6/30/07
Stamped Out
I'm not sure what could possibly be more respectable than paying your bills, or more prosaic than buying stamps, but then again, that's the mathematical average for most people—sometimes I personally find that things that ought to be easy suddenly spin out of control. As always, I was trying yesterday to be a decent, quiet, respectable person. I drop three bills off at the post-office "Out of Town" slot, and I turn to the stamp machine, because I've used my last three stamps. Before leaving the house, I've made sure that I have the bills necessary for a new book of stamps, because the stamp machine only makes change in dollar coins and dollar coins are greeted with as much enthusiasm as Monopoly money by most cashiers. The stamp machine itself does accept dollar coins, which I think is only fair. At any rate, I go to put in a fiver. The machine spits it out. I unfold the one tiny folded corner and try again. The machine says no. Again. And again. Finally, on something like the eleventh try, it takes the bill. Five dollars credit, three more to go.
The dollar won't go. Eleven tries later, the dollar still won't go. I'm getting a little frustrated, as anyone would. When suddenly
Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Wo—
I'm dumbfounded. The machine is screaming in fear and making bright flashes and I can't understand why. One second before, the front of the machine had collided with my clenched fist, and the next second, for no reason at all, there's all this commotion.
Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Wo—
I'm looking around me, waiting for jackbooted truncheon-wielding goons from Homeland Security to pound in and club me to the floor. But there's nobody around. Inside the post office, I hear the faint words, "Fire alarm?" I bend to down the slot—
Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Wo—
and call in, "Hey, is anybody there? The stamp machine has gone crazy!" I'm already making up my story—the machine came at me, and I tried to defend myself and my hand slipped. This is in case I need a story the jury might buy. A woman ambles out.
Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Woo! Woo! (Flash!) Woo! Wo—
Not a hint of accusation. She's a civil service worker, and she seems like a salt-of-the-earth type, by nature on the side of the little guy, which is me. You're not a big shot when an inanimate object is loudly accusing you of burglary, breaking and entering, battery, and a variety of other charges. The lady has a pad of paper for me to write down how much I've lost. She sees that I've put in five dollars. No problem, I think, until they review the videotape. In the meantime, she's poking experimentally at the buttons. Suddenly the machine stops shrieking. I reach for my wallet. "I wouldn't put in any more money," says. And then she punches in the code for postcard stamps, which I have no use for. I leave with the stamps and two dollar coins—Sacajawea, and John Adams. And I feel vaguely guilty—I walk out like a respectable bill-payer, the kind of person who buys stamps ahead of time, with laudable forethought. But on the inside, I slink away guiltily. Deep down, I know it's not right to go around hitting machines. Frankly I think the machine overreacted a little. But I'm remorseful, truly. I'm out five bucks, for one thing. I have those two dollar coins, but they're not much use for the moment—I'm not going back to that post office until this whole thing blows over.
6/28/07
And I Can't Get Up!
Played my usual Thursday-night musical soirée last night; very, very fun, with some moments where it was really coming together. Trust me, I'm the poster child for musical mediocrity, but even such modestly gifted persons as myself sometimes have moments when you're improvising and suddenly you can do more than usual. Your brain works faster, you're really not consciously thinking at all, and suddenly it feels like something bigger than you is using you as its instrument. The music flows out of you, and you're just sitting back, marveling at it, and wondering how long it can last. But there's another side—my tendency to get distracted and forget precisely where I am in the tune, what chord I should play, what the melody is. And suddenly it's like you're blind in traffic—help! What keys do I press now! Help help helllllppp!!!!! When these moments come in rapid succession, it's a little jarring. It's like you're walking down the street on a beautiful day, and you're so cheerful inside that strangers smile and say hello, the trees are green, the birds are singing, life is really very wonderful, and then your trick knee gives out, your arms fly up and pow! You hit the bricks with a thud.
Some bright, shining day, I may become more consistent and not have these breakdowns quite so often, at which time I'll consider playing in front of other human beings. For now it's lots of fun—bruising fun, like hockey, but still fun—to just play and see what will happen.
6/27/07
Risk Intolerance
My parents were risk-takers when they were kids—they went to school in Wyoming in the late 1940s, which was not the normal thing for young Philadelphians to do. My dad got one of the complicated cameras used at the time, and took wonderful pictures of people standing by cacti, canyons and such. Then they came home and hung out with the arty crowd in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They bought Nakashima furniture when he was just getting started and it was cheap. They went and saw Kurosawa films. They were cool, in a word.
But the coolness wore off, as sometimes happens, and as the decades went by they became less tolerant of risk in general and risk aimed at their children in particular, and of course you can understand that. But I still get antsy when my mom regards me, a middle-aged man, as if I were still a four-year-old liable to be kidnapped and sold to the gypsies. It took me a while, but I learned to judge the upsides and downsides of a given risk, and I'm willing to take one now and then. This leads to clashes of viewpoints with the folks, alas. I called my mom the other day and mentioned that I had a new job. "Oh, wonderful, dear," she said, but wearily, as if suddenly sagging under the burden of having to use her superior powers of risk-noticing to help me avoid hidden dangers. She asked where it was, and I told her, and she asked the inevitable next question: Have they been around long?
