An Interview With Steve Roggenbuck

Some of you may remember that I helped Steve Roggenbuck distribute his poems back in 2010. He's gone and done a few things ever since i am like october when i am dead, including download helvetica for free and recently self-published a book of poems called Crunk Juice. It's a combination of absurd humour and unusual poems with varying formats and deliberate misspellings littered throughout. I've read through it multiple times and it is one of the most interesting collections of poems I've read. Here is an interview with the man himself about Crunk Juice and his work in general:

Q:Your videos online are very unusual and often random. Do you script them or do you just pick up a camera and say whatever comes to mind?

A:usually i have a loose topic and then all the rest is improvised


Q:How often do you get asked if you’re on drugs?

A:haha maybe once a month. i am not on drugs


Q:You’ve retweeted bad reviews and incredibly negative ones are featured on the back of Crunk Juice. Do you ever get offended by people hating your poetry?

A:if the person actualy seems to be one of my friends or someone with an informed opinion, it has gotten me down a few times. most of the criticism i get is just so hyberbolic and ridiculous, it is hard to take it seriously. also most of the criticism i get is from people who write way different styles of literature than me. it seems like, they have their way and i have mine, and its ok for people to like differnt things


Q:Crunk Juice as a whole has recurring themes and motifs, but individual shorter poems appear random, bizarre, or even incoherent. Is it possible or intended for someone to understand and deconstruct your shorter poems on an individual basis?

A: i think a lot of the shorter poems are just functioning to embody a certain style or a kind of humor, and u get more by reading a whole bunch and getting a feel for the voice in general, the personality or the energy behind it all. analyzing the specific mispelling in a single isolated line might not help a lot

Q:What are your poems about generally as a whole?

A:i think they r about how to live.. i want to promote an approach to living that is playful and honest and free. a lot of the way people live is bulshit they are just following peoples expectations or the usual way.. i want to be an example of someone who has questoned the usual way and created a more beautiful, alternative way. i want to create a cultural movment and impact people spirtually and their personality and how they treat themselves and others


Q:You say in one of your videos enjoy the internet because people can appreciate your deliberate misspellings. Crunk Juice has obvious visual influences from the internet in some of its IM styled speech, text based emoticons like \m/\m/, , ... and even its inclusion of URL segments like “Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about! http://invalid.invalid/url”.www.example.com”. Are your deliberate misspellings related to this internet influence?

A:yes stuff like lol cats and some twitter accounts like @wolfpupy influenced my misspellings. but the internet is not the only influence. peter orlovsky was a beat poet who used mispellings to create a realy funny and cute as heck writing style, he is pre-internet and he was a major influence on me. also, poems by kids. oh my god kids are beautiful they write better poems than adults. i think its because they are more beautiful people. and iam willing to acknoweldge that, so i write more like a kid


Q:You confess to being inspired by e.e. cummings, do any other poets inspire you?

A: walt whitman and tao lin are usually the two others that i list along with cummings. k silem mohammad and some other flarf poets have greatly inspired me. ron silliman and some other language poets have inspired me. some dada poets and beat poets have inspired me. a lot of my peers in Pop Serial and the extended "alt lit" scene have inspired me


Q:I hear you’re working on your own feature film though I can’t find where it was written. Did I imagine that? If not, then will that be like a 90 minute version of one of your videos, a documentary styled video, or will we see a pseudo-narrative form?

A:i think it's gonna be a compliation of a bunch of my short videos, plus excerpts from my live broadcasts and live readings, plus short interview clips with a lot of people. kind of like how "justin bieber never say never" has all those different sources hehe i want it to capture this year of traveling and community building, and also just encourage people to watch a whole bunch of my material at once instead of just 1 or 2 short videos. the working title is "A YEAR IN THE LIEF." lately i created a couple longer videos, particularly "this is how we live in this world," and was really satisfied with it, i would like to use the length of my full movie to build emotional depth and realy mmove people


Q: would you describe some of your poems as having a stream of consciousness feel to them?

A: i coudl see them being descriebd that way. a lot of my poems use found internet language or they are styled to be similar to internet-comment type of language. also the poems (and videos) change topics prety frequently.. but sometimes the changes of topic seem even harsher than most stream-of-consciousness writing, like there is more overt randomness, compared to a poem that is just meandering thought. usually i end up deleting a lot of my first draft, so there is only a few lines left, and they dont always relate to each other in any obvious way, but i still keep them in the same poem haha

Q:Do you ever see your poetry being physically sold in a store in the future?

