Cleaning out the closet.

Since I haven’t been writing so much lately, actually I should qualify that, I have been writing just not on the blog and when it has been on the blog it has either gone unfinished or been swallowed up by an app crash, I thought I would begin the process of just getting all those snippets and unfinished entries up and out. One reason of course being to keep up the flow of content, the other reason because of a move I’m contemplating and not wanting to lose them.

Some things are interesting, if only to me, given the context of where they place in my own life history.

This one was from about a month before the ordeal of the EYOC began which would come to occupy much of my attentions until just recently.

Power on, power off:

Over the last 24 hours, there have been intermittent power outages. It started last night around 9pm - the power just blinked off. It’s accompanied by a high pitch squeal as the CO detector shuts off. The TV went off too, nothing but snow. Of course as fate would have it, it happened right in the middle of this week’s 4400, which is something that I’m looking forward to all day, ah well.

TV came back early this afternoon but, the power was on and off throughout last night and today. I’d be doing something around the house and all of a sudden >BLINK< no more electric. Last night I know I woke up at one point when it happened, it was unnaturally quiet. This morning I was getting ready to make coffee (plowing my way through a sink full of dishes) and >BLINK< no more electric. I just kept at the dishes and sure enough just about the time I was through, the power came back on (which was good as the stove is electric - no power, no coffee).

It reminded me of something that happened last week, an entry that got gobbled up by an inadvertent power blip.

One of the innumerable responsibilities around here is the care and maintenance of the EYOC. The EYOC differs from the FYOC in that a FYOC is infinitely more manageable. Those not familiar with the acronyms, EYOC stands for Eighty Year Old Child, a rather apt description of dealing with an Octogenarian parent - FYOC being a Five Year Old Child.

Over the last few weeks, the EYOC has fared well with me managing to get some sorely needed maintenance done around and about his suite. Being bachelor guy, these things don’t come naturally to me but, even an ill kept, alley cat bachelor allows that there comes a point when a mess can no longer be ignored. Consequently, there has been much moving of furniture, making less clutter for the EYOC (clear passages being a major point of concern for increasingly unsteady legs). The installation of the air conditioner (a project which languished for a long time) was finally completed. Much vacuuming and cleaning - even I am taken aback and still sniffling from the dust bunnies whose anger was incurred. A new bed even made it’s way into the EYOC’s life.

Think of it as something along the lines of a ‘Craftmatic Lite.’ Basically, it’s a twin that is completely adjustable (head and feet). It took the place of an old queen that somehow survived over 20 years and had sags in its sags. Somewhat like an old junker sitting in the front yard of a run down house, the thing was even up on bricks to give it an incline and help the EYOC sleep somewhat better (this an invention of his very own design).

So, new bed works better than old bed although there still seems to be some talk about being sure if it is the ‘right size’ and all.

—8.15.05

Surprisingly enough, although there seemed to be this stretch where the power was going off for a while I can’t remember it crapping out since. The other thing that comes to mind is that those last few months the EYOC was home before his sojourn through the world of docs and hospitals, he was being well cared for. I had spent a lot of time those months before just cleaning up after him and making his life easier and better. Something I can be glad of given the course of events.

There ’s no law against stupidity...

Harper told three friends he was sitting with that he was going to test whether the net would hold his weight – and then he jumped, police said.

“The next thing you know, you don't see him anymore. You saw him on the net,” said 18-year-old Mike Spadafino, one of Harper’s friends.

The idiot fan that wound up on the net behind home plate at the Yankee game last night. Testing a theory but, never thinking about the consequences to the people beneath him should the net prove to be too weak. File this under blatant stupidity – used to be things like this were good for weeding out the gene pool (natural selection at its finest) but, in today’s society it’ll probably wind up as a court case with the Yankees being sued on the grounds of some supposed negligence.

—8.10.05

I believe the guy was ultimately charged with a crime and part of his sentence was being banned from Yankee Stadium but, somehow I found it emblematic of all the cretins who came crawling out of the woodwork to become ‘lifelong’ Yankee fans once the Yankees started to hit that spectacular streak in the mid 90’s. I was a big Yankee fan for a long time but, as they started getting better as a team in the early 90’s you could see the change in the people coming to games.

When they were a fifth place team, the people in the stands were true baseball fans who loved their team (the Yankees). When the team got more and more successful on the field there suddenly appeared a whole legion of brutish, loud-mouthed, ill-mannered, drunken fans (usually men in their late teens through early 30’s). It made for a less than desirable Stadium experience. I bought a woman from work one time and had to ask some guys to watch their language that was embarrassing even to me (and I swear like a sailor) just for the benefit of my companion and some children in the general area.

Funny thing is I’ve taken people with me to Shea, people who are Yankee fans and even they admit the whole Shea Stadium experience is much more fan friendly and family oriented to the point where if they were to bring kids or wives to the game they would opt for Shea over Yankee Stadium. I think it speaks to the Yankee organization failing their fans.

Brutality...

