I have ants in my shower. And only in my shower. And only, like, one ant at a time. I know it's not the exact same ant because I've killed a few of them. But then I've let a few of them live too, because I'm beneficent.
I wonder what they think of me. Assuming they can register the concept of me, since I'm so much larger than they are. It would be like me trying to conceive of a two-mile-tall person, a concept I can't even begin to get my head around. And I wonder what they think of the shower with its expanses of white tiles like acres of porcelain Heaven. I also wonder how they're getting in there, since I don't see ants anywhere else in the house. If you see one or two or three you know there are many more somewhere else. Ants don't go it alone.
I also feel guilty for subjecting them to what must be the worst hurricane they've ever experienced. There's almost always one ant in the shower no matter when I get in, and they're gone when I'm done. Which means they must be - whoosh! - down the drain.
Does that ant's best friend miss it when it doesn't come back from foraging? Do the others organize search parties? Have I unwittingly become the ant Bermuda Triangle? Do ant conspiracy theorists believe aliens are spiriting their brethren away when in fact it's just me trying to wash off the day's grime? These are the thoughts that keep me awake sometimes.
Mostly, though I wonder what ants must think of my junk. I mean, really, my wiener has to be immense to them. Truly gargantuan on a scale that's like nothing they've ever seen. Maybe that's it... they've come to pay their respects. Like a cargo cult. For my penis. Sure, let's go with that.
Showing posts with label tragic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tragic. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't
I'm concerned that solipsism is real, and that everything I see is just a figment of my imagination.
Because if that's the case, then, man am I f*cked up.
Think about it. If anyone reading this actually exists, that is. What if everything I see and experience is actually just a figment of my imagination? All my friends, all my family, everyone I've ever met or talked to is just some aspect of my unconscious mind. I've met some pretty weird people in my time. I mean seriously whacked-out individuals who should have been institutionalized, or probably had been. What if I made them up? What if they were nothing but me with idle time to spend coming up with something insane? Scary.
Or what about every situation in the world? How completely screwed up am I if the mortgage crisis, the end of the space shuttle and the Japanese tsunami are all stuff I just made up. What kind of person thinks up those kinds of things?
Here's a brain twister. Serial killers. If no one but me exists, that means I made up the concept of serial killers. How deviant is that? And, to put the icing on the cake, if no one else exists, then the serial killers are really parts of me looking to do away with other parts of me. Me stalking myself, as it were. A grand ouroborous of disordered thinking.
For my money, I hope all you other people are real. Even those of you who smoke. Because the alternative is that I'm just one great big, hyper-imaginative mess.
Because if that's the case, then, man am I f*cked up.
Think about it. If anyone reading this actually exists, that is. What if everything I see and experience is actually just a figment of my imagination? All my friends, all my family, everyone I've ever met or talked to is just some aspect of my unconscious mind. I've met some pretty weird people in my time. I mean seriously whacked-out individuals who should have been institutionalized, or probably had been. What if I made them up? What if they were nothing but me with idle time to spend coming up with something insane? Scary.
Or what about every situation in the world? How completely screwed up am I if the mortgage crisis, the end of the space shuttle and the Japanese tsunami are all stuff I just made up. What kind of person thinks up those kinds of things?
Here's a brain twister. Serial killers. If no one but me exists, that means I made up the concept of serial killers. How deviant is that? And, to put the icing on the cake, if no one else exists, then the serial killers are really parts of me looking to do away with other parts of me. Me stalking myself, as it were. A grand ouroborous of disordered thinking.
For my money, I hope all you other people are real. Even those of you who smoke. Because the alternative is that I'm just one great big, hyper-imaginative mess.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Tales From My Past - The Iranian Kid
When I was in eighth grade a new kid showed up. Being in a military town we got new kids all the time, but this one was different. He was thick and dark and was already working on a pretty decent mustache, and he looked at us with wide, suspicious eyes, like he was waiting for the worst but hoping for the best. He liked to play basketball - 'hoop' as he called it - even though he was a worse player than I was, which was saying something. He looked vaguely Mexican, at least in coloration, but his features were wrong for it. When we asked him, he said he was Persian.
He was from Iran. It was August 1979.
His name was Sayeed, and he understood math better than the math teacher. He spoke English with barely an accent, which was way more Farsi than I knew, and he wrote Arabic as kind of a parlor trick, because it went backwards on the page. He didn't care for football and its pads and solid hits, but he really wanted to try out for the basketball team, and maybe baseball if he learned how to play. He slowly stopped being the new kid and stopped being the zoo exhibit because of his foreign-ness and started just being one of us.
Fast forward to November. Revolution in Iran. Students storm the US Embassy and take over fifty people hostage. It's the only thing on the news, video of young men who look remarkably like Sayeed chanting 'death to America.'
In an instant Sayeed went from just another kid to representative for his entire country and spokesperson for the revolution. He endured abuse like I could never imagine, but he also enjoyed more sympathy and defense than thought twelve-year-olds capable of. I could imagine him bracing for a day at school, for the names, for the demands for an explanation, for the humiliating yet necessary teacher interventions, for the agonizing yet well-meant friendly gestures. No matter how bad I had it, I knew I didn't have it anything like Sayeed did.
He finished out the school year and then his family moved back to Iran. I remember talking to him about it, and he was politicized to an extent that was foreign to me. He loved his country, and he and his family wanted to help make it better. So they went. That would have been May 1980.
The Iran-Iraq War started in September 1980.
I remember watching TV and seeing bodies, men killed in some nameless part of the desert between the two countries. They looked like Sayeed. Just as young, with the beginnings of proud Persian mustaches that were never going to get bushy. The news said both sides, Iran and Iraq, conscripted boys as young as twelve. If you were big enough to hold a rifle, you got one.
And it hit me. The kid who just wanted to 'shoot hoop,' and who could out-Algebra the Algebra teacher, might be dead. He was my age, fourteen, and he could be a corpse at that very moment. Or he could be sitting behind a stack of sand bags waiting for the enemy to come over the wall. And here I was worried about having the proper brand of shoes and whether I should buy a mum for one of the girls I liked. We were the same, he and I, and yet his path took him into a true life-or-death situation, while mine let me worry about zits and trying to get to first base.
That was the first time I realized that life isn't fair. The truth hit me in the gut when I saw the lifeless eyes of boys my age, killed in some conflict they certainly didn't understand. The injustice of it made me cry, and the shame I felt made me turn off the TV.
I don't know what happened to Sayeed. I hope he's alive and well and teaching his kids how to shoot hoop. But he was exactly the wrong age, and in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time for his survival to be anything but a lingering question.
Ma salama, Sayeed.
He was from Iran. It was August 1979.
His name was Sayeed, and he understood math better than the math teacher. He spoke English with barely an accent, which was way more Farsi than I knew, and he wrote Arabic as kind of a parlor trick, because it went backwards on the page. He didn't care for football and its pads and solid hits, but he really wanted to try out for the basketball team, and maybe baseball if he learned how to play. He slowly stopped being the new kid and stopped being the zoo exhibit because of his foreign-ness and started just being one of us.
Fast forward to November. Revolution in Iran. Students storm the US Embassy and take over fifty people hostage. It's the only thing on the news, video of young men who look remarkably like Sayeed chanting 'death to America.'
In an instant Sayeed went from just another kid to representative for his entire country and spokesperson for the revolution. He endured abuse like I could never imagine, but he also enjoyed more sympathy and defense than thought twelve-year-olds capable of. I could imagine him bracing for a day at school, for the names, for the demands for an explanation, for the humiliating yet necessary teacher interventions, for the agonizing yet well-meant friendly gestures. No matter how bad I had it, I knew I didn't have it anything like Sayeed did.
He finished out the school year and then his family moved back to Iran. I remember talking to him about it, and he was politicized to an extent that was foreign to me. He loved his country, and he and his family wanted to help make it better. So they went. That would have been May 1980.
The Iran-Iraq War started in September 1980.
I remember watching TV and seeing bodies, men killed in some nameless part of the desert between the two countries. They looked like Sayeed. Just as young, with the beginnings of proud Persian mustaches that were never going to get bushy. The news said both sides, Iran and Iraq, conscripted boys as young as twelve. If you were big enough to hold a rifle, you got one.
And it hit me. The kid who just wanted to 'shoot hoop,' and who could out-Algebra the Algebra teacher, might be dead. He was my age, fourteen, and he could be a corpse at that very moment. Or he could be sitting behind a stack of sand bags waiting for the enemy to come over the wall. And here I was worried about having the proper brand of shoes and whether I should buy a mum for one of the girls I liked. We were the same, he and I, and yet his path took him into a true life-or-death situation, while mine let me worry about zits and trying to get to first base.
