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.