Awkward Backhair

Spindependence

2014-07-19T14:16:00.000-05:00

Dear diary, which this blog is not, it has been quite some time since I have written within the confines of this WYSIWYG editor. Holidays for some reason have a habit of serving as arbitrary reminders for me to post here. In the time since last posting, many a holiday has passed, including the anniversaries of both the "independence" of this country and modern France. The campishness of quotation marks aside, the idea of independence is nonsense. The number of individuals or earthly creatures that can claim true independence is actually the old null-spot. My apologies to those who feel truly free, but then I think it is worth reexamining what that means, why it feels so important, and so on. But that won't be done here.

Instead I shall return to the near seven year-old statement of purpose of this blog: to gripe. There have been a few meaningless items to inspire my ire in the past three months, but this latest literary turd has pushed me over the edge. I had taken this chunk out of my day to do a little personal writing, but when Microsoft Word decided that it would quit on me countless consecutive times to the point where it couldn't recover the recovered versions of the recovered versions of the recovered versions of my initially unsaved documents (saving them was the initial impetus for this bit of software to quite in the first place), I thought why hello dear blog, how art thou?

Things haven't changed here I've found. Some of the images and hyperlinks embedded in past text have surely broken as those files and pages have moved paths or been removed altogether, but that is neither here nor there when the text itself has been maintained.

Text that should not be maintained, however, would be that within American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I think perhaps the working title of "American Godawful" should have stayed in place save for the fact that Gaiman is not even a US citizen. Now this steaming pile that embarrassingly won every Sci-Fi/Fantasy Award in the year of its release does have some credible reviews on Amazon, one referencing its illicit content, and the likes of this truthsayer.

Why be so offended by this book? Why not just stop reading? These are EXCELLENT questions that I will not answer. Instead I will pose more questions. How could anyone actually enjoy this book? Is it possible to write 600 pages (font-dependent) that are so incredibly disjointed? That one answers itself with a yes. I will stop with the questions. Instead here is the format of this book:

Main character that does nothing and has no depth (I have some of the book left to read. I have a feeling the character is going to do something at the end, which is out of character, as his character is to do nothing. His name is Shadow, so I guess he is a shadow of himself, just as this is the shadow of a what is necessary to write a good book).
Supporting characters that are loosely based on mythological gods and make cliché statements. They also do nothing and have no depth.
Multiple embarrassing sexual encounters or daydreams (I want to give Gaiman the benefit of the doubt of this being a device rather than his own personal obsession, but even as a device, emphasis on the latter syllable, it's poorly executed).
Make you believe there is a Scientologist conspiracy if this book can be not only published, but be successful (sales) and heralded (with awards)

I'd say the best moments are when you shut the book, except then you might read the gratuitous praise and horrendous back-cover synopsis. At any rate, kudos to Gaiman for duping so many, and shame on the duped.

I've taken a strong stance here. People have opinions and those opinions differ and one of the great aspects of life is discussion. If anyone can explain to me how this book is even remotely good, I'm all ears and eyeballs.

Thank you, and God bless America?

The Rumors of My Demise...

2014-04-30T20:07:00.000-05:00

Are accurate depending on the distinct semantics concerning demise. If it pertains to blogging, well that is rather accurate. I find that, though many of my gripes—the original sworn focus of this here blog—perhaps persist, the specific need to drain them into the vacuum of the interwebular space has decreased. Perhaps I'm simply venting them more in day-to-day life. Perhaps I'm coming to terms with another demise—one more official calendar year of arbitrary 365 day completion. Perhaps perhaps perhaps...

What I do know is that if you can find connection and solace in the internet, even this here blog, that is a truly wonderful thing. But if you can find the same thing stepping out the door, I highly recommend the latter. To take that advice of course has with it the possibility that you were doing the former. Still, even if it takes a digital device to remind you to commune with nature and the more tangible and tactile world, it could be worse.

Anyway, dear blogspot, I may see you in May, though as usual I've little idea what I'll say, and lest you complain remember you get exactly that for which you pay.

Now Trending

2014-03-31T22:39:00.002-05:00

It's been a long winter as most everyone's noted by now, and one of the essentials for enduring the brutal weather is good warm clothing. And yet people have survived plenty of harsh weather without need of a Canada Goose parka. Somehow though, for the oh-so-reasonable price of $800 or so, many seem to have become convinced they need them. Meanwhile I have a hard time not getting goosed by those in geese gear. Many give off an aura that tempts me to tell them to go flock themselves.

I can't pretend I'm completely immune to trends. After all, my pants have grown increasingly trim over the years (my shirts have always been tight), but even as I try to conjure up any true ire, it's more that I find this one altogether laughable. While they're not quite Hammer pants, this past winter was hardly trekking the arctic tundra. Unless of course you happen to be homeless.

I'm hopeful then that this trend will be short-lived, and some fine, underprivileged folks can reap the benefits in a future coat drive. That'd be the true furry lining to the parka hood.

Leap Year

2014-02-28T23:53:00.000-06:00

This isn't one of them and so, at the risk of going an entire month (more really) without a post, what comes next is these brief words. Let's just go ahead and ask for this cold-ass winter to end. Because that might not happen right away, perhaps car commercials could stop running facsimile versions of popular songs in order to, I would expect circumvent royalty payments to the rightful owners of such intellectual property.

