The Placebo Effect: back in cyan, yellow, magenta and black!

The CYMK thing - that's all the colors they use to print magazines. Please don't make me talk about it. But this is an article about my anticipated return to print and my waiting public! But no one noticed. And come to think about it, I didn't care.But they made an editorial change to a title without asking me and the end. So yes my long awaited return to print! I guess everyone's sick of my shit or something. Or maybe the paper wouldn't put me on the cover like the other one did. Maybe the paper wouldn't let me run wild through the pages and make the paper something people actually talked about. I can rile 'em up! But they make me play nice AND I WON'T. Because I am nice! Anyway.

I'm still doing the same job, two years later, except for a new company - so I hate my job much less. Bye! I love you! Oh no one's here ... okay bye!

A Bittersweet Pill

Did you really think you’d never have to hear my shit again? Maybe “hope” is a better verb. One day I’m one of Pittsburgh’s favorite columnists – a literary bad-ass doing Spoken Word with Lydia Lunch and Cynthia Plaster Caster; getting phone calls from the Tragically Hip’s frontman, Gordon Downie, who said it’d be an honor to write a blurb for my first book, Once Upon Some Welfare, and within four days the book deal fell through and the "name of alternative newsweekly here" booted my ass. Six months later I was telemarketing.

But naturally, it’s deliciously self-satisfying to see some whippersnappin’ smart arse like myself get the ol’ slap-down from the local media, ain’t it?

Well I’ve come back to return the favor.

When the new owners of the "name of alternative newsweekly here" were firing me, they said they still wanted me to write for them. I go, “You want me to wait tables and write for you?” No … no way. It was somewhat complementary to be fired by the Neo Alternative Press in their suits and expensive eye-wear. But they wouldn’t shut up about synergies and “taking the paper to the next level.” And they sure did! Right out o’ business.

A local daily offered me work but wanted that “powerful” writing I was known for but did I have to be so dramatic? I thought about the Tribune Review – there was talk that they’d let me keep my bus column – but I couldn’t write for Citizen Scaife.

The editor a new alternative newsweekly never responded to my email. I think I said something like, “I’ll never again allow a writer put his hands all over my prose without my approval just because he’s the editor.” That’s a bad pitch, I reckon.

This was years after my comrades from the "name of alternative newsweekly here" who had moved to the other alternative newsweekly (after dogging it for years) had stopped responding to my emails – even the complementary one. WHA’D I EVER DO?

I was offered a chance to write, unedited, for zmag.org with the Semiotic Funky Bunch including Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. But they said I had to write political articles. I’m a lowly Confessionalist Journalist which is just too personal. But the editor was really cool and said, “Every writer here would agree the writing you do is the most difficult.” So there!

After I realized my writing local career was over, it hurt, yo. It felt like saying good-bye to the whole city - to the rare and reverent chance to try and remind the poor souls we call losers, that they deserve better.

BUT I NEVER STOPPED WRITING YOU BASTARDS – just publishing – and once you do, you can say whatever the fuck you want, how ever you want, for as many pages, hours, days or years as you want. And what is the point of writing without that freedom? A paycheck? Eating Mimosa’s and drinking Chai with the East-Enders?

I spent the last seven years spewing about 25,000 pages of my shit somewhere that is archived but not widely read. Perfect. I should be proud that I refused to change how I write in order to stay in print but I became the dreaded has-been. So now if someone says, “I was a fan of yours,” I feel kind of embarrassed. I cringe hearing complements about my how good my writing I was. What was so special about it?

I POURED MY HEART OUT TO YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS! Luckily my life has been a hit parade of bad luck providing constant material about how bad “the less-than-common man” is treated in this country and through-out history. But these things aren’t issues to me, they’re about people with lives I barely escaped or about the times I didn’t.

I know how it feels to be belittled and abused for being poor, or what it’s like to be the hyperactive fat girl in third grade. I’ll never be ashamed of being sub-perfect and I’ll never shut up about how brutal “the good people” were to me when I was down, and how they’ve gotten worse. I’ll never forget how lucky I was to have access to social programs that no longer exist, to get out of the loser gutter by graduating with honors from Carnegie Mellon.

