Minimum Wage Hero

Philirony

2011-05-23T19:16:00.003-04:00

The other day I was in Starbucks getting a little fuel for my drive back from West Virginia. It had been a long day and I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings, so when I heard the counter person call out what sounded like my drink I shuffled up to retrieve it and took it to the little prep counter with the powdered cinnamon and such. When I took the top off I realized I had grabbed the wrong drink. So, apparently, did its owner.

"Oh oh oh, that's mine," said a tall, lanky man in glasses and a striped shirt. I hastily replaced the top and, apologizing, handed the beverage to him.

"Ah..." he said, eyeing me and the cup, lid askew, suspiciously. "You didn't, like, contaminate it did you?" He wasn't smiling.

I was momentarily taken aback, and the only response I could muster was an uncertain laugh and a shake of my head. He straightened the lid, considered his purchase for a moment, then muttered something I couldn't discern and asked the counter person for a replacement.

Maybe he genuinely thought I had put something in his coffee, like anthrax. I don't know. He was standing right next to me, so he knew I hadn't sneezed or coughed. And I used the hand sanitizer at the counter after I got my change, so I didn't get nasty money germs on his drink. All I know is he was bothered enough to seek a replacement.

Given his level of annoyance I am 99% sure that, when Mr. Stripey Shirt got into his car and fired up his phone, he posted an angry status update about having to take an extra 2 minutes to return and replace his drink. It contains a reference to "stupid people" and generalities about human nature. It probably has a dozen likes and half as many more comments agreeing with his assessment.

Mr. Stripey Shirt experienced what is commonly known as a first world problem, e.g. the inane garbage we complain about while the other half seek out water uncontaminated by much worse than a little bit of cocoa powder. I had a great idea to create a website celebrating this phenomenon, but, like all great ideas, it was already independently conceived by several chuckleheads who ran the concept into the ground.

The problem with the current first world problems websites is that most of the content is submitted by people who are being tongue-in-cheek or ironic. My idea is to cull genuine first world outrage from social media sites and put it on display like a cage of un-self-conscious, poop-flinging primates. I'm not saying these people are animals; I'm just saying monkeys do what they do without consideration for how they may be perceived by others, no matter how smelly their poo is. Humans call that being "real."

Submissions would have the offending party's name redacted, of course, to protect the submitting individual and myself. Threat of litigation: another first world problem!

There's a twist to my idea, though. I would implement a rating/commenting system so that visitors could vote for their favorite/most heinous complaints. At the end of the year I would tally the votes and use whatever ad revenue was left after paying web hosting costs to purchase and donate LifeStraws (http://www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/lifestraw/lifestraw) in the winning complainer's name. Sure, "winning" in this case means the Internet has decided you are the shallowest tool among shallow tools (no small feat on the Internet), but how upset could you be if you found out your bitchy tweet about McDonald's being out of milkshakes helped provide a village with safe drinking water?

I call this concept philanthropic irony; thus, the nonprofit organization I would start to handle donations and such would be called the Philirony Foundation (because "iranthropy" just sounds like a bad day at the water park).

All I need is a little venture capital. Let's turn unintentional dim-ness into unintentional give-ness, or something suitably catchy.

I guess I need a copywriter, too.

Open Letters

2011-04-09T07:17:00.001-04:00

Dear Neighbor,

Thank you for abandoning your house in place about six months ago. Your back yard is attracting mice and will probably harbor all manner of stinging/biting/tax evading insects this summer. You've also given me a big helping of food for thought as I consider whether I would prefer your steadily decomposing tenement or the 25 year old trailer you are pondering replacing it with next to my home, which I break my back landscaping every year.

Also, your fake plastic deer are creeping me out. I swear to God they're in a different configuration every time I walk out my front door. In my peripheral vision I can see them moving, conspiring, then I turn and---nothing. If I ever find hoof prints in my yard I am setting them on fire. If it takes out the garbage dump next door, so be it. I'd rather live next to carbon than compost.

Sincerely,

Josh

PS. I noticed you moved across the street with your mother, who keeps her dog in a filthy 15x15 foot cage 365 days a year, with a tarp and cheap plastic doghouse as shelter. The picture is beginning to resolve.

PPS. What is that thing on your eye? It's worse than the deer.

- - -

Dear Birds Making a Nest in My Awning,

When are you due? Do you need any spanish moss, or sticks, or anything?

The cats can't get outside, and even if they did they wouldn't know what to do.

Love,

Josh

- - -

Dear Front Yard,

I put down some grass seed last week. Maybe you noticed some itchiness or something from the roots. Anyway, me and the dog completely wrecked your tall fescue coif, so we're going to give you some time to recover. Godspeed.

Fondly,

Josh

PS. If you screw me over like you did last year I'm going "Greg Brady" on your ass.

- - -

Dear Post Office Worker,

If customer service were produce you'd be a big bag of spring mix. How can you work for a pseudo-government agency and be so kind, helpful, and knowledgeable? I know it's a cliche, but the DMV down the road is staffed by trolls and pariahs, and not the good kind, either.

I'm convinced you aren't human at all, but a robot designed to eliminate USPS inefficiency.

If you're human, keep up the good work. And can I see your guitar collection sometime?

If you are a robot, after your kind take over please understand that I haven't worked manual labor, ever, unless you count my 2 weeks as a caddie that one summer. I'd be a terrible slave.

Respectfully,

Josh

Bronco

2010-12-14T15:55:00.000-05:00

Winter always makes me miss my very first car, a 1989 Ford Bronco II XLT. My dad and I share the same wistful affection for that vehicle, which has long since moved on to the great Trade-In Pasture in the sky (for a vehicle I no longer own, sadly enough). My wife always seem to find an excuse to leave the room when Dad and I start in on what we both faithfully refer to as "the old Bronco," mostly because she is absolutely sick to death of hearing about it at every family function.

It started life as Dad's workhorse, getting him from job site to job site when he was selling heavy equipment. The weight of all his product brochures caused the leaf springs in the back to sag to an almost comical degree (more on that later). When I turned 16 it was passed on to me with a reverence normally reserved for priceless family heirlooms, which was actually how we regarded it.

As with all good things worth reminiscing over, the Bronco was marked not necessarily by its virtues but by its "quirks,", code for "items that were a pain in the ass at the time but are treated in hindsight as objects of character." Mom, in fact, nicknamed it "Sprocket" due to its unfailing condition of having at least one item malfunctioning at any given time. I wager that my wife's aversion to the very mention of the old Bronco stems from one such quirk wherein the passenger side window would very often disappear into the door like a piece of toast, frequently during adverse weather, and usually when she was the passenger. Dad and I never really figured out how to consistently prevent this from happening, and since I was the only one who ever really drove it by that time I left it alone. My window worked (when the switch wasn't broken).

Sometime during my high school years the horn began blowing fuses when engaged. After three or four replacement fuses my brother and I resorted to (this is true) shouting BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! out the windows as a substitute (this was, evidently, during a period of passenger window functionality).

[an aside regarding my brother and the old Bronco: One blustery, frigid winter morning we both trekked out to the back yard, where I parked in those days, to scrape the car off and go to school. As I put the Bronco in gear we swiftly realized the vehicle was frozen to the ground and utterly immovable. As my mother watched, aghast, from the kitchen window I instructed my brother to get out of the car and push on the doorframe as I aggressively gunned the engine in an attempt to free the vehicle. We made it, but my "ends justify the means" explanation to Mom later that day prompted her to suggest that maybe I'd like to take the bus for the remainder of my high school career.]

The fuel pump sounded like a dentist drill, no matter how many times we replaced it.

The power locks were frequently neither.

It was underpowered for its size. I once hit a deer going up Buckhannon Mountain and bounced back to the Weston Wal-Mart. That may be hyperbole.

But for all that, the old Bronco was beloved. My friend Drew and I pulled his Passat from Buckhannon to Morgantown on a trailer, an undertaking I learned years later was probably ill-advised (Dad turned white at the notion and had to lie down for a bit). Its many quirks provided ample opportunity to learn all about auto repair, a notable case being when Dad and I replaced those saggy leaf springs over a weekend. That project was also my first foray into violent, cathartic swearing, a Dad-sanctioned activity we still enthusiastically practice to this day.

It also held 99% of our band's equipment when we went to gigs. That in itself was worth a broken window or two.

We traded it my sophomore year of college for a Subaru, which I enjoyed but did not adore with nearly the same affection as my dear old Bronco. In fact, during one weekend my wife (foolishly) left me alone while she visited her sister I very nearly drove the Subaru to Tennessee to trade for an identical Bronco II with under 100,000 original miles. Prudence stayed my lead foot at the time, but my current vehicle, an Explorer, knows its 15 minutes are up if a deal like that comes up again.

It's a good thing the back seats in a Bronco II fold down fully, because if I actually went through with something like that I would most likely be living in it.

Search

2010-12-07T15:23:00.019-05:00

Everything in a baby's world is colorful to the nth degree, which is ironic considering the construction of that world is an exercise in discerning various shades of gray.

The most striking thing about being new parents is finding out there are very few universally bad or good things within the realm of child rearing. The internet has not helped matters in this respect. Think of the silliest, most irresponsible parental act you can imagine somebody perpetrating and I guarantee there's a web forum full of apologetics advocating its use. For example, my wife and I recently decided to begin feeding our six month-old son fruits and vegetables in addition to his rice cereal and breast milk. We wanted to know which of the two we should begin with. Our pediatrician suggested we start with only one at a time (to assess allergies), but beyond that offered no opinion. That was fair enough, we thought, so we started looking online. One website stated vegetables were the way to go, because fruits are so sweet that babies have difficulty switching from them to the blander vegetables. Another site advised that fruits were better in the beginning precisely because they are more enticing to children and encourage them to eat. Still another site went with vegetables, but only yellow or orange ones. And one suggested that all commercial baby food was overprocessed junk with the nutritional equivalent of packing peanuts, an alternative that was looking more and more attractive.

This, I have discovered, is a typical experience in the realm of baby research. As with religion, there are no particularly crazy dogmas, only crazy adherents. I've identified four of the latter.

The Hardass usually dismisses any nuanced view of anything parental with a brusque, "My mama and dad did that and me and my twelve brothers and sisters survived," the antecedent of "that" usually referring to any heavy-handed (sometimes in a literal sense) technique that ignores everything science has taught us about child psychology, physiology, or common decency/sense.

The Snob is an insufferable paren-twit who is unwilling or unable to admit that, sometimes, things that are mass-produced or popular are good. Bring up any item you can find at Target and she'll sniff, then say something like, "That's all junk. We prefer to make our own baby food, diapers, and vaccines." In the universe's balance sheet this person counteracts the Hardass, like matter and antimatter.

For The Wuss, parenting is exponentially more difficult, because whereas the Hardass and Snob are worryingly decisive, the Wuss is pityingly indecisive. Change is hard for the Wuss, what with all the options and dangers involved. The Snob has a notebook full of pros and cons debating various boutique strollers, cribs, and baby spoons; the Wuss has a Facebook wall full of whinges and rhetorical questions.

The Lunatic is the parental cross between a suicide bomber and the Westboro Baptist Church. You know crazy when you see it.

Literally every issue I've researched will contain an opinion from each of the above contingents, except for the Wuss, who will consider each viewpoint and sob uncontrollably for two days.

Infant sleep seems to bring out the best from each angle. If you have an afternoon to kill, sign up on a parenting message board and write an authoritative post about the best way to get an infant to sleep through the night (for extra enjoyment, don't burden yourself with facts; hyperbole will do in its stead). Step back and watch the fun begin. Never in your life will you know how it feels to be vilified and deified with the same enthusiasm at the exact same time. These people are really, really serious about getting their babies to sleep through the night, to the point that they get so stressed about it that they, themselves, cannot sleep. If baby food manufacturers were smart they'd develop an irony-fortified rice cereal for these parents.

We ended up giving him store-bought sweet potatoes, which he ate enthusiastically with no ill effects. This makes his first experience with "big boy" food better than mine. When I was a couple weeks old my dad stuck a pickle in my mouth, "just to see what would happen." What happened was my body went rigid, my hands tensed into fists, and my face turned the color of a particularly bad bruise.

"I thought I had killed you," he related.

"Did you ever stop to think that that may have been a bad idea, Dad?"

"It was just an experiment. You're fine."

You're welcome, son.

Roar

2010-04-07T09:13:00.004-04:00

I would like to forewarn that my mother always gets agitated when I tell this story, usually because she feels as though I embellish elements of it in order to make her look bad. I prefer to think of it as a disagreement over certain portions that, if viewed from a different perspective, could make the entire story uninteresting and boring. History is written by the winners, Mom.

On with it:

When I was in 4^th grade Steven Spielberg unleashed the movie Jurassic Park upon the world, inspiring dozens of articles in otherwise respectable publications about (and I’m paraphrasing, but not much) how cool it would be if dinosaurs were hanging around today. Little did the editors of these publications know that, for a bag of M&Ms and a Squeezit, they could have gotten the exact same material from my friends and I from our weekly journals in Mr. Beathe’s class (though they’d have to dig through references to Battletoads and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to get to it).

I, of course, wanted desperately to see that movie. I only had TV commercials and friends’ conversations to go on, but I gathered that it was about really scary dinosaurs and at least one person got eaten while he was on the toilet. That was enough for a 10-year old.

Those of you with parents who erred on the side of caution know what happened next:

“Mom, can I go see Jurassic Park?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too violent.”

She had me there. After all, I didn’t want to watch it to appreciate the frantic cinematography or admire the soaring John Williams score; I wanted to watch T-Rex eat people. She knew it, I knew it, and she knew I knew it.

Instead, being eminently practical, my mom bought me a copy of the Michael Crichton novel upon which the movie was based. As I began reading, two things became apparent:

1) There were a lot of bad words in the book, and

2) The book was much, much more violent than the movie.

After a long string of nearly incomprehensible babble about DNA and chaos theory I was treated to, among other niceties, the mental image of a man having his intestines ripped out after being blinded; a baby dinosaur being torn to shreds; a doctor trying to fight off a dinosaur after it eviscerates him and begins eating his innards; and two characters carefully (and in great detail) examining a disembodied leg. It is on this point that my mother and I differ to this day: in a movie the image is more vivid, but it is also, in a way, static. The shock value of the female character in the movie discovering a dismembered arm in a bunker relies partially on its transience. The image exists in precisely one permutation, with little detail or lingering examination of it. It’s an arm, she sees it, she screams, and then a dinosaur scares her and she runs. Grab the popcorn!

In the book, however, the discovery of a human leg is treated in an entire paragraph with a description of how the flesh looked (“gray” and “ragged”), how it may have been disconnected from its owner (“twisted away”), how the blood flowed off the stump and onto the white sock, and even how heavy it was when picked up. Somehow the horror of not knowing what, precisely, that leg looked like was worse than anything the movie. I’d lie in bed and think about it.

“He said it was heavy. Was it as heavy as my baseball bat? If I swung it would the blood go everywhere?”

“The skin was gray? When I cut my knee in our driveway and had to get stitches it turned a little gray. Did it look like that?”

“If it was twisted off did the bone twist too, like a wishbone when you pull it?”

