Craigslist Memories of the Great Recession

When you’re unemployed (like most of us were in the Great Recession), craigslist is your job. You learn how to write professionally phrased emails quickly, and then in a few days you learn the crushing fact that the perfect job you’re applying for is really just a resume aggregator spam-site that won’t get you work, only junk mail from University of Phoenix. You learn to understand the warning signs: random text blocks (to avoid re-post detection), applications that require a credit check, websites with privacy policy written on the bottom of the page but when you click it -- it isn’t a link. Everything starts to smell like bullshit.

I needed a distraction from the crushing reality of the job market, so I became an avid reader of Missed Connections. I was the guy who would always email his friends and be like: “This has to be you that this chick is posting about”, because we were all single and felt some pride in ownership over whatever scene it was that we were in. It became a compelling reason to leave the house everyday, even though I was miserable. I’d think, “Hey, there are a lot of MCs from (such and such place), I think I’ll go there just to see what the girls are like.”

I was really into the sartorial look. I’d always want to wear something that would be easy to describe and I’d dream up the ways I’d want to be seen, like: “You had on a tweed coat and cardigan with a tie clip shaped like an oil derrick, and you were drinking a coffee on the patio at the Cedar.”

I even posted a missed connection for my girlfriend after the night we first met and I gave her my number. It wasn’t until she called me back two months later that I learned she had no idea what missed connections were.

From craigslist I obtained (in chronological order) a futon, a barback job in the North Loop, and a volunteer job selling grand pianos that turned into part time work. I also had two more jobs that were referred to me from other guys who found them on craigslist. One as a carpenter’s union picket-line demonstrator and one as an amusement park gift shopkeeper.

Craigslisting for jobs convinced me that I wasn’t specialized. I wasn’t destined to do anything in particular, I just did whatever needed to be done until it was finished or I messed it up. I would usually search under the general heading “jobs” or “gigs” and try to find something that I wouldn’t need a car to get to. I’d rewrite my resume, send it off, and wait for a return email while I looked for more more potential positions and sulked around my parents basement.

My friend Adam was a craigslist “powerlister”. His job was craigslist, in a more literal sense. He and his dad would scour the freelist for vintage electronics, lawnmowers, and computer parts then refurbish or cannibalize them and post it back on craigslist for profit. Their house looked like something out of Hoarders mixed with the Possum Lodge from Red Green. Every time we’d hang out he’d have to leave early to go pick up a Commodore 64 in the exurbs or something.

I would read the free list often, but I never went to pick anything up. Just like the MC list, I had some compulsion to see every post (or at least every title). I felt like it was my responsibility to see all that craigslist had to offer and filter it down for my friends. Scrolling through page after page, all you’re really looking for is the familiar post that says: “You’ve seen all this before, so you can stop now.” The only thing I ever got out of the experience was a heightened sense of duty and memory recall.

Today I have a job, a car, and a girlfriend. The way I use craigslist has changed a lot. I don’t mindlessly scan, searching desperately for anything that I could use/relate to. I use focused searches and know exactly what I’m looking for before I even open my laptop.

I think there’s something about scanning craigslist that symbolizes Gen Y’s endurance of the Great Recession. Not having jobs left us feeling defeated, and we became unfocused and unspecialized. The time spent on the internet during those years of underemployment made us develop ourselves for our own sake, for a sense of completion, and not in the direction of any particular goal.

That’s why I feel you see more well-rounded individuals with general knowledge in the post-recession workforce. The people with hyper-specialized knowledge were likely working during the recession and have leadership roles in their businesses today, but the people working underneath them have a more comprehensive, cosmopolitan knowledge of both intellectual details and the the bigger picture grit that comes from being pampered with knowledge by the internet while simultaneously being told you’re worthless by the world at large.

--Beck Kilkenny

Livin' the Dream

The dream:
I’m at an old friend’s house and she has a bunch of new friends that are way cooler and way more attractive than me. They’re super sarcastic, and they’re all giving me a merciless amount of shit about all the things I’m most insecure about.
 
When the alarm goes off:
I suddenly have all the perfect comebacks, but those people have all ceased to exist.

The dream:
I’m arguing with my parents in their kitchen and I’m super hungry. I’m tearing apart all the cabinets trying to find something to eat. In the back of the pantry there’s this awesome looking cinnamon coffee cake with a brown sugar and walnut streusel.

When the alarm goes off:
I’m just about to take a bite.

