On weekends he and Hal would slip into sandals and ride their bikes to the creek. They’d peddle slowly through the neighborhood—weeping willows arcing gracefully to the sidewalk, wooden fences guarding lawns in various states of repute, kid’s toys strewn across front yards or gathering dirt on the porch, the youngest of the children riding on trikes or using training wheels while their bored parents feigned interest and tried to read the paper or fix the hose and gain one moments respite behind sunglasses before the crushing weight of another work week and another work week beyond that weighed them down.
When they’d cleared the neighborhoods and hit the park—old live oaks mostly, a few white birch and sycamores scattered amongst them, these all ringed by reams of waist high star thistle and saplings—the boys would stop at the first available sandbar on the muddy path and dump their bikes into the sand, careless as boys often are. Tree limbs, weighed down by thick foliage trailed in the water, and fish swam through skeins of light above moss covered rocks. The creek reached, Hal would usually take the lead, picking out some piece of flotsam—soda cans, plastic bags, beer glasses—that often got hung up in the eddy near the farther shore, which became a target for the boys to skip rocks at. Hal usually threw first, a side-armed thing of grace, bending slightly at the right hip to generate a good arm angle and turning his left shoulder from his target so he could create good torque when he turned and sent the rock sent skittering across the water like a toad across lily pads before pinging on impact.
Unlike Hal, he was inexpert at selecting rocks, always impatient, a weakness that would dog him from the rest of his life from small fender benders to poorly written cards and poorly chosen wives. Thus, this impatience born of a desire for more time wound up being a great waste of time, and so he was always left holding some misshapen rock, or lifting the veil of some ill-conceived woman, the sort who loved to fight but not make up. And when he hurled the rock towards the stream, regardless of arm angle and torque, neither of which fell between the bounds of respectable, the rock always plunked down in the middle of the stream and sank quickly, skipless and sad. He seems to remember a pair of mallards floating by and making idle chit chat as ducks often do.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
He
The big toe of his left shoe has a mark that he had been unable to buff out that morning. He’d spent a good ten minutes in the hotel room, applying the shine with teenagerly vigor to no avail. In the backround, the hotel’s air conditioning hummed like an old refrigerator and pale light made a small ingress at the feet of the curtain.
He remembers the rough tongue of the bark pressing into the tips of his fingers, and using those same tips to press into the small circular appearing holes left by a woodpecker from some other time. This image, of fingers pressed into holes, had come back to him today while delivering the eulogy, and he’d briefly and extemporaneously expounded upon the theological parallels between the unseen bird whose presence was still made manifest in the world and life after death. The irreligious people at the memorial were lost almost immediately, and the remainder of the crowd found the metaphor mildly obtuse, though perhaps apt.
It was Hal, his older brother, who had first helped him to believe in things unseen. After they’d been hustled off to bed—brushed, bathed, kissed, and reassured that they were loved—all by eight so that mom and dad could catch up on their own evening oblations of television and the easy familial camaraderie that comes with battling children and jobs and taxes and mortgages in the company of the same person for years. The stories Hal told him generally centered around animals that could speak and the very real presence of things like leprechauns and the tooth fairy, a character his parents did little to refute by putting one dollar bills beneath his pillow each time he lost a tooth. He still remembers the story about fireflies, perhaps because he’d watched Hal smear them across the sidewalk to make a well lit path. Hal told him that after their death firefly souls briefly rose up into the sky before coming back down to earth in the form of shooting stars. It was the sort of story that was only believable because it was dark and he was young. That week, he spent every night sitting in the silk tree after dinner, watching for signs of souls sailing through space. When the stories were finished Hal would occasionally reach down and take his younger brother’s hand. This was the sort of unspoken thing that the man sitting on the cold grey stones clung to, the remembrance of not being alone.
He remembers the rough tongue of the bark pressing into the tips of his fingers, and using those same tips to press into the small circular appearing holes left by a woodpecker from some other time. This image, of fingers pressed into holes, had come back to him today while delivering the eulogy, and he’d briefly and extemporaneously expounded upon the theological parallels between the unseen bird whose presence was still made manifest in the world and life after death. The irreligious people at the memorial were lost almost immediately, and the remainder of the crowd found the metaphor mildly obtuse, though perhaps apt.
