Prove It, Pirate

Over the weekend, I finally got around to downloading some of my 80’s collection because my enormous cache of cassette tapes have either melted in my car or been eaten by giant centipedes that have set up an invasion beachhead in the box under my bed.

Instead of buying, you know,  countless CD’s with 35 minutes worth of music on them, I thought “Why not obey the rules of my criminal life?” and I went online in search of every tape I bought between 1980 and 1992.

So I sat and listened to George Michael’s Faith and got all groovy because it’s snazzy quality and it was on my super sound system instead of the last cassette tape played in the house — some antique thing with one speaker that’s actually a small man calmly reading the lyrics of the songs and describing what sort of music it is:  “Now electronic horns replace the clap machine and George says, ‘Wouldn’t you…like to…have sex –ahem, sorry — with me.'”

When I first got the OMG George Michael!! CD in 1987, it was good times and we like danced and stuff.  Now, though, I not only know that George is a flaming queer, but I’ve seen pictures of him getting all queerey on his little lover.  That’s fine.  Whatever.  But the part that disturbed me was that his life was in constant turmoil because he was forced to sing these sex crazed songs and have all those hot videos with lingerie models while, the entire time, he was cutting his thighs and crying in the shower because he was gay and it was covered up.

It’s one thing to be, oh, I’m gay.  It’s another to say, “When I sang Faith, they had three guys in the recording booth with automatic rifles ready to shoot me if I cocked my hips the wrong way.

Instead of the finger popping song that would, usually, get me out of my chair and leaping around like a, uh, fag, it’s just depressing now.  I thought about what he went through and, well, I actually switched to Joy Division to cheer me up.  Finding those — the actual albums, not some weird compilation — was an electronic pirate’s success.  Finding good versions, I mean.  Look, if you’re going to rip this shit, why are you going to rip low quality versions?  Stop that you fags.

In what I consider to be an exciting find, I picked up a two gig torrent containing the entire Genesis discography from 1969 to 1997.  Unlike American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, I’m not too deep into the rock era of Genesis but I do enjoy the experimental Peter Gabriel era, though I do agree that Gabriel’s largely pathetic solo career is fueled only by his initial success in the 80’s.  Bret Easton Ellis predicted the sad, old Peter Gabriel we have to suffer through now, feebly trying to plug into the 40-something crowd by singing pre-87 hits over and over again, except with better acoustics.

I’ve held several favorite Genesis songs to heart, of course.  Anyone who grew up in the 80’s loves certain songs in spite of the bands.   Favorite songs weren’t what inspired me to go to the trouble of downloading two gigs, though.  This was all about the collection.  I paid $10 per cassette tape with my hard earned allowance which actually came from my grandparents because my mom blew all of her money on crack.

Oddly, this lovingly compiled and seeded torrent didn’t include 1986’s Invisible Touch. This is the problem with internet piracy – incompetent pirates.  Not including the band’s most successful and memorable album is what we at Team Nacho Sasha call “Weird.”  I found a download elsewhere, but the effort put me off of the whole piracy experience in regards to Genesis.

Nevertheless, I decided to load up the entire two gigs plus and listen to the Genesis experience for what felt like 120 hours.  I wanted to give them another try to see if, now that I’m 31, I appreciated the band a little more beyond “Oh, they had some great singles!”  Though I developed a few new favorite songs, I’m still left with the same overall impression.  Superman, where are you now?

By the same thinking, I went ahead and downloaded the Phil Collins collection. Again, there are a few hits that I enjoy but, sadly, I was unable to find any new favorites.

Also in the multi-gig department, I was thrilled to find the Talking Heads collection.  Unlike Genesis, this collection was complete – and even included several live sets and B-sides that I had never heard before.  A thrilling moment to get “new” Talking Heads that was only available through piracy.

Overall, I replaced about 40% of my cassette collection, creating an uncomfortable situation for the centipedes and box mites.  A goodly portion of their beachhead no longer mattered to me.  At the moment, Midnight Oil’s entire discography pours through my DSL and, by next week, I anticipate reaching a point where I can throw away the majority of my cassette tapes.

But where’s the Tiffany collection?  Nobody listened to her?  I masturbated to the picture on the inside of the eponymous Tiffany multi-platinum 1987 release several times a day.  That’s the one where the cover is a shameless Debbie Gibson ripoff but, inside, she’s in her ratty jeans and puffy 80’s shirt.  Her desire to pose for Playboy evident before she even broke into the big time.  And wasn’t the Playboy set nice?