How do you judge someone’s worth in your life? You sit down and level out the good versus the bad.

I’m trying to be a bit more optimistic these days and turn a blind eye to certain shortcomings in people. I’ve got more than my own fair share so, I don’t really think it’s right to hold someone else’s failings under a microscope. Life’s too short, there’s too much to do and wasting your time on the negative is never a good idea. Plus being around people, means taking the good with the bad.

Sitting around John’s house. with a drawing of a person while we sat around and listened to an inane phone conversation that had been taped with the words “actual voice of...” and laughing very long and very hard.

—8.6.05

An incomplete entry about a cancerous person long since removed from life, someone not even worth wasting time on.

Funny things about people you know...

I’m on what amounts to a very weird schedule with the heat and everything. This results in me being online at weird hours with the TV on in the background - days are usually spent in absolute quiet trying to get things done.

The last week or two have been very interesting in a bunch of ways.

I’ve been cloistered for the most part, choosing to focus on finishing all those things I work so hard to avoid. If there is one constant in my life, it is that is marked by periods where I just remove myself from things for awhile and try to do the business of taken care of moi and assessing what direction I want to focus in for the future.

In the meantime, I am sure the world is full of all these people I know who are leading the most wonderful lives. Rewarding, fulfilling lives, full of excitement and adventure, nothing but wonderful things and oh, of course, I am missing out on the big party that is going on for everyone else while I sit around. This is the kind of thing up until a few years back I was telling myself and feeling despondent over until it was pointed out to me (through therapy and much life experience) that everyone pretty much has the same kind of crappy life with its ups and downs. The other thing is that you mainly hear about only the good stuff as opposed to the bad.

A couple of things that came to light recently that were once again a reminder of the old saw that the grass is not always greener.

First, I found out a former friend of mine who I had long ago lost touch with had just spent a nice little ten-month stint in prison (it is just amazing the things you can find on the internet, amazing and scary). The information came my way in the form of a dozen or so very disturbing pictures taken of said friend throughout his progress through the penal system of the state where he was incarcerated. The pictures were upsetting. Even though we had a falling out (over a woman, of course), I still didn’t wish the guy ill - and yes, I was the transgressor.

The photos followed the journey from the initial arrest, to sentencing and then subsequent intervals thereafter. The thing I noticed was how at the arrest, my friend had his normal hair, after sentencing his head was shaved and then over the next few months his hair slowly grew back. He had street clothes on in the first few photos, the state issue orange jumpsuit in the next few and then some kind of janitorial green outfit towards the end.

Now, beyond the fact that something like this causes one great embarrassment (it’s not information you really want to broadcast) and the fact I would imagine pity on my part was something which would be welcomed, I still found myself feeling really, really bad for the guy. How badly does your life have to go off the rails that you wind up doing time? This is someone who went to and graduated law school! I just can’t figure how you could be so together as to make it all the way through the hell that is supposed to be law school and then screw up like this. I couldn’t make it through law school (even though a part of me thought about it at one time).

Then, a lot of it had to do with...

—8.5.05

Well, I imagine I’ll never finish that thought. I haven’t heard anything since about the person in question suffice to say it still strikes me as sad, shocking although not surprising what had happened. You hope something like this happens and it works to the person’s benefit. They come to a low-water mark in their lives and it forces them to take stock of themselves but, in such a way that they never return to such a low point. I don’t know if that has happened or not. I haven’t heard anything and my attempts at securing additional information have gone for naught but, I really, really wish the guy in question the best because for all his lapses (and there were many which have nothing to do with me), I never though of him as purposely malicious and it’s a shame to see someone you hold in high regard stumble.

The fuck in me...

I’ve been trying to find another all-purpose word for my vocabulary lately. Something that would serve a broad purpose of being an adjective, noun, or verb depending upon the usage. It seems my old pal, “Fuck” just isn’t in fashion the way it used to be.

There has always been an uneasy alliance between us - the word fuck and me. Fuck is just the old friend in my dialogue I lapse into out of habit and laziness. Unfortunately, through the years I’ve become increasingly aware (as evidenced by the many times I will try to forcefully use it in this entry).

—8.3.05

I still have yet to remove that word from my vocabulary although I have noticed two people I know who have successfully made the transition over to the substitute ‘Frik’ which I consider to be Fuck lite. It’s interesting to mark how much their language is peppered with the word though which is kind of funny and even though they use F-lite, every time they use Frik you still get a sense that it’s Fuck they are reaching for.

Important no longer...

There is an undoubtedly a transitory nature to life. I’ve noted in the past how we all have this tendency to occupy ourselves with the bubble of the present, not overly concerned with anything beyond the immediate past or immediate future. You wake up and a bunch of years go by without you’re really noticing - where did that time go? So, how important are the things we make important? Slights, feuds, and all those things we exert energy on which are little more than distractions for any of us.

The reason this line of thinking arises, stems from two things which came to light over the past week...