It was Hal, his older brother, who had first helped him to believe in things unseen. After they’d been hustled off to bed—brushed, bathed, kissed, and reassured that they were loved—all by eight so that mom and dad could catch up on their own evening oblations of television and the easy familial camaraderie that comes with battling children and jobs and taxes and mortgages in the company of the same person for years. The stories Hal told him generally centered around animals that could speak and the very real presence of things like leprechauns and the tooth fairy, a character his parents did little to refute by putting one dollar bills beneath his pillow each time he lost a tooth. He still remembers the story about fireflies, perhaps because he’d watched Hal smear them across the sidewalk to make a well lit path. Hal told him that after their death firefly souls briefly rose up into the sky before coming back down to earth in the form of shooting stars. It was the sort of story that was only believable because it was dark and he was young. That week, he spent every night sitting in the silk tree after dinner, watching for signs of souls sailing through space. When the stories were finished Hal would occasionally reach down and take his younger brother’s hand. This was the sort of unspoken thing that the man sitting on the cold grey stones clung to, the remembrance of not being alone.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
-
We've been watching the Harry Potter movies of late for the first time. And, as a subplot of the movies we've begun referring to our sleeping s as Dumbledork. I'm not sure if it's kind, but that's just how she looks when she sleeps.
Average amount NATO spends each week enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya: 1,930,000
I don't think children start resenting their parents until they are in their twenties. I'm not talking about that angsty sort of stuff that every kid goes through that has to be tough. I mean that point in time when you start to consider that even your wonderful parents may have screwed up a time or two. Dumbledork won't though because we are perfect.
Estimated value of arms sent by NATO countries to Muammar Qaddafi since 1969:10,000,000,000
Note: We've still got some zeros to make up apparently. I guess as a general rule we should probably, as a country, stop supporting dictators and gorilla generals and such.
Minimum amount Quaddafi held in U.S. banks at the time his assets were frozen in February: 29,700,000,00
I have an image of him swimming around in a sea of money with his number one dime in a case above him. Why didn't Uncle Scrooge have a lucky 100 dollar bill or a quarter or something? A dime is kind of cheap isn't it?
Percentage of Republicans who said in March that they fear ACORN will steal the 2012 election for Obama: 25
One in four isn't bad.
Date on which ACORN shut down: 11/2/10
That doesn't mean they couldn't get the band back together and steal the election, again, like Gore did in 2000. Oh.
Number of Congress members who gave up some portion of their 2010 salary for federal debt reduction: 3
Before bed each night the two of us generally creep into s's room and peer over the edge of her crib at her sleeping little form. And every time I am the first to leave. I have no idea what this means because I'm not unhappy looking at the child, I guess I just don't want to ruin it by staying too long.
Relatedly:
S: Do you think x (on tv show) is cute.
M: Yes....No, maybe not as much as I used to.
S: Huh.
M: You know people don't look as amazing when you start to get used to them.
S: You're right.
Relatedly: Lil s keeps changing every month or so, which means we never tire of looking at her. Oh, Sadie.
Total amount of these gifts: 15,223.56
That's considerably more than I gave a year ago
Number of seconds it takes for the federal debt to grow by that amount: 0.34
I'm thinking that if we can just take care of this national debt problem everyone can get back to working at good paying and fulfilling jobs, and, at the end of the day they can hop in their flying car and go back home to their wife/husband, loving children, or maybe just loving pet. I mean, things were going pretty amazingly until we hit this debt crisis. Remember how amazing everything was? Thank goodness we're devoting all of our attention to it because once it's gone, we'll probably devise a way to turn the whole earth into a giant rocket ship and we'll fly into a different galaxy where everyone on the earth will love each other and share wealth and stuff. Obviously, I'm kidding, only the hard working people will have money, kind of like now. Zing! I jest.
Signs that I'm older than I think.
Percentage of men who said they would start feeling old when music sounded too loud in bars.
I believe I was twenty eight or so when that started.
Steven Millhauser presents the epigraph:
"I saw that I was in danger of becoming ordinary, and I understood that from now on I would have to be vigilant."
Average amount NATO spends each week enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya: 1,930,000
I don't think children start resenting their parents until they are in their twenties. I'm not talking about that angsty sort of stuff that every kid goes through that has to be tough. I mean that point in time when you start to consider that even your wonderful parents may have screwed up a time or two. Dumbledork won't though because we are perfect.
Estimated value of arms sent by NATO countries to Muammar Qaddafi since 1969:10,000,000,000
Note: We've still got some zeros to make up apparently. I guess as a general rule we should probably, as a country, stop supporting dictators and gorilla generals and such.
