I Have a Puppy Card. It's fucking adorable.

My phone beeps and whirrs and whistles and vibrates whenever I get any sort of message from anywhere.  I usually turn it off during classes so it doesn’t distract me.  While other students are engrossed in online games during class presentations, my bound and gagged phone becomes a distraction for me.  I am an honorary member of the ADD generation. 

It was with little surprise that I opened an email from my bank entitled: Irregular Activity Detected.   I’ve gotten these emails before.  The bank’s detector device is usually very sensitive.  I’ve signaled the alarm before by having Starbuck’s twice in the same day…in the same city!   I was surprised, however, when on the automated phone line it was brought to my attention that a charge for $227 and change had been declined at a Wal-Mart…in Louisiana. 

At some point my card number had been stolen from somewhere.  A debit card machine, or more likely, a gas-pump.  How this particular feat had been accomplished I have no idea, but I imagine it takes some kind of Batman-like technology.  Don’t let their looks fool you, the ragtag bunch of dudes who hang out in gas station parking lots in rags are far more technologically savvy than you think.  They’re fucking ex-computer programmers and mechanical engineers, abandoned and left floating in the gasoline-sea of unemployment. 

Regardless, there is one gas station in particular I will not be filling up at anymore.  I should have known better.

Now until my bank replaces my newly canceled card, I am forced to use my emergency credit card with the $500 limit (big spender!) with the picture of a puppy and kitten on it.  Cute.  I wonder if a gun shop would let me purchase bullets with it.

One bird with two stones - When work and blog collide!

I’ve been writing a lot of toasts lately, which is ironic because I’m awful at actually giving them.

What I know now and what I should have realized then is that I should have made them rhyme.  They would have been more successful. 

A few of my current favorites:

A toast to the boys from back home;

      Who made me the man that I am;

       One day a year;

       We all do this cheer;

       and go back to not giving a damn.

Hoist a cup to those interred

In memory where they lay;

And if you choke

It’s their cruel joke

They hated you anyway.

Here’s to my friend, a singular man

And his peculiar smell that lingers.

Always a pal

He’ll raise your morale

Just don’t pull one of his fingers

Here’s to a night out with the boys

Making memories as we go.

Always high-fiving

And always imbibing

Together the travelling shit show.

Gather round and raise your mug

To another auld land syne.

It’s been swell

and it’s just as well

‘cause I had sex with all of your wives.

Okay that last one doesn’t rhyme.  I never said it was easy.

Ode To Rope Dog, a poem.

Ode To Rope Dog.

I snap down each letter on my board,

Shape each word each sentence like clay,

Stumbling bumbling vainly forward.

The rope dog has not come today.

I sit as arbiter to this game,

Robes a swirl of ash and gray.

No living soul trots by my pane,

The rope dog has not come today

Dry and cracked my palette pleads

Once again to play.

Still, nothing grows -  these spoiled seeds!

The rope dog has not come today.

Empty mind and blank ahead

Here in this café.

Still I wait for thoroughbred,

The rope dog has not come today.

Wearily I hike this low plateau,

Its tired towers of clay.

Crumbling tumbling down they go.

The rope dog has not come today.

Too long I sit too long I stay

The rope dog did not come today.

So dangerously short and sweet it may as well be powdered.

A short blog today, as I have much to write and much to think on.  I anticipate a very frustrating day of me trying to be smarter than I am. The more you try, the farther away the goal becomes.  Or something.

In new news, I’m slowly killing myself with vitamins.  Glad I found that out.  As a last ditch effort to maintain my healthy ways, I’ve been drinking Emergen-cee powdered vitamin supplements.  It comes in various flavors and is delicious.  I mix two packets in a big ass bottle of SmartWater and drink and refill it a few times throughout the day.  Sounds great, right? 

Well, each packet contains 1,666% of your daily value of vitamin C, or 1000 mg.  At the behest of my friends, I looked up the recommended daily value and it’s somewhere around 500mg.  The article I googled continued, to my horror, to suggest that there are health risks associated with overdosing on vitamin C.   My DNA could potentially begin to change.  Evidently, 6000-7000 mg of vitamin C really is too much of a good thing. 

 So that’s cool.