Honestly though, the reason for my lack of posting, aside from usual excuses humans might make of being busy and so on, is that there is precious little to go and complain about, certainly on the Internet level. But then, while this was spawned as a sounding board for my gripes, much of the griping is in jest, merely a coping mechanism for the day-to-day.

And as this day draws to a close I formally request I tuck my ass into bed. Welcome to March y'all: may the tidings be warm, even if the weather is brutally cold.

The Postal Service

2014-01-29T20:36:00.004-06:00

United States Postal Service within Chicago is known to be bad. Within Wicker Park it is known to be perhaps worse. Whether you're hitting the regular stop or actually need to pick up a package/certified mail that they will pretend they attempted delivery on. I mean, I get it, a little bit. Take the winter we're having: it's cold enough outside I could see not wanting to walk about stuffing mailboxes. But it is your job, and if you're not going to do it, please don't pretend you did it so that I am forced to come down to a hole in the wall at unlisted hours and pray that I will be given what's been bought and paid for. Or, in the case of certified mail, when I'm finally able to get to the facility after guessing at their hours, I'm quite sure they'll tell me I need a slip designating my mail is there, which was never delivered in the first place and I'm only relying on the sender's tracking notification that it was in fact delivered. Delivered how, where, and in what capacity exactly?

It's like Catch-22 meets 1984 in some ways. All of these hoops are thrown at your to discourage and dishearten. This is why people are so angry at the post office. In turn, postal employees have to deal with already angry customers. But I have to say, they don't generally improve the situation. There's a lot of the "this is what is stated" type of speak, rather than any actual thought or questioning of the system, certainly not in any way that might assist a postal customer.

Comcast could give these guys a run for their money of course. I tried to cancel my Internet service—which is somehow something that cannot be done on the Internet—and had to call four different times with varying hold rates. Representatives told me they would see what they could do and yet, on the fourth call, the woman I dealt with was able to directly close my account. Same number, same phone tree, same bullshit. The first time I had the wrong 800 number (even though it was listed on their site to use for cancellation purposes) and when I asked to be transferred they said they couldn't do it and that I should just call the new number. Wait, a cable TV and Internet company doesn't have the ability to connect me to another part of their own business via telephone? Do these guys do phone service too? Lest it not be clear I am joking, I know they do phone service.

But these are all just minor aggravations, things put in your way to discourage you. Don't be discouraged. Take the hard line. Follow through. It's mail and Internet service today, but trust me, allowing three or so corporations to dominate an industry isn't doing us any favors. This is nothing new, but a reminder here or there never hurts.

Cheers.

Homeless

2014-01-26T16:28:00.001-06:00

Reggie. That's my guy. For a long while and for whatever reason, I've always had a special place in my heart for homeless people. Oh sure, some of them are assholes, just as in the day-to-day you encounter home people that are assholes. Those damn homeowners. If anything the percentage might be lower among homeless people.

Many people seem to have an aversion to the homeless, and this can be for any number of reasons. I won't speculate on them all, but I'll entertain one quick extrapolation of the feeling I sometimes have. It starts that homelessness is a clear problem, and often people don't like to deal with problems. Couple that with it being a problem that doesn't have an easy solution, and therein lies a heightening of the problem. Why do I want to be considering a problem I can't really hope to solve? This is that dangerous line of thinking that brings one toward apathy. So instead, how about incremental steps?

For me this is treating homeless people as human beings, because they are human beings. Just as I can't know all of the reasons people dislike the homeless, I can't know all of the reasons people have become homeless. With the exception of a group of traveling dickweeds sometimes referred to as "crusties," most folks don't want to be homeless. Especially in Chicago. Especially in winter.

So when I can't offer leftover food or money—somehow homeless people aren't supposed to use your money to buy booze, even though that is what plenty of homeowners spend it on to "drown their sorrows," as if those sorrows are somehow more relevant—I offer my ear.

This was my experience with Reggie the other day. He asked for a little help and I had none I could offer—no cash, no food. But we did chat, and we even got onto the topic of the plight of homeless shelters where, even if there are beds to be had, those beds can include bedbugs. And if regular people don't want bedbugs, why should homeless people? Because remember, they're actually regular people too. So while onlookers looked at me as if I was crazy, Reggie told me, "You know what man, you made my day." It made me wish I had the boldness to offer him a place under my roof for the night. I didn't, and I don't. But you know, Reggie made my day too.

Wringing In the New Year

2014-01-17T00:49:00.001-06:00

Well 16 days into this 2014 and my blogging's behind if you know what I mean. I don't mean that it's behind me—though there's been blogging in my past—I just mean that any effort at scheduled/ritualized posting of content is, as is often the case, not happening. A strong example of this includes my changing 14 days to 16 in that opening line.

2014 is keeping a brisk pace, at least on the weather front, and perhaps soon on the beverage front. January's only half through, and while I never like to count days off and out, it would be nice for it to not be so nut-chillingly cold. Still, there are other locales with other climates, and there's no sense griping about the weather when I can gripe about literary frustrations. At the moment those include picking up a well-reviewed and well reviewed novel that is going down about as smoothly as insert simile of your liking to connote a degree of bumpiness. Which is to say that's it's not terrible or anything, sometimes jaded to the point of cynicism me just fails to see something new or, more to the point, wholly interesting in the concept.