Minimum amount Quaddafi held in U.S. banks at the time his assets were frozen in February: 29,700,000,00
I have an image of him swimming around in a sea of money with his number one dime in a case above him. Why didn't Uncle Scrooge have a lucky 100 dollar bill or a quarter or something? A dime is kind of cheap isn't it?
Percentage of Republicans who said in March that they fear ACORN will steal the 2012 election for Obama: 25
One in four isn't bad.
Date on which ACORN shut down: 11/2/10
That doesn't mean they couldn't get the band back together and steal the election, again, like Gore did in 2000. Oh.
Number of Congress members who gave up some portion of their 2010 salary for federal debt reduction: 3
Before bed each night the two of us generally creep into s's room and peer over the edge of her crib at her sleeping little form. And every time I am the first to leave. I have no idea what this means because I'm not unhappy looking at the child, I guess I just don't want to ruin it by staying too long.
Relatedly:
S: Do you think x (on tv show) is cute.
M: Yes....No, maybe not as much as I used to.
S: Huh.
M: You know people don't look as amazing when you start to get used to them.
S: You're right.
Relatedly: Lil s keeps changing every month or so, which means we never tire of looking at her. Oh, Sadie.
Total amount of these gifts: 15,223.56
That's considerably more than I gave a year ago
Number of seconds it takes for the federal debt to grow by that amount: 0.34
I'm thinking that if we can just take care of this national debt problem everyone can get back to working at good paying and fulfilling jobs, and, at the end of the day they can hop in their flying car and go back home to their wife/husband, loving children, or maybe just loving pet. I mean, things were going pretty amazingly until we hit this debt crisis. Remember how amazing everything was? Thank goodness we're devoting all of our attention to it because once it's gone, we'll probably devise a way to turn the whole earth into a giant rocket ship and we'll fly into a different galaxy where everyone on the earth will love each other and share wealth and stuff. Obviously, I'm kidding, only the hard working people will have money, kind of like now. Zing! I jest.
Signs that I'm older than I think.
Percentage of men who said they would start feeling old when music sounded too loud in bars.
I believe I was twenty eight or so when that started.
Steven Millhauser presents the epigraph:
"I saw that I was in danger of becoming ordinary, and I understood that from now on I would have to be vigilant."
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Quoting Things: TPK
"We've changed the way we think of ourselves as citizens. We don't think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense of being small parts of something larger and infinitely more important to which we have serious responsibilities. We do still think of ourselves as citizens in the sense of being beneficiaries--we're actually conscious of our rights as American citizens and the nation's responsibilities to us and ensuring we get our share of the American pie. We think of ourselves now as eaters of the pie instead of makers of the pie."
"Corporations are machines for producing profit; that's what they're ingeniously designed to do. It's ridiculous to ascribe civic obligations or moral responsibilities to corporations. But the whole dark genius of corporations is that they allow for individual reward without individual obligation. The workers' obligations are to the executives, and the executives' obligations are to the CEO, and the CEO's obligation is to the Board of Directors, and the Board's obligation is to the stockholders, who are also the same customers the corporation will screw over at the very earliest opportunity in the name of profit, which profits are distributed as dividends to the very stockholders/customers they've been fucking over in their own name. It's like a fugue of evaded responsibility. [...] With corporations I have no problem with government enforcement of statutes and regulatory policy serving a conscience function. What my problem is is the way it seems that we as individual citizens have adopted a corporate attitude. That our ultimate obligation is to ourselves. That unless it's illegal or there are direct personal consequences for ourselves, any activity is okay."
"I think what's changed somehow is they don't think of themselves as personally responsible. They don't think of it like that their personal, individual going and buying a ticket for The Exorcist is what adds to the demand that keeps the corporate machines coming out with more and more violent movies to satisfy the demand."
"And it was 1840 or '41 that de Tocqueville published his book about Americans, and he says somewhere that one thing about democracies and their individualism is that they by their very nature corrode the citizen's sense of true community, of having real true fellow citizens whose interests and concerns were the same as his. This is a kind of ghastly irony, if you think about it, since a form of government engineered to produce equality makes it citizens so individualistic and self-absorbed they end up solipsists, navel-gazers."
"He frequently had this feeling: What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn't wrong with other people? What if he was simply ill-suited, the way some people are born without limbs or certain organs? The neurology of failure. What if he was simply born and destined to live in the shadow of Total Fear and Despair, and all his so-called activities were pathetic attempts to distract him from the inevitable?"
