Funny how my last post was on my birthday. I liked this blog for its space and time. But I’m onto something new.

Could you wake up and be someone different?

Not, a different person, like in those switcharoo movies where the parent and child exchange bodies.  But you woke up and you are the person that you dreamed of becoming.  All improvements instantaneous, every characteristic you thought you lacked, became real.  No more nail biting, no more saying ‘like’, no more lack of focus, no more booze, you are complete and never need to change. You are improved in all the ways you ever wanted, as an  act of will.�

Am I dreaming? Probably. But I really, really wanted it.

I sound, to myself, like I’m looking for a cheap and easy way out of work that requires consistent effort.  But I know it takes work. This is more of an abstraction on the nature of change. That it cannot be sudden, or overnight. Yet, something tells me it can. There are external acts that alter our behavior; a close death, disease, etc, may change our perception, but our behavior? It takes people years to overcome destructive or unwanted patterns.  My inkling is that there is a will or desire strong enough to change its own nature.

I wonder if I have. Though, if I have to wonder, I probably don’t. Unreachable? Doubt, it seems, is the downfall.

Coincidence it’s my birthday today? Definitely not.

Here’s  the problem.  I don’t know when to start.  Nobody does.  An electron fires in your brain, a lump sags in your gut, and new idea is born. Ever ask someone, hey, why did you do that? Or, What made you do this? Often they’ll say, eh, I don’t know I just wanted to, or I had a feeling, or it’s what I was trying to do all along.

My abilities pale to my desires. Maybe it’s patience. Patience to let my desires catch up to my ability. Self-defeating impatience is another feeling that I remember having as a child. In elementary school, sitting at my metal desk, I wanted to draw the greatest thing ever; sliding into second base in my backyard. This was possibly the greatest experience I knew. I went to work with my pencils and crayons on a piece of brown construction paper.

The image glistened in my mind, exciting me.  I wonder now how long I actually worked, but when I stopped to look, itwas wrong. Weak determination in the face of the second basement. The smug look and acrobatic limbs of the runner was just goofy and childish. I was childish. I wanted so bad for it to be good, a reflection of the perfect details I imagined. I could only think of the frustration and my inelegant hands. I gave up. �

First of the month! A perfect time to feel unbounded optimism for all the things I will accomplish. Like updating this blog, which I still don’t know why is here. Now, don’t go commenting with any suggestions. Let me figure this one out.

I think we’ll all be happier when I do discover the true meaning, dream-quest if you will, of this blog.  Then you can stop waiting for updates all the time because I’ll know exactly what I want to post because it will derive from and support the purpose. That will make it better.  Wait and see.

Now, in the spirit of our referential culture and creative substitution, I present:

Chick Flicks and Unintened Messages

I had a long post about liberal and conservative politics, and how people become one or the other, and some personal feelings about the subject.

My ideas were there, but disorganized. The topic warrants a better construction. The idea sprang from this story about a couple in New Hampshire.

How do you categorize these people into a political party? Can their actions translate into a ethos of public policy?

Did you hear the one about the guy who took his boss to an Indian Restaurant?

He was  trying to curry favor.

I’ve been at my new job about a month now.  At work on Sunday an email came into the department Inbox asking for the following:

1) The gS process on server Echo is not responding

2) Please end the task (gstime.exe) and restart the service

Thanks, Hoy

A few others were CC’d on this email, my team, Hoy, and some people in Production I hadn’t met but heard of. Easy task, no problem, I completed it in a few minutes, wrote a quick ‘Reply to All’ saying it was done.

About an hour and a half later, I get the exact same email:

1) The gS process on server Echo is not responding

2) Please end the task (gstime.exe) and restart the service

Thanks, Hoy

What? Again? I so reply to the group,

“Hoy, does this need to be executed again? It was completed at 9:30 this morning.”

I thought the answer would come in a quick confirmation from someone on the email chain. Not so.  I don’t get a reply to my email, only another mass message that has the exact same text as the previous – the two numbered items and Hoy’s sign off. My next thought was, ok, maybe this guy doesn’t speak English, but he knows this piece of text will get the procedure done.

Fine, I’ll just go do it again. Done. I send out an email to the group saying so. Now, it’s Sunday so not everyone in the company is checking their email, but those who have a Blackberry, like my boss, can. Soon after I completed the task a second time, he a reply email to the group saying,

“This email is sent out automatically by the Echo server. Hoy was an employee here that passed away earlier this year.”