Masturbation is a good segue into my current complaints against my employer.  With lunch and the commute factored in, I’m away from home about 12 hours a day.  This is ruinous to the mind and body and leads to nothing but poor health and continued behavioral problems.  (Though the latter might just be because I’m a sociopath and have been since my second year of high school when I fell off a motorcycle and hit my head and woke up with an unquenchable thirst to make women bleed and/or cover the world in trampolines and travel from country to country without walking, which was a recurring dream after that incident.)

Being in the soulless work and commute environment for 12 hours a day cuts into my carefully balanced masturbation schedule.  Worse, though, is that the entire period is filled with useless insanity and aggression.  It’s not even entertaining anymore.

I’ve become convinced that middle-managers are locked into a strange role-play that they’ve learned from some sort of universal and, obviously, alien guidebook which tells them what they must do now that they’ve been given a promotion over their fellow workers.  It’s like promoting prisoners to watch other prisoners.  They go crazy and sodomize all of their charges and, well, that’s just fine, because the overlords don’t give a damn as long as no one makes any noise.

I think that’s the problem.  Middle management has no guidance.  They get a message from on high asking for some impossible task to be completed and then the overlords vanish for days on end.  Meanwhile, the middle managers have to slink onto the floor and try to get grossly underpaid, hyper-medicated, ultra-depressed and de-unionized employees to complete the task.  Yes, I know, it’s hard to be a supervisor, but that’s never an excuse.  No one shrugs and says, well, it was hard for Hitler when he was a young man.  I’m sure he did his best.

I work for a premiere association catering to members in a specific medical field.  Because of this, we often get calls from movie and TV folks asking if we have a member with a certain name.  Now, it’s obvious why they want to know, right?  It’s the same reason all of the phone numbers in movies are 555 numbers.  If they make a film about Doctor So & So who rapes and eats babies and there really is a Doctor So & So, people will believe the movie and Doctor So & So will watch his career get destroyed, watch his life fall apart and, to cheer himself up, go to the movies where he’ll see why all of bad luck came about.  Then he’ll freak out and sue everyone within a 4000 mile radius.  Doctor So & So’s need for vengeance won’t even be amusing.

When the movie company settles with him out of court for the ubiquitous “undisclosed sum,” they’re going to say, well, Nacho’s Association said fuck you when we asked them if you were a member.  Of course, you are a member, but, well… What could we do?

That’ll help narrow Doctor So & So’s law suit.

Our new policy is to not tell anyone any details about the membership record.  Is So & So a member?  We can neither confirm nor deny unless, of course, the caller simply says that they, also, are members, in which case we can give them weight, previous activity in the occult and daily routine.  He jogs alone at 6pm and, for 10 minutes, is out of site along a forest path.

I decided to be proactive and went to my manager, explaining the above scenario.  For example, boss man, would you see a psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter?  No?  Yes?  Maybe?

My boss then did something that a lot of people do to me, he listened to the potential problem and then said it would never happen and, if it has happened (or could really happen), I should “prove it.”

I’m not in there saying Jones v. State of Colorado.  I’m saying it’s a potential issue.  How do you prove that?  If a piano falls from 40 feet up and lands on your head, you might get hurt.  Let’s go outside and fucking prove it.    I hear this “prove it” thing from friends and family so often when I make a statement that it’s starting to dig beyond my usual social control borders and drive right to “Shoot them” mode.  I’ll make a comment and someone will say – prove it!  I don’t believe you!  And it’s not something like men on Venus raped me.  It’s stuff like this, or something along the lines of a guy on the phone called me a shithead, or my aunt’s in the hospital or I have a crippling neurological injury.  The latter I had to prove with a three page doctor’s note detailing everything from the injury to my bowel movements followed by a phone call from said doctor.  When I saw my doc afterwards, he was like what the fuck’s with your job?

You know boss, we should work out a way to answer these movie people, who frequently call us, because it’s a legal issue and, again, Hannibal Lecter, dude.

Prove a case where this happened.  Get the documentation.

To me, it’s common sense.  Especially since the answer to the Lecter question was “No fucking way!!”  But common sense doesn’t rule, I guess.

Even then, maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I am a retard.  I’m perfectly capable of accepting that fact.  So, if I am way off base, then just dismiss me. Say that you’ll look into it, thank you, goodbye.  The response isn’t to launch right into third grade and tell me to prove it.

I’ve made a promise to myself, recently, that I’ll never make statements to anyone again.  What bothers me is that when they say stupid things like you’ll live if you jump off a 100 foot cliff or whatever their deranged minds cook up, I’ll say, ha-ha, okay.  I never pull the prove it.  This is because I believe in my friends or, if they are not friends, I know that they’re not worth the energy required to initiate a conversation about whatever idiotic thing they say.

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Did you really read this far down?  If so, then join the GS forums and explain how that was possible.