Here is a picture of a cute armadillo:
"Corporations are machines for producing profit; that's what they're ingeniously designed to do. It's ridiculous to ascribe civic obligations or moral responsibilities to corporations. But the whole dark genius of corporations is that they allow for individual reward without individual obligation. The workers' obligations are to the executives, and the executives' obligations are to the CEO, and the CEO's obligation is to the Board of Directors, and the Board's obligation is to the stockholders, who are also the same customers the corporation will screw over at the very earliest opportunity in the name of profit, which profits are distributed as dividends to the very stockholders/customers they've been fucking over in their own name. It's like a fugue of evaded responsibility. [...] With corporations I have no problem with government enforcement of statutes and regulatory policy serving a conscience function. What my problem is is the way it seems that we as individual citizens have adopted a corporate attitude. That our ultimate obligation is to ourselves. That unless it's illegal or there are direct personal consequences for ourselves, any activity is okay."
"I think what's changed somehow is they don't think of themselves as personally responsible. They don't think of it like that their personal, individual going and buying a ticket for The Exorcist is what adds to the demand that keeps the corporate machines coming out with more and more violent movies to satisfy the demand."
"And it was 1840 or '41 that de Tocqueville published his book about Americans, and he says somewhere that one thing about democracies and their individualism is that they by their very nature corrode the citizen's sense of true community, of having real true fellow citizens whose interests and concerns were the same as his. This is a kind of ghastly irony, if you think about it, since a form of government engineered to produce equality makes it citizens so individualistic and self-absorbed they end up solipsists, navel-gazers."
"He frequently had this feeling: What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn't wrong with other people? What if he was simply ill-suited, the way some people are born without limbs or certain organs? The neurology of failure. What if he was simply born and destined to live in the shadow of Total Fear and Despair, and all his so-called activities were pathetic attempts to distract him from the inevitable?"
Here is a picture of a cute armadillo:
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Tuesdays with Sadie
7:20 A.M.
s wakes up happily. She always wakes up happily. She is either a morning person, or someone who just really loves a good nap. I hope that this remains for the rest of her life, and she doesn't wind up like most people I know who generally feel as though they've been flattened by a semi following a mid-afternoon nap.
8:00 A.M.
We drive down to Silver Spring to take the car into the shop. s does a good job of quietly looking on while we discuss the price of a new light and bumper. On the way home she sleeps while the metro rattles by and a car with a crappy muffler cracks into life on the street while I admire garden paths and bits of remodeling going on and try to figure out if it is related to an increase in home values or just that old adage about spring and birds and bees.
9:27 A.M. I commence feeding s, which stands as literally the grossest thing I've done for her yet. I kid you not, give me a poop filled diaper 100 times over. Note: This may be because I've already changed over 100 diapers as it is. Anyhow, s decided that she wanted to help me feed her the rice cereal, which is two parts rice and four parts breast milk or something, so when she stuck her hand in the bowl and then smeared it on her leg, cheek, my arm, and then ducked her head into the spoon leaving a mark on her forehead and a bit stuck in her eyelash, I was bit grossed out. I was up to my elbows in the stuff, and I eventually had to stop feeding her because it was too gross. She was pretty much covered in rice. And I'm fairly certain that she learned nothing and will be assaulting me as I try to feed her tomorrow as well as dribbling 9/10 of what I try to feed her on the bib while getting frustrated that I'm not giving her more to not eat/toss on her legs, my elbows, beneath her chin, on her elbow. Eh. Gross.
1:30 The strangeness of our neighbor removing the perfect dogwood from their backyard. Two weeks earlier I'd stood in the backyard with S and reflected on the satisfying brand of light that arrives as the days lengthen and that particular light still on the blossoms of the dogwood while we stood in shadow. (The tenor of light in late summer is a faded kind of silver that you see on cars that were once silver, but that haven't been retouched in years. This is the sort of light that arrives just before the uniform blue that precedes your garden variety darkness. Note: The strangeness is amplified by the fact that certain items, magnolias, dogwoods, azaleas, act as status symbols for brief periods of time in Washington, DC in the early spring. In the order listed above the bushes/trees come into full bloom and are not only beautiful but have attached to that beauty a kind of intelligence. Ie, the people viewing them, and probably not in possession of said items themselves feel keenly, or at least I do, a vague sense that the person with that item has gotten the better of me, that they are smart. Thus, it seems like not just an aesthetically questionable decision to remove the dogwood but almost intellectually, in a weird sense, as well.
