Tyler Fugazzie

Experience is an emerald. It shines green, assumes a jagged form, and tastes like luxurious lettuce, jewel-encrusted vegetables.

Say it with me: ex-peer-eee-ents

What does it evoke? Are you intimidated because the word represents a barrier to the entry-level job you need but they need you to have 5 years of it? Does it remind you of hard-earned truths, of lessons you could never have learned unless you lived through? Does it make you think about experts, ex-lovers, or extended family? Excellent marks on your work, or exciting excavations of your efforts?

Does it fulfill you more than material goods? Do you think of concerts, parties, outdoor adventures, paid summer gigs, amusement park trips, museum exhibit excursions? Do you think of brief, hidden moments?

Do you see how you can never lose it?

She has hair,
eyes, folded hands, wry smile
She’s lazy
Only sits there
What a waste
Who cares
She’s ugly, tiny
just a person
no dining savior
no night sky
no scary moment
no melting clocks
Who cares
I can’t make my masterpeace
With a piece of shit like this

Road. Road. Road. Road. Road. Road. Road.

Continue to say road, or any other word, out loud for fifty, sixty, infinity times, or more. Something interesting happens: the word begins sounding weird, strange, foreign, fake, nonexistent. You don’t believe it’s a word with any discernible meaning, and it sounds like nothing more than gibberish.

You may have already experienced this before, but maybe you didn’t know that this phenomenon of a repeated word losing its meaning is known as “semantic satiation,” and it’s an occurrence that reminds us that words are symbols; they don’t contain any intrinsic meaning on their own, they transfer meaning.

So does repetition always cause symbols to lose their meaning?

Shepard Fairey, a street artist most famous for the Obama “Hope” poster, comments in Banksy’s street art documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, about how another kind of symbol, an image, can become iconic through repetition:

“Even though the Andre the Giant sticker started out as a joke and I was just having fun…I liked the idea of, the more stickers that are out there, the more important it seems, the more important it seems, the more people want to know what it is, the more they ask each other, and it gains real power from perceived power.”

This would mean that a symbol can also become more meaningful through repetition.

I guess (supported with lazy research) the difference between these two examples is that the meaning is lost when the repetition is rapid, occurring in a short period of time, as saying road a significant number of times in a row is different than the weeks-months-years span of time taken to reproduce the Andre the Giant Has a Posse image in public spaces.

There are certain moments in life that we remember forever: learning how to ride a bike, sharing our first kiss, finding our first love, landing our first job.

Reading this new, free collection of nine-word poems is one of those moments.

There are no other books or works of writing that combine a love of professional wrestling and indifference to famous icons:

With original thoughts questioning the state of morality in 2015:

And social-personal commentary about the misdirections of do-it-yourself ambitions:

All while taking very little time to actually read.

Make this a moment you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Download Melon Cereal below.

Make another memorable moment by sharing the link to this free, one-of-a-kind book.

There’s a reason why this word is shorter than it’s smiling counterpart. It’s efficient. It’s definitive. It’s the final stop for wavering maybes or tentative positives or radio silences.

No allows you to save your time in situations you don’t want to or simply can’t afford to do something. No isn’t simply a door in the face or a fly swatter in a world of gnats, it’s a way to harness your energies towards the activities you deem the most meaningful.

Its saying no to a link online that would lead you down an endless, lateral trail of other increasingly worthless links. It’s saying no to plans with friends when you need to exercise or spend precious free time working on a creative project. Conversely, it’s saying no to your self-improvement and creative endeavors when they cross into self-indulgence and cause you to neglect important people, important relationships.

No provides clarity about who you are and what you want and where you plan on going.

I don’t want people to say yes to me if they’re just being polite or trying curry my favor. I get less offended if I ask you something and you say no, and really mean it, than if you give me any other answer or try to disguise the no in delays and a series of rationalizations.

Sometimes no is the most honest and helpful thing you can say.

Finished Taxi Driver

Digital alienation

Spring Breakers

Neon isolation

RiFF RAFF

Bowl of cereal

Chromecasting vaporwave mix in apartment living room

Rainy outside

Editing an upcoming book

Creative, new thought

Internet-access induced mind expansion

Sober psychedelic experience from demassified information

Surfing through darkness with LCD nightlights

Saturday, 2:14 AM no intention of sleeping soon

Dreamlike altered videogame consciousness

Computer safety blanket

Youtube video jumps

Random person’s tumblr page

Imgur and wikimedia photos

The morning is a rough affair when you need to commute by train, for over an hour, to spend time doing something you may like enough to not complain about 100% of the time, but not enough to be considered the thing that gets you up in the morning. What gets you up is the money. The money that keeps you fed, clothed, sheltered, and meeting the bare minimum of social acceptability. Things that feel worse to lose than the job and the tiresome commute.

Cheer up morning soldier, random ponytailed man plucked from a 90s grunge band, vacantly glaring at a point in the train carriage, an entrancing voidled entrance, or an escape from the disappointing ‘art’ of emergency instructions and criminal penalty posters. You may not have a beautiful sunrise waiting for you over the horizon, you may be stuck in the umpteenth iteration of the same non-eventful, indistinguishable day. But you are seen. You are honored for your efforts, however far from glamour they may be.

