Tag Archives: living

Pat’s Day 2018, keep your mouth shut edition

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I’m a day or three late. Maybe more. Blame Comcast their lack of faith that our internet truly shit the bed. After begging and weeping and prayer, the tech came and left a new modem and cables behind.

Late I may be, but it was worth being late, or at least I tell myself that my lateness is good lateness. It’s better than telling myself I’m tardy.

The Ides of March have come and gone. The day I think of my mother, since she would have been 89 on March 15, had she not decided to not be. I think of her all the time really, not just on her birthday, and she left about 17 years now. Maybe 17. Time flies, and she’s remembered.

Every year since she died, though, I like to remember how they broke the Pat mold and haven’t built another one like it. I remember to not let the bastards grind me down (which I wish was illegitimi non carborundum).

Because of Pat, I remember that non-creative small minded people kind of suck. I remember that there’s both honor and wobbly steps (I edited that from treacherous steps) in not conforming, following, acquiescing, going gently into that good night. Most of all, I remember that like Pat, I am a square peg in a world of round holes, and so it is.

But, that’s not today’s adventure.

Today’s adventure is about work, the thing I have to do. We sell our skills and brains on the open market to live.

I have the shoulder to the wheel thing down, but sometimes I outstay my welcome, or that’s what the authorities at past workplaces have told me. I outstayed my welcome, when a director was boning two women in the office and they all hated me for my non-office-boning knowledge, and they told me I just had to go. Or the time when after about 5 reorgs, the jackass above me was minutes away from being unmasked as a doer of nothing who couldn’t balance a bake sale, and I was shown the door to go.

I’ve always thought of my working as having a shelf life, and my expiration date would come soon enough.

Through all of the trials of the workaday world, Pat’s voice in my head says, “Just keep your mouth shut.” She knew I ultimately wouldn’t keep my mouth shut. And, she’d worry as I lost another job. Albeit lost a job and gained a great story.

I also suspect she was a bit proud of my inability to keep my mouth shut and dodge a fight. Sure, I need to work, and she always needed to work, but she respected that I have some fight in me.

Friday, despite her having been gone so long, her voice was loud and clear in my head, “Just keep your mouth shut.” Here in California, the strange land where I work, in a company that is more earnest than ironic, I’m doing alright with a big mouth and ingrained, East Coast bred sarcasm.

Pat’s head would be blown.

She would say “keep your mouth shut,” but she’d be confused by the work company I’m keeping. I’m working among lawyers, the kind that read and talk about the law not hang out in courts. Until now, the only mix of work and lawyering was when I hired a labor lawyer to help me out of my last employment jam.

On Friday, I was parrying wits with someone who used to be the head of one of the top schools in the country and clerked for a justice from the SCOTUS, while in the company of a double Ivy grad from Yale Law. Magically for Pat’s daughter, they asked me to speak up and no one’s getting fired.

So, I marvel at what a fucking crazy world it is. That I’m me, that she was she, and of all of the things she taught me to worry about or be cautious of and the kind of authority she feared. I’ve ignored her lessons of fear and aversion, and I live on to tell the story.

Here’s the Hemingway version of the story:

People who give away money for a living and run an organization for the purpose of giving away money are asking my opinion on how to make that workplace work better. They are paying me to not keep my mouth shut.

And for two hours, the day after Pat’s day, I got to share openly with the authority figures I was taught to avoid, and I’ve only just begun.

She would have been suspicious and recommended cautious. But, still and all, I think she’d be proud that I have a voice. For her, speak up, speak out and don’t let the bastards grind you down.

It ought to be a holiday

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Every year, well more frequently than that, I think about my mother. I think about her on the Ides of March, the portentous day in which Brutus stabbed Caesar and my mother was born. Not the same year, mind you, as I’m not tapping this out on my ancient Roman computer.

Actually, it was portent upon portent for old Pat. She was born on the Ides of March the year of the stock market crash for the Great Depression. She was meant for great things.

So, another anniversary rolls around.

I like to remember the ways in which Pat stood out from the crowd. Or in my warped and selfish and self-absorbed brain, the ways in which Pat affected me and stood out from the crowd.

Today’s memory is tied to the current season of my manual toil. OK, typing and sitting at a desk isn’t manual labor, but some days it grinds you just the same. I got callouses on my tappy type finger tips.

At work these days the pesky little papers (now computer files) that once a year worker drones planet-wide, or at least U.S.-wide, bemoan are due — the annual performance reviews. The neat little report where you and your boss get to write out how you’re “meeting expectations” and otherwise doing what a cog does when one is employed.

You say to yourself right about now, I can hear you breathing and thinking, you say, but how does that relate to Pat. Surely, she was not your boss, apart from the sense in which we are all subordinates to our mothers.

Well, here’s the thing. I might be one of the only people rambling around that has written their own performance “self reports” for the decades that I have been employed as a grown up adult, who got their start years before they were allowed to work.

