Originally published on September 19, 1997
Thanks for all the little notes you've wafted down this way lately. Read them, bookmarked accordingly, grinned when our own thoughts have been replicated in the "real" press, et cetera.
Been busy finishing off the A&F site. Now I move into the promotion and maintenance phase. A six-month contract. Sue's going out to Hector's farm today to load AOL on his Performa out there, and also to begin formulating his farm site by gathering up horse pics.
News. Peter Burris is moving into the Dollhouse basement next weekend for a season or two, the Sunday following my 42th birthday. Yes, happy and all that. We'll be hosting a few a quiet gathering after work on Friday. Blumstein celebrates his last day at Columbia Research on the same night. He hasn't responded to my E-mail inviting him and Allie over, but I reckon he might have other celebrationary options up his sleeve. We still haven't talked since that night of the pokerfaced airconditioning mishap a month ago.
We plan to throw a lot of cash and sweat at the basement as you've already been made aware. Timing is gonna be tight to get all the damned ducks in a row, but everybody involved is psyched to making it work, and so Peter might be camping out for a few days or a week until we cut the ribbon. This has all been rather sudden. A year ago I would have never dreamed that PHB would welcome or be welcomed in this house on this sort of long-term familiar basis.
Time does tend to change our perspectives for better AND worse, n'est pas? Karen may have landed us a huge trucking company account, but it won't kick in until late October as the owner puts the finishing touches on a multimillion dollar startup company. It's not in the basket yet, but is almost a sure thing, as he's an ex-and-wouldbe-current beau. She's really excited about her new role as GSIS sales rep. So are we. And best of all, she's no mirror mashed maniac like the rest of us. She's a levelheaded bubbly sort, who just has too many potential contacts to not exploit. So we've all stepped up to the plate looking for that fat pitch down the middle.
By the way, Karen gave Pitch a major bitching over that condescending kissoff note he wrote me, from her own volition. She told Sue about it later. Pitch had CC'd the note to her. Apparently she read it the same way I did. Sue's often characterized Karen as not being too awfully smart. I haven't been around her that much, but she continues to impress me with her downhome country wisdom. She's nobody's fool. She loves Sue, and is always cratcheting Hector about undervaluing Sue. And her mother loves me, in Karen's words. Now isn't that just gravy for an old roast like me. We have suddenly found ourselves bright-eyed and bushy-butted, primed for the feast.
And just think, not too long ago . . .
GT
Showing posts with label Blumstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blumstein. Show all posts
Monday, September 17, 2007
PROMINENCE DOT
Originally published on August 19, 1997
COM —well I see someone else has prominently displayed the dot com in its logoyle besides this country fried fat and freckled fellow from SE.
Meanwhile, Blum juggered my naught the other night by telling me that iMotedotcom wasn't life. He didn't elaborate, and that was the only time the web or my "life" was mentioned. I immediately spun off a Pontius Pilatian rant about life, what is life, everybody's got something to say on that topic, like Bracken for instance who's just written a book on the philosophy of what is life, and that kid has it all distilled down to the sexual conquest. Geez—I said. Bob immediately confessed that I had a point and we knew we had said our fill. All of this confusion began and ended in the last five minutes of Friday's poker night which was an intrusively hot & sweaty hoot.
At 9:52 AM -0500 8/18/97, rblumstein@columbiaresearch.com wrote:
> Sorry I started the pointless argument for the end of a otherwise good
> evening. I guess I was feeling ironic and the heat and alcohol weren't
> helping. My girlfriend said I shouldn't invite poeple over when it's
> so hot, not until at least I provide more air conditioning. I started
> the evening with 11 rolls of quarters and wound up with 3 (one of
> which Bob gave me). I was overall ahead now I'm dead even for all the
> poker played in recent years. What goes around comes around except for
> Bob Chisholm who nearly always wins Big. He's good to play with since
> he bluffs and generaly challenges everyone to their limits and beyond.
> Christine who usually goes home with empty pockets has since become a
> more seasoned player and made a little extra change. Hope you made
> some money, all the money flowing out of my coffers was enough to make
> everyone a little extra pocket change...
__________
Pointless, Bob? Hardly. It seems you made or tried to make several points. As it turns out I was particularly intrigued by your phrase, "well, that's not life."
But yes, I had a decent evening while gathering a few more twigs for the huge bonfire that has become my, uh, lifelessness. Powers of the phrase and the phrasemakers sort of thing. Counted my quarters the next morning. I was a buck and a quarter shy of exactly the fifty dollars I brought to the table, and was lamenting my losses until I remembered the five I kicked in for the pizza, so it turns out I actually soaked up a few bits on the plus side of the gambling ledger. Thanks for having me.