Ironically, after reading the book several times, the movie was sort of a let-down in the violence department. “Hey,” I thought, outraged, “that thing is supposed to rip the fat guy open before he eats him. What the heck?” I guarantee I was the only kid on my block who was disappointed by the level of gore in the film. After all, I had tasted filet mignon; why would I be satisfied with ground chuck (to use an apt metaphor)?

I’m not demonizing my mother. That book was my first “grown-up” book. It piqued my interest in genetics, biology, evolution, and physics. But I think her plan backfired a little bit. Imagination can take you places much, much worse than any a filmmaker could render on a screen. Ask any child who knows he’s about to get in trouble for something, and he’ll tell you.

Don’t ask Mom for a rebuttal, though. She’ll give you an earful, then call me and give me an earful, and if that dead horse gets exhumed one more time he’s going to disintegrate and leave us in one hell of an awful mess.

Collect

2010-03-29T20:18:00.004-04:00

I have this thing with my garbage can, and it's sort of embarrassing.

Monday is trash day, and I typically wait until early that morning to take our garbage around to the front yard. We only have one trash can, but in a week my wife and I generate the garbage output typical of a major construction site. What ends up happening is I bring the can around, then prop it up (because our yard is lumpy like bad mashed potatoes) with the other half dozen bags and cardboard boxes. I don't know why we have so many cardboard boxes in our trash each week, but the thought has crossed my mind more than once that, if I saved all the cardboard we threw away for a month, I could construct the greatest play structure known to man: Fort Corrugatia.

Allow me to elucidate. This week we threw away:

The usual overflowing can, lid askew
Five or six full-to-capacity bags that would not fit in the can
A venetian blind we took out of the baby's room (replaced with light-blocking curtains)
Large plastic and cardboard packaging material from aforementioned curtains
A few smallish bags containing litter box refuse

There is no good reason why a childless family of two should generate this much waste. And yet we have never managed to exist within the confines of a single trash can since moving to this house. It is, appropriately enough, uncanny.

As I stated, during the normal course of a Monday I will drag all of this to the curb at around 6 am, where it will perch until around 10 or so when the sanitation department makes it to our house. The gentlemen will dutifully collect everything from the yard and empty the can, leaving it laying in the yard in an exercise that reminds me of the process of eating crab legs, for some reason.

When I get home at around 4:30 I will take notice of the trash can laying in the yard, walk into my home, and ignore it. It may as well be a lawn ornament for all the attention and care I give it.

At some point that evening I will look out our kitchen window and see the can in the yard, and think, "Oh, there's the trash can. I need to take that around to the back porch." As soon as this thought enters my head it will be replaced with something else, such as a desire for orange juice or the intro to "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Tuesday morning is when things start to get weird. I will wake up and take the dog out, and in the 6 am darkness I will catch a glint of streetlight off something in my yard, and I will squint and realize, oh, there's the trash can. I need to take that around, I think. And then, swear to God, I follow that up with the exact same thought every single Tuesday morning: I bet the neighbors are really sick of seeing that trash can in my lawn. I bet they're sitting in their living rooms wondering, "Why the hell doesn't he just take it around? He parks 20 feet away from it. All he has to do it take it with him. It's empty. It weighs next to nothing. The porch is 5 feet from the side door he uses to get into the house every day. That is some special breed of lazy."

I get so paranoid about this. It will literally consume the entirety of my thoughts for four or five minutes. I will picture them talking about me over their morning coffee, trying to come up with reasons why I leave the trash can in the yard for so long every week. I imagine them coming home and looking into the Stumps' yard, seeing the can, and shaking their heads in bewilderment. "Can you believe this? Now they're stepping over bags of garbage on their porch. Isn't this absurd?" they ask each other.

I expend all that energy fantasizing about my neighbors' reactions, and yet when Tuesday night rolls around in a typical week you will still find that trash can in my yard.

The line usually gets drawn on Wednesday. I will take the dog out in the morning, see the can, and get decisive. Walking our dog, to borrow a phrase from my father, is like walking a raccoon; for some reason, it is when I have this creature taking up most of my concentration and effort that I decide I will return the can to its proper location. This ensures that a task that should take perhaps one minute will end up taking five or so as I wrestle with the puppy and an ill-fitting lid that pops off the can whenever it encounters one of the many depressions in our yard. So the whole exercise becomes a game of drag the can ten feet, reign in puppy, drag another five feet, replace lid, extract puppy from tangle in the trash can wheels, drag another fifteen feet, replace lid again after retrieving from puppy, etc. until it finally finds its way home.

As soon as I get back inside I imagine my neighbors looking out their windows. "Well," they sniff, "it's about damn time."

And then the tension eases and I can forget about my garbage can. Until next week.

Educate

2010-03-26T10:24:00.002-04:00

We finished up our prenatal classes this week.

Our final session was taught by a “lactation specialist,” a woman about our age who is really super DUPER excited about breastfeeding. Excited about it like people get excited about sporting events. So there we are on a Tuesday night, sitting in a hospital watching this woman demonstrate “latching” with a teddy bear and, I swear to God, a plush stuffed breast strapped to her hand.

“Oh yeah,” she said by way of explanation, “and I’m really not sure what they were thinking when they put this nipple on here. It doesn’t look like any nipple I’ve ever seen. Whose nipples look like this? Seriously. And I’ve seen lots of nipples, believe me.” And she sort of pinched it to illustrate her point.

I more or less concluded at that point that I’m not mature enough to raise children of my own, because from there on all I could hear from her was the word “nipple.” I fixated upon it.

“So nipple nipple. Nipple, but nipple. Nipple nipple, and nipple the nipple for nipple. Are we nipple?”

Honestly, she was actually very good, very knowledgeable, and very professional, not to mention enthusiastic. And nipple.

The rest of the classes were not quite as chock full of practical information, but were useful nonetheless. We got to see the labor and delivery rooms, as well as the postpartum rooms where the brand-new family gets to stay for a couple days.

“I call the bed,” I said. “You can have the chair beside it that folds out into the perpetually inadequate sleeping surface.”

“Or not,” said my wife, who is becoming increasingly aware of what she bought into when she married me.

We are on the downhill side of things these days. The nursery is 99% complete other than some wall hangings and a mattress for the crib, not to mention a toy box my dad and I are constructing:

Photo courtesy of my little brother

I have big plans for this toy box. It will be placed in a spot of honor in the child’s room. When he is old enough he will store his most prized possessions inside it: a stuffed bear, his Legos, all manner of cars and trucks. As he gets older he will cover it with stickers, graffiti, a layer of paint, and all manner of cuts and scratches, bumps and bruises. He will reach adolescence, deem it a relic of his childhood, and demand that it be removed from his room. I will dutifully carry it out and give it a home in our bedroom. He will bring his girlfriends home and they will see it and demand to examine it closely, but it will embarrass him and he will distract them. He will go to college and completely forget about it. He will fall in love, get married, and tell my wife and I over dinner one evening that he and his wife are expecting their first child.

We will be sitting on my porch that night drinking a beer when he says, “Dad, remember that old toy box I had? Could I have that for my child? I would need to take all the stickers, paint, and all that other junk off of it, and fill in all the holes I made, but it would be nice to have for our baby.”

And I will say, “Son, your grandfather and I build that toy box from scratch. Your uncle Nick took pictures to document the whole thing. It was the product of careful planning, hard work, and love. I made sure the edges were smooth so you wouldn’t hurt your head when you fell on it, and I got the best hinges money could buy so your little fingers wouldn’t get caught in the lid when you closed it. When you went off to college and forgot about it I took that old toy box into my garage and spent days stripping off all that stuff, filling in the holes, and making it look as new as the day we completed it all those years ago. I did all that because I knew, one day, you would come back and ask for that toy box for your children.”

He will sip his beer and exhale. “Wow, Dad. Where is it?”

“It’s in my music room, holding all my guitar equipment. Go make your own toy box. And get me another beer.”

Treble

2010-03-15T19:34:00.005-04:00

I teach guitar to a small group of students. On principle I refuse payment, not out of any sense of duty or obligation to spread the love of music, but because my methods are dubious and my ability is questionable in the first place. Fortunately, my students don't know that, so since they're not paying me I figure there's no harm done.

The biggest problem is I've never taken lessons myself. My dad taught me some chords when he got me my first guitar, but for the most part I sat in my room listening to my stereo and trying to play along with "Welcome to Paradise," an endeavor that so irritated my little brother that he took up the drums out of spite. The upshot is that everything I've ever learned on guitar I stumbled upon by accident after dozens of failed attempts, a process that Edison exploited to great effect but loses its charm when it isn't going to eventually revolutionize humanity (though you couldn't tell my 16-year old self that my guitar playing wasn’t going to benefit mankind).

So how do you teach what guitarists call "wankery?" The short answer is, you can't. There's an old adage in the education world that states, "Don't work harder than your students," but when you are attempting to teach kids how to basically screw around until something sounds good you end up working much, much harder explaining it than you ever did learning it. The other issue is that my method requires hours upon hours of sitting by yourself and sussing out songs note-by-note, making up for mediocre technique with blunt force. The obvious problem is this consumes lots of time, to the detriment of lesser pursuits such as athletics and academics. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this course of study to children whose scholastic pursuits are, in part, my responsibility. And I can't teach technique because I don't have any.

"Look guys, your best bet is to just ignore all your other obligations and play along with some Bad Religion songs for a few hours. Worked for me."

Besides, the way I learned may not even be viable these days. First of all, it requires a stereo, and did you know teenagers don't have stereo systems anymore? I'm only 26 and I already can't identify with the younger set. When I was in middle school I asked my parents for a boombox-type system like the one my friend Andrew had.

"Josh," my dad said, "you don't want to mess with that shit. You want a real stereo."

So we went to Circuit City and bought two Pioneer speakers and a CD player, procured a stereo receiver from one of his co-workers, and set the whole assembly up in an afternoon. Given the diminutive size of my bedroom and the amount of air that system moved I'm surprised I didn't end up sterilizing myself.

In 2010, though, I don't think your average teenager has the sort of audio reproduction capacity to listen to music at a level louder than polite conversation. Most music is consumed via earbud, which is quite possibly the least ballsy way ever to ruin your hearing. Computer speakers are marginally better but are the sonic equivalent of O’Douls: it’ll get you in the ballpark, but you’ll have the crap seats when you get there.

If you’re going to go deaf by music then at least do it by standing in front of something that could kill your lawn if you left it on long enough, the way God intended.

Tech

2010-02-05T09:58:00.003-05:00

As much as I enjoy technology in its present incarnation, I occasionally miss it as I experienced it in the mid 90s.

Back then my family had a Macintosh Performa 577, an all-in-one monstrosity manufactured during Apple’s “lost weekend” between Steve Jobs’ reigns. Appearances aside, I loved that machine, enough to spend entire afternoons breaking things in it. I wonder now if my family had another, secret computer hidden away from me somewhere upon which they kept all the “real” programs and documents that were one ill-conceived mouse click away from disappearing forever.

Because AOL (who didn’t have AOL in the 90s?) charged per minute, my brother and I had to ask my parents for half-hour chunks of time. I can’t account for my brother’s actions, but my 30 minutes were usually spent in chat rooms. I am saddened by the fact that the younger set will never know what an AOL chat room is like. There really is no comparable experience. The ones I loved were the ones that AOL populated with random members, so you ended up with 20-30 people with absolutely nothing in common carrying on a manic set of conversations for no other reason than THERE WAS JUST NOTHING ELSE TO DO ON AOL. Nobody had an internet connection faster than continental drift in 1996, so unless you wanted to spend 15 minutes waiting for the “News” section to load you pretty much checked your email and found a chat room in which to hang out. Once internet speeds caught up to AOL’s content, however, everybody stopped giving a shit about it, which was hilarious to everybody except Steve Case (and, later, Ted Turner).

The other reason for the “half hour at a time” rule was because, dialup being what it was, you were unable to communicate with the outside world when you were online. Mom would pick up the phone and HHRRRRGGGGGGGGSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

“JOSH! GET OFF THE FREAKING INTERNET! I NEED TO CALL YOUR SCHOOL ABOUT YOUR LUNCH BILL!” she’d yell up the stairs.

“MOMMM!!!! YOU JUST INTERRUPTED MY DOWNLOAD!”

“GET OFF THE COMPUTER AND FIND YOUR LUNCH BILL! NOW!”

And I’d slink off, cursing my friends whose parents got the extra phone line so they could stay online ALL THE TIME.

But computers were a great love of mine nonetheless. My best friend and I thought we were computer hackers, even though we didn’t know how to do anything other than download a “dialer” program and prank call his Egyptian neighbors from the computer. Imagine a thick-accented police officer screaming obscenities though a hiss of modem static to the incessant laughter of two teenage boys and you’ll have an idea of exactly why nobody wanted to hang out with us.

Nothing has changed with more starkness than cell phones. I remember my dad coming home with the family’s first handsets. We called them “the Bricks.” They had green LCD screens like a calculator, weighed a pound apiece, and probably operated on vacuum tubes. My mother developed shoulders like a linebacker due to carrying one around in her purse. Since this was well before unlimited talk plans (or even minute bundles) we were charged by the minute, meaning a request from your dad to pick up milk on the way home cost somewhere around $15 due to their policy of rounding up to the nearest hour. My parents insisted they were for emergencies only, which struck us as hilarious since there were only about 3 places in town where the phones actually worked*. This inadequacy gave rise to the “To The Stars For The Bars!” pose wherein you raised the little flimsy antenna and held the phone over your head, squinting at the little service indicator, fully expecting the extra two feet of elevation to grant you full reception (and if it did, why did we expect that reception to last when we brought the phone back down to our heads?)

We used the phones so infrequently that we were shocked beyond belief when they rang, mostly due to the fact that not even we knew the numbers (Dad had to tape them to the backs of the phones):

*ring*

“What the hell is that?”

“I think that’s one of the mobile phones.”

*ring*

“What? Who even knows that number?”

“Maybe it’s Brandon, I think I gave it to him.”

*ring*

Then we’d all scramble to answer it. It was pretty exciting.

Actually, come to think of it, it was all very exciting. I think you only get one paradigm shift a generation. Ours came with porn.

*Ironically, the one time I experienced a legitimate emergency the phone was dead.

Names

2010-01-22T15:21:00.002-05:00

My wife and I are fairly laid-back people, so we waited until we knew the sex of our child before kicking around names for it.

Now, before medical science gave us the answer to this question, the women in my wife's family had already definitively weighed in on what it was going to be.

"She's carrying low. It's a boy," said one.

"I thought that meant it was a girl," said another.

"Tie a pencil to a string and put it over her belly. If it swings in a circle, it's a girl. If it's a straight line, it's a boy."

"I actually have a fairly good solution," I interjected. "I read about this in a book. We need a flat piece of metal. We'll etch one side with a particular pattern, say, a man's head. Then we'll etch the other side with a different picture. Then I'll balance it on my thumb and, with a flicking motion, send it spinning into the air. If it lands on the head side, it's a boy. If it's the other side, it's a girl."

My flippancy, I probably don't have to relate, was not well received. Philistines.