Pat, enmeshed in some heavy duty politics and just short of Brutus-like backstabbing in my town’s school system, turned her typewriter over to her precocious daughter one fine day and asked for her help in word smithing her review. She had to describe her classroom contributions, and since she floated around helping learning disabled kids within other people’s classrooms, she had to talk about that too.

By nature, she was a mix of fierceness on some opinions and topics (ahem, Catholic molesters) and shy reticence on a whole lot more. She complained to those nearest and dearest, but she was way too polite to complain to anyone or anything with any authority, including a cashier at a convenient store. (Although, the school teacher might pop out at any time if said cashier couldn’t do the math to make simple change.)

Real humility, not the false stuff that often passes for humility, was part of her core, and she could not find any words at all to describe what she contributed. She knew what she did, but she couldn’t spin it to advertise her brand.

I could do that for her and with some nudging to not get carried away with florid prose extolling her greatness, together we spoke about her patience with kids in the classroom. Her vast experience. Her gentle but persistent nature. Her true and deep caring for children and learning and education. Her mastery of basic skills and pedagogies and learning methods. That she could set and meet goals until the sun rose and set a hundred years.

She was a champion to a whole lot of kids fumbling in classrooms with dyslexia, a host of other syndromes and disorders, and simply poor study skills.

Pat was also a drill sergeant. No misplaced modifiers, misspellings (which I incidentally just mistyped), prepositions dangling at a sentence’s end, no math not shown happened on her watch. For the stuff where there is a right and wrong way to do it, by god she was going to teach you the right way or die trying.

All of her skills, the ones that made strangers come up to me in high school and beyond and say they knew my mother and that she was great, they were in her heart effortlessly as a teacher.

But, she did suck at telling management what was up. I helped do that for her. I was a kid and it was a fun writing assignment and in truth I had no feel for the politics or fear of the consequences, so I could write without inhibition. She could not. It became an annual ritual in her later years of work.

Now, about a thousand years later, or maybe just shy of that, I have to do the same kind of reports for myself.

So, I sit at my desk and return to the game that I had done at my mother’s typewriter. I right fast and furiously, and I have learned how to advertise my own brand but temper it with a soupçon of self-reflection. I allow for the things I do not know, and I hammer out my strengths. I find the notes of self improvement that are surmountable and demonstrate my good attitude.

I try very hard not to by cynical. But, for that to happen, I do not dwell, I do not agonize. If I spend over 15 minutes on the thing, at about 10 minutes in, I walk away until my head is in the game and I give it only 5 minutes more.

It’s impossible to tell your boss that in addition to my 25-30 years of doing the things for myself, I might have done 10 years more. We breeze through the things, the virtual online handshake is done and another year will pass.

And my highest proof of mastery were the words of my attorney, the one I hired on account of my work at the time not really feeling the love, the labor lawyer who helped me out of a jam. That besuited gentleman pulled all of my Human Resources records out of the belly of the employment beast, and he went through each paper with the loving care that an hourly fee will get you.

Upon sage and learned analysis, he proclaimed that while many a person had come through his office doors with a sad story to tell about the workplace, almost all of them had some marks in their permanent records. But my file, the years of reviews and meetings, they were a pristine and glimmering example. He said in all his years of lawyering he had never seen such stellar performance reviews.

Cooking time

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Here’s something I’m disproportionately proud of to start the week: I made some seriously kickass chicken soup.

M., the man with whom I cohabit, did something he ain’t never done before since I’ve known him. He packed a lunch for work with said kickass soup. Then he shared with his co-workers, who are now seeking a recipe, so I’ll do the best I can to write it all out.

It’s recipe time boys and girls!

First, days before you make the soup, whip up this recipe from Farm Fresh to You.

Butternut Squash & Swiss Chard Hash
Ingredients
• olive oil
• 1/2 large onion, thinly sliced
• 1 jalapeno, finely chopped
• 1 small, yellow bell pepper, chopped in 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 cup butternut squash, cut into 1-inch cubes and roasted
• 1 cup shredded swiss chard, kale or spinach
• salt & pepper
• 2 eggs poached, fried or soft-boiled. Runny yolk recommended.

Instructions
1. To roast butternut squash: Heat oven to 400 degrees F and place cubes on an oiled baking tray. Bake for 20-30 minutes until tender and slightly golden.

2. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over a medium high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring for about 5 minutes until soft. Add jalapeño, yellow pepper, cumin and paprika and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in Swiss chard and cook for 2 minutes until wilted. Add roasted squash and cook for another minute. Remove from heat.

3. Season with salt and pepper and serve warm with a poached egg on top.
Serves 2
http://voraciousvander.com
Serves: 2

Oh, but don’t do the egg bit. Just use the veggies as a side dish, sans eggy-wegg. Have leftovers.

Cook up a seriously tasty chicken dinner the next night. Maybe use one of Trader Joe’s pretty tasty “Organic brined chickens.” I roasted that puppy up on a bed of leeks with a few slices of red pepper also thrown into the pan.

