Half a Decade Later . . .

Well, it's been long enough and the need to write, to just say something and add to the white-noise that is the internet, is just too strong to ignore. And the whole sharing of artwork thing (miss it). Drinking a black coffee right now out of a jet black mug with a big red R on it, readying myself for a day of work. I will write, draw, and link a bit more in a little more than 8 hours.  

Oh . . . and here is a great online literature and arts journal I was lucky enough to contribute some humble doodles to. Check out the site whenever you can. You'll be pleased, perhaps inspired, and definitely glad.

http://www.alexandriaquarterlymag.com/robert-overbey-born-together/

Emily Dickinson . . . wowzers

The funny thing about misconceptions, aside from being baseborn blood relations to ignorance and assumption, is that they actually feel pretty good once they're shed. Case in point: I knew nothing about Emily Dickinson before this week. I had figured since she was a predecessor to Plath, she would be equally as well-written but lacking in depth. And, to be fair, she has her depth but since I am neither living in the late 50's/early 60's nor can be classified as a female, adolescent or not, I can never fully identify with Plath's work- technically, it's brilliant yet I have trouble connecting with it. I was ready to feel the same way about Dickinson, yet found her obsession with death so non-time or gender specific that I “got” it. What gives her poems a dimension missing from Plath's work is that they celebrate life, even if at a distance and even if they are sometimes lamenting it. Poems about unrequited love, or her jilted friendship with her sister-in-law, or funerals all resonated with me. Perhaps I should reread Ariel as I have a better understanding of how to read poetry now, more so than I did at 18 and, of all her work, The Bell-Jar is most fresh in my mind, but maybe I will walk away thinking Plath is second rate Dickinson. Or to quote Woody Allen from Annie Hall: Sylvia Plath - interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality.

Just felt like saving it here rather than hard drive

Trees silhouette against sombre skies, fallen leaves cleave to wet paths we've wandered, streets shine black, every other drop bursts in white in plashed puddles close to curbsides leaving nothing more than rings to see. To forget.

Who's your turkey now, beeotch?

I guess I'll raise my hand, Horshack-style, and holler "Oh-oh-oooooh! Mr. Kotter, me, me, me."

Yup, another ill-fated crush. She's my first ever "crush" on a Greek woman not counting Tina Fey or Jennifer Aniston. Like the above mentioned objects of desire she is only half-Greek. Maybe I am attracted to her Italian side. Am I that much of a self-loathing Greek? Are there any such Greeks out there like that? Most Greeks I know are like the dad from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" complete with nationalistic pride. Maybe I have just not met the right Greeks. I also lack olive-colored skin so I'd be considered either a "Snow-Greek" or a "White-Greek." Go figure. I became smitten with her only once I pieced together that she was, in fact, of Hellenic decent.

She is a barrista at my nearby Starbucks (crush on a barrista? I must be the only one, he thinks sarcastically). She wears a black cap with the green corporate logo, a smock, and keeps her hair in a ponytail that sticks out of the back of her cap. She also has a dotting of dark freckles on her left cheek which draw attention to her manga-sized hazel eyes. The steamers usually squeak and hiss as they shake out a cappuccino, served “right up” to faceless yuppies and wild packs of teenagers ready to squeal their way through all their conversations. Her hair droops with each “professional smile” she serves up per coffee, per customer, per hour. Since today was Thanksgiving, it was pretty silent in there. The bar I usually sit at was empty except for one other guy who sat at the end furthest from me, closest to the door.

She towers over the counter when she is behind the register, but when she mops the floors or refills the bag of cane sugar hidden under the condiment station wedged against the wall and the bar, that very same counter reaches her diaphragm. Her skin is the color of an olive, plucked from the vine, and held up to a Hellenic sun. Her hair is as dark as the espresso she serves. Wow . . . that is cheesy yet oh, so, true.

After a refill, which gave us the opportunity to talk about Spanikopita and Thanksgiving plans (albeit, very briefly), she smiled at me. I left with my coffee in a paper cup. I crushed it when I eventually finished the drink. From experience, I knows she will not be interested in me as anything more than a customer who tips better the more she flirts with me. But it doesn’t stop me from hoping. From thinking.

Oh wait . . .she has a ring on her right hand.

Opa? Sigh.

Do you need a B.S. to describe the S?

Not a lot of terribly interesting things happen to me at work. I count. Seriously. All day long I count. Imagine my horror when, upon being told that the site I currently work at is moving 30 miles away from where I currently live to a proper facility (and yes, you read that correctly. A top-notch facility is, in fact, needed for counting), the worker that plays Mr. Smithers to my manager put it bluntly with the following:

You have to make a decision and if it’ll help, just ask yourself if this is a job or a career. If it’s a job, you might want to start looking elsewhere.