But while I might fail to love the book in question thus far, I do like it for raising, to me, the ongoing issue of defining what it is we like—rather than simple harsh denigrations of what we don't like. Saying no is fine, but if it's not getting you any closer to yes, it can become a bit of an issue. So know that there are some no's as far as this book goes, but I will continue to give it a go. Why? A combination of curiosity and already having abandoned one book of late. Reading, like many things, is a personal matter. A preference for a degree of realism in lingo and dialogue made me drop the last book, and a the old writer writing about a writer scenario has given me a current itch. In the latter instance it's because I know it to be a thing I do as well, and while writing should include you, I also look for it to step outside of you in some meaningful way.

Lackluster literature for this layman aside, I'm feeling good about 2014, and I hope you are too in your corner of the world.

Re: Solutions

2013-12-31T18:11:00.003-06:00

Well, the New Year is about to be upon us. Actually, depending on your part of the globe the New Year has already arrived. And with the arrival of a new calendar year comes the question of resolutions, a brief history of which can be gathered from the good old Wikipedia.

Currently, my resolution is 1280x800, I mean you know how that classic joke goes. In 2014 though, for real, I might finally have to get a new computer. But if anything, my resolution will likely only be smaller. I mean it will just be an entirely different dimension. Because that's what happens as you age, you reach new dimensions, and it affects how you view the world.

At the moment my resolution is brandy and bourbon infused and it adds a soft hue to a landscape basked in a continuing-to-fall powdery layer. The thermometer might read 4, but hey, who's to say what [fahren]hei[gh]t's we might get to next year.

So anyway all you inhabitants of the planet, Happy New Year.

Conundrums

2013-12-28T19:15:00.000-06:00

The thing about a conundrum is that it's nothing but a shared nundrum, and a nundrum is nothing but the drum of a nun. This is none too likely, and all too logical. A co-nun-drum then is assisted nun drumming, which could mean that we've got two folks drumming on a nun's drum, two folks drumming a nun, and both seem absurd enough to bring us to what a conundrum really is said to be: a confusing and difficult problem. And thank goodness as I think my efforts to break down the roots were otherwise tapped out.

Speaking of tapped out, could it be any more clear that it's that time of year? The end, I mean. Where at one point I branched off separate blogs to house fiction writing and song parody writing, that writing risks all running right here. 2014 then, the year I remember to keep those things separate, by which I mean actually updating those other blogs.

In the meantime, I'll think long and hard about my 2014 resolutions, just as I never do.

'Twas the Night Before This Mess...

2013-12-24T21:17:00.001-06:00

Little introduction is necessary for this improvised rendition of the holiday classic as it may or may not have happened for me this year after several brandies and some might say too much bourbon...

'Twas the night before Christmas, and somewhere in-house
A martini was stirring, to be placed in my mouth;
Some stockings were hung on the back of a chair,
Because we all know they'd shrink in the dryer;
The neighbors were watching some Walking Dead;
While I wondered whatever happened to Keds;
Some boogers in a 'kerchief, a desire to nap,
But first I needed tending to a big, healthy crap
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the can to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I shuffled with pants 3/4th up,
Since I'd not taken the time for wiping my butt.
A half moon was displaying if behind me you'd go,
And I could feel a light breeze there down below,
When what did I feel there dripping down my rear,
But the remnants of a fifth and more than one beer,
With a lingering hangover that could make me sick,
I smiled thinking of a drunken St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles my trousers down came,
And I stumbled and shouted, my cheeks red with shame:
"God, dammit! There's Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
Which is Comet? Which Cupid? Is there a Donner and Blixen?
Seeing fake reindeer in the midst of nature's call!
I must still be quite drunk after all!"
As heaves that post hurricane 40oz fly,
When I tried for vomiting, the heaving was dry;
So up to the housetop this drunkard he flew
With a gullet full of booze on this alcoholic Jew—
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of John Wilkes Booth.
As I thought in my head, my face made a frown,
This was the dude that took Abe Lincoln down.
He was dressed in a suit, from his head to his foot,
Damn this was the dude that made Abe's life kaput;
Oh I thought how I'd like to break his back,
Though I guess that'd throw history all out of whack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! an unseen adversary!
His cheeks were quite gaunt, his nose like a fairy!
His damned little mouth was cast in a direction down,
And the 'stache on his lipe was as brown—doo-doo brown;
The hilt of a pistol was hidden underneath,
And I must admit he had rather nice teeth;
He had a slim face and no hint of a belly
But he was down on his luck and really quite smelly.
He was hungry and trim, with an anger not shelved,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a duck of his head
I was reminded how he'd shot honest Abe dead;
He spoke not a word, but pantomimed his work,
And cocked back that hammer—my god, what a jerk,
And laying his finger on the trigger it goes,
And that's about the end to this non-prose;
He fled from the scene, and just then I heard a whistle,
It was the damn kettle, I wish I'd disarmed Booth of pistol.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he faded out of sight—
“I'd do it again, it served Old Abe right!”

Social Meteor

2013-12-16T23:41:00.002-06:00

Coming right on in from outer space are the people in your life who are adept at using social media who don't think you're adept at social media. These people aren't anything new in terms of their behavior, it's just that things are now cast through a social media lens. Really then they're not from outer space at all, it's just the behavior that's alien to me. It's this behavior (really, how many times will I say behavior) that has irked me for most of my life. In its simplest form, it's when people are jerks and don't think you know that they're being jerks just because you choose not to be a jerk or call them out in return.

