Everything you wanted
to learn at university
but didn't.

It had been over a month since the overeducated janitor had last checked his email. What was the point? Nobody was writing him back. More than a year had passed since he left The Almost Ivy League University, and he still hadn’t heard back from any of the seventy-three teaching and research jobs that he had applied to. His research grants had all been rejected due to a lack of institutional affiliation. He tried to defend his trade as an independent researcher, but, from the

There’s something to be said about saying nothing at all. “It’s Over,” Tom Waits 1. It was the second time in less than a month that The Big Boss instructed me to get the bolt-cutters from the backroom. There was yet another lock to cut from a locker. This time it wasn’t a client, much less an archenemy. This time it was one of us. This time it was Arturo. For several weeks his lungs had been acting up again. He started to do things that were out of character for him, things

I The overeducated janitor never had an enemy before, much less an archenemy. Sure, here and there, there were people whom he didn’t get along well with, certain personality types even, the arrogant, the selfish, the extroverts, the attention seekers, for example, but his social circles had always been wide enough, in punk, at The Punk University, in community organizing, to steer clear of troubled waters, to circumvent conflict, to troubleshoot enough to ensure that the occa

“Don’t quit your day job, kid.” The overeducated janitor kept notebooks when he was younger. In his past life, his punk past life, he kept one on him at all times. At the merch table at shows, in the loft of the van on tour, on the porch of the flophouse, in the breakroom of any number of menial jobs, on the rooftops of the industrial corridor, down by the sulphur-soaked riverbanks, on rickety park benches, on public transportation, or wherever he happened to be when the word