3:15 At some point s becomes tired of lying on her stomach. Like any reasonable father I attempted to help her roll onto her back. Unfortunately during the rolling process I kind of lost her and she landed rather rudely on the back of her head and commenced yowling and crying while simultaneously holding on to me, by this point I'd picked her up, obviously, and grabbing on to my shoulders before leaning away again, so I could see the full force of what I'd done. (This reminded me of what most people wind up learning about relationships at one point in time in their life. That the people who bring you pain are often the same ones who we almost invariably turn to in order to alleviate that pain. I guess I hadn't thought of how it's born into us, that it starts when we are mere infants.)
5:15 She rolls over all the time now. Every time I put her down to try and get a chore done I come back and find her lying in a new place on her stomach looking somewhat surprised. The spot is generally also off whatever blanket/mat I've put her on, and she's just hanging out on the dirty floor. I'd carry her around when I do errands, but I'm pretty sure I'd just wind up tearing my other labrum if I haven't already. I plan to put up videos on this blog someday of me doing stuff like rolling over and jumping up and down to see if it's just as cute. I'm guessing it isn't.
7:00 s goes to bed. She is cute. I head out into the yard to try and cure my rose bush, the last vestige of the previous owner in the backyard unless you count that ants that we disturbed with our landscaping that are now eating Borax and taking it back to the wife and kids. Aside: I also noticed about a million flying ants crawling around outside tonight, and I attempted to spray them with Windex, but it actually seemed to make them stronger. Cringing. Anyhow, I'm trying to fix this rose bush that has blackspot by spraying it with baking soda or something. These dirty hippie recipes for success never work, and I'm sure I'll just be pulling it out entirely next year after it whithers away.
General thoughts: s is getting big. I keep doing that thing that all parents do about "it's going to fast." But shi-, it's going fast. It's just that they change so rapidly that it becomes hard to imagine that only four months ago she was barely functional, and now she only jumps in her jumper for more than five minutes if she's receiving constant approval. Ie, she now has a personality and desires affirmation for things like jumping. This is strange for a parent because she could only worry about basic needs a very short time ago. Not much has changed for me in the last five months although I've really gotten good at not spitting up after dinner, but s has changed by leaps and bounds. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing for a person to witness. It's just a thing. I don't get a choice in the matter. The little urchin is going to keep growing up, like today when I was showing her flowers and we walked past a bush in the front yard and she grabbed on and pulled a branch out. It's weird that she can do that now, and good that it was a bush that I needed to trim anyway. She's a good kid.
s wakes up happily. She always wakes up happily. She is either a morning person, or someone who just really loves a good nap. I hope that this remains for the rest of her life, and she doesn't wind up like most people I know who generally feel as though they've been flattened by a semi following a mid-afternoon nap.
8:00 A.M.
We drive down to Silver Spring to take the car into the shop. s does a good job of quietly looking on while we discuss the price of a new light and bumper. On the way home she sleeps while the metro rattles by and a car with a crappy muffler cracks into life on the street while I admire garden paths and bits of remodeling going on and try to figure out if it is related to an increase in home values or just that old adage about spring and birds and bees.
9:27 A.M. I commence feeding s, which stands as literally the grossest thing I've done for her yet. I kid you not, give me a poop filled diaper 100 times over. Note: This may be because I've already changed over 100 diapers as it is. Anyhow, s decided that she wanted to help me feed her the rice cereal, which is two parts rice and four parts breast milk or something, so when she stuck her hand in the bowl and then smeared it on her leg, cheek, my arm, and then ducked her head into the spoon leaving a mark on her forehead and a bit stuck in her eyelash, I was bit grossed out. I was up to my elbows in the stuff, and I eventually had to stop feeding her because it was too gross. She was pretty much covered in rice. And I'm fairly certain that she learned nothing and will be assaulting me as I try to feed her tomorrow as well as dribbling 9/10 of what I try to feed her on the bib while getting frustrated that I'm not giving her more to not eat/toss on her legs, my elbows, beneath her chin, on her elbow. Eh. Gross.