This is always the second question when I get a new job. My mom worries that I'll allow myself to go to work for a fast-talking, cigar-chewing sharpie who operates out of the trunk of his car. The sharpie will pay me in stock options and then disappear between one day and the next, leaving me to pay his debts. That's the subtext of the question. I can't help feeling that this is a comment on my own ability to judge people and avoid the sharpies, and I bristle accordingly. She knows that, we've discussed it, but she does it anyway. "I can't help it," she says. "You're my son."
So I'm touched, in a way, but I bristle too. And one of my father's legacies to me, besides hay fever and largish feet, is the tendency to be sarcastic while bristling. We were all out for dinner to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday the other night. We were at a hot new restaurant that was literally hot from the jammed-in crowd and vibrated with the most hellish din you could imagine. We managed to converse by shrieking at each other, and the subject of the new job came up again. My mom had more queries for me. "Do they have a health plan?" she asked. "No," I said, bristling. "And they don't pay in cash, either. They pay you in that kind of stone money they use in Yap."
My mom can usually brush off one or two of these shots across the bow before she gets peeved, and she went on. "Do they have a—you know—a..."
"A 401(k)?" I asked. "Yes. Yes, they do. They have a 401(k)." She nodded, still unconvinced. I mentioned, with a percentage figure, how much of a raise I was getting over my last job. This helped a little, but not to the point that she was going to let her worry abate. My dad had a thoughtful look on his face. He wasn't rubbing his chin, but if he had it would have gone with the look. He looked like someone in a conference room who'd been silent but was now ready to make a cogent, incisive point. "How long," he asked, "have they been around?" I just sighed. They're still cool on occasion, but they're far more averse to risks I face than I am, and fear makes you less cool. The thing is, it can't be helped. I'm their son.
6/25/07
Talk
There are people who get you, aren't there? People who simply understand the set of assumptions, attitudes, allusions, and implications that underlie what you say. Friends and lovers get you. Family members often don't. This was demonstrated after dinner yesterday when I picked up the phone and cried, "What fresh hell is this?" instead of the standard "Hello?" It was my mom, and she was nonplussed. The silence lengthened. "I thought you were someone else," I said. Oh. "Don't you know that Dorothy Parker quote?" No. It wasn't awkward, exactly, but it was one of those conversational phases where you're losing traction and not getting past the moment fast enough. I really have to get caller ID.
Speaking of conversation, I was having lunch at a nice restaurant with a friend yesterday and big chunks of another party's conversation came flying over toward ours. They were talking quite loudly, considering it was only them and us, and detached phrases such as "It loosens up the mucus!" kept flying past me and interrupting my own train of thought. I mean, I was trying to talk about something else, and after that the word "expectorant" got stuck in my head for a minute or two.
K, got puh-lenty to do and you probably do too so bye for now. Oh! Wait! I was struck by something yesterday. I'm no healthcare policy expert but it strikes me that if every single other developed nation has universal free healthcare, maybe we ought to here in the States too, you know, just to keep up appearances and everything. It also strikes me that when insurance companies rig things so as to only cover the healthiest people then we're kind of missing the point of insurance. I know people who would quit their jobs in an instant and find better jobs if it weren't for their fears about health insurance. In short, everyone in the United States ought to have free health insurance and it's an embarrassment to me, including a financial embarrassment since I currently pay for my own, that we don't.
That said, I think Michael Moore is a big fat caricaturist who preaches to the choir and cheapens public discourse on serious matters and I don't have a lot of use for him. Sully today called him a "practiced liar and not too smart." The reason I say all this is that I was reading my July 2, 2007 issue of U.S. News & World Report, and there's an interview with him about his new fil—uh, docu—uh, entertainment entitled Sicko. I'm mostly agreeing with what he's saying, and then I come to this last question: What advice to you have for people who aren't happy with the way things are now? What should they do? He mentions a couple government and private initiatives he wants people to support, and then he says this: "And take care of yourself. Stay out of the system as much as you are able. Eat right, and get up and move around every day." I mean, Michael, dude! I'm not big into mocking people publicly about their appearance, but sheesh, a picture taken of him from any angle reveals an enormous object much like one of those asteroids they want to upgrade to planet status. Eat right? Move around every day? Heal thyself, Michael, bud! I mean, for the record, I think George Bush is a historic disaster but hell, at least the guy gets out on a mountain bike now and then.
BTW, I looked for the interview online, and it was there but that last question was missing, for some reason. Hmm.
6/24/07
The Other, Gold
Man, we used to have some times. We'd hell around Chester County at least once a week, drinking and eating and listening to music and playing music and staying up all night and then going to breakfast. Twentysomething boomers, then thirtysomething boomers, having some times. We'd go to Europe when we could afford it and hell around there. We did, really, have some times.