Noticed you escaped early from la casa del Blum during both of those 102 &105 degree recordbreakers this weekend. I took the liberty of retrieving the ice we never used and my white cap I'd left, letting myself in with key rather early Saturday morning. Now they're calling for temps to plunge into the fifties tonight. This kind of climate warp is liable to give even the outdoor bug battalions a nasty headcold.
The card went went on rather pleasantly until after one. I called it quits. Tony had already left. Allie had gone upstairs to snooze, as had Stefan even earlier. Blumstein, Chisholm and Christine packed it in after I announced my withdrawal. The two NoVa knockers took off. I was headed for the backdoor when in summation of a pretty decent evening I stepped in it.
Chisholm had been complaining about the heat and sweat on the cards all night, but his handsome well-articulated suave protected him (and where was his sweat?) from several rounds of most iffy behavior, but I'll leave that to another note. You see, I commented about airconditioning. Bob responded with too expensive. I countered if I had an extra two hundred a month that's where I'd spend it instead of socking it away for some millionaire old age roost. He recoiled by bringing up his business school classes and the fact that I never went there. I suggested he visit my website once in a while to find out where I stood on the issues. He insisted didn't know what I was talking about. I said I've never tried to lord anything over on him, that I was just making some innocent comment based on my own personal foils toward creature comfort in the now rather than later. He said he never lorded anything over on me. I said he just did. He said he did not, when? I said just then, by lording his so-called business credentials over mine. Then he made the comment. Yes, the comment. The comment was iMotedotcom, that's not life.
Oh well, we are a swelled bellied bunch of braggarts and inferiorities aren't we? Narcissistic to a fault. Ego-entrenched warriors for the self, and nothing but the self.
Oh, shallow shellfish on a stick, I just clicked on an iMote page, and it is all twisted. Wrong graphics in the wrong places, and another graphic skewed. Gotta go investigate. Maybe Bob's right. My life ain't life. Maybe he'll let me join in his weekly WWII strategy board game, or gaze dumbly at his stockpile of Japanese anime videos. Now that's life. I know I'm just being petty here, but it really burns the bone that among this crowd of friends and neighbors every choice one makes is shit, and Bob has always done that to me. My poetry is bad. My writing makes no sense. My web work is not life.
Even after all the GT v SET fires belching in the belly, and that most recent flamewar certainly left scars, I can at least say that you have always encouraged me in my struggle to express my loneliness and insights through writing and creative images and with the technical additions of web producing, you've been my only true visitor. I don't know what that says about you, but thanks anyway. But now, I've gotta attend to those pesky HTML brats. Keep it clean, and the dirt will follow anyway.
Busy with beaver and loaded for bear . . . strange how those epiphrases just jot themselves down along with the mustard and relish of a personality mirage. Lynn has not responded, although I certainly had no idea the phrase was anything but a toss-off. Tell me how it goes. I presume, it's like the "playing it by ear" and "that's my story and I'm stickin' to it" SET tune of the month. I can hear it already reverberating off the whispering pines of friendly Pennsylvanian platitudinal grace. Look forward to the update, but frankly, I think you and I are the only ones who "get" most of our poetic huckerism.
Occasionally Bob in good mood is generous with a Boblike compliment with adjectives like hip, post-modern, whacky, and subterranean sprinkled in to authenticate a true Bob true grit compliment, and they certainly have increased over the years, but like Bracken, most often he's just a little slow, and like all of us who prefer to hear our own voices that those of our neighbor.
GT
COM —well I see someone else has prominently displayed the dot com in its logoyle besides this country fried fat and freckled fellow from SE.
Meanwhile, Blum juggered my naught the other night by telling me that iMotedotcom wasn't life. He didn't elaborate, and that was the only time the web or my "life" was mentioned. I immediately spun off a Pontius Pilatian rant about life, what is life, everybody's got something to say on that topic, like Bracken for instance who's just written a book on the philosophy of what is life, and that kid has it all distilled down to the sexual conquest. Geez—I said. Bob immediately confessed that I had a point and we knew we had said our fill. All of this confusion began and ended in the last five minutes of Friday's poker night which was an intrusively hot & sweaty hoot.