The Lifelong Student Has Become the Master. Sort of.

I woke up with the strangest feeling that I had spent the night digging through wet sand.  The idea must have sprouted during the night and by the time I was in the shower it had produced provocative fruit.

The FedEx guy must’ve forgotten to put a slip in my mailbox because it turned out that I had had a package waiting for me in the office for the last two weeks.  I claimed it on Thursday and knew what it contained.  My (only) two photo albums that I had left at my old apartment in Santa Monica.  My ex had sent them back to me, either as an excuse to start talking to me again (which has been semi-successful) or as a way to get my address so she can mail me an anthrax envelope.

I don’t know that I’ve ever owned a camera.  I like pictures.  I see the merit in taking them and putting them in albums.  But I rarely take any.  The two albums contain pretty much every picture I’ve ever personally taken along with a few other keepers.  Besides the dozen framed photographs I have scattered in my apartment, they house every picture I own.  I am grateful to have recovered them.

I flipped through the books last night before I fell asleep and was surprised how emotionally loaded they were.  There are the obligatory college beerbong photos and high school prom pictures but there are also pictures of my grandparents, now gone, and ex girlfriends, also gone but still very much alive.  

I have no regrets.  I’ve done a lot of silly things.  Stupid things.  Insensitive things. But, in the end, I am confident they have made me smarter and more compassionate.  It’s how it works.  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – it’s called learning.  But sometimes when I look through old photographs, I forget all of that and ask myself why – why did I do that?   Why did I sabotage myself? 

There is, of course no answer.  A very happy (very drunk, probably) me stares back at myself, blithe to the truth that the girl around my arm is possibly my most perfect match I’d ever know.  In some ways, I’ve never quite gotten over her – I don’t think I’ve wanted to, as silly as that sounds.   As a clarifier, this is not the ex that sent me the albums, but the previous one.  I know, confusing.

What better way to fall directly to sleep than to repeatedly cut yourself with the razor sharp edge of Regret.

I awoke with the image/story/idea of me on the beach, digging.  I knew it was the beach because I could feel the grit of the wet sand between my fingers and in my nails.  I was steadily and confidently digging directly below me. There was no other choice.  My hands several feet below the ground, I hit something.  Not hard like wood but soft like flesh.  It was my legs.  I had been unearthing myself. 

It’s not the most original thought, but it felt real and it comforted me.

Sometimes we help ourselves without knowing we do. Or we receive special insight from somewhere.  I don’t know, I don’t understand it.  But what better metaphor than life being a slow uncovering of one’s self.  You don’t understand or find yourself until you do, through long, sometimes laborious digging. 

Regardless of whether you live your life with regrets or not, no matter where you go, there you are.

I really hope my old employers don't read this.

Few things are better than driving around beautiful summery Seattle in a truck loaded with thousands of pounds of bounce houses and my very good friend.  Did I mention being really really stoned the whole time?  Oh okay.  Well, being really high helps.

That summer will go down as the one of the best summers of my life, along with my summer “working” at the psychiatric hospital and the following one painting houses for my buddy’s CollegePro thing.  Note to everybody who is considering hiring a bunch of college kids to paint your house for cheap: Don’t.  Despite what it looks like, they are still college kids and have no idea what they’re doing. They will destroy your house/make it look terrible.

The owner of the bounce house (or jumparoo) company entrusted us with the keys to a brand new Dodge Ram and a code to his warehouse.  We’d often work 12 hour days and get back past 10pm when the place was closed and have to unload.  We’d go to the movies in between drop offs and get to test the jumparoos to ensure the proper level of bounciness.    It was standard procedure, we ensured the renters, barely able to contain our broad squinty eyed THC-induced smiles.

One time, we threw a sweet party at our dilapidated college house with the peeling paint and a yard that should have been resodded for the last 10 years. We had been out late dropping off and retrieving the jumparoos and realized suddenly we had the code to an empty warehouse, keys to a sweet truck, and all the time the night could afford us.  What clever stoners we were.

Note to college kids everywhere: A bounce house is an incredible addition to any party.  Especially if it’s free.  

