In college I dated a girl who also wrote, particularly poetry. Save her writing was good. I'll scratch out poems in the margins of notebooks thinking "This would look great in the insert page of a non-fiction book!"
I've also been reading Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Dazrnick which is a lovely novel about a young girl in pre revolution Iran and the protagonist struggles with making it as a poet. So, just like when I watch Vince Carter dunk highlights and then go out and brick 50 shots at the rec center here is a poem.
I recently found myself scrubbing and disinfecting a ton. Using nothing but bleach and a microfiber rag to defend against the early winter ick.
It jacked up my hands. I will admit to not using gloves in the first few go around and if you ever need a reminder that bleach is a poison (hence why it kills things) then go ahead and do that.
If my hands were a Magic card they would be something that comes into play tapped and taps for one mana of any color before you have to exile it. Pretty awful and pretty niche.
But they scaled up at the knuckles and withered away at the creases and folds so everything was in high and stark contrast across my palm. Across the lines that say how long you will live and who you will love. They still had that smooth clamminess of swimming in pool water. A dirty clean that feels slick and hollow. I hate that feeling. How some people cannot stand the word "moist?" Or "orifice." I can't stand that after swimming feeling. Irks at a guttural level.
At an older job I worked with a guy with a diamond tattooed on his forearm. "Because I'm as solid as a rock!"
And his hands looked the same except bigger and cracked at the fingertips. From slamming pallets and boxes around with no gloves 7 hours a day. The kind of hands that you see before one of those "Working Hands" cream commercials. Then a star edit wipe to smoothness.
All that cleaning reminds me of scrubbing the screen windows in PR. Mami would pluck them down off the turnkey latches by the metal shutters. And we would toss them on the back patio and scrub with the hose, liberal application of Mr. Clean and a plastic broom saved just for washing the screen windows.
Washing to concrete sides of the house which my mother said would get green with mold if we didn't do this. "Go up on the roof and wash off the parapet. I can seen the black mold" Clean the white walls of the alley by the house where we kept trash. I would splash the Clorox (Note any bleach is ALWAYS called Clorox in PR regardless of the brand) onto the wall and the blast with the house scouring away the unseen filth and scaling the grass pushing up from the cracks in the concrete.
Or of washing the old family car a black Peugeot. I think the only damn Peugeot on the whole island of PR that no one could fix. Washing the car with great big pours of Mr. Turtle soap into a bucket and wiping down the Peugeot with random bits of cloth. Old underpants my mom saved. Never hers but sometimes my dad's from after he passed away. Or mine. Which I don't know if that is any better but no one seemed to question it. In Puerto Rico you wash screen windows and save old tighty whities to use as rags. This is how it is done con pura cepa.
In the old car I kept a tiny tube of lotion. Something cheap from the impulse buys. But in my new car I run lean. Space program lean where every bit of weight matters. "Do you have napkins in the car I could use," my wife once asked me. To which I said "Fuck no." I wipe down the car when I get home every night. "Yes....I know," she retorted.
But I wish I had that lotion recently. I asked some coworkers who were kind enough to share but it opened myself up to quick ribbings. Softball setups for jokes. "Beat the meat?"
"No, never at work."
"Never at work......?!"
"Not, even when I work from home! Professionals have standards!"
Due to overwhelming demand* I created a second ersatz map of my grade school. This is the upper campus
Sorry.
I did want to elaborate on the playground which had this hard metal Soviet style brutalism to it. At one point in the 6th grade they installed a small more normal wood one (which I forgot to add) but the OG structures were out of Mad Max.
The Pony Swing had these 40 pound metal horses you rode that were attached to the arch. You pumped them forward to get going and it was a lot of fun to swing the ones in the middle and just Ben Hur the knees out of the kid next to you.
The UFO was maybe 10 feet off the ground and had a metal saucer on top that you then slide down from on a firefight pole or one of those devious playground coils.
The rocket slide. Wow that was something else. Imagine a 40 foot metal rocket shaped cage. Then small ladders running up with each alternating on each level (which was maybe 6 feet between levels) until at the second to highest level there was a burning metal slide. If you did go down it then you had an intense claustrophobia trapped in the slots. Did I mention it was all rusty?
Looked like this only taller and red.
It was huge. You could see the curvature of the earth!
Mind you this was boarded up after 1998 so it still stood but no one could climb up either the ladder of slide.
The field by the playground was just a hodge podge of grass and the red mud. The back half was dotted with gopher holes** that gobbled people up as they ran three legged races.
So yeah to get quikcly you took a lot of short cuts especially when you made it to 7th grade and you did not need to worry about lining up or getting your raincoat out from your cubby. No, GO! You got 5 minutes to make it from Art to Computer Lab!
*Assumed. I don't know if anyone save robots read that blog.
**Mind you there are no gophers in PR so this was either rats that made it or some ankle hating monster
One day at work I found myself cleaning a pair of shoes. Not mine, but one of the students at school. He and a classmate had just run ape shit through a morass of mud and came into the office looking for replacement clothes. These kids looked as if they had crawled over the top at Ypres to take out the German machine gun nest.