At 9:52 AM -0500 8/18/97, rblumstein@columbiaresearch.com wrote:
> Sorry I started the pointless argument for the end of a otherwise good
> evening. I guess I was feeling ironic and the heat and alcohol weren't
> helping. My girlfriend said I shouldn't invite poeple over when it's
> so hot, not until at least I provide more air conditioning. I started
> the evening with 11 rolls of quarters and wound up with 3 (one of
> which Bob gave me). I was overall ahead now I'm dead even for all the
> poker played in recent years. What goes around comes around except for
> Bob Chisholm who nearly always wins Big. He's good to play with since
> he bluffs and generaly challenges everyone to their limits and beyond.
> Christine who usually goes home with empty pockets has since become a
> more seasoned player and made a little extra change. Hope you made
> some money, all the money flowing out of my coffers was enough to make
> everyone a little extra pocket change...
__________
Pointless, Bob? Hardly. It seems you made or tried to make several points. As it turns out I was particularly intrigued by your phrase, "well, that's not life."
But yes, I had a decent evening while gathering a few more twigs for the huge bonfire that has become my, uh, lifelessness. Powers of the phrase and the phrasemakers sort of thing. Counted my quarters the next morning. I was a buck and a quarter shy of exactly the fifty dollars I brought to the table, and was lamenting my losses until I remembered the five I kicked in for the pizza, so it turns out I actually soaked up a few bits on the plus side of the gambling ledger. Thanks for having me.
Noticed you escaped early from la casa del Blum during both of those 102 &105 degree recordbreakers this weekend. I took the liberty of retrieving the ice we never used and my white cap I'd left, letting myself in with key rather early Saturday morning. Now they're calling for temps to plunge into the fifties tonight. This kind of climate warp is liable to give even the outdoor bug battalions a nasty headcold.
The card went went on rather pleasantly until after one. I called it quits. Tony had already left. Allie had gone upstairs to snooze, as had Stefan even earlier. Blumstein, Chisholm and Christine packed it in after I announced my withdrawal. The two NoVa knockers took off. I was headed for the backdoor when in summation of a pretty decent evening I stepped in it.
Chisholm had been complaining about the heat and sweat on the cards all night, but his handsome well-articulated suave protected him (and where was his sweat?) from several rounds of most iffy behavior, but I'll leave that to another note. You see, I commented about airconditioning. Bob responded with too expensive. I countered if I had an extra two hundred a month that's where I'd spend it instead of socking it away for some millionaire old age roost. He recoiled by bringing up his business school classes and the fact that I never went there. I suggested he visit my website once in a while to find out where I stood on the issues. He insisted didn't know what I was talking about. I said I've never tried to lord anything over on him, that I was just making some innocent comment based on my own personal foils toward creature comfort in the now rather than later. He said he never lorded anything over on me. I said he just did. He said he did not, when? I said just then, by lording his so-called business credentials over mine. Then he made the comment. Yes, the comment. The comment was iMotedotcom, that's not life.
Oh well, we are a swelled bellied bunch of braggarts and inferiorities aren't we? Narcissistic to a fault. Ego-entrenched warriors for the self, and nothing but the self.
Oh, shallow shellfish on a stick, I just clicked on an iMote page, and it is all twisted. Wrong graphics in the wrong places, and another graphic skewed. Gotta go investigate. Maybe Bob's right. My life ain't life. Maybe he'll let me join in his weekly WWII strategy board game, or gaze dumbly at his stockpile of Japanese anime videos. Now that's life. I know I'm just being petty here, but it really burns the bone that among this crowd of friends and neighbors every choice one makes is shit, and Bob has always done that to me. My poetry is bad. My writing makes no sense. My web work is not life.
Even after all the GT v SET fires belching in the belly, and that most recent flamewar certainly left scars, I can at least say that you have always encouraged me in my struggle to express my loneliness and insights through writing and creative images and with the technical additions of web producing, you've been my only true visitor. I don't know what that says about you, but thanks anyway. But now, I've gotta attend to those pesky HTML brats. Keep it clean, and the dirt will follow anyway.
Busy with beaver and loaded for bear . . . strange how those epiphrases just jot themselves down along with the mustard and relish of a personality mirage. Lynn has not responded, although I certainly had no idea the phrase was anything but a toss-off. Tell me how it goes. I presume, it's like the "playing it by ear" and "that's my story and I'm stickin' to it" SET tune of the month. I can hear it already reverberating off the whispering pines of friendly Pennsylvanian platitudinal grace. Look forward to the update, but frankly, I think you and I are the only ones who "get" most of our poetic huckerism.