You know what though? All kinds of people got all kinds of hang ups, and at the risk of sounding like a self-help pamphlet, the problem is rarely you, it's them. It makes me wonder if we're a collectively more miserable society than any before, or if we just keep a nice, fresh log of it.

As for things that don't stink: Boston's Logan airport. Okay, not strictly true. When I landed there in late November it did have a scent of cheesy foot. But this was counteracted on my flight out by the fact that security doesn't require a you to remove shoes, liquids...anything? I put a bag down, and I walked through a metal detector. No radiation beaming off of and also into me, no, oh right, I said the other things. Amazing.

And all that in a city that you might think would remain on high alert after the Boston Marathon bombings just eight months back. Speaking of, I might just sit myself down to read this article on the alleged/convicted bombers, at the very least because I'm glad to see that in-depth investigative journalism still goes on. I've only read the first three paragraphs but labeling it "the greatest act of terrorism in Boston history" might need adjusting. The British, after all, might have something to say about that. Still, it would be semantics to argue, and for the time being I'll take an antisemantic stance.

Adieu les hommes et les femmes, les garçons et les filles, et tout les autres de l'internet.

Nonesubscribe

2013-11-30T21:39:00.000-06:00

Time is short. Actually, that isn't quite how time works. I should say instead we can tend to be short on time. And in that time I don't wish to have to sign up, in, and for everything I am ever to be presented with on the Internet (capital I, because it's muh-I internet).

If a website won't let me read content without signing up, even if sign-up is free, I don't want to read it.

If an e-commerce shop requires me to create an account in order to checkout and make a purchase, I won't be making a purchase from there.

You get the idea.

It's easy enough to get all of my information. I shouldn't have to take the time to enter it so you can send me emails I never signed up for and I can endlessly unsubscribe from them and then you can ask a question as to why I'm unsubscribing that you'd be able to answer without my help if you filled out a corresponding checkbox when adding me to the email list in question and the checkbox would say something to the effect of, "this poor sod just wanted to buy a pair of novelty socks for a friend and now he will be forever bombarded with emails suggesting purchases."

Once you unsubscribe, I'm fairly certain they then keep a reject bin list that they let sit idle for perhaps a few months before re-subscribing you. I might be annoyed to get that email after unsubscribing, but they're banking on enticing me with a catchy headline, or maybe tricking me into opening it, merely so that I can unsubscribe. And mostly they just don't care because they can set it and forget it and I'll be on and off that list without any effort on their part.

Then of course there is the email confirming your unsubscribe. It's all a true delight. And if enough time's not wasted deleting, unsubscribing, and/or setting as spam, well, you could always blog about it. Something tells me I've even done it before but I refuse to waste even more time with a quick search. I can only imagine how you might feel reading this far.

On an uplifting note, here's a tale of a high school girl persevering through the puzzling illness that is MS.

Thankssieving

2013-11-27T00:58:00.000-06:00

This is the holiday you get when you drop it through a filter and get only what you need. For me, it's family. I don't get round to seeing them enough so anything that essentially forces me to see them is a plus in my book. Why don't I see them more? Life, distance, choices, money, excuses. Not everyone likes their family, and so while I think of this holiday as a great gathering of family and food, feel free to substitute family with friends, friends who really end up being your family anyway.

Now sure the original tale of Thanksgiving that's taught, well at least in my day, is one rife with fiction, but that doesn't mean that good can't be squeezed out in modern execution. And when I say this, I'm not referencing Black Friday sales. It's a touch disturbing to me to look back and see how these same thoughts came to mind in the past. But there's also nothing wrong with a little consistency. Or a lot. Perhaps even a real whole lot (author's note: this last link contains an embedded image linked from a Lycos-hosted site. How about Lycos for a shout-out to the pre-Google days).

It seems there are plenty of those who dislike the homecoming nature of Thanksgiving and it's understandable. Being around your hometown and all that it entails can manage to be worse and/or more depressing than simply returning to see family and answer a lot of questions, and usually you're looking at all of these together. That I don't go to my hometown may have a softening effect for me. And let's face it, as much as people love to bloviate on the internet (what's that pot? oh hello kettle...), non-digital confrontation with honesty about ourselves is not a lot of fun. Knowing we should get our shit together is a little different than knowing we should get our shit together.

After that brief and cursory treatment of some of the struggles and intricacies of the fragile psyche, I'm going to leave with a link to a cartoonist I had the pleasure of meeting the other night, one Alex Nall. There was a time I read comics far more, from the Sunday offerings, to Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side compendiums, right on up to your X-Men and so on. Though I've strayed, I'm glad to have been brought back by someone like Alex, to see there are still those holding the torch, that there's still a beautiful honesty accompanied by nice art, and that the fundamental problems and struggles we have are age-old, in spite of shifts in outward appearance.

This all runs the risk of sending me off on a bloviant tangent, but I'll stop here since several sentences back I said I'd leave you. Sometimes I'm bad at goodbye.

At any rate, tally it up as one more thing I'm thankful for.

Disruption

2013-11-20T19:36:00.000-06:00

There are words that rise and fall in popularity in our world. Several years back with the beginnings of the Google book project you could search in one of the offerings of Labs to see a word's popularity graphed by year. I am certain I once posted about this and that you can still do this but as I compose this (I'm trying to set a record for saying "this") post from my hi-jacked and out-of-date Firefox browser that presents much content in Japanese, I'm going to forgo looking for a proper link out of, well, laziness.

