supa

If you could be a superhero, what would your power be?

I took this magazine quiz with a friend of mine one time and it asked, among other things, if you could have a super power, what would it be? I thought about this for a minute and I have come to the conclusion that it was actually a really good question. There are a few ways you could think about it, but I'm not talking about the tricking-people-into-having-sex-with you-through-mind-control power, or being able to shape shift to evade and eavesdrop. No matter where you come from or what your station in life, everyone has something that pertains to their lives that a superpower could totally wrap up.

Yes, I realize this question is totally cliche, but I don't care because I'm applying it to a more practical aspect of real life. For instance, would you be able to do flash long division or calculus in order to produce logarithms and forecasting models at a fraction of the current rate?

Or, perhaps you would be able to mix the dye and peroxide, or other natural dying agent, exactly right every single time you did a highlight application, thus guaranteeing you a customer base for life.

Then again, perhaps you would be able to wake up fresh, rested and hydrated no matter what time you went to bed. I'd probably choose that one, for obvious reasons, but if you were.....say....an alcoholic, you could totally prolong the point in time where you would be found out, because half the battle of being an alcoholic is the utter fatigue involved in keeping that situation going.

You could be "Super-Get-Out-Of-Fights" girl, or "Super-Endurance-Shit-Taker" guy, or even "Super-Never-Tired-Forearms-And-Shoulders-Massage-Therapist" person. The options are endless, really.

But I digress. I can't lie, I went over the utter futility of imagining this in my mind and my inner obnoxious said that it was stupid and even dangerous to go flirting with crazy ideas like superpowers. No way in hell we're ever going to start genetically engineering things to produce a greater return. Pahshaw to that.

Then again, it doesn't hurt to wonder. Perhaps sooner than later I will become "Super-Dollar-Earner" girl.......it could happen.

sandwich board

I could easily write about several other things I have been mulling over in my head lately, but today on my way to work, I was struck by something. I started to analyse the daily occurrence of people wearing sandwich boards, shoving flyers out into the crowd of the aforementioned joyless commuters of the ankle express.

If you don't work in Manhattan to experience this, it's pretty much the same thing that goes on when you visit Times Square or any other super touristy area. The hander-outers stand out in the blistering hot, beautifully temperate, or freezing cold weather (they mostly take the rainy days off, except for the totally hardcore) with a huge stack of fliers. If your eyes should even rest on the hand of the bearer or god forbid you've made eye contact, it's over. The flyer is stuck out for you at chest level and the person may even go so far as to make it physically inconvenient to pass them.

The flyers are for all manner of goods and services. Hair and nail salons with special discount offers, restaurant delivery menus, directions to a shoe warehouse or discount store, or Qi-gong massage place. But it's not the items and discounts provided that are the problem. Most of the time, they are items about which you've had at least some curiosity. The problem is in the timing and aggressive nature of the hander-outer.

You'll see the same people every single day, out there. There is a guy I used to walk past on 6th Ave., who handed out flyers for a discount men's suit location. I am, clearly, not a man, yet he tried every single day and even every single time I walked by, to get me to take one; 10 hours a day, everyday. I've walked by there a few times since my commute to work changed course and he's still there every single day, with the same look of futility all over his face. How much does he make to stand out there, arm outstretched and have his offering rejected every single day for 10 hours? What is the return on that investment for the store? How many people really take the flyers and then what is the subsequent business increase experienced? How do they track that to their miserable flyer-person?

The people standing out there on the sidewalk could be handing out bars of gold and I doubt interest would go up that much the first couple of days, because people simply look the other direction on most days, to avoid disappointing the hander-outer and having to endure again, the pleading look in his or her eyes.

I could have it all wrong, of course. It's entirely possible that these people have a booming business selling coke to businessmen, or doing social anthropology studies on large crowds of people dressed mostly in black. Whatever the explanation, they are out there day in and day out and I'm surprised some corporation hasn't picked them all up and given them jobs because of their dutiful execution of their mundane tasks. I mean, standing out there in that river everyday; that shit takes dedication.

eff that.

My favorite word is the word 'fuck'. This has been my favorite word for upwards of two decades, because of it's versatility and impact. You can't say the word fuck without ears perking up all around. If a point needs to be emphasized, fuck will get the job done well, every time. I tried, for a while, to soften my thoughts and speech and not use the word fuck quite so often, but I've fallen in love with it all over and I've promised it that I'll never abandon it again.

We have a special relationship, I've come to learn and the more I think about it, the more I value it.

"Wanna stay at work for several extra hours without pay?"

"Fuck that!"

"Hey, I'm gonna say a bunch of stupid things to you and piss you off, whatcha think about that?"