That was the first time I realized that life isn't fair. The truth hit me in the gut when I saw the lifeless eyes of boys my age, killed in some conflict they certainly didn't understand. The injustice of it made me cry, and the shame I felt made me turn off the TV.
I don't know what happened to Sayeed. I hope he's alive and well and teaching his kids how to shoot hoop. But he was exactly the wrong age, and in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time for his survival to be anything but a lingering question.
Ma salama, Sayeed.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
She Looks Chinese-ier
I swear by all that I hold sacred this story is 100% true. Even I couldn't make this up.
I was in the post office this morning, mailing queries for a kid's book my writing partner and I are trying to sell. I was standing in line, minding my own business, inching forward as the clerks took the next people up.
The lady in front of me, an older white woman, well past retirement age, tapped me on the arm and said - and I quote verbatim - 'You can go next, I want to talk to this person, she looks Chinese-ier than the others.'
Chinese-ier.
I guessed in an instant what her problem was, she had something to mail to China had couldn't make heads or tails of the non-English characters. But still... Chinese-ier? How do you measure that? Is it a ratio from 0 to 1, with Seal at 0 and Kim Jong Il at 1 and everyone else somewhere in between?
She then proceeded to gesture at the other postal clerks, Asians all, and tell me 'Those other ones don't look as Chinese as she does.'
So now I had a definition of Chinese-ier. Kind of. But, honestly, the clerk this woman was pointing to looked Korean to me. And, sure enough, when the older lady stepped up, the first thing the Chinese-ier clerk said was 'I don't speak Chinese' with absolutely no trace of an accent. So that's one big srike against the theory of Chinese-ier-ness the older lady subscribed to. And I'm still mystified by how she decided one particular clerk looked Chinese-ier than the others, none of whom were probably Chinese at all.
But this got me wondering: do older Asian people look at me and see a 'white-breadier' version of other white guys? That I'm somehow even less funky than decidedly non-funky frat boys? That I keep pink plastic flamingos in the weedy front yard of my run-down trailer home? That I can't afford to pay my meager rent but somehow I'm always mullet-deep in cigarettes, Jack Daniels and lotto tickets? I'd like to think not, but I know in reality they probably do. I mean, I do watch NASCAR, maybe they can tell somehow...
I was in the post office this morning, mailing queries for a kid's book my writing partner and I are trying to sell. I was standing in line, minding my own business, inching forward as the clerks took the next people up.
The lady in front of me, an older white woman, well past retirement age, tapped me on the arm and said - and I quote verbatim - 'You can go next, I want to talk to this person, she looks Chinese-ier than the others.'
Chinese-ier.
I guessed in an instant what her problem was, she had something to mail to China had couldn't make heads or tails of the non-English characters. But still... Chinese-ier? How do you measure that? Is it a ratio from 0 to 1, with Seal at 0 and Kim Jong Il at 1 and everyone else somewhere in between?
She then proceeded to gesture at the other postal clerks, Asians all, and tell me 'Those other ones don't look as Chinese as she does.'
So now I had a definition of Chinese-ier. Kind of. But, honestly, the clerk this woman was pointing to looked Korean to me. And, sure enough, when the older lady stepped up, the first thing the Chinese-ier clerk said was 'I don't speak Chinese' with absolutely no trace of an accent. So that's one big srike against the theory of Chinese-ier-ness the older lady subscribed to. And I'm still mystified by how she decided one particular clerk looked Chinese-ier than the others, none of whom were probably Chinese at all.
But this got me wondering: do older Asian people look at me and see a 'white-breadier' version of other white guys? That I'm somehow even less funky than decidedly non-funky frat boys? That I keep pink plastic flamingos in the weedy front yard of my run-down trailer home? That I can't afford to pay my meager rent but somehow I'm always mullet-deep in cigarettes, Jack Daniels and lotto tickets? I'd like to think not, but I know in reality they probably do. I mean, I do watch NASCAR, maybe they can tell somehow...
Friday, January 14, 2011
Factions
Not to overstate things, but I almost saw the end of the universe today.
See, there are two different garbage truck companies that work my neighborhood. Okay, 'waste management experts,' or whatever you call the people who take away all my filthy leavings. One company has gray trucks with red, the other company uses blue trucks. I think my apartment uses the one with blue trucks, which is neither here nor there but I'm throwing it in for a touch of veracity.
Anyway, the two companies try to keep different schedules on different days, so they're not trying to pick up garbage on the same street at the same time, which would be no good for anyone.
Except it didn't quite work out that way today.
The gray truck was on my street, rattling and banging and making all kinds of hydraulic noises as it hoisted a dumpster high overhead and upended it. There was beeping too, as the little truck that retrieves the dumpsters was skittering all over the place. Man, those guys work fast....
As I got to the corner I saw another of those little trucks take a right turn onto my street. The guy driving jammed on the brakes when he saw the other garbage truck, and he grabbed his radio. Right behind him the blue garbage truck that was also going to turn right skidded to a stop - which, if you've never seen a garbage truck skid to a stop, is truly an alarming sight - and almost clipped the back of its little service truck. I think the blue truck sloshed out some garbage juice, because it suddenly reeked of garbage-y grossness right there. Pretty disgusting, but it has to be even worse for the guys driving.
The blue truck backed up, which just put even more beeping and grinding noises into the atmosphere, and then the little pickup truck did the same. All the while completely tying up traffic at the intersection. Meanwhile the guys in the gray truck noticed what was going on and they seemed genuinely alarmed, maybe even a little upset, and I don't think it was because of the garbage juice smell.
Obviously one of those trucks shouldn't have been there. I don't know who had dibs, I just know neither crew expected the other. I used to think it was just a matter of the street being too narrow for two garbage trucks at the same time, but given the reactions of both crews I think it's more than that.
I think one garbage truck is matter and the other is anti-matter. And if Star Trek has taught me anything it's that when matter and anti-matter get together... BOOM!! Instant end of everything as we know it. That's the only explanation that really makes any sense.
Either that, or the two crews are like the Jets and the Sharks and they have to rumble when one encroaches on the other's turf. Yeah, maybe that's it, singing and dancing garbage truck crews. Stranger things have happened.
See, there are two different garbage truck companies that work my neighborhood. Okay, 'waste management experts,' or whatever you call the people who take away all my filthy leavings. One company has gray trucks with red, the other company uses blue trucks. I think my apartment uses the one with blue trucks, which is neither here nor there but I'm throwing it in for a touch of veracity.
Anyway, the two companies try to keep different schedules on different days, so they're not trying to pick up garbage on the same street at the same time, which would be no good for anyone.
Except it didn't quite work out that way today.
The gray truck was on my street, rattling and banging and making all kinds of hydraulic noises as it hoisted a dumpster high overhead and upended it. There was beeping too, as the little truck that retrieves the dumpsters was skittering all over the place. Man, those guys work fast....
As I got to the corner I saw another of those little trucks take a right turn onto my street. The guy driving jammed on the brakes when he saw the other garbage truck, and he grabbed his radio. Right behind him the blue garbage truck that was also going to turn right skidded to a stop - which, if you've never seen a garbage truck skid to a stop, is truly an alarming sight - and almost clipped the back of its little service truck. I think the blue truck sloshed out some garbage juice, because it suddenly reeked of garbage-y grossness right there. Pretty disgusting, but it has to be even worse for the guys driving.
The blue truck backed up, which just put even more beeping and grinding noises into the atmosphere, and then the little pickup truck did the same. All the while completely tying up traffic at the intersection. Meanwhile the guys in the gray truck noticed what was going on and they seemed genuinely alarmed, maybe even a little upset, and I don't think it was because of the garbage juice smell.
Obviously one of those trucks shouldn't have been there. I don't know who had dibs, I just know neither crew expected the other. I used to think it was just a matter of the street being too narrow for two garbage trucks at the same time, but given the reactions of both crews I think it's more than that.
I think one garbage truck is matter and the other is anti-matter. And if Star Trek has taught me anything it's that when matter and anti-matter get together... BOOM!! Instant end of everything as we know it. That's the only explanation that really makes any sense.