If you're a reader of this here blog from time-to-time, you'll note that, from time-to-time, I get incredibly (and probably unreasonably) frustrated by such excessive use. In the past that word has been "awkward" and oh how I'm aware that this is one half of the title of this blog. In the past that word has also been "sexy." Neither has completely disappeared, but hey once you vent to your blog I mean where do you really go from there? Seriously, if the entire world hasn't taken notice based on the 30-50 hits I tend to get, then I just don't understand. Maybe I need to learn a way to be more...disruptive?

Okay nail, I'm going to hit you over the head here. Disruption, disruptive, and any other use of this word —I'm so disrupted I can't even think what all of the forms are and I'm deciding not to Google on my predominantly Japanese browser —have got to stop being used. Now it's true, it's a function of what news you focus on, who your friends are in social media and, once you've seen a word, how much you choose to focus on it (there's a scientific term for this phenomenon that I also won't Google — go brain!), but I promise you, DISRUPTION is everywhere. It's the buzz word for how to be entrepreneurial and innovative and attract attention to change or, um, disrupt, the status quo. But most of these things do no more to disrupt the status quo than but to place disruptive, disruptor, and so on more firmly in the ether. Because hell, as I'm sure I've said, and at any rate I'm sure you just know anyway, when you use a word over and over its emphasis, its power, is diminished.

If I wanted to distract from disruption I could cite the prevalence of overly-enthusiastic language storming through the web in the form of sites like Upworthy that contend that everything happens to simultaneously be the most mind-blowing, earth-shattering, life-changing shit in history. The only thing there might be more of than canned enthusiasm on that site is share buttons. It's the other side of the Epic Fail coin, a movement that was nice and eponymous. Ordered regular, got decaf! Not epic fail. And look, I get it, we're about click-throughs on this Internet — which I know well from not getting a lot — but holy hell, how about a little gradation? Think if every day I took the biggest shit of my life? Well shouldn't I realistically start to worry about my colon, my diet, and perhaps the size of my asshole?

I apologize for the use of profane language in the preceding paragraph, but should it not be expected in a place where griping is listed near the top of the list? So hey, let's disrupt things. Let's stop calling everything disruptive. Let's look at a thesaurus. Bollix? Upset the apple cart? These are excellent. You can even abbreviate that last one as UTAC. I can't wait for that to be the name of some new agency! UTAC that one right to the bank...

I'm From Nowhere

2013-11-18T17:25:00.000-06:00

As good old Facebook seeks to expand how much information it has about you, it's been desperate to know my hometown for a little while now. It does a good job of assessing where I'm probably from based on how many of my friends claim a certain place as their hometown. But what is really excellent is the last option: I have no hometown. As it is, even my hometown had a hometown. Well I suppose you can say it still does. At any rate I'll continue "suffering" through my incomplete profile.

I'm not a good Facebook user. Too many people send too many requests. The problem of course, is that sometimes I want people to see messages or notifications I send them on there, but I'm likely lost in the same world of mass they are on my end. Ah the social media vortex. Instead I stand at the edge from time-to-time and do my best to not let gravity pull me fully in.

Speaking of gravity, the gravity of language is something I consider probably far too often. It ties into what I was just getting at all too well. When there's so much presented to us so easily, how can we boil down to what matters? Well nevermind that since I'm not going to come to some grand epiphany at the time being. Instead I'll just have fun reading apartment listings that say things like "Heat, Water, and Garbage included!" Now you might think that an apartment full of garbage wouldn't appeal to anyone but Oscar, but remember the old adage: "one man's trash is another man's treasure." I wonder what the implication of that adage is for women...

Hall of Wien

2013-10-31T23:30:00.000-05:00

For whatever reason, Wien has been on my mind today. I suppose it's simply Wien being pronounced ween and the last syllable of today's holiday, coupled with my childish amusement concerning speculation as to residents call themselves Wieners. I mean, they're either Wieners or losers, right?

And speaking of losers, we've definitely got Ventra. As I mentioned in the past and as you might have noticed if you were a Chicago transit user, the system is performing rather abysmally. And it's tough for the employees of the CTA, many of whom I have interacted with over the years, and many of whom I like. People get pretty frustrated with the service already and there's a tendency to take it out on someone wearing the logo. Throw in another wrench with Ventra and I worry about the remaining hair on the already one-third bald head of a man at my nearby station.

CTA's pretty aware of just how unenthused riders are with the crap service — though not aware enough to have considered not implementing the unnecessary "upgrade" in the first place. Alas, profits [for someone]. The result is that the stop I get off at every morning has recently acquired a new jovial man to greet everyone and to tell us all to have a wonderful day. I know why he suddenly appeared and I'm sure other riders do too, but that doesn't stop me liking the guy. Using such a tactic only makes me dislike the CTA even more, but hey, I'm transported most of the way to work without having to do anything but stand there. That can be a little more difficult at rush hours, but hey, other people want to travel most of the way to and from their destination without having to do anything but stand there too. Some of them even sit.

