M. is out of the house. I have my computer on my lap. I have ideas in my head. But, there’s always the internet to detain me from actually creation. I wonder why I hate myself?

I went to a rare work-related social thing last night. Actually, I assume it’s rare, but in truth for all I know there are parties left and right and I’m just not invited. Probably that’s the case. I mean, I wouldn’t invite me. Although to my credit, I tend not to come empty-handed. My single, uncoupled self would bring booze. But, paradigm shift and other pretentious phrases happen in a relationship, so we brought a log.

A French log, actually. A non-Noelle buche, I suppose. No champignons anyway.

Tasty.

I went to this particular thing, because the guest of honor represented exactly what I have learned irked me about my Cambridge life. They say in NYC and LA everyone is on their way to being something else. Waiters, office workers, cab drivers with scripts and books and aspirations. I’m thinking the world might be full of such like people, not just Lala land and the apple city, but if Boston is, it sure ain’t happy about it. Most jobs in Boston, even when I was at my careerist career-focusing, I was a fucking square peg aching to be hammered into place. (Well, I wasn’t fucking aching, but someone else sure wanted to give me the beatdown.)

It always felt, back in my other life, that you had to be one thing or another, but anything short of singular thinking was fucked up and wrong-minded. Comedy clubs felt that way, too. Various levels of folks would opine on who’s legit and who’s not, the artists and the pikers, and build up their fragile ego selves with the parsing some indecipherable calculus of who is real or genuine. And, forget about the office jobs, where all outside interests were subterranean. I remember a chick working as the fucking petty-cash cashier in accounting at one job WHISPERING about her nightlife and her soca band.

One of M.’s Cantabridgian friends wants an interesting job, so’s she’ll have something to say if she’s dinner or cocktail partying.

Here, though, people spend a disproportionate amount of time separating themselves from being the sum total of their 9-5. Even the folks in charge, who clearly have invested a little bit of something to get the kind of titles on their name plaques that reek authority, have other things going on. Music, wilderness treks, gorilla-peeping, sports fantasy camps, working out, reality-show addictions, whatever, it ain’t all work. There’s a fair amount of beer and skittles.

I should step back a bit and revisit my saying there’s none of those outside interest things in Boston. I seem to remember some kind of executive killing himself in his personal plane, so he had to give a shit enough about something to get a pilot’s license.

The point is, here, with my fantasies about someday writing legitimately (or at least mailing off a proposal and getting my ass rejected, repeatedly), ain’t no thang. I’m a face in the goddamn crowd. The honoree, who’s left our little mom and pop shop, is staying home with his keyboard to honor the contract a publisher with which a publisher hooked him up and expects something from the advance. Fucking A, he’s doing it, and sadly, I’m just happy to have been in his circle for a bit to remind myself it’s possible.

In fact, I either gotta get back to performing or find a writers’ group to keep the memory of not being alone alive.

The other thing about Boston is, I should just hate this guy on principle for having a book deal. He’s many things I am not, young and bright coming first to mind. So, in the art and science of chip-on-your-shoulder begrudgery, I really should wish him failure and misery. But, he’s a good guy, and I simply don’t.

Maybe I am just a sunshine, positive spirit who needed some actual Californian sunshine to bust out. I wish him well and will buy his book, because I knew him. (Actually, that and because it’s about doctors and the medical education system, and given my purgatory at my last job, the medical complex is something too familiar.) I miss my angry self a little, though.

Now, if only I could get over my fucking block about my fucking horrible book idea and focus, I really could feel the warm rays of happiness. Not likely, but I dream.

The only downside to all of this nice, swell, outside lives side of the people I know now, is there are quite a few more people who have read ‘blogs or ‘blogged themselves. Yikes. I never will quite live down my reasonable fear of the so-called blogosphere and the impossibility of neatly compartmentalizing my life.

So, as we left the shindig and the honoree mentioned that his way to procrastinate writing was finding and reading weblogs instead. If that was a veiled reference, all’s I can say is this ain’t me.

Technorati Tags: avocation, California, Cambridge, East Coast, happiness, Intellectualism, vocation, puppy, work

Upgraded some weblog software bullshit and fixed everything I broke.

Tomorrow, I shall hate myself for not sleeping more. And, for the headache that won’t go away. And, for world peace still not having been achieved. I am responsible for that too.

By the way, fly Virgin America. It was the best thing about my business trip.

Technorati Tags: flight, work, tired, work

Fucking hell am I tired. Weary, bone-aching tired.

I always imagined myself an adventurer. Some day, when I was all growed up, I would take to the skies and the oceans and the roads and paths and wander freely discovering the big, blue marble and its occupants. Or some other fairy tale bullshit. Some kind of dream, some kind of fantasy world traveling thrills and chills.

But, I fucking hate the tired. I hate the time zone changes. Hotel beds and sleepless nights in uncomfortable unknown spaces.

Of course, it could just be that all I got to fucking see was the inside of some office space and the streets around DuPont Circle. I’m in the U.S. of A’s monument central and I didn’t even see a real skyline. No phallic obelisks or giant stones honoring war and leaders and the American dream.