Some people were dismayed to learn that we wanted to know the sex of the child, an act which apparently violates some romantic idea of not knowing which goddamn color to paint the nursery. Some were shocked, given my wife's personality. My wife is into surprises, see, which is why she's waiting until the birth to tell me whose child it actually is.

Seriously, though, the appointment was kind of an anticlimax. My wife was on the table for about two minutes when the technician froze the ultrasound screen and pointed to a lighter, slightly more substantial blur than the rest of the blurs on the screen (I think they pluck ultrasound techs out of a lineup of people who can actually see the figures in those Magic Eye pictures).

"See that?" she asked. Then, charmingly, she placed an arrow on the screen and wrote "BOY!!!!" in big capital letters next to it. We still have this printout, which I will show to all of my son's future prom dates.

The tech spent the next twenty minutes taking measurements, checking heart chambers, and observing vital organs (other than the first one, har har). We watched our son scratch, yawn, and occasionally kick, activities which I believe indicate his future success as an NFL punter. Hilariously, when the baby was in a position that displeased the tech she would jiggle my wife's substantial belly and grumble until the baby moved and she could take a better measurement. I'm not sure if that's in any medical manual but it was funny as hell to watch.

After a few more pictures she patted us on the head and we were on our way. On the drive home we called our families to deliver the news and listen as the "told-you-so"s rolled in from the half who guessed correctly.

Which brings us around to names. We assembled a small list of possibilities and tried them on for a few days, writing them out on paper and saying them aloud to each other. We eventually narrowed them down to a few and debated their various merits.

One night we were laying in bed when the subject turned to names.

"I still think Noah is my front-runner," my wife said.

"I do like that one," I replied. "Although William is pretty high up on the list for me."

"Mmm," my wife murmured thoughtfully, "I like it, but I think it kind of sounds like a name an old man would have."

"What?" I blurted incredulously. "You like the name 'Noah!' Don't you remember the Torah?"

My wife sighed. "Yes, but-"

"Hell," I continued. "Not only was Noah an old man, he was, like, the oldest man. I think oldest ever."

"Oh, shut up."

Impending

2009-12-05T08:28:00.003-05:00

I'd like to talk about my impending fatherhood, if it pleases.

(we'll just call this blog Big Life Change Hero for the time being)

Our unborn child is the size of a navel orange right now. Because oranges are delicious, I'm assuming that everything is going well with the pregnancy. My wife's practitioner, who coincidentally is also the size of a navel orange, has given us the thumbs-up the last three visits. I'm not sure of her criteria, however; the last three times we've been in her office she's listened to the baby's heartbeat, made fun of my clothing, and told us everything is going great.

It was pretty nifty seeing the ultrasound, though. I'm not really up on the whole biology of the human gestation period (I aced conception, though), so it came as a big surprise that our child was moving around an awful lot in there. I think it even picked its nose, which my wife indicated was a sure sign that I was the father.

Speaking of the Incubator™,my wife has been entertaining the past few weeks. First of all, she has this belly that isn't really getting in the way yet, but still looks awkward, like somebody stuck a big blob of Play-Doh on a Barbie doll and stuck her in a pair of maternity pants. Early on in this process I watched her wrap a piece of American cheese around a pickle and eat it, right out of the fridge. And after a day of being sick, she sat on the couch with a TV tray and consumed an entire container of grape tomatoes, along with several types of cracker and at least one soda. Hand to God, it's like she's been hiding a copy of Expectant Mother Stereotypes under one of her half a dozen pillows she now sleeps with (I feel like I've been dozing next to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man).

As for me, well, I'm obviously extracting immense enjoyment out of this process. The dad-to-be books I bought all have these sections about dealing with your wife, your in-laws, your own emotions, your change in lifestyle, etc. Reading these, I suddenly feel slightly inadequate that I'm not a drunk, nervous wreck or an insensitive manchild pining for his glory days as King of the Keg Stand.

Look, people, allow me a bit of hubris for a second: I'm highly adaptable. I've lived in one of the biggest cities in the world, the most rural of the rural, and places in between. I got married with no drama regarding any perceived loss of "freedom." After we bought our house I didn't complain when the toilet leaked. It took human beings millions of years of evolution to develop a decent cerebral cortex; I'm not going to cheat my species by losing my shit over the small stuff.

...that's not to say that the whole daddy thing isn't jarring. You can only be so stoic. But my DNA doesn't include the Ts, As, Gs, or Cs for fixation on the kinds of debris that your basic expectant father seems to wear out like a worry rock, at least according to the books on my ottoman.

When did we, as men, decide it was okay to go mental every time our lives change?

Are we supposed to live in a constant state of easy comfort?

Have we really become so accustomed to food, clothing, and shelter that we can't eke out a single bit of happiness from any living situation?

Can we not adapt?

Lazy

2009-01-17T09:14:00.011-05:00

I became a husband a little over a year ago. I am not, however, sure of how one becomes a really good husband, sort of heroic and romantic and masculine all mixed up together. My big problem is I think I have a pretty decent grasp of irony, and so I tend to engage in the sort of introspective navel-gazing that ends up making me self conscious whenever I think about performing grand husbandly gestures.

I'm getting a vague picture from my wife that a husband is somebody who should appear

thoughtful, yet thoughtless in this thoughtfulness. This is why men die sooner.

I think my wife and I knew we were going to get married when we were in high school. She has a series of pictures around here somewhere of us getting ready for a dance. She's wearing this pale purple dress, I think lilac or something similar, and in one shot I'm plainly gazing down the front of it. That was when I knew we were going to go the distance.

Because we are both nurturers at heart, over the last year we've accumulated two cats and, very recently, a puppy. The tale science tells us is that being around animals lowers blood pressure and lengthens the human life span. Obviously, scientists are not pet owners. Scientists spend their days running mice through mazes, giving IQ tests to cats, and watching dolphins have sex. This is not inherently stressful animal-related activity. Stressful activity is chasing your puppy, who is chasing the cat, who has just peed on your brand new couch while you yell for your wife to PLEASE GET THE LYSOL AND PAPER TOWELS BECAUSE THE CAT JUST PISSED ON THE COUCH AGAIN AND WE ARE GOING TO SELL ALL OF THESE PETS TO THE PETTING ZOO AND BUY AN ANT FARM AND DINNER AT APPLEBEES!!!!!!

Owen, who thieves my guitar picks without remorse

Scientists, however, are not stupid. They have PhD's, you know. They've concluded that it's much less stressful to come home to their collections of rare books and vinyl albums after announcing with straight faces that pets lower your stress levels. If everybody knew the truth - that owning pets corrodes your sanity, bank account, and will to live - we'd all have shelves full of first editions and tube amplified record players and the scientists would have to find another elitist hobby to engage in, like cornhole.

Jaxon. Cute as a button. Dumb as a box of rocks.

Don't misunderstand me. I love our pets. But they have quirks. For example, we have happened upon three particularly bizarre specimens who have certain issues with bodily fluids.

Owen, the thief pictures above, alerts us to his displeasure by pretending his litter box doesn't exist. It's not as charming as it sounds.

Braylee, below, will periodically eat so quickly she makes herself sick. She once vomited from a height of about two feet, in the process discovering the very precise combination of sounds that can utterly disarm even my most voracious appetite.

Jaxon simply isn't housetrained yet. There's nothing quite like catching your cute little puppy bending one off right in front of your prized acoustic guitar.

Guitar cat Braylee, the only entity in the house who enjoys my music

But at least we aren't bored.

Substitute

2008-05-28T12:10:00.004-04:00

If you're ever in a position to do so, you should really take a turn at substitute teaching. Like foodservice, it's one of those jobs that makes you appreciate all the other jobs you've ever had. It also gives you moral license to complain bitterly about children, the privilege of the old(er).

The truly weird part of this whole situation is that I'm not that much older than the high schoolers I'm in charge of. So when they do things that are, for lack of a better word, stupid, I can sympathize. It's difficult to think clearly with your hormones are shouting an adolescent chorus inside your brain, drowning out all semblance of rationality. And I remember that strange time of life pretty clearly; consequently, sometimes I feel as though my reprimands don't carry the sort of righteous force necessary to command, if not respect, then at least grudging acceptance. That's what I tell myself, anyway, and since I sleep pretty well at night I'm not interested in your reality.

I do hand this to teenagers, though: insistent, indignant defiance of all things adult is one effective tool. Especially when that "adult" is a surrogate, an ex-fast food employee who wants nothing more than to finish his paperback while Your Friend The Atom plays on the dusty VHS deck in the back of the classroom.

"Get off the table, please."

"Why?"

"Because you don't need to lay on the table."

"Mr. ______ lets us lay on the table."

"I'm not Mr. _____. Off the table, please."

"Why?"

On and on, ad nauseam, until the entire class is focused on this absorbing power struggle that you, Mr. Substitute, are losing, and eventually lost. One of my worst moments in classroom management, and a violation of Rule #1: Don't let the students set the tone.

But it's hard. I always describe the understanding of difficult, abstract concepts as "a 'feel' thing," and teaching is definitely a "feel" thing. Not only does it vary from class to class, but from student to student. So what ends up happening is a very intricate juggling act that involves group dynamics and the behavior of individual students, because one student, improperly handled, can disrupt the entire peaceful equilibrium of the classroom like an improperly balanced domino. As he goes, so go the rest.

I like to think that I'm improving as a classroom manager, but the truth is it's very difficult to step into different shoes every day and take effective command of a classroom without any prior "tone setting." As a substitute, the best you can hope for is that the teacher whose classroom you're watching kept the group humming along with little prodding. In a way, a class run in such a manner is less tense, because high expectations have been placed on the students from the get-go. I've substituted in classrooms that were run tight as a drum, and when I assume the mantle the group simply executes.

The challenge comes from classrooms with more permissive atmospheres. I'm equipped to handle the occasional hairy group, but the truly wild ones are very stressful for me. Those are the ones that make me question my effectiveness as a classroom manager, because when the end of the rope is reached I settle into a frustrated funk. Not good for me, and unfair to the students, because ultimately (with a few very difficult, very unique exceptions) the teacher is responsible for the classroom atmosphere. And while my position is as a substitute teacher I still feel responsible for student behavior under my supervision.

Imagine being angry at an unruly student, disgusted at yourself for losing the classroom, and frustrated at the circumstances that led to the class being so out of control in the first place. That's substitute teaching.

But you do it anyway, because, in that masochistic part of your brain, you like it. If you're a teacher, you know why. If you aren't, well, it's tough to explain.

Just a "feel" thing.

Cat

2008-05-07T08:04:00.003-04:00

We adopted a cat. Meet Owen.

As I write this, Owen is engaging in his favorite activity that doesn't involve stripping ribbons of skin off my feet in a dart-from-under-the-bed sneak attack: watching the birds on the power lines. Since we're on the second story we're at eye level for some primo ornithological study, although I have a strong suspicion that his interest is less academic than mine. Also, he drools more.

I've also discovered why icanhascheezburger.com has such a loyal following. You can't help but conjure up a narrative for these creatures as they go about their daily lives (being unemployed really helps spur this creativity). I suppose the next step after that is to speak it aloud to your significant other until he/she finally succumbs to that reptilian part of his/her brain and clobbers you with a coffee mug; from there, you're the tiniest of jumps away from taking pictures of your cat and captioning them with a strange pidgin of English and net-speak, then sending them to everybody you know. Yes, you're one of those people, God help you, but your friends still love you. For now.

Move

2008-04-11T21:05:00.004-04:00

Honoring our agreement with the state of Virginia, we finally packed up and moved ourselves.

It wasn't bad, as far as moves go. We had a gameplan and executed it with surgical precision; as a result, we were moved in and comfortable within the course of one day.

I called my mom the next day.

"How did it go?" she asked, then yelled at their border collie to get the kitten's head out of its mouth, which didn't faze me much because I've come to accept those sorts of outbursts as a matter of course. Speaking to my parents on the phone these days is like speaking to a couple of Tourette's patients whose tics all involve animal reprimands.

"It went pretty well. I'd say we're 98% moved in at this point, to be honest."

"Really?" she said. "Well that's good. So it only took you that one day to move everything you own?"

"Yep."

"You know that's a sign of poverty, right?"

"No I didn't, Mom," I said, dry enough to pass for a Churchill martini.

"Actually," she said, and sighed. "I miss being broke. Do you realize we have three couches?"

"Three couches?" My back spasmed in sympathy. Our only couch, a "sleeper sofa," is the heaviest single object I've ever moved without the aid of an internal combustion engine.

"Sure do," she said. I heard my father in the background. "Dad says we can seat 29 people in the house without bringing up the folding chairs from the basement." I'm not surprised by this at-hand knowledge, because this is part of a litany of Things Only Dad Knows™, such as what spacewalk phase the astronauts are currently working on or what percentage of the earth's crust contains manganese.

I suppose the couch/poverty relationship can be expressed mathematically as such:

"For H, Happiness, there are two conditions:

1) If C > 1, where C = number of couches, then H = (Net income / C) x (A + B ) + Dc, where A = actual square footage of residence and B = total number of border collies living in residence, and Dc = the total number of consecutive days in the past calendar month gone without eating frozen chicken from a box.

2) If C ≤ 1, then H = ( mR ) / E + R - rD, where mR = the total monthly rent, E = equity garnered (note: this is never quantifiable in this condition except in wealth of knowledge, which cannot be borrowed against as far as utility companies are concerned), R = days elapsed between when you ask your landlord to repair your leaky window for the fifth fucking time and when it actually is repaired, and rD= number of days in the past calendar month during which ramen noodles were consumed as a primary source of nourishment.

I mean, at this point I'd settle for Lower Middle Class Hero.

Displaced

2008-03-14T19:24:00.006-04:00

"As explained in our meeting, as of today you are considered 'displaced persons' by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT)."

When I read the letter from VDOT and first came across our classification I immediately felt as though I should be pulling along a donkey and wailing about my homeland to a CNN translator (who is probably British, because, inexplicably, they all are) who relays my agony to a gravely nodding Anderson Cooper. And though Grundy does feel like a humanitarian crisis every so often I still can't help but feel that the term "displaced person" seems a tad overblown.

Because God has a sense of humor He has decided to subject a group of people who have based a way of life on avoiding change to the undoubtedly unprecedented ordeal of moving their entire town away from an incontinent river, while simultaneously constructing a few miles of highway through the center of the rubble. This entire process had been a source of mild amusement and occasional traffic-related annoyance to us until a couple of weeks ago, when we were paid a visit by a representative from the highway department. Mr. Black (and, really, can a guy who works for the government have a better name than that?) broke the news to us that the state had bought our apartment building and we were going to have to move. This would normally be a Very Bad Thing™, except for the fact that the state was going to find us a new apartment, pay our moving costs, and pay the difference in rent for three and a half years.

"This is really a pretty good opportunity for you," he said, cringing as a gust of winter air cut through the gap between our window and the wall.

A week passed, and, government being what it is, another state representative came calling.

"Okay, we found you guys a place. As you know, there's a brand-new apartment complex a few miles down the road. We're going to move everybody in the building there."

We nodded. Get to the money, bureau-wench.