Occasionally Bob in good mood is generous with a Boblike compliment with adjectives like hip, post-modern, whacky, and subterranean sprinkled in to authenticate a true Bob true grit compliment, and they certainly have increased over the years, but like Bracken, most often he's just a little slow, and like all of us who prefer to hear our own voices that those of our neighbor.
GT
GET REMINDED
Originally published on August 19, 1997
Suzy celled in from Saint Thomas last evening before reboarding the liner. She & Aunt Lou are having a sizzling time. I could smell the fun on her breath from here. It's really strange without her at home, but you know me, I'm soaking up all the quiet I can. I miss her, but it'll be Labor day until we baby dance together again. With that ringing in my left ear I've carried since the Zodiac Mindwarp show in London 1992, my days and nights pass eerily as if in the woods or the farm, crickets and the silence of nothing but the fan. Alone, no pressure to succeed, no terms of regret, no inkling of failure. Hints of a new routine, say for instance an evening walk around the neighborhood, a dip into the city, a relaxing drink in the backyard nirvana.
No, I've stuck inside avoiding the heat, but I've noticed these inner stirrings. Today is twenty degrees cooler, but even so, I hack away at this terminal, working, planning, fooling myself I'm living life with some great plan to succeed. Me, I just do what I can, and try not to aggravate or be aggravated by every whim and weasel this world has to offer. Guess I'm still stewing over Blumstein's bluster because I don't know where it came from, life?
Life? That word just swooped in on me and I cannot fathom why or how he intended to mean it other than demeaning me. But, I'm way off the path of solitude when I let Bob crash my peace. He gave a blanket apology. Back to the crickets in my bad ear, the purr of the fan at my feet, and the allure of the Internet where anybody can be somebody and everybody can be nobody, but none of us can ever know the difference until we do the work.
I, of course, associate these feelings with Lofton Creek FL, the chicken farm days, the cabin, forty thousand birds, long lonely weeks without ever seeing another human, my daily summer skinnydipping, vegetarianism, cheese and grapes and rye bread lovers, writing my first serious, better poems of a lifetime, poems I still read with enthusiam today (aching to plug online), those ten mile hikes into town, Dylan Dog who looked and acted just like Nickel Dog, getting buried three hundred year old literature checked from the library, Will Durant, and a steady feed from PBS.
I was 24-25. Young, thin, even skinny. Full of zest, vigor, and peace. Life is not a home-brew. Life is what happens to you when you are busy making plans for something else. I said that before, but that's the fat and the gristle of it. Nothing's any more clear than that. Now the chicken farm is gone. My mentor (of hard work) has been dead for ten years, and the farm I helped build torn down. Life? Yeah Bob, lemme sit at your feet, such wisdom.
Have you heard the recent uproar about the thousands of fish sporting nasty abcesses on their smelly bods first in North Carolina, and now proin the Chesapeake? After nearly a year of mystery, the problems are being blamed on chicken farm runoff, shit tragically high in nitrogen and ammonia gases running off into the streams and creeks and into the ocean. That's some powerful stuff that survives the plunge into the sea.
GT
Suzy celled in from Saint Thomas last evening before reboarding the liner. She & Aunt Lou are having a sizzling time. I could smell the fun on her breath from here. It's really strange without her at home, but you know me, I'm soaking up all the quiet I can. I miss her, but it'll be Labor day until we baby dance together again. With that ringing in my left ear I've carried since the Zodiac Mindwarp show in London 1992, my days and nights pass eerily as if in the woods or the farm, crickets and the silence of nothing but the fan. Alone, no pressure to succeed, no terms of regret, no inkling of failure. Hints of a new routine, say for instance an evening walk around the neighborhood, a dip into the city, a relaxing drink in the backyard nirvana.
No, I've stuck inside avoiding the heat, but I've noticed these inner stirrings. Today is twenty degrees cooler, but even so, I hack away at this terminal, working, planning, fooling myself I'm living life with some great plan to succeed. Me, I just do what I can, and try not to aggravate or be aggravated by every whim and weasel this world has to offer. Guess I'm still stewing over Blumstein's bluster because I don't know where it came from, life?
Life? That word just swooped in on me and I cannot fathom why or how he intended to mean it other than demeaning me. But, I'm way off the path of solitude when I let Bob crash my peace. He gave a blanket apology. Back to the crickets in my bad ear, the purr of the fan at my feet, and the allure of the Internet where anybody can be somebody and everybody can be nobody, but none of us can ever know the difference until we do the work.
