The Hierophant

So I have pneumonia. [Every time I type that word I hear my father's voice say "pee-new-monia," which is how I remember which way to spell it.] Turns out I was sicker than I thought. The doc, who I finally got to today, gave me a stern talking-to for waiting so long, and then prescribed some horse pills to kill off the bugs in my chest. They took x-rays, blood, the whole works - I actually find all those things fascinating, i.e. watching my own blood fill up a vial or taking in a deep breath for an x-ray. I am fascinated by my insides, the silent mechanisms that move my fingers and aerate my brain. Don't you agree that, whether God made them or not, they are equally miraculous either way?

A big hurrah to Jessie! She completely obliterated her Praxis test, scoring somewhere in between Wonder Woman and Marie Curie (including a perfect score on her essay... I love a girl who can write). And here she was worried she'd failed. I simply laughed, acknowledged her completely unfounded self-doubt, and proceeded to feel crazily proud of her. Her school district is lucky to have her, and any one she applies to should have to ask extra nice. I forgot to ask her what her essay was on. I'll need to remedy that tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, Jess and I are heading to the Hotel Hershey, a five-star hotel in Hershey, PA (yes, the candy bar place), for a "Holiday Spectacular" package that includes a couples' massage, fancy dinner, Christmas lights, a swanky hotel room, and breakfast. It is going to be insatiably romantic and I'm so glad it's going to work out that we get to go. There was some doubt around my Apple schedule, so to have it all work out is a treat. We need a night alone.

Apple is going well. The other thrust (mmm...thrust) of this entry is days 2 and 3, both of which brought new challenges as well as cool experiences. Day 2 was a 10-hour monster after which I was seriously considering knee surgery. They had me stationed on iPod Express, which is basically a setup Apple has in the middle of the store specifically designed to sell iPods. The trick is the payment method, a device called an "EasyPay," which is hand-held and allows you to painlessly pay with a credit card. Well, see "painless" is a relative term - I find it rather annoying and slow, personally, but people love it. What I really like about it is the conversations you have while waiting for things to process. I made it a habit of finding out the status of people's Christmas shopping. One person could tell I was sick and recommended I check out "Z-pack," which sounds like either a medicine or a quantity of beer. My other favorite place to be in the store is in the "Etc." section, where they keep all there peripherals and goodies. If you need an FM Transmitter for you iPod, I know what to recommend.

I'm liking it so far. Keeping my mental commitment to a minimum, by which I mean I don't think about it when I'm not there and as such feel like I still have a life outside of it. It's also curbed my late-night habit of wandering eBay and Mac websites obsessing over their computers. On Wednesday Mat and I got together for a spot of dinner and some Christmas shopping. I only have Dad left to shop for now. I wrapped all of my other presents tonight, and now have quite a pile under the tree. If I got a pile this size for Christmas, I would be screaming like that kid in that BMW commercial. It's cool to think I can create this kind of thing for other people now, and am not just the receiver of such things.

Speaking of receivers, I just made an amazing purchase at Jerry's Records of "The Empire Strikes Back" LP. It's in great shape, and I had a blast last night playing it, sitting in front of my record player and enjoying the music. Sure, I have the whole thing on my iPod, but there's something so cool about having the music made right there in front of you, all that magic and mystery of a needle and a groove. That and I love the cover art, how the size reminds you of when you were a kid and everything was big in your hands.

Anyways, I must anon to bed. If I could have a Christmas wish, it would be for some snow, something to get me into the season. It's been so hot outside that the frigging grass is still green. In December. Global warming, woo. And here I wanted to go skiing this winter (you in, Jess? haha!). Hope you are getting into a Christmas mood and have something special planned for Monday.

yours,
m

The First Day

So, I made it.

After finally wrenching myself to sleep at 4 AM (I went to bed at 1), I woke up at 8:44, exactly one minute before any of my four alarms went off. First the clock radio went off, and then the cell phone, and then the radio, and then the cell phone. I was awake for each, lying in bed waiting for each one and then turning it off moments before it could really go off, feeling myself pulled inexorably towards the day.

If you haven't guessed, I have some anxiety about "real" work. I don't know whether it's that I feel like I'm committing myself to an eternity as a such-and-such or I am really just that jealous of my free time, but it's a huge deal for me to get a job. I'm definitely cool when it comes to working on things that I like, i.e. film, video, and music-related-thingies, but whenever I'm working for The Man, I get stressed the hell out. Even if the Man, in this case, is the amazing Apple Computer, to whom I would probably will my firstborn for a MacBook Pro.

That said, I had a really great day. It was random in the way that only good days can be random. In the Tarot thing I did last night, I had three cards from the Major Arcana - and according to the hallowed spiritual tome known as "The Idiot's Guide to Tarot and Fortune-Telling," Major Arcana cards are indicative of forces that are out of your control, of destiny, of fate. All you can do is choose how to react to them.

Today was definitely a series of choices. I arrived in plenty of time, earlier than many of my co-workers, which for me is about as common as Halley's Comet, and proceeded to choose to be as positive as I could. Surprises came early and fast - Anna showed up at the *perfect* time, buying Derrick both a Blackbook and a Mac Mini (I am freaking thrilled for her - she is going to love these computers), and as soon as she finished my manager let me off for my hour lunch, so Anna and I got to have a lovely lunch together. It's so hard with Derrick and the kids - all need her so much. [For those who don't know, Derrick was in a tragic car accident nearly 7 years ago that was not *remotely* his fault, and he suffered near-death damage to his body and brain. He's made a miraculous recovery, but his short-term memory is nearly decimated and a lot of his cognitive functions are around a 3rd-grade level. He is a sweet, sensitive person who is also a great father. And talking about it more will make me cry, for him and mostly for my sister, who stayed with him and has given him everything she can, including a family and two amazing children who are going to change the world.] After lunch, who walks in but Kellie Robertson, or should I say Dr. Robertson, one of my favorite professors from Pitt! I had her for "Chaucer," and it was she who gave me my love of the Wife of Bath. It was great/awkward to see her, because on some level seeing your students everywhere must be akin to blunt-force trauma. She was very gracious, however.