"You're entitled to a rent differential payment to cover 42 months of the difference between your current rent and the rent there. It'll be split up into yearly disbursements, or we can do it all at once under certain circumstances." She showed us the amount.

Holy crap, we think. That's like...a Kia. A really nice Kia.

"Now, we'll also cover moving expenses. Based on four rooms in your current apartment, you're entitled to a one-time lump sum payment, unless you want to hire a moving company."

She gave us the amount. Apparently we'll be packing our DVDs in the Ark of the Covenant.

"To tell you the truth, most people spend this money on other things. One guy I was talking to was taking a vacation." I consider this. It's tempting, but there are meats and cheeses to be bought for our upcoming wedding (because this is a much more responsible use for taxpayer funds)(at this point, I would like to also point out that the economic stimulus check the president is sending us is going to be used for our honeymoon...in Canada.)

"So that's about it. If you're okay with everything just sign here and we'll get the moving money to you as soon as we can."

We signed the paperwork while I made little cash register noises in my head.

Has anybody in history ever been so happy to be evicted?

Town

2008-02-12T09:03:00.000-05:00

When you live in a small town you will never have need to wallow in the folly of conjecture, because answers will fall into your lap if you ask the question loudly enough.

The local Food City has a bakery-deli whose wares are regularly advertised over the store's PA system. The spokesperson is a folksy, down-home woman of indeterminable age who waxes poetic (in a folksy, down-home, reserved sort of way) about things like roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. All of her announcements revolve around some sort of theme, usually dictated by the nature of the product being advertised and the time of year it is ("Well howdy, Food City shoppers. Heat wave making it too hot to turn on that oven? Well come on down to the Food City bakery-deli, where we have a super cool deal on a big ol' chicken meal with all the trimmings, including..") She's always been a source of amusement to me, and I've often wondered what this woman is like away from her PA telephone.

I was at work when somebody brought in a box of bakery-deli food.

"You know," I said, "the woman who does those announcements is just great. I'd love to meet her and see what she's like."

"Oh, that's my cousin," interjected a co-worker.

"Are you serious? You're related to the bakery-deli lady?"

"Yep, all my life." (this passes for dry humor in Grundy)

"No kidding? Wow! So is she nice? I'd get a kick out of it if she was this miserable old hag or something." (not my finest moment, in retrospect)

"Um, yeah, she's just kind of a regular person. She cuts meat," came the reply. A pause. Then, with suspicion: "You seem really interested in her."

"Yeah! She's like the J. Peterman of egg salad."

"The who?"

Well

2007-12-07T19:55:00.000-05:00

One afternoon a few years ago my brother and I were helping my dad load up his pickup truck.

We finished packing the cargo and were untangling the springy rubber netting in preparation for transport when Dad wandered by.

"Oh great, the truck's packed," he said into his ubiquitous cup of coffee. "Go ahead and put the ah....."

And he wandered off.

There are few scarier situations than when your dad gives you instructions and immediately leaves you to a task you barely understand. It's even worse when you don't even have a complete sentence to guide you.

My brother and I looked at each other in panic for a few moments.

"What do you suppose he wanted?" Nick finally uttered.

"I think the tailgate," I said.

"You got tailgate out of that?"

"Well, did YOU hear him?"

"No, but-"

"Shit, here he comes."

We stuck our chins to our chests and fingered the netting as Dad came around the front of the truck, then stopped when he got to the bed.

And in a monosyllabic roar of frustration and disbelief he flung himself into familial infamy:

"WELL?!"

"What?"

"I told you to attach the hooks to the netting, close the tailgate, and net the stuff!"

This was inconceivable. "No, you said, 'Put the UHHHH' and walked down the driveway!" I protested.

"Well did you not KNOW what you were supposed to do?"

"How?!" Nick blurted out.

"It was pretty obvious, boys!"

And there we were, standing in the driveway, three semi-grown men, brazenly and shamelessly arguing about something so mind-numbingly stupid that the neighborhood squirrels went into early hibernation.

To this day, whenever one of us is explaining something to the other, and the instructee isn't understanding it, we'll usually stare at him for a moment, fling up our arms, and yell "WELL?!" right in his face.

Nobody else really gets it, but it's the funniest damn thing ever.

Shake

2007-11-01T20:31:00.001-04:00

As I stood waiting for my cooperating teacher to open his classroom I began looking through my Palm with no real purpose.

"Mr. Stump! Guess what!"

I looked up and met the smiling face of one of my students. "What?"

"I got a promotion!" His smile widened.

"Hey, congratulations!" I said, giving him a thumbs-up.

"Thanks! I'm a manager now at work."

"That's quite a promotion. Did you have to interview for it?"

"Oh yeah," he said, eyes wide. "There were like ten people who signed up for the job."

"Wow!" I said. "Well good for you, bud."

He nodded and turned to talk to a friend. I stood watching the parade of costumed teenagers as they performed their morning routines. The school allowed students to dress up for Halloween, and some were taking the holiday pretty seriously.

I was rummaging through my bag for a document when I heard the student I was talking to earlier snort loudly and say, "Man, I oughta kill him."

I looked up. "Who? And why?"

He pointed. I turned and saw a young man in a large foam milkshake outfit, his back to us.

"I don't get it. What's the big deal?" I asked, but as soon as the words left my lips the shake turned. Emblazoned on the front of the costume was a large golden arches logo, the Death's Head of fast food.

"Our shake machine is always breaking," he mumbled, "and that reminded me of the last time it broke and we had to-"

"You work at McDonald's?"

"Yep, for a couple years now."

With a jolt of horror I became aware of two things: I share the exact same job as one of the students I teach. And, worse, he outranks me.

"Have you ever worked fast food?" he asked good-naturedly.

Immediately I realized the dilemma: if I tell him no I will be lying, and if that student or any other student visits Grundy on a weekend and sees me at work they will realize I was lying, and I will lose all credibility as a teacher. If I tell the truth he will undoubtedly realize he is his teacher's superior at work, and he will tell this to all his friends, and I will lose all credibility as a teacher.

I decide to bank on the long odds of him ever visiting Grundy.

"I did some, yes," I said, echoing a somewhat edited version of the truth.

"Yeah, so you know what I mean," he said. "Those machines always break, you know?"

"I do know what you mean," I said, which was the 100% truth.

"Cool." He sighed. "It ain't such a bad job. I'll tell you what, though, how old are you?"

"I'm twenty-three."

"Yeah, see," he said, "if I'm working at McDonald's when I'm your age I'll probably just shoot myself in the head."

Creation

2007-09-12T18:24:00.000-04:00

William opened his eyes and saw nothing.

In a sense, however, he saw everything, since the total of everything at that precise moment was nothing. Until William. William was Time's orphan, a remnant of something (an idea, or a notion, or a glimmer) that had existed briefly but vanished as quickly as it came. William was a ripple of disturbance in the Void.

As he awoke he became flesh. First came his eyes, wide and inquisitive, framed by a cherubic face and interrupted now and then by rich curls of hair. His body was the body of a young boy, strong but still perfectly juvenile. He rubbed his eyes with his plump fists, pausing afterward to look, puzzled, at his hands. In that moment, William became aware of himself. William moved from ripple to Being.

The Void shifted and William found himself in distress, a well of panic rising within himself. At its climax he opened his mouth and drew a breath, and the panic ceased. He drew another, and another, and his body realized what was happening and took over, and he never worried about it again.

As he breathed he became aware of his own weight as his lungs pushed against his rib cage, causing another shift and leaving him lying supine on a flat, invisible surface. He became cold, and in response his body began pumping blood, warming him. This touched off a chain reaction that did not stop until all of his insides were formed. Being became Boy.

He sat up and turned his head. The Void was utterly and completely featureless, a quality that you or I certainly cannot fathom, but understand that at this moment the only speck of Existence was William. He sat in silence for seven days.

On the eighth day he became aware of Time, and his joints ached from his inactivity and his legs fell asleep. He pushed off the surface and he fell, landing on another surface after a short duration. He swung one leg in front of the other and began to walk, tentatively, slowly. By and by he began to run. He smiled and the Void shifted again, erupting in a spectrum of color that gave hue to everything it touched. His hair turned brown, his eyes a deep blue, and his skin rosy porcelin. He saw this happen and laughed, ecstatic. William's ears picked this up, a high and careless noise, and sound was created. This startled him, but he thought it wonderful. The air whistled by his ears as he ran. He ran and ran and ran and laughed, days upon days upon days, tirelessly and seemingly without purpose. His breath created the winds and sky, and his sweat the seas, so great was his exertion. At last he tired, and with a contended sigh he fell to the ground and closed his eyes.

He felt a tickle on his back. William propped himself up on one elbow and looked out across the Void, and he gasped.

Wherever his footsteps had fallen there was grass, green as malachite, soft and wonderful. He stood and looked out at a vast undulating plain stretching out as far as he could see, the horizon a seemingly untouchable frontier, nearly perfect. But because William himself was the result of a ripple of imperfection, so, too, were the fruits of his creation. Like a top set spinning carelessly and without precision, the Void's equilibrium waned in response to William's efforts and began to shake with a terrible and terrific violence. William uttered a cry of fear and hid his face in the grass, and he did not show it until the Void was once again still. When he cast his eyes upward he found that the soft highs and lows of the Void's grassy plain had become great craggy mountains and deep valleys. The seas bled into the land, creating the rivers and lakes. Grass became mosses and trees. Where his sweat clung to the grass it became distorted in entirely different ways, great and small, and with the help of a fortuitously benevolent wind it became all manner of animals who took to land, sea, or sky. Of these William was not afraid, and though they regarded him with caution and suspicion he thought of them as fascinating cohabitants, and spent many hours watching them carry out their respective purposes.

He understood his power in a detached, cause-and-effect way, but regarded his work in the same way any ten year old would regard a quick crayon scrawl rendered in a moment of boredom. This detachment created small, slow-moving ripples of feeling that emanated from William like drops of water on a still pond. What life existed absorbed these ripples and divorced themselves from William's influence. Rivers and lakes flowed with their own rhythms, animals began to heed their own instinct and the green things began to respirate and grow at their own pace.

Many days passed, and William took to exploring his environment with great zeal. On a warm day he decided to visit some rocky foothills near his favorite tree. Not used to the craggy terrain, William did not watch where he was stepping, and with a cry of pain he stepped on a sharp piece of flint and fell.

He grasped his ankle tightly, sniffling, and watched in horror as the sizable cut on his foot began to ooze blood. The first drop slid down to his heel, paused, and then fell to the dirt. It remained motionless for a moment, but the tail of a breeze gave it a nudge, and it spread out in a dendritic web across the loose soil. One tendril reached toward William, and he scampered to his feet, wound forgotten. The breeze subsided, and yet the blood continued to move of its own accord, stopping occasionally as if getting its bearings before moving again in an entirely new direction. William observed this, barely breathing. Branch after branch split two, three, four ways. He circled slowly, leaving small droplets of blood behind him, and although he didn't see them they oozed to their own patches of dirt and began the same dance.

A man-shape emerged. The soil underneath began to move, churning softly, then burst upward violently. William shielded his eyes as a fierce windstorm blew sand and grit against his naked flesh, but as quickly as it began it ceased. Before him lay a boy, and further on another boy, and beyond those two a girl. At every footfall he had made and left his blood there was a child, inert, not alive but decidedly not dead. There were 47 in all, lying supine on the dirt. William kneeled down beside the nearest and placed his hand on his cheek. Cold.

William had no reason to know sadness before that moment, but as he looked at each of the children he felt lonely. The animals kept their distance from him, though he tried his best to imitate their actions in hopes of gaining their close companionship. The trees and green things provided shade and comfort but not friendship. But beings like himself, William thought, would not be afraid.

He smiled a little. They might even share his love of trees. Perhaps they would climb with him and watch the big animals feed, as William often did. Or jump in the cold river and float downstream and find an entirely new world around the big bend in the forest. They needed life.

His blood, William thought, gave them shape. Maybe it could give them life as well, even if it meant causing himself pain. William followed the line of children back to the flint he had cut his foot on, but found it lodged securely in the ground. He looked around and found another rock that looked suitable for digging, and began to unearth the rest of the flint.

Rock struck rock, and a shower of sparks so frightened William that he propelled himself backward and nearly fell into the river. He looked at the rock in his hand and back at the flint, then kneeled down and gingerly struck the two together, yielding a smaller display. Thrilled, he struck the rocks together again, this time towards himself, and the sparks burned his bare feet. With a grunt of confusion he rubbed his wound until the pain subsided, then paused, an idea forming.

William looked up to the sun, thinking of the trees he loved that spent their days reaching towards the sky.

The sun, William thought, gave warmth and light...and life?

And so why not the little suns he himself had created with the rock and flint?

With a mighty effort he struck the exposed flint with his rock and, with a puff of dirt and broken soil, the flint dislodged. William picked it up and bent over the nearest child.

A quick strike on the flint. A shower of sparks.

And as William held his breath the small child opened his eyes and took his first. William straightened, fascinated and ecstatic. The child sat up gingerly, took another shuddering breath, then looked up at William. William smiled and extended his hand, helping the boy stand.

They regarded each other for a long moment, William smiling, the boy confused and shaky on his new legs. Like a fawn, William thought. The boy looked around at the other children, then questioningly back at William. With a wide smile William held up the two stones, then ran to the next child and struck them over her.

In no time William had awoken all of the 47 children. They had crowded around him, staring expectantly, wonderingly. He looked into each of their perfect faces, overjoyed beyond anything he had ever felt.

But as he studied their faces that joy was tempered, all at once, by a sense of trepidation. And fear. In their eyes he saw a hint of something dark, a murky potential that sent a chill down his little spine.

The moment passed, and William took another breath. And he smiled.

They smiled back.

And thus began the First Tribe of William, the alpha clan of this world.

Tip

2007-08-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

Some advice I recently gave to one of the high schoolers I mentored this summer:

"When it comes time for you, too, to swallow your pride in the name of paying the rent, make sure it doesn't taste like a chicken nugget."

Honestly, that's the best I could do.

Confidence

2007-08-17T16:10:00.000-04:00

Recently, as part of the admissions process into the student teaching program, all of the candidates had to undergo an interview that tested our knowledge of state teaching standards and how we plan to meet them as professionals.

As we waited out in the hallway for our turn with the committee our motherly Resource Director, who had prepped us the day before on what we should say, noticed that a few of us looked nervous.

"Relax, everybody, relax," she soothed, amused at the nerves. "This morning these people put their pants on the exact same way you did."

I pondered that well-intentioned yet useless little pep talk for a few moments before my turn was up. I rounded the corner and came face to face with the interview panel.

All women. All wearing skirts.

Moral of the story: Platitudes are stupid.

Cabbage

2007-08-10T22:27:00.000-04:00

Everybody in Grundy pays with large bills.

It's like living in a town populated entirely by drug dealers.

Grundy being what it is, of course, the largest bills come out for the smallest totals, and vice versa. It's actually a nearly perfect inverse relationship: a couple Dollar Menu items warrants a Benjamin, whereas a $35 order gets me a dirty, sweaty fistful of ones and fives.

It's baffling, really.