Eat the chicken. Save the ravaged corpse.

When the weekend comes along, time to boil up your bones and make a broth.

Here’s the tricky part — First, juice a whole bunch of tangerines, while your loved one watches. Let him leave the house to go for a run.

While he’s out, switch out the tangerines from the juicer, clean up the citrus and switch on over to carrots. When you make carrot juice, you end up with a bucket full of ground up carrot bits. All of the juicing guides tell you, you can make stuff with a bucket full of ground up carrot bits. For example, you can make broth.

So, there you are, a chicken carcass, a bucket full of ground up carrot bits, water and a big pot. Boil that shit. Boil it some more. Let hours pass. Throw in some laundry. Not in the soup, in the washer machine. Do your core exercises, while the pot simmers. Maybe a little knitting, while the pot simmers. Update your craptacular blog, and you guessed, the pot simmers.

You’ll end up hours later with a murky orange goop of soupy base goodness. Time to let it cool, strain it into a bowl and recover any meat that ended up at the bottom of the pot. Throw that into the bowl with the lovely, strained chicken broth.

Slap it in the fridge and go out to eat. Drink wine. Carpe the old diem.

The next day, throw the broth back in a big pot. Put the pan, and a bit more water on the fire getting it back up to a toasty simmer.

Rummage around the refrigerator, and pull out the leftover squash and chard hash from the recipe above. Dump the leftovers into the pot.

Wash and chop up some carrots (the other ones in the pack that you didn’t get around to juicing), and throw the carrot slices into the pot.

Check the crisper in the refrigerator, and discover a bunch of neglected spinach. Clean that up, throw out the leaves of no return, chop or rip it up, and throw that into the pot.

Throw out the beets behind the spinach. They’re wilted and soft anyway, and only in Moscow do you want beets in your soup. This is California, not the Soviet Union. Bad beets. Bye bye beets.

Sit on the couch and let that stuff chill on simmer. OK, not chill exactly. Relax on simmer.

When you finish your core exercises, go back to the pot and grind in a serious helping of fresh pepper. Look around for what other soupy type spices you might have. Hmmm, just in case, throw in a chicken bouillon cube and a bit more water.

Discover the unopened spice mix you got as a Christmas present and check the label. If it says something like “celery salt, garlic salt, pepper and sea salt mixed,” throw some of that junk in. Toss in a little dried rosemary. The old parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Although, probably not the sage.

Back to the fridge — take out the giant jar of minced garlic in oil, and throw a metric shit ton into the pot. Or at least two heaping tablespoon’s worth.

Let that boil a long while longer. Throw in more water if it starts getting low, and check the carrots. If eyes are the windows on the soul, carrots are the windows on your soup’s doneness. Soft carrots equal done soup.

While this all is boiling, fight off the local critics and naysayers who question your simmer. Simmer is good.

Finally, when you’re hungry, declare the soup is done and force all in the house to eat. Or else.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to throw in some breast meat from a brand new chicken just to give it some more meat.

Enjoy.

Maybe it’s because another birthday is a-coming

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I thought I had a thought about something to write about here. The jump was a Facebook status I saw with a quote that boiled down to whether you could call yourself an artist.

I usually don’t. Sometimes I do. It’s usually when I am melodramatically claiming insights and wisdom and sensitivities I don’t actually possess. Recently, I did gesticulate and gesture broadly while declaring “Fuck them all, I’m an artist,” to a work friend (he is beleaguered as I am by those people who cannot discern wit and sarcasm from assholic behavior).

Generally, I’m more unsure. Although, as M. will shout at me, ridiculously so. If I don’t trust my words or my way with words, why the fuck should anyone else?

It’s a baby step that I now tell people that I’m a “writer” (yup, note the quotes and do the little airy double-fingered gesture) or admit to blogging or working on a book, now with M.’s sage advice an admitted collection of essays. Essays I can manage; a book creates a dry heave kind of thing in my brain. Hmm, not a great visual that – a retching head.

It’s important, I think, that you have to at some point say “fuck it, I’m in the club.” I’m tired of waiting for permission to decide what I am.

I never or rarely call myself a stand up comedian. I say (admit) I’ve done stand up comedy (and suppose I might again).

At night in dim clubs and bars, there was a mostly unspoken hierarchy, and there was a definitely bitched about gripe of who got to call themselves a comic. I think I took the atmosphere too much to heart, too personally, and I couldn’t bring myself to compare my meager offerings to people who made money and gigged madly and got auditions.

In retrospect, I wish I had brassier balls to front myself as belonging, even if I didn’t feel it inside. After all, I drank beers (and retro-shamefacedly even slept) with clowns who cashed checks built literally on fart jokes. Fart, fucking, jokes.

(Cue the smoke and vaselined lens with swirling colors, I feel a nostalgic memory coming on….