A:it could happen, but it wouldn't mean much to me, i dont need the help of any publishers or corporations to get where i want to go. i will probably never distribute my books through chain stores because i dont want to contribute to that system. independent bookstores would be more likely, but still it's not a priority in the near future. im building up everything myself, with my friends help

Crunk Juice can be bought physically or downloaded as PDF for a donation of your choosing here. Printed copies are on %100 recycled paper. For more Steve Roggenbuck you can follow him via Tumblr here.

Still Unemployed

Time for... A MINI-BLOG!!! (mini blog!)

(Note: mini blog may actually become not so mini and go for more than just a few paragraphs)

Well, quick update. I did NOT get the job at Video Ezy... why? Because there were other applicants. That's in effect of the reason given to me... one job position + multiple (she said "many" which could mean anything) applicants = hahaha like hell we'd pick you.

Which I COULD take it as "Well although you're a friendly film student who it getting a university level education about the only thing we sell and you have absolute availability every hour of every hour we're open thus pretty much perfect* for this job seeing as you can WALK here from your house if you wanted to... we knew from the very beginning that you had no experience so we wasted your time interviewing you because what separates you from any other applicant (besides your film student status, probably the only reason why we even bothered to acknowledge your existence) is the lack of retail experience thus it was predetermined from the beginning that you were really just backup in case everyone else fell through..."

OR...

I could take it as.... wait a moment when I think of a better spin to put on this....

"Your film student status means nothing, you simply lacked the assertiveness to really go outside the set conversational boundaries of the interview thus failed to woo us as an exceptional person who stood out from the rest." (Yes that's positive)

WHICH MEANS.... that to what I need to do to get a job NEXT time I get an interview (which happens on average a year or year and a half right?) is simply just talk more... get to know my interviewer and show them I am more than just the answers to the questions on their sheets. OK that won't guarantee anything, but I have to find some way to stand out and my resume obviously isn't it.

I don't take it personally, that's just silly. Of course it's not personal, there just are people who do better. I am actually quite glad that they took their time to actually acknowledge my existence by phoning me up originally. Very few people do that... in fact... they're actually the only people who have done that. Out of all the job interviews (all 2 and a half in my life) this one was the first one where they actually called me beforehand to arrange it. The last one on the other hand involved them emailing me on the incorrect email address and then me finding out not long beforehand because my brother also got the same interview and they called him instead. Needless to say those people maintained that level of professionalism all the way through my interaction with them.

Each failure is another thing to learn from, every few months I rewrite parts of my resume, improve, learn to shake hands and introduce myself instead of just handing things silently to people, learn how to respond to pointless questions, do lots of volunteer work to make me look like a saint (a saint that gets retail and customer service experience when working the till at St Vinny's), learn sign language so I can handle the deaf.

I just need to improve beyond adequate... I need to be more than sufficient. I shall become superb in my application and interviewing process.

I am awesome. And I will bloody prove this.

Bring it world. BRING IT ON.

...he says for the 300th time...

*(Why is the job I'm most suited for also very highly sought after? Why can't I just get that damn job?)

The Trees have been Spared!

Remember that last blog post where I said I wasn't going to stop printing out endless applications and resumes (thus slowly killing trees) until I got a call back?

Well, thanks to a very special someone (you may remember them from a previous blog post where I called their current staff incompetent?) the trees have been saved because I have a job interview! (NOTE: I only meant ONE of their stores have incompetent staff... I have a job interview at the OTHER store nearby... though yes, I did apply to the one closer that has random poorly alphabetised DVD's everywhere. So it's a GOOD thing that they'd hire me! They're obviously out to find good employees of fine quality that are intelligent, funny, social team workers who have a passion for film, such as myself!)

I am so happy! Has the curse been lifted? Will I somehow ace this interview and get my dream job? (As in my dream retail job... My dream job is film maker. But you know, you got to start somewhere. Quentin Tarantino did) This is brilliant! I hope they don't ever read my blog!

I was sitting in my creative writing class when I got the call. I looked at my phone and didn't recognise the number, it wasn't on my contacts list. Suddenly I realised that unknown contact = EMPLOYER!!!

"I must take this" I said as I rushed out of class, answering the phone before I had even reached the door (much to the amusement of my classmates, who jokingly yelled out "YES MR PRESIDENT?!" as I left the room).

"Hello, it's (name) from Video Ezy, how are you?"