First, was a conversation with a friend. It involved a conflict between him and an estranged sibling brewing for years. Akin to neighboring countries who find themselves at odds, resulting in the sporadic border skirmish, this friend found himself enmeshed in righteous indignation over the most recent slight in a litany of many. Not that there aren’t a ton of other distractions to occupy my friend in his life currently. Fueled by his indignation, he was ready to embark on a full-scale war. No amount of effort and time would be too great to avenge this insult and balance the scales.

He asked for counsel and I found myself telling him to let it go. Imagine that, me of all people telling someone to let things go.

Next up, was idling away sometime doing the Yahoo image search entering names of people I’d lost touch with and discovering a former close friend had been incarcerated for almost a year.

—7.31.05

It took me a second to remember whom I was referring to in that post. Now that I did, I can’t really say whether or not things ever got resolved between the two siblings although the friend in question has since moved quite a distance away which makes the whole dispute very easy to manage. Physical distance between the two parties means whatever lingering animosity between the two can stay unresolved since they seldom enter into each other’s orbit.

Again, the mention of the incarcerated friend that at the time was just the most disturbing news.

The many jobs...

I haven’t been doing the graphics thing so much lately. It’s not that I’ve missed it and it’s not that I haven’t been busy. As I had observed a few weeks back, someone had asked me at a function what I was doing these days and I had replied, ‘nothing.’

I had replied in that fashion because generally when I am asked that question I get the sense the person asking it, is referring to where I’m working at the moment. Since I hadn’t been doing much freelance lately, I responded ‘nothing.’ In retrospect, when I thought about the question (and my response) over the subsequent weeks, it occurred to me how much of a person’s identity is wrapped around what they do for a living.

I guess it’s the way our society is structured, you meet someone for the first time and within the first several minutes of your acquaintance you ask him or her or they ask you, “So, what do you do (for a living)?” It’s such a seemingly innocuous and harmless question but, what it does is give you the parameters within which you judge a person or are judged by them. If you doubt me on this, try it the next few times you meet someone. Give a group of different people different responses (professions) and see how they react. I truly believe you’ll get a big difference in the response if you say something like theoretical physicist as opposed to garbage man.

It’s the American version of the caste system. A way that society operates and your very own special place in society’s pecking order.

Anyway, what bought on these musings was how I choose to occupy my days recently. They are not eventful or exciting but, I find they rocket by and generally are extremely satisfying.

—7.28.05

Looking at this I realize the last two years have been marked by a definite slowdown in terms of the career thing. It was partially intentional, partially by accident. However, I find I still feel the same way about how we choose to ‘brand’ ourselves by the work we do.

That‘s always bothered me to a certain extent. Maybe it’s a sign of not being able to grow up in a way because when you think about it, adults are the ones who classify themselves, children don’t do such things. As a matter of fact a big question for adults is, ‘So, what do you want to be when you grow up?’

The question is geared towards generating an answer which is occupation based: I want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a fireman! We carry this questioning over into our adult lives when meeting other adults we ask that same question which was so readily foisted upon us as children.

However, do we really want to define our lives this way? Especially in today’s marketplace, where jobs themselves are so transitory in nature. If we define ourselves by our jobs and we wind up holding a multitude of positions throughout the course of our working life are we in danger of becoming a little too much the equivalent of Sybil?

I can}t say I have a better answer now than I did when I first wrote the entry although I do find myself moving away from defining myself by what I do to make money and I think that is a better thing after all.

On the heels of talking about Michelle Wie...


Again, just another comment on how different this generation of women is from the ones that preceded them. I have to admit that there is something about Serena Williams too. She is just fascinating. I mean, she looks like she could probably beat the sh*t out of me (not that that is what I’m into) but, she is really just very beautiful. Just a gorgeous face and incredible eyes and smile. Although I must say she looks like she just stepped out of a comic book with that physique. I can’t say I could ever remember...

—7.19.05

There was a period of time where I was thinking of doing something along the lines of Women I love Wednesdays. Just as a way of exploring something for myself in what I find attractive. A lot of people say every person has a type but, looking back on the women I’ve had as part of my life I can’t say that’s the case for me. There is something very, very beautiful about Serena Williams. There are some who would find her physique to be off-putting but, I have to admit I like the whole package (I can hear the ewwws now).

She is just an incredible woman.

I like women and I may still do that WILW if I can ever motivate myself just because I think it would be interesting to see the range of women I find attractive - interesting and surprising to some (even me). I always get a little nervous though about being offensive to people but, is it really offensive to comment on finding someone attractive?

1 effin K!

Yeah, I looked at the counter and it looks like it’s about to hit the three digit mark. Unfortunately, I have to figure there are a bunch of hits in there which are just me posting or editing an entry or just going back to fix a broken link or image.

—7.8.05

I’d like to think if I put the thing up sooner it would have had a much higher number but, the truth is the blog doesn’t really generate much traffic. Which is okay because the original reason I started the thing was more for myself than anyone else and that‘s what should keep me motivated.