Back in old Boston, there’s a dingy room in a basement of what was once a bank. The tiny tables behind the stage, where comedians impatiently wait there turn, is adjacent to the black, iron wall of the bank’s vault.

I chatted and fiddled with my list of jokes in front of me and nursed a beer. A guy who at the time got paying gigs and took a shine to me, leaned over me to whisper sweet nothings of advice, and no doubt peer from above my head at the fun bags in my blouse.

He explained that I was too smart, and audiences don’t like that. My success, it would seem, would best be served by following his lead. He suggested I stand up from where I was sitting and watch his carefully calibrated performance unfurl.

Woman that I am, because I do sadly believe woman are a bazillion times more likely to politely follow these kind of orders, I got up to watch.

No lie, it was painful. Scampering and dancing on stage and a solid gold bit that if my dim mind remembers culminated in the comic gold of not being able to tell if the farts were coming from his dog or his grandmother sleeping on the couch. GOLD!

People do laugh at that shit, I’ll give him that. Although, sometimes it’s the uneasy laugh of watching someone fall spectacularly or the cruel laugh at the handicapped or maybe the giggle from watch monkeys flinging poo at the zoo. So, indeed the room had laughter in it.

A couple of people later, it was my turn. He returned the favor to study my set and give me notes.

It was one of those nights I only sort of remember. My best moments on stage are the ones where like a trained athlete it’s all muscle memory, mechanics and flow. Everything rolls out instinctively, not held up by my conscious (and self-concious) thought of what’s next.

I ripped it. The audience was listening and laughing exactly where I planned. They were silent on my words that would lead to revelation and release. But, in my game, in that ultimate zone, I don’t remember the details.

Admittedly, those nights were rare for me. I could measure my success by the astonished smiles and back pats from my friends and acquaintances back stage.

In a comedy club, a cold handshake with no eye contact tells you your fellow comics are embarrassed for you. In contrast, there’s a warm spread of people reaching out to touch you, pat you, congratulate you, smile when you’ve just nailed it in the end zone.

My would be suitor, smiled and offered the perfunctory hand shake and “good set.” He didn’t try to sleep with me again after that night.)

Those moments are the ones that make me want to sell myself harder. I only wish it didn’t take negative stimuli for me to feel the need to conquer.

There’s a bit more in my head. Stuff about what happens into the next decade, now that I’m about 10 years deep in M.’s and my relationship, just shy of that many years into my California dream, and looking down the barrel to 49, knowing it was 38/39 when it all last shifted seismically. And, as they say on Madison Ave. and Cupertino, wait there’s more.

But, for now, I’ll have to consider a part 2.

The not so great pretender

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The above depiction is my little foot ensconced in the finest of paraffin wax. From the ankle down, I occasionally look as pampered and fine as any lady in the court. Above the ankle, I am’s who I am, which is more Popeye than Lucretia Borgia.

In the passing of age, and in the passing of various and sundry jobs to pay the bills, I now find myself side by side with the hoi polloi. For reals, I don’t just work for the one percent, I work among them. People who pay people with calluses to remove their calluses.

I swirl glasses full of fine wine and make decisions on morsels and settle expense accounts. The thing about experiencing luxury on someone else’s dime is that it starts to make sense to set aside a couple of centimes to buy your own comfort.

And, so we do.

Yet, I am’s who I am. And, as I took an apple and a honey stick from a very nice spa that dipped my feet into the above-depicted wax, and I drank their proffered champagne, tea and infused water, I considered survival.

So, here’re some tips for fine living on a shoestring budget, especially if you ever find yourself maybe getting a room on an expense account but otherwise needing to pay for food and survival and whatnot.

First rule of the one percent: Turns out their lives are cushier than ours. They get 800 count sheets, pristine logs in their fireplaces, real honey and a lot more snacks. A lot more snacks.

Corollary rule to live like the one percent: Take your share, everyone else is. Also, take another share. Live as they do. More is more. The rich don’t want, because they take what they need (and maybe a wee bit more).

(And, you know what? They get more. Wee little shampoo bottles are bigger the better the hotel. Bars of soap approach full size, not the bare little wafers lost in skin folds at the lesser establishments. Two-ply to clean your unmentionable crevices not industrial strength sand paper in single ply is how the other half lives.)

At hotels I can afford on my own, there is occasionally a card table set up with a carafe of lukewarm coffee, non-dairy creamer in powdered form, and maybe, just maybe, a box of doughnuts purchased, you hope, that same day.

At fine hotels, there is usually coffee you can brew in your room and coffee service, freshly brewed and monitored frequently, in the lobby. Better yet, fresh fruit is often freshly placed daily in a sparkling bowl somewhere for the guests’ enjoyment. Sometimes there is fresh fruit lovingly place on every single damn floor. Pass by, take an apple. Pass by, take a tangerine. Pass by, take another apple. Go to another floor, see what they’ve got.