"YES! I mean, I'm good. How are you?"

Yeah, I literally did this while on the phone just after I had exited the classroom:



Image source:

Though admittedly not quite as enthusiastic as Lleyton Hewitt, but still. I was damn excited and I have every reason to be so! I got a job interview! Finally! After three YEARS of trying harder and harder it pays off! I handed in an application and the NEXT DAY I get a call! Thank you God, you rock dude.

So come this Wednesday I am going to rock out. Bring it on interviewer, let me wow you. Could anyone go any further for a Video Rental Store job than a Film Student? Hello, I am a FILM STUDENT! that is desperate for a job and committed enough to do it properly! There is none more suited for this job than I! I do really believe being a film student actually helped secure me this interview, and as such I utter the following sentence:

To those who think doing a Humanities subject at University will never get a person a job: Suck it.

Yeah!

Forever Unemployed

Hey there! As we all know, I've been searching for a job for... a very very long time! Well a week or so I get told that Woolworth's is looking for "longlife fillers" which is a fancy way of saying reshelf things. Now. Yeah I'm not above being a shelf stacker OK? A job is a job and even though my brother also wanted to apply to it, I was confident I could get this job. Seriously, what competition could I possibly have? So I handed in my resume even though I had excluded any references at all...

GUESS WHO GOT A GROUP JOB INTERVIEW! My brother!...... Me also! Yeah what's really bizarre is how on my resume I listed my contact details to include my hotmail email account... and yet they contacted me via my gmail account. OK that's one thing that Woolworth's did wrong so far! (Oh yes, let's count them!)

Well I go to the group job interview and I thought I was the oldest one there until someone else showed up. Apparently they weren't just interviewing shelf stackers so that person actually wanted a proper job. I was the oldest one wanting to stack shelves... Oh well right? Job interview went well. So well that...

GUESS WHO GOT A CALL BACK!... My brother!...... Me also! Well OK I got the one-on-one job interview which was pretty cool. I went there all smartly dressed and looking good, ready to be interviewed on time. I thought you were meant to show up 10-5 minutes before an interview for some reason. To show punctuality skills required for working at Woolworths like all employees are expected to have? Yes the fact that I had to sit around and wait for my interviewer after the appointed time means nothing, they have a job to do so that doesn't count as a mistake on their behalf. Wait for it people! Woolworth's a perfectly respectable company! Stop urging me to slander them and point out all their flaws! They're bound to make a few mistakes once in a while.

Job interview went well. I answered all the questions quite well except the last one which was "Why do you think you're suited to this job?" which confused me. Hadn't all previous questions actually been this question? Seriously what does that mean!? I hate interview questions because they're always so utterly pointless. "Why do you want this job?" "FOR MONEY!!" (I actually answered for money and to earn valuable working experience) and "what skills do you have that will help you with the job?" answer: capable of heavy lifting and can work independantly. The fact that I appear confident enough to apply to this job and talk to you should suggest I am not so shy as to be unable to work in such an environment and taking one look at me will easily determine that I have more muscle mass than any of the other applicants. You don't need to ask that question for the job. Job interviews for jobs that only teenagers take aren't filled with poignant and important questions. They have questions for the sake of there being an interview process. It serves two purposes, it prepares you for real interviews later on in life, and it shows you are capable of interacting with another human being for ten minutes without stuttering or mumbling. That's it. They know their questions are pointless, it's just how well you give pointless answers is what they rate you on. So yes, I was confused that they asked me such a redundant question that to me was "so, repeat all your answers to me please in a slightly different way. I want to see if you can make up an answer as to why you are suited to picking things up and then putting them down." (By the way, I don't like repeating myself when asked similar questions because it feels like I'm spouting tautologous nonsense which shows very little intelligence) Well I'm suited to in the sense that... I can do it? (Because really, it's SHELF STACKING) So my answer was "............because I am capable?" It's simple, it's truthful, it's really the only thing you can say at this point in time when the past ten to fifteen minutes has been thinking that the person across the table seriously needs to trim their nails because they're so long there are very noticable differences in the lengths and they have made less eye contact that you have. Seriously, how are they going to judge my eye contact and general body posture if they look down at the piece of paper most of the time, pausing to think about the question written down on the sheet of paper before reading it? Read the question! All you do is write down what I say!