"Fuck off!"

"Oh, no! I've stubbed my toe and now it's bleeding in my shoe!"

"Fuck!"

Simple and to the point, that word. I don't necessarily promote the shouting and flagrant use of it in public, because it does have immense power to offend, but generally speaking, I feel that free use of that word is, in no way, problematic.

The only time I can really advocate moderation with the word fuck is when telling people where to go; to "fuck off", if you will. By the time I get to uttering that phrase, we are past the point of repair in our conversation or relationship, and whatever damage that word does, I readily accept as inevitable and necessary. In fact, among people I know and with whom I have had any sort of regular correspondence or relationship, I can really only think of one to whom I've said "Ugh, Fuck off!" Most of the time, I'll just ask them to go away. Given my command of the English language, I can find more subtle ways of getting that to happen than to blatantly abuse them with the f word. I guess I'm generally a more good natured "fuck" user and gravitate toward it for narrative and humorous purposes, rather than to incite anger or combat.

Anyway, the point is, I encourage everyone to find a word to which they are so loyal. It makes speaking more like bathtime where your word of choice becomes the rubber ducky that makes you squeal with glee at the very thought of it. Fuck, that's fantastic.

See?

montag

And here we are again....Monday morning and I'm yawning because I couldn't seem to find sleep last night. Funny, seems like I was just having this same series of thoughts last week and I was searching just as frantically for my mp3 player so that I could tune out the Monday morning yakking going on all around me.

I'm not a morning person, but I'm also not not a morning person, provided I have a halfway decent nights sleep. We're all in the same boat here, I'm sure of it. I saunter the streets of midtown on my way to work and see nothing but yawns and blank faces. Not an excited or animated visage in the bunch. Every poor bastard out at 8am on Monday morning is thinking the same thing: "do I really have to go in today?"

Why is Monday so hard? I suggest it's because Americans work hours that are too long, without taking breaks and freak out too much about productivity, even though things are generally moving along quite well. I also believe this hysteria, coupled with our long hours and lack of breaks, actually makes us less productive, in the long run. However, if I were to voice this opinion in my office, I would be summarily shot by upper management and used as an example; hung to taunt everyone, in the glass-walled conference room. Let that be a lesson to yus.

I propose a simple mini-solution for the near term; napping. This could quite possibly be the greatest invention ever. If offices were stocked with these nifty pods, management might be a little more affable and the average worker, a little less bleary-eyed come 3pm. Monday might not hurt so bad, either. The other alternative is for us (and by us I mean me) to set ourselves up with jobs that we enjoy. Take the time to do a little extra on the scholastic front so we can be a bit more picky about the environments in which we will earn our living. Maybe even earn a living working for ourselves instead of for a man who started in his living room and still thinks he's there.

angel dust, part deux, plus a paranoia bonus

I notice a trend with people who live on the fringes of society. Paranoia runs rampant among their ranks. Whether said fringe-dweller is to the far left or far right, he or she has developed a healthy fear of the world around them and automatically assumes that every person not espousing a militia-esque belief system is a tool of the guvamint, out to bring them down.

Frighteningly enough, however, are those who live and walk and work among the 'normal' (and I use that term loosely), who harbor secret fears and fantasies about who is out to get them and what kind of tools are in employ to do it. These are the most creative people ever. If these people had any idea of grammar, a moderate vocabulary and a laptop, they could all join the ranks of Isaac Asimov and write best sellers that would creep out and /or reassure millions.

My latest example of this takes me back to my encounter with my angel dust-intoxicated friend from a couple of weeks ago. A key part of the story, which I woefully left out, were the chips which had been implanted in him to track his whereabouts and activities. He pointed to several non-scarred, non-tattooed areas on his body and noted skittishly, that the cops had planted them in him. He knew this because everywhere he went, there were cops and they all seemed to be watching his every move. Strangely, it had never occurred to him that the reason for such surveillance may have been because he was twitchy and loud and behaved erratically. He repeated may times over that he needed to "go and get these fucking things taken out, because they were really starting to stress him out." I wondered silently if there was a program for chip-removal that one learned about when on psychotropic substances. Having done many of those substances (though never angel dust), I felt left out of the loop for a moment. Then again, I haven't done that many and I'm also not paranoid.

Case number two in my paranoia analysis is, sadly, a detail of someone to whom I was once quite close. I never could grasp this aspect of him, however, and to this day, wonder how it is possible to live thinking that everyone is ready to go out of his or her way to sell you out to the fuzz and invent reasons to take you down. I am of the belief that most people simply aren't that motivated.