Either that, or the two crews are like the Jets and the Sharks and they have to rumble when one encroaches on the other's turf. Yeah, maybe that's it, singing and dancing garbage truck crews. Stranger things have happened.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Journal Of Unsurprising Research
I was reading in Scientific American* a few months back that researchers had sequenced the Neanderthal genome and then compared it with modern humans'. Their conclusion was that, at some time in the past, before Neanderthals died out completely, humans and Neanderthals interbred.
This is a surprise?
I applaud the effort the researchers went to, it's not easy getting genetic material from 60,000 year old bones, but I could have pointed them to any number of bullies and malcontents from my middle school and high school years to prove the caveman-interbreeding hypothesis. Low-browed and thick-limbed, dim-witted and guttural, these guys were throwbacks to pre-history, when strength and cruelty were needed instead of compassion and insight.
I remember one guy in particular, a year ahead of me in middle school, who was on the football team. Keep in mind that we were, what?, twelve? thirteen? And already this guy was covered in a carpet of body hair so thick that he looked like a chimp on the run. Or a Neanderthal, now that I've read the research. It was astonishing, he even had wiry hair on the second knuckle of his fingers. Put him in wolf fur and give him a spear to jab into a mastodon and I think he would have been right at home.
What I'm saying is I already knew what these researchers have proved. So I got to thinking, what other non-surprises do scientists have in store for us? Fire is hot? UFOs are real? Cats want to murder their owners and eat their eyeballs? These are all well-established propositions.
Scientists should get extra points for coming up with new stuff. Like the universe is held together with twine. Space-twine, sure, but it's still twine. Or proving that your face really will stick like that, just like your mother said.
See? I should be a scientist, there's lots of stuff I could test. They make a pretty good living. There's got to be a lot of millionaire scientists, right?
* yeah, I like reading about science stuff, so what? Don't you oppress me...
This is a surprise?
I applaud the effort the researchers went to, it's not easy getting genetic material from 60,000 year old bones, but I could have pointed them to any number of bullies and malcontents from my middle school and high school years to prove the caveman-interbreeding hypothesis. Low-browed and thick-limbed, dim-witted and guttural, these guys were throwbacks to pre-history, when strength and cruelty were needed instead of compassion and insight.
I remember one guy in particular, a year ahead of me in middle school, who was on the football team. Keep in mind that we were, what?, twelve? thirteen? And already this guy was covered in a carpet of body hair so thick that he looked like a chimp on the run. Or a Neanderthal, now that I've read the research. It was astonishing, he even had wiry hair on the second knuckle of his fingers. Put him in wolf fur and give him a spear to jab into a mastodon and I think he would have been right at home.
What I'm saying is I already knew what these researchers have proved. So I got to thinking, what other non-surprises do scientists have in store for us? Fire is hot? UFOs are real? Cats want to murder their owners and eat their eyeballs? These are all well-established propositions.
Scientists should get extra points for coming up with new stuff. Like the universe is held together with twine. Space-twine, sure, but it's still twine. Or proving that your face really will stick like that, just like your mother said.
See? I should be a scientist, there's lots of stuff I could test. They make a pretty good living. There's got to be a lot of millionaire scientists, right?
* yeah, I like reading about science stuff, so what? Don't you oppress me...
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Losing Touch
I went up to my local Target today, in an unsuccessful attempt to find Christmas presents. There were TONS of people all over the store, which is a lesson for me not to go to Target on a Sunday afternoon. Much more importantly, though, I noticed something alarming, something that shook me to foundations of my identity.
They'd changed the shopping carts.
For as long as I can remember they've had the same carts, metal bases with plastic bodies that also lock up when you try to take them off premises. Which is why homeless people use carts from the 99cent store, they're easier to steal. But Target no longer has the old kind, the familiar kind, the kind I remember.
Now they have all-plastic carts, no more metal bases. The new carts are sleek and gray and red and just... wrong. It's kind of like shopping with the Jetsons, too streamlined and too modern.
I don't know why this change affects me. I mean, really, who cares? They changed the shopping carts, life goes on. But there's something else. They've made this Target the kind that sells groceries too. And I knew nothing about it. They didn't run the approval past me like they should have. Time was I went to this Target all the time, I worked across the street, but it's been months since I've been in, and in that time they've changed the layout of the store, and they now sell groceries, and they've changed the shopping carts.
Enough already. I thought I declared a moratorium on change a while back. Why is no one paying attention?
Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna close my eyes and count to twenty, which should be more than enough time for everybody to find out what they've changed in the past year and then change it back. Okay?
Here we go. One... Two... Three... Four... Five...
Are you changing things back? Good.
Six... Seven... Eight...
They'd changed the shopping carts.
For as long as I can remember they've had the same carts, metal bases with plastic bodies that also lock up when you try to take them off premises. Which is why homeless people use carts from the 99cent store, they're easier to steal. But Target no longer has the old kind, the familiar kind, the kind I remember.
Now they have all-plastic carts, no more metal bases. The new carts are sleek and gray and red and just... wrong. It's kind of like shopping with the Jetsons, too streamlined and too modern.
I don't know why this change affects me. I mean, really, who cares? They changed the shopping carts, life goes on. But there's something else. They've made this Target the kind that sells groceries too. And I knew nothing about it. They didn't run the approval past me like they should have. Time was I went to this Target all the time, I worked across the street, but it's been months since I've been in, and in that time they've changed the layout of the store, and they now sell groceries, and they've changed the shopping carts.
Enough already. I thought I declared a moratorium on change a while back. Why is no one paying attention?
Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna close my eyes and count to twenty, which should be more than enough time for everybody to find out what they've changed in the past year and then change it back. Okay?
Here we go. One... Two... Three... Four... Five...
Are you changing things back? Good.
Six... Seven... Eight...
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Alone
I didn't used to mind being alone. I preferred it, to tell you the truth. Just being by myself didn't mean I was lonely, and no roommates meant my place was mine, I could walk around in my underwear to my heart's content, do dishes or not, leave laundry until it was an absolute emergency. No big deal.
I don't like it now.
I find myself coming home to an empty place, no wife, no kids, no pets, just a few houseplants, and I know I'm missing out. I'm alone and I'm lonely. Even as recently as six months ago I didn't know that.
What changed? I wish I knew. I'm getting older, as we all are, and maybe I'm feeling the march of time, maybe my chance to have a wife and kids is slipping away. But I'm so out of dating practice I don't know how to go about it any more; I don't know how to find someone I want who would want someone like me. It's enough to make me despair, really.
But I'm not gonna. Things will get better, but they're not gonna get better all by themselves. I have to do something, I have to make this happen. I know what I want and I just have to go out there and grab it.
Sure wish I knew what to do...
I don't like it now.
I find myself coming home to an empty place, no wife, no kids, no pets, just a few houseplants, and I know I'm missing out. I'm alone and I'm lonely. Even as recently as six months ago I didn't know that.
What changed? I wish I knew. I'm getting older, as we all are, and maybe I'm feeling the march of time, maybe my chance to have a wife and kids is slipping away. But I'm so out of dating practice I don't know how to go about it any more; I don't know how to find someone I want who would want someone like me. It's enough to make me despair, really.
But I'm not gonna. Things will get better, but they're not gonna get better all by themselves. I have to do something, I have to make this happen. I know what I want and I just have to go out there and grab it.
Sure wish I knew what to do...
Sunday, November 7, 2010
If A Tree Falls On El Molino...
A tree fell over in my neighborhood today.
We're not having any violent weather, no rain, no fire, no wind, no nothing. Nobody hit it with a car or took a chainsaw to it until well after it had toppled. One minute it was standing tall and the next it just... fell over.
I happened to walk right past that tree on my way home from the gym not an hour before its demise. I've passed by this tree on foot several times a week for years now, with never a second thought as to its sturdiness or fortitude. It's a tree, for God's sake, it's a landmark, an ecosystem unto itself. As a matter of fact, a little dog was taking a leak on that exact tree as I walked by.
Must have been one serious whiz.
But as I watched the city workers carve it into little chunks small enough to fit into the wood chipper, I got to thinking. There is no constant in the world but change, after all, and when a neighborhood tree just pitches into the street you'd better take notice. Is this a metaphor I need to pay attention to? Is this some sort of message that the pillars of my identity are built on an unsturdy base? Am I that tree, purportedly strong yet fragile enough to collapse under my own weight? (no fat jokes, please) Is everything I am and everything I thought I would become - the branching of my own life from acorn to oak - rotten inside? Do I need to delve into myself and re-invent who and what I am before my proud canopy lies ignominiously in a metaphorical street?
Or is it just a freakin' tree?
I'm voting for number two. But I might start taking personal stock. Just in case.