I, of course, associate these feelings with Lofton Creek FL, the chicken farm days, the cabin, forty thousand birds, long lonely weeks without ever seeing another human, my daily summer skinnydipping, vegetarianism, cheese and grapes and rye bread lovers, writing my first serious, better poems of a lifetime, poems I still read with enthusiam today (aching to plug online), those ten mile hikes into town, Dylan Dog who looked and acted just like Nickel Dog, getting buried three hundred year old literature checked from the library, Will Durant, and a steady feed from PBS.
I was 24-25. Young, thin, even skinny. Full of zest, vigor, and peace. Life is not a home-brew. Life is what happens to you when you are busy making plans for something else. I said that before, but that's the fat and the gristle of it. Nothing's any more clear than that. Now the chicken farm is gone. My mentor (of hard work) has been dead for ten years, and the farm I helped build torn down. Life? Yeah Bob, lemme sit at your feet, such wisdom.
Have you heard the recent uproar about the thousands of fish sporting nasty abcesses on their smelly bods first in North Carolina, and now proin the Chesapeake? After nearly a year of mystery, the problems are being blamed on chicken farm runoff, shit tragically high in nitrogen and ammonia gases running off into the streams and creeks and into the ocean. That's some powerful stuff that survives the plunge into the sea.
GT
Friday, August 10, 2007
DOLLHOUSE CHARMS
Originally published on October 13, 1996
Anecdotes on the grill, hip-hugging and pressure cooked people sprawled about the deck with all sorts of psychoses just a spoon feed away. All told, it seems everyone left with a pleasant evening under their belts after chortling on cheese dip, assorted dishes and the chow din of new acquaintences.
Bob and Peter had never met. Michelle was new bird. Allie announced she was moving in with Bob, saving $800 a month, helpful since she too is leaving Columbia Research for greener pastures, that is to say, her hunt for that illusive green card, saying that CR has a long record of hiring aliens but dropping the ball on green card sponsorship.
The gathering began late, which of course threw off my own psychological equilibrium for most of the early part of the day since I had hoped for an early start, early end, but things softened and turned to a generalized sense of fun once Peter and Michelle arrived sometime shortly after 1730hrs.
The afternoon heat chilled rather quickly, finally underpinning the autumnal ambience to the other seasonal changes visible in the sheets of orange-brown leaves blanketing the backyard matched by the brilliant, cascading angles of the fading sun.
Bob was cheerful all night long. He and Peter gloried in their common interest in comic books and Japanese animation. Allie unloaded her greencard woes in her horrible English tongue which is less a mumble than a slippery slur of half-formed syllables. But she too was cheery, even as the night pushed late into the mind, curled into her chair, snuggled into sweatshirt sleeves intent on listening to the banter of the boys.
Michelle didn't talk much, not that she's shy or inarticulate, but with a full deck of notorious chatterers on board, she politely played it safe. She's a psychology major at Purdue, and was markedly endearing as she also curled in her chair, tilting her head in such a way as to communicate an adoration for Peter whenever he took to the common soapbox.
But she's no mere fawn. Peter had burned some bacon earlier that afternoon, and when Sue suggested the microwave was a saner choice for the chore, Peter of course started in with his own variation of Shipwreck rationale.
Michelle surnamed Carnes as in Kim no relation, immediately backed Sue as Peter mumbled off into that land of geez, can't I ever be right about something, even when I'm wrong about nothing spin cycle. Maybe not. Perhaps I'm being ever slightly unfair for the sake of a short line of bull.
Admittedly, I wasn't there in the kitchen, although at one point I nearly bolted from my chair to race upstairs as my complaint-driven pathos peeled back the stench of newly formed carbon gathering in my ever sensitive nostrils, but Sue witnessed to me later, and I have no problem imagining that when she said he started explaining something about hot grease and the natural water in the bacon combining to blacken it, he was pulling a big time, uh, well you know what I mean.
This a been a banner weekend. Had a swell time on the bay feasting with the three Spence dolls plus Pitch. I'm sure this topic has come up before but I forget your opinion on crabs. I would imagine Philly to be a great place for the critters, even while somewhat overshadowed by the world famous Philadelphia cheesesteak culture.
My friend Kenny Sacks, now in Seattle . . . I just timed out to ring him, but got the machine, formerly of Philly, still raves about how much he misses the Philly steak of his youth. His mom once had promised to ship him a crate of the whole steak-n-cheese enchilada, bread, meat, cheese from a local distributor just to ease his homesickness and taste bud deprivation after he moved out there a couple, well, maybe three years ago now. Don't know if that panned out, but it was a nice motherly gesture.