Our subject is educated, entrepreneurial and not prone to attention-grabbing activities. You would have thought that he was any normal guy, moving through life as a relatively successful, good-natured guy. I thought so too, until he told me about his "apocalypse stash", which was completed by a handgun for use when "people start breaking in and trying to get to his shit." The fact that he only dealt in cash, refused to tell people his name in many instances and wouldn't go to certain parts of town, for fear of being captured on film, seemed only like idiosyncrasies until the mention of firearms freaked the shit out of me and put it all into perspective. This has caused me to come to a grave realization.

The paranoid and deluded are the ones who are "stocking up". They are the ones you will see roaming the streets with weaponry, wild-eyed and ready to see you as an aggressor, or at least claim that so they can hold you up and rob you of your food stores, money, water, or whatever other currency they can come up with. These are the people who are not trained in emergency situations, have no tactical training or ability and who are just plain crazy. When "the shit" goes down, as it inevitably will, your emergency kit, water, food and clothing rations and resourcefulness will be no match for their lunacy.

Kind of makes you paranoid, no?

home, bleep home.

Home is where you hang your hat, where the heart is, where you ate soap when you swore and where the highlight reel of your childhood sports replays every time you drive past the park where you played and the elementary school where you were tether ball champ.

Home is a bittersweet word and a location that is rife with contradiction for most of us. I'd like to say we're the normal bunch, but we all know that's bullshit. One thing I have noticed, however, is that I can’t feel indifferent to going back. I’m driving down old streets where I used to run to clear my head, passing old bars where I drank away my sorrows, seeing familiar faces to which I used to turn for laughter and comfort and remembering old times from which I turned away when I left.

You know you’ve been away a while when going back home, for business or otherwise, starts to feel like a vacation. You start to think about everything in terms of “remember when…” or “holy shit that was funny….”. But, it’s not real. I didn’t leave home to run away from everything, I left because it was time to go. I’d had wanderlust for years and couldn’t shake it. Even living in the land of good waves and sunshine can’t keep the curious from sneaking out and stirring the pot. So I left. I chose a spot 3000 miles away from home that was about as different from my comfort zone as I could find. I didn’t know a single soul within about 500 miles and walked into my new life basically sight unseen. Everyone’s done that to some extent and if you haven’t, it’s because you are either the one who already has a perfect, blissful existence, or you are a pussy. I tend to think it’s the latter of the two, but I’m cynical.

When times are tough and you’re somewhere other than “home”, it’s always so easy to think about going back. I already know where to live and get a good deal on the rent. I know all of the really good, cheap places to eat, which beaches are the least crowded and I know how to get around on side streets without any trouble at all. I could line myself up a pretty sick job with minimal effort and pick back up with my friends, right where I left off. I’ve even gone so far in this fantasizing process as to start planning out my return in my head. I start to calculate the numbers and add up the expenses to see exactly what I’d have to do to make it a reality.

But that's when I begin remembering all of the bullshit; the people who sold my ass out for better opportunities for themselves. The jobs that didn’t pay me anywhere near what I was worth and sucked off of my work ethic, taking advantage of me because I was too stupid to know my own value. The guys who treated me like shit because there was another hot piece of ass 10 feet away who had tits so fake that they wouldn’t bounce if she jumped and whose brain was occupied by so few brain cells that there was no chance of a collision up there. The valley speak that was pervasive in every single conversation with a person of my same sex and wanting to stab myself in the eye watching boys eat up the stupid like it was chocolate pudding. I remember starving for an educated conversation and thinking that I would give up an ovary to find someone who wasn’t his or her daddy’s republican; to find anyone who actually had views of the world for a quantifiable reason and who could discuss them openly without getting bored or distracted by something shiny.

Yes, I know why I left and why I can’t go back. I know why I’m where I am now and why this series of struggles is where I need to be; I appreciate it, even. I know that even if I went back “home”, I’d only be regressing back into a world where I would sit with massive frustration and the tone of all of my conversations would include the implied sentiment, “Dude, I’ve gotta get the fuck outta here.” Thus, home has now taken on the same personality as the friend who annoys the shit out of you, but who you just can't bring yourself to ditch altogether. Small doses for home and I'll be just fine.

audience of (no) 1

A friend of mine gave me some undue praise the other day.

"So many people must be reading your blog, now that you switched it over." She said.

I burst out laughing, though I didn't mean to and I think I startled her a little. I laughed because even the people that I finally solicited to read this thing don't, by their own admission. So all of those who didn't read it before and who aren't reading it now, are in the wonderful company of thousands....millions even.