And then people started having kids, and careers, and taking care of the daily exigencies, and the gang that used to see each other once a week eventually ran into each other once a year or so. I felt terrible about it—everyone does, I guess. But it felt inevitable. Things change. People drift apart. You make new friends, and so on.
And then, the other night, some of the old friends called. Am I doing anything? Why don't I come over for dinner? Just like that. And so I did. Old friends, the same as ever. Bright, funny, nice, just great people who are cheerfully determined to enjoy their lives. We talked about the little stuff—you built the addition on the deck yourself? Cool!—and so forth. We talked about what was going on lately. We drank a couple of bottles of wine I'd dug up from my basement. My friend D. loves a good glass of wine, but he's not too interested in talking about the wine, once he's decided he likes it. Talking wastes time that could be better spent taking another sip. And so it went, into the night. Talking, laughing, all that good stuff. And clearly, as I'd suspected, the good times weren't in the past and gone. We just have to work a little harder, pick up the phone and call, and all that. Looking back, I thought for a moment that the evening had been like the good old days. And then I decided that it was more constructive to turn that around: The good old days were very similar to Now. So I'm checking out the possibility of our all going canoeing sometime soon, or going on a local winery tour, or just having them all to my house and cooking some good food and putting out a bunch of bottles. Make new friends, they say, but keep the old. So don't worry, I'll be picking up the phone. There's not much to hold on to in life—youth goes, for one thing. Fame and fortune? Phooey! But friendship—that's worth working to keep. I found that out, for the umpteenth time, last night.
6/22/07
Fiscally Conservative, Physically Liberal
I just never know with the infamous W. She's regular to the point of eccentricity in her habits—you could set her somewhere like a grandfather clock, go away, come back 15 years later, and there she'll be, quietly doing the same thing she was when you left. And yet I never know what she'll do next, on another level. Her latest crusade has rather floored me and I'm not sure how to tell you about it.
But it began with her working at the library, where a certain book fell under her gaze: Every Young Man's Battle: Strategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation. Our friend W. grew curious and took the book home to study it at her leisure. I'd like to make it clear that I haven't read the book myself, but evidently it advocates, and purports to help you achieve, complete and total sexual purity as a young man in today's North American culture.
The infamous W. found this a great surprise and in short order she experienced perturbation. "I am outraged about this!" she cried. "This has really irritated me. It's very upsetting. All they're doing is making people feel bad about themselves! I think that's terrible!"
W. is very conservative politically. She's very much against liberal views, and says as much so often and at such great length that I'm a little vague on the specific political beliefs that she actually thinks are correct. But she seemed concerned that people might think she herself is in favor of repressing other people's sexuality. With conservative politics and fundamentalist religion intertwined the way they are today, I suppose people could make that mistake. Just don't make it about the infamous W., that's all. People have urges and if they want to indulge them in some noncoercive way, that's just fine with the infamous W. She told me in no uncertain terms that she has no problem with her initial being associated with such a view. So kids, if you've just read that book and now you just read this blog and you're confused about what to do next, don't worry or feel bad: Go for it with the infamous W.'s blessing.
Personally I'm not that concerned. Many of the great religious traditions encourage or require celibacy or at least complete abstinence before marriage. I doubt many of them are very successful. I'm not a huge fan of the wide swathe of leering vulgarity in the culture myself, but let's face it, even before Maxim magazine appeared on newsstands, people were strongly compelled to put their hands down their own and other people's pants. We're monkeys, OK? (I don't mean to start another argument with that, but we are monkeys. Period.) And that's what monkeys do. I feel a certain pity for people who think their sexual urges will damn them to hell. And I think the preachers and parents should recognize that, and lighten up.
But human nature tends to find its outlet. This book that W. read has a quote on page 193, with advice for a young man who's faced with temptation in the presence of a young woman:
When you're in her company, play the dweeb...Okay, there's not much glory in playing the dweeb...But you'll be a hero to our Lord. [Editor's note: Substitute "Allah" or "Buddha" in there if you want. It still works.] Always play the dweeb if a girl is pushing too hard. If a girl smiles at you with a knowing look, learn to smile with a slightly confused look. If she talks about hip things, talk about things that are unhip to her, like your car engine or your grades. She'll find you pleasant enough but rather bland and uninteresting. Perfect.Now, honestly, I don't think there's been a teenage male in the history of the world who deliberately portrayed himself in front of a woman as a bigger dweeb, as more unhip, as more confused than he actually was. It's like those religious traditions in south Asia that try to levitate. You're simply asking the impossible. So I was able to reassure the infamous W. that these people were probably not going to get very far. Your immortal soul may not survive every temptation—I don't claim to know. Democracy may not survive the crises it faces. The ability of the world to support life isn't guaranteed. But I told the infamous W. that the human desire to procreate—horniness, if you prefer—is all-powerful. It will be there at the end. It will survive any attempt to eradicate it. "Like cockroaches," the infamous W. said.