You all know how cruel the world is to a loser. I think you look the other way in an act of preserving your shiny, happy world. You think Everyone gets what they deserve when you see the imperfect suffering. Until it’s you. Then it’s universal injustice.

But I’m not back in print just to lay the superior out. It’s not because of the War or Wal-Mart, but simply: The editor of "another alternativish newsbiweekly that went out of business" responded to my email. He promised me the freedom that I need (they all do). So I can say things that would get “real” journalists fired. It’s f’n great! It took getting fired and rejected to get this freedom. I guess it always does.

This column will be a continuing examination of how our world views are formed and their effects. I’m taking poetic license with the strictest definition of the Placebo Effect but it’s a fascinating dynamic that will turn a sugar pill into a cure based on your belief that it will work – and a Placebo can be anything idea/belief based. Which is everything.

So much depends on who delivers it. And when I look around, I think half the country is mistaking lies for love and turning it into loyalty for an entity that sends their children into war like plastic toy soldiers on cardboard countries.

People think they understand the issues when really they’ve taken the path of least thinking. I’ve always wanted to give the reader a good slap across the face and say LOOK AROUND YOU.

I might sound like the grimmest bitch alive but only because I know we can do better, but not unless we’re willing to accept the fact that the Truth is not always Beautiful.

I just want to tell the stories of my life and other ordinary people who got screwed even though they followed all the rules – or maybe broke some – but we’re all sinners in the eyes of the Lord, eh? Everyone deserves another chance.

The Placebo Effect is about receiving something you’re told will make you feel better, and you’ll actually feel better. The more you invest in it, the harder you’ll have to pretend. Especially if it’s religious.

You may not really feel better but you’ll have to act like you are or you’ll look like you’re been duped and you can’t have that! You don’t have the spine or heart to admit that you were wrong. You’re so f’n weak. On the other hand, you have no one to really believe so I pity ya.

Look I know I won’t be right about everything, but I figure I can’t be more wrong that any one else out there. No one gets it right every time. It doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my own interpretation of the world. It doesn't mean I'm not right about everything, either. I wrote that in the most confusing way on purpose just to fuck with you because i can whew hew!

I meant to say PROVE ME WRONG if you think you can. I'd love you for it. Show me the world is some beautiful subatomic paradise and that we're all loving honorable beings. If you could do that, I'd blow you in perpituity.

But if you like me too much to tell me pretty lies, if you can't preach positivity to the darkest ones, then sing me a little song about how the world blows but you still love me anyway even though everyone hates me and calls me a freak and stuff.

But please don't try singing me a song about freedom knowing why they insult me they way they do. Because I'm "different." I am tragically hip agh! How the fuck did that happen?

Born ready, baby. But we're not all equally free - I don't care what anyone says. BUT I AM FREE TO DO THIS, AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.

The ultimate human liberty is having complete authority over your own ideas. Without the freedom to think, the Freedom of Speech is mute. I’m just offering another way, my way, of looking at things.

And if you want to argue with me, don’t ignore points I already made that refute your point. I abhor redundancies and will kick your ass either way. But I’m just like you. Just trying to figure it out.

Sometimes I think the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and war is nature’s way of keeping the population count down. But when you see the pain – you know something is so wrong. Even so, I can’t help feeling that we’re one idea from freeing history from its bloody legacy. From its contradictory capacity for love and craving for killing – all coming from how we see things and why.

Sometimes I don’t care or know if we can do better. Ultimately I write so I can live with myself. And I just want to thank The Front for giving me the chance. I don’t know if anyone will care about what I have to say. We can argue endlessly about anything but there are some things just are just wrong. I can’t just watch. I can’t just do nothing.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy tries to pull a marble sink from its pipes to throw through a window and escape the nut house. He wrapped himself around that sink and tried to lift it, every vein bulging – but he couldn’t do it. His best wasn’t good enough.

As he left the room, defeated, he turned to the others who were so smug or sad, and he said, “But at least I tried. At least I can say I did that.” He never did escape. But because he tried, someone else did.

When the Chief lists that sink, you can hear the pipes wailing as they're separated, water spilling everywhere, slowly at first. He runs and he throws it through the window which explodes, every shard capturing the sunrise.

I write because to be able to say, ”At least I tried," when I meet my maker, ya bastards. Thanks for blowing me in advance!