And we did not have spare shoes nor socks but I offered to clean their shoes in the janitor's slop sink. If anything but to prevent them from getting any so permanently dirty. Or have their parents refuse to let them in the car. Because I would not let my kids in my car with muddy shoes if a dinosaur was chasing them! "Kids, we are almost there. Remember to grab a plastic bag from the trunk and slide your shoes in there BEFORE you get in. Don't worry I already popped the trunk."
Scrubbing and scraping the muck off I was reminded of the unique mud of my grade school. It was Mars red and on a rainy day it could slough off the hillsides in rouge crumbles right out of Tremors*
Quick aside on my school. One I went there K-12. And it was built in what I understood the be an old country club. At least that was the rumor but it has a very liberal arts college campus vibe even for a K-12 school. Grades were clustered separated by big quads and cement paths cut through the grass. Not too many trees but the long walk to the cafeteria cut through the playground on your left and then just a giant field on the right that was a combo soccer/baseball/whatever. It was a big campus and in the 9th grade when you had maybe 5 minutes to BOOK it from art (all the way from the "Top of the World" by the pools and maintenance shed) to English back on the main quad it sucked to do so in the rain. And yeah then your shoes would glob onto the mud so you looked like you were wearing Elmo Monster feet.
We had no carpets in our classrooms so people would scrape it on the cement walkways and the edges of the open air hallways. This left red skid marks on the cement and eventual dried up husks littering the walkways. And before you ask how did we get so muddy when there were walkways then remember we had to BOOK IT across these quads. Here is a drawing I made of the lower campus. Excuse the awfulness.
I am awful at expressing myself visually. I will do better for the upper campus
And that was just the lower half! *A fantastic dumb movie I saw probably 90 times as a child on USA Network. I just re-watched it unedited on Netflix and it holds up
A confession I have is that I love getting alerts and message notifications. I find them rewarding in both clearing them (The satisfaction of checking things off my list) and the interaction. For sometimes maximum glee I disable the notifications so that I need to manually check my email or messages.
At work sometimes out messaging app doesn't flash the notification and it's a little surprise. Like finding a dollar on the street. And the program lets you respond to posts emotionally all Facebook style. So I thumbs up your post. Here is a shocked face. A sad face. If somone responds with the heart emoji then I would kill for them. That heart is powerful.
And I always want people to respond knowing that in reality everyone else has soemthing else to take their time. They are truly inundated with messages and their little note is not so tied to self worth. Those three dots that flicker up and down as they type are a double edged sword that fills with glee and also ennui.
So I value the last minute emergencies and questions. Sometimes people on Twitter will DM back and it's a message from deep space. They have weight
I do have one buddy who regularly messages. He uses it to pass the time while at work save he works third shift so they chime at 3am. And my sleep schedule, broken by anxiety and children, often lends itself well to this. "You always answer," he says.
I have a few minutes and checked my writing prompt book for something quick and got the word...
Beast
An evocative word. And the first image I get is an auditory one. And, yes, I understand an "auditory image" is a head scratcher but I can hear it. Its an ax, a tomahawk to be specific, swooping through the air and dancing off someone's wrist. Then the head of the ax shucking into the soft space underneath someone's arm. Then it sitting there stanching the bleeding. No screams or anything else except the satisfying smack of the metal into an armpit. That feels and sounds beastly.
Beast makes me think of something curled up and getting smaller and smaller to spring back. When my son is angry he does not want to be seen. He curls into a ball and hides under the Ikea coffee table. The cardboard honey comb structure of that table is exposed due to all his kicks and scratches from other beastly moments. I hear beast and think of some plowing down a long elementary school hallway. Just a husky kid in a huskier coat with a faux fur hood dragging an endless amount of children behind him. And everyone is clawing onto bulletin boards and posters to hold him back so everything is shucking off the walls. The student posters. The 100 things I would buy on the 100th day of school easel pads. The signs thank you for not smoking.
Beast is what the heroine slays as she pulls a spear from the now defeated 12 heads of a bristling hydra. The snicker-snacking Jabberwock. And from the sinew of the last neck she cranes back her own so her hair whips back in a cinematic victory pose that hems in the falling stars of what used to be the beasts winged and irritating progeny.
Beast is the series of paper jams that winds it way through the copier and snarls everything up. Someone tries to go fix it and the toner cartridges slides out so everything, all the powder, flies up into their face. They have to then go home and change out of their cardigan because it is now cyan blue. And for the rest of the day the air is sooty and grimy even after various wipe downs.
Beast feels like slipping on ice and cracking your coccyx two feet away from the front door. It is the neighborhood dog in Mayaguez, Pee Wee, chewing on discarded chicken bones from the bodega. Its the angry eyes from my wife when I forget to put the twist tie on the coffee. It is the flutter and fear when my work crush walks up to the copier. Not the one from above.
