gettingittogether

I need to sell these horrible pants on Ebay. Does that interest you? Do you need a pair of women’s beige Nautica dress pants? I paid $100 for them and want at least $40. Please comment on this entry if you are in need of such pants. These pants are appropriate for the following events: <br><br>1. Going to the Gala for the Golf-for-black-kids-non-profit-to-which-your-husband-donates-money<BR><BR>2. Advertising pitch meetings<BR><BR>3. A job interview for a job you don’t want.<BR><BR>That’s all I can think up for these pants. As I said, please inquire about these stunning, beige ladies’ Nautica trousers.In other news, there is a new brand matrix in the works. It is so hard to get started on it, stay working on it, and finish it. I need motivation, stimulants, a promise that someone will enjoy my new brand matrix. I like them a lot. They shield many world secrets having to do with identity, culture, myth and life sustaining lies. They are symbols bound up in webs of significance, webs of meaning, spider webs in the attic, and the InterWebs. If you are interested in a brand matrix along with the beige pants, please also leave a comment about that. I will be sure to respond. 

This is what I wrote in my paper journal. I’m putting it online in case of terror:I watched him talk last night after winning. I felt that I wasn’t accepting it all — his name, “Hussein” on the big CNN screen at the bar, my friends screaming. I voted for him, but I could tell that I hadn’t let myself care enough because I’ve become so cynical. The macro-conditions of my adult youth have been lorded over by an imbecile, a small man any of us could have out-debated as 12 year olds. The war, our dwindling social services, Katrina videos…marriage equals one man and one woman… ad nauseum. And now I can’t accept that things will change. “Give it time,” someone told me at the bar.I’ve been getting pangs of it in the past day. I saw some photos on NYT of black people crying in their church. I teared, but it was for them — their feelings came through the image and I empathized. I imagined what it must be like to care, to be a black person who lived through the 40s, 50s, 60s, and see this. I empathized. And I think about his story, about growing up with his mom like I did, and about how his family must beam at him, and I feel empathetic for his family. I feel like I know what it must be like for them. But, I haven’t felt it, any of the hope, the optimism, for myself. I don’t know how it feels to be myself and feel like my reality is going to change… that the country is going to be more like how I think it should be. That teachers will be paid well, that I’ll have health insurance if I quit my job, blah blah. I want to sink my teeth into a juicy steak hologram of our future, but I feel like “I should know better.” “Don’t get your hopes up.” “Wait and see.” 

I realized yesterday that this blog could present information that I did not create, but rather edited or curated. I could have top 10 lists or “best of” lists — charts, graphs concerning all sort of important things. So I noted that I have (so far) chosen to use this forum as a place to talk about myself, not other things. What does this mean? Who are the people who enjoy writing about things other than themselves?  I mean, I get it. There is something fulfilling about writing a text book, a survey of ancient Roman art. (Will there now be an ad for ancient Roman art on my blog? PS: This is what David Foster Wallace did —  insert these little self conscious remarks inside his text. I remember. I think the urge has permeated our age.) But anyway, yes, when you write a book about ancient Roman art, you ARE someone. You have brandished your phallus-brain and the world has taken notice. YOU WIN. With autobiography, though, you have to assume someone cares about your life. You can always assume, however, that someone out there cares about Roman art.

So I was checking out Hipsterrunoff.com last night and felt anxious about my blog content. Am I cool enough? Postmodern and ironic enough to be the meta-meta-meta social media Internet sensation that attracts ads from the likes of American Apparel and Adult Swim? Am I even cool enough to get ads from those two outfits? I mean, they should want to advertise on my blog, right, because I mention them, am part of their target market, and, ostensibly, have a readership that also belongs to their target markets? I’m just all about anxiety lately. Subterranean anxiety. I won’t tell anyone today. Thanksgiving Day, that I may be a person who would benefit from anxiolitic drugs such as Klonipin or Valium. But again, am I even hardcore and cool enough to attract ads from Roche and Ely Lilly for mentioning Klonipin and Valium — twice?? Who can say. As my friend K. says, “How can one know?” It’s all about anxiety and self awareness. As for the latter, I think people like a self-aware voice. Many aren’t. I think people like to know what’s going on, namely, that this blog — this blog that is the first thing they wake up thinking about after a good night’s sleep thanks to Ambien, Valerian root, kava kava or whatever — is a location within a sales funnel. A large, engineered, wonderful, blessed sales funnel. I should make a shirt with a colorful funnel on it. It will say “Where are you in the sales funnel?”

Should I write about my coworkers, who may or may not be interesting to you? Let’s start. There’s Bloatee, one of my bosses. He’s fat, bald and waddles. He also has a short, brown goatee. It’s bearish. My friend thought of the name “Bloatee” while I was bitching about him one day and conflating his ginormity with the ginormous assholness he was exuding one day. When he’s not being a fat entitled asshole, I think of him as a soft fat fuzzy thing who just can’t keep himself from folly. He’s behind me now, in the print production room, scanning in photos of him and his frat friends back when he was more tolerably proportionate. I wonder: do the holidays have him caught in reverie? Poor Bloatee. <br>I was going to have the friend who anointed him with “Bloatee” meet him at our company Chrismas party, but on account of there being hardly any money to keep me in snacks and computer peripherals, the party was cancelled. Boo. 

I’m all cubed up and ready to blog the artificial walls off this bitch. I’m Brannigan, a writer at an ad agency, and betwixt churning out ads for spinal technology, shoes with wheels in the heels, IP-enabled communication networks and other material pollutants, I am going to blog — about me, about my cube, about my torrid agency relationships, about my ideas, about my cat, and anything else that doesn’t fit inside my company-subsidized MS Word documents.  Let’s begin. Today I found out that my dream of living in Mexico for a month next year will probably have to be put on hold, on account of me getting more work to do here at the agency. When there’s stuff to do, my dream of dropping out of society seems further and further away. “I have a dream,” said MLK, Jr. My dream is temporary apocalypse. The complete dissolution of social ties, my immersion into the contemplative life. Over the next few months, we will see if I will get to drop out and live it.