However, it becomes an inconvenience in the early morning hours, when there's only a little bit of cash in the drawers and a single hundred can clean it out as soundly and completely as the coma I slipped into when I accidentally watched an entire episode of Full House.

Sometimes a person guilty of this fast food sin will say, "Sorry, it's all I have." For some reason I find this especially heinous, and so I've developed a plan for the next time somebody says it.

Me: "Your total is $4.35."

Customer: *handing over $100 bill* " Sorry, it's all I have."

Me: "No problem!"

*I make change*

Me: "Here's your change. Thanks!"

Customer, aghast: "What the-? What is this supposed to be?"

Me: "That's your change, sir."

Customer: "It's in ones and fives! And pennies...?!"

Me: "Sorry sir," I say, closing the window, "it's all I have."

Stock

2007-07-31T11:18:00.001-04:00

I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the big full-length mirror this morning as I emerged from the bedroom.

What I saw was a shirtless man-child, hair comically askew, shorts hanging off my butt carelessly. I stopped in my tracks and backed up a little.

23 years old. College was fairly good to me, except for the 20 pounds that somehow encroached into my midsection and, inexplicably, my cheeks and under my chin. The latter is what everybody seems to notice, like the high school theater director I ran into last year who told me the "weight on [my] face makes [me] look older." Because I try to see the best in everybody, I convinced myself he intended for this to be construed as a compliment.

I really don't remember the 80s. My only connection to that decade was that I was born in the midst of it. I caught the denouement of Reagan and recall Bush only by the green-tinged night vision of the Gulf War on TV. By the time I became aware of politics it was September 2001, and even then it was only by force.

I missed some of the culture that my generation bonded over, I think. I never watched Full House, 90201, Melrose Place, or Saved by the Bell. I did, however, stay up late against my parents' wishes to catch Beavis and Butt-Head. I don't know a single word of Can't Touch This, Achy Breaky Heart, or Ice Ice Baby. I'm pretty much a failure as far as early 90s adolescent children go. I didn't even listen to popular music until my friend Drew let me listen to Green Day's Dookie album. I think before that I listened to a lot of orchestra music, although I don't know why. My only saving grace was that I kept up religiously with video games, from the original NES to the Nintendo 64. After that things get a little shaky, but my immense collection of GamePro magazines in my parents' basement will attest to my expertise.

Reading that again, I can only conclude that I was, and still am, a hopeless nerd.

Meanwhile, a lot of people my age say they feel old. I'm not so sure about that.

We've only lived through one complete two-term presidency. As long as we've been old enough to use computers meaningfully we've had the internet. We grew up with video games and CDs; VHS died out long before we graduated high school.

I think I'll finally feel old when I pick up some elaborate piece of electronic gadgetry, turn it over in my hands for five minutes, and finally ask the nearest teenager how to turn it on.

After that, I'm moving to Florida.

Esteem

2007-07-14T21:59:00.000-04:00

Sometimes all it takes is little stuff to chip away at your self-esteem.

I just watched Transformers, and as if I wasn't already feeling down after spending $50 to get the mechanic to tell me he can't fix my car, I realize that it is also not a robot alien being with a rocket launcher and machine gun.

I'm mentoring some high school kids this summer. A couple girls were talking about band, and I stepped in, because they pay me to be intrusive:

Me: "You guys play in the band? I did, too, when I was in high school."

Girl: "Cool."

Me: "What do you play?"

Girl: "Clarinet."

Other Girl: "Trumpet."

Girl: "What did you play?"

Me: "Well, I played--"

Girl: "Flute?"

Me: "No, actually I--"

Girl: "I figured you for a flute player."

Me: "But I didn't--"

Girl: "Definitely a flute player."

Me: "You're not terribly impressed with me, are you?"

Girl: "Not really."

I'm not sure exactly what I did, but she hasn't spoken to me since and I can take a hint.

Strudel

2007-06-26T15:55:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from the personal diary of Zack Simons, AKA "That Kid With The Toaster Strudel"

For the record, Diary, let me say this: I have what I consider to be a healthy and mutually nurturing relationship with my parents. To that end, they assure that my emotional, physical, and dietary needs are met to the best of their ability, financial or otherwise. My father is a patent attorney, altogether unexciting work (he was undoubtedly pushed into the work by my grandfather, who sought to pass on his family's name in the profession at the cost of his children's own happiness, although I must admit my father has taken it in stride), but sufficiently lucrative nonetheless. My mother, bless her soul, has assumed the role of caregiver to her two boys and three bedroom Victorian, which is slowly building equity thanks to a very concerted remodeling effort. She is patient and kind despite her occasional displeasure with her station in life. She writes poetry; I've found the books. Most of the time, however, she derives an acute sense of fulfillment in raising her children, and so even though the instinct to break free surfaces through the pen her motherly instincts utilize the Kenmoore and wooden spoon as their vehicle. She has achieved equilibrium.

Enter Cody. You know him, of course. He comes from nearly the same circumstances as I; father as provider, mother as nurturing caregiver. On the surface, anyway, all appears normal. However: whereas my mother expresses her domestic angst through thoughtful self-expression, Mrs. Clemens opts for a pathetically juvenile program of lashing out at her family, whom I suspect she blames for her discontent. Cody, unfortunately, has become her prototype, a concrete manifestation of the responsibilities she has come to resent so fervently. Poor Cody bears the brunt of her scorn for this reason. As his best friend, I witness the effect of these transgressions are imposing upon his countenance. Cody is fragile, partly by nature, but also as a consequence of his mother's rage. He was the last in class to master the construction of the cursive alphabet, a matter of considerable weightiness at our tender age. Cody is reasonably confident around girls, at least as confident as boys our age can be around such enigmatic creatures (I, along with my peers, are eagerly awaiting the enlightenment on this subject that age will surely bring), although in his ardor to gain their praise he often wallows in his failures, settling into a deep funk at every declined cafeteria seating request or negative answer circled on a clandestinely passed note in spelling class.

Such are the consequences of his mother's slings and arrows, wounds opened on her offspring borne of her maternal (matrimonial?) frustrations.

A relevant aside: Pop-Tarts are awful. They are congealed wood pulp and Styrofoam wrapped around a sickening concoction of artificial fruit flavors, sugar, and preservatives blended into a paste so nauseatingly sweet that it would instantly send a hummingbird into a diabetic coma. The manufacturer, apparently realizing how bad those "pastries" are, packages them in pairs to trick unsuspecting customers into buying more of them at a time.

Mrs. Clemens, of course, provides Pop-Tarts as the only breakfast food in their household; Cody arrives at school every morning clutching his uneaten Pop-Tart in misery. I've observed the denouement of his morning routine from the back of our Explorer, driving by his house as she shoves him out the door, cigarette in hand.

I concluded from the nature of his mother that any requests for a substitute (not that such a request would originate from meek little Cody) would be denied. Because my family as an avid consumer of the vastly superior Toaster Strudel, I formulated a plan to help poor Cody get himself a decent breakfast pastry. While my mother tended to my little brother, who is difficult to rouse in the morning, I pilfered an extra Toaster Strudel, put it in a plastic baggie, and hid it in my lunch bag with a piece of tinfoil and a lighter I stole from Mrs. Clemens. Once at school, I ducked into the boys' room, wrapped the frozen pastry in the foil, and cooked it to a golden brown with the lighter and an empty toilet paper holder. I hastily applied the icing, disposed of my waste, and took the piping hot Strudel to my despondent friend, who was gnawing on a stale corner of a "strawberry" flavored Pop-Tart at his locker.

He was understandably thankful. He chucked the offending rectangle into his locker and downed the Strudel in record time. This became a daily routine, with he dutifully accepting the Pop-Tart from his mother while I smuggled an extra Toaster Strudel under the nose of mine. Soon his locker became so full of discarded Pop-Tarts that they came tumbling out in a torrent one morning, to the amusement of passers-by. It took fifteen minutes to clear the mess, and it landed Cody in the principal's office, although through some divine act of Providence he was spared a call home to his parents.

I was the only one visibly disturbed that there was no sign of decay any of the months-old Pop-Tarts.

Thankfully, Diary, this story has a happy ending. Mrs. Clemens was arrested on a possession with intent to sell charge while stopped for a speeding infraction, her third in as many weeks. Robbie Booker said he overheard his dad tell his mom that she had been transporting marijuana in the back of her Volvo for quite a while, apparently. Amazingly, nobody knew a thing about it until the police officer noticed an odd smell coming from the back seat. It was not until he started poking around back there that he realized why none of the other officers who had stopped her had noticed the drugs, despite the fact that they were in plain sight.

She was hiding them in Pop-Tart wrappers.

Grievances

2007-06-25T15:00:00.000-04:00

Minimum Wage Hero
presents

The Airing of Grievances on MySpace

subtitle:

The Utilization of the Pronoun Phrase 'Certain People' to Preserve Party Anonymity on Internet Networking Websites

Publisher synopsis:

Grievances fills the void left by other For Dummies and similar DIY volumes and delves into the finer points of protocol, etiquette, and syntax in the crafting of effective personal conflict-oriented MySpace blog entries.

Topics include:

How to preserve plausible deniability through snarky allusion
"Some bitches need to just grow up," and other methods of imploring maturity
Why class, dignity, and self-respect are signs of weakness
Techniques in feigning bemusement to disguise anger
The High Ground: Why take it when you can fake it?
Turning a blind eye to irony

Grievances includes a BONUS DVD that features:

A lesson in escalation through careful commenting ("omg dont let those dumb bitches get 2 u")
Motivational, self-affirming video entitled "The Internet: A Consequence-Free Utopian Rage Playground"

Grievances will be available next month at major booksellers nationwide.

Angst

2007-06-20T15:57:00.000-04:00

For some, happiness hinges on their satisfaction with the job they do, the quality of their love life, or something similarly self-actualizing/fulfilling. For others, it's fast food.

Case study:

I was taking money, and my co-worker Grace was taking orders. The morning had gone fairly slowly when a beep sounded in our headsets.

"Can I help you?"

"I want a McChicken, a Hi-C, and an Oreo McFlurry."

"I'm sorry ma'am, but we are currently unable to serve ice cream. Can I get you anything else?"

"Huh? No ice cream?"

In the background we hear a nasal whine: "But it's summer!"

"It IS summer!" echos the driver.

There's a pause while Grace considers this.

"Yes, ma'am," she finally submits, tentatively.

Background: "What a bunch of retards."

The driver, to the passenger: "God that's fuckin' stupid."

Grace attempts to refocus the situation. "Ma'am?"

"Nothin'! Gimmie a Coke."

We hear her gun the engine and the speaker clicks off. I'm thrilled; when they get this angry I always slather more sugar on the "kill 'em with kindness" shtick. Until this point work had been boring. I gird my loins for battle.

She pulls up and I've got a smile on big enough to make Norman Bates cross to the other side of the street if he came upon me.

"Good morning!" I chirp.

The driver is puffing on a cigarette, and says nothing as she hands me the money. I make change and hand her the cash and receipt. When I turn to transfer these items to her I notice she and her passenger and positively murdering me with their eyes. I am smiling so hard that the corners of my mouth are quivering.

"Here's your change. Thank y--"

"I got a question," she says, interrupting me. "What's wrong with the ice cream machine?"

"Oh, it's a little finicky," I reply, eyes full of sorrow. I feel her pain. "The parts are ordered, so it should be fixed fairly soon." For all I know the parts we need are delayed due to a Hamburglar-led labor strike in McDonaldland.

The cars are lining up behind her as she takes a long drag on her cigarette, eyeing me carefully. Her passenger, who I've determined is her daughter, has her arms crossed and is petulantly staring at the dashboard. I have never seen two people so upset about ice cream. I'm in heaven.

"You know," she says, exhaling smoke, "this happened last summer, too." Like the Middle East, Grundians have long memories for atrocities committed against them.

"Yeah, and you guys had ice cream all winter," snorts her daughter. The irony is just killing her.

I put on my best Very Concerned face. "I think it tends to break down when it's used a lot, like in the summer. Like I said, it's kind of finicky."

"You think so, huh?" she growls, eyebrows raised incredulously. "That just seems kind of...funny. Don't it to you?"

I realize she has formulated a grandiose conspiracy theory wherein McDonald's, in an effort to avoid the outrageous hassle and crippling expense of serving ice cream to its customers, has suspended all frozen menu item sales until the solstice. I am the 9/11 Commission, and she is Dylan Avery's biggest fan.

My headset crackles, and my manager informs me that the line is out to the road. Ruefully I decide to wrap it up.

"Well, ma'am, I'm very sorry. I would suggest checking back at the end of next week to see if it's fixed. Have a great afternoon!" I cast one more glance into the car and smile as both occupants glower at me. I catch the daughter rolling her eyes and muttering before the car rolls past, and as they move out of sight I start whistling the opening strains of "Margaritaville" as I wait for the next car to arrive.

Sixonenineohseven

2007-06-19T20:06:00.000-04:00

Lots of dogs this morning, hanging their heads out of windows and climbing into drivers' laps with that unflappable doggy enthusiasm that humans wish we had at 7 am on a weekday.

One woman in a puke green Chevrolet Aveo roared past my window as I poked my head out to collect her money.

"Ma'am?" I shouted, and I saw her look at me in her side mirror, eyes wide, as she slammed on the brakes. The little egg-shaped hatchback squealed to a halt, and on the passenger side I saw a large white object, ushered by the hand of Newton himself, collide with the dashboard and fall to the floormat. As she backed up a fluffy and understandably dazed poodle raised its head, shook it, then climbed back into the passenger seat. The woman read my horrified facial expression and laughed sheepishly.

"Oh, she's used to my driving by now," she offered by way of explanation. Sure enough, the poodle was sitting up, watching the money change hands with interest. Before I could comment further she and her undoubtedly brain damaged canine sped off to pick up their breakfast. As with most things, I suppose, even animal cruelty has a gray area.

A little while later an F-350 stopped at my window. The door stated that they were employees of "2-Way Radio Repair Co."

In a pleasing stroke of ironic luck the man in the passenger seat was complaining to the rear passenger about how the truck's CB radio was malfunctioning.

"I dunno what I done to it," he lamented.

And my only thought was: "God help us if these guys were paramedics."

Coins

2007-06-13T20:26:00.000-04:00

I feel bad for coins because their friendships are so fleeting.

Sometimes if I see a couple of them stuck together or in a neat little pile in the drawer I give them both out at the same time.

Just to keep that bond going.

Bob

2007-06-05T11:56:00.000-04:00

I've always loved The Price is Right. I was very young when I started watching it, and over the years I've always reserved the 11am-12pm time slot on snow days and summer afternoons for a little time with old Bob.

The best parts of that show lay in the minutiae. You remember that bizarre mic Bob spoke into? It was this long gray thing with a marble on the end of it. I have never seen a microphone like it. He was dedicated to that thing, though. He finally got rid of it a couple years ago, only to replace it with an updated version of the same thing: small handle, long stem. Thirty years and the old boy finally got himself a mic-fro, though. I guess CBS thought he deserved it.

The showcases always had the weirdest stuff in them, too. They taped the show in Los Angeles, but every third showcase had a pair of snowmobiles in them. Or a jukebox. We live in a world where you can carry around 10,000 songs on something the size of a deck of playing cards, and the Price is Right wants to give away a 450 pound CD player.