Whenever I post about MTG my page views dramatically jump. Now, mind you they jump to like 10 views but compared to 2 that is bananas. I would post more on MTG but I am 1)Not that good at MTG, 2) Don't have time/money to grind to be better, and 3) I swear my two regular readers are not into MTG* and don't want to subject them to that. Too much. I want to give a run down of how my Theros Beyond Death pre-releases went.
Paper Pre Release 1
This was two headed giant. A format I am not a huge fan of** but a buddy did want to partner up so lets go. He played a Blue/Black controlling pool with my showcase Thassa, Deep Dwelling ($$) and that Narcissist inspired guy. This guy...
I told maybe 6 people "The Narcissist guy, you know" and no one had a clue about the myth. Such a Sisyphean task!
It was A LOT of fun to make a dozen reflections or so.
I played Red/Green pool with my foil showcase Purphoros, Brozen Blooded (Which was like $100 at that point, then it shrank down to like $30 but whatever, Commander people will appreciate it...eventually) and tried to slam in while he stopped a bunch of threats. Variance killed us in the last round with me being stuck on two lands and the opponents milling me so I played zero Magic.
We went 2 and 2
It does look nice. And yes, its the "worst" god, but let me enjoy something!
Paper Pre Release 2
I got ANOTHER showcase Thassa, but nothing too crazy to flicker. And a foil promo Purphoros but no big red dummies to cheat in. I went blue white and lost first match again to variance (Never got a blue source but survived thanks to just drawing white cards for first 5 turns...then not so much) and then got CRUSHED in Round 2 by this card...
Uggggggghhhhhhh!
Dream Trawler is unfair. More on that later
In 3rd round I played against someone who bragged about getting a ridiculous pool during his deck building and I lost but I did get one game. He played a wonky Rakdos build with that Titan that drains you for 3 and the black shock to just grind away.
Now 0 and 3 I switched to green white because why not and did win my 4th over someone playing "satyr tribal with no other satyrs" (Ok...They have the lord lady but....ok?)
So 1 and 3.
Arena Sealed 1
Played 3 games, lost 3 games. Eliminated. I hate this fucking game so much.
Arena Sealed 2
Won 6 matches before being eliminated. Grindy blue/green enchantment deck that just durdle until Aspect of Hydra made some flying nerd HUGE. Or cast the flash 4/5 blue guy. I love this game so much!
Arena Sealed 3
I opened Dream Trawler and my girl Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis. I then splashed green for First Iroan Games and this was an easy 7 wins. Again, Dream Trawler is busted. It and Elspeth just ground people to dust. The only way to get it is wraths or edicts or some stupid self inflicted error like playing all your cards.
Arena Sealed 4
Got 4 wins which the deck really should not have. Black blue with (ANOTHER, albeit digital, Thassa) and Tymaret and a Gary. Did flicker Gary once with Thassa to drain a total of 8 life in the turn.
Is Mono Blue a thing because I have half a playset of this lady and I want to flex on people!
So, I played a lot albeit much of it is digital. I still want to do the Pre Release gauntlet and go to EVERY event my store offers in one weekend but I am $150 too poor and too rich in you know...spending time with family and what not.
* No proof for this. Just a vibe. You can always trust your gut on the Internet, yes?
** You play with a partner and the people who need one are always weirdos who aren't that great at the game. #selfown
I read a book recently where someone described the smell of a city. And it broke from anything expected as the author described it as floral honeysuckle and cedar wood and the smell of roasting cashews. Found it quite lovely and unique.
I don't want to speculate on the smell of any city I have lived in as I would feel phony. I lack authority to take it anywhere beyond the hackneyed. Cleveland is old smokestacks. Ithaca is tacky sticky marijuana with crushed oak leaves. I have little clue for San Juan as its centers are so scattered. The old city that smells of heat bouncing off cobblestones and salt spray. The high rise mile of finance that smells like the fry traps of Chinese restaurants.
A digital place like Twitter would smell like animal shelter. That sharp nose slamming smell that indicates someone has been running around cleaning but the mess keeps piling up. It is pervasive and permeating. I mention this because I saw a RT where someone asked that. Someone with millions of readers and the most common response was a public restroom. But that is very abstract. This blog
I have a feeling on how certain specific places smell. My workplace in the winter smells like the wispy dust the lingers in the sunlight. It is tired and salty yet clear and subtle. This is also the smell of Central New York house for rent. It lingers in mud room vestibules cluttered with winter boots and three separate snow shovels.
My old job had airport parking lot smell. That is also salty but with hits of diesel fuel and engine exhaust. Note I did not work at an airport but in warehouse so there was also a living smell of rock doves in the rafters. The wispy husks of cardboard that smell of light friction.
The water in the gutters by my aunt's house in Mayaguez smell like wet dust and that fish tank smell of moving living systems gurgling.
