Favorite Video Games # 3

 You ever see that meme where someone is holding a sign that says "Your music saved me!" and then the next panel it is something like "Never Going To Give You Up" or "Cotton Eye Joe"?

Stardew Valley, number 3 on the list, has that same vibe save that it is sincere with no hints of irony.

Stardew is a farming simulator where you build up an abandoned farm from nothing but packs of turnip seeds and rusty gardening tools.

Stardrew is a slice of life simulator where you live in a small port town and meet, and possibly romance, close to 20 distinct non playable characters (NPCs).

Stardew is retro pixelated top down combat simulator where trying to get to the bottom of Skull Cavern is as hard as any better known dungeon crawler. 

Stardew has a fishing mini game (a tricky one but once mastered you never want to stop) which is a lock for making me love any game*

Stardew also have a classic video game vilian, a time limit, with each 24 hour day (about 15 minutes of in game time) being your chance to water crops, feed animals, buy seeds/supplies, harvest your artisanal products (You can make wine, beer, cheese, etc.), chat with your NPCs, fish, chop wood, mine, and then go sell your items. And there is a wizard and cat that sells hat. Oh, and doing all this helps you save a run down community center beating out a global conglomerate (Joja Mart) and their threat to small town life!**

And, while I didn't need saving,*** this game is loaded with a vibing and wholesome community of people who say how it cured their depression. How it made them good cry.**** How it winds them down after a long day. It cures their anxiety. It makes them feel accomplished. They bonded with their spouse over a shared game. 

The game was also made primarily by a single guy, Concerned Ape, who is sort of tech bro we THOUGHT we were going to get when unboxing our first PCs.

You hear all this and the game is not overwhelming. You can play at your own pace and if you don't want to mine (and fight goofy cartoon monsters) then you don't. You don't want to fish? No problem. Sure, you don't get to see every cut scene and check every box but that is ok. And, if you are completionist, then this is the game for you. And a diverse set of things to track down, make and find. Not just more of the same in a huge map. When I found the enigmatic Prismatic Shard I screamed "OMG A Prismatic Shard, yes!" and my wife laughed from the neighboring room. "What a nerd!" This game can be many things and it can also provide satisfaction to us elder millennials who dream of maybe owning a home in a walkable community and saving the world with our sustainable agriculture. Get friendly enough with Shane, the surly town drunk NPC, and you save him for suicide in probably the darkest scenes in the game. SDV firmly makes you the hero of your own story.  

With so many options you can sink hundreds of hours into the game and then start a new save and have a distinct experience, particularly with the dating/marrying option. I don't have the heart to start a new save so it is just me and the local sculptor, Leah, and our kids on Ironhoe Farm. 

*Does your video game have a fishing mini game? Then you automatic get 8 out of 10. Does it have women holding swords? 9 out of 10. Women have neon pink/blue, etc hair? Fuck! 10 out of 10. Must buy!

**UNLESS you got the Joja route and buy a membership and instead just repair the community center with money. Doing this nets same in game effects save the forest spirits (Yeah they help fix the community center when you offer them crops) have to exile themselves. This is the bad choice and controversial among fandom. 

***At least, not that I know of. If any game will save me it will have a fishing mini game in it. 

****In the early part of the game you are given a choice to adopt a dog or cat and name it. It is common for people to name them after childhood pets often long deceased. And eventually, if you pet and feed the animal every day, the game will prompt you with a text that says your pet loves you. And its sweet and cut like a knife. 

Favorite Video Games #4

Between 2006 and 2010, I spent most of my time looking for jobs. And not the kind off job hunting memed in young professional memes and reels. Not looking for something better if not just looking for something. I spent this time not necessarily always unemployed but under employed. PT hours and gig jobs. I got paid in a 100 Target gift card once. 

But, when at home, I played ROMS of Gameboy games. ROMS being bootleg rips of games you could play on an emulator program on your machine. Your laptop could be a Gameboy (or anything if you have the right specs) and play for free any and all games. 

Here I played Pokémon: Crystal which was the second Pokémon game but this was years after its release.

Now, original Pokémon? Red and Blue. Oh yeah I played the hell out of that and lived the schoolyard memes (Missingo hack, etc) but just stopped playing once I went to college. Pokémon went on. And on and on.

Those games in 2008 (now some one firmly in kid 20s) were a return and hint at everything new. The new starters. The goofy look of Wooper and how adorable Mareep evolves into beady eye Ampharos. Here I got wrecked by Whitney's Miltank, a brutal battle in games now known for ease of access.* It made me love the franchise all over again even, almost 30 years from the first, it hasn't moved much beyond animated gifs slamming into one another.

I used to work at a school and my knowledge of most Pokémon from generations 1 through 6** was always impressive to the children. I have this art nouveau styled Umbreon shirt that I would sometimes wear on Fridays, which is when the already casual dress code rules*** were even slacker, and be the envy of all the middle schoolers

"What is this shirt that is making all the seventh grade girls go crazy!?" asked a teacher pulling me aside in the hallway. I felt truly small and pathetic hearing that exact phrasing. 

I'm talking less about the game itself and more the experience. This is an intergenerational franchise with manic adult fans and kids. It makes oodles of money because of that as compared to say a Power Rangers fandom, which is for kids but is held up by adults. But, yeah, we knew the Team Rocket anime saying by heart and I spent a vacation trip to the USVI desperately hunting for batteries for Red and Blue games on the OG Gameboy. The seeds for this were already laid when I downloaded those roms and reconnected in Johto, Generation 2/Pokémon Crystal's home continent. Crystal got re made in the mid 2010s onto the Nintendo DS as Heart Gold/Soul Sliver and damn those games are amazing. In color and popping with a neat gimmick of the Poke Meter. It was a pedometer shaped like a white and red Poke Ball that could take to the game via likely RFID or some infrared connection. So drop your Pokémon in the Pokemeter and go for a walk and it gains levels, finds gear, even other Pokémon! I worked a warehouse job then so getting 12K steps a day was nothing. My pokes were yoked!****

I have bought every Nintendo handheld (The DS allowed for cross play from older Gameboy Advanced games so that helped me with Ruby and Sapphire) so I can play these games and its my turn with the Switch when Scarlet came out! Out of the way kids. 

The franchise for sure needs a refresh. We have Pokémon dogs based on cinnamon rolls right now and how many more horrible fish Pokémon can we get? But, it allows for a conversation with young and old and scratches that itch of cheerfully grinding for incremental advantage. 

And, my top ten, fwiw

1) Vaporeon (Poke Mermaid!)

2) Crobat (Lighting Bat!)

3) Litten (Fire Kitty!)

4) Mudkip (MUDKIP MUDKIP MUDKIP!)

5) Annihilape (Spooky King Kong)

6) Sandslash (BA Dirt Porcupine)

7) Raichu (Alolan) (Trippy Surfing Thunder Mouse, Go!)

8) Luxray (Lighting Kitty!)

9) Rockruff (Rock Puppy!)

10) Breloom (Punching Mushroom!)

*Gen 1 is brutal. The way stats were set up meant the psychic type gym was near impossible. Counter it with bug type moves? Well they all suck. Counter with ghost moves? Well all the ghost typed are also poison which psychic wrecks and Shadow Ball runs off attack Stat. Why?! Gen 2 was ok save for Milbank and Gen 3 is where we get a nice balance of hard the quality of life improvements. This isn't me being some Poke boomer. I appreciate not needing HM slaves and not keeping boxes free and sharing experience but damn did an all level 60 team feel great back in the day.

** Each game is a generation setting the tone for the show and Manga, etc. 30 years of Pokémon and nine generations so far.

***I once had a co worker bemoan that we allowed the Assistant Principal to wear ripped jeans. Could I do something about it? No, I had no business talking about the AP's pants.

****I promise to never say that again.

Favorite Video Game 5

 When Twitter died (for what seems maybe real albeit it has been over many times before), I moved to Mastodon. Mastodon is neat but in a DIY sense. The people on Mastodon remind of that one guy in 8th grade computer club who really liked Linux and our collective response was "What?" We were debating which of the Solitaire card backs in Windows was best. People on Mastodon have their houses wired with mini network rooms. 

At the time, the trend was to drop a hashtag and introduce yourself My Space style with favorites, dislikes, etc. And since it is the Mastodon fediverse there is no algorithm to glean your info. Instead it is left for people to find by searching the hashtag. Mastodon has an early 00s message board feel where you find certain people, chats, veins and then run with them. Its work but feels redeeming. I remember spending a lot of time trying to get stars on the Fish Lore or The Agony Booth to get that same feeling.

One of the intro hashtags was favorite video games. For this ask I always have my answers ready. Its an ice breaker that I have anxiously practiced over hundreds of times*

So, ill milk this for a series of posts to get those numbers up and those two sets of eyeballs reading.

And Number 5, is kind of a cheat. Sorry! Because its a category of a game. And, one I made up.

It's the Big Dumb Shooter.

First experienced in the aforementioned computer club when we played the first few levels of Star Wars Dark Forces from demo dics.

And then just honed to death in Goldeneye of which I was the generation that argued over people cheating by picking OddJob and the guy who insisted on Licenses to Kill (you die in on hit) and then Slappers only (there are no guns just people running around trying to karate chop each other). 