I quickly learned I do not like filing alphabetically while working at the psychiatric hospital. As the son of the administrative president-lady, my best friend got me the job there filing and doing data entry.  Data entry was mindless.  Boring, but mindless.  Filing alphabetically took brain-power and a level of concentration I could never muster.  Sanchez comes before Sandoval?  Whoops.

Note to people thinking of hiring a college student for any reason: Don’t.  They cannot be trusted.  Take it from me.

High School Dreamin'. Is There a Shrink in the House?

I had a high school dream last night.  I hate them because I always wake up angry. 

Basically, it’s always the same thing: I’m at a random party (as though I was invited to all of them) or in the high school minding my own business and I start to get picked on by the “popular” kids.  They approach me, get in my face and push and taunt me.  I get angry.

I must have a lot of unspent aggression.

The thing is, I loved high school. I had an amazing time.  But I think the dreams speak to two things – First, that anyone who questions the impact high school has on a person is an idiot.  If I’m still dreaming about it, it’s still affecting me.  Which is depressing.  Second, it illustrates the overwhelming competitive conditions of high schools.  I wasn’t picked on per se, but it was an extraordinarily intimidating environment.  Movies like “Mean Girls” only perpetuate the stereotypes and impressions of fear and “othering.” Now that I think about it, I remember seeing it was playing yesterday – though I didn’t watch it, I’ll bet that’s where my dream was inspired.

I opted not to go to my 10-year high school reunion.  Not explicitly because I harbor resentment toward most of my class (I don’t) but due to financial restrictions.  I imagine I could have put to rest some part of my subconscious brain that wants to go all Klebold on the school.  It’s embarrassing and a shame that I still dream about something that doesn’t affect my real life at all.  Though high school may have shaped me in some esoteric way, I don’t think about it unless my nonbrain is diarrheaing at night. 

The dreams are never violent.  Just confused and angry.  I recall (in that dreamy kind of way) that I responded very maturely to the bullies last night with a kind of “seriously?” vibe.  

I think I should see a therapist to instruct me how to stop dreaming about getting bullied in high school and more about having sex with the cheerleaders.  

A Half Remembered Poem From Long Ago-Fail.

Here’s a poem I wrote in college that I no longer have a soft nor hard copy of.  I randomly woke up this morning reciting it so I think I’m trying to tell myself something.  Maybe it’s that I have a terrible memory.  Here goes:

I wonder if, as boys

 Keats or Frost ever thought of counterpoise.

Or pictured the Thames deep yet clear.

Or if Pope was an sincere

As Keats and his lyric odes

Or Frost’s converging roads.

Did Keats ever go apple picking

And ponder time slowly ticking.

And that’s all I remember.   Fuck.  I’ll meditate on it and see if I can remember anymore.  I remember it being better. If anybody has a copy of this somehow let me know.

Fail.

Pretty much the best story ever told. Er, written. Whatever.

I met the lead singer of Journey once.  Steve Perry. 

Steve motherfucking Perry.

I was working at a restaurant in LA called Palomino and he came into the bar for a late lunch.  I recognized him immediately.  We had an amazing salad called the chopchop.  There’s romaine, basil, salami, turkey, cubed cheeses and a thickly rich balsamic dressing.  I think that’s it. Basil and Balsamic. Steve Perry.

Naturally, my first response was to start singing in the back kitchen hallways as I finished my closing duties.  The hallway stretched through the entire restaurant like an artery, opening into the dining room at three different ventricles. 

Just a small town girl…

The dishwasher, an enormous black man who started every story with, “…I knew this guy, man…” smiled at me as I walked past, my volume slowly rising into a different tune.

Some day, love will find you…

Well apparently Steve was a regular (I had been there at least a year and not seen him at this point) and my manager knew him.  The manager stopped me in the back hallway.  “Noah.  Come here.”   I turned the corner and wham. Steve Perry.

Steven Ray Perry reached out his hand and I shook it, and said something dumb.  He smiled and said,  “So you’re the one who’s been murdering my songs?”

Unbeknownst to me, my singing had been amplified by the cavernous hallway and had flooded into the empty restaurant like a tsunami.  Evidently Mr. Perry heard my siren song and asked my manager who was singing and the rest is history.

So, that’s pretty cool.