My current office smells like little much save the musty sharpness of toner and whatever lotion someone has on. My space in it is likely petrified coffee shellacked into rings on the compressed cardboard.
On the news that Puerto Rico has (and continues) suffer from a series of stubborn earthquakes, I immediately thought of Mami. Oh, she is safe. She moved up to my sister's in Ohio. And she doesn't live in the "quake zone." But I could just imagine the reactions.
I think she would be most concerned about her wine. During the big one on 1/6/20, she would utter something like "The bitch made me spill my wine."
And during the remaining ones she would be drinking them all to save them from the aftershocks. "Mijo, I may need to buy boxed wine. But the box is so heavy that it hurts my wrist and I have to take two relaxers."
I could also imagine her wrapping up all the bottles in the monogrammed towels she kept pristine from her wedding day in the late 60s. Don't worry they are still beyond fluffy because she never let anyone use them. "They are for guests. But not every day guests. One set for me and one set for your father, may he rest in peace"
You may think this is mean. "Your poor mom. People down there are very scared."
And, you, mystery reader are right. Except for poor mom. We got poor mom out of there because there was nothing left for her in PR. People back home often paint anywhere but PR as a savage land. My dear grandmother was amazed to learn we had hot water in college in NY. She assumed it was impossible in the winter and that people bathed themselves with "a sort of warm rock." But considering most other places, including sleepy Ohio (Which based on recent moves from Columbus I know dub Mississippi On The Lake), don't have random power outages, earthquakes, and hurricanes I think we did OK.
Poor mom lives in a McMansion in southern Ohio. Her misery is now that my sister works too much (Note my sister works 2.25 hours a day) and my brother in law travels too much so she is so lonely. There is plenty of wine there.
Looking at my blog metrics it appears that now two people regularly read these posts. I have no clue who these folks could be except you can DM me on Twitter @garikapc. That is usually where some of these posts begins. As 240 character screeds where I shake my linguistic fist at phantom inconveniences. Maybe you came from there? Or maybe not? MAYBE YOU ARE A FAVORITE TEACHER!? Eek...sorry about all those posts. I know you are not Mami...quizas? But anyway, thanks!
Anyway here is the post and sorry that it is an MTG post but that seemed to be the trend this week.
Not going to lie but a lot of the 7th graders think I am cool.* Well, a lot of the 7th graders that play Magic The Gathering think I am cool. Which means like 5 kids. But these kids are constantly asking me to play with them. Which is sweet but I have no time after school. That is when I push paper and scrub down stalls and make sure my own son isn't screaming down the halls.
"Mr. A! I challenge you to a game of Magic the Gathering" said one as I passed him in the hall.
And my heart gushed. "Sure! What kind of deck do you play?"
"Mono black mill."
"...Is it Modern or Standard?"
"What?"
"Nevermind. Ok, sure ask your teacher."
"It is very good. I have only ever lost once in my playgroup and it is only 40 cards."
At this point I knew the kid, while well intended, was playing the trickiest of combo decks.
First, if you are not initiated then a MTG deck must have 60 cards.** I have seen some wild "kitchen table" (ie casual rules) in my day but never someone arguing to have less cards in their deck. There is a reason my your yet to be drawn cards are referred to as "gas" and cards like "Mind Flayer" or "Brain Blast" (Mind you I don't think these are actual cards) have an effect of making you discard cards.
A mono black mill deck? To the un-initiated (and why you are still here I am not sure), mill is a strategy where you don't win by killing someone. You win by making all their cards go into their discard. When they can't draw a new card, they lose. More often than not the person gets locked out of doing anything and just concedes. Mill is the "cult classic" of Magic win conditions barring actual goofy alternative win conditions like Happily Ever After.
I lost to this once on Arena and I am still face palming
Newer players love mill because it is so quirky. Its like when you first see a Monty Python movie and need to tell everyone about it but do so by saying NEE! to everyone. I love mill because it feels good. If you are one of those people that loves those Oddly Satisfying videos then you would love mill.
But in the five colors of Magic blue is the main mill one with black being the complement. A mono-black one? Its like Robin beating the bad guys all by himself.
Now, I don't play much competitve constructed Magic but I would guess Mono-Black Mill is equivalent to a Tier 4 modern deck. Saying it is not so great. But, that's fine. Its just a middle school library.
Doing a bit of digging I find that its a thing with a bunch of combo pieces like Altar of the Brood, Heartless Summoning, and Myr Retriever. THere is even an old The Mana Source video about it in Pauper.
So, that makes the 40 cards make sense. Because it lets him get to whatever combo he needs and just locks the opponent out. Would be awesome if it is wasn't cheating.
It is very hard to explain without knowing the game but imagine you are playing basketball except each team has their own ball. A red ball, yours, and a blue ball, theirs. THe blue ball is slightly smaller and faster than the red one. So it goes into the hoop quicker. It doesn't rattle as much. It leaves people hands faster on the pick and roll.