You could wake up to gratis arabica beans, but you can live a day on free fruit with no gout to speak of.

Similarly, fine hotels dole out water, like it’s water. When you see a tureen, crock or glass dispenser of cool, cool H2O, often infused with fabulous fruits, juices and petals, grab a cup and drink long and deep. Hydration is easy in four-star hotels. No need for feeding a wrinkly dollar bill into a humming vending machine next to the ice machine.

Second rule of the one percent and of access to water: Fine hotels are an oasis, even if you don’t have a room. The key is acting like you belong.

Clean toilets off the lobby with real towels! Cold and dirty from a harsh walk in the grimy streets of a major city? Listen for the whistle of a uniformed doorman, pass through the doors and the cleanliness that is next to godliness awaits you as the mean streets recede into hushed tones of opulence.

I still own a hand towel I stole one cold winter night, drunk and seeking refuge at the lovely Charles Hotel in Harvard Square.

More snacks — head to hotel bars at nice places. When the well-off drink, even if it’s the same bottled beer or glass of modest wine as schmoes like me imbibe, the bartender passes snacks. In the olden days, a lot of bars were generous with salty treats, but now snacks are left for the elite. I’ve had prosaic Goldfish and gilded, gourmet Chex mix and the humble peanut.

And, then there’s wifi for them that is bold enough to ask. I’ve yet to have a front desk turn me down when I’ve asked for the password, even as I was nursing a glass of wine at the bar not planning on spending the night.

And, thus, in that last little bit is my ultimate survival tip — Even with the rattle of coin in my pocket, I will remain more like the peoples behind the desk than the ones in front of them. They are my people, my allies, my friends.

Event planning has reminded and taught and refined for me to always be nice, fair and generous to the staff anywhere and any time. Your brother, your friend in arms, your contact to the perks the wealthy demand.

Back about a thousand years ago, I scooped ice cream for my job, when a small cone cost a mere 63 cents. (Total tangent, I still remember the price scale of small and medium cones — 63 and 79 cents respectively. Ice cream sodas with a single scoop were $1.19.)

Some of the clientele were demanding, entitled and willing to push a full-court press to get their penny’s worth of frozen sugar and cream. They got no more than exactly the training manual allotment of cream into their cone and a quick swish in the dish of what Bostonians call jimmies with an extra shake to make sure not too many sprinkles clung.

Manners and attitude, a friendly smile or the humility of a hand digging deep to count out the change penny by penny got you a heaping helping. The small cone teetered into 75 cents worth of ice cream, and the medium might require a cup to handle the excess weight.

The same philosophy holds in the upper echelons. The masters of the universe, they need people like us, and people like us help each other out.

Go ahead, put on your nice shoes and your company manners and mingle in the corridors of the well-to-do. They have snacks.

(By the way, all of the above is part of my ultimate retirement plan. You’ll catch me in a pressed suit, skipping from fine establishment to another with high-end retail adding extra spice and cookies to my day.)

It’s all relative

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If I had anything like a soul, I might put fingers to keyboard and write a list of all the things for which I should be grateful. It’s the day before Thanksgiving after all.

But, soulless I remain, so instead I will write about people in sufficient generalities to not attract specific ire.

First, my absolutely first world, privileged, fat, dumb and happy problems. Here I sit in the soft bath of sunlight streaming through a skylight in a state of the art, certified green and excessively comfortable office building. Free Wi-Fi. Free Diet Coke. And, in fact, a free, whole, family-sized pumpkin pie beside me.

Yet, I do not feel free. I have to wait for a ride.

So, my inner whiner is thinking “Oh, poor, pitiful, me. However, shall I survive in a luxurious office, closed now for the holiday, waiting to be transported home?” Moreover, I’m not sure how I can carry my holiday groceries and my free pie to the car, once my ride does come.

It’s a thought that someone who not only saw these images in real life but took the pictures while looking at them with my own eyeballs shouldn’t actually think.

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Ultimately, I will have my soft, white flanks seated upon the rich, puffed fabric of my relatively new car. I will envision if tomorrow’s dinner should have a wee panache of gourmet or just old-school holiday cooking.

If waiting for a ride is the worst of my life, I guess I do have reason to be grateful. (Not to mention, when I see the cliffs and the ocean of our chosen town, I will forget when I lived close enough to work to bike it.)

All of the above is not what I am writing about. Well, it is. I just did. Only it was an accident.

Instead, I’m writing about sweet, sweet irony and confusion of this life. The relativity that gives this post it’s title, and my theory of relativity is what makes the world go around and around. I suppose Einstein thought the same thing about his.

Every day in my universe, I have to interact with a person who makes me kind of crazy. It’s the special kind of crazy that hits that never grew up from junior high, don’t want to get picked on any more, why is life so hard adolescent scab that never quite healed.