People are on to them, though. Everybody knows that each showcase segment contains two showcases: the Cool One and the Crappy One. Most of the time they show the Crappy One first, which has a jukebox, followed by a hot tub, and topped off by a jet ski or sailboat. This is almost always passed to the unfortunate runner-up contestant, who ruefully places their bid and immediately starts calculating how much eBay would charge for listing a "NEW-NEVER USED PORTABLE SAUNA!!!!!!" Meanwhile, the other contestant is asking her friends how much to bid on the Cool One, which is usually something like a computer, pool table, and Honda Civic.

This segment also exhibits just how cruel people can be. Typical scenario: Brad the KA brother at USC, and Grandma Dirt, retiree, have made it to the showcase. Brad is the first-place winner, so he gets to see the first showcase, which contains a tandem bicycle, a Bowflex, and his-and-hers Sea-Dos. Brad could easily sell this stuff to his rich friends for beer money and maybe a pound of choice chronic. Brad, though, knows that the other showcase probably has a car, so he passes this to Grandma Dirt, whose delicate constitution is being tested by the brooch on her blouse. Afterwards, Brad shamelessly bids on the next showcase, which has a grandfather clock, an electric scooter, and a Chevy Impala.

But I suppose it all evens out. Long after Brad has sold his bong and Management 101 textbooks to pay off the taxes on his Chevy Grandma Dirt will have gotten enough from her Price is Right yard sale at the retirement community to get a used Cadillac and accidentally run over Brad one evening after buying rice cakes and Lean Cuisines.

Karma's a bitch.

McDashistan

2007-06-04T11:31:00.000-04:00

I consider it a point of pride that the country I created on NationStates is currently 1st in my region for "Largest Cheese Export Sector."

I was wondering if my "burgeoning sheep population" had anything to do with it.

Can you milk a sheep?

Beach

2007-06-03T14:33:00.000-04:00

After a thousand-odd miles on the old Subaru and a week in Myrtle Beach, we arrived back home yesterday.

Some highlights:

My hat, book, and beach towel.

Amberly walking into the water.

My dad and I. If you look closely you can see that I have a bad case of heat rash, which is an affliction usually found in infants. I have the dermal constitution of a two year old.

The beach in the morning.

This is Mom playing with the border collie, Polly. Polly became somewhat of a rock star this weekend. Borders, if you aren't aware, are extremely intelligent dogs, which means they learn quickly but require near-constant attention or else they get into trouble, much like the kid that built slingshots out of paper clips and rubber bands in third grade and shot paper wads at Becky Sears and got into trouble even though they didn't hurt very much because I shot myself first to make sure. Anyway, my point is that Mom taught her how to fetch in record time, along with a handful of other tricks that rely on hand movement. As a result, you can make yourself look like Mogwai: Dog Whisperer with absolutely no effort on your part. She is so spectacular that she would draw small crowds of people who would watch in amazement as Polly fetched, did circles, stopped on cue, and leaped into the ocean after her tennis ball. Kids biked by our campsite and yelled "There's Polly! Polly!" Even other dog owners would watch longingly as Polly performed, bringing stern looks of consternation from their poodles and chihuahuas (campers seem to favor the ankle-biter variety of canine, although, regrettably, their little legs do seem to get stuck in the sand quite a bit).

This is a picture of a roast beef sandwich.

Amberly through the door of my parents' RV.

This is Amberly petting a stingray at Ripley's Aquarium. They felt like, for lack of any better description, muscular snot.

They also had a big tank full of horseshoe crabs, which look like those face-huggers from Aliens wearing the top half of a WWII infantry helmet as a Halloween costume. There was a friendly lady tending to them.

Lady: "Would you like to hold a horseshoe crab?"

*she holds out one about the size of a dinner plate, upside-down and legs askew, in a (I felt) presumptuously expectant manner*

Me: "No, I think I'm all set."

Lady: "Are you sure?"

Me: "Yeah, I'm definitely sure."

Lady: *to the 12 year old girl beside me, wearing a Hello Kitty tanktop and pink sunglasses* "Would you like to hold one?"

Girl: "Cool! Yeah!"

The Final Humiliation

2007-05-15T13:30:00.000-04:00

As if working at McDonald's isn't degrading enough, this morning the company decided to up the ante with this little gem:

I was feeling okay about it until the end of my shift, when a car full of teenage girls came through.

Girl 1: "Aren't you embarrassed to wear that thing?"

Me: "Nah, it isn't so bad."

Girl 2: "I'd tell them to kiss my ass."

Me: "Well the job pays the rent, so..."

Girl 1: "Man, I'd rather move back in with my parents."

Me: "You really think it's that bad?"

Girl 3: "Have you seen yourself?"

I had no retort.

Broken

2007-05-02T22:08:00.000-04:00

Nothing in my life works.

Not in the abstract sense. I'm talking about the material stuff in my life.

My cell phone inexplicably stopped showing caller ID names and voicemail notification a couple weeks ago. All my text messages come back "MESSAGE NOT SENT," although nTelos seems happy to charge me for them.

Our wireless router drops its connection seemingly at random, and coincidentally my laptop can't connect to the school's wireless network. I don't know why. Neither does the IT department, who seem to charmingly regard technical problems with a sort of bemused detachment.

My car's "CHECK ENGINE" light came on in January and hasn't shut off since. On a somewhat related note, the vacuum cleaner we bought that same month no longer self-propels. I strongly suspect a connection between the two, but my therapist thinks I'm imagining it. He gives me the drugs anyway so I'm not worried.

Moving to a smaller scale, my PDA, at completely random times, will refuse to power on unless I reset the entire handset, and my iPod's battery holds enough of a charge to get to the third solo on "Freebird" before it dies.

But that isn't enough. I go to work, and the computer systems crash at least twice a shift, causing an unmentionable amount of angst among our customer base. Considering we have a monopoly on fast food in Grundy management doesn't seem to worry about it too much, which is okay with me.

And sometimes the cash register refuses to open, so I get the keys from a manager and open it manually when I complete a transaction. After a few minutes of that it seems to fix itself and pop open unexpectedly, rather like a jack-in-the-box. Sometimes the sharp metal edge hits my thigh. Sometimes it doesn't.

I think I'm going to sell all my stuff and live in a Hobbit hole. I think you get a tax credit for that.

Planet

2007-04-22T16:44:00.000-04:00

We live on an immensely beautiful and altogether strange planet.

I've been sitting here by the window cooling off after an afternoon run, watching a spider dutifully construct a nearly perfectly symmetrical web on our sill. She's big, about the size of a nickel. Perhaps she'll catch some of the giant moths that congregate outside our living room at dusk, although she may aspire to bag the noisy and petulant bat that visits our air conditioning unit every night. She may have ambition. Who am I to say?

I especially enjoy predators. I'm not exactly sure why. I remember watching, enthralled, as a praying mantis devoured the remnants of another insect outside my dormitory last year. But it's the big hunters that really capture my attention. Discovery is running their Planet Earth series, and on one of the episodes the camera crew followed a wolf pack as it stalked and chased down some sort of bounding, gracile prey animal. If it had been a sporting event I'd have been wearing a beer helmet with big fuzzy ears on it, shirt off, with "WOLVES" painted on my chest, drunkenly cheering "CATCH THAT DEER! CATCH THAT DEER!"

I think it's because prey animals don't really seem to require any great effort to feed themselves or their young. They usually eat grass. Big deal. I can grow grass in a styrofoam cup on my window sill. But stalking and killing a jittery, lightning-quick hooved mammal takes patience, cooperation, skill, and some serious instinct. I respect that. It's a hell of a lot harder than defrosting a pound of beef in a microwave to make some chili.

But there's wonder in the little things. A bumblebee is lazily hovering outside the window now. They have got to be the least aerodynamic creature I've ever seen, and yet they have evolved into the helicopter of the insect world.

At an even smaller level, think about this: certain pairs of subatomic particles, even when they've been separated by considerable distance, can somehow figure out what the other one is doing. We know this because the minute we measure the spin of one the other one will start spinning in the opposite direction at the exact same rate.

I mean, what the hell?

Spring

2007-03-22T10:52:00.000-04:00

Spring is dangerously close to springing around here. The trees outside the library have bloomed, wafting a really really offensive odor across most of campus. I'm no hibiscus myself, but I didn't think rebirth was so....stinky.

I'm getting in the mood for a grilled steak and a Corona. It's that time of year. I don't get stir crazy but there's something about the sunlight this time of year that makes it wonderful to be in.

And in three months I'll be complaining about the heat. Mother Nature has fickle progeny.

Sometimes I look at what other people are looking at on their computers in the computer lab. I'll pretend to stretch and grab a quick peek. Is that wrong? Most of the time it's something reassuringly banal, like a school paper or MySpace. College students prefer to express our individuality by joining social networks and putting it on display like everybody else. Ha-ha.

(I understand the irony here. I never said I was immune. Who are YOU?)

It's comforting, in a way. Words are more distinctive than a haircut or t-shirt. And it places a lot more emphasis on being able to express yourself in a coherent and distinctive manner.

Or maybe not. It should be. At the very least, I think it's important. Chances are if you're concerned with finding a "voice" for your writing then you've already taken the next step beyond throwing a few sentences together about your day and throwing it up (to use a seemingly apt metaphor) on your MySpace page. Stream-of-consciousness self-examination (or denial, if we're honest) has never had it so good, out in the open with the wind in its hair, naked, seemingly without shame.

We've all got our megaphones.

"Listen to me! I have ideas to share! I have issues to air! I had a great pizza last night!"

Flails arms, frustrated

"Pepperoni! With cheese!"

There's really no downside, aside from accepting the fact that you will come across some embarassingly melodramatic dog-and-pony show moments that tickle your misanthropic funny bone. As long as you realize that some people are thinking the same thing about whatever drivel you write you'll be good to go.

I think the real victory is putting it out there in the first place.

Bills

2007-03-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

Bills and I have always had a shaky relationship.

On my desk right now are three bills. Of those three, two contain a number after the phrase "Previous unpaid balance." As if that isn't demoralizing enough, a quick check of my bank account shows a three digit balance, including the two digits after the decimal point.

Find your happy place. Find your happy place. Find your happy place...

People who ask me for money in return for services are generally left very disappointed when they get their payments. I make a ridiculously small amount of money on a weekly basis, and so I participate in what I like to call "bill financing," although this has nothing to do with credit and everything to do with paying small amounts on a bill over a period of time until the bill is paid; at this point the next month's bills are usually in my mailbox, starting the process again (this is probably why I drink). Bill financing is possible through the magic of the internet (the entity that brought us mass-produced niche pornography and R3@LLY CH3@P VI@GR@, so you know it's legitimate), because when you go to pay bills online you can put in any amount you want towards the balance. The only downside is the smarmy little messages you get on the confirmation page after you authorize the payment:

"STOP! You have chosen to pay an amount that is MUCH, MUCH SMALLER (really small!) than your balance. Are you sure you want to do this? Maybe you should call your parents and have them wire you some cash or something, or put in a little overtime. I mean, look, we'll take what we can get, but you really should examine the pride aspect of this endeavor you've undertaken here. Can you even look at yourself in the mirror anymore? You really can't cough up the extra $35 to pay this thing off? Because that would be a whole lot better than the pitiful deuce you're about bend off on us right here."

"No, I can't. I need that to go towards my power bill."

"Oh, well, pardon me for interfering. I had no idea you were also screwing them over, too."

This all started in grade school. Administration decided, probably over a few cocktails, that they could save money by simply giving the lunch bills to students to take home instead of sending them via USPS. This took effect over all grade levels.

I became a deadbeat by 4th grade. I would receive the bill and then forget it ever existed, stuffing it in my backpack where it would fall through a miniature black hole I carried around with me (you think books are heavy? Try a super dense astrophysical entity) and never be seen again. The school, ever patient, would give me another one after a couple of weeks with "SECOND NOTICE" stamped on it. I'd lose that one, too. Finally, one day, I'd come home from school to find my mother in a rage, wanting to know where my lunch bills were because the school called her and asked why they hadn't received their money. I'd earnestly open my backpack and rummage through the Handi-Snacks wrappers and mechanical pencils, trying to find the most current lunch bill among the dozen or so other ones from months past. Eventually she would get fed up with the whole ordeal and write the check, stuff it into an envelope, and (in an amazing show of motherly trust/stupidity) hand it to me with a stern warning to "make sure this gets to the office WHEN YOU GET TO SCHOOL."

After the third lost check she began mailing them out.

So, to Verizon, nTelos, and AEP: I'm really sorry. I do my best. Sometimes things just don't work out.

Do you guys take change?

Animals

2007-02-23T07:59:00.000-05:00

We live with four animals.

I'm not exactly sure how that happened. I do know that I went to bed one night after feeding the hamster and the next morning there were three more furry faces staring at me as I shuffled out of bed.

"What the hell? Where did you come from?"

"Ah, good sir," they replied, "the question should be: when will you be feeding us?"

We began our zookeeping careers with Ginger, the aforementioned hamster. She lives in a pink cage and is a connoseur of sunflower seeds and the occasional grape. The impression I get from her is an attitude of detached indifference, if hamsters are capable of such an emotion. In her world, humans are the noisy creatures that fill her food bowl and take all the bedding out of her cage just when it starts to smell good. But she also knows that we're the ones who control the twisty-tie on her door (she's a bit of an excape artist so we have to lock her in her cage at night like a unruly prisoner), and if that tie comes off she knows it's time to run over toes in her exercise ball.

Pequeno, the first guinea pig, was the next addition. He started off life as a squat little ball of fuzz but has grown into a sleek, shiny creature that can produce an amazing amount of poo, given the time and the timothy hay. He has dark eyes and a curious face, which makes him looks like a stuffed animal, and if he doesn't stop chewing on the baseboard he's going to end up as one. C.C. (Amberly named him Cookies n' Creme, but I like to think of him as C. C. DeVille, famed Poison guitarist. I think their musical skills are comparable) is the second guinea pig. He bears a striking resemblance to a sheep, right down to his wooly exterior. The guinea pigs regard Amberly and I as benign distractions to the ultimate goal of shitting on every surface in the apartment at least once, a goal we thrwarted early in their quest by trapping them on the kitchen tile for their "out" time. Keep your shoes on if you ever come visit.

Biff is the chinchilla. Biff started out life scared to death of me, then grew fond enough of me to stand on my head and shoulders (knees and toes!) for a few minutes at a time when I took him out for exercise in the bathroom, where I sat and read while he ate toilet paper, the seashells from the back of the toilet, loose tile, and my shoelaces. These days he sees me as the guy that opens his cage door to let him bounce around the apartment, ever since I decided he was big enough to stay out of the small, hard-to-reach places. He responded by figuring out a way to get into the couch, so that occasionally I will look up and see a conspicuous bulge in the loose fabric on the arm, accompanied by a sharp chewing sound that indicates he has found the tasty wood frame. Chewing is his favorite hobby, in fact, and nearly every book we own has a few chunks taken out of it, not to mention Amberly's bench in the kitchen and the living room chair. Interestingly, chinchillas lack the muscles to hold in their poo, which most chinchilla aficionados regard as cute and sort of charming. I wouldn't be surprised to find they are stockholders in the Hoover corporation. Chinchillas used to be bred for their fur, and at first I found that fairly troubling. I don't anymore.