His mom is a dear, a small hairspray-blonde Jewish cabana queen who looks and talks like she just stepped out of a Seinfeld episode. She kept trying to feed us sweets from the fridge. One year our colleague in the fantasy baseball league wimped out in getting our Phillies tickets. She bailed us out with her influence, calling the front office, seating us in the best seats we'd ever had over the four games Sue and I had shared with the Nuthouse Gang, right near home plate just a few rows up and a few seats down the first base line behind the net.
Peter and Michelle are gone for the day. They'll sup at his parent's house tonight, and she'll fly back to Indiana tomorrow afternoon. Peter got a call this morning suggesting he's still in queue for a job interview at, I think, one of the places he's interned. That's timely, since we mildly roasted Peter the last hour of last night's gathering focussing on his need to find a job because neither he nor we are rolling in web business yet, and in order to really be worth his ambition in GSIS stock, he needs to improve his own skills and speed with practice, not on my time and dollar, but on his own.
No feelings were unduly trampled, and I feel the exchange was blithely enlightening, as he admitted that he has often been chastised for a lack of speed and creativity in his work, and is hoping to improve on these fronts in time. I'm committed to helping him where and when I can, but he must certainly begin to pull his weight in some area, and for now that appears to be simply paying the agreed upon rent, and then working to improve his skills in areas that we both can exploit so that he indeed can become a healthy factor in the growth potential of Graphic Solutions Ink Systems and CYFII, his own company. In other words, we're each still operating in good faith.
GT
Anecdotes on the grill, hip-hugging and pressure cooked people sprawled about the deck with all sorts of psychoses just a spoon feed away. All told, it seems everyone left with a pleasant evening under their belts after chortling on cheese dip, assorted dishes and the chow din of new acquaintences.
Bob and Peter had never met. Michelle was new bird. Allie announced she was moving in with Bob, saving $800 a month, helpful since she too is leaving Columbia Research for greener pastures, that is to say, her hunt for that illusive green card, saying that CR has a long record of hiring aliens but dropping the ball on green card sponsorship.
The gathering began late, which of course threw off my own psychological equilibrium for most of the early part of the day since I had hoped for an early start, early end, but things softened and turned to a generalized sense of fun once Peter and Michelle arrived sometime shortly after 1730hrs.
The afternoon heat chilled rather quickly, finally underpinning the autumnal ambience to the other seasonal changes visible in the sheets of orange-brown leaves blanketing the backyard matched by the brilliant, cascading angles of the fading sun.
Bob was cheerful all night long. He and Peter gloried in their common interest in comic books and Japanese animation. Allie unloaded her greencard woes in her horrible English tongue which is less a mumble than a slippery slur of half-formed syllables. But she too was cheery, even as the night pushed late into the mind, curled into her chair, snuggled into sweatshirt sleeves intent on listening to the banter of the boys.
Michelle didn't talk much, not that she's shy or inarticulate, but with a full deck of notorious chatterers on board, she politely played it safe. She's a psychology major at Purdue, and was markedly endearing as she also curled in her chair, tilting her head in such a way as to communicate an adoration for Peter whenever he took to the common soapbox.
But she's no mere fawn. Peter had burned some bacon earlier that afternoon, and when Sue suggested the microwave was a saner choice for the chore, Peter of course started in with his own variation of Shipwreck rationale.
Michelle surnamed Carnes as in Kim no relation, immediately backed Sue as Peter mumbled off into that land of geez, can't I ever be right about something, even when I'm wrong about nothing spin cycle. Maybe not. Perhaps I'm being ever slightly unfair for the sake of a short line of bull.
Admittedly, I wasn't there in the kitchen, although at one point I nearly bolted from my chair to race upstairs as my complaint-driven pathos peeled back the stench of newly formed carbon gathering in my ever sensitive nostrils, but Sue witnessed to me later, and I have no problem imagining that when she said he started explaining something about hot grease and the natural water in the bacon combining to blacken it, he was pulling a big time, uh, well you know what I mean.
This a been a banner weekend. Had a swell time on the bay feasting with the three Spence dolls plus Pitch. I'm sure this topic has come up before but I forget your opinion on crabs. I would imagine Philly to be a great place for the critters, even while somewhat overshadowed by the world famous Philadelphia cheesesteak culture.
My friend Kenny Sacks, now in Seattle . . . I just timed out to ring him, but got the machine, formerly of Philly, still raves about how much he misses the Philly steak of his youth. His mom once had promised to ship him a crate of the whole steak-n-cheese enchilada, bread, meat, cheese from a local distributor just to ease his homesickness and taste bud deprivation after he moved out there a couple, well, maybe three years ago now. Don't know if that panned out, but it was a nice motherly gesture.