Her gift is one of narrow vision. She’s one of those lucky people who go through life with myopia thinking their field of vision is the ultimate truth. For example, she has her own calculus for all things normal. My in-box, often filled with receipts and other non-paperclipped, letter-sized documents is NOT normal. My clothes elicit a mix of good-natured joshing with full-on criticism and laughter.

Among her offhanded remarks that hit the sullen teenage corner of my lizard brain are consistent and fairly frequent criticisms of all things on the internet but most especially any creation of content. The reader might note — these words are on the web, and I created the content.

Facebook — Silly. (Oh, and even better, Facebook causes divorce. I bet they said that about telephones when they were invented.) ‘Blogs — doesn’t read, nothing there. (I guess in any of them?) Self revelation of any kind in public — self-serving or worse mentally unstable. Smart phones — waste of money. Twitter — unknown. Comments on websites — Stupid. (OK, I might give her that one.)

Maybe I just get cranky, because she also has a lot to say about my Diet Coke and candy fixes. Probably a chemical reaction from my reliance on the richness of preservatives in my diet.

Early on up there, before I started complaining, I mentioned the irony. The irony is that today I heard about the person in her life who criticizes what she does and her choices. I’d give the examples, but, hey now, I’m avoiding the specific.

Probably worth saying my disclaimer — for the purposes of drama I made up all the shit above, not just how the words are strung together but what they are meant to mean.

So, here’s what I learned. Even the most critical people, the ones that go around opining on the right and wrong of life’s minutia. The puritans who pee on your candy and Diet Coke parade. The ones who cannot not share the negative comments and thoughts that leap into their brains. Even those folks suffer criticism.

Maybe, just maybe, the secret will be if we could all stop tell other people what to do. Of course, as I write that I am telling each and everyone one whose tired and wary eyes may fall upon this page what the fuck to do — Let it go. Stop judging and criticizing and offering stuff up to the universe that doesn’t construct anything.

Except for the extreme right wing. As far as I’m concerned, there’s always open season on those morons.

I suppose it could be an allegory

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20121119-235805.jpgHours by the sea. The surf pounding in giant cascades of pure energy. Seals frolicking. A woman, a pole, a snare, some squid and the certainty that crabs just want a free lunch.

Smarter than a lowly crustacean I may be, but they knew to avoid my trap. Well, except for one poor lady crab, bursting with eggs. She, my only victim, caught and released to ensure those eggs get their own fighting chance.

Goddamnit. I just wanted a crab dinner.

If I were Hemingway, the adventure would be ripe with meaning. The failure would speak of the human condition. The agony of hours wasted would chronicle the holes in one life.

Me, I got nothing. And, I didn’t get a crab dinner.

Trying to get back on the horse, or some other cliche

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I’ve been mildly and definitely unhealthily obsessed with one person recently. Mostly because she’s an idiot, or boring, or possibly worst of all, both.  
 
I like to play a game in my head — would you rather be stupid or boring? I’ve always wanted to be stupid. Many people might say I have undoubtedly succeeded in that goal.  
 
Imagine the happiness of always living up to people’s expectations, given that they don’t expect much. But, boring, dull, plodding, conventional, plain, run-of-the-mill? Where’s the fun in that?  
  
My obsession has extorted me to act more “normal.” Apart from having my itty bitty feelings hurt, seriously, I did, I kind of just wanted to punch her. It’s a curse, I think, that mainstream folks who meet me feel compelled to give me solid advice like be more normal. Apart from missing the obvious note that I don’t have any desire to be like them, they want me in their camp.  
 
Why? I can’t imagine. I’d truly be a shitty foot soldier in their regimental army.  
 
I had an epiphany brought on this week not just by the woman over whom I obsess, but an equal character who was giving M. unsolicited advice. The aha moment was that a lot of people around our age suck. They suck in a very specific, very boring way.  
  
Here’s the breakdown. 20 year olds, your average young adult set, know how to have fun. Pretty much, drinking, fucking, eating when theyre hungry, getting their first apartments, hanging out, learning how shit works. They are annoying as fuck, because they think they have a lot of answers that they in fact don’t, but they got the fun part down or at least know how to try new things.  
 
Early, mid-30 somethings are maybe a sweet spot. The douchebaggery of 20+ has mellowed, but the going out on a Thursday night, because that’s when the weekend starts, or renting a vacation cabin with relative strangers is still doable. Plus, by then with a tad more security and disposable income, there are many more fun things to do.  
  
And, the seniors, so fucking many of them now are partying it up like life really does begin at 60. I know someone who got her first tattoo at 65. Other folks are taking college classes, traveling, selling the family homestead to keep it light and flexible. I’ve had some great conversations that basically have the subtext of fuck it, I’m old, it’s now or never and let the assholes judge.  
 
What’s missing in that chronology are my peers — lets say maybe hovering around 40 on up to 50 something. Sweet Jesus on a Popsicle stick, we, as a demographic, suck.  
 