Truth is, I don't write to attract droves of readers, though if and when I do attract any kind of audience, I'm sure my writing will get better, after a rash of scathing comments and unsolicited opinions pour in. But, I'm writing this for the same reason I've been writing my whole life; and that reason is, no reason at all. When I was a kid, I would go up to my room to hide out from the rest of my family and take my mom's portable typewriter with me. It was the kind of manual, old-school typewriter that you pecked at. The keys were hard to depress and you had to manually return it to start the next line. Sometimes the keys struck high or low and gave the piece on which I was working a little extra personality. There were no font or color options and I had to become familiar with correction tape, which I learned also wrote well on walls and other people's toys.

So there I sat, on my yellow bedspread, tucked away in my room, inventing stories about things like happy families and popular kids who had interaction with people outside of their gene pool. I have no idea what happened to most of those stories, but it was and remains to be, a fantastic form of escapism. I find I write all day in my head. I write stories about people who have incomes worthy of their efforts, bosses with legitimate managerial skills, people who know how to walk and binge drinkers who can hold their liquor. Most of the stories come in, are scrawled out on my brain and then hop back out into the ether, leaving me momentarily entertained and robbing my vast audience of my self-proclaimed brilliance.

Rare is the author who receives praise in bulk for her work though. Even Ayn Rand was said to have cried to herself every night because of the biting criticism she received for "Atlas Shrugged". She was known to have read aloud to her inner cirlce of friends and followers and then cry when they left. I would do that, the reading, that is, but I don't feel like being pelted with rotten fruit, in my own home. I'd rather defy the 'tough love' of those who maintain that their reason for not reading is fear of eviceration. A hearty belly laugh to that one, too. Join the rest of the masses in the empty seats over there. It's a packed house of barren tonight, so best get here early.

hones....

...tly. How important is honesty and are there degrees of such a thing? I have several questions centered around this topic. Can you really claim to be honest and still be secretive at the same time? What prompts one to decide that secrecy, no matter how seemingly innocuous it may be, is a good course of action? Secrecy denotes that one has things to hide. And if one has things to hide, is one truly honest?

Assuming for a moment that there are degrees to being honest, who determines them and would all parties involved in said honesty-degree-defining concur as to the definition and execution of the protocol, once defined?

I only wonder because I'm distrustful. I'm also honest to a fault; something I wish I could remedy, but I can't seem to get the straightforward in me to bend. I've been curious about this for most of my life. Curious and confused, and now I'd like some input on the matter, because it doesn't seem like it's going to get resolved in this noggin.

those gases

When I was in high school, I was in the ecology club. This meant pretty much nothing, except that all of the weird kids and "death rockers", as we were known, met in the biology room at lunchtime once a week and talked about what we could do at our tender ages, with no money, to help save the environment. Our club wasn't organized very well, so after a couple of months, it was just a guaranteed place to sit during lunch and we talked about music instead. We did however, get in touch with organizations like the Surfrider Foundation and Heal the Bay and we did beach cleanups and tried to start a recycling trend on campus. This was in California in the early 90s, so we weren't looked on as complete freaks, as much as we would have been if we were in say.....Texas.

But looky what's happened today! Thank the heavens for this gem of information. Guess what everybody?! The Bush administration has decided that greenhouse gases and global warming can largely be attributed to human activity! I can't believe it.....I mean who saw that coming?? Here I was, cruising along in my heavy polluter of a car, using CFC products wherever available and pelting all of those pesky "earth friendly" freaks with Alaskan oil drilling pamphlets, hoping they would all just wise up and get into bed with big business like they should, and now I'm to be told that perhaps they were right? This is an outrage and I, for one, demand to know who intends to be responsible for this kind of slander.

I find it curious and a bit ironic that this sort of epiphanic information has come to light when all along, our nation's leader has widely ignored and even eschewed what people with things like eyes and brains have known for years. He went so far as to categorically oppose a multi-national treaty, that would give us the opportunity to band resources and combat the problem on a more global scale. Big oil and big money also, apparently, have big blinders as well.

We are now 8 years behind on the development of renewable energy sources, forward-thinking legislation and solutions that help industries of all sorts maintain quality and preserve the environment at the same time. Any strides the United States has made during this administration have been fought for tooth and nail against a man who doesn't even have a command of his own language. I am overwhelmed with joy that each passing day takes me one day closer to the end of the Bush era. I think there are 400 and change days left and I mark them all off in the calendar of my mind, with glee. My own misgivings about Bush aside, however, I mark off the days until we put a new person in the oval office who will pay mind to what the role of the United States has in the world and not what role the world has in the United States. Even on such paltry issues as the environment, we really should pay better attention and make an effort to get along.

overheard....

I have been taking a mental tally of all of the funny and stupid shit that I hear while cruising around the streets of the world. Here are a few of the winners:

*heard while sitting on a train, shoved against the window, listening to the people next to me cover topics like anxiety due to cockroaches and bi-coastal marriages....