1:30 The strangeness of our neighbor removing the perfect dogwood from their backyard. Two weeks earlier I'd stood in the backyard with S and reflected on the satisfying brand of light that arrives as the days lengthen and that particular light still on the blossoms of the dogwood while we stood in shadow. (The tenor of light in late summer is a faded kind of silver that you see on cars that were once silver, but that haven't been retouched in years. This is the sort of light that arrives just before the uniform blue that precedes your garden variety darkness. Note: The strangeness is amplified by the fact that certain items, magnolias, dogwoods, azaleas, act as status symbols for brief periods of time in Washington, DC in the early spring. In the order listed above the bushes/trees come into full bloom and are not only beautiful but have attached to that beauty a kind of intelligence. Ie, the people viewing them, and probably not in possession of said items themselves feel keenly, or at least I do, a vague sense that the person with that item has gotten the better of me, that they are smart. Thus, it seems like not just an aesthetically questionable decision to remove the dogwood but almost intellectually, in a weird sense, as well.
3:15 At some point s becomes tired of lying on her stomach. Like any reasonable father I attempted to help her roll onto her back. Unfortunately during the rolling process I kind of lost her and she landed rather rudely on the back of her head and commenced yowling and crying while simultaneously holding on to me, by this point I'd picked her up, obviously, and grabbing on to my shoulders before leaning away again, so I could see the full force of what I'd done. (This reminded me of what most people wind up learning about relationships at one point in time in their life. That the people who bring you pain are often the same ones who we almost invariably turn to in order to alleviate that pain. I guess I hadn't thought of how it's born into us, that it starts when we are mere infants.)
5:15 She rolls over all the time now. Every time I put her down to try and get a chore done I come back and find her lying in a new place on her stomach looking somewhat surprised. The spot is generally also off whatever blanket/mat I've put her on, and she's just hanging out on the dirty floor. I'd carry her around when I do errands, but I'm pretty sure I'd just wind up tearing my other labrum if I haven't already. I plan to put up videos on this blog someday of me doing stuff like rolling over and jumping up and down to see if it's just as cute. I'm guessing it isn't.
7:00 s goes to bed. She is cute. I head out into the yard to try and cure my rose bush, the last vestige of the previous owner in the backyard unless you count that ants that we disturbed with our landscaping that are now eating Borax and taking it back to the wife and kids. Aside: I also noticed about a million flying ants crawling around outside tonight, and I attempted to spray them with Windex, but it actually seemed to make them stronger. Cringing. Anyhow, I'm trying to fix this rose bush that has blackspot by spraying it with baking soda or something. These dirty hippie recipes for success never work, and I'm sure I'll just be pulling it out entirely next year after it whithers away.
General thoughts: s is getting big. I keep doing that thing that all parents do about "it's going to fast." But shi-, it's going fast. It's just that they change so rapidly that it becomes hard to imagine that only four months ago she was barely functional, and now she only jumps in her jumper for more than five minutes if she's receiving constant approval. Ie, she now has a personality and desires affirmation for things like jumping. This is strange for a parent because she could only worry about basic needs a very short time ago. Not much has changed for me in the last five months although I've really gotten good at not spitting up after dinner, but s has changed by leaps and bounds. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing for a person to witness. It's just a thing. I don't get a choice in the matter. The little urchin is going to keep growing up, like today when I was showing her flowers and we walked past a bush in the front yard and she grabbed on and pulled a branch out. It's weird that she can do that now, and good that it was a bush that I needed to trim anyway. She's a good kid.
Monday, May 9, 2011
MSN Mondays: 3 weird clues a guy is into you
I'm pretty much just going to turn my blog into a dating advice column since I'm fairly certain it would quadruple my traffic in about two weeks time. I can't really blame people for that because our core relationships are almost undoubtedly, jobs, kids, gambling, coin collecting aside, the most important thing in our lives. Anyhow, MSN didn't really give me the sort of great fare that I've grown accustomed to. Complaints aside, it's my job each Monday to blog for MSN, so blog I will. Okay, it's not technically my job, but it probably should be.
1) I know this is going to sound crazy ladies, (I learned from watching the second season of the Bachelor and about a million seasons since that it's cool to call women ladies. I apply this principle liberally when dispensing advice, but when a guy is....screw it, I'm not capitulating.
Instead: Seven Ways to deal with a mean manager
1) Whopee(sp?) cushion. So yeah, maybe your manager comes in and starts behaving in a general douchey manner like usual giving you the what for, which I assume is bad, then bam! whoopee cushion! All of the sudden your manger, who was previously kind of an ass, is probably going to be laughing his/her ass off because nothing says "Hey, I understand that this is a professional environment where we'll all trying to achieve our utmost for the corporations highest, but it's okay to have a laugh or two on the side," like a whoopee cushion. Your mean manger will probably promote you after the incident and shake his/her head every time they walk by your cube and say something like, "Whoopee cushion guy/gal. Good one."