Most of us don’t know what we want. We’re supposed to. We’re supposed to have a crystal clear idea of what we want and who we want and when we want it and where we want to do it and why.

Cheer up morning soldier, for your day goes downhill from here. You will return home much later than expected and you will be swept up in the encouraged-but-not-required post-work shenanigans that you usually regret attending the moment they begin. For some reason they’re supposed to be fun but they’re also always forced. You’re in need of energy and you will get it with a coffee and a jolt when you’re reminded of how much work there is to do since you last looked and as soon as you add another to-do item to the endless garbage pile of tasks, you get a landslide more.

You will invariably get involved with projects that go nowhere, tasks you always repeat, and conversations that do both. You will laugh for some reason, not at any genuine comedy or tickling of the funny bone, but at the hapless realization that you are fated to relive this absurd, elaborate charade every single morning you step foot on this train.

I mentioned you looked like a misplaced Eddie Vedder and you might be, I hope you share some of the man’s talent but not too much, because that would be a tragic waste, to trade musical prowess for a plain white long sleeve button down and bags under your eyes and no workbag because, honestly, why the fuck would you bring a workbag when every file, every text-based manifestation of your living limbo, is located on the same device you use to keep in touch with people you love, even as that number dwindles as your task landslide overruns your schedule and for some reason people around you convince you that this is the way things are supposed to be.

Morning soldier, I don’t know what you want but I hope you get it. Or I hope you are comfortable enough in not wanting anything that you own that disposition and don’t allow the steadiness to spoil you.

They say they want my products
They check off the boxes
They type in their credit card numbers
But I know what they really desire
Is a little piece of me, a sliver of the brain capable of solving their life’s little problems

They want me, they get me
I am for the people

Click “Ship Tyler” and I will pack myself up
I have a trusted colleague come over to assist with the logistics
Of wrapping me in a box, or stuffing me in an envelope if we’re trying to be lean
Did you know that the post office used to impose a shipping limit at 70 pounds?
I had had a conversation with one of their directors about this travesty
“Look sir, reasonably, I can’t cut my weight to 70 lbs, no way no how”
He listened and he liked me
Then I was able to ship myself

But the postage costs are exorbitant
I only go if the customer pays premium
Lonely ex-wives
Curious teenagers with their parents’ credit cards
Enterprising new age businesses

You know I get claustrophobic
My colleague chloroforms me before slipping me into the box or the lope
He likes doing this part because I treat him like shit
Anyway, I don’t like it because it’s hard to come back to consciousness when I arrive at the door
These customers are excited until I ungraciously unravel out like some sort of drunken sock
They poke me with a stick
My colleague adds a set of instructions to “blow an airhorn” in my ear if I should stay motionless for too long
I had one person who wanted a refund
She immediately shipped me back, but not before planting a tender little kiss on my forehead for my bon voyage
I fell in love with her the moment she planted that kiss and I went to ask her her name
But she’d already licked the seal and airtaught me a lesson in returning lost love

I would like to formally thank all of you for keeping me gainfully employed these past years.

You see, I found an opportunity in the unsaved. I have been using your documents, projects, presentations, and other unsaved files for my own benefit. Remember that time you were almost 99% sure you saved that file but couldn’t figure out where it went? Well it went into a shadow databank I deployed that lives throughout the world’s billion-strong connected computers and electronic devices, forming part of the repository I use for tapping into knowledge I don’t yet have, can’t quite attain, and never plan on securing through traditional means.

I laugh whenever I see crowdsourcing efforts, because they’re all miniatures compared to the beautiful outsourcing engine I have sole, on-demand access to. I’ve made $1,023,000,900 in this time. I’ve given awe-sweeping presentations to local libraries about the Dewey Decimal System. I have 75,000 untrademarked logos to use at my disposal for any business I decide to start, which I have plans for as well. 

The examples go on.

I’ve amassed such depth and breadth that my biggest concern is finding the space for storing this data, but luckily I have your unsaved tips, leads, decision-points, and pricing sheets to find the best storage at the nicest prices.

I was told I have an hour to mutate into something else entirely and I’m not sure what it is or what it needs to be or what it should be or what to do to reach it and I’m not even sure I’m not already something else entirely at this time and at all times.

After the deadline was set I looked around my genes but none of them were ready to change. I asked them nicely, but they said no. I explored my thoughts and they floated away before I could explain to them what needs to happen. I reached for my skin cells and they flaked away; I lost some time dusting the floor.

So now there’s only five minutes left, what to do, what to do.

Salt might do the trick. I’ve read that salt changes chemical compositions. I think. Sounds about right.

I’ve got some salt somewhere around here. I know I do. Where’s the salt? It’s somewhere around here I know it.

I’m not making this deadline.

But if I’m already mutating at ever time then I’m already something else entirely, something different from what I was or who I was when the deadline started so maybe I already met it but maybe the deadline changes with every change in time but if changing into something else has already happened and is not necessarily something I can do at will anyway but moreso a function of time then maybe I did meet the deadline.