"....I mean, you guys could be having zestful conversations about Hawaiian coffee."


and then a few moments later:


"One of the joys in my life is riding my big, Chinese bicycle and coasting with my hands stretched out in the air. I think it's because of the Chinese bicycle; I just don't think I could acheive that kind of freedom on another kind of bike. "



*heard while walking down 44th street in mid-town on the way to Grand Central....


"I don't know.....maybe we should just walk. I heard there are a lot of dead people that hang out in the subways."


**I had to wonder, do dead people actually hang out? And if they were to hang out, why would they choose a subway station? I would think if I were dead and looking for locations to frequent, I would choose a lovely park, or a spot that overlooks the Hudson river.



*I can't detail where I heard this, but I promise this is verbatim.


"O my god, I like totally have never tried Red Bull, but I did try Rockstar one time. That stuff is like totally crazy and I was like fully levitating when I was on it. I totally don't know why people need to be on Red Bull when they go out because it like keeps you up for like hours.


**I wonder if that's how David Blaine does it.

howdy, neighbor

My scalene muscles hurt today. I'm assuming this is from gritting my teeth and wincing too much. This happens when I lift weights and lately, it also happens in my sleep so that I wake up with my jaw muscles and everything attached to them feeling sore and angry. I'm commenting on this because I'm bored and since it's bad form (as mentioned earlier) to announce every thought and feeling out to one's co-workers, I am writing. Onto a better topic though.

I was having a conversation the other day that started with an observation I made about a little mini-fence in the corner of a random yard on the vast expanse of suburban waste that is Long Island. This fence was approximately 4 feet wide and 3 feet tall and came to a corner but did not continue to protect the yard; just an ugly bush that was cowering behind it.

"What is the fucking point of that?" I inquired.

There was a chuckle from the other side of the car and then nothing, until we started to see them at about every 5th house.

"I'll tell you what that is," he said. "Everyone has to keep up with the Joneses."

"I don't think the Joneses are really on the cutting edge out here." I replied.

This launched us into an analysis of neighborhood-ism and how people are more worried about what their neighbors think of the exterior of the house than that there is a gaping hole in the roof in the back or that despite a lovely and refreshing exterior facade, the furniture inside the house is all circa 1968 and smells like cat piss. Never mind the comfort of the inhabitants of the house, just make sure the neighbors think you've got all your ducks in a row, for fuck's sake.

I took the opportunity to rail on the suburban lifestyle and neighborly bullshit. I mercilessly made fun of the dwellings and habits of people who, by all accounts, are probably lovely people who clean their minivans weekly and have well coiffed children playing kick the can in the streets on weekends. I was raised in such a neighborhood, which may explain why my parents suddenly lost their fucking minds and painted our lovely grey-blue house a horrific shade of coral pink, thereby providing me with ample reason never to go there or admit prior residency ever again.

In good conscience however, I can't assign the unattractive "follower" trait solely to the suburban dweller, because if you roam the streets of Boston, New York, Miami or any other booming metropolis, what you will find are the same willing clones, following the misguided cues of each other in an effort to attain a higher grade of cool or to get a higher grade of sexual partner. I wonder what the success rate is and how that information can be tracked. I mean really? How many guys that wear striped shirts, untucked, with large collars, can really distinguish themselves by anything other than shirt color in a sweaty, STD-laden cesspool of house music? Same could be said for guys in really, really, really tight t-shirts with spiky hair; although you may be able to differentiate them by their undeniably cool religious tattoos. Obviously those guys have a close connection to their faith, which would make them totally distinct.

For the women, I'm pretty sure that every small-breasted woman is wearing the same push-up bra, thus falsely advertising her wares (or lack thereof) and pretty much the same tight, polyester/nylon blend pants or exceedingly short, beaver-bearing skirt, sans underwear. Because, voluntarily entering a realm where disease is perched at the ready on every surface, without underwear is a totally sound idea. But I digress, this is not to detail my opinions on the mating habits of the useless and infected. I merely outline how they seem to follow one another in the same, sad manner as the suburbanite with the "mom jeans" and the husband in khaki pants with embroidered whales, follows the neighbor's choice of vinyl siding and useless fence placement.

But if you're the neighbor, in city or suburb who chooses not to toe the line and move with the trends, then you're the weirdo family who risks being ostracized and not invited to the block parties or first birthday's of everyone in the area. I can't begin to conjure a fate worse than that.

what it was like from over there

Six years ago, one of the most terrible things I could ever imagine came true. At the time, I was in California on my way to work in LA. I was stuck in the most insane traffic; traffic that was bad even for LA. It was like a parking lot and no one could figure out what the deal was. It was about 6:30am and then suddenly my phone rang and the voice on the other end said "Get off of the freeway and get your ass home right now."

