Bastards!

Uncertain times like these prompt a man to consider their future moves upon the devious Chinese Checkers board of life, awash at all times with the knowledge that a single false move can leave you cornered on a massive, multicolored pentagram, desperately seeking an interstitial escape route while facing the dawning inevitability of your own compulsory ritual blood letting. (I am hazy on the rules for Chinese Checkers.) Point being: I am engaged in single combat with one of the chiefest lieutenants of Big Bastard Life, the Future. The moment has come to seek greener (possible blacker) pastures and pursue new windows of opportunity (which may be windows to oblivion), and it is to this end that I brilliantly faked my death so as to remove myself quietly from the daily goings on of the Villains and set my sights on Studio City.

See, my heart's wish would see me finding gainful employment, rich avenues for personal growth and ample opportunities to exploit my interest in the written word. But, we are, in the words of Nickie R, "living in a world of whores." A world made by whores, for whores.
True words, sir, true words. But in order to supply myself with a fitting delusion of potential until my ultimate barista-centric destiny unfolds, I have all but solidified a scheme that will take me to the west coast, and the doomed lands that gird its terminal reaches. It would be nice to produce comedy for a "for reals" living; this I regard very seriously as the Ideal Outcome. Granted, the possibilities are fraught with disappointing outcomes: even if I get a script bought, there's all the reason in the world to think it would be mutilated and reengineered to fit the needs of financial advisors to mighty studio heads, and the beacons to which the filmgoing publics proverbial dollar is drawn is a bona fide shit festival indeed. Yes, the stakes are high indeed. It will take a high degree of risk, endless hours of soul-shattering work and impeccable good fortune….

Which is exactly why I am led once again to reflect on one of life's truest axioms: The world is your oyster if you're a con artist. Oh, God, is it ever. Sure my quaint notions of writing for the joy of it might be dashed agin' the rocks and left to putrefy in a metaphorical tide pool, but with even my modest mastery of the written word, I could possibly attempt to cash in on a vapid lighting-in-a-bottle situation, after the fashion of the creators of Twilight and Harry Potter. With only minimal effort and negligible amounts of imagination, I could obtain the closest our society affords you to a license to print money- and oh how sweet it would be. I mean how much actual time do you supposes it took to write? 3 business days? 4? In any case, something within one week, I imagine. And for that one week's desultory labor you are made wealthy beyond my wildest imaginings. The conclusion we must draw is clear: Fuck you, dreams! From now on I'm all about the shysterism! Hell, it'd even work to get paid oodles just to not make anything, right?

The exchange in my head goes somewhat like this:

The producer snaps up my shitty script, nods approvingly, says:

 "Now this is the kind of bullshit that could make someone a lot of money! That someone is not us, because we will never make this turd. But we also don't want anyone else making it; it's just the kind of crap that could sell today. So we'll pay you for it. We'll pay you for it and never, ever produce it. Take this $200,000, less than couch cushion money to me, but a sum vast beyond reckoning for yourself. Take it and festoon your tiny existence with garbage to excess the likes of which you never imagined possible until now! Do so with such single-minded fury that your next salient thought will be only the realization that you are already dead!"

And I would, I would do this thing. I would take his money in a heart beat.

And the producer guy would lean back, those baleful doll's eyes of his devoid of human expression, and he'd ejaculate vociferously across his desk, like a blinding torrent form some infernal geyser, and I would gleefully lunge hither and yon, catching as much of his rage seed in my gob as possible, letting globules splatter upon me like so many raindrops.
And amongst the maelstrom, a cheque for 200,000 big ones would make its way to my hand, groping blindly against the deluge, and I'd turn heel and run form his office with all haste as he screamed oaths after me, with a kind of rage that would kill an angel.
I would steal away to the bank and cash that bastard of a paycheck with nary a missed beat, semen stains still visible on my person. The teller would nod knowingly- she has seen this all before.

"Sold your first screenplay, huh?" she'd say.

I'd cough up a healthy wad of greed semen on her fine polished desk, and she'd laugh it off:
"Oh don't worry, we have a guy for that." she'd say.

 "We have several guys."

That… that is more or less what I've pieced together about how LA works from second-hand accounts, anyway.

In truth, eschewing all stability and sources of income in favor of becoming one of Hollywood's catamites is still thinking small. When I think of the inordinate reward bestowed upon bastard lords like drug king pins and televangelists by all societies in human history, I find myself wishing only that I was on the winning side of the bastard struggle. It would be nice, to fully appreciate the fetid underpinnings of society but to also be one of the few who can be nothing but unilaterally benefited by it. To see the most corrupt public figures and hear the most deplorable sentiments broadcast bereft of shame and know that these creatures are not my nemesis, but my competitors.

Those are all mostly already crowded fields, the entrances to those old boys' clubs heavily guarded, and I imagine they are rightfully suspect of outsiders. More feasible perhaps would be worming my way into some low-level government job, like a state lawmaker. Do those positions pay much? Even if the pay is modest, it seems like a pretty sweet gig. I think I'd make a dandy no-name politician- I would never need to be concerned with being featured in national reporting except as an anonymous effigy of all that's wrong with whoever some yokel happens to want me to represent, and there is virtually nothing I could say or do that would be so ludicrous as to disqualify me from the position. A fine racket, I must say. And a tempting one, too, as the ship has sailed on the college textbooks.

God, so many bullshit industries! A world teeming with whores! And why am I not fortunate enough to be one of them? Probably because they generality require charisma in vast quantities. Even a simple holistic medicine scam requires too much single-minded drive. Starting  a business, even a brick-and-mortar trap for slow pokes, takes a certain kind of moxie that my withered heart is too frail to play host to.  But this… thing I've written has already gone to strange, terrible places. And for some reason I detect a slight current of negativity throughout- this is not my mind! It is merely the result of staring down the daunting magnitude of the tasks ahead. But my ambitions are there, and my moves are not chosen in caprice. With luck, they will not prove my undoing.

Here's hoping, you vile fiends!

--KCR