Ever started a story but have no idea what’s going on? You’ve got a few cool descriptions of rain tickling the trees on an empty boulevard illuminated by a single street lamp,  but no clue as to why the former telecommunications magnate is sitting in his car watching the water run down his windshield while the radio plays Super Sounds of the Seventies?

Me neither. These stories, the fragments, the pieces – they don’t go anywhere. I have a character that talks on the phone in his kitchen. Another that finds a novel belonging to a murderer in a tax, with specific passages underlined and marked. Another that is held up on a bus in Columbia. Wherefore art they doing this?

I start self-psychoanalyzing in the light of these sketches, the prose equivalent of doodling. Since I have not a stated goal or direction, so necessarily neither do they? And they’re imaginary! They can do anything! Fly! Take over entire countries! Live in any environment! Bake pies for everyone in town! Now, I could probably bake a couple pies for my friends and neighbors, but why? It’s not even pie season.

Currently I am unable to give them a destination, to reach or fail, only offer various glib scenes having no baring on the greater structure of their story.  It sounds too much like my own life.

Perhaps greater planning and outlines are needed.

The office faded anonymously into the skyline as Francis walked away. He pulled the shirt up from inside his pants and the heat lifted off his soft belly. The traffic was light on the way home. Inside his apartment the cat cried fiercely at his feat in the short distance from the door to the kitchen until he emptied a wet sticky glob into her bowl next to the oven.

He leaned against the counter and pushed a button on his cell phone.

“Francis, hey, what’s up? Last day at work?”

“Yup. Last day. Finished.” He dragged out the last word as he sighed and stretched at once.

“That’s fantastic. Good for you.”

“That’s what they keep telling me.”

“Who?”

“Everyone that I tell that I’m quitting my job. Hell, everyone at the office was congratulating me. Didn’t even want to know if
had another job.”

“Yeah, what are you going to do anyway?”

Francis looked out the kitchen window to the green and brown grass stripped by cracked cement in the backyard of the apartment.

“Get a girlfriend.”

“Without a job?”

“Sure. How do I get money? What do I do with my time? Girls love a mystery. Besides I never had one while I was working, so maybe now that I’m doing the opposite that will happen.”

“Right. You quit your job to get laid.”

“I guess so. No, I quit because life is too short to have a cliched existence in an office then regretting it years later.”

“Francis, that is some vague-ass bullshit. No girl will go for that, none that matter anyway. And, come on, isn’t ‘life’s too short’ a cliche?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Francis paced back and forth in kitchen, watching the cat slurp the contents of her dinner. He felt dizzy.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I never have.”

“Well, you’d probably better. Time is a-wasting.”

“What?” Francis craned his neck forward while cocking his head to the side, “But aren’t I supposed to love whatever it is it do? I can’t just choose something. That’s what got me where I am, because I didn’t care, and I hate it.”

He reached into the cabinet, found a glass that looked sort of clean and set it on the granite counter-top. He went back to the refrigerator and removed an opaque glass bottle, closing the door with a kick behind his back.

“Yeah, I guess you’re fucked.”

“I don’t feel fucked.”

“I mean, it’s pretty awesome you’re unemployed. See if you can keep that up.”

“Yeah, thanks. Hey, I’ll talk to later.” He unscrewed the black plastic top.

“Oh hey, what are you doing tonight?”

“Like I said, I’m going to find a girlfriend.” Francis brought the bottle to his lips and poured the liquid directly into his mouth.  He swallowed and cringed.  He put the phone back in his pocket.

The pull of a heavy mass sagged in his stomach. The gin? He closed his eyes to concentrate on the dull weight in his torso.  Somehow, it originated from his spine.

God, he thought, opening his eyes, what man wanted to kick himself out of his own body so forcibly that he invented gin? This is the end product that that guy wanted, thought Francis. Or did he give up? And as far as the guy could tell, the last batch he made did the trick well enough so there it was: gin.

He heard the scrapping of the cat in its litter box.

I didn’t like the way the old presentation was handling the text.  It was edgy, which I like, but too hard on the eyeballs.

Ah, black text over white background.

The mac and cheese of content layout.