Weak Weekend

Beverage: diet Dr Pepper

Toast: let's get stupid

 

I think this chicken made me a li'l sick. It was certainly awkward purchasing it. The conversation went like this:

Me: yes, I'd like a number 2 with a diet dr pepper, breast meat and a biscuit.

Kid: .......what?

Me: a number 2.

Kid: ...yeah...what you want?

Me: uh- a biscuit.

Kid: size?

Here I think at first he means the size of biscuit, but then I think he must mean size of drink, which is confusing because it only comes in one size. But I stick with it.

Me (confidently): medium.

Kid: uh. yeeeeah. Size?

Me (now realizing he said sides not size before): oh. A biscuit.

Kid: it comes with a biscuit. Side?

Me: uhhhhh.. Cole slaw?

Kid (rolling his eyes over the speaker): yeah.

Then I pull around and wait forever. He finally comes to the window his hands full of drink, straw and box. I have money in my hand and neither of us can give each other anything. It's the embarrassing conclusion to a ridiculous exchange. I take the chicken and retreat in haste. Now I feel gross and stupid.

 

 

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Outlaw Country

Beverage: Bookers Bourbon

Toast: your gonna get yours

There's an old Public Enemy song Joel and I used to like called Your Gonna Get Yours. It's about how great his car is. Now, Public Enemy isn't known for frivolous ditties about fast cars. They are serious-minded political black men. But they were moved enough about their Oldsmobile that they sang this one. Must have been some car. The lyric I always like is:

Out that window middle finger for all

So, I'm driving home and I can't bear the idea of going back to the apartment. There is too much of my life there. I feel about like Chuck D and his universal gesture. I'm on the fence about it though until I flip the dial over to the Outlaw Country station on the radio. This is a station of music like the album by that name we had when we were kids. The DJ is even a musician I used to like a little in college.

They are playing this song. Songs sound different in the car than other places, so I take the first exit I see and head south. There's a scuzzy old section of town outside the city and I remember a liquor store there from when I used to come here as a trainer. Those days seem like a long time ago, and as I tick off the years on my finger, it was.

I buy Bookers.

This is expensive stuff; I think I've bought it half a dozen times. And it's strong. I drink it on ice. I usually pour a glass over ice and leave it alone for a while. When the ice cracks and I hear that pop, I'll pick it up for a sip.

Each kind of alcohol has its particular effects. Maybe it's the impurities, I don't know. But tequila is different from wine in ways other than the alcohol content. There is an aspect or personality to each. Bookers has a unique personality. It's different from Makers Mark or Knob Creek, certainly different from Jim Beam. More adult, somehow more honest.

And pitiless.

I think that's what I like best: la belle dame sans merci.

Bottoms up.

 

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Fortune Favors the Bored

Beverage: I guess I should go buy champagne

Toast: to the high life!

There is no food in my house, so I went to eat what was around for dinner. First course: a fortune cookie from last night. Delish!

And my fortune? For those of you with cataracts, it says "Keep up the good work. You soon will be rewarded financially."

This is obviously stupendous news. I have been working hard. So the cookie is likely right about the other part, too. Time to start living the good life!

And what's fancier than lighting cigars with money? Not lighting the cigars! Just pointlessly burning the money anyway.

Well, I might have done it to take snaps of. I'm not that fancy. Then it was back to Dinner of the Scavengers. Second course was a spoonful of peanut butter dipped in Nutella. So I guess I am a little fancy, Fortune, here I come!

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Retail Therapy

Beverage: diet coke from the Chinese place

Toast: respectful silence

I was crabby pretty much all day. It started off with a series of needless lectures over email. You'd ask someone a question and instead of answering it they explain a bunch of stuff you already know in a snotty tone and never get to the first question. I got like three of these in a row with strangers being douchey.

Usually I take things like the puff adder in the old Monrovian story: de man he step on the adders back. De adder he say: oh! Dat man he does not mean to step on me, I will let him go. De man step on the adder's tail. Dat adder say: oh, dat man! He makes a mistake, I will not bite him. But de man step on de adder's nose! De adder he say: DAT MAN! He make fun of my nose it is so short! I will BITE him one time!

By ten they were stepping on my nose and I had to step away before I wrote emails I'd regret.

By eleven I was feeling weird physically and left the building for a while. This is uncharacteristic. I typically work all day and through lunch. I have left the building in the day perhaps five times since coming here.

I found myself at Best Buy and I bought this watch. It's called a Pebble.

The idea is, it pairs via Bluetooth to your phone. Then you get a text or call, and the watch shows you the alert. So instead of staring at your phone rudely around people, you can glance at your watch and decide what to do.