6/20/07
They Are Japanese If You Please
OK, this seems like a small matter but it really isn't because when I bring it up most people either look shocked and dumbfounded or they just laugh. I was raised by my parents to call a certain kind of footgear "zoris." (That's pronounced "zoreez.") The word is Japanese, and has been used in English since 1823. It's not an especially hard word to pronounce. And it's the right word. And wipe that look off your face!
As I was saying, my parents always said "zoris" and so I've always said "zoris" myself, and people give me a hard time about it. They'd prefer to say "flip-flops," which to me sounds like baby talk. I mean, in The Simpsons, Moe Szyslak once gave Homer a hard time about saying "garage," arguing that this was a la-di-da term. Homer asked Moe what he called it, and Moe said "car hole." I think it's similarly dopey to call them flip-flops, even though I seem to be in a minority that consists of me and my parents. But today I was in the drugstore and stopped short as I was passing the summertime supplies area. There it was! Ha! Zori Sandals! Take that, doubters and laughers! I have no idea what the LDS stands for if not Latter Day Saints. I don't know if the Mormons have to wear special sandals, the way they have to wear special underwear. But if they call them "zoris," that's something we can agree on.
I was in a local suds emporium the other evening, catching up with my friend J. We got talking about the location of Mount Everest, and the subject of its home country came up. He said he thought it was in Nepal. I said I thought it was in Tibet. I added that I was confident enough about the matter to bet twenty dollars. We shook on it. And then he whipped out a Palm Treo. According to that Internet thing all the kids are crazy about, Mount Everest is in Nepal. It also happens that J. has traveled through Nepal. I wondered for a moment if that could be considered a form of cheating, and at the end of the moment decided that it really couldn't. I've been mulling over getting a smart phone myself. (I'd get an iPhone, of course.) They cost a little bit of money, but all you'd have to do is get two dozen people to make foolish bets against you, and it would pay for itself.
6/19/07
A Lance Less Free
Remember a while back, when I was going on and on about becoming a freelancer? All the many benefits of it, and so forth, all those things I was saying? Well, not long ago a dear friend told me about a job opportunity—one of those full-time jobs that so many people seem to have—and I checked it out and—um—I sort of got it. You can't really talk about your job in your blog and expect any good to come of it, so I won't, but it's really a good job and I'm glad. But of course, in less than a couple of weeks I won't be a freelancer any more. I suppose I'll miss the freedom to stroll around town whenever I feel like it, but frankly I won't miss worrying about money. You never feel done, you never feel caught up, when you're a freelancer—you feel that you have to keep moving, like a shark. I'm still going to do freelance stuff, just not for a living. Which is really the best of both worlds, I guess. But just now it struck me that come July 2, I'll have to have my key in the car door at this exact minute, instead of sitting at my home office window, watching the rain gently fall, pondering whether it's time to wander up to the local café and have a blueberry scone. So there you are—the moment, and the freedom to enjoy it, are things to enjoy while they last. What else is new? That's true of all moments and all things, no?
I had all sorts of purchases put off, while I was freelancing, all sorts of things I coveted—nice camera gear, a new bicycle, expensive fishing trips, clothes, shoes, audio and video equipment, a new piano, possibly a car—I'll stop, as we're climbing into five figures here. But reason and self-control reasserted themselves "like a friend's calm hand falling on my shoulder and bidding me take my time," as Nabokov put it. I asked myself to distinguish between things I just sort of want, and things that would actually make my life better in any substantial way. I don't recommend everyone do this, because if they did the American economy would collapse in about half a day. But I did, and I can really only think of one thing that would really make life better for me: a new bed. My old one is just that, worn out and saggy. Most mornings I wake up feeling achy all over, like I'd thrown myself down the stairs a few times the night before. So I'll get a nice bed, and lie down on it at the end of the day and contemplate with a happy smile my newfound financial security, and drift off into a tranquil, dreamless night's sleep.
And now I'll stroll up in the gentle rain—it rains like this in Ireland, I imagine—and have coffee and a scone in a leisurely manner and on my own schedule. Because I can. For a few more days.
Sigh.
6/18/07
Floating the Boat
Normally I'm a live-and-let-live guy, and up to the point that it seriously infringes my own rights, I'm comfortable with you doing what makes you happy. You want to play the musical saw? Groovy—just keep it down after 10 p.m. or so, is all I ask. So while I rail at all the flavorizing that's going on lately—there are 13 different kinds of Triscuit, for God's sake—I think that if that's what people really want, then OK. But is it what people really want? I was at my sister's house for Father's Day yesterday and for dessert they brought out an ice cream called "Root Beer Float." It was a cloying mixture of bland vanilla and artificial root beer flavor. Nobody was happy with it. We could have had real root beer floats (I prefer Coke, actually), which I haven't had in a long time, and that would have been much better. I think the Triscuits are the same. There's one of the 13 that has a cheddar flavor infused into it somehow. I don't feel comfortable with the idea, frankly. I don't think the kind of flavor that you can create in a lab and mix into a cracker somehow is likely to taste nearly as good as the kind of flavor you'd get from a morsel of actual cheese. Is it a timesaver? I don't think so—if my own experience is a guide, people spend quite a few moments gazing in confusion at the welter of Triscuit boxes there on the shelf. It couldn't possibly take longer to grab box of regular Triscuits as you went by and then grab a hunk of cheddar cheese too.