The dream:
I’m driving home from work on the same trucking route that I use every day. When I take a sharp turn my steering gets wobbly, and it becomes apparent that my wheels are falling off.

When the alarm goes off:
I’m relieved that I don’t have to bother with a tow truck, but later that night when I’m exhausted after a long shift and I’m driving home on that same road, I keep remembering that dream and I get paranoid.


--Beck Kilkenny

Nobility and Dignity

 In Shankar Vedantam's The Hidden Brain the science journalist discusses a phenomenon he parallels to a personal, near-death ocean experience that he calls the invisible current wherein people who swim with the current believe they are able to swim faster and farther because their own inherent strength and are unaware of additional forces.

In citation Vendantam describes two case studies of transgender male-to-female bodied and female-to-male bodied people in academic settings. It's revealing to notice the rail-guided structure comprised of positive expectations, privilege, and unearned advantages that many men readily enjoy and many women actively perpetuate, although the invisible current metaphor isn't limited just to feminism, it's functional for ability, race, orientation, age, and most significantly attractiveness.

In social psychology lecture my professor was very adamant that we recognize the significance of attractiveness discrimination, and the evidence of the privilege accumulated through this discrimination is monumental. There is an industrial culture in America that worships beauty: money is exchanged, ads are pitched, products are manufactured, and individuals become products. We attach ourselves to names, faces, and bodies that are easy to recall when making personal comparisons.

There's a reason all your most attractive, most intelligent friends post the least amount of f-b photos. Social vanity creates a subtle conflict within an online community and it becomes easy for attractiveness discrimination to manifest itself into trolling and stalking. People of integrity actively seek prejudice and work to dismantle it, but attractiveness prejudice is so ingratiated into who we are as to seem a genetic imperative.

Social Darwinism has fittingly earned its place on the wrong side of history, and when the argument arises it's more likely to be a red flag of injustice than an ethically acceptable ideology. The idea that attractive people deserve to be treated differently, and the subsequent creation of an elect class of humans is the most degrading and universal injustice on the planet. And the hardest part of eradicating it is learning to detect it.

Firstly, it's important to be able to tell the difference between a compliment and flattery. You may think you're providing a service with a self-esteem building compliment to someone attractive, but truly you're only depriving them of the oxygen of reality with suffocating flattery. This is especially true of people you are sexually attracted, but not committed, to. It's a subconscious, conditioned response to tell people if they're pretty because our insecurities seek out the approval of people whose looks give them authority. I try to make neutral compliments to others, only noticing changes of appearance and always keeping it brief.

Secondly, accept your own self-image. Accentuate your flaws and become someone memorable. Don't hide your body, even if it's gross: the only way for it to become "un-gross" is for people to be exposed to it. In the living world, outside of the glowing rectangles we love to stare at, people are attracted to all different bodies/faces/hairstyles not just the elect ideal of attractiveness. I have a thick mat of chest hair ("hamburger meat") that people have told me I should cover up or wax or burn off or whatever, but instead of getting hung up on other people's body issues I wear v-necks and a-shirts with pride.

Also you have to recognize the power dynamic in play with attractiveness discrimination. Intuitively one assumes the dynamic is cascading: with attractive people at the top of a hierarchy. I'd argue instead that the dynamic is more of a bell curve with those of average attractiveness majority wielding prejudice against the less attractive/more attractive minority. In both respects people are hunted (an ugly nerd is an "easy target" while the sexy single is "stalked"), and an anxiety of predation is established.

Attractiveness is nearly impossible to unbiasedly self-asses, and asking others will only give you inconsistent results. This is a testament to the fluid definition of attractive qualities. The process of divining these qualities is also highly self-destructive, and is not recommend. Instead, don't try to be "your perfect person" be as ugly as you can be and still love yourself. Remember, the majority is the average so aim for the middle. Women often tell me my eyes are my best feature and I'm hiding them with my dorky, Napoleon Dynamite glasses. The very thought of touching my eyes to put in contact lenses as per suggestion makes me shudder; almost as much as the idea of enduring said torture just for the benefit of those who only appreciate me for my looks.

It seems unnecessary to say but the difference between insults and criticism is also crucial. It's okay to swear at someone and tell them hurtful things when you're both angry, in the same room, and you love each other but being judgmental of people on the street is cheap entertainment that ultimately corrupts. Noticing that people are fat doesn't make you thin, and noticing that people have gross ponytails doesn't give you perfect hair forever. Of course there will always be a place in the heart of the sardonic for being critical of fashion, one should always bear in mind the train wreck outfits of laundry day's past.

