxes of recycled paper, scrap metal … and yes, recycled plastic as well. I’ve gotta get this one past my employers, but I am prepared to go to any lengths necessary to get this deal done. Simply put – I want the bragging rights. Guess what, plastics veterans … your stats might be better than mine, but when was the last time your material was featured in Vogue? Oh, it wasn’t? Strange. On top of this, I plan to get a copy of the specific Vogue so I can hang the photos up in my cubicle. And I will incorporate this into my resume as well. Job highlights: Sold material to major NYC fashion photographer for spread in Vogue.

There’s a marketing angle there, too. My company will be the only plastic compounders/recyclers that I’m aware of who can say their material was aesthetically pleasing enough to be used in a fashion shoot. It might be a potential segue into a whole new business … raw materials as fashion statement! My company could be pioneers in leading a total revolution of art, spitting on old mediums like paint and photography and literature, and making it hip to simply walk around with a handful of water clear polycarbonate injection grade V-0 pellets. I could be a billionaire art mogul someday, and you’ll see me on TV talking about “in those days plastic recycling was a dirty game run by the suits. We didn’t dig a world where paper pushers were in charge of re-using the earth’s resources so we jumpstarted this plastic revolution, and, man, it really took off. We had indie bands doing long jams about polypropylene regrind, and these cats would do freeform solos symbolizing whether it was homopolymer or copolymer, and punk choruses just screaming out what the IZOD was over and over. And, man, we’d organize these rallies where we’d stand outside a compounder’s facility and just throw handfuls of prime virgin high-density polyethylene at whoever walked in and out of the building, and we’d all shout things like “Stuff yourself in a gaylord box, suit!” or “Extrude this, yuppy!” It was wild times, man, and things really took off when we got them to start building entire cities from high-impact polystyrene. Turns out nobody wanted to live there, but, man, the spirit of it was the victory. And, man, you know what? The victory was the spirit.”

You laugh. Don’t. All artistic revolutions start out as unlikely oddities. I’ll show you all.

Thank Fire that the Sabres will be playing Phili in the first round. Horror had me choked almost to the point of bucket kicking at the merest hint that we might have to face New Jersey in the first round. I won’t mind playing them so much if we meet in the second or third round – at least then we’ll have a series or two under our jock strap. But for now we’ve avoided that death trap, and the league’s hottest team, backed by the league’s hottest goaltender, will probably be making short work of the overrated Rangers.

Before reading the following, please re-visit “deadlines” epigram…

Petty was supposed to have his tour dates announced last week, or so it was written. In keeping with the whole theme of this “Highway Companion” era … deadlines were not met, information was not relayed, fans continue to wait patiently. Rumored album, rumored tour, nothing tangible. I grow weary of this, but still I wait. I’m starting to wonder if that Tom Petty is Dead website wasn’t on to something.

And now, for completely non-existent reasons, I give you an unsolicited “Top 5” list of the ugliest celebrities.
5. Hillary Swank – mannish features, and a swirling maelstrom where her mouth should be are NOT becoming aesthetics.
4. Julia Roberts – A swirling maelstrom of her own.
3. 50 Cent – glazed over eyes that scream “brain is not home” and teeth that put horses to shame.
2. Oprah – The woman’s head looks like somebody stuck a tire pump in her mouth and had at it.
1. Molly Shannon – A square face that not even God could love. May it perish in fire.

In summation, we have seen, then, how Mike’s thesis continues to be pointlessly delayed, and additionally how Book Mountain has proven a dangerous and even deadly obstacle for reckless climbers. Moreover, we have examined how recycled plastic can and likely will have a significant society-wide impact on contemporary culture, while giving thanks to Fire for its deliverance of the Flyers as our first-round playoff opponent. Ultimately, while lamenting Petty’s continued inability to deliver new product and examining aesthetically disappointing celebrities, we left open the questions of Supermassive black holes as they relate to baby ducks and the various usages of amphibious vehicles including as potential conveyers of sustenance to the elderly (meals on amphibious mechanisms!) or even as paid archeologists. Perhaps next time, chums.

A Presto