the art of parking

designed to be read AFTER the previous post...its like...a sequel...you know?


what i did while i was "away"...

i opened a parking lot that sells "art"...what do you do when you want to sell your "art", but your tired of standing in a tent by the sidewalk?...you open a gallery...great idea...now, what do you do when you actually want to make money at your gallery?...you open a parking lot on the grounds of the gallery...so you end up sitting in a chair by the sidewalk...a bit of irony i suppose...however, it turns out that parking cars is the most economically sound part of the "art" business...i have often thought that if van gogh had had a parking lot, he may not have shot himself...at $4.99 a car, Hyper-Realistic Parking ends up buying a lot more cheap beer than the ridiculously priced pictures that i try to sell inside...what a concept...i get shit-faced drunk holding a cupful of pennies, people park their cars, give me $4.99 and i proceed to make an absolute ass of myself...i knew it couldnt miss...and i only had to pull my gun twice last summer...i named the "artistic" abomination Fountainhead Gallery because i cant help but want the world to kiss my ass if it wont accept me only on my terms...ive learned that the world does not appreciate this as much as i had hoped...live and learn, i guess...so now, [as an "artist"] my new job is essentially to appear troubled and enigmatic...thats it...its really not that difficult...sitting in the parking chair and watching the nightly throng of human repugnance go by...being troubled comes easy...the enigmatic part isnt much more difficult...i just say things that almost make sense but are just outside the realm of comprehension...the words dont necessarily need to have meaning...if you can some how conflate the shallower aspects of immanuel kant's Critique of Pure Reason with the deeper aspects of the honey boo boo show, then you can pull it off...i rely heavily on those to whom i am speaking to believe that [as an "artist"] i am just a little too complex for them to fully digest...i also rely heavily on the copious consumption of cheap beer to lubricate my thoughts as i am performing this most important of "artistic" functions...

i developed a texting trap in the sidewalk...so, i ended up sitting in a chair by the sidewalk...parking cars...i tried to make the most of it by practicing what i call intellectual frottage with the passersby...i enjoy seeing their reaction when i let my weirdness hump the leg of their mind...no response...nothing...it was a cavalcade of cyber-somnambulists  parading down the sidewalk past my parking chair...people so busy with their cell phones that i was afforded absolutely not opportunity to socially violate them...even in the slightest of ways...i got bored...i thought it would be great to make some sort of trap so i could watch these insensible cyborgs fall down and drop their phones...it never ceases to entertain me to see the look of absolute, world-shaking horror on a person"s face when they drop their electric heroin...i witnessed one case of a person falling prey to the trap with a baby in their arms...after getting up, they checked the phone first...[your world...not mine]...i tried several variations...i started with a small, well-camouflaged bump...slowly, i made it more and more conspicuous...bigger...more brightly colored...it made no difference...no matter how obvious, it worked every time...i gave it up out of boredom after i finally dug a large hole with huge warning signs and barricades and still, the people just poured into it... 

i experimented with omnipotence...i sat in public square in cleveland watching window washers and tried to use my powers to make them fall...the first time, i literally passed out from the strain...i woke up with my head in some homeless guy's lap...after a few attempts, i found myself greatly disturbed by the fact that my first act as an omnipotent being would be to cause ill to befall my fellow man...of course, i rationalized...well,i thought, if i am to be the only omnipotent man alive, then i could (and should) consider the remainder of the world's population as insects...to hell with them...let them develop there own god-like powers to defend themselves against me...it just didnt sit well...i guess i am too nice of a guy to operate like that...this thought offered me another route...i rationalized it by believing that, because i am such a nice guy, my innate benevolence would cause me to spare them at the last moment by temporarily suspending the law of gravity...after a few more attempts, i gave up because i realized that, even though i really am a nice guy, my innate benevolence has become severely eroded by a lifetime of dealing with idiots...

i may have trained a cat to make the Law and Order sound ...lets face it...who hasnt gotten bored from time to time with the same tired old cliche coming out of their cats mouth?...that all too ordinary "meow"...i thought it would be easy...watching no less than fifteen episodes of various forms of Law and Order a day in the winter, i assumed the cat would pick it up easily...after a couple of days without progress, i decided to go to a reward system...being a geneva-on-the-lake cat, i concluded that the most effective reward would be Milwaukees Best Ice...i poured some in a bowl, turned on the tv and waited...the cat didnt seem to be able to make the connection between the task and the reward...so, every time the Law and Order sound played on the television, i would look at the cat, make the Law and Order sound and get down on the floor and drink some of the beer out of the bowl...just to show the cat how refreshing and satisfying the reward could be...unfortunately, the project finally ended when i got sick of waking up face down in the carpet with a hangover and bowl of vomit next to my head...there was one time when i could have sworn that the cat finally did it...but with so much cheap beer in me, i cant be sure... 