The categorical imperative gets thrown around a lot by people who get off to abstract concepts, but the real challenge of morality isn't simply developing empathy: it's finding what qualities specifically  you share with your fellow man, and how to protect them. When you strip away the attractiveness and elitism from the world you're left with only people of dignity and nobility, and you see that they're all the people.

World's Dumbest Loser

Anxiety

There's so much anxiety within my self and my generation about "going somewhere". Everybody I know in their twenties is planning some trip to some bigger city or some other continent; or they're gunning for some horizontal movement within their company or their college or their scene. Facebook presents a constant flow of ego-filtered messages from everyone you ever worked with, went to school with, or met at a party, and the retro motive of "keeping up with the Jones" becomes a burden of self-examination and contrived affectation.

"Going nowhere"

I know that I'm going nowhere, and I like it. Throughout my childhood my family would pack up and move every three to five years. I've been to a total of nine different schools during my education (three elementary, two middle, three high, and one technical college), some where I fit in and some where I was too depressed to show up for class. I was not only used to change, I needed it.

But right now, in the Twin Cities, I feel more or less fulfilled. I'm finally at a school I love (I've been there since 2007), I'm respected by the people I work with (clients are another story), and most importantly I'm in love with a beautiful woman who I want to spend the rest of my life with.

There's a sentiment I've been repeating lately that even the worst job is doable if there's someone you love waiting for you at home. As a restaurant server I often have perform my duties with passive confidence under situations of heavy stress. Forcing a pleasant attitude and submissive demeanor because your money depends on it can become an excursion in soul-sucking and self-induced dehumanization when you're tired or hungry or your serving a dick. But when I'm not at work I'm not working on my graphic novel, or building furniture, or recording an EP: I'm with my girlfriend, having fun or doing whatever. It brings me out of the "smiling depression" that consumes me when I strip back the facetious veneer of enthusiasm with which I greet a world in which I have no influence or true importance.

A strong family is built on a strong relationship, and strong families are the cornerstone of strong communities. By just spending time together around town with my girlfriend and my friends I'm making my community stronger and improving my surroundings, ultimately improving my quality of life. Small, tight knit communities have higher life expectancy rates than disconnected ones because other community members look out for each other. I've learned to realize that community means I help you when things fall, so that someday there will be someone around to help me.

Help!

Unfortunately, civic responsibility is not an aspiration for the entire population. When I'm alone I can feel the jungle-law pervade my consciousness. I'm hunted: by deceptive salesmen, ticket-happy cops, conniving seductresses, arrogant social rivals, and scheming co-workers. A side effect of being a good citizen is the overbearing fear that you're being taken advantage of and the unsettling knowledge that you really are. The successful wonder: "Why not do what I do?", but never come to realize they only win because we lose, and we only lose because otherwise there's no game.

These days, as I watch people who were once close friends silently write me off as wasted potential with the whites of their eyes, I refuse to let myself feel inadequate. I will proudly aver my status as a twenty-four-year old child living in his parent's house in the suburbs, taking part time classes at junior college and turning tables at the Olive Garden. My clothes never fit, my phone/car/PC frequently doesn't work, I wear ugly glasses and have a gross haircut (a cross between a mullet and a bowl cut), and I'm always in the process of quitting smoking and relapsing. Most of my music is from 2010 (which is a year in music that I will defend to the death) and I haven't seen whatever movie you're talking about, so stop asking.

Men face a societal pressure in regards to status not unlike the one women face concerning body-image. Even in the most effeminate (straight) male circles competition and self-aggrandizing subtly break into conversations like dolphins on the ocean's surface: Indie music is a sport, where you "know guys", hear "new material", and "see it live" to earn points. Seeing art and attending events becomes something that you begrudgingly interrupt your comfort stupor for, only to later tell the internet that you did it. And the internet itself is an ocean full of messages-in-bottles where the blogs and memes that you are positive will catch on never make it past a hundred views.

I can't compete, or rather I won't compete. I don't want to struggle to "get somewhere" in life. I don't want to amass money or nice things that are intended to impress other people. I don't want to have the most cutting edge technology or the best clothes or all the other things that the television advertises to my valuable demographic. I simply want good food, great wine, and even better sex; and it doesn't hurt to have a job in biking distance from my home. The most valuable thing I have is something I give myself, and that's the time to do whatever I want.