We're not having any violent weather, no rain, no fire, no wind, no nothing. Nobody hit it with a car or took a chainsaw to it until well after it had toppled. One minute it was standing tall and the next it just... fell over.
I happened to walk right past that tree on my way home from the gym not an hour before its demise. I've passed by this tree on foot several times a week for years now, with never a second thought as to its sturdiness or fortitude. It's a tree, for God's sake, it's a landmark, an ecosystem unto itself. As a matter of fact, a little dog was taking a leak on that exact tree as I walked by.
Must have been one serious whiz.
But as I watched the city workers carve it into little chunks small enough to fit into the wood chipper, I got to thinking. There is no constant in the world but change, after all, and when a neighborhood tree just pitches into the street you'd better take notice. Is this a metaphor I need to pay attention to? Is this some sort of message that the pillars of my identity are built on an unsturdy base? Am I that tree, purportedly strong yet fragile enough to collapse under my own weight? (no fat jokes, please) Is everything I am and everything I thought I would become - the branching of my own life from acorn to oak - rotten inside? Do I need to delve into myself and re-invent who and what I am before my proud canopy lies ignominiously in a metaphorical street?
Or is it just a freakin' tree?
I'm voting for number two. But I might start taking personal stock. Just in case.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
World War II Was Just Yesterday
An old lady gave me a gift today.
I was flying back from San Antonio and we were seated next to each other. We said hello when I sat down, and then I got to work revising one of my books. About an hour or so into the almost-three-hour flight she started making conversation, asking me how I could read the small type I use to conserve paper when I print things out to edit. We got to talking and I could tell she was originally from somewhere else, so I asked. Belgium, though she'd been in Texas for sixty-five years, far longer than she'd ever lived where she was born. She's 88 now.
We had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from the Cowboys (she's despairing) to maximum tax rates to how she doesn't remember words in Flemish to Hawaii (her destination) to how her departed husband was vertically integrated into the West Texas cotton business. I even found out that she lived in Sherman, TX for a while, which is where I went to school (go Roos!).
As the plane was making its approach into Burbank, somehow the conversation turned to her brother. Her voice got very quiet as she said 'the Germans got him. For two years we didn't know where he was, then we found out he was in an Unknown grave in Holland.'
She was right back there, aged fifteen when the Nazis invaded Belgium and they took her brother to work as slave labor since all the German boys were fighting. She told me how the Gestapo came to their house and told her brother he'd better be on the train Monday, or they would come back for the rest of the family. So he went. And he died.
Her tears were fresh and real and I could see the fear and outrage and terror in this 88-year-old woman's eyes as if she were seeing the Nazi men in black in front of her at that very moment. It was a humbling experience, and suddenly I understood why she would have left Belgium 65 years ago and never looked back.
We had discussed my writing - it's how the conversation started - and as she dabbed at her tears she told me 'you should write about that. It's something you never forget.'
I gave her one of my old cards, back from when I worked at Countrywide, with my cell number and a brief reminder of where we'd met. I want to get her story, even though I know it will cause her pain. And I think she wants to tell it, even though it will cause her pain. These things need to be recorded and people need to remember how inhumane human beings can get.
I was flying back from San Antonio and we were seated next to each other. We said hello when I sat down, and then I got to work revising one of my books. About an hour or so into the almost-three-hour flight she started making conversation, asking me how I could read the small type I use to conserve paper when I print things out to edit. We got to talking and I could tell she was originally from somewhere else, so I asked. Belgium, though she'd been in Texas for sixty-five years, far longer than she'd ever lived where she was born. She's 88 now.
We had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from the Cowboys (she's despairing) to maximum tax rates to how she doesn't remember words in Flemish to Hawaii (her destination) to how her departed husband was vertically integrated into the West Texas cotton business. I even found out that she lived in Sherman, TX for a while, which is where I went to school (go Roos!).
As the plane was making its approach into Burbank, somehow the conversation turned to her brother. Her voice got very quiet as she said 'the Germans got him. For two years we didn't know where he was, then we found out he was in an Unknown grave in Holland.'
She was right back there, aged fifteen when the Nazis invaded Belgium and they took her brother to work as slave labor since all the German boys were fighting. She told me how the Gestapo came to their house and told her brother he'd better be on the train Monday, or they would come back for the rest of the family. So he went. And he died.
Her tears were fresh and real and I could see the fear and outrage and terror in this 88-year-old woman's eyes as if she were seeing the Nazi men in black in front of her at that very moment. It was a humbling experience, and suddenly I understood why she would have left Belgium 65 years ago and never looked back.
We had discussed my writing - it's how the conversation started - and as she dabbed at her tears she told me 'you should write about that. It's something you never forget.'
I gave her one of my old cards, back from when I worked at Countrywide, with my cell number and a brief reminder of where we'd met. I want to get her story, even though I know it will cause her pain. And I think she wants to tell it, even though it will cause her pain. These things need to be recorded and people need to remember how inhumane human beings can get.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Horrible Cat
God help me, I'm warming up to my mother's horrible cat.
A few years after we had to bid our family dog a graceful exit my sister found my mother a new pet. A cute little gray furball kitty, who was born with a gimpy right front foot. Like Nemo but in cat form. His mother had her litter under a boxwood hedge, and they found the kittens once the braver ones started venturing out into the world. My sister had the best of intentions and imagined that the little kitty would be a good addition to a grandparents' household.
She was right and she was wrong.
My parents named the cat Smokey, because he was dark gray like smoke from a forest fire. And he was a little bastard. Halfway feral because he'd spent the first six weeks of his life under a bush, and kind of pissed off because he only had 3 1/2 feet, he was anything but cute and loving. He knew he was a cat, and more to the point, he knew you were not.
My father let the little SOB bite him on the feet. He thought it was cute. It was not. All it did was give Smokey permission to be ornery and awful. You wouldn't think he could do too much damage seeing as how he lacked a right foot, but the little bastard drew blood all the time.
Make no mistake, I hated that cat, and my sister did too. Her daughters learned that this particular pet animal was a 'no-touch kitty' and he learned that the very last thing you wanted to do was get between my sister and her children. Instant cat-skin cap, if you catch my meaning. For years he's been just one good scratch and bite away from finding a new home 100 miles away on some rancher's property.
The past few days, though, I've been in my mother's house with this little SOB, and I don't hate him, not any longer. He's getting up there in cat years, and he's had the crap kicked out of him by other neighborhood cats more times than anyone can count, so he's kind of earned my grudging respect, if for nothing else then for lasting as long as he has. He's slower, obviously arthritic, more tentative when jumping up and going down, and less inclined to savage someone who's just trying to pet him.
He has tried to get my attention with his version of a meow, which is so pathetic and weak and obviously non-practiced that it is cute, in a sorry, scarred, one-bad-foot sort of way. Every day I've been here I've taken leave of my senses and let him out when he squeaks and given him cat treats when he come in. And despite his moods and bites and irrationally vicious nature, my mother does seem to love him. You gotta respect that.
So here's to you, Smokey, for lasting as long as you have when you've been at such a disadvantage in relation to other wildlife, and for ingratiating yourself to my parents even though you are - seriously - the worst pet animal I've ever known. Unlike the past... oh, entirety of your tenure on this planet... I wish you well, good luck and long life. L'chaim, skoal, here's to you kid, and every other applicable toast. You beat the odds.
A few years after we had to bid our family dog a graceful exit my sister found my mother a new pet. A cute little gray furball kitty, who was born with a gimpy right front foot. Like Nemo but in cat form. His mother had her litter under a boxwood hedge, and they found the kittens once the braver ones started venturing out into the world. My sister had the best of intentions and imagined that the little kitty would be a good addition to a grandparents' household.
She was right and she was wrong.
My parents named the cat Smokey, because he was dark gray like smoke from a forest fire. And he was a little bastard. Halfway feral because he'd spent the first six weeks of his life under a bush, and kind of pissed off because he only had 3 1/2 feet, he was anything but cute and loving. He knew he was a cat, and more to the point, he knew you were not.
My father let the little SOB bite him on the feet. He thought it was cute. It was not. All it did was give Smokey permission to be ornery and awful. You wouldn't think he could do too much damage seeing as how he lacked a right foot, but the little bastard drew blood all the time.
Make no mistake, I hated that cat, and my sister did too. Her daughters learned that this particular pet animal was a 'no-touch kitty' and he learned that the very last thing you wanted to do was get between my sister and her children. Instant cat-skin cap, if you catch my meaning. For years he's been just one good scratch and bite away from finding a new home 100 miles away on some rancher's property.