In short, business travel sucks. I mean you get to go places, but then you work.

Sightseeing-wise I got to see the National Geographic Society’s HQ with an insider’s tour. I got to see a cool documentary. I got to see a state rep from the state of California remind me of why people hate politicians. And, I had a couple of cocktails on an expense account.

Whoop-de-fucking-do.

I just had the realization, from the July, when M. biked and ran from Hitchcock’s “Birds” roost to August with our work retreat, late August to my artisanal vacation in Edinburgh until now, I haven’t been sleeping a lot at home. My second realization is I like my bed at home.

Tonight, I’m channeling work trips to DC from at least a decade ago, but more. Flying into the capitol and then thinking “What next?” Here’s a major, fucking huge difference, though. Then, those ten to fifteen years of change ago, I was at a national convention with a horny, guido conventioneer, who was also my director. Scary and sad to start drinking at night and realize hours later you were pimping out a friend’s colleague. Scary times, bad days.

Now, I had dinner in the Irish pub in the hotel, because for fuck’s sake I could order a Black Velvet and get a beverage with Guinness floated on top of cider. Sure, California has the Arnold Palmer, but for half and half drinks, that’s all she wrote. I also had a respectable sandwich and fries.

Unlike the horny director who bellied up to the bar and whatever contemporary young woman with whom I spoke, as though frottage was an acceptable greeting, nope now I’m with a cool coworker who met me at the bar. We had a normal, non-frightening convo.

Now it’s 1:30 in the morning where I am, but 10:30 in the evening where I live. Cold water to wash away the Black Velvet and sleep to forget the jet travel.

Tomorrow, I feign training. It’s harder to feign when you’re the trainer.

Im sitting on a spanking new Virgin America plane getting ready to experience the richard branson- esque experience. But, of course, without Richard Branson, because hes a brit and this is a domestic flight and well foreigners and allthat in our domestic atmosphere.

So far, i’ve learned this morning thqt if your leave town for thw second tizmr in as many months, yiur life partner is a bit blase.

Ive also learned that civility isright dead and peopl suck. Very glad i was a witness not a participant in the checkin line scuffle. Seriously, more to come, because people suck but they are fubny.

Off to our nations seat of government for work. If there’s a news story in the next couple if days about a hippie-looking chick taking a dump on the Whitehouse lawn, it’s a coincidence.

I’m sitting on the plane. Of course, there’s no internet, so I’ll be letting this upload once I’m on terra firma. So far, the only event of note was on earth not in the stratosphere.

The deal with Virgin America is, of course, all modern and shite, what like the kids like. You know, wired. So, I logged in and did the whole online check in thing, printed out my boarding pass and got to the airport. Then, I stood in line where you could allegedly just drop your bag and go. Or, you could stand in line and wait with the non-computer-literate riffraff checking backs the old-fashioned way. Today, they pretty much made everyone stand in line old school.

I got in line behind a woman that I would peg at at least 60, but she had some lines and whatnot that made me think older. She was dressed very Californian casual, no matronly frump, including hip, stylish hippie-ish glasses. But, yeah, clearly not on the young side of the divide. She was jockeying up in the line as a middle-aged guy slid in on the diagonal. I gathered right away they had been doing to who’s next dance for a bit.

The middle-aged guy, south of the woman’s age but not by much, although even tougher to tell, towered over her short stature by about minimally a foot. He was probably over 6-feet and he inched in closer to the line’s front just past her hip. Having none of it, she twisted forward and nudged him back. He pushed back. “Alright,” I’m thinking as I step back a foot, couple of excitable folks eager to get checked in and go.

Generally, I can’t get it up to give that much of a shit in that type of line. I figure, they know when the flights are leaving and have the financial incentive to get our asses on board.

The lady lets me in on her world view, mainly that the guy had muscled his way in the minute they opened a new line and rushed her in the first place. Who the fuck knows.

She turns her back on the alleged muscle-inner, and he makes her move. A solid hip-check to her blind side and she just missed losing the footing beneath her. What the fuck? When did guys of an age certainly old enough to know better throw their weight behind tossing old ladies. He was a standard-issue, middle-class looking dude. Maybe a white-collar job, some kind of college degree, nice watch and shoes and weekend cardigan, you dig. A dad, an uncle, probably born of a mother.

So the woman keeps on her feet and shoves back. There is a mini-shoving match right in front of me, inches away, and I’m just thinking, “What the fuck is wrong with people?” Then it got better.

Enter stage left, the wife. The dude’s wife comes flying up on her broomstick and starts screaming at the woman to keep her hands off her husband, and she makes some sort of dig (in a proper British accent, I might add) about the woman having no sense of decency or courtesy. Then the two woman, seriously, are yelling at each other. The only thing that broke it up was wifey needing to get back into the line she was manning. Apparently, they had split up, she and her husband, to be sure to get the bestestest places in line. (Editorial note, it wasn’t that crowded or that late.)

She scoots back in her line and then goes for the classic shrew stage whisper. The clenched jaw hiss to your spouse (or dog), “Get over here!” with a bit of a petulant foot stamp.