Not to mention arcade light gun shooters. I sank way too many quarters into Area 51 and Revolution X. The latter being a rail gun shooter (you cant do anything but aim and shoot. No moving through the area. All the arcade shooters are like this, making this aside somewhat moot.) where you fight a tyrannical rock and roll hating regime with CD shooting guns while being mentored by Aerosmith. There are super soldiers in rubber yellow and black armor running around on rollerblades and bug eyed ninjas throwing Nerf throwing stars at you. Other things in this game

• Steven Tyler tells you, dead to rights, "Music is the Weapon"
• Laserdisc are flaming CDs which deal even more damage
• You have to save hostages (The same bleached blond 90s California babe in a pink tank top) by shooting away the locks on their stripper cages. Note they are still dancing while there is a gun fight happening. That male gaze is something.

But, the first time I ever played a big dumb shooter and thought "Damn, is this is a game**" was Far Cry 3. That game is a banger with an open world (That doesn't feature that enemy scaling bullshit. No point in an open world if there are areas you are wink wink not really allowed to go to) and a real sense of clawing your way back. The premise?

You and your friends are partying in a pictaresque Indian ocean archipelago and get kidnapped by pirates save for you (who escape) and then have to shot and stab your way to save them. You have to craft weapons, gear to carry more weapons, and then medicines from the animals and plants on the islands. This is all pretty reductive save to say that the world felt alive (Still empty. There are people there but, like an shooter world, its either shootable or not) particularly with the animals. You will be running away from enemies after messing up some stealth attempt to take down an outpost and also waiting for the game to let you heal*** and jump into a pond. And then, there is an alligator in there and you are WTF! You are lining up to take a long sniper shot and the familiar hiss of a Komodo Dragon pops up and you are No no no no, fuck!

The game also sets up umpteen sequels (all just derivatives of FC3) that add more features (In FC6 where you fight in a fictionalized Cuba you have a backpack that shoots rockets and a cock fighting rooster that can kill people) but its just lots of fluff. The core formula works so well that they have set it to run in Paleolithic time (Primal) and cyber vector punk futures (Blood Dragon), then Nepal (4) an Montana (5 and New Dawn)

Far Cry 3 also has an overpowered bow and arrow weapon which can one shot guys in armor. The developers weaken this in later games but damn is it satisfying to plunk people with it. Lets me say "bend back your bow" which is a lovely phrase.

Next one (and all the next ones) are less violent so don't worry. This is as dude bro as it gets.

*As an introvert (The last time I did a Myers Brigg I was INFJ If that helps you contextualize) the worst thing with icebreakers is not the questions themselves but going first. For this, I have many canned responses and quirky facts. I enjoy the lesson teaching semi woke ones meant to make you think. These feel better in an 8th grade classroom but fuck yeah can I name 10 countries in Africa. 20, 30, 40, 50. Bring it on! 

**Note that there are many great games I have played but arne't on the list. Not a knock on them just that if you tell me "Hey, no way you would ever be allowed to play these games again." then I would be quit sad, indeed.

***Big douche daddy shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield (I actually like the B3 soundtrack fwiw) popularized the "hide behind a crate and heal" motif. Far Cry does that save that the game lets you start a manual heal. Which then involves varying scenes where you characters heals by pulling a shark tooth out of their hand. Or shoving a bundle of matches into a wound to cauterize it.

Place holder

I lived in a basement apartment once with exposed pipework running above in the ceiling. The guy above would flush the toilet and it sounded like a tub of Hot Wheels poured down the sewer. 

There were big double jointed spiders that just hung in corners until they decided to sprint across the floor. Here I go! I swear I saw them twirl their legs in full 360 circles once. The old landlady left doily lace curtains in the half window wells. They were yellowed, the color of coffee rings on formica. The spiders spindles website through them to make all encompassing nests.

My budget covered Wegmans brand vegetarian vegetable soup and grilled cheese sandwiches made from an All Clad pan I pulled from bulk pick up. 

Once the bathroom ceiling leaked until water poured through the break in the plaster. Brown and laced with webby film must have been stuck there for days. I fixed the hole with duct tape and a layer of acrylic white paint, all bought at the dollar store.

It would have been haunted. A woman in the walls if not so boring. Placed on Foothill Avenue behind the Dennys.

The whole place was just ok. 

Time Sheets

Haunted by a lack of things to do

The cleaners decides to triple bag

All the cans. Bartenders drill deep shines 

Into wormwood. Red, brown, old blood

On sheets for the cleaning lady to scour

Baking soda and Dawn dish soap

Not on the list. So not in the Instacart 

Your mistake, not mine. Waiting

For things to do. To fill up the time sheets

Five minutes chatting with Kaitlynn with two n in her name. A meeting someone canceled.

A post with many exclamation points

Someone sent me a meme reel with no context. "White American NBA players!"

I replied thanks and haha. They replied they had been let go from their job. 

"Their loss," I replied. This is a line I honed after years of emphatic trial and error. I once worked with sooner who loudly proclaimed how, over an inconsequential weekend, how she got engaged. "And I got this!" she said flashing a silver ring with a square cut diamond. 

A year later, I learned through an ersatz meeting at copier she wad no longer with that fiance. "His loss!" That got a laugh. A flash of Baikal blur eyes and snuggle tooth smile.

I had said this to myself. Usually after not getting a job. I have been turned down for myriad jobs. I drive through greater Cleveland, OH and it's a laundry list of all the places that didn't hire me. 

That pie baking bastard! Those stiffs in the office park! The philanthropic foundation! The massotherpay clinic above the vacuum store! The local public theater! The coffee shop here and the coffee shop there! All didn't callback. Their loss! "A real sad story of opportunities lost," my wife says as she can't endure another tale of riding the bus for 45 minutes just for a no from the raw food cafe. Their loss!

Last Day of School

I wanted a picture for this post. Taken years ago it was from the roof of my old school. On the last day of school I made it a thing to go on the roof and survey the two block radius. Couldn't find it, even with social media able to remember and show me everything else. Found my very first Instagram post  (An aquarium picture that said bubble bubble) but this picture must have only existed in my kind. My own custom made Mandela effect of a last day tradition.

Maybe it never happened? It wasn't documented and I am the only and quite biased narrator often this blog. 

No toe curling memories of teachers being up there and arching over the waist high parapet. I don't mind heights per se. It's edges that get me. The line between feet on the ground and ass over ankles. People will sometimes say "I just can't with this." 

Well, I can't with people peering over balcony edges or railings. Those teachers peering over the edge towards the park (The blue park in the students lingo) were all just forthcoming splats on the sidewalks. I could be the hero and swoop them into my arms but it's a 40-foot drop and I would freeze.

The roof's surface had the consistency of rising bread. Pockets of it poked slightly higher above the actual flashing between the brick and tar. Walking on it had a moon bounce vibe. A bouncy house just set to high chaotic randomness. You will fly one day and another you will roll an ankle.

There is a service ladder on the side of the building that people seem to prefer. In my memory that was never in play. Instead getting up meant climbing a ladder in a custodial closet, dodging a burning 150 watt bulb and a head first scoot over a gap to reach the crawl space under the roof hatch. There are dozens of crumpled packets of menthol cigarettes in this run. Oddball economy brands at the bottom of the shelf. Maverick, Newport, Kools

In the pic, the flag on the flag pole snaps into focus on the teal of a hundred kids playing field day are in soft relief. The Key and Terminal Towers poke up from the far horizon. There are sycamore trees as tall and old as the school building and the maneuvering SUVs and vans fighting for a place to park. 

That picture is gone. Or never existed. That tradition is over and likely people are safer for it. My hearts bends and breaks thinking about it exposed up in the air.

Typing

In order to stay warm, the landlord has set up an exchange (a neat nest of wires and a tiny network switch) to talk to a computer to talk to the furnace. The whole system has ears and it needs the sounds of a clicking keyboard. Write to stay warm. Say something and do not freeze.

I am not writing and selling stories to pay the heating bill. Instead the sound and effort makes the thermostat click and triggers the throaty sigh as the furnace comes to a head. 

I'll repeat the same phrase over and over. 

This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb

I want to take an axe to the computer. Yes fuck it.

I'll type out the alphabet. 

Luckily, mercifully, the whole setup lets you prime it. So type a thousand words and it will run a half day.

I'll re-write essays from middle school. Here is what I have learned about "Poseidon since that 7th grade paper. He really was all about horses. How did I miss that? Also, makes no sense"

I won't write scripts but instead the scripts to YouTube video reviews of nostalgic shows.

"Arclight is a slightly truly historic adventure series that ran two seasons between 2005 to 2007. It tells the fictionalized ghost hunting escapades of Charles Brush who really did invent the arclight"

I'll type out secrets. Regrets. Wishes

Throw into the void how I no call, no showed quit that sandwich sub shop. The teleplay beats of my fantasies. The things I've shoplifted. The times I've been cruel and never had a chance to make up for it. 

Every time I felt guilt averting eyes from the man outside the VA clinic drafting through traffic asking for a change. The time in college a professor thanked me for reading all the assigned books in the class when I missed one. Only half reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography. Swear he wrote 70 pages for every year he was imprisoned 

I'll type things that made my day or brought a change to it.

This lady wore a dress to the office today. What could that mean?

This house is all black and on the porch a man with gauged ears takes photos of Jack o lanterns and orange twinkle lights in May.

The purple glow of tomato houses across Lake Erie

I don't know where it is all logged. Or.if anyone reads them but it's there and kindling the furnace each morning and evening. During the day it is up to the cats to clatter over the keys.