SO thats why. Because he can just sit around and the law of averages makes him get whatever 1 or 2 combo pieces he needs. I would lose because you just don't expect that since it is illegal. THe kid is pulling a Kobayahi Maru from Star Trek!
But, I am going to build my deck to ruin his whole day!
The great thing about Magic is the variance that lets even casual players beat pros. Not to say I am anything but casual but I don't plan on losing to a ginned up 40 card ringer deck! I get rick rolled by kids all day but not this day!
*I have a pair of Pokemon shirts that the younger ones love. They are Art Nouveau style Eevee evolutions. I love Art Nouveau and I love Eevee. And apparently so did a fair piece of the more weeby 6th grade girls because their teacher approached me once and said, "I need to see this shirt all the 6th grade girls are wild about." Which made me feel icky.
**Unless you are playing a format called Limited, where you build decks from packs you just opened Then 40 cards is perfect! This was not it. These kids are whipping out spot Sealed events.
So, the other day #girlsinyogapants was trending on Twitter. And, I am not made of stone so I viewed the hash tag at work and well....
Me, internally: #girlsinyoga pants is trending. Let's go!
Also, me internally, but screaming: OH NO! I am doing this from work! Why is this trending!? I thought porn bots were my friends! My only readers
Boss: Hey! Just thought I would drop in. What are you up to?
Me: NOTHING! ***slams computer***
Boss: .... Doesn't look like nothing.
Me, sweating: Oh, I needed to reset my password and I forgot. Well, it didn't take. So annoying. Sorry you had to see me like that
Boss: What's that you say...."PUT IN A TICKET!" ***Laughs a deep belly laugh***
Me: Haha, right!?
Also, me: ↓↓↓↓↓
As a closing note there was nothing exciting about that hashtag as it was a mix of A) People befuddled by it, B) Porn bots furiously retweeting, C) Jokes.
One thing at my job that leads to a regular crisis of confidence is when I visit some of our remote sites to assist with helpdesk issues. Everything is just different enough to lend itself to inevitable delays and that sort of tribal knowledge from my own location is gone. I also can't approve purchases for these sites so often I am just advising my peers who can who are out of the building. In any case here is a bit of a play.
Staff Member: Hey, can you help me with my projector?
Me: Sure. What happened.
SM: It exploded.
Me: ... FOR REAL?! (Note, internally I think this is beyond awesome.)
SM: Well...it got really hot and then a puff of smoke came out before it died.
Me: Oh looks like a a bulb died. Purchasing is getting a quote to then replace
SM: How fast will that be?
Me: I don't know. A week?
SM: Can you give me a projector? I need one very soon.
Me: ... No, sorry.
Also, me (internally): No, sorry. I left my Bag of Holding at the Hairy Troll Inn so I am plain out of projectors that I can just unfold from my satchel
The writing prompt book took me to an ask that said to begin a bit with an onomatopoeia type noise. So "BANG" or "KAPOW!" But that seemed to pedantic so I wanted to start with this...
HOT AND DANGEROUS!
That is what I am going to name my chili eating team. Coney Island has hotdogs every Independence Day but in February downtown Ithaca is going to host the Chili Cook Off and that will be our name.
Save, I need to find a team of people. But, its Ok because it is just October right now so I still have time. James from work said he would do it. So, that's one. But he is not very hot. It's ok. I am confident enough in my feelings to say that. He and I took and overnight trip once to Cedar Rapids for a conference and we shared a room. He came out of the shower in black briefs with little else and it was nothing special.
But, is he dangerous? I think he owns a gun.
Not that we need to be true to the name but it would work so well. Much better than all the topical names people fling around. A lot of semi political ones last year. The I'm Peachys. Yet Our Stomachs Persisted. Make Chili Spicy Again. I was surprised because it was all puns before but now you tried to ham fist something newsworthy.
I want to take it back with a pun like HOT AND DANGEROUS!
When I write the word here on this entry form (They released them already even though, like I said, it is October) I can hear the words too. Not just how they pronounced but a sort of drum and energy. A lot of twirling. I heard it in a song once, I know it. But, can't remember the name. So much Top 40 is so same-y. Maybe they will play it over the DJ booth at the festival and I will shout out, "Holy shit, guys. That's it! That's us!"
Maybe someone from my team will now. I need to recruit people who are hot and dangerous and have a better understanding of Top 40 pop then I. That should not be too hard.
The rules say you need at least 4 people on your team. One person competes in the heat portion and the other in the volume portion. You need 4 because there is a veggie and non-veggie tier for each. Teams don't judge quality. There is a chili marshal for that.
These happen simultaneously so hence 4.
There is a barista at the Gimme! Coffee on Seneca that could fit the bill. I see her every day and she smiles at me and we exchange more than usual pleasantries. Her name is Summer ("An awful name to give a woman from Central New York, I know," she told me that first time she shared it) and she has dreadlocks with marble beads braided into the two longest ones. I think she is cute so that will do for the hot but the dangerous? She once told me about blasting the steam wand on the espresso machine for a bit too long and scalding the palm of her hand. Could that do?