In the spirit of Halloween, Kind was giving out bars this morning. I could have sworn when these launched they were nothing but natural ingredients but now they've got the soy lecithin and the soy protein isolate of every other "bar." Or perhaps they were always loaded with these artificial goodies and now they just choose to report it. Either way, doesn't seem so kind to me. What I mean is they're not the kind of thing I want to be putting in my body. Not at a premium cost, and [almost] not for free. But not eating free things that aren't good for you wouldn't be following the spirit of the day. Sometimes you gotta give into the spirit.

A Happy Halloween to one and all.

All Hallow's Eve's Eve

2013-10-30T22:32:00.000-05:00

If you're a regular reader of this blog, that probably means you're me. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you also know I am a harsh taskmaster to myself regarding posting four times a month. And though that corresponds quite nicely to weekly, sometimes I get behind. And while I can get behind getting behind (as well as getting behind a behind), I can't abide the missing of deadlines. Not when I know they exist. I've never missed a deadline I knew existed. The problem is I'm just not always aware of the deadline.

Those lines are pretty dead, which is only fitting for The Day of the Dead, or day of the undead if you will (you must, it's my blog). But I've no burning desire to talk about vampires, nor zombies for that matter, even when cranberry.

Tomorrow there will be children and adults in costumes but so it was today and perhaps every day since last Saturday. Sure I understand how excited people get for Halloween (actually, I don't entirely, I'm not much of a costumer of note), but hey it's already a franchise, so go and enjoy how you like though, if you're using fake blood, maybe it's time to stop using Heinz since they too have gone to the conglomerates. Businesses of the world are always falling to conglomerates, so I guess Heinz was just playing ketchup. Independent companies can continue to join the dead it seems.

Anyway, tomorrow there will also be candy, and you don't have to be from Mars to be excited about that. After all, you could also be a dentist...or a doctor specializing in diabetes.

Somewhere in a Vienna Airport...

2013-10-29T13:55:00.001-05:00

There's a book I wrote and had published in limited (5 copies) release -- since I had a coupon code for free printing and I love deals. The secret romantic in me has a lot of love for the found object and it perhaps being a sort of serendipitous event. To that end I'd decided I should drop off a copy of said book somewhere in Europe while there with the wife-to-be. There was a most excellent venue presented to me in Prague, but alas I wasn't carrying it. Or I may, in fact, have just been too nervous about it. Probably overzealous to drop it in the Kafka section. With a touch of sadness, I czeched out.

Nearing the end of our journey another great and eclectic book shop within the Museumsquartier that might be this place presented itself. Again I don't recall whether I was bookless or ball-less in the circumstance, but once again opportunity passed. After all, it's a little embarrassing to stick your own book into a place like that.

So at last I gave into halfway guerrilla marketing, purchasing the latest Junot Diaz book at an exorbitant rate in a Vienna airport book shop, and replacing it with my own offering. Inside was just an inscription hopeful that someone would pick it up, read it and, most importantly and least likely, enjoy it. Who's to say how much of this will or has taken place as one thing I didn't do was include any sort of contact information, save even a link to this blog or perhaps a twitter account.

At any rate, between the swapping of [book] places with another writer from New Jersey, and that the book is about an itinerant and then left in an airport, it all seems to have come in not too far shy of 360 degrees. Sometimes you don't get to find out where or how a thing ends up. And since fiction is about inventing outcomes (or lying and calling them invented -- one might use the terms "repackaging" or "repurposing"), an invented future for this work fits just fine.

Tee Mobile

2013-10-19T22:39:00.001-05:00

But isn't every tee mobile so long as you pull it out of the ground? Or you throw it on as shirt. Tea can easily be mobile as well, as it was for a certain tea party. Mobilitea even has it built right in. And, just in case, a list of the other set of tangents I might have selected. But maybe tea's not your bag. But look, what I'm really getting at, unfortunately, is T-mobile, and this ad I didn't see on TV a few minutes ago, but just as I typed that, the ad appeared again, a couple of parents saying something about their son for this Catch Jeremy campaign. And I went to that link because I'm familiar with the name. And if you've read this far, don't go to that link, unless you already have, in which case it's too late. And we could discuss how stupid it all is, but honestly, that's the first thing I'm discussing for the month of October? Synopsis: thinner Jared aka old Verizon guy is meant to be globe-trotting and has a crappy international data plan. I think. I just scrolled a bunch to avoid wasting even more of my time. Basically, if Evan Ratliff from Wired could be found trying to stay off the grid, it wouldn't be very hard to catch this idiot.

The woman to whom I've recently become engaged wishes I weren't engaged in this right now and instead maybe mentioning the fact that we've become engaged. So I, who clings to a vague anonymity on the internet (but clearly, with what I linked above and the fact that I'm blogging at all is quite vague indeed), will make quick note of this milestone. In real life this is a huge deal (at least for me, who plans to do this once), but here on my nonsense blog, actually it still matters. In a place where absolutely nothing and thus everything is sacred, you've got to keep track of the milestones.

And that's a wrap.

Running Out of Ideas

2013-09-27T18:16:00.000-05:00

There's a phrase "running out of your mind." In general it's come to mean when you run so well, so beyond any expectation, that the reality of it is difficult to grasp within the standard boundaries of the brain, which tends to operate on logic and limits. For me I always thought of it as those rare moments when I'd run and my body was moving independently of my mind. Mind you this doesn't happen often and perhaps it's not something every runner aspires to. I tend to think of this in race specific scenarios, meaning those races where I don't think at all for the majority of the race and just latch on, mindlessly to another runner, with hope the leader. I wait as long as possible to take action. This does happen on routine runs as well. I'm just moving, and don't have to give thought to anything as I almost can't feel my legs.