Middle Management Memo

Hello Friends!

Short Version: Please answer the check questions honestly and we can all just get on with our days. This will be over soon.

Long Version: Someone left ChatGPT running for too long and now Catty Gupridner Thane shows up in both Slack and Teams and Discord.* And, no, it is not real but just real enough to merit the following protocols to make sure you are chatting with a real live co worker and not a pile of 1s and 0s on a Chechen server farm.

At random points of the day, when chatting in any of our varied communications methods you may get prompted to answer one of these:

1) Meme check! Share your most recent meme on your phone. No cheating!

2) What color is your underwear?

3) What is the word of the day? It will be written by Alexis in the lounge every morning. And if Alexis is out then Sam will. If both are out then pray you don't get this question!

4) Is a hot dog a sandwich?

5) Describe a city bus, please

6) Look out the window in room 307 and tell me what you see**

7) Are there any secrets this year?

8) Sing a song in the public domain

9) Name the best struggle food/meal

10) Type a backwards e

Knock one of those out and you can get working! Fail and you will either have to go open a ticket with helpdesk or wait 10 minutes for it to reset and try again. These will fool Catty beacuse, as a proto AI,*** it has no legs to walk, speakers to sing or eyes to see with then we will be golden.

The underwear question has been cleared with HR. It is being asked professionally so all good. 

The engineers are hard at work right now making sure we block out Catty who really can't hurt you but can send you meeting invites to clog up your schedule and send emails saying "per my last email" when the last one said the same thing.

That's it! 

-Middle Management

*Why the company allows for all three of these, I am not sure, but the free trials of one of then will end soon. Which one? Well you will have to guess! 

**If not close to 307 then get up and move to it. Failure to do so will cause your machine to explode!

***If something graduate students out of Adderall use when writing papers could be called an AI

Creeping Dread

We have no lack for tips to live longer. Get eight hours of sleep. Drink more water. Take the walk break from your desk. Less carbs, more fiber. Make boundaries. Say yes to no. Etc, etc, etc. 

Then there are those for our immediate safety. Avoid dark alleys and always lock your doors, especially the sliding glass window/doors on the ground floor.

Then the apocryphal. My mother always said to pour the rice into the boiling pot in the shape of a cross. In the name of the father, son, and the holy ghost. Dinner will be ready in 45 minutes. 

I always check the liminal spaces in my home. If I go to the restroom and that shower curtain is drawn, I will peak behind. Doesn't matter if its a desperate need to go so bad that a kidney stone is already biting back. Or, if I am visiting a home and it is an elaborate frou frou setup with cloth wallpaper print actual curtains over vinyl sheets. These are the shower curtains that also have that sash that hooks against the wall to tie back the curtains. Like in a living room.  Those will be popped to the side to make sure no one is there. 

Ill worry about women in walls. This is a deeply irrational paranoia and feels very foreign. Something like "The woman who lives in the cupboard? Yes, that is akin to the Japanese spirit the knocks whenever kids don't finish their milk." Its not based on anything in my past or present, save from any hole can come a spindly drowned cat looking woman that drips from drop ceiling panels. Or from the space behind the tub where the laundry chute ends up. I always check these spaces flipping on lights and flailing arms into them to shake out the double elbowed phantom from its hiding space. 

Note these monsters don't live in enclosed spaces (like under the floor boards or the room Harry Potter lived in at his aunt and uncle's) but in the open. The Ikea Kallax shelf with the fabric cubbies that slide in and out is a favorite. She will curl her fingers through and over the handhold and then push against the lip of the shelf to then wriggle out like a shadow coming into its final draft. 

Things My Mother Said

"At night, all cats are black." 

A version of "we are all in the same boat" or, in more wholesome versions, "all same on the inside." Usually used in an "it is what it is" sense of indifference. Also see "same difference"

"Blacker than an old telephone"

Means dirty. In reference to shared phone handles touched by thousands of hands. 

"Big bell, little town"

A loudmouth or trouble maker but who cannot back up their talk. The boy who called wolf meets Regina George.

"Everything in life has a solution except for death"

A version of "nothing is guaranteed save death and taxes" Said quite often like a mantra almost like inshallah among Muslim folks.

"That is a pretty cage for such an ugly bird"

Usually reserved for older mean driving expensive cars. An ugly or unpleasant person in possession of something lovely. Note that cannot be used to refer to a situation where say boyfriends is a 4 and girlfriend is a 10. Has to be a thing. Can also apply to houses or plum jobs.

"Peaches and cream"

Rich and arrogant. Never said in Spanish but always in English but pronouncing cream as cleem.

"From any hole comes a mouse"

An ominous phrase meaning problems can arise anywhere. Usually used before checking something again or emphasize passive aggressive concern for something already solved.

"To swallow cables"

Always used as a descriptor to an event or situation. Ie, this party is to swallow cables. Means bored and a painful defeating boredom at that. 

"It's dying of laugther"

Something not in use and stored away is "dying of laugther." Always used pointedly to emphasize how something was a waste of time, money or effort. The skateboard the kids wanted and never rode...it is dying of laughter in the garage

Please note, these all sound better in Spanish.

Action Music

Someone recently asked me "What is your walk up song?" Some context, we were at a baseball game, so it made sense in the moment. Not like someone asked me this at a bus stop or in the line at Marc's. 

I answered Sandstorm by Darude, which appropriately aged me but also nailed it as an excellent song. Many high fives from the others needling both sides of 40. Someone said a song by A$AP Rocky and I was "Who? What?" But, that got a praise chorus from the younger set. 

I struggle whenever asked "What kind of music do you like?" That question seemed an extension for it and luckily I overheard it as my colleagues worked down the line of co-workers. Had time to think and make something true to myself but not too esoteric. This all makes me sound like quite the hipster and, don't worry, its more that I like video game scores or "action music." Action music being a term I coined and never shared until now in this post.

Is your song one I can set a sword fight against? Yes? Then, that is the first step! What else do you have? Bleeps? Bloops? Score of public domain submarine sounds like in Kate Bush's Under Ice?* Descending violin notes? That is something I overheard once cutting through the music school in college (I used to walk at night listening to....guess what...on my discman and poke through buildings to sometimes escape the cold or just make for change of scenery) and then in the description of the actual audio clip I found, years later, on YouTube. 

Action music is what plays when the heroine armors up or undergoes the henshin transformation to become a super hero. Gets streaks of pink in her hair and a barbed sword flies down to land in her hand. 

*Note this song does not meet action music status. But it is moody and has a climbing ominous energy. It is a song to set a trailer to for the hero to work against/with said action music.

Decades

The whole thing felt smaller. Decades

Ago, when I began and still tried

To impress the men in stiff shirts. Proud

Of having lost 20 pounds on eating beans

To impress the women in long black skirts

And with unicorn pink tips. Highlights

Of years served and bar reviews that 

Averaged on the better side of OK. 

I got there, boys. The reward is

Staying. To see others wriggle and maybe

Thrive. Decades still to go.

Seasons

 Never had a job that was outdoors. Not for lack of trying. At a younger age, I wanted to work for the National Park Service and attended universities by the sea. But, all my jobs had some connection/view of the outdoors

Coffee shop: Big plate windows to the street and shop sat over Trumansburg Creek.

Warehouse jobs: These were ancient warehouses often unheated and definitely not air conditioned. Animals would pour in through broken windows and torrents of water during hard rains

School job: Always away from my desk for something. Searching grounds for litter. Bringing in deliveries and tossing garbage. Working the dismissal line.

But, in my new job, I am, indeed, at a desk. A nice desk in a nice office for sure but its a desk job. Seasonality is lost on me. Leaving at the end of the day is disconnected from the start. Its darker. Colder or warmer. And its sudden and stark like transitions in a video game. 

I miss that excuse to be outside and feel some connection to the elements. Co workers will say its too cold in the office and I recall standing in an empty parking lot waiting for the distinct broken bumper of the green Nissan signifying the last parent was here for their kid. Its cold over by the conference room but cold usually meant staring into other co-workers eyes when that was you could see. The rest bundled under hats and parka hoods. Often this was loading a truck, the metal walls humming back the chill. On better, yet still freezing days, its the loose wisps of hair of a work crush dangling over her eyes. 

Working at a school, fall meant new bulletin boards. At the warehouse, it was leaves stuck to the sky light windows so that spotty shadows dropped onto the cement. At the shop it was leaf shaped raspberry cookies and new drinks to sell. At the office job, it depends on the prowess of the HR team signing people up for the costume contest. 

People Watching

In Northeast Ohio there is a manic discount grocery/small box store called Marc's. Its owned by a local ersatz celerity/villain named Marc Glassman who has a walrus looking mustache and glasses. His carton mascot version is festooned all over the stores. Above end caps with the latest deal. Right above the door pointing to the exit sign.

These stores are if Aldi rolled down a hill. And, Katamari style, they picked up all kinds of other junk and landed in between a Home Depot and a movie theater. More recent stores have a glo up with a happy block logo with a green leaf (To denote freshness, I bet) but the legacy stores are set in functioning has been energy. 

At some point they have away free coffee at the customer service desk. Where you would go to get cigarettes or rent the carpet cleaners they had a silvery urn of weak scalding bean water. The stuff funeral homes wouldn't serve to the dead

You can buy aluminum foil wrapped Nathan's hot dogs at Marcs. But not from a snack bar but a heated island in the deli. Next to the produce there are wilted African violets and an overflowing "seasonal" section with three dollar slides and knock off toys. Instead of Legos...Mega Brix. 