Findings these folks is getting hard especially since they are acquaintances. The last time I went on a date it was because someone set it up and that friend even was CC'ed on the emails. And, yes, we used email. It did not go great.
I could ask my mom! But she is not hot. No way. And dangerous? We got past that. But she would say yes. I jot down "Mom---the nuclear option"
I mostly just know people from work. Some of them are already on teams. I don't talk much to the night cleaner, Ernesto. I am going to ask him especially since I have to work late on Thursday making the deposit before the Columbus Day holiday. He has a mustache which lends an air of mystery.
A thought! Getting someone who is vegetarian will improve our chances in the veggie categories! They will appreciate it more. Whoever does it needs to love beans. If you drive just a few minutes out of town and sit in the bar by the Pudgies pizza then the people there will say that dangerous angry vegetarians are lousy in town. I jot that down. I can look on the missed connections on the town Craigslist. I also jot down posting on the town Reddit page that I am looking for people for my chili cook off team.
They need to agree to the name HOT AND DANGEROUS (Which is always capitalized so we will need to always inflect when saying) and then prove to me they are hot and dangerous.
"Aren't we always dangerous?" I imagine a few saying. These would be the good ones. Those filled with mystique and power.
"Yes," I would say. "But what do you think about beans?"
The real win? That is getting someone who meets all my criteria AND is from the town of Chili, NY. Which is not pronounced chili like the food but with a chi that sounds like the tea. Then a longer last syllable.
CHAI-LIE, New York.
Its only 45 minutes away. Its a suburb of Rochester. There has to be someone here that meets the bill.
I then jot down, 'Take a day to go Chili? Ask boss?"
My whole family got struck with a mighty cold that waylays everyone but me. Until about a week later when the only time I wasn't a dripping, sniffling, shivering mess was in the 4 hour reprieves granted by Advil Cold and Sinus. A true wonder drug that makes Dayquil feel like the bagged cereal of the OTC cold remedies.
For reasons that have no basis in science I stopped taking my other normal meds during this cold. It just felt odd and dirty. I already take 5 pills just to fucntion and now I needed one just to breathe. Let's give that one all the metabolic space it deserves.
Because of that I was off my antidepressant for 4 days. Its effectiveness is now proved by its absence. The guilt of not always doing something productive didnt become an awkward hollow fuzzy. It gnawed like before and I would want to bounce to blasting work emails and folding laundry and grinding in video games. If these were denied (because, you know, the kids need something. Can you believe it) then anxiety reigned until I wanted to curl into my couch. Luckily I spent a lot of time passed out so that helped.
I did appreciate losing the fuzzy cloud of feeling. The only way I can describe it is maybe having a significant other grab your palm under the table to silently sign, "No, stop." But all the time and in your mind. It's not normal albeit appreciated.
I was also eating more and flipping out quicker. A co worker snap chatted me with "angry ostrich face" as I told someone how little they knew about things actually got done. "You always are salty just less so sometimes," they said. I also crushed hard to the point where I spent 10 minutes staring at someone's earrings so smitten I was they way they fell on their face.
Once the cold cleared I went back to the routine now more comfortable with that metabolic bandwidth being shared by the ground level rate of medication.
The writing prompt I stumbled on was a "thief steals something from the Garden of the Sun." Which felt appropiate because it had just enough a shade of epic and the upcoming MTG set is ancient Greek themed and it made me think of Prometheus.
But I am awful at writing fiction. This blog is proof of that so I wanted to try something different.
In this situation the thief steals anxiety. Because the garden of the sun is actually a prison. It looks good for sure. It features a koi pond cut into a well manicured divot into a hillside surrounded by sedges and non-invasive cat tails. The fish themselves are fat mythical dragons the color of old amber. Around this pond there are butterfly bushes that are ever blooming. The whole space is well lit. True to name, in the Garden of the Sun it is always high noon so there are no shadows. At the center of the garden is a polished cedar pedestal holding the MacGuffin on anxiety itself. And anxiety is huge. Because everyone is anxious. About world war 3. About their health. About politics. About their children. About work. As you get older one realize that few people know what they are doing but those we perceive as better skilled are just pretending until they get by. You could say I am strong writer if you were to compare me to a freshmen English major.
So because we have been on a precipice for the last 30 years (Anxiety briefly shrunk after the Soviet Union fell and people agreed with the End of History point of view of world politics. But it recovered) anxiety is huge. It has no true form itself but the thief has studied what others have described. The shape is both deeply personal yet common. Cutting and quite mundane.
People describe seeing a lotus head filled with holes.
People describe seeing a single blue tile askew to the pattern in the bathroom floor.
They see a DMV form drowned in blue ink and the space in the boxes for one's personal information shrinking.
Its a child standing on the busy road shoulder as both sides of the rural highway fill up with F250s.
