Sunday, January 13, 2008

Simple answers of looming dread

1. Is there someone who's planning to take my Christmas tree down for me, or help me decide what to do about the poinsettias, or who plans to enfold my shiny little Christmas objets in tissue paper? Because I could use some help with that.
2. When will there be a movie (preferably a comedy) that I can watch without effort and still feel happy at the end of it?
3. Is Bruiser lonely? He seems lonely.
4. Am I missing something, or have I eaten at all the restaurants in SLC and now they seem stale and unimaginative?
5. Is the world more full of incompetent people than it was just a couple of weeks ago? Or is it that all the systems they have for doing practically everything have taken a turn and become really, really bad?
6. Why is it just pasta polenta rice polenta pasta around here?
7. Why did the people at Wild Oats let me leave without the butter, the cheese, and the mushrooms that I paid for?
8. Is it just me? Because it seems like maybe it's just me.

To which I respond:

1) Trust me, you don't want my help, unless you like a house full of needs and many broken shiny Christmas things.
2) Such movies have been banned.
3) All dogs seem lonely to me. I think it is in their DNA. Perhaps it is just in our DNA.
4) SLC Restaurants are dull and unimaginative. There is a mediocrity here that is completely unacceptable, especially for the prices that they charge. Ask lis, I'm sure she agrees with me.
5) Yes.
6) Sounds kind of a tasty routine, if you ask me. It could be worse: you could be on the pre-packaged diet that many people seem to be on these days.
7) See 5 above.
8) No, it is not just you.

Labels: dogs, incompetence, life, restaurants, routine

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Sunday, November 18, 2007

My Task in New York for Tomorrow

People in New York are funny. They are actually friendly when you engage them in conversation about some relevant topic or when you are the subject of their service, but overall without the pretense of a focussed topic they ignore you. Such is life in a megalopolis, I suppose. For example, when you pass some one in the street here, the usual interaction is to say nothing. You huddle up and scurry on your way.

This suits me well. I generally dislike such trifling acknowledgments of our existence, and, I assume like most New Yorkers, just want to get about my business.

I feel compelled, however, to change my ways in the city that suits me so well (being the rude, un-noticing son of bitch I can be), and tomorrow I shall greet every person on my path in a friendly manner.

Perhaps this is noticing the difference between where I live and here. No. No. No. It is not that Salt Lake is the bastion of friendliness--in fact it is not. It is the fact that here you have the Salt Lake problem of being rude to your passers by so massively evident. In Salt Lake, however, at least you have someone who recognizes the problems of a homeless person (I've only met one so far in this visit to New York) or even a hobbling old lady. In SLC there would be at least some help for the old lady. The homeless folks, however, face a harder time. You know, ultimately, that may be why beggars are so far and few between in modern New York: there is very little tolerance for poverty or for beggars. They don't fit in the scheme. They don't survive her because the people don't tolerate everyday courtesy.

Zow. (No offense, New York, but as the song says "I love you but your are bringing me down.")

Ok, Ok, so what't the plan as I finish my Convention attendance here in the greatest city in the world? "Hello!" I shall say to the unwitting tenement dweller in my unfortunate neighborhood. "How's it going?" I will ask of the tourist hauling her luggage to Penn Station. I will give my change to whoever asks for it.

It is easy to forget the simple courtesies while living in such a large city. Yes it protects us. (As I know as a resident of a not-so-large city), but it also anesthetizes use from living. The difference between San Francisco (which abounds with beggars) and New York is vast. I feel compelled to write about that difference and what it really means. That is for latter, however.

But, Hello! How are you doing? Thanks for stopping by. Would you like something to drink?

Labels: fear, hope, life, living, street, tourism

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Lost

Well I'm back from San Francisco in what qualifies as a whirlwind trip. I won't bore you with the detail of my work there, as I will save that for the academic blog, perhaps, so I will excite you with the details of how I seem to have lost all ability to read contextual clues from everyday situations. In other words: I was the absent-minded professor this weekend.

This morning I walked into the Olympic Diner across from my hotel and stood at the threshold like I assumed a good patron should and waited to be seated. The waitress, no doubt the grand daughter of the Greek-born cook manning the grill, looked at me quizicaly several times. She came towards me and said something which I didn't quite make out (perhaps my hearing is going) and then walked back towards the counter. I followed her, being a well-trained patron. She turned on me then and motioned wildly to the rest of the diner. I then realized this was a sit-anywhere-you-like establishment.

"Should I sit where I like?" I asked the obvious.

"Of course!" she said exasperatedly and waved her hands. I chose a two-person booth next to the counter. Its formica top worn with age. Their menu was simple: various versions of omelets, steak and eggs, and huge flapjacks.

I actually felt kind of good about this, since it meant that I was in a truly local establishment. A local establishment with greasy floors. A local establishment where the granddaughter scolded her grandfather.

I sat and I had an excellent American breakfast, accompanied by family drama, and the grand father fry cook who looks like he would have fit right in to the 50s. There was a bit of despair in his manner, something so city. Something so how did I get here? or what the hell is all of this about? Somehow I'm not equipped to read the clues or to understand. I felt foreign in this place. I felt dazed.

All this in a nice little diner in San Francisco.