His mom is a dear, a small hairspray-blonde Jewish cabana queen who looks and talks like she just stepped out of a Seinfeld episode. She kept trying to feed us sweets from the fridge. One year our colleague in the fantasy baseball league wimped out in getting our Phillies tickets. She bailed us out with her influence, calling the front office, seating us in the best seats we'd ever had over the four games Sue and I had shared with the Nuthouse Gang, right near home plate just a few rows up and a few seats down the first base line behind the net.
Peter and Michelle are gone for the day. They'll sup at his parent's house tonight, and she'll fly back to Indiana tomorrow afternoon. Peter got a call this morning suggesting he's still in queue for a job interview at, I think, one of the places he's interned. That's timely, since we mildly roasted Peter the last hour of last night's gathering focussing on his need to find a job because neither he nor we are rolling in web business yet, and in order to really be worth his ambition in GSIS stock, he needs to improve his own skills and speed with practice, not on my time and dollar, but on his own.
No feelings were unduly trampled, and I feel the exchange was blithely enlightening, as he admitted that he has often been chastised for a lack of speed and creativity in his work, and is hoping to improve on these fronts in time. I'm committed to helping him where and when I can, but he must certainly begin to pull his weight in some area, and for now that appears to be simply paying the agreed upon rent, and then working to improve his skills in areas that we both can exploit so that he indeed can become a healthy factor in the growth potential of Graphic Solutions Ink Systems and CYFII, his own company. In other words, we're each still operating in good faith.
GT
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT
Originally published on October 17, 1996
Just when one thinks that it would be easier to drain all the seven oceans of salty fish nip than to squeeze another drop of self-pity from the story of my life, then boom, another couple of notches later, feeling like shit on a stick is the highest compliment I can pay myself...
This morning while taking out an armful of corrugated cardboard recycleables, I broke my left foot, again! I'm beginning to feel like a sad parody of Tim and his annual collarbone. The foot snapped lengthwise with characteristic audible clarity. I was stepping from the house to the front porch and my unfastened sandles slipped to trigger the occasion. Ten minutes later, wincing on the sofa, with vigor and gruff I jump up at Sue's notice that a man is foraging through our big blue plastic, metal, and glass curbside recycle bags. Once at the door I yell that rather than plunder the dozen or so smaller bags neatly packed inside the big blue ones he should just take off with the whole shebang.
He was an older, maybe sixty year old black man, well-attired, did not exude the aura of a lifelong wino (would it matter?), but he immediately shot back that he wasn't gonna leave a mess. He was merely taking a few cans. I stared in dreaded white silence for ten to fifteeen long seconds before telling him to go ahead. I watched him scavenge for coke and beer cans, leaving the glass wine bottles and plastic milk jugs behind as he rummaged for parts of a penny. I took a bag of cans to the plant once and got nine dollars for what must have been a thousand crushed cans some years ago, never again.
Ah, as I write this, the truck pulls up and regards the trash, and rather early today. Two pickups ago, they missed our whole street altogether. Dutiful citizen on even numbered years, I called Publics Works for a rescheduling. Three days later the trash was snagged, after I was told to leave the stuff at the curb indefinitely until pickup. Neighbor Chisley did not, and so had quite a mess two weeks later the next time. However, without too much gross exaggeration it is safe to say we sprawl along the curb other Tuesday more than the whole side of this block of Eighteenth Street combined. The scavenger in good news to the scafflaw followed his word, and the curb was nice and neat after he left, so I guess my starring role as the Billy Goats Gruff foul-toothed troll who lives under the bridge to the 21st century is safely undisturbed.
Despite this leg drop injury I refuse to rush to the hospital, unmoved by the indignity and the expense of THAT trouble. If I hadn't heard the snap, crackle, and pop at the time of the 265 pound stomp and roll I'd even doubt it was broken. I can even put steady weight upon it, and feel arrgglike pain only when I bend, drag or rest it in a bezier curve along the sofa. But the icy and instant numbing at impact and consequent prickly twinges further identify my condition. Ooh well dearies, fortunately it wasn't my ankle or heel. I still have a fine pair of wooden crutches I inherited for $30 from my last left foot catastrophe in September, 1993. The blood vessel knot and prickly numbness will no doubt subside in a few days if I don't aggravate it by jumping for joy if that Apple monitor ever frickin' gets here. Sue suggests the doctor. Says we've got insurance. Uh, workman's comp for injury on the job? I just ain't inner rested. Who will putter around doing the countless manipulations it takes to keep a hint of order around here? Who wants to lug around some ridiculous cast for six weeks. Oh I know. We'll hire a nanny...
