i've often pondered the fine line between genius and insanity and i've always been a big fan of lists and collections. last week i finished reading Donald Antrim's piece in the New Yorker after starting and stopping it a few times because it's not exactly uplifting reading first thing in the morning
but his list cut & pasted below is a good one.
Depression, hysteria, melancholia, nervousness, neurosis, neurasthenia, madness, lunacy, insanity, delirium, derangement, demonic possession, black humors, black bile, yellow bile, the black dog, the blues, the blue devils, a brown study, the vapors, a funk, a storm, the abyss, an inferno, Hell, a pain syndrome, stress, an anxiety disorder, lack of affect, an affective disorder, a mood disorder, panic, loneliness, bad wiring, a screw loose, a mercurial temperament, irritability, schizophrenia, unipolar disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit disorder, borderline personality disorder, laziness, pain, rumination, grief, mourning, malingering, unhappiness, hopelessness, sadness, low spirits, invalidism, despondency, dysthymia, detachment, disassociation, dementia praecox, neuralgia, fibromyalgia, oversensitivity, hypersensitivity, idiocy, an unsound mind, cowardice, obstinacy, apathy, recalcitrance, spleen, a broken heart, battle fatigue, shell shock, self-pity, self-indulgence, self-centeredness, weakness, withdrawal, distraction, distemper, a turn in the barrel, a break in a life narrative, bad thoughts, bad feelings, coming undone, coming apart, falling apart, falling to pieces, willfulness, defiance, thoughts of hurting oneself or others, the thousand-yard stare, craziness, rage, misery, mania, morbidity, genius, suicidality, suicidal ideation, aggression, regression, decompensation, drama, breakdown, crackup, catatonia, losing one’s mind, losing one’s shit, losing one’s way, wasting away, psychic disorganization, spiritual despair, shame, raving, the furies, a disease, an enigma, a tragedy, a curse, a sin, and, of course, psychosis—suicide, in the past and in our time, has been called many things.
Even when the hair grows back it’ll still be 3:33 and in my time zone it will never really be 4:20 bro my clock runs slow or fast depending on how much horseshit is in the room and on hallmark holidays half past a monkey's ass inverse proportionally even directly it was psychosomatically suggested to me by a pharmaceutical company and i said i see the consumer feedback focus groups came up with another spectacular name for the thing placebonoyoudiunt placebo yes they did if you think it isit is a high resolution digital photo of a black & white line drawing of an analog watch inked seven layers deep in the skin no more no less 3 x 1 = the magic number
the white knuckle commutes kinda suck up a few extra calories but they're nowhere near as exhausting as the endless conversations speculations calculations about the weather.
this shit makes me appreciate a normal commute to work kinda like getting kicked in the balls makes me appreciate all the times I didn't get kicked in the balls.
In May 2016 this cover appealed to me for several reasons. I like the artist I like the art I like the subject summed up so well in a clean attractive package.
In February 2019 I can add a few more reasons this image appeals to me as I slowly roll around an amazing 700 acre campus on an electric assist bathtub making my way from place to place picking a line through thousands of college kids staring and their fucking phones. I have a carabiner full of keys clipped near my right front belt loop and unique perspective on the ivory tower as well as a behind the scenes pass to visit the not so scenic underbelly and daily nitty gritty of a very large university.
30 years ago I was a clueless college kid with some half baked ideas of what a college education would mean to people out in the real world. I now know what it means to me and I don’t give a shit what it means to other people and I know what I want to be when I grow up
I wanna be free
I wanna be free to do what I wanna do
I wanna be free to ride
I wanna be free to ride my machine without being hassled by the man
And I wanna get loaded
fucking forks in the road (ffitr)
1990 Unpaid Internship
One semester at the Gallagher-Widmeyer Group in Washington DC. they offered me a job as soon as I graduated and I said "no thank you. DC is not for me"
1991 Unpaid Internship Offer
full-time unpaid internship at a PR firm in Bellevue. I turned it down so I could continue my grocery store deli job and continue to pay the rent
1992 Interview for Internship
I slept through it, as in, I woke up hours after I my interview was scheduled
1993 Application for Internship
I was in contact with a bigwig Anthropology professor at WSU about archaeology research blah blah blah. He called me and got my machine, as in, answering machine with the cute little cassette tapes and the message on the tape was Mudhoney's sample of the Wild Angels speech. Professor said "the first thing you need to do is change that message" and I never returned his call
1997 Graduate School
I got accepted to a Masters in Teaching program and got a job as a bike messenger in the spring to work through the summer and start school full-time in the fall. When I received my financial aid statement and saw the bottom line on the loan I blew off grad school and worked as a bike messenger on and off and on and off until 2010.