That was it. Just get out of there and get home because shit was going down. I had no other information and no idea what said shit was, so I forced a bunch of cars out of my way and took side streets all the way back home, only to see a replay of the first plane crashing into the WTC the second I walked in the door. I thought it had to be a movie, a joke. There was no way in hell that someone could pull that off, but there it was. People running, terrified through the streets of lower Manhattan as the world literally crashed down around them. I sat on the couch and sobbed for hours.

Here's where it gets weird though. I was on the west coast, 3000 miles away from ground zero. I didn't know anyone in the towers who was killed. I knew someone on his way there, but he was running late and never made it to the meeting, so he's fine and has moved on with his life. I didn't know any of the firemen, the policemen, the cleanup crew....no one. It was a surreal feeling to be waaaay out west and to feel so detached from everything.

People where I lived were upset and horrified just like people all over the US and the world were. The difference was, the sadness in the air was prevalent for a couple of months, and then the American flags started to disappear from the houses and the car antennas and the rhetoric, the discussion and the sense of banding together just sort of slipped away. People stopped consoling each other and it all but disappeared from regular conversation. Nothing "went back" to the way it was before the attacks, but we were all so far away, it just wasn't in our faces anymore. It should have been, but it wasn't.

I moved to the east coast and to New York specifically and now I feel like the gravity of how many people this affected is weighing down the way it should have, back in 2001. People I love deeply have a quiet pain that resonates in them when this day rolls around and I can see the memories and the horror playing out on the screen in their minds. There is no possible way for me to provide comfort in this case and strangely, that's okay. I have been to ground zero a number of times to try in some way to connect with what went on and now I finally feel like I get what New Yorkers got that sunny, eerily beautiful day six years ago. I wasn't here physically on that day, but I felt it then and I feel it now and my heart breaks for everyone who has to relive it all every time the break between summer and fall rolls through.
Fitting that it's raining and gloomy today. My sadness was compounded when I read this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20657183/site/newsweek/
I wish more people would acknowledge what seems to be so obvious.

positivity, boss

A good friend of mine detailed a plan to become "Dictator of the World" a few years ago. His platform was based on a deep-seated idea that nearly ever person he had ever met needed lessons on how to conduct him or herself in pretty much every kind of situation known to exist. He proposed things like tube-tying for women and reversible vasectomies for men until comprehensive parenting courses were completed and certification for procreation was issued from his offices.

At the time, I chuckled or openly mocked him and called him crazy. Now however, I think he may have been onto something. I didn't have the best and most loving environment growing up, but what I did have was discipline. And plenty of it. The kids in my family were -- scratch that -- ARE opinionated and sometimes a little mouthy, but we are on time, we get work done with a perfectionist's eye to detail and we are multi-taskers like you've never seen. In public places we are courteous and do our best not to disturb the flow. I know many, many other people with similar skill sets, who contribute to the world and exercise decorum in most, if not all, social situations. Most of us, complete these tasks with a good attitude and approach difficulty by forging ahead and keeping positive. I think the average person goes for this internally, even if the manifestation doesn't turn out quite that way, ultimately.

Then there are the negative nancies of the world. I don't understand these people. They seem to be shouting "gloom and doom for everyone!" from the rooftops of their miserable shit-palaces. Many of these people are in high places in all different types of industry and it's almost like they operate under the idea that everyone is ultimately going to let them down, so they should just keep the perpetual puss on their faces in anticipation of the impending chagrin.

These are the people who you hear at 9am on Monday morning using words like disappointing, unacceptable and pathetic to describe a group of educated, hard-working individuals as they are sent off into the world to "make it happen". The furrowed brow, the head hung low over a paper of some sort, which is obviously used to record the failures of everyone in sight. Our fearless team leader, ready to let us know how we all suck. And there we all forcibly sit, trying inwardly to muster the desire to skulk back to our cubes and conquer the world, $20,000 at a time. We leave the meeting and carry the tension and dismay with us as we charge ahead. It seems to me that each of us had a decent upbringing with regard to productivity and we've all been able to apply it to life rather well. But week after week, month after month, to take spoonfuls, or gallonfuls of pessimism has got to impact a person. It becomes harder and harder to fight off the message from "the man" without starting to think...maybe I do suck.

So now, Monday seems to crash into the weekend at about noon on Sunday and I fight a losing battle every week not to let my blissful weekend of butterflies and rainbows be shat on by our weekly Motivation Meeting. With inspiring speeches like that, it's a wonder there aren't slit wrists and people hanging by their neckties from light poles littering 5th Avenue, because it can't only be happening here.