Lots of good people watching at Marc's. The only benefit when I find myself in there. Privilege check: I find myself in the social strata where I can just go to Target but Marc's is cheap and there for a reason. Sometimes I need a four dollar pack of Gia Nonna Momma (Must be San Marino's favorite coffee, yes) and that hits the spot. And there you see the old timers in marshmallow doughy shoes. A lot of people carrying oxygen tanks and people wearing pajamas out.

And not nice pajamas like when wearing black yoga pants then layering some sort of top/dress over it for this tunic look. People in knotty pilled sweatpants and oversized shirts from Hot Topic. What does the person wearing plaid pajama pants and the Great Malenko ICP shirt have to say of the price of Voom detergent?

Yelling About Laundry

Have you ever watched Pluto TV? I don't know how it works (I assume it is evil and based around some conglomerate of all IPs) but it streams tons of old and random shows for free. It reminds me of OG Hulu when it was all free and random and I still recall watching NBC's Surface (discussed in this blog) and some ABC show about attorneys. That show stood out because one attorney was from Case Western Reserve University which is in Cleveland to which I applied to, and failed, about 50 jobs when first moving here. That show (I really wish I could remember the name) also had a scene where one female attorney spills coffee on her shirt and goes to the other attorneys office to grab a spare shirt*  and she takes off her dirty shirt off right in the middle of the office. Then a male attorney walks in and...its network primetime titillation. I can't remember this show but its like if the first two seasons of New Girl were distilled into 2 minutes. 

I mentions all this because Pluto tends to just ram the same kinds (if not the same one outright) ad in breaks. All fast food or all laundry products or, when the time is right, all election ads. One day I got stuck on the laundry train and yelled that the Tide Clear Pods don't look as appealing as the normal ones. Just make them all clear and not candy themed.

"She shouldn't be wearing pants!" I scream incredulously and pointing at the TV. Not at the world most boring adult film** but instead as the ad for the Bounce static cling reducing sheets. Our commercial heroine should take her slinky ankle length dress and walk around pants less (or at least in sweats) while the sheets do their magic in the dryer. That makes more sense, yes? What do I know, most of what I know is from movies.***

*This is an all pro move and something you should do especially if coffee has a laser lock on fucking up your day. Never wear white, anytime!

**Anyone who patches pornography on the TV is either a boomer, somehow incarcerated, or an absolute maniac. Why the tube sites have that "Broadcast to TV" button is something that should be regulated. You need to drop three multifactor authentications (texts and a finger print scan and something not yet invented) before that beams to the flat screen. 

***This post features a lot of people in varying states of undress. I guess sorry, not sorry. 

Check In

At middle age, I found myself using the term " value add" unironically. There was a contest at work to name the new conference rooms. Drop them all here in the link but remember it is not anonymous so keep that in mind, folks. I submitted generic local pride names (Lake Effect) and my most acerbic was "Quick Wins" which, mileage varies if people will get the tongue in cheek note. In the last year that is the zenith of my writing having pivoted to a new job in the entrepreneurial world. 

I used to write to textualize fantasies and day dreams. The pandemic with its zoom calls and intimate distance was fertile ground for jotting things down. I would drop them on my blog and feel accomplished. A little less hollow after another meeting. I thought I was funny. Or somehow sage. Often they were indeed just fantasies as I had co-workers whisked into adventures henshin super hero style.

In the tenth grade I read a snoozy short story, Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and can't remember a thing save the guy day dreamed of planes and adventures. I would re-read it save the very teacher who assigned it to us, re-connecting years later on Facebook, apologized to me for making us read it. "Im sorry I made you read that silly story, but looks like you made it!"

Everything jotted down was a Walter Mitty type aside and, in a new environment, not sure if I would have the same feelings or time. I wrote during hollow moments in a job already plateaued. I had reached a point where the flow, however hectic, had enough cadence so I could swim through the ebb and flow and find 10-15 minutes where it was OK to do anything but work. 

In college, a creative writing class introduced me to the short stories of George Saunders, specifically CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. It's good but note that at last check I think Saunders had been, as popularly and freely applied today, "cancelled" for sexual harassment. But, damn, were those good stories and I appreciated that, before writing, he had miscellany jobs. Here was someone who just bounced from being a cook to oil derrick technician to writer. I think of that when I think of something I should jot down on the blog if even for minor eyes. The lonely Russian porn bot reading this. 

Gordon Square

The old church stood

All afternoon I waited

Tables loaded with porcelain 

I'm sorry you saw that

Vomiting, voiding into the bowl

Left for passing dogs 

Bent page copies of free literature 

This isn't a library, sir. Jabroni, jerk

Move along. Buy or move along

Clean up and sanitizing. Bleach

Stainless steel cutters at the meat market 

Oldest thing left besides the church 

The bar features Fruit Loops and cheese

Crackers on their hotdogs for six

Dollars rattling on ends of the street 

Blocked and bookends by bus 

Lobby energy

I make fun of my mother too much but I'll say she raised me with what would be quickly called class. But with a higher word count called crippling anxiety of what others would think. So Mami would never let me get away with what I call hotel lobby sloppy. Folks queuing up to order coffee in their swimsuits and rolling overloaded bell boy carts with Joann Fabric totes. 

Sure, I sound like a snob dear reader but I have the class to keep it on check and shove everything unfolded into the same duffel bag I've had since high-school. There, functional and not name brand but contained. 

This is "I only go out to eat on Valentines day" energy. A sort of the world stops for me so who cares energy.  Privilege check, I grew up where others vacation so this otherness cut across all lines. Dont do that, its what others do. Not us. And when we did internal tourism it was to affirm we were part of the culture. We got it even when we did the same swim up bar at the hotel by the airport. You could watch jets take off if you had a balcony view. 

The clerk behind the counter is making fun of this on the Slack chat. Karen memes and the line of "I want to speak to the manager" removed of all its venom.

Spring

Mud followed signaling 

Spring from every corner every tile

soiled in terracotta, when younger

just plain brown when older

exposed earthworm casings, tree roots 

Swallowing up sandals, destroying boots

We'll donate shoes. To the school, church 

Anyone who gets stuck in stalking mud

Old sneakers from memories some with

holes, but untouched by mud.

Bother You

I'll stop bothering you

No, it's. Keep going

And going? You sure?

It will never stop

Your response validates me

In physics, in high school, we learned

About Heisenberg. Watch things 

Change them. Save the PDF locked

And the friend zoned and the letters

scrawled in ancient Sharpie pen

So, tell me about your day.

We work together but moved to opposite

Divisions. Never noticed until I bothered you. Sorry, not sorry 

Bend Back Your Bow

I've written about this before, phrases that I enjoy. More so than favorite words but short sentences that evoke a feeling often that little movie that plays in your head when reading. 

One phrase is "bend back your bow" 

And it's all comic book carnal with our heroine in a gleaming white hooded sweatshirt dropped over a vest of body armor. The hood is up beacuse I expect her to make an amazing reveal later and flip that back. Our heroine actually looks like she kicks ass for a living so no waify anime crap here (albeit this whole scene is derivative). Our heroine can pull back on the tensile bite back of her bow string. Full face, grey eyes, Slavic features from years of hurling around crops.

She has her recurve bow, cut from a solid piece of maple and painted an inky india blue, in her hand and when she bends it back the bowstring is scintillating gold light.

Before she fires she runs her tongue along the back of her teeth and presses into a gap made by missed braces in adolescence. This is her centering technique before she lets loose at the imaginary enemy.

A coal smoking tank looping around on a battered cul-de-sac road. A speeding thief on a neon green crotch rocket bike. The office villian made out in all black. Something to end and blow back a wall of heat for a winning pose.

Siesta

 Ill get home from work and enter a dizzy stage of tired. It triggers on walking in and setting everything down. The kids run to their rooms after school and settle in. They will call who gets first dibs on the bathroom on the ride back and camp there for a solid 40 minutes. I'm then on the couch digging my feet into the crack between couch cushions and covering myself in a knitted afghan. 

This sort of tired does not feel earned like after a day's honest work or a hard hike. Instead its a burst drain, an ice jam letting go in February sun and crashing everything onto the patio furniture below. Anxiety leaving the body where one can be most true? My parents had a tchotchke hanging above the fridge  that read...

Home Sweet Home: Where You Can Scratch Where It Itches

Home, where it is ok to cry and kick your dog and scrape the last layers of the peanut butter jar because it was a day. A series of days. 

I type often about sleep and dreams. My dreams are furtive and cyclical anchored in the possible impossible. My life if I never moved out of central New York. A day in the life as a journalist. A restaurateur. Watching a new bridge over the Cuyahoga River open. They are rarely titillating but that is because I undress everyone I encounter, just some more than others. 

A recent dream had me craft blocks of text into infinite work email memos. This is a deviation of a repeating one from my previous job, jockeying in a warehouse, where boxes fell and nested into one another. A waterwall of interlocking cardboard like my son's frozen Minecraft waterfalls. In the first moments of awakening the dream remains vibrant but it fades away at an impossible speed. Forget faster than light drives. Go for faster than dream decay drives. Trying to unravel cooked spaghetti with a school lunch room spork would be easier. 