Sometimes its a feeling like a piece of popcorn husk shucked into your gums A partner saying we need to talk. A panicked co-worker saying what should we do. The feeling of sitting in the driveway of a relative's house knowing the weekend is already lost. Its seeing your crush and boiling the courage to say something to then realize this will be like all the other times.
But the thief takes anxiety because the thief has the special containment device. Its like the ghost trap in Ghostbuster but instead of it being made of metal and plastic and rubber it is made on a giant damn Cymbalta pill. A pill the size of a milk crate with the inside lined with all the rainbow colors of Paxil and vaporized Zoloft running through the internal honeycombed walls. And there are pipes made of gummi candy that carry chilled Proseco for cooling.
While anxiety is huge (The thief later reports that at seeing the box, Anxiety morphed into a hurt inky black pool of ink) it shrinks next to the containment device until it is the size of tennis ball and into the box it goes. It can never be destroyed but in the box it can be contained.
Free of anxiety the world becomes braver and bolder. The honesty crushes some (Even crushes some businesses and governments) but it lifts others. The robbery is a rising tide that sweeps some boats high and others under.
One day at worked I realized that a good majority of my day is spent moving things around. Boxes, trash, piles of dirt with a broom. And there is no shame in his work or in staying humble but that is far removed from what I tell people I do. But, that is how it shakes out and someone needs to move these boxes.
And that got me thinking of the making formerly intransigent objects mobile. Because another big part of my job is the 1st law of motion. Objects at rest stay at rest unless acted upon an external force. I am that external force. That case of paper? MOVED! This trash? DUMPSTERED! That overflowing dumpster? COMPACTED! This bureaucratic red tape? CUT! These binders? FILLED WITH RECEIPTS!
Then that got me thinking of stripped screws. We strip screws at work all the time. Which would make sense if say we were a carpenter or body shop but we are a school.
Its the tables which are all adjustable but only so through the technicality of the word adjustable itself. I could ride my cat cross country. It would take forever, involeve a lot of blood, and be no fun but sure he is a beast of burden. And so are these tables!
Now our tables come in two varieties. The ones I bought and the ones I inherited. THe ones I inherited are leftover civil defense monsters that weigh 900 lbs. I swear they are lined with lead to stop fallout when kids drilled to duck a cover. Then the ones I bought are the best soft cheese steel China can offer. Hey, I can admit it but I tend to get the lowest bidder because its a table!
Regardless of the style all are adjustable by using a series of screws that thread through a tubular slot in a metal sleeve anchored to the table. These then lock into a leg with different holes to lock in heights. Aligning these guys is a Death Star Trench run of suck. Both the screws and then the legs which, on the older tables, have been Fraknesteined together so even at the same damn height they don't align because 12" inches on Leg A IS NOT the same 12" as Leg B!
And all have either sunken fishing boat irons rust or brittle steel that strip at anything but the perfect turn with a screwdriver made just for it. So I strip all these guys. Usually the very last one when I think I am done and then it is FUCK!
But I have a stripped screw retriever. A tiny set of screws you hammer into the broken head and then wrench out so all the bound tension countervales at the turn of a crescent wrench and success! Feels amazing to pry one of those out and in my mind the scene goes like this...
Me: I got that stripped screw out for you. Leg is fixed
Teacher: ***swoon*** My hero!
Me: Alright!
But it really it is much less adventurous
Me: I got that stripped screw out for you. Leg is fixed
My last post made me reflect on Puerto Rican desserts. Note that as a kid I hated going to "traditional" restaurants because I wanted "other" food. Sometimes Mami called this American food (ie fast food chains) but it also meant anything ethnic or sugary. Worst at the traditional PR restaurant were the deserts. They were the same at every place no matter if it was The Tropicale in the abandoned Paseos mall or Burbujas or Los Hermanos. You know how you can go to any Chinese restaurant in America and they all seem to have the same menu? Well same happened in PR. The restaurant mob got together and said "Ok, we are all going to have the same deserts. They are going to be brought out on a giant serving tray for everyone to admire albeit they all know what to expect. And, of course, we won't make any of these."
So there was always flan. Which I am not a fan of. No fan flan here. Not a big fan of custards except creme burlee which is only passable because they toast the top and make it less like eating a piece of sugary whale blubber.
Then there was "dulce de lechoza" which means candied papaya except no one calls is lechoza back home. This is candied papaya served with a semihard white cheese I was taught was "Caribbean Cheese" You can find it at CostCo as Queso Caribe made in Wisconsin. Its damn good especially grilled in a pan like halloumi or other grilling cheeses. Here it is still good but the candied papaya is often dry and feels like sucking down the membrane on a long cold hot chocolate. Note this is impossible to find outside PR and now I crave it.
Then was "tres leches" which is three milk cake. Its a sponge cake soaked in three milks. What I was never sure. Regular milk. Condensed milk and err maybe like skim milk. Mami said it was goats milk but doubt it. In any case tres leches is OK except it can ave the mouth fell of soaked toilet paper.