I wonder....if those who perpetuate that kind of negativity were to have their speeches recorded and played back for their mothers, would their mothers be horrified and say "I didn't raise you to be like that!" Or should those tubes have been tied pending the completion of the aforementioned classes? I can only imagine what disquiet could have been avoided.....

dust of the angels

I know a lot of people who ride the LIRR regularly. There are also millions of people I don't know who ride it regularly; every day in fact, as they commute to and from work in Manhattan or wherever it is they are choosing to go. Many of these rides are totally eventless and click by quietly as issues of the Times and the Post and the Journal are digested, gallons of coffee are consumed, faces are applied with a deft expertness and text and e mail messages are sent to anxious recipients.

The trains in the LIRR are actually not bad in terms of condition and provided environment. Frequently, you will get a clean train with a high-backed seat and you can ride in relative comfort to your final destination. And by "you", I mean everyone but me. Now I don't claim to have any monopoly on train experiences, because due to the infrequency of my rides, I'm certainly not going to have the biggest trove of stories. That said, it does seem like every single time I ride that train, something totally effing bizarre happens. Today was no exception.

Today started with an annoyance known as my VW Beetle, which is nearing the death of its life-sucking lease. In a great mood to rid myself of its annoyance, I skipped onto the train at around 10:30am to go out to Long Island and return it. Anyone who knows me, knows this was an extremely momentous occasion. So I cruised into Penn Station right on time, bought my ticket and went down to the platform at track 17 to board the train. There were only a handful of people there, which was fantastic because that meant my own seat and possibly my own section of seats, where I would ride undisturbed and read the paper. But ahhh....no such luck.

Of all the cars on this very long train, a man comes to sit across the aisle from me. He is either going to or coming from work, toting a white hardhat, workboots, black jeans and a wifebeater tanktop, from under which I can see several interesting, violent and slightly fading tattoos with the look completed by two thick, silver chains around his neck. Let it be known that I have no problem with tattoos and actually sport some myself. 'Nother subject though.

Upon choosing his seat, he turned to me and began talking. I had not made eye contact with this man, nor did I intend to, but there he was, talking and talking, as if willing me to listen to his meandering, nonsensical shit. I learned, again without even making eye contact, that he was staying with friends in Manhattan, but was on his way to Long Island to pick up his Social Security Card from another friends house and from there would go back to Queens to open his union book and pay his dues, since he had secured a union job and was straightening his life out.

The reason his life needed straightening out was because he had recently been released from jail, where he'd done a 60 day stint for slashing the tires of his neighbor, who apparently had been stealing checks from his mailbox. I inwardly noted that taking said neighbor to the cops for mail tampering would have been a better course of action, but what do I know. So the tires were slashed, the amount added up to a felony and off to jail he was carted, losing his apartment in the process. He also peppered in that he had previously had a drug problem that centered around Angel Dust, but that he was totally clean and never wanted to mess with that shit again.

Angel Dust, for anyone who doesn't know about it, is some seeeeerious shit. It makes one angry, exceedingly deluded and extremely violent. People can pull off things like lifting cars and scaling un-scalable surfaces on it. I suppose that since I was clad in work attire with makeup on and a decent handbag, that my new friend thought I had never seen a hard day and had no idea what he was messing with. He staunchly maintained his sobriety, though he did admit to slipping up and smoking it over the weekend. Roight. Looking into his eyes, I could scarcely make out a pupil and by his speech and behavior, it was plainly obvious that the dude was lit as hell.

So there were a couple of references made to the fact that he was not a murderer, though he had threatened people when on 'the dust' and that all he wanted to do was make movies. He even busted out a zed card with his photos, measurements and agency information and told me to keep it. At that point, we had come to a stop and he jumped up out of his seat and asked me to watch his things. He then came back quickly, retrieved them, and I heard a tussle with the conductor as to whether he was getting off the train or remaining there. I heard nothing after that, the train's wheels began to roll and I relaxed, thinking the fiasco was over. Not so much, actually.

I heard the sound of heavy steps at one point and thought that he was coming back down the aisle, but didn't see him until he came sauntering in from the opposite direction at the next stop. Whaaaa???


"I'm a stuntman!" he declared. "I just ran across the top of the train while it was moving and then came in the front door! Lost my hardhat, though."

"Tough break." I replied, not looking up from an unnecessary story about Brad Pitt attending a Yankees game.

"Hey! Wanna take a picture of me doing it again? This time, I'm gonna run front to back. Yeah!" He was emphatic in his enthusiasm.