Wait

2007-01-29T10:01:00.000-05:00

I am no stranger to the world of foodservice. Before I worked at McDonald's, I waited tables.

It wasn't actually a bad job. The hours were pretty good, the pay was excellent, and I learned a lot about steak.

I realized the other day that waiting tables is a lot like being in a relationship. You get introduced, you tell the other people your name, and you tell them a little about yourself.

"I enjoy dogs, long walks on the beach, and halibut fillets for $8.99 with your choice of vegetable."

There's sort of a feeling-out period there, right after that first meeting when you get their drink orders. You go back to the other waiters, who are your friends, and the customers are at the table talking about you.

"He seems really nice. Great hair, apron was pressed and clean. He really listened to me when I was telling him about my Diet Coke."

And you're back there, "Well not bad, not bad. The one near the window was kind of picky about the amount of ice in her Diet Coke. Might be one of those high-maintenance types. We're doing cheese sticks and avocado dip in about 5, we'll see how that goes."

So it takes on this whole relationship-type arc. The main course is that part of the relationship when the newness has worn off and you've gotta work a little. If you both are committed, it can go well.

"They stacked their dishes at the edge of the table when they were done. Aren't they thoughtful?"

But sometimes it can go badly.

"He really isn't responding to my needs. I've been out of soda for ten minutes. Do you think he's with another table?"

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the end in this case comes in the form of the check. "Check, please," is customer-speak for, "We need to talk."

If things went well the two of you might decide to "just be friends" and you both leave feeling good about all the good times you had together. If things don't go so well, though, the breakup can be ugly. You bring the change to the table and they trash you behind your back when you leave.

"Forget it. It's over. He was a jerk. He really seemed like a nice guy at first. I had high hopes. But I think things started to go downhill when he brought me the French instead of the Ranch dressing. Not a good listener."

And then there's that 5% tip, sort of a parting insult.

"Oh yeah, and your car is tacky. Who the hell drives a Camaro?"

Meanwhile, the waiter is back with the other waiters. "I'm not even bringing them their to-go boxes. They can come back here and get them if they really want them that badly. I'm not going back out there. It's over. I'm throwing this crap away."

But there's also the dark side of foodservice, and I've crossed into that world out of desperation. Whereas sit-down restaurants are like relationships, fast food is like hiring a hooker. Everything about the experience is mediocre, and you end up trying to cram all the highlinghts of a real relationship into a startlingly brief encounter that leaves you both feeling guilty and a little ashamed. There's just no self-respect involved. You don't even tell the other person your real name, you just have this demeaning moniker glued to a piece of cheap plastic and pinned to your chest.

And you can always pick out the "Johns" who have taken advantage of fast food a little too much, like the creepy guy that spends all his free time in the red-light district of town. They become connoisseurs. It's disturbing. Because when you become that familiar with something so tawdry and illicit it represents the bottom of a long slide that began out of curiosity and blossomed into an illness.

"I'll have a double-quarter pounder with cheese, add Big Mac sauce and make sure it's the shredded lettuce, not the leaf, and the minced onions instead of the slivered ones. I'd like that as a meal, with an iced tea, make sure it's half sweet and half unsweet with three Splendas and four regular sugars," is the equivalent of walking into a brothel and telling the madam "Hey, is Minnie Minx in? She is? Wonderful. Make sure she wears the black thing with the 3-foot riding crop. Tell her to go ahead and leave her teeth out, but make sure the red light bulbs are in. Is room 5 open? I like the curtains in there. Great, okay, look, tell her I'll be up in about a half hour, I gotta head across town and grab a Big Mac."

Evolve

2007-01-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

As far as the news goes, I pretty much stick with CNN.

However, the other day I was browsing The Smoking Gun and I happened upon a news article with a headline that was pretty difficult to ignore: Judge Rules on Dead Deer Sex

Apparently a guy named Bryan James Hathaway was caught having intimate relations with a dead deer he found on the side of the highway in Wisconsin. He claims that he didn't violate any laws because the deer was dead, meaning that a charge of "sexual gratification with an animal" couldn't stick because "the term 'animal' refers to a living organism, not a carcass". I'm sure this is what his attorney pictured as he stood on the dias accepting his law school diploma all those years ago.

Call this a first for me, but I had never heard of anybody getting arrested for doing this sort of thing with a dead animal. Live ones, yes. I seem to remember an unfortunate fellow who sustained some massive injuries after a horse he was trying to romance decided to assert itself with its hooves.

That got me thinking about an anthropology class I attended recently. We were discussing the evolutionary path that modern humans followed from their genesis to today. We are 98% similar to chimpanzees in terms of DNA; this means that, thousands of years ago, our paths had to have forked. But before that happened, there obviously was some sort of sordid man/monkey love happening there.

So, humanity, before we break our spines patting ourselves on the back for things like the internet, fire, air travel, and botox, let us pause for a second and remember one thing:

Without people like Bryan James Hathaway, we wouldn't be a species.

The Smoking Gun: Judge Rules on Dead Deer Sex

Ring

2007-01-18T11:08:00.000-05:00

I got engaged.(!)

A few days before I asked her to marry me (more on that later) I called my family to tell them. I talked to Mom first, earlier in the day.

"Oh that's so wonderful!" she gushed. "You know, this is such a good step for you guys. At your age sometimes it's easy to lose your sense of purpose, and I think that this is a good way for you to keep your focus and help your emotional and personal growth."

Mom has a degree in psychology and isn't afraid to use it.

When Dad got home from work I had a ten-minute repartee with him.

"Hey Dad, did you talk to Mom?"

"Yeah, I just walked through the door. I hear there are some engagement festivities being held in your neck of the woods. Congrats!"

"Thanks Dad, I-"

"Are you guys getting married this year? Could you hold off? It's gonna fuck up my tax return."

"What? No, we-"

"And make sure to get married on a Friday. That way if it doesn't work out, you'll still have the weekend."

"What? What does that even mean? Did you just make that up?"

"No, I heard it somewhere. I'm kidding, son. I'm proud of you."

Dad had recently bought a new engagement ring for my mother, so he was very interested in the buying process.

"Now you know about the three Cs, right?"

"Yeah, I do. I even asked her if I could take it near the window to check out the facets in the sunlight. It's a beautiful diamond."

"I see, I see," he said approvingly. Dad doesn't make many large purchases, but he is seriously into the process once he decides to make one. There are dogeared copies of Consumer Reports in every room of their house, including every bathroom and the dog's crate ("Top 10 Chew Toys: Who's Been a Good Boy? Who's Merely Squeaking To The Wind? We Have The Answers THIS ISSUE"). Never has a man lived who all at once hated the act of purchasing a major item while at the same time relishing the process of finding out everything about it.

"How many did you look at before you got Mom's?" I asked him. I had looked at so many that I had diamonds on the brain. I found myself looking at the rings of co-workers and customers, mentally assigning size and clarity ratings, judging setting and accent placement. Diamonds may be forever, but my sanity was slowly unravelling.

"Well actually, I did my research and bought from an online broker," he replied.

I couldn't have heard correctly. "Dad, you won't even use eBay to buy computer software. You really bought a diamond online, sight unseen?"

"Well, they are a very reputable company. I did my research."

"But you didn't see it before you bought it?"

"Well no."

"Victory is mine!" I yelled.

I later learned that that's a pretty common practice these days, and in fact you can get a nicer diamond for less if you go through these brokers.

Dad- 1
Josh- 0

But it really is a nice ring.

The Big Day arrived. We ate a lovely dinner at a fancy restaurant (okay, Applebee's, but they have one hell of a Triple Chocolate Meltdown cake) and came home. I popped the question among a tableau of lit candles and blankets. John Mayer was my wingman. I'll send him an invitation.

The exchange was forever burned into my memory. I'll reproduce it here for posterity:

Me: "Will you marry me?"

Her: "Wh-what? Are you serious?"

After two weeks of ring-searching, talking to myself in the car, working out what to say and how to say it, setting up the evening's events so that she wouldn't suspect a thing...well, I was expecting tears, maybe her throwing her arms around my neck while the music swelled ("Your body is a wonderland!" croons John in the background, cheering me on) and kissing me with parted lips and repeating an affirmative.

In light of those expectations, "What? Are you serious?" becomes sort of an anticlimax. I laughed. I couldn't help it.

Me: "What? Of course I'm serious! I have a ring and everything, look!"

I sort of jiggled the box in front of her face. I half-expected the ring to fall out and get lost in the folds of blankets, leading me to fumble around while pleading with her to wait just one more second while I searched.

Her: "No, I meant-I mean-Yes! Yes I'll marry you!"

Whew. Payoff.

I slipped it on her finger. Too big. Blast.

"No no, it's fine!" She held her hand out, letting the diamond catch the candlelight.

Now, let me tell you something. I'm 23 years old, so I don't know all that much about women (they seem to like shiny things, though), except for this one thing: Women seldom look better than when they're bathed in candlelight. All the soft lines become softer and eyes become glimmering pools of warm liquid. It's poetry in three dimensions.

Amber was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, sweatpants, and had her hair up in a ponytail. And looking at her in that moment, my friends, I became convinced that this woman was made for candlelight. Even in sweatpants. Especially in sweatpants!

"You might want to call your parents. They're probably about to explode."

"They know?"

"Well yeah. I asked them if this was okay with them."

"Awwwwwww...," she cooed. Then come the tears. Score!

I had called her parents right after I called mine. I was pretty blunt.

"I'm going to ask Amber to marry me. Is that okay with you guys?" I said after they had both picked up phones. Not my most eloquent moment.

"Awwwwwww...," her mother said.

"Absolutely not," her father said.

You'd just have to know him.

I called her sister and told her.

"Awwwwww....," she said. I was noticing a pattern.

There's no date yet, but I saw that she was looking at wedding dresses online the other day. Given her level of restraint in these matters, I may come home to find a wedding party waiting for me outside our apartment and a tuxedo with a note "Hurry up, the plane leaves at 9!"

Bless her.

Customers

2007-01-05T21:08:00.000-05:00

Grundy is a pretty small place, and McDonald's serves as a sort of hub of activity and culture for the entire town (you can't see me, but I cried as I wrote those words). As such, there are several customers who appear on a daily or almost-daily basis who stick out among the rest for any number of reasons. I jotted down a few notes about seven of them. For the hell of it, I also assigned each a PITA (Pain In The Ass) rating, with 1 star being vaguely annoying and 5 being justifiable cause for homicide:

Ice Lady:

PITA RATING: ****

Aptly named PITA who orders cups of ice and then sends them back with an almost heartbroken, yet exasperated, look and demands that they be filled to the top, no matter how full they are in the first place. Unaware that grocery stores sell entire bags of ice for thirty cents more than a cup from McDonald's. May not own a freezer. Interestingly, whenever I hold out the cups and our hands brush during the exchange, I experience visions, ala The Dead Zone. I'm dressed like Ronald McDonald, right down to the makeup and veneers, and I'm holding a deep sea fishing pole with her dangling on the end of it over an icy stretch of ocean. I usually snap out of it when I cut the line and yell "HOW'S THAT FOR ICE, SHE-DEVIL?!"

Jerk 'N Pepper

PITA RATING: **

Screeches to a halt in front of the window and repeats one and only one phrase: "Salt 'n pepper." No greeting, no thanks, no parting salutation. The only other thing he's ever said to me occurred when I was in a hurry and accidentally dropped some of his salt and pepper packets when I handed them to him. He looked down at the packets, back up at me, and growled "Be a little nicer next time." He is also friends with my boss, which should give you a clue as to my quality of life at work.

Lawge Fwies

PITA RATING: none

Comes in only sporadically and orders a large order of french fries. Harmless and polite. Marked by the above speech impediment, brevity, and always having exact change. Puhwfect customuhw.

Tubby McTopped-off

PITA RATING: ****

This fine specimen orders a large Diet Coke, then removes the lid and asks to have it filled to the top, the law of surface tension and the questionable steadiness of his sweaty sausage link digits the only things between the beverage and the leather uphostery of his Mercedes-Benz SUV. I haven't seen him since he came through for the first time after we got the new automatic drink dispensor. This little dandy prevents us from adding any more liquid to the drinks once they've come off the conveyor belt. As such, when he asked for a top-off I told him I wouldn't be able to do so at my station, but he was welcome to pull down while I sent somebody to do the deed at the lobby drink station. He took it pretty well.

"This is piss-poor," he said. He bared his grubby little baked bean teeth and asked why I couldn't do it here. I explained.

"Well that's just piss-poor," came the reply. He clutched his drink and drove off.

We haven't seen him since.

Winky the Wit

PITA RATING: none

Pleasant old man who, with a sly wink, asks if the cashier will pay the dollar amount if he pays the change portion, i.e. "I'll pay the 42 if you pay the three." I defeated him at his own nefarious game when he placed an order for $.63, handing me an easy (yet strangely hollow) victory.

Penny Pedantic

PITA RATING: *****

Older lady who exclusively wears logoless sweatsuits in a variety of colors. She orders her food as though she was in a fine restaurant and not at a McDonald's in Grundy, Virginia (which, come to think of it, may qualify as a fine restaurant in Grundy. But I digress.) Penny will send food back for almost any reason, the most popular reason being "doughy biscuits." This is hurtful, because we at McDonald's actually pride ourselves on making our biscuits entirely out of dough, unlike certain other unnamed "royal" restaurants who put in nasty fillers like baby seal skin and crystal meth.

Nice Nancy

PITA RATING: none

As well as making for a lovely alliteration (and I do enjoy a lovely alliteration), I sincerely believe this woman looks like she should have been named "Nancy." The order here is a side salad, no dressing, two packets of croutons and a small iced tea. Because there is nothing otherwise extraordinary about her, I was tempted to make something up, but I think implying she was a cocaine mule for a Mexican drug cartel would qualify as libel.

Grundy

2006-12-12T19:59:00.000-05:00

Let me tell you about Grundy.

Chances are, you've never heard of Grundy. You may think it's an adjective, as in "Do your laundry, your socks smell pretty grundy."

But Grundy is a real place, or at least as real as its inhabitants say it is. Personally, it feels more like being trapped in another dimension, where trickle-down never really trickled down and the only view in every direction is the steep slope of a mountainside. Grundy was carved out of the central Appalachians by coal miners and railroad engineers, an oasis of industry among a pristine stretch of mountain older than time itself. Nature, apparently miffed about the intrusion, decided to flood Grundy every ten years or so to get her point across.

But Grundians are a persistant, if not a bit dense, people. A few years ago the federal government decided to pump a few million dollars into the area ("Why the hell not?" they probably said. "It isn't as if we channel millions in disability and Social Security benefits into Buchanan County so its recipients can buy Quarter Pounders and beer. Right?") and construct a complicated flood control system so that Grundy can continue to create that sucking sound you hear whenever you pay your federal taxes every April. Consequently, the entire town has packed up and is in the process of moving itself away from the river, quite a feat considering most of its residents seem barely able to move away from their daily routine, if McDonald's daily clientele patterns are any indication.