So why are there cheddar Triscuits? Did a group of citizens, weary of the bland old regular Triscuit, approach Nabisco and ask if they might please have some more flavors mixed into them? Was there a great yearning through the land for crackers in a kaleidoscopic variety of flavors? Was that one of the things we found missing in our lives? I don't think so. I think that years ago the boss of Nabisco spent the morning frowning over earnings reports that showed sales of Triscuits that were substantial but essentially flat. The boss picked up the phone and called the head of marketing. "I want to start selling more Triscuits," the boss yelled, "or you and your whole gang of losers are so fired!" The marketing people called a meeting, of course, but nobody had any ideas. At the end of the day, they all went to a nearby restaurant and sat down along the bar. "Appletini," one said. "Chocolate martini," said the next. "Cosmopolitan," said the third. And so on down the line.
They all drank for a while, and the elderly bartender gazed at them benevolently as he dried glasses with a towel. Finally one of them noticed that he was smiling. "What're you so happy about?" she asked.
"Well, sister," he said, "I was just thinking about the bad old days. Time was, all them hippies was rolling around in fields, listening to music and drinking Boone's Farm. I could barely sell a drink in here. But then people started putting all kindsa goofy flavors into vodka and calling it martinis or whatnot, and I can't sell 'em fast enough. I tell you, Sex and the City is my favorite TV show, and I never even seen it."
"That's fine for you," said the head of the marketing department, "but it doesn't help us with our problem." All the marketing people nodded their heads. The bartender asked what the problem was. And now we have all these goofy flavors in our Triscuits.
Marketing Update:The insanely accomplished Virginia Postrel has, unlike me, written stuff about this whole choice question that's actually sensible. I was just looking at her blog, when I noticed something: The ad for Amazon there had stuff that was directed at me in particular. It had Nikon photo gear, and a book about Dostoyevsky, and a book about Harry Potter. That's not an accident—those are three types of things I just might buy. Now, I understand about IP addresses and all, and I'm not baffled, it doesn't seem like magic or anything. But it's still the first instance of that I've seen. And I'm thinking, whoa, those guys are good.
6/17/07
Busy Next Week
Consistent readers of this little blog will be familiar with the infamous W., whom we mock and revile because that's what friends do. But occasionally even the infamous W. will have a good day, and fair is fair, it deserves to be pointed out when it happens. It seems the infamous W. was approached by a person who thought well of himself as a tennis player. He heard the infamous W. played herself, and invited her to the courts one day. They played, and then agreed to meet again, and when they were on the courts the second time our confident man friend D. started breaking things down for the infamous W. He'd been thinking about her game, he said, and he had innumerable points of advice for her—the way she held the racquet, her stance, her this, her that. On and on, the guy went. Our friend the infamous W. got peeved, as well she might. She suggested they start to play. And she offered to let him serve first. "OK," he said, "but you're just throwing away a game." To his surprise, she hadn't thrown the game away at all, since she won it. In fact she did rather well, winning the set 6–2. She asked if he could play again next week, but he demurred—it seemed he had a prior engagement. A pity, isn't it, how busy people are nowadays?
6/16/07
Masters of the Obvious
There have always been howler headlines in the press—it's easy to make a mistake with time pressure and so forth. But there are also simple failures of judgment that make you smack your head. Years ago I was walking past an honor box and saw that the local newspaper had headlined its lead story thus: "Oxford Basks in Unveiling of New Sewer Plant." I just shook my head; some months later David Letterman read it out on his show, in the segment he used to have on goofy small-town newspaper headlines.
Just a week or two ago the local weekly, called The Kennett Paper (I'd link but they have no-nada-zero-zip-zilch Web presence), said the borough council had decided to paint the town's motto—Mushroom Capital of the World—on the local water tower. Of course that was bad news enough. But the paper, waxing descriptive, opened by talking about the tower "that for years has sat quietly on the edge of the park..." and I was struck by that. It's in the nature of a water tower to sit quietly; it's only news or even worth mentioning if it doesn't. And then today I made my recurring mistake of looking at CNN.com. "Billy Graham attends wife's funeral," it said today. Really, don't you sort of expect that he would, if he was fond of her at all?
Not to change the subject, but I've said it before and I'll say it again: You never know. I was circumnavigating the pond—a decent-sized lake, actually—at the park this morning, getting some exercise. I saw a younger guy coming my way, and figured him for a streetwise sort. He had a sleeveless T-shirt that showed off his cannonball shoulders, and his pants rode low on his hips in proper hip-hop fashion. But as we neared each other, he says this: "Have you noticed how heavy the population of turtles is in the pond this year?"