"No way," I said "We'll both get arrested and I have too much to do today to deal with that."

He seemed to be discouraged enough to sit down, but then when it was announced that the train would be delayed at the stop for another two or three minutes, he became re-invigorated, begged me one more time to take the photo (I again, declined), and ran off toward the front of the car. Thinking peace was at last mine, I settled back into my reading and waited for the lurch of the train so I could continue on my quest.

It was at that moment that the announcer came on again to tell us that there was a "problem" with one of the passengers on the train and that we would be delayed until the police arrived. Not to worry though, the passenger in question had "run away", so no one was in any danger. And there we sat. For upwards of a half hour, we sat, sans scary, trouble making passenger in question and waited. He had jumped off the far side of the platform and into a field of tall weeds and run away. We had to wait for the cops for that? He ran away; just start the fucking train and let the rest of us get on with it.

As the cops arrived, most of the passengers had left the train and were talking or sunning on the platform. I decided to join them for a moment and as I exited the train, I realized the card in my purse may actually help this circus to move along. I walked up to one of the conductors and shoved the card into his hand.

"This the guy you're looking for?"

"Hoooolllyyyy shit. It is!" He was looking at me with suspicion in his eyes. "You know dis guy?"

"No," I said, "He was rambling on while I was trying to read the paper and he handed this to me."

"Whaddayou, dis guys agent uh somtin?" He was laughing now, and the other conductors and a couple of cops had come over to check out the card.

A zed card is a card that is handed out by modelling and acting agencies to prospective clients. It has a person's height, weight, measurements (down to the shoe size) and a few photos to show different looks. This guy had basically handed himself to the fuzz. I turned on one heel and started back to the train, amid the stares and whispers of my fellow passengers and the cops behind me discussed the stupidity of my new friend. It was at that point that the clog was unblocked and we were given the okay to roll on down the line. I haven't checked the blotter to see if it was noted or if he was caught, but something occurred to me at that moment.

I used to commute on the Metro North every day. An hour and fifteen minutes on the train, one way, every single day. I rode that train to work, back home, and even in the wee hours of the morning after nights out in the city. Nothing like this ever happened on that train. In fact, nothing that would even be considered noteworthy happened on the Metro North in all that time. And then it dawned on me....

All those people were going to Connecticut.

insomniation

That song "Anticipation," by Carly Simon always seems to pop into my head when I think about my insomnia, because I pretty much just lie there wishing for the dust of sleep to fall on me and knock my ass out for 7 or 8 hours. Hardly ever happens like that though, so what I do is try and make pictures in the shadows where the paint on the ceiling has cracked and been painted over several dozen times. I think about re-arranging the lights, stripping the molding, painting the hallway.....or I think about work.

The nights where I think about work, suck ass. I review every little damned thing. What tasks must I accomplish in order to have a successful day? How much shit is gonna roll down onto my beleaguered group of co-sufferers from the perches of upper management? How many phone calls do I need to make in order to be considered 'productive' and when is the big daddy of a deal gonna strut in the door and prove me to be the star that I know I am? I wonder if I have any Clif bars in my drawer for when I'm hungry mid-afternoon, because I really don't have too much money to go buy more.....

It goes on like this for hours. At some point, I say to myself: "Self, go to sleep, dammit!" and then I hotly retort: "Don't you think I would if I could, bitch?"

"Antiiiisssiipayshun......antiissiipaayyyayyshuunn." Hopefully you can hear the lyrics the same way I can. It makes the pain so much more palpable.


The only possession in my life for which I will freely and unabashedly spend money is my bed. I've taken every possible precaution against my insomnia. I've created an environment so welcoming and so comfortable, that everyone who has ever slept in my bed has commented on its excellence. I purchase sheets that are cool and inviting and soft. They match the duvet cover and lend a warmth to the rest of my tiny, shitbox apartment. There are pillows upon pillows of which one can take full advantage. Soft, squishy pillows, firm pillows, small pillows and big pillows. It's a veritable cornucopia of pillow-laden comfort, my bed. And yet I lie awake in the limbo; too awake to be asleep and too tired to do anything productive.

And then comes the best part....that sweet, sweet feeling of drifting off, despite it all. Peace washes over me and I sink deep into my feather bed, which is on top of an egg crate, which is on top of a custom mattress. I tumble down the rabbit hole of slumber and become completely unaware of everything around me.

Until the reverie wakes me up about an hour and a half later and the day begins. I drag my sorry ass out of bed, pray to god that no homeless people try to crawl into the bags under my eyes for a nap, and head back out into the world, all the while hallucinating that I am actually still asleep and tucked safely away with the purple unicorns and men who can flex their pecs independent of one another.