September 2007 Archives
Friday, September 28, 2007
Welcome to Solid Mold, a special end-of-week feature here on W.com. In order to post five times a week when I'm really posting four times a week, I'm recycling reposting some of the entries from old blogs that have long since disappeared from the internet. Pleasenjoy, and see you on the flipside.
Originally posted 12/11/2002
If I could be anybody right now, I would be the country singer.
Yes, I'd throw away this stressful Northeastern city life, trade it all in for a guitar and a cowboy hat. And I'd move down to Nashville - because everybody knows that's where you go if you want to be a country singer.
[cont'd.]
Thursday, September 27, 2007
I picked up one of my most valuable and cherished business lessons back when I was working bindery at a print shop, in the evenings after college classes. It was a lesson about mistakes. The mistake isn't that important, I learned, it's the response to having made a mistake.
The worst and stupidest thing to do is deny it, or pretend it never happened, or somehow pass the buck back to the affected party. This really isn't much of an option at a print shop, where there's a written work order with everybody's signature on it and a final product. When the end result doesn't fit the description, there's a problem.
[cont'd.]
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
This is the last week of the baseball regular season. I'm enjoying it as much as I can, spending long evenings in front of the tube magically teleporting between eight different stadiums. Next week, it's the playoffs, which means there's only one game on at a time. That just seems like such a technological regression -- trading in satellite dishes for bunny-ear antennas. So that's usually when I tune out, unless the Twins are playing.
[cont'd.]
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
What a horrible, dehumanizing experience it is to be "friended." To be exhibited like a Hummel figurine in a 12-avatar display case, or worse still, to be stashed away in a virtual closet, only present in order to provide heft to the aggregate. I get sick just thinking about it. This is why I ditched my MySpace profile over the summer, as well as that of my cartoon basketball. It was being treated like an object too, getting endless "friend requests" from webcam girls and useless unsigned indie-rock bands.
[cont'd.]
Monday, September 24, 2007
It often seems like the time-space continuum is God's prison, that we are helplessly trapped in the now. Behind, the past: mistakes, passed time, empty entertainments, successes that are often proven all too transitory. Before, a future that is blank, dark and frightening enough to support a multi-billion dollar insurance industry.
[cont'd.]
Friday, September 21, 2007
I have to finish renovating the master bedroom by the time the wife comes back from the Navy. So after work yesterday, I drove out to the IKEA up in Stoughton to do some research. Don't worry, this isn't one of those blogs about crazy Swedish product names or putting together furniture with a hairpin, you'll have to go elsewhere for that.
[cont'd.]
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The likely second or third single from Kanye West's fantastic new platinum-selling album, Graduation, is a headnod-inducing slammer called "Good Life." It took me a minute to recall what that slowed-down sample was from. Of course... Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." It took me back to the first time I heard that song in a public setting. It was autumn 1983, and my father and I were sitting around in a McDonald's when "P.Y.T." came on over the speakers.
[cont'd.]
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Fell asleep watching baseball again. When my eyes cracked open at 4:30 am, I flipped around looking for any sort of televised competition, ended up on ESPN2 somehow, and quickly fell asleep again. So when I woke up for good, the teevee simulcast of the ESPN Radio show Mike and Mike in the Morning was on.
[cont'd.]
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Yesterday afternoon, I went to the local post office to mail a package. It was a single errand out of many, one of those to-do list items that usually ends up dead and forgotten afterwards, killed by a strikethrough line. Not this time, though.
[cont'd.]
Monday, September 17, 2007
Lately, I've been feeling nostalgic. Not for the 70's and 80's, periods which I lived through, but for right now. What I mean to say is that I'm thinking a lot about how future nostalgia will be handled, about what we'll do when it comes time to remember and celebrate these times. Twenty years from now, what will a "00's Party" be like?
[cont'd.]
Friday, September 14, 2007
Failure is all around me these days, it feels like I'm surrounded by it. There's a guy I know who's going through the long, sad process of having his year-long novel project turned down by publishers. Another friend of mine was recently passed over for a promotion at work and dumped in the same week. He's pretty blue about it, as you might guess.
[cont'd.]
Thursday, September 13, 2007
We're mammals, you and I. We all have warm blood and big cerebrums. When we were small, we were offered yummy milk from our mothers' dangling, pendulous breasts. As we get older, we pair off, connect Tab A into Slot B, and make even more of us. That's how it works.
But there's a question that's been bothering me for the last few months: if we weren't mammals, and laid eggs instead (or were monotremes), would that have a significant impact on our entertainment? What would our pop music sound like?
[cont'd.]
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Last evening, I spent over an hour agonizing over how to close a 700-word mini-feature. It wasn't the productive type of agony either, the kind where there are balled-up papers scattered around a wastebasket to indicate some sort of expended effort. No, this was 60 minutes of staring past a flickering TV screen, trying desperately in my mind to transfuse some blood from the first paragraph into the ending, trying desperately to bring the piece full-circle with something resembling panache.
[cont'd.]
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The cinema has given us plenty of movies about young boys coming of age, but none have ever been as rich and wondrous as the summer I experienced during my tenth year on earth. It was 1982, glorious 1982, and I would spend my evenings staring up from my bed at a cracked yellow ceiling, wondering what the world had in store for me. The days, those were filled with intrigue and romance.
[cont'd.]
Monday, September 10, 2007
That wily-looking old fellow there? He's a World War II veteran. I know this because on the back of his black ballcap, there's a velcro closure with yellow sewing that spells out "World War II." It also says "World War" on both sides of the brim, and there's a big American flag on the crown surrounded by the words "World War II Veteran."
[cont'd.]
Friday, September 7, 2007
Customers generally complain when their order is fucked up. It happened again just now, here at the local chain café down the street from my house. From what I overheard, there were two muffins in the lady's wax bag instead of the three she paid for. It was a simple error, it was taken care of, but not without an unpleasant confrontation.
[cont'd.]