The past few days, though, I've been in my mother's house with this little SOB, and I don't hate him, not any longer. He's getting up there in cat years, and he's had the crap kicked out of him by other neighborhood cats more times than anyone can count, so he's kind of earned my grudging respect, if for nothing else then for lasting as long as he has. He's slower, obviously arthritic, more tentative when jumping up and going down, and less inclined to savage someone who's just trying to pet him.
He has tried to get my attention with his version of a meow, which is so pathetic and weak and obviously non-practiced that it is cute, in a sorry, scarred, one-bad-foot sort of way. Every day I've been here I've taken leave of my senses and let him out when he squeaks and given him cat treats when he come in. And despite his moods and bites and irrationally vicious nature, my mother does seem to love him. You gotta respect that.
So here's to you, Smokey, for lasting as long as you have when you've been at such a disadvantage in relation to other wildlife, and for ingratiating yourself to my parents even though you are - seriously - the worst pet animal I've ever known. Unlike the past... oh, entirety of your tenure on this planet... I wish you well, good luck and long life. L'chaim, skoal, here's to you kid, and every other applicable toast. You beat the odds.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Lightweight
I am, without a doubt, much more fit and healthy than I was, say, eight years ago. I moved out to California and gained a lot of weight. A lot. I was running from something or running to something, but the end result was I spent way too much time on my ass in my apartment. Alone. Eating. Now I'm fifty pounds lighter with way more muscle and I can climb the stairs without getting winded.*
But I am slowly feeling the grind of the wheels of time.
You know how I know I'm getting older? It's not the more visible gray strands in my hair or beard, or the lines at the corners of my eyes. It's not the slightly bulgy vein on my calf or the occasional gray chest hair - which I pluck out when I find it. No, it's a more depressing, obvious sign.
I can't eat nearly as much as I used to.
I'm not talking about my teenage years, when every boy is a human garbage can, or even my early twenties, which is just the teen years with permission to drink alcohol. No, I mean my late twenties, when I could still pack it away and yet I was old enough to know good food from bad. Cheap-ass prime rib at the run-down casino across from Cesars Palace? No thank you, I'll have plate after plate of Spanish tapas for free at a happy hour.
Man, I used to be able to eat. Which was, of course, part of my big-fat-sucker problem eight years ago. But now not only am I not able to eat as much at one sitting, I'm just not inclined to either. I used to want to at least sample everything at a pot luck dinner. Now I just want my salad and some meat and cheese. maybe a little of that Jell-o ring with fruit and I'm finished. Time was when we would go to a Vegas buffet the idea was to double your money: if you paid ten dollars to get in you had to eat at least twenty dollars worth of food. Wholesale, not retail. Now I don't even want to go near the buffet, couldn't care less.
It's insidious, this getting older. It takes what used to be a defining characteristic and turns it into a liability. Which, in this case, ain't so bad a thing. I don't need to eat like that any more, and I'm glad I don't.
But still...
* which is good because the elevator STILL isn't fixed
But I am slowly feeling the grind of the wheels of time.
You know how I know I'm getting older? It's not the more visible gray strands in my hair or beard, or the lines at the corners of my eyes. It's not the slightly bulgy vein on my calf or the occasional gray chest hair - which I pluck out when I find it. No, it's a more depressing, obvious sign.
I can't eat nearly as much as I used to.
I'm not talking about my teenage years, when every boy is a human garbage can, or even my early twenties, which is just the teen years with permission to drink alcohol. No, I mean my late twenties, when I could still pack it away and yet I was old enough to know good food from bad. Cheap-ass prime rib at the run-down casino across from Cesars Palace? No thank you, I'll have plate after plate of Spanish tapas for free at a happy hour.
Man, I used to be able to eat. Which was, of course, part of my big-fat-sucker problem eight years ago. But now not only am I not able to eat as much at one sitting, I'm just not inclined to either. I used to want to at least sample everything at a pot luck dinner. Now I just want my salad and some meat and cheese. maybe a little of that Jell-o ring with fruit and I'm finished. Time was when we would go to a Vegas buffet the idea was to double your money: if you paid ten dollars to get in you had to eat at least twenty dollars worth of food. Wholesale, not retail. Now I don't even want to go near the buffet, couldn't care less.
It's insidious, this getting older. It takes what used to be a defining characteristic and turns it into a liability. Which, in this case, ain't so bad a thing. I don't need to eat like that any more, and I'm glad I don't.
But still...
* which is good because the elevator STILL isn't fixed
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Frontierville
Jake tied Old Paint to the hitching post, close enough to the trough for a drink. Like Jake himself, his horse had seen better days but was too proud and ornery to admit it. Jake pulled his shotgun from the saddle holster and checked to make sure there were two shells ready to go in the chambers. Today was the day, he was either going to put an end to this once and for all or it was going to put an end to him.
Knocking the dust from his boots he sauntered down the raised wooden sidewalk, headed for One-Eyed Jack's, the only saloon in town. Those gentle citizens who found themselves in Jake's path took one look at the determined glint in his eye - and at the shotgun in his hand - and made themselves scarce. It didn't take a Pinkerton to see what was about to happen.
When the swinging doors to One-Eyed Jack's parted everyone turned to the man with the shotgun. Lefty stopped his one-handed plinking on the black-and-white keys and stared at Jake with wide, rheumy, alcohol-rimmed eyes before he scrambled for cover behind the piano. The miners at the first table looked up from betting their week's wages on a rigged card game then scattered like straw on the wind, leaving behind chips, cards, and a half-empty bottle of rotgut whisky. The swinging doors fanned the air as people beat a hasty retreat. Like a wave rolling across the beach, when the saloon's inhabitants saw Jake they flowed somewhere else.
Clara, the town whore and Jake's sometime fling caught sight of him as she descended the stairs. "Jacob Ulysses McGrath, what do you think you're doing with that shotgun?"
"I'm gonna take care of it, Clara," Jake snarled. "Once and for all. Or go to Boot Hill tryin.'"
Skirts flying and bosom threatening to burst from her corset, Clara raced in front of him. "Jake, you just leave that Facebook alone."
The twin barrels of the shotgun pressed against the laptop Clancy the bartender kept there for his customers to use. He stole broadband from the Chinese laundry next door.
"I'm tired of it," Jake snarled. "Had about enough of them keepin' my personal, private information. Sharing it when they see fit, not when I do. All those ads based on my birthday. Whose business is that?"
Clara put her soft hand on his shoulder. "You're working yourself up to something you don't want to do. Why don't you come on up to my room? We can get rid of some of this tension."
Jake shrugged her hand off. "I know you check in on FourSquare all the time. I told you I want out. I don't want any more 'friend' suggestions, I don't care what other people 'like' and I ain't aimin' to be 'tagged' in anyone's gol-durned pictures."
"Nobody said you had to do any of that," Clara stuttered. "Put the gun down, why don't you?"
"Somebody has to stand up to them," Jake growled. "This is my information, not theirs. I own it, it's mine to do with as I please. And they ain't pleasin' me right at the moment."
He pressed the shotgun tight against his shoulder and pulled the hammers back. The laptop was going to get both barrels, point-blank.
Clara's face went pale. "Jake, you need to reconsider..."
"You want to know the worst of it?" Jake's voice was a cold whisper. "Mafia Wars. I'm like Bert, over there in the corner, sleeping in his own vomit because he can't give up the hooch. But my hooch is Mafia Wars. This is the only way, Clara. The only way."
Jake heard the click of the derringer's firing pin as he felt the cold metal on his temple. "I can't let you do that, Jake. I keep in touch with my cousin in Dodge City on Facebook. And I play Farmville every night."
"Why are you playing Farmville when there are twenty farms within an hour's walk of this saloon?" Jake barked. "I'm gonna put an end to the madness."
"Back away from the laptop," Clara ordered. She pressed the derringer tighter to his head.
"Seems like we got us a Mexican standoff," Jake said.
"Yup," Clara said.
"I'll give you to the count of three to put that little toy back in your garter," Jake said. "Or you and I are gonna have us a problem."
"I'd say we got us a problem now," Clara whispered.
Jake's jaw clenched. "One... two..."
A shot rang out.
Knocking the dust from his boots he sauntered down the raised wooden sidewalk, headed for One-Eyed Jack's, the only saloon in town. Those gentle citizens who found themselves in Jake's path took one look at the determined glint in his eye - and at the shotgun in his hand - and made themselves scarce. It didn't take a Pinkerton to see what was about to happen.