Watching TV, getting stoned, maybe cooking something really good or playing guitar: that's how I'll waste my potential. I can feel all the haughty intellectual self-importance drain out of me when I'm two beers into a Futurama marathon and I'm free to drift off, thinking in a language unfiltered by company and without separated meaning and image. I value this time above all else. I stay up late and get dumber and dumber until I feel profound. Satisfied, I go to bed to start the process over again.

World's Dumbest Loser

Enjoying your life for what it is can be a controversial lifestyle. The success and mobility engine is shocked when it's engaged by a proud townie; nagged by it's own subconscious doubts as to what it wants from life. Once it's clear I'm no threat the immediate predator instinct kicks in and I'm summed up for a sucker, someone to be grappled into submission and mined for resources. I maintain my rigidity well enough, and am able to defend myself always but I'm haunted by the motives of others. Do they not know the sacrifice I make for them by choosing the way of the loser? I give my money, sweat, and blood for my love and my community because I'm integral to the system that the unnecessary leisure class feeds off of. Success's mixed messages of "Why can't you be like me?" and "Get your own!" are the two-fisted slap of a desperate animal: the dog which finally caught the tail it was chasing, only to realize it didn't want what it got.

So, now more than ever, by choice, I will be the world's dumbest loser. With love and the infinite depth of my imagination I can enjoy a life free from the shackles of success. Allow my failures to bring you all great fortune and I promise that I will let you all down until you've built yourself up enough to reach your dream. Just don't forget that it was my dream that died to get you there.

Quitting antidepressants: A chemical inventory

Sometimes I just get cold and clinical. I'm just a machine. I work and consume. Drive and refuel. No emotions needed. This is not a feeling I like having.

Usually that's when I'm smiling the most. The deserved, genuine smile is reserved for times off work: usually intoxicated. I get relaxed with the Ws (a little weed and wine) and it makes it easy to put the stress of a busy day behind me.

I've had problems with alcohol in the past. Ages 16-21 feel like a smear. I drank destructively, I blacked out more times then I kept track of.and I found myself locked in detox twice, and attempted suicide twice. I'm not overly ashamed. I've made peace with many of the people I've hurt during those times; and am now in a committed relationship, a key employee at work, and an A student.

I've lived in the shadow of depression throughout my life, but I can safely say that right now is the best life has been. One major reason, I feel, is that I no longer take antidepressants.

I've taken Prozac, Cymbalta, and Effexor for sustained lengths of time since childhood. I can recall going into withdrawals, after leaving my pills at a friends house, and fainting and being hit by a car on the way there. I remember days where I'd be in withdrawal for some reason or other and be unable to leave the house. I would tear up over any show of sentimentality: TV commercials, and faces my cat makes.

It's no better than being hungover, and I began to think "What is this actually doing to my health?" I raised the concern to my doctor and he said (for Effexor) that the metastasized drug can cause harm over time, and that it's not meant to be take indefinitely.

I safely weaned myself off of antidepressants. Before doing this I quit drinking completely to detoxify. Isolated myself (over the course of a Minnesota winter) and spent the season writing, painting, and composing music. I wrote notebooks full of my beliefs and methodologies and started a routine of light cardio.

I started drinking again many months later to taste wine at the restaurant where I work. Starting over again with an education in drinking gave me a vastly different perspective, and it made it significantly simpler to feel satisfied after one drink. I am off antidepressants and I drink one glass of wine or one bottle of beer each night.I never drink more than four, and I only do that every other month or so. I feel little temptation to drink more than that, and when I am tempted to over-consume I openly ask my girlfriend to help me cope with it.

I smoke weed every night as well. Rarely more than a bowl, I spend maybe forty dollars a month on it. My prescription medications had cost triple; and they made me feel that hollow, machine-smiling way that I feel when I spend to much time at work.

There was a time in the past where I smoked too much weed, where I was burning through $20 worth of weed a day. I was skeletal from spending money on weed instead of food, and I spent all day dehydrated walking around in the hot summer sun.

There's nothing about weed that I fear. Weed is a significantly better antidepressant than any prescription drug I have ever taken. Alcohol is also an excellent antidepressant.

I realize that not everyone has the ability to drink moderately, and I don't recommend restarting it if they've managed to quit. They can't appreciate slow sipping, a slight buzz, a lightheaded smiling mood; without feeling a desire for the primal, night-monster mode of binge drinking. I understand and respect that, despite my own choice to drink. Instead they strive for purity, and they usually end up being more creative, righteous, and successful than the majority of moderate drinkers.