Then the tray dices it up because the try to sneak in some more flan as different deserts. This is a chocolate flan and a pumpkin flan. Bull shit.
But the PR dessert I want to talk about is el brazo gitano (literally gypsy arm but likely means gypsy cake) or Jelly Roll cake as I have dubbed it.
The main player in the jelly roll cake is a company called Brazo Gitano Franco which is based in town I was born in, Mayaguez, PR. Mayaguez is like the Youngstown, OH or Binghamton, NY of Puerto Rico. It used to be a big deal and your family is from there. Famoulsy enough I took my then girlfriend now wife to Mayaguez and based on my description of it she for real thought there would be no power. "I expected a donkey to be tied up to a post next to the church," she said only to realize it is like City of Industry, CA just with no industry. And less Mexicans.
The Franco bakery is right across the River Yaguez from my aunt's house in the neighborhood Mami grew up in. You could swim there if you were so inclied especially since its about 30 feet but the water is about 90% silt. From what I understand you can walk there now what with all the silt build up but when we walked we had to cut through the abandoned concrete house someone left on the riverbank when the finance fell through.
This cake is ubiquitous across PR. It is in white rectangular boxes with a red and yellow trim. They come in dozens of flavors (still indicated by a marker check someone physically puts on there) but the default one is guava.
Now if you run into another Puerto Rican they are going to say that oh yeah they love brazo gitano but they are laying because no one likes these monstrosities. It is the candy corn of Puerto Rico. Or fruit cake. It exists solely to be gifted to people you don't care enough about but still feel obliged to. Or to tourists in the duty free section of SJU airport.
All these bad boys are a yellow sponge rolled around a gritty guava paste. They are then BLASTED in powdered sugar and sealed in plastic wrap and shucked into the box.
These things are awful. Dry yellow cake with too much powdered sugar and that paste that bites back. It makes you scream for something to drink. 'Its not to bad with a cup of coffee," Mami said last time she ferried some up for me and the family. Well, falling off the roof of my house isn't too bad with a cup of coffee either, Mami!
There are other flavors. The "crema" (cream) flavor was OK as it was filled with a white buttercream frosting that did not taste like the bottom of a grizzled prospector's pan.
Mind you there are competing jelly roll cakes in Mayaguez like Ricomini but I never had there cakes. I would like to both these sites but the Franco one is "under construction" and the Ricomini one is a 404 error code. "Mayaguez is a sleepy town. We rise and go to bed with the rooster," said a cousin of mine once. "Mayaguez is where we swallow a cable," is what we mother would say meaning its a boring place. And she grew up there! It reminds me of that line in Return of the Jedi where Luke tells Han there is nothing to see on Tatooine.
Oh, one GREAT desert is the Yemita which translates to "little egg cake" and I can't find anywhere on Google. That was a treat for going to Mayaguez. It is was an airy sponge cake covered in a bright yellow glaze and then coated with sprinkles. They then sprinkled some rainbow dot sprinkles on it and sealed this all in with an egg wash. It was golden and bright like a rod of escaped plutonium. The size of a bar of soap it was a meal onto itself.
Now I want one of those but that would mean going to Mayaguez.
As they say around my house..."At least 2019 won't be written on my gravestone."
And because it is that time of the year I am putting down in writing my 2020 resolutions. That way all you porn bots can keep me accountable*
1) Eat Less Sugar
If you read this blog then you know I love bread. Like my favorite snack is a "Taco De Sal" which is a tortilla pan fried with butter and salt. Mind you that made me a professional fat kid and pre-diabetic so back in the late summer my doctor told me to cut that out. And bread isn't too hard to cut out but I love candy. Mami was not one of those "we have dessert" type people** so once I could make/pay for my own meals you bet we are going to have dessert. But considering you know it is awful for me I am going to need all the willpower.
2) Drink More Water
So when I want to eat candy I am going to slam my fist in a wal....err...I mean I am going to drink water.
3) Play More Commander!
Commander (aka EDH) is a Magic format where you have a 100 card deck lead by a legendary creature type (Your commander) and then 99 other singular cards. It is an incredibly popular paper format that emphasized multiplayer. If you are not a nerd then its just a good way to scream at people in a basement using pieces of cardboard wrapped in plastic. But Commander is FREE at the local game store and it fires every weekend (as opposed to draft) so as long as the wife let me dissapear for 3-4 hours on Saturday then we are all good.
That't it! And hopefully these resolutions (Well except for number 3) will help me cheat death a bit longer and maybe keep losing some weight and getting those gains*** so favorite teachers notice me! And not just because they overheard me talking to myself about how this is all bullshit or spilled coffee on my shirt.
*Instead of asking for my money to meet hot single moms in my area. I know the kind of people who live in my neighborhood and only 1 of those 3 is true.
**Mind you PR desserts aren't so great. Candied papaya and some white cheese? Ehh, not so much
***There are no gains. I approach all the weights at the gym as if they are going to buck up and punch me right in the dick.