When the swinging doors to One-Eyed Jack's parted everyone turned to the man with the shotgun. Lefty stopped his one-handed plinking on the black-and-white keys and stared at Jake with wide, rheumy, alcohol-rimmed eyes before he scrambled for cover behind the piano. The miners at the first table looked up from betting their week's wages on a rigged card game then scattered like straw on the wind, leaving behind chips, cards, and a half-empty bottle of rotgut whisky. The swinging doors fanned the air as people beat a hasty retreat. Like a wave rolling across the beach, when the saloon's inhabitants saw Jake they flowed somewhere else.
Clara, the town whore and Jake's sometime fling caught sight of him as she descended the stairs. "Jacob Ulysses McGrath, what do you think you're doing with that shotgun?"
"I'm gonna take care of it, Clara," Jake snarled. "Once and for all. Or go to Boot Hill tryin.'"
Skirts flying and bosom threatening to burst from her corset, Clara raced in front of him. "Jake, you just leave that Facebook alone."
The twin barrels of the shotgun pressed against the laptop Clancy the bartender kept there for his customers to use. He stole broadband from the Chinese laundry next door.
"I'm tired of it," Jake snarled. "Had about enough of them keepin' my personal, private information. Sharing it when they see fit, not when I do. All those ads based on my birthday. Whose business is that?"
Clara put her soft hand on his shoulder. "You're working yourself up to something you don't want to do. Why don't you come on up to my room? We can get rid of some of this tension."
Jake shrugged her hand off. "I know you check in on FourSquare all the time. I told you I want out. I don't want any more 'friend' suggestions, I don't care what other people 'like' and I ain't aimin' to be 'tagged' in anyone's gol-durned pictures."
"Nobody said you had to do any of that," Clara stuttered. "Put the gun down, why don't you?"
"Somebody has to stand up to them," Jake growled. "This is my information, not theirs. I own it, it's mine to do with as I please. And they ain't pleasin' me right at the moment."
He pressed the shotgun tight against his shoulder and pulled the hammers back. The laptop was going to get both barrels, point-blank.
Clara's face went pale. "Jake, you need to reconsider..."
"You want to know the worst of it?" Jake's voice was a cold whisper. "Mafia Wars. I'm like Bert, over there in the corner, sleeping in his own vomit because he can't give up the hooch. But my hooch is Mafia Wars. This is the only way, Clara. The only way."
Jake heard the click of the derringer's firing pin as he felt the cold metal on his temple. "I can't let you do that, Jake. I keep in touch with my cousin in Dodge City on Facebook. And I play Farmville every night."
"Why are you playing Farmville when there are twenty farms within an hour's walk of this saloon?" Jake barked. "I'm gonna put an end to the madness."
"Back away from the laptop," Clara ordered. She pressed the derringer tighter to his head.
"Seems like we got us a Mexican standoff," Jake said.
"Yup," Clara said.
"I'll give you to the count of three to put that little toy back in your garter," Jake said. "Or you and I are gonna have us a problem."
"I'd say we got us a problem now," Clara whispered.
Jake's jaw clenched. "One... two..."
A shot rang out.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Shorts 'N Boots
I know it's been hot here in SoCal lately, and I want to be understanding. Really, I do. The AC in my apartment works only halfway at best, and the AC in my truck doesn't hardly work at all. I can sympathize with someone who's just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
But seriously... shorts with boots? In Pasadena? In 2010?
This is never, ever, EVER a good fashion choice, not even back in 1978 when the world was young and people didn't know any better and certainly not now. And keep in mind this proclamation is coming from a guy who proudly owns five Hawaiian shirts, one for each day of the work week.
If you're a female and you strut down the street in boots and shorts the best you can hope for is that you look like an awkward fashion disaster. Like someone who dressed in the darkness of an early morning. Pity from strangers is better than the other option, which is that you just look like a hooker. And not a high-class hooker, more like a truck-stop hooker with a meth habit to feed.
If you're a guy wearing shorts and boots you'd better be covered in paint or sawdust, otherwise you look like a moron. And if you're a fat dude, don't wear a wife-beater because that just exposes your man-boobs. And, for God's sake, don't wear a cowboy hat to complete the ensemble, you're just begging to get beat up. Yes, man at the corner of Lake and Del Mar at 5:15 PM today, I'm talking directly to you here.
If only doofuses who wore boots with shorts read this blog, the world would be safe from their monkeyshines.
But seriously... shorts with boots? In Pasadena? In 2010?
This is never, ever, EVER a good fashion choice, not even back in 1978 when the world was young and people didn't know any better and certainly not now. And keep in mind this proclamation is coming from a guy who proudly owns five Hawaiian shirts, one for each day of the work week.
If you're a female and you strut down the street in boots and shorts the best you can hope for is that you look like an awkward fashion disaster. Like someone who dressed in the darkness of an early morning. Pity from strangers is better than the other option, which is that you just look like a hooker. And not a high-class hooker, more like a truck-stop hooker with a meth habit to feed.
If you're a guy wearing shorts and boots you'd better be covered in paint or sawdust, otherwise you look like a moron. And if you're a fat dude, don't wear a wife-beater because that just exposes your man-boobs. And, for God's sake, don't wear a cowboy hat to complete the ensemble, you're just begging to get beat up. Yes, man at the corner of Lake and Del Mar at 5:15 PM today, I'm talking directly to you here.
If only doofuses who wore boots with shorts read this blog, the world would be safe from their monkeyshines.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
I'm Trying, Really
I've been sitting at my desk for the past 57 minutes, fully intending to post something witty or poignant. Possibly both. But it's just not coming.
Writer's block is not a concept I subscribe to, it's like saying a quarterback has 'throwing the ball block.' Writing is what writers do, and if you're having a hard time of it you figure out what's wrong and work through it.
But right now, this morning, forces are conspiring against me. Downstairs, since 8 AM, workers have been hammering, sawing, screwing things in and generally making a racket to wake the dead. Or me. I think they're replacing the AC mechanism(s) down in #9, because they're indulging their noise-making about five feet from where I sit and around the corner. Where my own AC stuff is. I tell you, I'm like Sherlock Holmes here.
Just when I think they're done they find something new to beat on, or something new to saw, or something new to screw into something else. Crazy-making.
And there's a couple on the first floor with a baby, the cutest little girl you've ever seen, probably two years old I'm guessing. Big surprise, she doesn't like the hammering, sawing, and screwing any more than I do. But since she's two she gets a free pass to complain in the only way she knows how. By crying.
Hammer hammer hammer saw. Cry cry cry. Hammer hammer hammer saw. Cry cry cry. Hammer saw hammer saw screw screw screw. Cryyyyyyyyyy...
But wait, there's more... since the gates downstairs are open for the workers determined to keep me from concentrating, door-to-door salesmen now have no barries to keep the off the property, so now I have uninvited guests. About fifteen minutes ago someone knocked on my door. I assumed it was the manager or one of the workers downstairs telling me they needed to get into my place for some reason. Oh no. A kid, pimply-faced, nervous and dirty looked at me with wide-eyed surprise as he realized I didn't have a shirt on.
'Hi, my name is (fill in forgettable name here, I think it was Jared), and I'm selling subscriptions to pay my way through school...'
Kee-rist. I just can't get a break.
I politely refused and decided not to threaten him with a visit from the cops. Even though our police force loves rousting these slave-labor subscription selling operations, this kid has enough problems just being part of it, he doesn't need me to add to his misery.
It's quiet now.
Too quiet...
Writer's block is not a concept I subscribe to, it's like saying a quarterback has 'throwing the ball block.' Writing is what writers do, and if you're having a hard time of it you figure out what's wrong and work through it.
But right now, this morning, forces are conspiring against me. Downstairs, since 8 AM, workers have been hammering, sawing, screwing things in and generally making a racket to wake the dead. Or me. I think they're replacing the AC mechanism(s) down in #9, because they're indulging their noise-making about five feet from where I sit and around the corner. Where my own AC stuff is. I tell you, I'm like Sherlock Holmes here.
Just when I think they're done they find something new to beat on, or something new to saw, or something new to screw into something else. Crazy-making.
And there's a couple on the first floor with a baby, the cutest little girl you've ever seen, probably two years old I'm guessing. Big surprise, she doesn't like the hammering, sawing, and screwing any more than I do. But since she's two she gets a free pass to complain in the only way she knows how. By crying.
Hammer hammer hammer saw. Cry cry cry. Hammer hammer hammer saw. Cry cry cry. Hammer saw hammer saw screw screw screw. Cryyyyyyyyyy...