Counting as a career? Was she serious? It’s not as if I wear a monocle and my skin is made of purple felt.

Does she ever stay awake at night wondering why she has never been made a manager? Actually, she was an assistant-manager at one point but they took that title away. To be fair, she does do a lot of work and is quite good at it, but with people skills that drove 3 out of 4 people in the department to choose in the negative, managerial she most certainly is not. Enough griping (I’m writing a blog here, not a novel).

Friday afternoon, I opened box after box of product to count like I did the Monday through Thursday before it. If you’ve ever wondered why I float towards authors such as Kafka, pepper my everyday speech with the word “bureaucracy,” or use socialist imagery whenever I see fit, you now have a better understanding of the influences that gave birth to something like this.

Kafka once said, “Real hell is there in the office, no other can hold any terror for me.” At least he was probably allowed to drink coffee or water at his desk. I digress.

I opened up a box and found a business card mixed in with the product (how very Kafkaesque of me, not identifying anything in order to convey its true sense of tedium and, by proxy, the sheer horror of dull repetition. And if I didn’t already, I think I made it pretty clear just now (and that’s the last Kafka reference, I promise)). But the real treat was on the other side of the card.


It’s for real. See.

That’s according to Wikipedia and anyone who has ever written a paper knows just how reliable a source Wikipedia actually is (now if only the academia would give it props, it’d make researching said papers so much easier).

So, anyway, after seeing this card, I wondered why it was made in the first place not to mention what the poor kid at the print shop thought when the initial order was placed.

“I’ll be requiring a 500 count and could you possibly make it a satin matte finish. And this is important, it must, I repeat, must be water resistant.”

Something about the seriousness and style of the little poo paintings looked like they would be more at home in an issue of Highlights Magazine or National Geographic circa 1958 and not on the back of a business card. I’d hate to be the doctor who pulled the wrong card for a drug rep. Or, on second thought, maybe I’d love to be that doctor.

I thought that maybe it was a chart for patients who didn’t speak English and it would act as an aide in helping to tell the doctor exactly what was wrong. Or maybe that very same chart was for people who did speak English but weren’t capable stringing a few adjectives together to describe what made them see a doctor in the first place. I also wondered if anyone has a poster of this in a dorm room somewhere, complete with black light and lava lamp. Or if it was equivalent to those cards the deaf carry with them made specifically for the incontinent. 8 hours of counting, one found poo chart, and this is what my imagination ran with.

What is shocking about the find, or rather the card, is that it was made for doctors. And it was first published in 1997. 1997?! Had doctors known what each different turd stood for prior to the late 90’s, maybe the obesity epidemic could have been avoided.

“Timmy, you made a number 28. That’s one through seven added together. Lay off the Doritos, doctor’s orders.”

Or do combinations of different types get multiplied? This is a Pandora’s box I’m afraid I just don’t (or don’t want to) know about. Thanks to recent scatological findings we can now easily identify “rabbit pellets” and the “runs.” I mean, if you can number food combinations at McDonald’s it seems fair to me that you can also number the results.

I was sad, I was glad . . .

Earlier this week, I had a typical consumerist reaction to a void unaddressed. That’s right . . . I just really wanted to get something. Anything. And in particular Radiohead’s newest album “In Rainbows.” I had heard it in its entirety a few weeks back and made a mental note that I wanted it for my Radiohead collection. Said collection consists of 4 albums and the rest that my friend uploaded to my iTunes- essentially everything except for “In Rainbows.” Oh well, that’s neither here nor there and for me to go on about it feels like bragging to other kids on the playground about having toys they may or may not have. Such is the way of collectors and their collections.

I decided to get it where I get the majority of my albums and, as it turns out, where I’ve purchased all of my Radiohead albums: marsRed Music in Haddonfield, NJ. The owner, Scott, has a great wealth of knowledge about music, as well as movies, in all forms of various genres. He’s an all around great guy as opposed to the usually snotty “gatekeeper of all things cool” attitudes CD shop employees and/ or owners tend to have. I feel bad that I swiped the swell picture from his store’s web site, since marsRed is now closing thanks to that post-Industrial mentality of entitled swiping and/or not supporting.

How often have you heard people bragging about what they got from Limewire? About seeing a current theatrical release movie on DVD that “looks crystal clear?” Anymore, it’s like a badge of honor to be shoplifting.