Labels: food, life, people

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Friday, November 02, 2007

Lady luck let's please let the dice stay hot

Holy fuck, I missed it. On August 31, 2007, I officially outlived Elvis.

"On a cold and gray Chicago morn, a baby's born, and his momma cries."

Labels: goals, life, whatthehelliswrongwithyou

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Ashamed or "Punk ass Kids"

Punk ass kids, originally uploaded by Theorris.

I posted this photo over on flickr because I was quite amused by the antics, but after talking to my friend Tif and then reading what Dr. Write has to say about commonplace violence, was quite shamed by my actions:

The bored, little, teenage wannabe baller punks* up the street have taken to throwing apples at cars. My house is across the street from their vantage point and, consequently, their spent ammo ends up in my yard.

I shouted at them last night with a classic Hank Hill line: "Are you going to stop doing that, or am I going to have to come over there and kick your ass." Aside from a little back talk from them, they quickly dispersed, especially when I charged from the porch to the sidewalk. Great fun.

It is not to hard to track down who the kids are, given that the neighbor up the street has an apple tree in his back yard next to their basketball hoop where these dipshits practice their mad ball skillz. It is going to be fun when the cops show up the next time they decide to pull this crap.

*You know the type: 15 year old rich white boys dressing in basketball gear as a sort of uniform, and think it actually conveys on them some sort of ability and right to cop an attitude with anyone they meet.

Labels: city, grow-up, humanity, kidshows, life, living, shame

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Sunday, August 12, 2007

Renga, anyone?

Since I'm officially on vacation, I'm thinking of work--well some would probably not call it the writing I do as work, but they can go to hell. I like the idea of staying up late huddled in front of my computer fiddling around with words: the crickets outside singing the hours away.

Anyone want to write a Renga with me? Kendrakoo? lisa b? Dr. Write? Middlebrow? Condiment? Anyone?

----------------
Listening to: The Rapture - Get Myself Into It
via FoxyTunes

Labels: life, vacation, work, writing

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Thursday, May 17, 2007

Strange things we remember or I saw a man die (maybe)

When I was ten I was instrumental in hospital triage and emergency care. You see one fine June day when school was out, I was dragged along by Mom to my grandmother's radiation treatment for breast cancer. Grandma was a downwinder and witnessed many of the open-air nuclear tests that happened in the 50's from her Cedar City vantage. Now, of course, her breast cancer could have been caused by many environmental and genetic variables, but given that none of her female ancestors suffered the malady--unlike my paternal grandmother who was also a Southern Utahn and died before said nuclear tests--it seems more-than-likely that there was a link to errant nuclear radiation causing her affliction, due to the fact that she was living in Southern Utah and breast feeding in the early 50's when the tests were being conducted. (I should note that my sister in the mid-70's visited the Panguitch cemetary at night to see the glowing headstones caused by radioactive fallout from the 50's.) Of course it is more than ironic that radiation treatment cured my grandmother of her cancer (along with a mastectomy) but a diatribe against radiation and horrible government policy is not the point of this post. The point, as my initial sentence states, is that I was essential, as a ten-year old boy, in the immediate care of another human being.

I remember it clearly: my mother was not a fan of letting children into certain establishments--hospitals being top of the list. She was not a modern 70's woman by any means, and followed the code of conduct established long before that hospitals were no place for healthy children. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was to wait either in the waiting room or outside. I was to go no further. So after watching the cool fish in the LDS hospital waiting room for a while swimming their exotic salt-water way around the giant bubbling tube, I felt compelled to go outside.

Of course there was nothing outside, either, but I remember sitting on the strange benches that inter-cut the main entrance to the hospital and a parking lot further on. For some reason I want to picture myself with a skateboard, but I don't think that is accurate, given my bad experience with 70's skateboards earlier that year in fitth grade. I might have had a skateboard or I might not have, in any case I was doing something out by the weird garden-in-between when all at once a blue Ford F150 pulled up all skeewumpus next to the guard rail separating the little enclave from the ring road around the parking lot. The driver was clearly in the wrong spot and he had nearly pegged the guard poles. The door creaked open and a man of average height staggered out. I was a bit scared at this point, as I'm sure anyone, let alone a kid in some weird hospital situation would be. He fell and then stood and then staggered to one of the guard poles, grasping it weakly.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

"Are you all right?" I said.

"No. No." His lips were blue and ringed with a white crusty salt. That image sticks in my mind particularly. "No."

"I'll get the doctor!" And I ran as fast as I could into the hospital to the receptionist, not minding the cars or anything.

"There is a man out front who is sick!" It sounds stupid now, but what was I to say? "I think he is having a heart attack!" Luckily the woman in the window took me seriously and grabbed her phone.

I stayed inside next, jumping up to see the woman behind the counter. Within seconds a stretcher appeared from the elevator which was off-limits to me. They went outside.

I didn't.

Moments later they came crashing through the doors and headed to the inner-sanctum of the hospital.

I hung around and looked at the fishes some more and then went back to the desk to hear what had happened. I asked her and she said "He'll be fine!"

"Massive cardio-infarction" is what she said to her coworker.

I don't know why the image of this man blue lips with their salty rim sticks with me to this day. I don't know if he died or if he lived. I only know he didn't die right there in the middle-ground between parking lot and hospital. Or maybe he did.

It is one of the things I will never know in this life.

Labels: death, health, life

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