2) Throw them a surprise birthday party on a random day. It's important that you order a clown for this occasion because clowns are even scarier than mean bosses. Next time your manger is thinking about coming down on you so hard they'll remember that you threw them a party on a day that wasn't even their birthday. Note: No matter how many times they protest that it is not actually their birthday, just be sure to disregard them and encourage them to play another round of pin the tail on the donkey. Insist on face painting. Do the painting yourself. Do a really poor job. Commence crying and letting face paint run. Find some hay bales. Sit on them. Apply the clown liberally as failing a good time your manager will at least remember that you aren't afraid to pay crazy people to come by the office and loom.
3) Impress them. Create a random e-mail generator on your computer that complains about office related problems. Send it to their blackberry on the hour every hour, including Saturdays with messages like, "Hey, just in on another Saturday working on those files. Also I'm wearing pleated pants." Pleated pants are very impressive to corporate types. Use this random e-mail generator to make them feel bad that you never leave the office. Bring in a tent but insist that you're not sleeping in it, spray it with bear urine and start setting traps around the copy machines and in the break room. Spend part of every morning skinning a rabbit. Ask your mean manger where the most dangerous game is. Leave the book on his/her desk. Ask them if they want to come boating with you for the weekend. Smile.
4) Buy them a kitty. Every person just needs their cold heart warmed by a fuzzy kitty. Failing that, buy them ten more fuzzy kitties. Drop them off at his/her house in the middle of the night for seven nights running. Develop an intense training pattern for the kitties. Nit your mean manger pillows with kitty's on them. Then, when the coast is clear, begin taking the kittens back one by one. Soon enough your mean manager will probably get all weepy and have to take some leave, which solves your problem. Also, sell the cats.
5) Ask them to go out to lunch with you, then sit in your car waiting for them to come out and meet you, drive up on the grass and give them a solid brush on the leg with the passenger side door. This will remind the mean manager that when you're mean someone might just drive up on the grass and hit you with a car. You should probably store some beers in the trunk for this occasion in case him/her realizes what a funny prank you've pulled and just wants to sit back for a minute or two.
6) Develop an internally inconsistent language and start using it around the office. Ask your mean manger all sorts of questions in your invented dialect. Request new hiring forms indicating that you're from Atlantis. Spend at least three hours of every day chanting to yourself and claim that your religious rights are being infringed upon if he/she asks you to work.
7) Photoshop yourself into your mean manger's family pictures. Display them prominently in your office. Insist that you were on the trip to Vail, but that you kept quiet. This will help your mean manger realize what a quality sort of fellow/gal that you are. After all, your mean manger wouldn't just take any measly employee on a family vacation. Barring this start sleeping on a mattress outside of the mean manager's home. Play only Bob Marley songs for three days straight until they submit and come downstairs to talk about loving people and also maybe drugs.
1) I know this is going to sound crazy ladies, (I learned from watching the second season of the Bachelor and about a million seasons since that it's cool to call women ladies. I apply this principle liberally when dispensing advice, but when a guy is....screw it, I'm not capitulating.
Instead: Seven Ways to deal with a mean manager
1) Whopee(sp?) cushion. So yeah, maybe your manager comes in and starts behaving in a general douchey manner like usual giving you the what for, which I assume is bad, then bam! whoopee cushion! All of the sudden your manger, who was previously kind of an ass, is probably going to be laughing his/her ass off because nothing says "Hey, I understand that this is a professional environment where we'll all trying to achieve our utmost for the corporations highest, but it's okay to have a laugh or two on the side," like a whoopee cushion. Your mean manger will probably promote you after the incident and shake his/her head every time they walk by your cube and say something like, "Whoopee cushion guy/gal. Good one."
2) Throw them a surprise birthday party on a random day. It's important that you order a clown for this occasion because clowns are even scarier than mean bosses. Next time your manger is thinking about coming down on you so hard they'll remember that you threw them a party on a day that wasn't even their birthday. Note: No matter how many times they protest that it is not actually their birthday, just be sure to disregard them and encourage them to play another round of pin the tail on the donkey. Insist on face painting. Do the painting yourself. Do a really poor job. Commence crying and letting face paint run. Find some hay bales. Sit on them. Apply the clown liberally as failing a good time your manager will at least remember that you aren't afraid to pay crazy people to come by the office and loom.