But wait, there's more... since the gates downstairs are open for the workers determined to keep me from concentrating, door-to-door salesmen now have no barries to keep the off the property, so now I have uninvited guests. About fifteen minutes ago someone knocked on my door. I assumed it was the manager or one of the workers downstairs telling me they needed to get into my place for some reason. Oh no. A kid, pimply-faced, nervous and dirty looked at me with wide-eyed surprise as he realized I didn't have a shirt on.
'Hi, my name is (fill in forgettable name here, I think it was Jared), and I'm selling subscriptions to pay my way through school...'
Kee-rist. I just can't get a break.
I politely refused and decided not to threaten him with a visit from the cops. Even though our police force loves rousting these slave-labor subscription selling operations, this kid has enough problems just being part of it, he doesn't need me to add to his misery.
It's quiet now.
Too quiet...
Saturday, July 10, 2010
... And That Little Boy Smile
I have a black velvet painting of Elvis. I've had it for years, it was a present from a friend who knew of my fondness for midways, carnies, Vegas, and all things vaguely seedy and disreputable. He got it in Mexico, Neuvo Laredo I think, as part of a weekend-long excursion he only remembers bits of. The best part is the frame, which he got for an extra dollar. It's just mitred wood, there's nothing to actually hang the picture, which means it's been sitting on my floor for years. I vacuum it every so often - really - to keep the white-jumpsuited, Mexican-looking Elvis happy.
My philosophy in life has been 'if it's good enough for Elvis, it's good enough for me.' Not that I've ever had the funds to do most of what Elvis did, or the toadying hangers-on to make doing those things worthwhile. But I'm working on it. So I figure a good first step would be for me to get my own black velvet portrait done. Once I have my smiling face beaming down from a wall somewhere I know I'll have arrived, and the rest will just fall into place. I can get a 'TCB' three-finger ring, a big ol' convertible Caddy, and I can start shooting televisions. And a cape. I need a cape.
It's a natural progression - black velvet painting of myself, then all the stuff, then the cape, then financial independence. The way is so clear, I don't know why I didn't see it before. All I have to do is find someone to paint a black-velvet portrait of me and I'll be just like Elvis.
I'll take a pass on dying on the toilet, though, if it's all the same to everyone else.
My philosophy in life has been 'if it's good enough for Elvis, it's good enough for me.' Not that I've ever had the funds to do most of what Elvis did, or the toadying hangers-on to make doing those things worthwhile. But I'm working on it. So I figure a good first step would be for me to get my own black velvet portrait done. Once I have my smiling face beaming down from a wall somewhere I know I'll have arrived, and the rest will just fall into place. I can get a 'TCB' three-finger ring, a big ol' convertible Caddy, and I can start shooting televisions. And a cape. I need a cape.
It's a natural progression - black velvet painting of myself, then all the stuff, then the cape, then financial independence. The way is so clear, I don't know why I didn't see it before. All I have to do is find someone to paint a black-velvet portrait of me and I'll be just like Elvis.
I'll take a pass on dying on the toilet, though, if it's all the same to everyone else.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Eavesdropping
I like to keep my eyes and ears open, I try to observe without being obtrusive and listen without butting in. People fascinate me, all kinds of people, even the most pretentious, horrible douchebag is someone's son or someone's father, and as such has an innate nobility, even if that person doesn't know it themselves. If you just hang back a little, watch and listen, you learn the most amazing things.
I took my empty plastic and glass bottle up to Ralph's today, to the recycling center. This is the one right across the street - literally - from the Salvation Army mission, so it's always busy with homeless people cashing in their day's treasure. If you get there early in the morning, however, they're mostly all still out picking through dumpsters, so you can get in and out pretty quick.
I got there early, about ten minutes after it opened, and got to work feeding my empties through one at a time. After about five minutes I happened to look up and saw that a crowd had gathered. Where there had been no one but me and another guy, all of a sudden there were eight or ten people, all waiting patiently for their turn. They snuck up on me.
You can tell the career homeless, especially in Summer. They're the ones with the dramatic brown tans, the thin, bony limbs, and the towels and re-used bottles of water in their shopping carts. There were three of them in line. They all knew each other, and they were speaking low and quiet. I tried to eavesdrop over the sound of the recycler but it was too clangy. Then a fourth lady showed up, loud and happy and overbearing. She joined the conversation, and as usually happens the others increased their volume to match hers. And I listened. It was a glimpse into a world that, honestly, I hope never to become part of.
Things I learned:
Pickers - as they call themselves - absolutely have turf. They discussed major streets and intersections across Pasadena, who had claim to what side, and who they witnessed venturing out of their regular area.
They know police officers by first name.
They're actually averse to certain soup kitchens, because of lectures they get. They'd rather sift through a dumpster than hear a sermon.
There's a protocol to who gets first crack at restaurant food tossed out at the end of the night, and if you violate that protocol you're cruising for a beating.
You're also cruising for a beating if you cheat someone out of a prime spot in the shade at the park during the day.
Some travel very long distances on a regular route. One guy spent a few days in Pasadena, a few in Long Beach, a few in Santa Monica, and a few in LA proper before starting the cycle again. During the hottest summer months he favored the beach communities, but evidently so do many others.
As you might expect, there is a great deal of personal tragedy that goes into putting a person out of a regular home. But these four talked about friends dying on the street with such detachment that it made me want to cry for them, since they weren't willing or able to themselves.
They're not smart. It sounds uncharitable, I know, but I didn't hear any hidden pearls of wisdom, or glean any astounding insights into the human condition. They were four very down-on-their-luck homeless people just trying to get through another day. I don't suppose you find yourself in that position if you're prone to introspection and thinking about the consequences of what you do.
When I was finished I got my ticket for $5.75, redeemable in Ralph's just steps away. I thought I would buy grapes and fruit juice, but I finally got a good look at the loud lady. Thin, unwashed, gray hair and bad teeth, wearing men's clothes pulled from a bin of cast-offs. She was the one who'd been talking about all her friends who'd died in the past year, street people who weren't coming back to the Mission across the street, ever.
I gave her the ticket. She needed it more than I did.
I took my empty plastic and glass bottle up to Ralph's today, to the recycling center. This is the one right across the street - literally - from the Salvation Army mission, so it's always busy with homeless people cashing in their day's treasure. If you get there early in the morning, however, they're mostly all still out picking through dumpsters, so you can get in and out pretty quick.
I got there early, about ten minutes after it opened, and got to work feeding my empties through one at a time. After about five minutes I happened to look up and saw that a crowd had gathered. Where there had been no one but me and another guy, all of a sudden there were eight or ten people, all waiting patiently for their turn. They snuck up on me.
You can tell the career homeless, especially in Summer. They're the ones with the dramatic brown tans, the thin, bony limbs, and the towels and re-used bottles of water in their shopping carts. There were three of them in line. They all knew each other, and they were speaking low and quiet. I tried to eavesdrop over the sound of the recycler but it was too clangy. Then a fourth lady showed up, loud and happy and overbearing. She joined the conversation, and as usually happens the others increased their volume to match hers. And I listened. It was a glimpse into a world that, honestly, I hope never to become part of.
Things I learned:
Pickers - as they call themselves - absolutely have turf. They discussed major streets and intersections across Pasadena, who had claim to what side, and who they witnessed venturing out of their regular area.
They know police officers by first name.
They're actually averse to certain soup kitchens, because of lectures they get. They'd rather sift through a dumpster than hear a sermon.
There's a protocol to who gets first crack at restaurant food tossed out at the end of the night, and if you violate that protocol you're cruising for a beating.
You're also cruising for a beating if you cheat someone out of a prime spot in the shade at the park during the day.
Some travel very long distances on a regular route. One guy spent a few days in Pasadena, a few in Long Beach, a few in Santa Monica, and a few in LA proper before starting the cycle again. During the hottest summer months he favored the beach communities, but evidently so do many others.
As you might expect, there is a great deal of personal tragedy that goes into putting a person out of a regular home. But these four talked about friends dying on the street with such detachment that it made me want to cry for them, since they weren't willing or able to themselves.
They're not smart. It sounds uncharitable, I know, but I didn't hear any hidden pearls of wisdom, or glean any astounding insights into the human condition. They were four very down-on-their-luck homeless people just trying to get through another day. I don't suppose you find yourself in that position if you're prone to introspection and thinking about the consequences of what you do.