Sometimes these naps extend into the early evening. Two hours and my wife has gotten home and already lived a full second life while I awaken and think I should note that and put in on the blog. 

Bordeom

I pour myself ten cups of coffee
Each morning, noon, and night
Combined, drink only six. Others abandoned. Left to sit
A bread crumb trail in ceramic and black
Rings within rings each one a time stamp
Of  fresh start. Here, let's go. It'll be ok
I'd drill a hole through my gut if I drank
ten cups of coffee
scattered on night stands, back of toilets
One to start, two to go, all the others
Coin flips with a 50/50 on idle time
Something to do; make ten cups of coffee 

#500

In 2006, I began blogging inspired by reading Dave's Long Box. In the early to mid 2000s this was the "start a podcast" phenomenon and between Live Journal and MySpace it really was a day to appreciate the long form. Now everything is much more bite sized, a Twitter thread likely being the closets equivalent to this, or visual with YouTube essays. Everyone today wants to be a streamer. Everyone back then wanted to be heard.

I also had a snoozy job where I sat alone in an attic office waiting for the phone to ring or an email to come in. These were rare so I blogged.

I even had two blogs, one (The Blog of Plenty) for all my hilarious hot takes and another (Fear of the Blank Page) for my creative writing. I thought much about myself then. 

I deleted the Blog of Plenty after getting tsk tsk'ed by my employer. I worked for a small coffee chain in central New York, Gimme! Coffee, and, at the time, their NYC shops got lots of great coverage in the NYTimes as best cup of coffee in the city. That said, there seemed to be a disconnect because while it was the hot to trot of NYC coffee, the chain was actually from lowly Ithaca, NY with all the coffee roasted in a converted barn on Route 96 between downtown and the Town of Ulysses. So it was common among the "upstate" workers to chide this split. I mentioned this on the blog and apparently the manager of the NYC shop saw that. They then called my manager who quickly (There were five of us who worked at my location) deduced who it was. Looking back, that NYC manager must have either been seven pages deep into the Google search or they needed some serious optimization to find my post. 

My manager didn't ask me to delete (I don't care. Its your right to say whatever and you didn't say anything wrong) but he did ask me to never post about this phantom rivalry. But, no one read it and I was spooked (Why, I don't know, but a stupid spur of the moment thing) so why not.

The blog then cycled through ups and downs mostly serving as the lonely diary no one reads. Sure, the metrics say SOMEONE reads these but I think those are just lost people on the Internet. As I get older I realize I am not as funny or clever as I think I am. My best thoughts are found at tail ends of dreams as I wake up and the stirring takes away any memory. I fashioned myself a write, realizing I am ferociously better at making a manifest or purchase order. A work memo, etc, etc, etc. 

At one point I discovered that someone(s) at my current job read this and I was a bit flattered because they seemed to like it. The flurry of activity in 2019-2021 is testament to this.  However, even this waned to the point it was awkward to bring it up in conversation. How dreadful to share your diary and find people think it is just boring. Work chats in slacks and Teams? Now, that is where people are honest. This could have also been indulgence and pity reads, the kind of reading you do of the back of the tea box while waiting for the microwave to ding. 

Yet, I still write. Getting 500 posts. Maybe this site will never digitally rot away and my kids will find it. See their father was boring and disappointed in how he could never have enough patience or savvy to match them. Or the hot takes on Jason DeRulo, Sailor Moon, and Spiderman. Archer's Rise takes and two decade old book reviews. This is a journal in the digital longform. It is a product of its founding time because the Internet has become all AV and listicles and slide decks.  

Anyone who has read then I appreciate your visit. Likely you stumbled here from an errant search or a mistyped search for garlic, but thanks for reading. 

Nadir Poem

I'm imperfect, like all of you doomed
To become broken copies of our parents
Save I remember my childhood and project
The Legos I created. The spread of trading cards
This is not appreciated. Leave me alone
Uh huh, that's OK. Yeah thanks. My kids raised
By smaller screens than mine. Luxuries
I had just on a slower timeline. Gifts ungiven
By my own anxiety and the omnipresent end
It's not nostalgia, ever dangerous. It's a chance
To recover pieces of a circle drawing to
Their own mistakes, their own sincerity.

Katamari Dream

 Over the course of the COVID 19 pandemic I discovered the Katamari video game series thanks to the remaster version on Xbox. I knew about the games like how a film nerd knows about every director's canon (Or The Day the Clown Cried) but just hasn't gotten to it. These were also Playstation exclusives for a while and the last I had in that series was PS2 and I was all about the Grand Theft Auto.

The series is endearingly charming and quirky. In short, each game centers around how your dad, The King of All Cosmos, somehow destroys parts of the universe (In the original game he goes on a bender and destroys all the stars in the sky) and tasks you, The Prince, to rebuild them. Your tool is the katamari (I think it is Japanese for roll up) which is a bouncy studded ball (Looks like one of those back massaging balls) you roll around the game and gather stuff up. Get big enough in X amount of time and you move to the next level. Typing that out sounds crazy and also falls short. It needs to be played and if you like puzzlers or are one of those satisfying meme watchers, its worth a try. King of All Cosmos is also a classic bad passive aggressive dad who brutally chides you when you do just ok (Normal is the new black, I guess) much less don't reach size.

I mention all this because I had a lucid and tactile dream where I found myself in one of those trampoline bounce parks. Instead of launch pads the center was a deep pool filled with silicon gummy letters and shapes. Tiny cookie cutter things in the whole alphabet and running from 0 to 10. These also ran up the wall in curated sequences. This wall is all 1234. That wall is all ATGC, a reference to nucleotides in DNA. And I can swim through these quickly even with the katamari in front of me, getting bigger leveling from a beachball to county fair pumpkin. The goal being to push the ball into a hoop with a pattern. Triangle, G, 4,X or Square, B,3,4. It changes with a digital display that sometimes flickers as it cycles between winning combinations. The goal is to drop your katamari into the hoop and hit that pattern but the combinations are approaching factors of pi and you have little control over who you gather. Its infinite and tactile and without pressure even with the game show atmosphere.

I note this because its such a "feeling" dream and one that isn't about work. If you have read this blog, I often treat this as an ersatz dream journal. Note that this blog is coming up on 500 posts and these kind of posts may take it over the milestone.

Video Games

 Post holidays and the house is slammed with stuff. New stuff, some still unopened, that makes me feel an awful guilt. And not the sort of listen to NPR while driving to the Root Cafe to order a fair trade coffee sort of guilt. Or some holy piety simplistic less is more guilt. I feel dumb for buying my kids stuff they look at once and then dive back into YouTube. Extra dumb for thinking they need more as a way to make up for how much I suck as a father. Also a hurt because I want my kids to be like me with these toys, particularly video games and collectibles, but I need to let them be themselves. My son does not play with Legos like I did. Instead of building your own fleets of vehicles and hero rides (after all the formal instruction sets succumb to entropy. Maintaining Lego sets as designed and built requires a combination of real estate and patience saved for the single, the cat-less, or maybe those monks that make Chartreuse) he keeps piles of specific bricks on the floor. These are used to build hand held widgets of modular geometry. Six long eight stud flat planks joined on top of each other and then snapped to the back end of a Lego velociraptor. Motorcycles with the front wheel pulled out and replaced with a set of two rectangle bricks. 

On video games I want them to max them out. Its likely due to the success of the medium (The Fear of the Blank Page is on team video games are art) but its not just the volume (We had volume back in the 80s and 90s just a limit on where to get) but the accessibility. You needed to fork over cash to the guy behind the counter at Babbages or KB Toys and ask for the game. Now, just download or snap onto your phone. Maybe because my experience was so formally procedural (Thank you merchant for this good. This piece of plastic and silicon I will take back home once my mom grabs me from the mall) that I needed to really max these games out. I honestly don't recall ever beating too many games as child but I remember playing them often enough if just to feel they were earned. A great example of this is Mario is Missing a game that is quite the lie. 

I bought this game. or, well i made Mami buy it after some negotiation or possible reward. maybe she felt bad to albeit she actually grew up with struggles. And this looked sweet. Luigi is the hero!? No fucking way!

That said, the game is educational. Its a point and click geography game (And I LIKE geography) with a bit of world history and globe trotting. Where in the Mushroom Kingdom is Carmen San Diego kind of thing. The educational aspect is not bad (Oregon Trail was educational. Putt Putt games were educational) but its boring and clunky and slapping the Mario moniker is a betrayal. But, I played it because I had maybe ten games and that was sne and damnit lets play it. And I beat it finding Mario in the Forbidden Palace in China! My kids have maybe 20 Switch games and we have Xbox game pass so I can download games on the fly. Its a bounty that to me and my 90s sensibilities seems still perverse even after years of "modern" video gaming. 

However, when we gave my daughter a Switch (Something meant to save on arguing and teeth barring fights over the OTHER switch my son dominates AND the Xbox with the Minecraft game) so she can play Minecraft on her own. And she loved it for maybe two days until know the Switch is missing (like Mario!) and she is just still on YouTube. Steve and Alex couldn't top Cookie Swirl C, I guess. 

And this makes me upset. "Do you know how much this costs!"

"Well...its from Santa, right?" Which comes out with a bit more venom than this post can imply. 

And then I am "Well...fuck" Maybe the big guy will feel bad then!