That’s right. Closing. Score one for the big box chain stores. Let’s root for the rich kid to get that full scholarship because their parents have powerful ties. Didn’t we do that in 2000 and 2004? Sure, lots of people are employed at BestBuy, Target, and WalMart. Right now, during this recession, that’s actually a great thing (until the corporate bigwigs have that desire to make themselves even more money by cutting whatever benefits they pay out to those very same employees). And, really, who buys music from WalMart? Apparently it’s a lot more common than I’d ever want to think about. Isn’t that like an child of the early 80’s proudly admitting that the clothes they’re wearing came from K-Mart? Have we no shame supporting those who don’t need that support? Trickle down economics doesn’t really work. In theory, it sure as hell makes sense, but all it takes is one Gordon Gekko to mess it up for the rest of us. And there will always be more than one Gordon Gekko.

To paraphrase Lord Acton “Power corrupt[s], and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He summed it up pretty succinctly.

Anyway, it felt like I was sucker punched as I walked by the shop on Tuesday and when I walked in again on Friday, I talked to Scott for a bit. He was visibly saddened that he was forced to close up his dream. I definitely saw it in his face as I talked to him and it killed me. I’ll miss swinging by to pick up a new CD by a band I heard on WPRB, WXPN, or glowing word of mouth review (including Scott's). I wish Scott great luck in whatever he chooses as the next path he’ll pursue.

Maybe we're all doomed to see our dreams die off in the name of getting things on the cheap. We kind of are, already. China and India have taken the reigns because we, as a people, feel entitled to get paid more than we are willing to work for. We work for "stuff" and for "money." How many people work to do a job well done?

This entry, which no one ever reads on their own, is all over the place. I’ll try and tighten and edit it later.

Oh, the "glad" part of this entry's title refers to the really great date I had last night which included umbrella sharing. That made the loss of marsRed not mar my week completely. I’ll write more about it later.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to find out I had low blood sugar. . .

Oh boy. I haven't written anything in a very long while, but here goes:

Yesterday I had to pick my friends Erin and Kenny up from the Philadelphia International Airport when I had, not one, but two epiphanies.

The first one was that I really, really need GPS. Mapquest and Google Map just don't cut it for me with their sneaky "slight left" directions that I always, without fail, seem to miss. More accurate directions would include phrases such as "turn RIGHT at nearest u-turn . . .0.2 miles," "see sign for destination over LEFT shoulder as you passed it . . . <0.1 miles," and "are you trying to get lost. . .seriously?"

I still remember getting lost to visit my friend Sarah thanks to a missed "slight left." I called her to say nothing seemed at all familiar from the map or from my stored memory/ experiences and she told me that was because where I was was actually considered North Philadelphia whereas she lived in South. I don't like getting lost as it makes me feel like an autistic who shouldn't be driving himself anywhere let alone responsible for picking others up. A few years back, I got so lost going to someone's wedding that I totally missed it and got there in time for food (well, leftovers at that point).

I was told time and time again that the airport was easy to get to because there were millions of signs pointing me to it all with handy little drawings of white airplanes on green backgrounds just in case I was illiterate (aside: if people can't read, should they be driving in the first place (second aside: I recognize that it's for people who don't really read English and the odd unattended toddler or two that somehow manage to get keys to daddy's big gas guzzler and make it work by saying "Vroom, vroom" . . . there's always one or two stories like that in the news every year. File it under "Aww, Precious . . .Aww, Poor parenting))).

What's interesting to me is as I get lost, it always seems to be dark (so those millions of signs are easier to miss) and it usually starts to rain (reducing visibility of said signs and making them a lot easier to miss). And when it starts to rain during those exact conditions, it's usually the type of rain that is best reserved for the adjective "torrential" (see previous parentheses and add or substitute the word "even more" where appropriate). I go somewhere I don't know, and suddenly I'm driving into the most clichéd opening for a story ever.

Luckily, as I found myself in Media and then in Plymouth and then in Springfield, I found a Pizza Hut and asked a guy who was picking up some pizzas where he was going.

On second thought, it really does sound like I was propositioning him, but I told him I was lost and offered him 20 bucks to drive me to the airport (with me following, not in his front passenger seat keeping the pizzas piping hot as best I could). Luckily, he said he lived near the airport anyway and that it would be no problem.

That's why I need GPS. To stop embarrassing myself to everyone involved. But what's the other epiphany? My blood sugar gets low when I get really nervous although I suspect that had more to do with not eating anything hearty before taking the trip to PIA. Who knew 2 meatballs and a bowl of soup wouldn't suffice. I felt very much like Llyod Bridges in "Airplane."