The object of my obsession fits neatly in the group. She has a list of foods longer than Wilt Chamberlain’s dick plus another 7 feet that she can’t eat. They are fattening, bad for you, too inorganic, stomach upsetting, have too many ingredients, weird, unknown, new, contain alcohol, cholesterol, fat, sugar, chemical additives, and are gassy, bloated, rich, poor, and just out and out bad. The only thing safe is salad – no dressing – and a cracker washed down with water no ice. Followed by a sliver so narrow of dark chocolate that more calories are burnt in the shaving of the morsel than gained in the eating. Further calories are burnt in the endless recriminations and self-flagellation for tempting the fat fates with such a taste.  
 
I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about someone else’s food hang ups, but by god I wish those people so obsessed would shut the fuck up about it. You know what I don’t need when I’m grabbing an afternoon Diet Coke and M&Ms? Someone reminding me I’m going to die.  
  
 
Better yet, maybe with the bloat and the chemicals, I’m actually puffed up enough like a marshamallow that I’m not as wrinkled as the sour pusses of my peers. Chemical preservatives keep me young. That and the blood of virgins.  
 
I guess the whole point is, why are the miserable, dull folks in the world trying to enlist? They should all stay home and frown over a careful, tepid broiled chicken breast. It leaves more for me and my kind to enjoy 
 

Holy, holy, holy

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I really don’t know how to feel, so I’m doing the only thing I ever learned to do. I’ll write. Badly, maybe. Thoughtfully, possibly. With futility, definitely.

Today the closest I ever had to a father figure left this mortal coil. A true mensch, a sensitive soul, my uncle Ron died today.

I thought about writing a euphemism for died, but for all the poets, madman and philosophers seeking the truth, I couldn’t do it. Ron was the first person I ever met who talked about the Beats, Ginsburg, Kerouac, Burroughs. For all of them, the word is death, and today it’s Ron’s word, too.

The first thing I remember about Ron is that he was the first grown up that spoke to me like an adult. I remember real conversations, or rather they were very real to me. Given that I was about 6 years old and he was in his 20s, his mileage no doubt varied on what he got from the dialogs.

I dogeared and wore thin the pages of a picture book he gave me way back when.

That mean man, who shared his chicken pox but never his jelly beans, deserved his score of mean children who made him live unhappily ever after.

It was its non-treacly story and non-kiddie flavor that made it long a favorite after I was past picture books. The book traveled to college and crisscrossed various moves and apartments. I regret not knowing where it landed.

When I came home tonight, I pulled open drawers and scanned shelves to find a tiny gift I never gave Ron over the couple of Christmases we didn’t return east. I meant to give him a small badge from the Beat Museum, an earnest little storefront in the heart of North Beach.

Long before I ever moved near the San Francisco Bay, walked down Grant Ave. to Columbus and by Jack Kerouac Alley, North Beach existed in my imagination. Ron’s love for books and the Beats taught me where City Lights Bookstore and the Condor club are, and I hoped that someday he’d come out here on a visit and see for himself.

As a placeholder for that visit, I picked up the pins from the museum. “Holy! Holy! Holy!” and “Starving Hysterical Naked.” Now they will hold a place of remembrance on the bookshelf by my desk.

I want to say so much more. Ron was the adult who extolled the virtues of “Exile on Main Street” above all other Stones albums. He was jazz records and quoting postmodern analysis of just about anything. He was the babysitter not knowing how to handle an unruly brood of five letting my brothers smoke a novelty cigar. He was nerdy passion for books, art and music in equal measure to a passion for sports, even though a natural athlete he was not.

Coincidentally, my aunt, his wife, told me a story about my father and his influence on her as a kid that I thought I could have said about Ron. My father to Nancy was someone who tried the new, bringing gadgets and food and whatever to her Dorchester, a neighborhood not known for exploration. Ron was that to me in my suburban world.

He listened to rock and jazz and read books that raised eyebrows. He spoke to me and my siblings and his high school students like a real person, including innuendo and jokes. He admitted to having inhaled way before it was asked of presidential candidates.

Ron and my aunt Nancy were Newbury Street in the 60s, urban life and walks in the Public Garden to feed the ducks after reading “Make Way for Ducklings.” I met my first hippies and interracial couples and a gay man through them. I tried new foods, like the exotic pita bread suddenly appearing on store shelves next to the Wonder Bread.

I got to take a sip of wine and beer, and instead of soda was allowed sophisticated drink mixers like Squirt from the corner store.

Every perception I had as a kid in the sixties and early seventies was influenced by what seemed at the time a Ron and Nancy’s counterculture lifestyle to my mom’s post-war mainstream self.

Ron was also after school adventures and schemes with Pat, my mother, as they both used their school teacher afternoons pretty well.

There is a part of the non-conformist me that I think I owe to both of them back in those afternoons. I learned about shy adults with passions bubbling under the surface. Early on I talked about writing with Ron, a closet writer who said his stuff wasn’t good enough to see the light of day. I am sure that he was wrong.