3) Impress them. Create a random e-mail generator on your computer that complains about office related problems. Send it to their blackberry on the hour every hour, including Saturdays with messages like, "Hey, just in on another Saturday working on those files. Also I'm wearing pleated pants." Pleated pants are very impressive to corporate types. Use this random e-mail generator to make them feel bad that you never leave the office. Bring in a tent but insist that you're not sleeping in it, spray it with bear urine and start setting traps around the copy machines and in the break room. Spend part of every morning skinning a rabbit. Ask your mean manger where the most dangerous game is. Leave the book on his/her desk. Ask them if they want to come boating with you for the weekend. Smile.
4) Buy them a kitty. Every person just needs their cold heart warmed by a fuzzy kitty. Failing that, buy them ten more fuzzy kitties. Drop them off at his/her house in the middle of the night for seven nights running. Develop an intense training pattern for the kitties. Nit your mean manger pillows with kitty's on them. Then, when the coast is clear, begin taking the kittens back one by one. Soon enough your mean manager will probably get all weepy and have to take some leave, which solves your problem. Also, sell the cats.
5) Ask them to go out to lunch with you, then sit in your car waiting for them to come out and meet you, drive up on the grass and give them a solid brush on the leg with the passenger side door. This will remind the mean manager that when you're mean someone might just drive up on the grass and hit you with a car. You should probably store some beers in the trunk for this occasion in case him/her realizes what a funny prank you've pulled and just wants to sit back for a minute or two.
6) Develop an internally inconsistent language and start using it around the office. Ask your mean manger all sorts of questions in your invented dialect. Request new hiring forms indicating that you're from Atlantis. Spend at least three hours of every day chanting to yourself and claim that your religious rights are being infringed upon if he/she asks you to work.
7) Photoshop yourself into your mean manger's family pictures. Display them prominently in your office. Insist that you were on the trip to Vail, but that you kept quiet. This will help your mean manger realize what a quality sort of fellow/gal that you are. After all, your mean manger wouldn't just take any measly employee on a family vacation. Barring this start sleeping on a mattress outside of the mean manager's home. Play only Bob Marley songs for three days straight until they submit and come downstairs to talk about loving people and also maybe drugs.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Things
Sometimes I dream that I'm swimming in a sea of eyelashes, all their soft little tips are brushing my skin. In the middle of the dream I switch to doing a half-assed kind of backstroke, legs beneath all those lashes, and I look up at the big eye in the sky staring back at me, eyelashless. I've never known what to make of dreams or the smiles you exchange with people that you never meet.
S: I'm going to take a shower, so I don't have squirrel droppings in my hair.
Everyone in the world has more time than me. I don't know how this is physically possible, but it seems it must be so. Yesterday I watched an old man with a cane tapping his way down a cobble stoned street and a butterfly clinging to the moss on an old brick wall just flexing its wings. Somehow they had nothing better to do, no old flame to see. And there I was all busy like I always am, watching them.
On Mother's Day:
M: I was going to buy you flowers today when I was out.
S: Ah. (Hugs).
M: But I had already spent all my money on pea gravel.
S: How much did it cost?
M: Enough that you didn't get any hydrangeas. It's at times like these that I fear I'm getting a bit too tied down.
Perhaps it's as you suggest. Perhaps everything I've, no we've ever done has been entirely wrong. Like that time I sat by the river and tried to think of all the different words I could use to describe its particular shade of black. Perhaps you're right about that summer I spent in the woods killing baby birds to help a native species survive incursion. Perhaps everything I've ever done has been like that summer, trying to keep away from the natural way of things. But I think that last night, in the middle of that terrible movie about producers and cats, when I reached out to take your left hand in my right, I think that was the first time I've done anything right. And if you had just squeezed back I'd think that you agreed.
"Look down your shirt and spell attic."
Sometimes I sit beneath the oak tree on the street and practice spelling words backwards. It's as if I'm preparing for some quiz that is never going to happen. evol. That's an easy one, and don't know if anyone ever really means it. tcepsmucric. That's probably a harder one to define, but it's the exact way that I was watching you when you got on the bus and kissed that person who wasn't me on the daeherof. Sometimes I do it when I don't want things to be true. I have this idea that if I could get everything spinning drawkcab. That's a really easy one due to the context. That maybe this time, I won't be on the street at mid day, cats yowling in the distance, gingko trees dropping crappy blossoms, spelling words that you won't ever read.
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