i spent a month in the lobby of a major bank's headquarters as a piece of installation art...i sealed myself inside of a small plexiglass box with a single air hole...naked, i would cavort and writhe in my own filth...relentlessly screaming through the air hole the solitary word "ME!!" at everyone that walked by...i would wait about one full second after i first made eye contact...just at the point where i was certain that their mind had almost fully engulfed the sickeningly surreal sight that their eyes were sending it...then i would begin..."ME!"..."ME!"...sometimes i would weep and wail...loudly sobbing the word...pleading with the forlorn desperation of an unloved child...other times i  would lower my brow and gnash my teeth...vitriolically screaming the word...attacking with the rebellious hatred of an overly loved child...i ended the installation when someone finally took a selfie with me...posted it on facebook...and truly validated my existence...the superlative banality legal department has forbidden me from mentioning the name of the bank since i failed to ask permission before i showed up in the lobby...

fugue

so...what the hell happened to me?...i feel like i did when i woke up in the middle of the road in central arkansas…my breath smelling like week-old roadkill stuffed with really expensive cheese...as i recall, i lost twelve days on that one...good christ!...its been over a year this time...i cant be absolutely certain what happened and i may never be...whenever i am absolutely certain that I may never be absolutely certain about something, i seek guidance from the real thinkers of the world…it stands to reason that anyone who has sores on their elbows from sitting at a bar drinking and bullshitting all day, must be doing some real thinking, and must be good for some form of guidance…so i assembled a dream team of medical/lifestyle advisers down at the pickled pepper for a consultation…after some lengthy, alcohol-soaked discussions of all the evidence, after beer-tears shed and accidental punches thrown, we concluded that i suffered what can only be called an intellectual coma...a traumatic event overwhelms the mind, pushing it past the point of critical, meaningful thought...the brain and body continue to function... but the mind and soul are hiding under the bed as if their alcoholic uncle henry got called in to babysit at the last minute…you can still drive to work…you can still stand erect while brad relentlessly refers to matters regarding the local sporting distractions in first person plural…sporadically staring downward, shaking his head and interjecting his mantra “we need defense, man”…you can even still listen and understand as shirley irrevocably eradicates forty minutes of your life, verbally molesting you with every last detail of a thirty minute show that you just told her you already watched… gone, however, is the ability to think “wow! brad and shirley really are assholes”…autopilot lifestyle...on...........the final thing that i remember was attending my weekly transcendental twerking class back in may of last year [the thursday class was being overrun by snobbish wine swirlers who were just out to prove something, so i switched to wednesdays] ...notwithstanding the countless breakthroughs of medical science in the field of twerking, there are still many unknowns...based on the current volume of data regarding the physiological, psychological and spiritual effects of a really intense twerking session, it is possible that i entered an altered state of consciousness known as hyper-realistic perception...this occurs when you experience such clarity of mind that the bullshit of our modern existence is stripped of all of its apparent "normalcy" and seen for the madness that it truly is...this was my trauma...i remember being reborn into a world where people take the time to gather together in groups so that they can ignore each other while they facebook [yes...it's a friggin verb now] or text with people who didnt even bother to take the time to sit down and ignore them...a world where parents fed their children a strict diet of saturated fat and high-fructose corn syrup so that they would be weak and lazy enough to sit all day playing expensive video games, watching traffic camera clips of people being killed by trains or learning how to properly ignore people with their iphones...this way, both parents could go out and work just to be able to afford the latest video games, computers and iphones to forestall their children’s hatred for abandoning them [thats not the disturbing part...they actually wondered why their kids ended up being sociopaths, but i digress]...the world i saw was teeming with people who were so desperate for the smallest crumb of eminence or recognition...so hungry for anything that could verify that they truly were the superstar that the lifelong marketing blitz had convinced them that they are, that they made pseudo-celebrities of themselves by endlessly updating their status or obsessively tweeting out selfies (strategically hashtagged for maximum exposure, of course) to a world that couldnt possibly give a shit less that they just had a yummy lunch or that theyre feeling a little blue today *sigh*... this was a world where everyone was trying to be anything other than what they really were…anything...people moving, living and thinking in herds…each one trying to act like everyone else in the group, leaving only some lowest common denominator of a human being…every personality trait focus group tested and deemed safe for public consumption...laughable caricatures of who they wish they were...bland, insipid, vanilla people who would think, say or do nothing offensive, unexpected or out of the ordinary for fear of being seen as someone less than enthusiastic about conformity...thereby risking rejection, and ultimately the solitude required to help them realize that their lives were swirling down the bowl while they chased someone else's dream…wave after wave of unabashed, mind-raping idiocy assaulted my senses…i snapped………the first thing that I felt can only be described as going from a normal existence, standing here in the earth’s atmosphere to being encased in cottage cheese (or greek yogurt for you trendy types) within a split second…the all-encompassing pressure of raw stupidity rushed in on me…a tsunami of insanity…it was too much for my mind to bear…the next (and last) thing that I felt was ridicule…as if the simple act of perceiving the madness of people, somehow made them aware of my scrutiny of their “normal” behavior…for which they chastised, belittled or otherwise laughed at me…I was instantaneously inundated with visions from my past... pointing out the everyday, beacon-like stupidity of people who would never argue against the point that I was making, but would invariably call me an idiot and deride me for “thinking too much”…hmmmm...and just as I was fading out, one final critical thought flashed through my mind which set my life in motion for the next year…”when surrounded by idiots, the idiots will call you an idiot”…there could be only one course of action…I opened a parking lot that sells "art"…the art of parking…to be continued