Well even though her pause made me feel uneasy as if I had just shattered my perfect facade with an oddly bad answer, I was still confident I had done well. Sure, my interview didn't really reveal any of my actualy real traits or skills. I said "I'd say I'm intelligent, but I don't suppose being able to critically analyse and deconstruct literary texts helps with this job does it?" which a subtle way of saying "You don't need to be smart or skilled to do this job. Hence I am overqualified, but should get it anyway." I don't want to seem vain and think I'm more awesome than anyone else, but I honestly believe I am a very employable person who is wasting their talents as a shelf stacker. But a job is a job and hence not below me. No job on earth requires %100 of a persons skills so the fact that I have many that aren't needed for it doesn't matter. I left and then waited for my call back to see if I had gotten the job.

GUESS WHO GOT A CALL WHILE SITTING IN A CAFE NEAR THE BEACH THE NEXT DAY!..... NOT my brother! (damn right he didn't get a call!) Well it was the lovely HR whatever who was at the group interview (but not the personal one) who had called to inform me that I hadn't got the job unfortunately because they were looking for someone who was going for more long term employment...

"Wait..." I interject, not wanting to sit and be told things without actually talking back and going "excuse me! What the hell woman? Let me justify things before you tell me I failed!" Before she could continue I went on. "3 years is not long term?" Because when I was asked how long I was planning on staying at this job I answered "At the most 3 years. Not staying around forever. 3 years max to pay for some of my uni fees." "And so not just a few months?" (replied the interviewer) "Oh no. Not just a few months, that's far too short. I don't know how many months but more than a few." "OK so 3 years maximum?" "Yes, 3 years maximum." OK.... did you get the underlying theme there? The strong undertones of my point expressed by my repetition of the word "years" complimented by the other persons verbal confirmation of what I JUST SAID? Good! I'm glad you got it from just that because the real conversation was actually a few sentences longer and hence harder to miss what I was saying. "Sorry... I've got written down here you said 3 months." "No I most certainly expressed 3 years quite strongly." MISTAKE TWO! BIG ONE! "Oh, well sorry..."

OK I thankfully picked up on that and mentioned it. I get annoyed when I let people think they're actually right when they're logic is faulty. Just like with my drivers test... which I failed. Sure I actually failed legitimately but she said one of my mistakes included this one time I went onto a road without being able to see oncoming traffic. The person testing me thought it was amazing how I was able to not run into anything when she thought I was unable to see oncoming traffic easily enough. Well maybe the reason why I stopped was because there was a pedestrian crossing at the end of the intersection so wanted to let potential pedestrians past before driving on. Then as I approached the rest of the road I didn't need to stop because as you approach the road you can see onto it! Duh! She also said I made traffic slow down because I cut in without being able to see oncoming traffic. That was a faulty judgement on her part also, there was a truck. You see if a vehicle is slowing down to turn into the same road you're coming out of then no one can actually go past it so you're free to go. I don't need to see oncoming traffic because it's blocked by a truck. It was slowed because it needed to slow to prevent crashing... something I never ever do.

Doesn't matter, I didn't fail on those points, I lost due to a rather nasty instant fail involving a double laned roundabout and a potential hazard.

Anyway, where was I? OH YES! The reason why I'm currently still unemployed! :) Yes, I had forgotten to point out the obvious "well the person who did the interview is INCOMPETANT... that or you can't read. Thanks." But I had made my point that someone screwed up not me. She basically backtracked at that point in time trying to find a reason why I can't be employed anymore at this point in time... but in the future... because she's already given the job away to someone less physically suited to this job. "Oh... well it says Uni study may affect availability. Have you got your uni schedule yet?" "Not yet." "When do you get it?" "End of February I think." "OK well you call me when you get your new availability and then we'll see what we can do. See if we can fit you in." So thank you! Thank you for realising you made a mistake and that there isn't actually anything stopping me from being employed and then offering me the same job in the future to make up for it.

So it's not like I'm completely unemployable... it's just that they won't do it right now. So in a month I will call them back and they will most likely tell me they don't have any positions available and I will be still unemployed! Of course they might actually still employ me after all. Who knows?

I'm still going to apply to other places instead while I wait. Like hell I'm relying on people who either can't write or can't read! (Some people would be bitter after this happened to them... not me though... of course...) So now it's back to printing resume after resume! Now it's back to getting physically exhausted walking around all day looking for places of interest to hand in resumes into. No one ever calls me back, I don't think the whole "handing in resumes" thing actually works unless there's a sign asking for help. There's never any signs! Oh what fun it is to be unemployed...

...gives me time to work on my novel.