This is different from the runner's high. The runner's high I describe as an often elusive feeling of effortless perpetual motion — different than not even feeling my legs, it's a touchy and semantic training ground here. I can seemingly go forever and considerations of pace are ludicrous, just as they would be when running out of my mind. There are no limits, there is no beginning or end though you stop at an arbitrary and predefined point. I have never had the runner's high in a race, though I have run out of my mind as I said, and the distinction is likely drawn upon due to nerves. Running out of your mind, for me, is to tell yourself for the longest time that it's not a race, it's just running. Oh sure, at some point it becomes a race, but you seek to delay it.

Now I take back what I said about the runner's high in a race. It's been there. Once. In the scenario I expected to win and my opponent's attempts to be in the lead or anywhere near me were actions to which I took offense, which is a stupid and, unfortunately for me, natural occurrence. I want to be in the lead. We can be there together, but if I sense you upsetting the delicate balance, I want to get away, I want to be alone. This is what I think of as the loneliness of the long distance runner. For me I want to compete, I want to win, but it's just so that I am alone at the end of it all, until I am scared as that arbitrarily defined finish point approaches that I am truly alone, and scared as well that I am not.

But that race I spoke of was a time trial training run against three separate pairs of legs belonging to teammates. I ran away from the first and the second started when I approached. I ran away from the second and the third started when I approached. And as he took off at a speed I knew he couldn't sustain, the runner's high struck. I walked him down as the old racing phrase goes, and I was alone as I like it and I stopped, finally, where my coach was waiting, but I could have kept going.

Thoughts of this spawned from my run this morning, where I did something separate from all of this, I ran my mind out. A spike in the heat fatigued my body through dehydration, with salt depositing on my face in the wake of evaporated sweat the way it often did in the past when I felt 13-15 miles was the natural morning's activity after 13-15 drinks. This was called a weekend. And when it's through, the world appears brighter. Yes, my goddamn eyes seem to take in more light. I don't know why this happens exactly, but I do know that I like it. This is why you can believe a person when they say running is their drug.

Jer-see, Jer-do

2013-09-25T17:49:00.002-05:00

There's a joke, a pun, some wordplay in there somewhere as I write this from nowhere, nowhere but the toilet that is. What better place? Speaking of what better place, what better place than Jersey, my home of homes, for its true that I lived there for the better (and worse) parts of 24 years. Any and all such trips to the motherland awaken within the beast a certain forlorn peering into the past, tinged with wonderment that the you that was then ever even existed. Certainly it shaped the you of now, but with how out of touch with the you of old you are, it seems strange.

Anyway, Jersey is as lush as ever. Along the Raritan towpath you wouldn't guess at the factories that surround Newark Airport, or the entities that constituted the cast of the once-relevant (and then, only in certain social circles) Jersey Shore. Alas, fitting that they've fallen victim to the almost unknowable past of my own Jersey, albeit theirs easier to access due to prodigious quantities of video, picture, and other digital content.

Jersey also brings, for me, the relaxed and easy humor of old friends. So, for whatever else, thanks for that Jersey. I'll see you again, not soon enough and too soon.

Tuned In

2013-09-12T12:47:00.001-05:00

I'm never actually at the cutting edge of newly released, or underground, or "hip" music (I'm classifying all of these as separate items though there is inevitable crossover). As I age, it's only getting worse. I do, however, know some songs. Now it's one thing when a new song bites on an older tune that maybe we're expected to only have a vague subconscious association with, but when new songs take their cues from other popular songs not even five years out, well perhaps it just speaks to the increasingly ephemeral nature of memory and lasting impressions. After all, we're bombarded with so much content, we simply can't remember as far back as we might have -- there's only room for so much.

What that introduction is getting at is quick observations on listening to a couple of new Fall Out Boy tracks. I'm more than happy to say I enjoyed a couple of their past songs, but generally they just don't do it for me. No big deal. However, in listening to "Just One Yesterday" I'd say it's rather impossible to hear the beginning of the song and not start singing "There's a fire, burning in my..." in your best Adele voice. As youtube comments show, I am neither the first nor the only person to observe this. As far as "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark", I couldn't help but hear Kanye West's "Power." It's not identical but it sure is close.

Something much more worth noting however is the switchover occurring at the CTA to the new Ventra system. This has been going on for quite sometime, and it's pretty obvious where the real gains are. Apparently the technology was getting outdated, but the old CTA VP of Tech just happened to work for Cubic, the company that got a $454 million contract to implement this new necessary technology? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I mean, poor Cubic went through the trouble of creating this new technology, we couldn't just have them sink that development cost by not giving them a bloated contract, could we? The good news is they'll now cut a bunch of jobs to make up for budget shortfalls. And they'll increase the fare cost by 33% starting in 2014. I'm not an accountant, so care to tell me how the $454 million implementation works in conjunction with the apparent $10.3 million per year in losses the CTA's taking?