Nausea. Sartre. Simpletons and Simon Magus. Surely I am blessed among men...
Oh course soon after writing this note I receive another nasty reply from my next door neighbor Blumstein, who types, (obviously from his workstation on the job, a job he wished upon me as often as the spirit moved him:
It was interesting to discover he cared, even if it took the form of a Blumfisted flame.
GT
Just when one thinks that it would be easier to drain all the seven oceans of salty fish nip than to squeeze another drop of self-pity from the story of my life, then boom, another couple of notches later, feeling like shit on a stick is the highest compliment I can pay myself...
This morning while taking out an armful of corrugated cardboard recycleables, I broke my left foot, again! I'm beginning to feel like a sad parody of Tim and his annual collarbone. The foot snapped lengthwise with characteristic audible clarity. I was stepping from the house to the front porch and my unfastened sandles slipped to trigger the occasion. Ten minutes later, wincing on the sofa, with vigor and gruff I jump up at Sue's notice that a man is foraging through our big blue plastic, metal, and glass curbside recycle bags. Once at the door I yell that rather than plunder the dozen or so smaller bags neatly packed inside the big blue ones he should just take off with the whole shebang.
He was an older, maybe sixty year old black man, well-attired, did not exude the aura of a lifelong wino (would it matter?), but he immediately shot back that he wasn't gonna leave a mess. He was merely taking a few cans. I stared in dreaded white silence for ten to fifteeen long seconds before telling him to go ahead. I watched him scavenge for coke and beer cans, leaving the glass wine bottles and plastic milk jugs behind as he rummaged for parts of a penny. I took a bag of cans to the plant once and got nine dollars for what must have been a thousand crushed cans some years ago, never again.
Ah, as I write this, the truck pulls up and regards the trash, and rather early today. Two pickups ago, they missed our whole street altogether. Dutiful citizen on even numbered years, I called Publics Works for a rescheduling. Three days later the trash was snagged, after I was told to leave the stuff at the curb indefinitely until pickup. Neighbor Chisley did not, and so had quite a mess two weeks later the next time. However, without too much gross exaggeration it is safe to say we sprawl along the curb other Tuesday more than the whole side of this block of Eighteenth Street combined. The scavenger in good news to the scafflaw followed his word, and the curb was nice and neat after he left, so I guess my starring role as the Billy Goats Gruff foul-toothed troll who lives under the bridge to the 21st century is safely undisturbed.
Despite this leg drop injury I refuse to rush to the hospital, unmoved by the indignity and the expense of THAT trouble. If I hadn't heard the snap, crackle, and pop at the time of the 265 pound stomp and roll I'd even doubt it was broken. I can even put steady weight upon it, and feel arrgglike pain only when I bend, drag or rest it in a bezier curve along the sofa. But the icy and instant numbing at impact and consequent prickly twinges further identify my condition. Ooh well dearies, fortunately it wasn't my ankle or heel. I still have a fine pair of wooden crutches I inherited for $30 from my last left foot catastrophe in September, 1993. The blood vessel knot and prickly numbness will no doubt subside in a few days if I don't aggravate it by jumping for joy if that Apple monitor ever frickin' gets here. Sue suggests the doctor. Says we've got insurance. Uh, workman's comp for injury on the job? I just ain't inner rested. Who will putter around doing the countless manipulations it takes to keep a hint of order around here? Who wants to lug around some ridiculous cast for six weeks. Oh I know. We'll hire a nanny...
Nausea. Sartre. Simpletons and Simon Magus. Surely I am blessed among men...
Oh course soon after writing this note I receive another nasty reply from my next door neighbor Blumstein, who types, (obviously from his workstation on the job, a job he wished upon me as often as the spirit moved him:
Gah Bree Elle,
Why is it that I have to guess at you breaking
a limb. Why make me assume such nonsense
rather than just say it out straight 'I broke my
GD left femur!' Don't assume anyone in your
audience knows all the details so you can
discuss such as old news.
But the reality is that if you did break your
leg, whichever left and/or right, you should
get it professionally set before it heals in
an obnoxious way and must be broken again
to correct it thus fucking it up even more.
God I hate martyrs...
Blum
It was interesting to discover he cared, even if it took the form of a Blumfisted flame.
GT
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