There games are played in pieces. Maybe it is because of mobile gaming? Social media? Just progress. My own horrible parentage? Likely it is me just romanticizing my own nostalgia and not wanting to remember I could not get past first few levels of Super Ghosts and Goblins. I want my children to be like me, but only the good parts, and not the crappy part (Which we are all doomed to carry from our parents anyway) while hoping to let them build their own "good parts." I should just let them play. 

New Year 2022

Eat less sugar. I didn't finish my daughter's leftover churro left on her desk

Drink more water. From the tap, not sparkling stuff.

Save money. I stuffed a twenty into the change cup of my glove box. Another twenty tossed into a jar behind the desk. Turn off all the lights. What the fuck, why are so many lights on!

Read more. Or re-read the stuff in the basement already dog eared and yellowed.

Enforce that toy embargo. There are still Legos unopened and nail polish sets forgotten. I'll buy any book or art supplies but nothing tops YouTube. Maybe a skin in a game, your bucks for RoBucks. 

Fantasize less. About work, it's never going to change. About the house which will still leak in all the same spots. About people on the Internet, photos on Facebook from two jobs and two kids ago. 

Write more. In margins and even on this blog writing to a single set of digital eyes unblinking.

Tip of the Spear

This will be the year
That I see
The cute woman
From school with
India ink frame glasses
Circles of light spinning from her wrists
Hold a vanquished foe at
the end of a feathered spear
jabbed under the chin
the head elevated. Anguished
dropped and thud
over the frumpled tiles

Patch of Life

 I once dated this girl who was furiously into journaling. With a dedicated set of pens and drawings in the margin to mimic medieval texts. Dragons hand painted into the margins and embellished flourishes on the starting letter in a paragraph. Stuff like that. And I glanced as it once, something I promised I never would but she had left it open on the nightstand of the hotel and I reached for the light, and saw her describe the place, the island, as a place "she had never seen be so green." This was meant to be a compliment on the tropical fecundity. 

That stuck with me even after all this time. The best way to describe something so alive it was just green. I have never seen a space that met that criteria until staring into the roadway berm of a trailhead in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. There, beyond the six inches or so of mowed grass, were spiraling goldenrods and exploding New England asters. Thick mats with tall stalks and lance leaves that tumble over one another.  I am sure this was just disturbed backfill two weeks ago. Hit by an errant mower or the digging for a new pathway.  Each bloom stood out from a wall of green in varying dips of emerald and then lime. What made the scene was all the movement. The honeybees overloaded on dust and then the bumble bees spurred at the leg with their pollen. Threatening hunter wasps bounding each curling stem. And dusty gall flies slicing open the stems to get to the stalks inside and lay their eggs. Everywhere these is movement and color but it is too fast and too small to be taken singularly. Instead its a mass, hypnotic and humming.  There is noise in this scene as the quaking aspen stand behind all this catches the wind and shutters that paper trembling sounds. Its the end of August and this stand is the deep and final sign of all summer against the creeping fall. Finally, there is the weather which is at the inflection point right before a strong thunderstorm. The wind cools from behind so the center of your chest is last to lose the sun's warmth and everything seems to hurry. Race to get inside, to scrape a final bit of pollen, to reach the trail shelter and shelter. The patch moves in circles while also in straight lines as  things shoot to get secure and put an end to the moment. 

DMs

Separated by anxiety, time, and space

to grow and give a chance. She declared

Easier to just like your comments. Texts

DMs never wanted. Just hit the heart

Conversation punted three light-years

Into a future found only in the mind

Of one of us

Hot and Cold

 My current work has me often in positions where people look to me for a solution. And not just for things in my scope but for everything. Their taxes. Someone not flushing in the staff bathroom. The rumor on who will get fired. So, it is the kind of look people throw at a bursting beacon on the horizon in the epic fantasy movie.

Behold, there is the light and fury of Gondor! What shall it bring to this Helm's Deep!?

The worse is temperature. It is too hot or cold in my room. Our school is tired pile of bricks going on 90 years with most everything being original save not in the charming way, like a Butterfly Gold Pyrex bowl, but in the annoying way. Like leaded gasoline.

Too hot and there is a dwindling shimmer on the single pane glass above the radiators. I have one teacher with big statement olive wood eyes who will say "I'm so hot! Please help!" and I think it is a trap. "Yeah you are!" I joke and want to drop the cymbal clap bit. Ba Dum Dsh! This works much better over the work chat. Where maybe she will hit me back with a brief heart/like icon and just make my day. Or a LOL face which is fine but anything better than a simple thumbs up which feels so clinical. In person it is awkward and plodding as I bite my lip and try to hide behind the gewgaws on my desk. And she nervously strokes down the end of her ponytail asking "Is there like a thermostat? Can the custodian look?" Does playing with her hair mean she is nervous? Frustrated? Confused? By me perhaps? So smitten is she!? Or is it because she is close to heat stroke death? Likely the latter.

The custodian could look and just affirm that everything is fine. It is not that bad. In that teacher's room there is nothing for him to draw his ire to so its just fine. Across the hall it is the bad insulation I had installed three years ago. Of course, that is it. Always ready with not just an answer but THE answer. Something else. Just deal or do as I say. 

Too cold and its weak yet threating rimes of ice forming along the vintage window frames. In some spots the walls are so porous that the draft moves paper around behind you making for terrifying backgrounds on Zoom calls "Excuse me. I'm sorry but I have to ask. What is making that drawing on your bulletin board move?"

"Does this get hot?" And people will send me pictures of their radiator registers via text. 

I would hope so, if not dress in layers. If the register is pristine and still painted in the tepid mud puddle brown then likely not. They cut the steam to it. If it is beat and covered in the rainbow of melted crayons then yes, it should get cooking. 

If you are too cold maybe I will sneak a space heater in your room. Depends on if I trust you enough to use it, turn it off at the end of day. Too hot and here is a fan or i guess turn on your AC and defy everything. One day the boiler will be at max power and every AC and fan will be on and the whole space, the whole red brick lump of entropy, will collapse into a singularity of the right temperature. 

Time Travel

Around the age of 33, Ernesto discovered that by closing his eyes and thinking very hard of a specific moment in the past he could travel back in time.

This happened one day when sitting on the bus during a moment where he recalled a particularly cringe moment in front of a client. Saying "you too" to a waiter when told "Enjoy your lunch." Frazzled and confused he excused himself to the restroom before the horrible exchange and confirming the data and time on his watch and phone, slinked back and defused it with a simple 'Yes, thanks."

The time travel however required Ernesto to come back to "long way." So he would he would need to follow the natural flow of time and return to his present at the same speed as he already did once before. There was no snap back to the present, or, at least to where he began.

Because of this, this power was used for overwhelmingly petty things. Uncanny sports betting mostly. Bouncing through other Sundays just running a clean sweep on NFL scores and spreads. Then he followed each season and then also expanded to high school sports. Once he began on the NHL and trying to convert Canadian dollars he spent the idle time "resetting" just catching up on everything and scribbling in the spiral notebook that skipped along with him. 

Stopping assassinations or trying to influence elections were out of the question. Not just because of Ernesto's lack of prowess (he get a good 12K steps a day between the office and the commute but he not a trained counter sniper) but also because of the time. Go back 40 or 50 years into the past and effectively sentence himself to death leaving a jilted present, or in such a case, for him, future.

The betting made Ernesto major money but cost him a relationship when his girlfriend, suspicious of why he would disappear for two days and return on Tuesdays often wearing same clothes from Saturday, decided he was cheating on her and simply left. On seeing the flurry of angry texts from her and the final word of "I'm blocking your number" he thought about explaining this to her. or showing her, but it would need her patience to wait for his return. And that was gone.

Ernesto did tell someone. He left his job after six months of this power. He was loaded from all the betting, each game giving him the confidence to drop bigger and bigger amounts on the results. This was key and he never wanted to demonstrate his "luck" to someone multiple times. Once was luck. Twice a fluke and three times something un allowed.

But on a trip out to Seattle he ran into a friend from college, Zack who asked him "But I heard you quit your job? How can you afford to travel so often?"

And Ernesto told him and offered to prove it to Zack. "Give me your address. I will go back to tomorrow. Ill think about landing at the airport and then just get a ride to your place. Then you will know"

"But if its in the past and this is now. How would I know. I would just be surprised."

"Tell me something you planned on doing today. That you know. All the details. What did a a cashier wear? Stubbed your toe? The subject line of an email."

Zack backed away and said he wouldn't have time but that he believed him. "Sure. But I just don't have the time for that. Good luck."

Ernesto then wondered if he could have handled that better. Maybe flash back to that scene and try again. bring something from the past. Predict with accuracy every game score Something with a bit more teeth to it.

That was the only person Ernesto ever told. His body let him know that the cumulative effects of the extra days added up to extra birthdays so by age 35 he effectively was getting closer to 40. He swore the falling hair and adult acne were not genetics but side effects of this. So, he kept his winnings in savings and stopped using the ability until one evening it fluttered away from him so all he could do was daydream about the past.