At the transit stops they've been giving out nifty pamphlets too, to explain how the Ventra system is better! Fewer cards to keep track of! Actually no, you only ever needed one. Whether it was the papery piece with the magnetic strip like the MTA or MBTA or the plastic Chicago Card Plus you could tap on the machine, that was it. So far I see frequent moments of the Ventra scanners going down. The more technologically advanced you make a thing, the more opportunities it has to have something go wrong. Everything Ventra'd, nothing gained.

As we said in my safety patrol days then, "Start walking."

The Future is the Second After You Read This

2013-09-05T11:05:00.003-05:00

Though it was a little warm yesterday and a bit humid today, we're settling in on what is fall. The days are already notably shorter, though it's still a blessed eight weeks until the terrible shifting of the clocks. Wake in darkness or leave work in darkness?

But for now people are still riding their electric skateboards and wearing their cyclist's equivalent of a dashboard cam, which is just a camera on their head. In the case of the former, it was just one dude, and while the technology to have a motorized skateboard isn't new, I don't think I'd actually seen one before. If you were expecting that they guy looked and acted like a douche, you'd have been correct.

As for the cyclist with the headcam, this isn't that new either, but once again I'd never seen a person wearing one for general consumption. Also, rather than being attached to his helmet, he had it on his forehead. Nor did he appear to be a very competent cyclist, leading me to wonder just what kind of footage he'd capture on a typical ride. It might be time for me to wear one when I run to take note of cyclists being extreme assholes. This isn't anything unique to cyclists, assholes abound, but it's well-established that I have a gripe with cyclists.

It's a successive string of natural environmental enemies -- cars pose a danger to me too, especially the frequent stop sign rollers and cell phone involved Range Rover drivers (lots of drivers have pulled dumb shit, but there are a disproportionate number of Range Rovers and/or my brain recalls them with greater ease). But cars, pedestrians, and runners can universally agree on hating cyclists. It's a shame because as with any group they're not all bad. Some simple things worth remembering might be: if you want the road rights of cars, you're going to have to start observing traffic signals (things like stop signs and red lights), and moving into the blind spot of a bus or making a right turn across and in front of a bus is not really a good idea. And whatever I say, just remember that your helmet is your seatbelt.

I know what you're thinking, it's a good time for a snack.

Digitally Speaking

2013-08-31T20:09:00.002-05:00

After thinking I had put down all that I might need to regarding observations in Central Europe, there was something else I put my finger on that I asked my traveling companion/roommate/girlfriend to corroborate, namely the decided lack of digital plug-in of the general populace. That sentence is one horribly convoluted way of saying we didn't see a lot of people staring at their cell phones. Given my general technological griping here in this interspace, it should come as no surprise I counted this a plus. People were instead actually engaging with one another or, even if they weren't, they were at the least not consulting some device but instead simply enjoying the quiet.

Sure, there were instances of it here and there, like in airports where there were business men making business calls using business terms as they went on their business travel, but even then it was using just the phone operation of the "phone," that part of the handheld device that seems to get less and less use.

The other thing about the bulk of Euros we encountered: they love t-shirts with any and all American words. Phrases that don't make any sense? No big deal, it's got English on it! I think I know where to start out selling my t-shirt line called something like "American Word." It was endearing and disturbing at the same time.

Lord knows I could keep on going on about things such as this, but instead here's just one more American word for you: later.

The Language of Disappearance

2013-08-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

Whenever I travel to a place where they speak a language other than English -- a rarity -- the trouble is that the inhabitants of this place speak English. Sure this is in a lot of ways great for me, one not very adept at other languages, but I can't help but think it's also a shame in what it tells us about alternative cultural appreciation here. After all, we don't provide all these other peoples the benefit of speaking their language when they travel to the old US of A. Then again, they wouldn't be learning English if it weren't a business and lifestyle necessity. Alas, such is the cost of globalization, progression, unfication, quotation marks wherever you think I intended them.

At any rate, it's easy for the visitor to cast the wistful eye at foreign places without a full grasp of what it is to actually live there. What I can tell you in my latest visits is that in the Central European cities of Prague, Budapest, and Vienna, people do not run without shirts on. Even sizeable tourist groups from Italy (granted they happened to be teenagers), land of fashion that would attract a skeptical eye in America, do not understand the shirtless runner donning short shorts. I'm still on my quest to discover what it is about this situation that sets so many ill at ease. After all, in Budapest for instance there is no shortage of baths, where same-sex nudity is unquestioned, and in Prague there are ample banners for escort service sex.cz -- not to mention the city being well-known for its technically illegal, but blind eye more than turned and in fact approving of services to improve tourism. Hell in Prague I'm pretty certain I encountered a Brit taking good advantage of such access (I took his photo with a barely obliging woman at 6 in the morning) and in Vienna another Brit seemed to have brought an escort to 9:00am breakfast. But look, by no means should you run without your shirt on. A shame that Freud's no longer over at Berggasse 19 to help come to a precise psychoanalytical conclusion

And now, at this point, it's natural to wonder if the likes of Mozart and Beethoven went without wigs when they were out on long walks (maybe not Beethoven since he was blind) composing the classical music we still listen to today and, if so, whether they were looked upon strangely by peers. After all, "wiggin' out" is derived from the situation of one entering society without one's wig on, hence exposing the true self. Witnessing a person wig out makes people uncomfortable precisely because it exposes true nature and innately we fear the dark inner self.

On that note (a b-flat according to Wolfgang Amadeus), I'm going to head back to reality.