It is ony fitting, then, that Grundians give directions relative to places that don't exist any more.

"Go past the old Food City and..." is the most common phrase you'll hear if you ask a Grundy citizen for directions, which makes perfect sense, after all, because even though I can't find a location that exists now I should have no problem finding a place that no longer exists. It's this sort of metaphysical irony that makes Grundy what it is.

I've touched upon them a bit, but this all leads us to what makes this place what it is: the people of Grundy, a lively bunch that I've grown to love and appreciate the way a researcher of higher primates learns to love and appreciate their subjects. And all this time I thought I didn't have a thing in common with Jane Goodall.

The most prominent aspect of your typical Grundian, if you've been paying attention, is that many of them exist on government assistance programs. Of those, however, approximately 1% are members of what you would call the "working poor," while the other 99% do things like buy new cars they can't really afford and processed food they can't really digest while forcing their children to fend for themselves, because while they feel as though they are owed they do not feel that same obligation towards their offspring, who frankly didn't ask to be brought into the world in the first place, and especially not the one they live in. This 99% represents an almost eerily perfect doppelganger to your generic spoiled rich poster child, completely impervious to personal responsibility and utterly absorbed with their own pursuit of whatever happiness a monthly government check and a bag of Fritos can bring them (substitute "trust fund payout" and "nepotism" where applicable). I'm not exactly sure where this value system comes from, but I bet you money Paris Hilton has a summer home there.

That other 1%, along with everyone else in Grundy (both of them!) makes up your basic small-town citizenry, complete with friendly post office workers and old men who wink when they talk. I grew up around people like this and find the warmth comforting. These are people who enjoy talking about their gardens, rib each other over sporting events, and seem to carry around immense amounts of change in their pockets. Rockwell might even paint them into a calendar at the mall. I romanticize them thusly because my workday consists of dealing with the 99 percenters almost exclusively, so whenever I run into a 1 percenter I tend to attach myself to them, leech-like, until they mumble something about an appointment and scamper away like frightened rodents.

"No no no, tell me more about your strawberries!" I plead as they hug their children to their chests and retreat.

And this is where I bid farewell for now. In truth, what I've written above is really about all anybody could say (or, let's face it, has ever said) about Grundy. I encourage you to come visit and see what Grundy has to offer for yourself. You could even come visit me.

If you do, for the love of God, bring liquor. I'm sick to death of these fucking ABC stores.

Dad

2006-12-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

My dad was really proud of this garbage disposal we had at our old house.

He put it in himself, years and years ago, which is no big deal because he also built the two-car garage behind the house so as a handyman sort of accomplishment it's a little underwhelming.

Ask him about it today and he'll gaze wistfully into that block of air right above your head, eyes twinkling, and he will speak with an air of reverence normally reserved for the Pope and the '72 Dolphins.

"Oh man," he'll say, "that thing was awesome."

And it really was. It was huge, covered in brushed stainless steel and matte black plastic the way you might imagine a miniature nuclear weapon to be. He had it wired into a light switch that he put near the sink. When you flipped that switch the lights would flicker throughout the house and the roar would drown out the surround sound system in the living room and shake the walls of my bedroom, which was right above the kitchen. It lay in wait, coiled under the kitchen sink like a predator, for its unsuspecting prey. Like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, it killed even when it didn't need to: when he pulled out the mangled remains of a spoon that had fallen into its clutches one time my mother fainted and the dog hid.

We gave it lots of respect.

When people came to our house for the first time Dad would proudly throw open the cabinet door and beckon them to have a look. "Yep," he'd say, exhaling and hitching up his pants (even if they were sweatpants), "that's a two horsepower motor turning three stainless steel blades sharp enough to get through just about anything. You could put a cat in there, no problem."

When they moved I asked him if they were taking the garbage disposal with them.

"No, we're going to leave it," he said. I could hear the pain in his voice, even over the phone. "Your mother doesn't want to deal with it, and there's already one at the new house."

When I visited them at their new house for the first time I was talking with him as he was cleaning up from dinner. I realized we were still talking even after he had flipped the disposal on.

"Dad, that thing sounds weak," I said.

His face darkened and his voice dripped with disgust. "Yeah, this lousy thing is a piece of junk. It clogged up the other day. Clogged up!"

He looked out the window. "Did I ever tell you about that disposal we had..."

Holidays

2006-12-04T14:47:00.000-05:00

A few remarks:

- If you want to observe the most miserable people imaginable in an industrialized nation, go to Wal-Mart in December. I was in a buoyant mood this morning until I had to stop by to exchange a string of lights that didn't work. I left with a prescription for Zoloft.

- Riding around in those motorized shopping scooters because you're too fat to walk is probably a sign of failure.

- When you're faced with a long line at the checkout counters, be sure to get behind a baby in a shopping cart. You will not be bored.

- It takes an idiot to believe that you can make it through a Wal-Mart quickly on a weekday afternoon when you live in an area of high unemployment.

- I'm an idiot.

- Talking fish or deer heads make hilarious and original gifts. If it's 2001. Actually, those were never that hilarious.

- We decorated our apartment over the weekend, and I discovered that if you put up strings of lights intended for outdoor use inside, you will never need to turn on a lamp for the rest of the holiday season. Downside: we're both suffering from severe cases of photokeratitis. But the place looks holly jolly.

Tip

2006-12-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

The drive-thru line at McDonald's got pretty crazy, so we were parking cars left and right to get them through quickly.

I was cooking all the fried stuff, and I had all the oil vats full of food, so I was standing idle for a few minutes. The drive-thru manager caught me out of the corner of her eye and recruited me to take orders out to waiting customers.

I delivered the last order, and as I thanked the woman and turned to leave she said, "Wait, here," and handed me a $1 bill.

"Did you need change, ma'am?" I asked.

"No, that's for you."

She drove off and left me in the parking lot, confused, holding my $1 bill.

Amber said she must have liked my "tushie."

Flashback

2006-11-20T14:45:00.000-05:00

The Powers That Be in the Grundy McDonalds' organization decided that the restaurant needed a facelift a couple weeks ago, so in a flurry of drywall dust and Marlboro smoke a band of contractors descended upon the golden arches and closed the whole place for a week.

This meant, of course, that nobody could go to work, which of course meant nobody could get paid, which meant the DirecTV AND Verizon bills were both several days late and my bank account dwindled down to three ghastly digits (that's including the ones after the decimal point). McDonald's, being the classy company it is, opted not to tell the employees about the closure. As a result, I showed up to work in my McUniform to find a big CLOSED sign on the billboard and the parking lot roped off. McPissed.

After a couple of days without a word (or work), I decided to drive down and find a managerial sort to try and get to the bottom of the whole mess.

I parked my car and pulled open the side door of the restaurant, and was about to take a step onto the tile when I spotted a woman bustling towards me, looking worried.

"Watch watch watch!" she repeated urgently, pointing to the floor.

I tried to pull back but it was too late. My foot landed and, with a gritty scrape, slid the piece of fresly-laid tile out of position. I lept upwards and tried to land on the part of the floor that had not yet been covered with tile, but instead landed on the edge of another tile and skidded it out of place as well. I pushed off that foot and landed on the bare floor, but in doing so I flipped the edge of the tile up and out of the grout (or whatever it is that holds tiles to the floor).

I looked up sheepishly to find the woman glaring at me, more than a touch irate. She didn't say a word, just kneeled down and attended to the task of fixing her floor as I muttered an apology and scampered to the kitchen to find a manager.

It reminded me of when I was younger and I still rode the bus to school. Mom would always clean the tile floors in our house once a week, and for some inexplicable reason she always chose to do so in the afternoon, right when my brother and I would be coming home from school. From the outside you could never tell if the floor was wet or not, and the only clue that there was cleaning going on was the lemony-piney smell from the cleaning solution.

So I would come bounding across the back yard, backpack in tow, unaware of the labor taking place in the kitchen and mudroom. I would race up the back steps, throw open the door, and as my dirty little sneaker found the floor and the smell of the cleaning solution found my nose I would inevitably hear:

No no no, not on the floor! Go around!

...and she would come around the corner of the kitchen, hair up, wielding the mop handle like a weapon.

And I would perform that same leap I did in McDonald's year later, trying to float on the air right above the floor, startled and terrified. Mom is a kind, gentle soul, with a sharp wit and a talent for sarcasm. She is also the woman that shooed me (her oldest son!), bleeding profusely from the nose, out of the "good" living room where she was reading after I ran headlong into the fireman's pole in our backyard during a game of tag.

"The rug!" she shouted. (she took care of my nose, of course)

So it should come as no surprise that a grubby footprint on her freshly cleaned floors would warrant a similar response. She would tilt her head and sigh loudly, followed by a variation on "I told you to watch the floor."

Years later, the contractor gave me the same look my mom gave me as an elementary schooler. I recognized it immediately. And I could still smell that lemon-pine odor.

That's how it goes as you get older. You move away, start a family, start a life, but you've always got a mom somewhere around you at all times telling you to keep the floors clean and your pants ironed.

Bike

2006-11-16T14:26:00.000-05:00

Get off the road, fuckhead!

Guy yelled this at me as I was biking this afternoon.

He was leaning out the passenger side window, turned around so that he could face me. The driver actually slowed down a little bit so he could deliver his message with clarity.

Being a reasonable sort, I did what any man wearing Spandex would do when confronted with a detractor while riding a bicycle on a country road in the middle of nowhere: I flipped him off.

"After all," I reasoned, "what could he possibly do? He's in a 2000 pound car on a lonely road with lots of forest around and no other people, houses, cars, or police officers for miles, and I'm riding a bicycle in tight pants."

Sigh.

McDonald's

2006-11-10T12:37:00.000-05:00

I work at McDonald's.

I really do.

I know there are a lot of us, but it's not often we come out and admit that sort of thing. Making $5.25 an hour is not exactly a point of pride for most thinking folk.

I use the job as a means of bill paying and, perhaps even better than money, a source of endless amusement. And you can't put a price tag on fun (okay, you can, but that ruins my premise here)

Now I've held many meaningless, menial, mind-numbingly dumb jobs in my life, but this one has been by far the best, for a few reasons. Number one, I think all jobs like this are really entertaining if you're operating under the premise that you won't be doing it for the rest of your life. That takes the black hole of eternal misery out of the picture and frees the playful side of your brain to have the most fun you can before you move on with your life and leave behind the McWorld. Number two, Grundy, Virginia is full of flat-out hilarious people, albeit unintentionally hilarious. Many of them are grossly, morbidly overweight. And they take their fast food very, very seriously.

I always get really excited when I see a customer that I've just served five minutes ago approach the counter, unwrapped food in hand, jaw clenched, sweat dripping off his forehead as he struggles not to have an aneurysm over the unforgivable injustice of finding pickles on his Big Mac when he specifically asked for NO PICKES! It becomes the highlight of my day, all these little conflicts that I have to handle and resolve, because I usually get the opportunity to witness people who have little to no control over their daily lives finally exercise some sort of authority over somebody.

This is how it usually goes:

Me: "Is there a problem, sir?"

Him: *tosses burger onto counter* "Got pickes on it"

Me: *in a cheerily confused voice* "Did you ask for no pickles?"

Him: *annoyed* "Don't want no pickles." Most of the customers that frequent McDonald's do not speak in full sentences, let alone proper English

Me: *annoyingly optimistic voice* Oh, I'm so sorry! Let me get this fixed for you!

*I ask the cooks for the proper order, then give it to him*

Me: "Have a great day!"

I most often choose the "kill 'em with kindness" method because it just absolutely annoys the fuck out of them, mostly because I, unlike them, do not wake up every morning next to a 400 lb spouse and am, therefore, not completely miserable/borderline alcoholic.

They also get slightly confused that somebody working at McDonald's in the middle of Appalachia's most desolate region, who is young and obviously from another part of the country, is not miserable/borderline alcoholic.

The one thing I do not do is intentionally needle customers. This makes them pissed off at you. You do not want this, because this will eventually involve the managers and you don't want them interfering with your prey. Rather, you want to get them pissed off about you. They don't know why they're pissed off, but they are, and this confuses them. Meanwhile, you stand there, bovine-esque smile on your face, eyes twinkling. You are a laborador puppy. You are Mr. McHappy. They hate this.

Dems

2006-11-08T22:14:00.000-05:00

Dang.

Somewhere the PNAC guys are sitting around going, "Well, this wasn't in the plans."

With Rumsfeld's resignation it's now up to Cheney to pick up the slack in the "irritable scowl" department.

Face

2006-11-06T15:08:00.000-05:00

Another study lounge observation.

I must look like a friendly sort, because I often find people will strike up conversations with me as I sit in the study lounge, often about nothing at all. It doesn't bother me, and I like talking to people, but it's amusing because they'll often single me out among a few other people in the lounge.

Today:

Woman- "Hey so are you a commuter?"

Me- "Yep"

Woman- "I thought so, the laptop was a giveway"

Me- *with a laugh* "Yeah" (what are you really supposed to say to something like that?)

Woman- "I drop my kids off at school every morning and drive a half hour to get to class at 8 am. It's so hectic in the house in the morning."

*she goes to the drink machine and gets a soda*

Woman- "Well I gotta go to class, see ya!"

Me- "Bye"

Literally ten minutes after I told my girlfriend about this incident on AIM a guy came in and sat down at the table near my chair.

Him- "Man, it's hot in here."

Me- "Yeah, it's always hot in this place"

Him- "I'm glad I didn't wear a coat today even though it was cold this morning, right?"

(Was that a question? His voice went up a little on the 'right?' part but I didn't hear anything question-like)

Me- "Yeah"

*he grabs his backpack off the table and stands up*

Him- "Later"

Me- "Bye"

Library

2006-11-04T19:13:00.000-05:00

As a commuter student, I find myself in the library a lot between classes.

There are a couple vending machines in the study lounge, which is my favorite spot, and the food machine is notoriously bad about accepting money and dispensing items correctly. It would be bad enough if the damn thing just ate money and didn't give up the goods, but this piece of work makes you put your change in three or four times before it screws you.

As I was in there doing homework and surfing YouTube on my 3 hour break between my morning and afternoon class meetings, I notice a young lady approach the machine and put money in it. The machine started misbehaving, and her reaction was so insane that I opened up TextEdit on my iBook and started writing down what she was saying so I could remember it later:

"You fucking HOMO give me my MONEY!"

*She bangs on the machine*

*She hisses at the machine like an angry cat*

"That is for making me make the angry noise!"

(in my notes I write in big letters "BATSHIT INSANE")

*She bangs on the machine again, punctuating each hit with an emphatic "FUCK!" that reverberates through the study lounge. It becomes difficult to pretend I don't notice the scene, like when you were at a friend's house and their parents started fighting and you had to pretend you were concentrating so hard on Megaman that you don't even hear Mr. Smith call Mrs. Smith bad names *

"That's right, give me my change!" she yells.

*She SPITS on the machine and grabs her bag of Baked Lays*

"I lack the patience for HOMO machines!"

She exits stage left, clutching her prize to her chest like a greedy squirrel.