My girlfriend is aggressively anti-smoking. I quit cigarettes before we met, but have relapsed a few times since. The first time I lied and said I wasn't smoking. I hated lying to her, but I also realized I couldn't help myself from lying defensively thanks to the conditioning of a dysfunctional family. I knew that the only way I could keep from lying was to confess immediately. So when I later caught myself buying cigarettes, I would call my girlfriend's cell, or tell her as soon as she walked in the door.

This ended up being a major strain on our relationship, but we worked through it and never left each other feeling angry. I felt unsupported by her when I confessed, and I worried that we'd break up if I continued to relapse. I'd try to draw unfair parallels to her personal vices, and defend myself for smoking.

Always I'd buy patches the next morning and hand write an apology letter for her, and we always had amazing make-up sex.

All in all I'd conclude that if I had drug and alcohol awareness education that taught me how to appreciate drugs and alcohol, to use them sparingly as medicine instead of hopelessly trying to resist them altogether, I would have reached this state of balance a lot sooner.

 I used to feel nihilistic, I was reckless and sometimes I would actively pursuit death. Now I feel purpose. I'm motivated to write, to work, to be a good boyfriend and student. Most importantly I can feel genuinely happy again, not just the hollow happiness one feels while working. And that pursuit is a right of independence.

Introducing PizzAmerica

Being in a band is difficult. Especially in the suburbs.

"Suburban rock" is itself a derogatory term. That's a descriptor I've only heard used by old (think late 40s, early 50s) coffee shop hangers-on when they describe the band at their daughter's wedding. It's characterized as over-polished, boring classic rock covers, and it's performed by church group volunteers and dads. Suburban rockers always perform in collared shirts. Usually they have short, moussed hair and if it's long it's in a ponytail.

Genres that aren't as played out as white-man-guitar-rock, like hip-hop, metal, and electronica, seemingly have no place in the sprawl. Their subcultures grow fungal in the depths of the inner city and the furthest reaches of the Middle American flatland.

But demographics change! The rolling highways of the middle century lost their luster once gas topped $3 a gallon, and the far-flung populace is finally beginning to concentrate. The suburbs are the new hoods, with the former status-obsessed commercial-culture moving back into the inner city and giving up their townhome communities to the trailer trash on the outskirts of town.

But can you be taken seriously as a musician in the suburbs? No. You ain't shit until you're struggling in the city. But does that mean you need to give up the job and family you're building in your neighborhood just to be cool? Yes. It sucks and we're sorry. Does it need to be this way? No, let's try to change it. We need to be proud of the suburbs. We need to encourage garage bands. The Greatest Generation only has a couple decades left. All those retirement homes are going to become low-income housing eventually. Let's claim our territory now and make future suburban culture a liberal arts culture!

One major obstacle to face is the distinct lack of music venues. Share-houses by colleges are the prototype for basement venues, then it's cafes/bars, then clubs. Since most people move into these share houses to get away from their parents, next to none exist in the suburbs. Also, cops in the suburbs have nothing better to do than bust house parties, so the longevity of share house venues is questionable.

But this is our movement, still trying to find definition. We need to invent a new venue, one where music isn't just an excuse to consume psychoactive chemicals (although those are nice) and where suburban kids have some breathing room to be something other than burned-out, overworked, or depressed.

Americans, particularly suburbanites, are defined by work. Menial labor of the stressful or boring variety dominates our waking hours, and this is what separates us from the rest of the world. When America eats, it eats fast because we never outgrew the half-hour public school lunch break. Rarely does a meal last longer than an hour, and rarely is it cooked by anything other than an industrial flash oven or deep-fryer.

Pizza is the food of the American suburbanite. Pizza doesn't take long to make, even for like, a dozen people. It's high in carbs, so you can get fat off it if you want. It's designed to be shared, because meals are pretty much the only time you aren't working, so it's nice to see other people. It's also a childhood rite. Whenever a group of public school kids know they've done something right, it's because some authority figure is throwing them a pizza party.

Teens and twenty-somethings in the suburbs should redesign the Chuck E. Cheese model of pizza, performance, and video games. Although the pizza will have to be less shitty, the performance less animatronic, and the video games will have to be free to play. Actually, the performers can still be robots but the music has to be less corny.

I believe this is a critical step in rebranding the suburbs, and staking out the future of creative spaces and indie music. Anyone else who likes my idea of a fucking sweet pizza venue should continue to read this blog as I update it and should listen to recordings from my band (once we have some).

INTRODUCING PIZZAMERICA!