Parent teacher conference

At one point the teacher said that my son had very little writing stamina and was concerned he would not meet expectations as a writer. The conference there then lost all oxygen. I wish that is one apple that would have hit closer to the roots. I scribbled endlessly in margins and penned Star Wars fan fiction in notebooks with roller blade graphics on the cover. I would write out daydreams of a crush fighting it out with a lesser one. I didn't need double spaced essays. I won contests. Minor ones but enough that people said "You are a good writer." Likely not good but I can carry my own and now I find a challenge to test and exercise my kid on something that felt just as breathing 

Slowly Dying

The chestnut tree out front, chronicled in blog posts from 2018 and the eponymous Chestnut War, continues to die. Now at an accelerated rate. A large branch maybe five feet long from break to leaf tip fell off one sunny September afternoon. No storms that day so I guessed just a sudden snap of wind. or just the sudden chaos we invoke hypothetically. That branch got "hit by a bus."

The tree has a complete and lovely overall superstructure. At the end of the intersection of Addington and West 120th, one can see it from seven house lengths away and it looks like a lovely tree with a tight bobbing outline against the houses. Its a tree you would see features on a logo. Closer up, however, you can see the patchy empty boughs where entire leaves have withered away. These are big hurting bald spots on the tree where the park curls up form the branches and lichen takes over where wood hasn't frayed. Up close it has this melting snow cone look where flakes of snow have melted and refrozen together, albeit briefly, to come up with a jagged canopy.

Summer 2021 and the tree was loaded with the wispy pipe cleaner flowers. All through August there was that perfume fairy piss smell but that boon turned into few nuts. Likely the neighbors have plundered most of them (My wife swears they are the ones who broke the big branch) but just enough to fill a cereal bowl. A big cereal bowl, mind you. A real two scoops of real raisins and flakes kind of bowl, but a cereal bowl nonetheless. Each year they have dwindled in amount and also in value. From  a precious crop to just a novelty. They taste sloppy chalky when roasted, but with enough sugar I can try to make homemade orgeat. That is a nutty syrup usually made with almonds but could be an artisanal blend made with actual chestnuts. Or even peanuts for this circus feeling kind of drink. The handful of nuts should be enough for that. And, if any other ersatz ones do fall, I can add it to the seeping pile in the vial. 

I imagine that the next five to seven summers will see more branches slough off. Maybe ones big enough to block the driveway or other wise actively inconvenience the house. Bit by bit it will clockwork out into a stumpy snag with snarled branches and just one section with leaves. There will be less actual chestnut husks by this point, but I will never be so brave to head out there barefoot. It would just make for an even more elaborate story. The one branch dropping the one last chestnut grenade. Even a glancing blow will send someone hobbling. 

Long Weekends

This post is a bit dark. It's a digital pity party shouted into the void. I don't have any meaningful connections and no one reads these. The metrics on the admin dashboard will say a single person did. The page views with their one cyclops eyes but I bet that is just ingrained into the software to make one feel better.

That all said that if somone does read this then that is the content warning. It's all quite pathetic beyond here.

I hate long weekends. I rather be working,  having some degree of validation made in the office. Sometimes I think of any professional exchange as this big game of tennis. And I'm slamming back each ball asap only to wait for a return. And often that return never happens or is weeks late, this time table only exacerbated by the long weekend. 

I need an answer back from a vendor and they left early for the holiday weekend. Everyone else unplugs and I'm left trying to sneak in work or just diving right into it during a rare moment of the kids being at peace.

I hate long weekends beacuse its more time for my kids to prowl around and look for conflict. My son is a deep well of rage and he will meltdown for hours in his room screaming while the rest of the family tries to pretend this isn't happening. A house full of toys and games and the option always is to fight or rage. At work I could let the teachers handle it for just eight hours and then get a nice email saying how they mostly held it together.

What makes me feel better is checking stuff off the list. Long weekends nudge this. Really should clean the garage. Get your hair cut. Organize that shelf. This on top of the usual weekend get stuff done like the Sunday blues piles of laundry. So I flit between these tasks and just find more and more until I say fuck it and just lay down on the couch. I rather work so there is so grater fulfillment or mission

I develop unhealthy infatuations at work that align any sense of my self to said crushes responses. My current job is my longest running and also one with most coworkers so these are numerous albeit they ebb save for two long running  colleagues. So , I rather work so I have some excuse to message them and then segue to sharing a meme or reminding them how awesome they are and/or how shitty this place is, am I right?! So desperate for dopamine that just getting a like on the all office Slack sends me briefly away from the shady sunken place. I'll find reasons to message them over the weekend to feel soemthing and then hate myself due to interrupting what I assume are fabulous lives.

I'm only as good as how not good others are and this will all be exposed one day so I work to build some insurance.

He really did suck but he did close the support tickers quickly, I guess.

False Fall

Early September and everyone is switching to early spooky season. But, it is still hot, pushing on 82 degrees and still as soupy and buzzy as any other day in August or July before it. 

There are still mountains of tomatoes dropping from plants and becoming burdens to anyone not prepared. And those prepared (People with canners or raw tomato enthusiasts) likely grew their own tomatoes so instead they are left in office break rooms (Free! TAKE ONE!) or handed out like ticking white elephant style gifts. Quick, eat this before it spoils. 

This is when smart people will say "Pumpkin spice doesn't really taste like pumpkin you know?"

Indeed just like the butter at movie theaters is not butter and the fluff inside Oreos is fluff instead of cream. Or crème to keep it extra confectionary. 

Even smarter people will say "Pumpkin spice is a mix of mace, all spice, cloves, cinnamon etc that is used for all kinds of baking. Women started adding to their coffee because it reminded them of these things so when you hate pumpkin spice you actually hate women."

For sure, it began a something small. Is there a coffee shop where they first made pumpkin spice? I used to live in a place where they fought about being the originator of the term "ice cream sundae."  And, home is where the pina colada supposedly began albeit no one wants to claim it. No one who wants to be anyone or anything at least. So this has to exist. Wherever pumpkin town USA exists, some local coffee shop dropped that 25-30 years ago and then the genie could never be let back in the bottle. 

 

This early and its false fall. Its hoodie weather and everyone looks great in hoodies. 

Your rival? They looks extra zippy in that red hoodie

Your friends? They look great and maybe you can match dueling hoodies

Your crush? Act normal, not dumb, but they look banging in that heather grey hoodie. 

You! Yes, even you. This is my hooded sweatshirt from college ten years ago and yes I still fit in it and yes I look bomb in it.

As a young man I bought a solid white hoodie with royal blue trim and wore it all day on a flight from the tropics to the snow mounds of northern New York state. Did not spill a damn drop on it. Which would be first and last time that happens. As an old man I still quickly flip that hood up and when it catches over my scalp in one go I feel infinitely powerful. 

Apple picking weather. Apple picking is a racket. The farmer realized how profitable it would be to have people pay THEM money to pick apples because its fun or for family photos. You get to the orchard and they only have two sizes. 

Inconveniently small. This box is the size of a child's lunch box

Inconveniently large. This bag is the literal Bag of Holding from a Dungeons and Dragons quest. There could be a dragon in here!

The practical bags have already been stuffed full of apples and laid out in the orchard's gift shop. That is no fun. 

So you get the HUGE bag because 1) Fuck it 2) While I don't think I can eat 100 apples I sure as hell can eat more than the 5 the tiny bag can hold and 3) We will make apple pies. And butter and jams, etc, etc.

Then you need to haul the hug bag loaded with apples all over the orchard strategically trying to leave space for the varieties all the way at the end of the rows. Don't get too crazy with Jonagolds. There are Fujis in the WAY BACK and those are my favorite. Bright white blistering sweet apples. 

True fall comes later and after Halloween. In the doldrums between it and Thanksgiving. Here the charms are gone and it is getting to cold for any of the hay bale rides and cider sniffs. There it is blustery and scratchy as leaves pour over the pavement.

Paraguay Dream

 In a dream, a botched trip took me all the way to Paraguay. 

"Are we taking this helicopter all the way there?" I said to the ethereal narrator guiding the dream. The chopper was one of those wire work Rat Patrol looking things with the sea foam pontoons for water landings instead of the metal runners.

"No, that would take too long! But we will fly to the Plaza de la Victoria and leave you there. After your talk you can find a way back up north."

In this dream I am to meet in a small un airconditioned conference room at the base of a tall monument. The monument is four stylized metal brush strokes zig zagging up towards the sky and maybe 200 feet above the base, each tip comes together to hold a golden globe. At the bottom of one of the arms is a unassuming handle less door with a wooden table set outside. On it is a placard denoting the meeting

"Tenth Annual Pan American Conference on River Travel"

This placard is neatly framed and printed in looping font under pictures of paddleboats and reed canoes.

But the door doesn't open and I wait until the one thing that happens is a wingless giant transport plane comes slowly falling off the horizon until right before landing it fires off a skirt of hover bags so that it plunks softly onto a tarmac. I don't feel the earth shake and I wait under the shadow of the golden globe and the quiet of the sleepy plaza.

I then find myself on a loaded school bus texting my family from the wifi of a gas station. "I hope to be back north by end of the week. At least the Mexican border." Once the message is confirmed I go and get two five gallon jugs of water from the gas station and three buckets of fried chicken served with a dozen ears of corn.

The ride on the bus is musical. I have never been to Paraguay but my dream makes it look like the interior of home save with taller mountains and denser canopy. The roads are paved yet narrow and cluttered with lot of dirt bikes and horses and llamas. 

The bus pulls over again for food and we get to a road side restaurant built over a hill that look at a dried up lake. The once large lake now dotted with deep yet isolated pools of water among red clay. At the restaurant the owners hawk sea bass and arapina to us letting us select cuts they shuck off with a machete. The last image of the dream is looking into the mega fish's mouth and the undulating back and forth of the ribbed mouth and insides in hues of pink and watermelon bruise red. 