Perhaps most of all, Ron taunted a kind of affection and sensitivity in me, giving me the hugs that were not second nature in my family and speaking out loud about feelings. I modeled behavior that he showed and eventually I’ve gotten better. Ron and Nancy were the most couple-y couple in my world as a kid.

Now, I use his “take care” as a goodbye (which actually works pretty well in California.)

That’s all I have right now, and it’s not nearly enough. Maybe instead, I’ll just re-read Ginsberg. Ron and everything are Holy! Holy! Holy!

Living smoothly

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The other day, I imagined myself writing in this space to vent about the resumes I have to read at work and advise on what not to do. I didn’t get around to it.

In truth, my resume, job applying advice is very brief — show empathy.

If your prospective employer asks for your name in the subject line of your email, include your goddamn name. When your naming your attached documents, it’s no longer relevant if the names make sense on YOUR computer, they need to make sense on someone else’s. Somewhere in the kit and kaboodle, provide some kind of clue as to why your applying. I ain’t got the time to mine for your gold.

That’s about it. Oh, and save the crazy for after you get the job. Although, folks where I work are kind of digging your advertisement of the goodness of your homemade jam, we may not be laughing with you.

In my personal case, the job has a glamorously worldwide sounding name. It’s not, it’s paperwork locally for the most part. But, good god y’all everyone who has imagined travel or lived abroad thinks that’s enough to establish global bona fides. Do some research about the job, people.

All of the above is preamble to what I want to write about now, social network anger. I got a dose and realized that a whole lot of people are talking but not listening.

Admittedly, in a less than charitable mood, I Twittered and Facebooked about a job applicant that stated his desire to work among folks of “various socioeconomic backgrounds.” I was amused not just by the thought of someone hoping to rub shoulders in the workplace with the strata of American society, but the fact of the matter that where I work is pretty much no melting pot.

In response, I got an earful from a socially networked “friend,” actual close relative, about his own experience with the paperwork of job applications. Truly, I didn’t get it. It was a conversational hijack with a sweeping generalization that wasn’t matching my own experience or current reality.

It was clearly social networking equaling two simultaneous monologs masquerading as dialog. Somewhere I was told we should agree to disagree, but for that to happen we would have had to have been speaking about the same thing.

Of course, the comedian in me was miffed that my punchline was hijacked by a non sequitur.

I’ve noticed that kind of “conversation” happens a lot online.

M.’s coworker ended up blocking people in her Facebook circle, rather than continue to participate in the non-dialog. In her case, she sometimes throws out affirmations and whatnot from her personal New Age-y perspective. Quite possibly not one’s cup of tea, but harmless enough and her belief system.

She got tired of “friends” criticizing her posts or proselytizing their own beliefs.

I totally can’t relate to her naysayers. In my own feeds, I have plenty of folks who don’t believe what I believe. In particular, thanks to comedy, there’s a good amount of 12 steppers. No way can I imagine shitting on someone else’s call to a higher power.

Pretty much, I keep my snarky counterpoint to those contacts encouraging provocation or political dialog. Otherwise, I guess I live the cliche, if you ain’t go something nice to say, shut the fuck up. (Or the comedic corollary, I at least try for something funny.)

Speaking of comedy, I follow a few Twitter feeds of comedians of various levels of fame or success. Some of them go for one-liners, quick, witty observations and other humorous notes. Others keep it much less purposely funny or a bit more personal.

What amazes me is how repetitive the slamming is. For quite a few of them, it would seem especially the ones who share a bit of the personal, there’s a steady-ish stream of “fans” deciding how unfunny they are.

If you’re fan enough to find some comic and start following what they write, why the insults? I really, really, really don’t understand liking someone enough to seek them out, but being contemptuous enough to shit on them.

Life is short and all that.

It used to be that Internet arguments among Usenet readers with a shared interest in common would devolve into anonymous shouting matches and ad hominem attacks. I think I understand the underlying passion and anonymous safety of a good, old-fashioned flamewar.

I almost understand the trickery and prank sensibility that is trolling.

Angry posting among “friends” is another animal. One I don’t comprehend. In social networking either you know people or feel some kind of connection. How did that devolve into contrarianism?

It’s like all of the shifty dark part of the net is taking over the good junk. Makes me kind of nostalgic for a good Usenet argument and Godwin’s Law.

In the end, I just can’t sustain the anger. Maybe it’s as M. claims, we’re doing alright and life is fine and others can’t see it.

Yesterday was sunshine in Napa with four friends. We tried reserves, and Pinots and cabs. We sampled Francis Ford Coppola’s Rubicon, which at $145 a bottle was damn smooth and tasty. The afternoon was lunch and more wine,

M. and I ended the day by wandering SF at night. Finally, in lieu of dinner we shared a banana split at the chocolatier’s that lends it’s name to Ghiardelli Square and headed home.

Maybe he’s onto something with this happiness thing.