When I was finished I got my ticket for $5.75, redeemable in Ralph's just steps away. I thought I would buy grapes and fruit juice, but I finally got a good look at the loud lady. Thin, unwashed, gray hair and bad teeth, wearing men's clothes pulled from a bin of cast-offs. She was the one who'd been talking about all her friends who'd died in the past year, street people who weren't coming back to the Mission across the street, ever.
I gave her the ticket. She needed it more than I did.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Damn Bicylces
They've gone and done it. The bicycle mafia has ruined - devastated, really - a street I travel regularly, and I've had it with them and their kind. Or with you and your kind if you ride a bicycle on my streets.
Cordova, a street I use several times a week to get where I need to go, has gained a bike lane between Lake Avenue and Hill Street.
'But Don,' you say, 'Cordova's a two-lane street, how could they possibly squeeze a bike lane in there?'
Well, they didn't squeeze it in. They took out a lane to make room, one on each side. Bastards. What had been a nice two-lane road now is one-lane, with a big yellow-lined turn lane in the center that no one's ever going to use, all so the freakin' bicycle weirdos can have their stupid lane, when they had a perfectly good road to begin with.
Now I'm going to get stuck behind some jackass going 20, with no way to go around them because there's a bicycle lane to my right and a yellow-lined turn lane to my left. All so bike riding douchebags can go to and from PCC on a road no bicyclists take to go to school in the first place.
So here's what I'm gonna do. And no, it doesn't involve smashing my truck into bicyclists, killing's too good for their kind, and it would gum up my truck. No, I'm going to start walking in the bike lane. See, I figure the lane's got to be safe enough, and even though there's a perfectly good sidewalk I want to assert my pedestrian's rights to use a bike lane for my own purposes, even though I clearly don't belong in it. Eventually I'll get my own pedestrian lane in the road, so the city can make Cordova one-lane. Not in each direction, just one lane.
Just makes me so mad...
Cordova, a street I use several times a week to get where I need to go, has gained a bike lane between Lake Avenue and Hill Street.
'But Don,' you say, 'Cordova's a two-lane street, how could they possibly squeeze a bike lane in there?'
Well, they didn't squeeze it in. They took out a lane to make room, one on each side. Bastards. What had been a nice two-lane road now is one-lane, with a big yellow-lined turn lane in the center that no one's ever going to use, all so the freakin' bicycle weirdos can have their stupid lane, when they had a perfectly good road to begin with.
Now I'm going to get stuck behind some jackass going 20, with no way to go around them because there's a bicycle lane to my right and a yellow-lined turn lane to my left. All so bike riding douchebags can go to and from PCC on a road no bicyclists take to go to school in the first place.
So here's what I'm gonna do. And no, it doesn't involve smashing my truck into bicyclists, killing's too good for their kind, and it would gum up my truck. No, I'm going to start walking in the bike lane. See, I figure the lane's got to be safe enough, and even though there's a perfectly good sidewalk I want to assert my pedestrian's rights to use a bike lane for my own purposes, even though I clearly don't belong in it. Eventually I'll get my own pedestrian lane in the road, so the city can make Cordova one-lane. Not in each direction, just one lane.
Just makes me so mad...
Friday, June 4, 2010
Litterbug, Litterbug, Shame On You
Pardon the perspiration but I just lugged a 70+ pound book case up three flights of stairs - because the elevator STILL isn't fixed - and I'm sweating like a whore in church.
Which is kind of my topic. Perspiration, that is, not whores. Or church. It's unseasonably warm in LA today, 80 degrees in Pasadena, and as I was driving home from work I noticed a lot of rolled-down windows with people's arms sticking out of them. A lot. Usually LA driving is hermetically sealed, unless you're in a convertible, everybody in their own little cocoon of metal and glass. But today people were becoming one with their environment, at least the part that jets by at 30 miles an hour. But there was something else I noticed a lot of. A lot.
The people with their windows down were littering. Brashly and brazenly. Unapologetically.
I noticed a bus driver lady first, flicking something off her fingers and out into the street. Took her a while to get rid of whatever it was. Not two stop lights later I saw a guy throwing a wrapper out his window. And a guy behind him tossed something out too, which bounced and rolled down Wilshire. I noticed debris-tossing about five more times on the way home, and then another five or six when I picked up the monster book case I mentioned before. All were people who had their windows down, sunning their left arms.
So I figure one of two things is true:
a) people who like to litter also like to roll their windows down when it's hot
OR
b) having a car window down makes otherwise fastidious people into scofflaw litterbugs.
I'm guessing it's a) because I had my window down and I didn't toss one thing out of my truck. Didn't even spit.
COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes back - 35 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 38 days
Which is kind of my topic. Perspiration, that is, not whores. Or church. It's unseasonably warm in LA today, 80 degrees in Pasadena, and as I was driving home from work I noticed a lot of rolled-down windows with people's arms sticking out of them. A lot. Usually LA driving is hermetically sealed, unless you're in a convertible, everybody in their own little cocoon of metal and glass. But today people were becoming one with their environment, at least the part that jets by at 30 miles an hour. But there was something else I noticed a lot of. A lot.
The people with their windows down were littering. Brashly and brazenly. Unapologetically.
I noticed a bus driver lady first, flicking something off her fingers and out into the street. Took her a while to get rid of whatever it was. Not two stop lights later I saw a guy throwing a wrapper out his window. And a guy behind him tossed something out too, which bounced and rolled down Wilshire. I noticed debris-tossing about five more times on the way home, and then another five or six when I picked up the monster book case I mentioned before. All were people who had their windows down, sunning their left arms.
So I figure one of two things is true:
a) people who like to litter also like to roll their windows down when it's hot
OR
b) having a car window down makes otherwise fastidious people into scofflaw litterbugs.
I'm guessing it's a) because I had my window down and I didn't toss one thing out of my truck. Didn't even spit.
COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes back - 35 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 38 days
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Dirt
I saw a homeless guy today. Which is not unusual, especially in LA, where even millionaires try to look as slovenly as possible. But there was something about this guy that made me notice him. He was in the crosswalk at Third and Vermont, talking to himself as he made his way across the street. His face was deeply tanned - he'd obviously spent most of his time outside - and he was wearing a jacket in the afternoon sun of a 75 degree day. He was worn and weary and thin from what was probably years spent on the street. Again, not unusual. But his feet were.
He was wearing flip-flops, and his feet were black. I'm not engaging in hyperbole here, they were black, as if he'd walked through coal dust, with paler bits showing through where the grime had scraped off during his wanderings. And I realized that even the filthiest homeless person I'd ever seen in Pasadena didn't have feet that dirty. This guy must have gone weeks without a shower, without either the opportunity or even the compulsion to clean off in a gas station bathroom.
That's a guy who needs help. And he's obviously not getting it. He's out on the street right now, maybe huddled in the doorway of a vacant office building or hiding out by a dumpster, trying to keep warm when it gets cold after midnight.
On the rest of the ride home I got to thinking about how I'm sometimes less than satisfied with my lot in life. Things could be better, sure. But I'm living like a king compared to that guy. I have money, a car, a job (for now), and people who care about me and who would help out if I started wandering the street muttering under my breath.
I got to wondering what choices that guy made that put him where he is, or what choices others made for him. And then I got to wondering what he thinks about his desperate situation when he's talking to himself because that's the only company he has.
Man, sometimes I wish I was less observant.
COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes back - 45 minutes, stalled car on the 110
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 41 days
He was wearing flip-flops, and his feet were black. I'm not engaging in hyperbole here, they were black, as if he'd walked through coal dust, with paler bits showing through where the grime had scraped off during his wanderings. And I realized that even the filthiest homeless person I'd ever seen in Pasadena didn't have feet that dirty. This guy must have gone weeks without a shower, without either the opportunity or even the compulsion to clean off in a gas station bathroom.
That's a guy who needs help. And he's obviously not getting it. He's out on the street right now, maybe huddled in the doorway of a vacant office building or hiding out by a dumpster, trying to keep warm when it gets cold after midnight.
On the rest of the ride home I got to thinking about how I'm sometimes less than satisfied with my lot in life. Things could be better, sure. But I'm living like a king compared to that guy. I have money, a car, a job (for now), and people who care about me and who would help out if I started wandering the street muttering under my breath.
I got to wondering what choices that guy made that put him where he is, or what choices others made for him. And then I got to wondering what he thinks about his desperate situation when he's talking to himself because that's the only company he has.
Man, sometimes I wish I was less observant.
COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes back - 45 minutes, stalled car on the 110
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 41 days
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