Henshin

"What are you thinking about?"

Henshin which is the Japanese word for transform/transformation and is then associated with media where somone transforms into a hero. When the Power Rangers yell "Its Morphin Time!" that's henshin. When Linda Carter spun around fast and changed into Wonder Woman that is henshin. Different from suiting up like Iron Man with a suit of armor. Here it all magically happens in a flash of light and sequence. 

Henshin of the cute co worker manifesting a long spear by moving her hands apart and then twirling it to end in a pose where she cracks her shoulder muscles and is ready to fuck somone up. If I were actually writing this or drawing this then she would have the appropriate armor but this is my fever dream so she wears gymnast outfit. 

Henshin of me being 40 pounds lighter and looking good in the bioluminiscent black ceramic armor of Tron. 

There is often music to all this. Halsey's Nightmare or the aforementioned Tron sound track. If not it would be disconcerting. Somone yells "I have the power!" and then the light and sparks and spell that gives them the Gauntlets of Fury is all quiet. Total cognitive dissonance. 

My day dreams steal right from the comics beacuse I want it all to be clear. Your protagonists and antagonists. The story controlled by the penciler and layout. Instead of any nuance. 

Mother In Law Suite

 Investigators could tell the room was haunted, if not out right cursed, because of the sheer amount of things in it that seemed to have a purpose but produced no discernible effect. Light switches that when flipped did nothing. Outlets painted over that after carefully sloughing off the paint, which ended up in rainbow sherbet clumps on the floor, drew no power. A side panel door to a sheer brick wall with maybe a half an inch of clearance. A composition notebook would barely fit in it. There were built in speakers to the blonde maple wood but when you chased the wire to what should have been the access panel, the wire just dove into a solid cube of cement. The drawers were cut at triangular angles so pulling one out also meant possibly topping all of everything onto one's foot. 

The main color was a had too much ice cream after dinner mint green with too much blue but still enough green. Then deep mahogany trims almost black for stark contrast. But under all that paint were dozens of layers in wilding hues. The walls seemed almost an inch thick with just paint, making the whole thing smaller and encroaching. 

The rest of the house? That seemed fine and quite dull. But, in the backroom, everything seemed amiss and annoying. In the middle of it there was a warm spot that seared from an invisible source while the rest of the room remain stuffy but tolerable.

One investigator tried to bring in some fresh air and opened a window to find that the wire window screens were just finely painted lines on translucent paper. He removed it and poked his head out the window to see the small backyard and then a broken floodlight glued right by the window. Broken in that each head drooped on exposed wires to the side. He told another person to flip all the mysterious light switches and nothing sparked from the flood light. 

They all stood in a circle while investigating, their backs to each other, as to make sure nothing slide out from behind a pulled door or curling floor board. But they just found more inconveniences, the angriest one being the tacks arranged like a punji board on the threshold of the sole closet. 

The owners, chatting with the group after the walkthrough in the room, asked what to do. The investigators suggested to board up the room and not bother. Whatever haunted it seemed content to form whatever needling grievances from that single space. "Make it a room to go in every one in a while and spook a visitor. A real mother in law suite, if you get what I mean!" The assistant then mimicked banging on a pair of cymbals. Ba dum dsh.

"Is this common?" The owners of the home demanded.

"No, not too common. Poor maintenance is one thing. Landlors who paint over things and decide to cut costs but a space like that, which seems to find something new and irritating upon each entry is not. A real mystery spot. Ever seen things run up walls in it?"

Jungle Room

At some point around year four of teaching Mariela became known as the "plant person" and her room became an ersatz greenhouse. The place where kids would store the overgrown bean plants trying to burst from their Solo cup bases and where anything left behind would end up. Year four was the year because it is where parents stopped sending kitschy mugs or jelly bean samplers and instead send a bag of potting soil and the sad five dollar starts from the floral section at Marc's. 

Mariela did earn this, albeit she didn't do this purposefully. Her first year she began simple with just a leggy Norfolk Island Pine in the far left corner and then a single Boston fern hanging planter. That she kept on her desk until year two when through a mix of union back and forth and some awkward flirting she got the custodian to anchor an eyelet into the ceiling. She then hung it from a netted rope holder.

Each year she would add more items, especially after her three year apprenticeship ended and she internally said "why not" and committed to the long term. At this point she dropped various cacti on the swollen wooden window frames.  The kids all loved the old man cactus which stood six inches from above a cornflower blue clay pot and had wonky modified needles that looked like a Rip Van Winkle beard. That is what she called it, Rip.

But in year four it exploded. Snake plants recovered from someone who retired, a pair dropped akimbo behind her desk. All the window wells lined with philodendrons and crotons and aloes. On warm muggy days, especially soupy days in early August or late May, the edges of the windows would briefly bead with moisture from all the back and forth transpiration of the plants. She had a defunct classroom phone that would only blared out mumbled public announcements lined with the clinging air plants that needed just a brief hint of mist every few weeks. 

"It really is a jungle in here!" That is what everyone said when they walked into Room 213B (At one point there had been a larger 213 that had a bright side with all the windows and then a dark side with wider floor, a short squat T shape, that was then, in the early 90s split into two with a wall. Mariela got the sunny side and the other side, which people guessed was the end of an old dance class space, became a pull out room for kids. Which needed to be illuminated by spindly halogen lamps) and Mariela had a canned response of "Yeah and Im Tarzan!" that got some laughs. The parent group insisted that the police do a walkthrough of the school to test for the horrifying yet always looming possibility of a shooting. Someone's  husband was a so and so lieutenant on the force so he found the time albeit the administration did argue to do this when there were no children in the building. Walking into 213 the officer, who internally acknowledged the performativeness of the entire event but it was overtime so why not, noticed the bramble vibes and hungry green of the space and asked Mariela "What would you do if you heard someone was coming in shooting?"

Mariela went through the canned responses of trying to bar the door and get the children as far away as possible. Her mother had actually bought her a rope ladder that could be draped over a window and used to escape. It would still leave about four feet of clearance at the end but her mother said better broken ankles then dying.

But she then added that she would just shove all the plants by the door and hopefully the tangle wire would slow down the perpetrator who would give the same frustrated guffaw of someone trying to weed out a garden. 

"I would clutch this barrel cactus in my hand and slaw it into their face, as a last resort, I guess." Mariela showed the officer the plump little malicious thing with half inch spines the color of pus. The office laughed maybe to be kind or maybe at the thought of Mariela, who was about 5' 2" and had 3rd graders who likely weighed as much as her, going Amazon in her own personal jungle to defend the homestead. 

When summer came, she arranged all the plants into a circle of magic on the floor. On top of a plastic shower liner and asked the cleaners if they would water them and just work around the space when doing the floors. Every plant but the air plants and the emerging trellised ivy plants on the tack board above the white boards in that square. And the pile grew over the summer because people would forget their own plants in their rooms and the cleaners knew just the spot. 

Rating Movies

As a tween I had a summer kick off ritual where I would write down all the summer blockbusters I wanted to see and then, as I saw them, noted how many stars I would rate them.

This was purely an internal document just for me that I kept pinned to my cork board.

Going to the movies as a tween was somewhat of a pain since I had no car and any friends with cars lived scattered across the metro area. And we had to check the times in a newspaper or call the theater. And even then no one seemed to have a newspaper subscription. I had to walk down the street to my titi's  house and get her copies of The San Juan Star. Then coordinate rhe rides to and from. See if we can catch everyone in front of the theater. Everyone had cell phones (lovely Nokia candy bar phones with interchangeable silicon skins) but this was when you had to time your calls. Don't call me until after 9pm and such.

This was the mid/late 90s and I specifically recall writing down things like Men in Black and Wild Wild West and Face/Off. No one ever noticed except my mom's long term boyfriend who would always ask what I would rate movies as, even into high school and early adulthood.

Witch's Weather

 On a muggy, soupy early July day the bright sky betrayed all predispositions and burst a brick rattling thunder boom. After it simmered away back beyond the horizon the day continued to shine and wisp as there wasn't a storm somewhere. 

This is the kind of weather my aunt called "witch's weather." When it rains while it is sunny that means a witch got married. Everything happening in the beautifully inverse. This storm would strike dry earth and flowers and baby cap mushrooms would pop up from the strike. Instead of primal obsidian glass, a tiny glade. 

I poke my head out the balcony to see if I spot the storm somewhere. This takes some effort as I need to dislodge the dusty box fan from the window frame. Nothing poetic about that especially the petrified starling poop on the window sill. I bat that with the tip of pen into the lost alley between the buildings. Once settled, I look for the deepening gradient of white to drowned blue to dusty grey in the clouds but nothing. Instead the only clouds are towering cotton blobs over the shivering trees. Over the apartment building is nothing but blue. The sky then follows up with a low grumble over the invisible horizon before it all just stops and shifts back to the muggy hurt of summer. 

It would be nice to rain. Wash away the starling shit and also drain the garbage from the alleyway. It would leave nothing but the pioneer plants settling there. Including the spindly ailanthus tree that reminds me of tree pollen and the time a coworker texted me a picture of her thigh after an allergy test. "This is why I am out. I am allergic to everything! Dust mites, tree, grass. Its crazy." I felt awkward and flattered. Witch's weather.