I managed not to fall over, but I was pretty surprised. Population of turtles! I would not have suspected herpetology to have been among even the most casual of his interests. I would have as soon expected him to say, "Pardon me, good fellow, but I seem to have misplaced my monocle hereabouts." But I simply replied that I'd mostly noticed the good population of bass. And we both kept strolling, he watching for more turtles, I suppose, and I musing on how people do try to tell the world things about themselves by how they dress and all, but there's almost always more going on in those strangers' minds than you could ever possibly guess.
6/15/07
Poised
Sorry sorry sorry for the sustained nonposting, gang, but I in my defense I offer two mitigating factors. One, I've been busy and I know, you've been busy too. We've all been busy. Once I was rushing through a bookstore, running some gift-buying errand, and I saw that the current New Yorker had an article on why we were all so busy, but I didn't have time to stop and check it out. I'm still wondering why we're like this, but whatever the reasons, we are. And lately, in the interest of having a life, I have been too.
The other reason is that I'm poised on the knife-edge of a new career development. Things are moving, I have reasons to be optimistic, but it hasn't happened yet and I can't help fretting over it. I sat on my porch this afternoon and had a few Triscuits, and then I had more and more, and I got myself into a Triscuit frenzy and ate an entire half-box and obsessively upended it so the crumbs would fall into my greedily waiting gullet. It's hard, waiting. But this new career opportunity would solve a few problems for me, and—well, we'll all just have to be patient. But that's hard.
I was mulling over the good things about this new possibility, and it came to me that the (possible) new outfit has high general standards, and I like that. It's no fun to work with people who don't. I was talking to a very smart writer a few years ago, and we bemoaned the large percentages of people in publishing who didn't really know good from bad, excellent from mediocre. It's painful to be aware of this—it's like you love music, and you're forced to live in world where three-quarters of the musicians saw away on their fiddles out of tune by a little or a lot. These publishing people, the writers and editors and graphic designers, many of them just don't know what's good, and what they produce is uniformly mediocre and it's a huge drag to work with them. Writing is not an exact science, and taste accounts for much, but there simply are standards. There just are. It's not entirely guesswork or luck. There's a real magnetic north, and it's truly possible, we agreed, to know what was good and to avoid the mediocre. "You can't make everything perfect," my acquaintance said, "but you can make it so that it doesn't suck."
That summed things up beautifully, I thought. Yes, I thought, let's make consistent non-sucktitude an ideal, the North Star toward which we steer our little boats through the dark seas of uncertainty and doubt. I think these (possible) new folks want to always do good stuff, high-end stuff, and I'd like to help them with that. So we'll see.
What else is new? Well, I had a fun conversation in the course of doing a magazine assignment the other day. The woman I was speaking with was a real local old-money type, her people have been here about three centuries and all, and she's nuts for fox hunting. Fox hunting this, fox hunting that, none of it really germane to the subject of the article, but that's how people are including me. So I tried to hang in there conversationally—I used to live in a place where you could hear the horns and hounds (not dogs! Don't call them dogs!) of the local hunt going by of an autumn morning. I mentioned that, and she started asking me if I regularly went to this event and that event and on and on. I felt I was getting into deep water here, and had two choices: I could say "Look, lady, I've got about as much to do with fox hunting in my life as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, or I could change the subject. I opted for the latter.
"Actually," I said apologetically, "my main leisure activity is fly fishing." Oh, she cried, she had some relative who was passionate about fly fishing. Where did I fly fish? I smiled to myself. This was perfect. "Where don't I fly fish?" I asked airily. "Everywhere from British Columbia to Belize." Which is more or less factually true. I have fished in British Columbia and I have fished in Belize, and I've been to a few other places too. I've gone there by saving my nickels and dimes, I might add. Sometimes I'd be staying in places where I'd be rubbing elbows with cardiologists and regional directors of marketing—people who can actually afford to be there. For me, it was more of a sacrifice. At other times I stayed in shacks that harbored cockroaches the size of your thumb, and at others I stayed in a tent and made myself all my meals on a propane grill. I prefer such places, on the whole. I didn't go into all that. The main thing was that we had changed the subject, and I heard no more about fox hunting until the magazine editor and myself had thanked everyone and bowed ourselves out. Old money! They're fun. Then there's new money. Me, I'm no money. But I still have a good time.
6/10/07
Goat-Boy
First of all, full disclosure on the snoring thing from yesterday—I snore myself and I've literally woken my own self up while doing it. I'm just kidding about the demons. But wouldn't it be a good thing if snoring could be eliminated with a vaccine, like smallpox? OK, let's imagine this isn't a blog but a musical—at this point the lights fall, and a single spot illuminates a young woman who steps tentatively toward the audience, singing this yearning lyric:
So much for snoring. Now, the ants: They're gone. I covered the salt and removed the sugar and the ants are gone. It's like the end of a long war; peace has returned to my pantry.