The other part that's sort of fun is that you can design your own watch faces and create apps for it. I made one with the Ramones logo for instance.

But even this didn't make me feel better. Because now I had shopped through lunch, which I didn't realize until later. Sometimes you step on your own nose I guess.

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Dead Flowers

Beverage: ice water

Toast: here's to trying

These are shot with a Nikon 60mm macro lens. It's the same one that has been on my camera throughout the blog. Some of the early posts I was using a cell phone camera, but since then it's mostly been the same lens throughout.

I've had trouble with it before for macro because the short length often had me in my own light as I was trying to work closer. My solution for that has been to raise the ambient level. Translation: shoot outside. I move things out on the deck. Shots like these it's afternoon light and I'm in the shade. The lens goes down to around f3 though, so I have a lot of room. But I like that soft stuff these days so I'm enjoying what I get. I'm also amused by letting things get high key.

I had left these flowers on the counter when I went to Maine. You may have seen them here. I came back and they were doornails, as I had planned.

Dead flowers always remind me of the old Stones song. My old pal Johnny taught me to play it on the guitar and I would struggle along with it while he sang and played lead. I usually had to sing the chords in my head to keep it straight. Well (D) when you're sitting there (A) in your (G) silk upholstered (D) chair. But eventually you can just D-A-G along and it feels really good.

I like that when you're strumming the guitar, your brain kind of calms down. Java was harassing me to get the old thing out. Maybe I will. But right now I've got flowers to clean up. And I d-d-d-d-d- a-a-a-a-geeee.

 

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Sympathy Beard

Beverage: cold beer

Toast: to fellowship!

I got in the other night and didn't feel like doing much. It got to be Sunday and was scratching my neck in the bathroom mirror, deciding what to do. You can't go a week without shaving and expect to do it in the morning and get to work on time. If I was to shave, it had to be Sunday.

I ran the water and got out my trimmer. It was the one that a couple days earlier I had used on my father. I looked at the trimmer and back to the mirror. Fuck this, I said. I trimmed up my head and under my neck but left the beard. Then I switched to a razor and worked the jaw line and cleaned up my noggin.

I scrutinized my work. It was very tempting to clean up the cheeks or to thin out the mustache. Once again I told myself to stop being a baby and let that sucker grow.

 

The summer of my senior year in HighSchool I worked at a camp for sad, rich boys. About halfway through the season, nearly all of counselor decided to engage in a beard-growing contest. It was awesome. Beards of all sizes and stripes. Each beard was like its owner. Some sturdy and workmanlike. Others fanciful and full of longing.

In a couple cases, the studliest jocks in the camp grew the wimpiest threadbare beards. How we laughed at them. There were many opinions offered about how to best grow beards. Everyone would offer the poor beardless men advice as to the diet and exercise routines that were most conducive to facial growth. But good beard or bad, we were in it together and that part felt great.

At the end of summer we wrote a song about it to the tune of Over There:

Facial hair! Facial hair!

Looking tough! Beardy scruff! Facial Hair!

Cuz the beards are growing, but Doug's ain't showing-

He can't grow it anywhere!

We sang it with gusto. Even Greg.

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On the pipe

Drink: Bloody Mary

Toast: Safe travels

I got a groin-area pat down going through security at Bangor International Airport.

I think it was because of the Bloody Mary I had beforehand. I had been going back and forth with Beth about how early to get to the airport. She was of the opinion that there was nothing to do in the tiny facility. I told her you could always enjoy a per-flight cocktail. So, to make my point I went to the small lounge in the airport after checking in. I was the only one there of course, but I bellied up to the bar and ordered the breakfast beverage.

It was not delicious. The glass was awkward, kind of like a squat hurricane glass that didn't hold the ice well. I tried drinking through the tiny stirring straws, but that failed, so I put the glass to my lips. The surface tension on the ice in the bell of the glass broke once I passed a certain angle, and the bulk of the drink came shooting forward at me.

I tipped back, but the damage had been done: spilled drink on jeans.

I don't think of it again until I go through security. It's one of those full-body X-ray deals. I empty my pockets, assume the pose and uh-oh, better try again. The guy tells me to hike up my pants tight and try again. Same results. So it's off to the private pat-down room.

My mind went back to a time we were going through security in Portland and I told the TSA guy I thought his policy explanation was "bullshit". That went like you would have expected. This time I bit my tongue and went along with it docilely.

I'm not going to write some hack piece about the diminishment of our civil liberties, but dang. Have you seen the photos those X-rays take of you? Now this? I keep swearing to take the train next time, but that's too long and just as expensive.

Some day I'd like to do it though. It would be nice to see more of America from ground level. Take a slower look at things going by.

 

 

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