He obeyed.

So for no fucking reason at all, since his wife had pushed them ahead of a whole other line, the guy almost dropped a stranger.

My two cents — I hope I always fucking remember life is short and lines will pass. You know, Serenity Prayer and all that shit.

I also think I chose my partner on the basis of never having to find out what I would do in that situation. I mean, I’ve seen M. pissed off and impatient, but never to the point of physically shoving someone smaller and older (or even contemporary). If that ever did happen, I’d throw him into the back of the car and drive fast to the hospital, because clearly he would be having a brain tumor or aneurysm problem. Anything short of brain damage, and he’d stay cool.

But, if in the hypothetical bizarro universe where I did end up with another man who was that particular kind of dickhead, I can’t imagine defending him. Maybe I’d stand to the side and observe (Jesus, I hope not), but I doubt I’d accuse the other chick of roughing up my big psycho goon.

The visibly shaken older woman got her turn at the counter, and her last words to me were to hope that the lovely couple weren’t sitting next to her on her flight. Thankfully, none of them seem to be on my flight.

Civility is deader than dead, and people are becoming meaner.

Technorati Tags: civility, cutting, flight, queue, strangers, stress

Tomorrow shall see the old, forlorn back of Nick’s slightly balding heading and dispirited, stooped shoulders as he lumbers into the metaphoric sunset of our acquaintance.

M. and Nick are supposed to meet up tomorrow so we can collect our court winnings. I might go, but I’m afraid of one last nasty encounter. I don’t know. I’m torn between a stories end and the desire to avoid all lunatic fuckwads in a 100 mile radius.

What to do, what to do?

They say that the French say, and for all I know the “they” are French, the more shit changes the more it stays the same. I think it means that shit never really changes. But, how the fuck do I know, I speak American.

Point is, I left my old job, moved a coast over, started a new life and, you know, got all rehabbed. Like, I haven’t even read a Stephen King novel or any other kind of shit about the evil people do. Nope. Living one day at a time, clean and not writing in the old horrorshow violence way, my little droogs.

Lately, though, I’ve been scratching my itchy literary trigger finger. I’ve been thinking of my old prose on shivs, my drama. The stress of the workaday world is re-piling up. The desire to write about useless meetings, politics, cube farms, paperwork, the whole swirling Scott Adams, Dilbert-esque, sucky swirl of toiling every single fucking day.

But, I’m reformed. No more blades. Now, my fantasy is a TASER. How fucking awesome would that be?

Isn’t it cute? All happy fun toy looking. Someone gives you the old guff, I hates guff, afterall, in the office setting or just wastes your time about a minute too log? Whammo, and buzz, buzz, buzz, problem solved. You got clear space to walk away.

Better yet, TASER makes swell attachments, like the TASER cam. No shit. I’m not poitively, absolutely sure, but I think you get to TASER some kind of malingerer in TASERing range and simultaneously videotape the shenanigans. Awesome YouTube potential right there.

I think I could use a day off, though.

Technorati Tags: California, Landlord, pranks, TASER, stress, work, fun

I want to write something politically astute about the campaign. I want to comment on the special-interest group debates and whether that splintering makes any fucking sense. Or whether it’s just further divisiveness which helps no one and confuses the sound-bite politics of our town to less than bites with the consistency of pablum.

But, all I got is what is the fucking deal with Giuliani? And/or Mrs. Giuliani?

There was this one a while back:

Now, there’s the NRA debate:

Is he that much of a goon? Does his wife not know something like, I don’t know, his fucking schedule? I mean, fucking a, she could check the Tivo or something. Or, maybe she’s so needy, it’s like “Rudy, don’t put that phone on silence or vibrate. I mean it, you better pick up.” He’s either retarded or whipped. Great fucking presidential stance that one.

Technorati Tags: Giuliani, NRA_debate, Cell phone, special_interest, Rudy_Giuliani, 2008_Campaign, Cell, debate, presidential

Yesterday was mall day. The large, full of outlets and discount shops and Asians mall in Milpitas. Among the features of this mall is a wide array of Chinese massaging going on.

We got side-by-side, half-hour “reflexology” foot massages, or feet massage, or feet massages. Four feet, two massagers, 30 minutes.

Whenever I get a manicure or a pedicure and now a foot massage, I become acutely aware of the people alongside me. The ones with beatific, peaceful smiles. The ones who look limp, languid. I think they call the state “relaxed.” It’s something like that, and it’s an entirely foreign concept to me.

Invariably, I’m in a weird muscular tug-of-war with a helpful professional beseeching me to “just relax…relax” while manipulating some extremity or another. Taut is how the world made me and taut I stay. Rigid. Unyielding. I don’t do anything but clenched. Really. I try. Turns out, though, that using your brain to will yourself relaxed leads to board-like stiffness.

M.’s reaction was, “You’re from New England and a stranger was touching you.” Like, duh.

I’m thinking of loaning myself out as scaffolding.

Technorati Tags: California, massage, foot_massage, Chinese_massage, New England, relaxed, stiff, tension