What's that? What about goats? Oh! Right. I met up with my parents at an Indian restaurant last night and goat biryani was on the menu, so that's what I got. I believe I've availed myself of every opportunity to eat goat that I've ever had. It's not so much the taste as the idea. Eating goat seems vaguely adventurous to me, and I'm here to tell you that every single man who has ever lived on earth, every single one without one solitary exception, enjoys thinking that deep down the spirit of adventure is alive in him. Deep down, we're all Steve McQueen—or so we would like to think. When I eat goat, I feel (vaguely) akin to the Afghani tribesmen whom I once heard described as "hard-wired to fight." And I can feel that vague kinship without any of that troublesome risk that actual fighting exposes you to. The meat's a little bony, is all. That much, I can handle.
6/9/07
Sly Dog
I don't go around getting into bar fights or anything, but sometimes it's the principle of the thing and sometimes it's the objectionable reality of the thing too. Like yesterday—I'm sitting in my living room, and it comes to my attention that a dog is unloading on the left-side neighbor's yard. The owner has something in his hand, maybe a bag, but he seems to be crumpling it up in his fist as he looks up the street, then down, a smirk on his face. He turns to leave. And suddenly I'm on the porch.
"Hey, were you planning on cleaning that up?"
The smirk is now a winning, open smile. Certainly he was, but he'd already used the bag he'd brought for some other stop on the way. (This bag is nowhere to be seen.) Can I lend him one? Assuredly I can. I go and get him two, so he won't run out next time. And he cleans it up, under my watchful eye. Dog Boy, just so we're clear, a couple of points: A) your story doesn't ring true and B) imagine if it were my lawn and not the neighbor's next time.
I was thinking about God and the Devil and all that, and although I have my doubts about God, I certainly am open to the possibility of there being a devil, and demons too. Why? My evidence? Simply put, snoring. We've all heard people snoring. Usually anybody you hear snoring is someone you think well of—a fishing buddy on the other side of the cabin, your significant other on the other side of the bed, whatever. You've consented to spend the night in the same room with this person and there's a certain level of trust implicit in that. Well and good—but as the night cloaks the countryside, things change. Horrible, unearthly sounds issue forth from this person you like and trust. Sounds erupt that no sane, God-fearing person would make in the light of day. Your hands curl into claws, ready to snuff out the unholy sounds at their source. Ordinarly placid people become as beasts, driven to murderous frenzy by the evil snortings and raspings. Let's be honest—are these sounds of divine origin, or do they emanate from further south? Sure, it seems silly at the moment. But at the witching hour, listening in the darkness, clenching your fists and gnashing your teeth—then, it's hard to be sure.
6/7/07
Accommodation
I mowed the lawn today, like I was talking about yesterday, and I mowed the neighbor's lawn too. I mowed his front lawn, where it's adjacent to mine, and the whole time I was doing that he was out in his backyard, sitting in a lawn chair, reading the paper. I saw him when I took the mower out of the shed, and I saw him when I came back. He'd rather sit in his chair reading the paper than mow the lawn, and I can hardly blame him for that; I'd rather read the paper than mow myself, quite frankly. But it was provoking, all the same. I had a tiny glimmer of insight into how slaves must feel. I suppose you could have told the slaves that while they were chopping the cotton, their master Thomas Jefferson had spent his time productively writing the Declaration of Independence. And in a similar way, I'm all in favor of my neighbor reading the paper. It improves his mind, I'm sure. But today I'm thinking about those slaves—they might have wondered if Thomas couldn't have managed to write the document on his own time—nights and weekends, say—and chopped his own damn cotton during working hours.
It's been hot today, hot and muggy, and everyone is taking steps to deal with it. The steps I took were to grill fish for dinner. I went to the supermarket and there was fresh mahi-mahi for sale, so I asked the fish manager for a good-sized portion of it, and he gave me a weighty slab of flesh about the size of a placemat. But of course, with fish it doesn't matter: I grilled it up and scarfed it down, no problem. It's a guilt-free little orgy of eating, fish is. I'm happily digesting it right now. And there's an angry line of thunderstorms bearing down on us here, and soon the muggy air will be flushed away. And if I want to, I can go sit on my porch, and have a glass of wine and talk to my neighbor and his work colleague, who's visiting. Or I can go uptown and get some ice cream. Or I can watch a video—I rented The Great Escape, just in case it was still hot later and I needed something strongly diverting. I can do whatever and go wherever I please. Which means that on this particular evening I'm way, way better off than a certain self-indulgent young woman I've never met who goes by the unlikely name of Paris Hilton.
6/6/07
Dogs and Their Days
I'm going out to mow the lawn, and I'll have to inspect it carefully. The last time I mowed it, two different dog owners had come by and left their calling cards so I could know they'd been around. Personally, if you want my advice, every dog owner should wise up and get a cat. Remember those bitter, sleety days when you'd be out there, cold and miserable, walking your damn dog? My cat and I were watching you from the warm house and laughing. Loo-zers! But if you must, must, must have a dog, clean up after it. Really, I mean it. I already have to mow my neighbor's yard because it's adjacent to mine and he never mows it. If I didn't mow it for him, it would grow and grow and eventually I'd come home one afternoon to find sheep grazing in it. I'm a little grumpy about it—I don't see why being responsible means you get extra work. But it does, for some reason. At any rate, I'm not happy about that but when I have to carefully scan my lawn and his too before getting to work to make sure your dog hasn't befouled the area, well, it's provoking. It makes me feel beset on all sides by inconsiderate people. And if I eventually snap and sit in my darkened room with a crossbow, pointing it at every dog owner who approaches, just waiting for that one who thinks he or she can fail to clean up and then get away from the scene scot-free, well, let's just say that I warned you all. I don't think a jury of my peers would vote unanimously to convict me—not if they have lawns, I'm thinking. I'm willing to take the chance. The question, Dog People, is whether you're feeling lucky. You are? Great! Bring the pooch on by. Maybe I won't be waiting, crossbow at the ready. Or maybe I will. Heh heh heh.
Gee, that was a little dark, wasn't it? Oh well, so it was dark. But here's something cheerfuler. It's an alarm clock that lets you hit the snooze once, then jumps off your nightstand and hides under things, beeping all the time. Why didn't they think of this before?
6/5/07
Antsy
Just now I went for the salt shaker in the cabinet, and shook some into my spaghetti water, and saw a black fleck floating, and looked closer: an ant. Damn and blast! I look in the shaker itself. There's like 17 of them. Damn and blast again! I took it out and emptied it in the garbage. And then I thought—what do ants want with salt anyway? And more to the point, what if I were to use their vices against them? Maybe if I set a little dish of salt outside my back door for them to gorge on, their blood pressure would eventually rise until they all died of tiny little heart attacks.
No word yet on that hot job prospect. I confess that it's starting to hurt me—instead of running around looking for more freelance work, I watch the phone. I remind myself of the cargo cult people, the Melanesians and so forth. Ever heard of them? They're so typically human that they break your heart. During WWII, both the Japanese and Americans flooded remote islands with material, all brought in by plane to landing strips they'd hastily constructed. The islanders, many of whom had never seen anybody from a modern society before, were awed by this flood of goods that literally came from the sky. They assumed the goods came from their ancestors—the only beings who had so much power—but had been misdirected to the warrior interlopers. So they constructed their own landing strips, built imitation towers and aerials, and carved wooden earphones to wear, figuring that if it worked for the army folks it would work for them too.
But it didn't. No planes came. No cargo. There are people on Vanuatu still waiting. They worship Prince Philip—he visited there once, years ago—as a divine figure and hope he will send them some bags of rice or a Land Rover. Personally I don't think Prince Philip is going to send them much—sorry, guys—and I'm reasonably certain he's not sending me any rice or cars either. Why should he? All he ever gave his adherents in Vanuatu—the people who worship him, remember—was a few pictures of himself. So until I get this job, or until a bag of money falls out of the sky and into my backyard, I suppose I should go and do some work. Sigh!
6/4/07
The Mountains
Sorry for no blogging, but on Friday I was sitting at my desk, all ready to work the weekend away, when my friend P. called. He wanted to go fishing for the weekend, away off in the woods. He's a dogged and skillful arguer, old P. is, and he would have made a fine lawyer. All of my objections and protestations were refuted, and on Saturday morning I found myself in his truck, zooming toward the mountains of central Pennsylvania.
I did need to get out and do some fishing. But I also did need to get work done. So I took my laptop along. P. gave the laptop case a moment's contemptuous glance. "I'll bet you ten bucks," he said, "that that thing doesn't come out of that case once the whole weekend." But we didn't shake on it, and if you don't shake on it it's not a bet.
I really did mean to get some work done and maybe blog from the site, but the woman who runs the place we stayed in just shrugged and trailed off vaguely when I asked if she had wireless Internet access. I would have figured she did but there it was. And at any rate, the fishing involved a hatch of insects that occurs right around dusk. You fish, then you stumble back the trail to your vehicle in the dark, and you go to the one bar in town that's open and hope they haven't closed the kitchen yet. As it happened, they hadn't closed it when we got there. But they had when the next guy came in off the stream. He had a bag of potato chips and about four Scotches for dinner. All the anglers—you can tell them apart from the locals instantly, as if they were a species of bird—had drinks until fatigue overcame them, and then dragged themselves back to their rooms and crashed. Earlier, we had seen dozens of people on the stream, and watched their flashlights bob in the darkness like will-'o-the-wisps as they came back to the trailhead. Did any of them eat mediocre food and drink about four beers and then go back to their hotel rooms and blog? If they did, good for them. Like I say, I just hit the hay, and as I was falling asleep I could hear coyotes howling.
The fishing? Not bad, not at all bad. Not as great as it sometimes can be, nor as bad as it can be too. Frustrating, at times, when you've tried everything and nothing works, and we got rained on a bit and it was fairly crowded. But we caught fish and exercised our bodies and minds and saw interesting sights and when you get right down to it, people say "trout live in pretty places" and it's true. Those hills just glow in my mind still, in a way that my desk never does. That's why I didn't blog. All work and no play, right? I hope you had a good weekend too.
© Copyright 2007 by Matt Freeman. All Rights Reserved.