And then, after that, who walks in but Bryan Wright, the piano wizard from Sedalia whom I mentioned in my "Scott Joplin Fest" post as a great guy from Pittsburgh I randomly met, and with whom I played an awesome duet on "Charleston Rag." We talked for a good twenty minutes, and he graciously invited me to be on the bill of a ragtime concert he's putting on in April. I need to shoot him an e-mail, but I think it sounds like a blast. I need to hurry up and get a repertoire! What fun that would be... it'd be nice to get to know him better. He seems like a nice kid.

So, all in all, it was a day of strange and welcome surprises. I seem to be strangely lacking my caustic wit tonight, the absence of which I can't explain, so if this post has taken forever to read it's most likely because I'm boring. I'm certainly tired enough. The day ended pleasantly with dinner with Mat, a spot of writing to be continued on Wednesday, and a warm, welcome conversation with Jessie. Scott is sick - I apologized profusely - and so I went out and bought him some cold medicine since he had kindly done the same for me back when Tylenol Cold had any chance of fighting back the sinus infection that now is slowly devouring my head. Yikes. Blood in my snot, phlegm in my throat, and now I have to wake up at 9AM to get to work on time. Woo!

Two more days, and then I'm free again to delight in the carnal pleasure of the late night. Saucy.

-m

Suddenly I See

Hi.

So, in 8 hours, I start my new job at Apple. I'm working seasonal at the Shadyside store, just like I did out at South Hills Village last year.

Honestly, my biggest fear is waking up on time. You'd think I'd be nervous about, you know, the actual job. Nope. You'd like a pink 4GB iPod nano for your daughter? That'll be $199. I'm up on my iPods - I spent an hour last night studying them, their specs, which ones come with docks and which comes with cables only, etc... I doubt they'll put me anywhere near someone looking for a computer (save my sister, who is coming in tomorrow to buy a gift for her husband... too bad I won't get credit for the sale, as I'm not in the system). It'll be really good to see Anna. I'm there from 10-6, and maybe she'll come late enough that we can catch dinner together. Anna is the kind of person who, after talking to her about anything, you feel more capable of actually dealing with whatever it was. She is great in the way stories are great - intangible, universal, magical. Be jealous that she is my sister.

I'm nervous. It's why I'm still up. I actually crawled into bed an hour ago, but I had the inclination to find out a little about tomorrow and had the good fortune of finding my Tarot cards on Saturday (I had lovingly lost them to a box in the closet in the solarium (with the candlestick?), and so I pulled them out along with my "Tarot for Dummies" book, shuffled, and dealt out destiny.

I cannot tell you the joy I get from these cards. If there was empirical evidence for Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, these would be it. I delight in just the imagery - the colors and the shapes, whimsical names like "The Fool" and "The Tower" - experiencing the magic and the fantasy of my insides. I don't believe the cards have any real power in and of themselves, any more than this keyboard has, anyways. Their power is in my reaction, the way they can stimulate my subconscious (do you ever wonder if people a hundred years from now are going to read about our belief in a "subconscious" and react to it the same way we do to people who pray to the moon?). At the very least they give me a little peace, which is more than anyone could ever ask of a superstition and, according to my gut, tomorrow is going to go okay.

Short entry tonight. I'm going to try and sleep and wake up on time. Let's get that far, and then I can worry about the Hanged Man reversed...

-m

Why The Hell Am I Awake

Usually this title would indicate a deeply philosophical post, but right now I am just wondering why the hell I am still awake. It's 7:24 AM on Friday morning. I've spent the past five hours in a daze - I think I was organizing my iTunes library at some point, which is the intellectual equivalent of asking yourself rhetorical questions. I clicked and dragged cover-art, typed in names of songs, deleted and rearranged. And it's not like I was having a problem figuring out which song was playing - having a picture of Harrison Ford come up when I hear the "Raider's March" does little to improve my life. If I can't figure it out by the 40th listen, I doubt an image is going to help anything.

What the hell? Such mundanity should have obliterated any will to keep eyes open and forward, let alone awake enough to type a blog entry. No, I know myself well enough to know that if I *really* wanted to put myself to sleep, I would have found something I had to do, and then I would have fallen right asleep. Fill out financial aid forms? Whoa, I'm feeling a bit groggy. Pick out classes for next semester? Already fluffing my pillow, sorry.

Actually, the truth is I've been quite sick the past couple of days. I lost my voice, which people always seem to react to as if I'd just been hit by a car ("Oh my gosh, when did this happen?") I, myself, find it rather fun to lose my voice. Not the whole help-I'm-drowning-in-a-pool-of-my-own-mucous part, but the part where I go to speak and another person's voice comes out all rough and tumble, gruff and scratchy. I grew out my beard to match my voice, and now I'm rather disappointed to have gotten my old voice back. I was going to buy curtains and everything. Oh well.

Also, I might just have some residual energy from all the INCREDIBLE intellectual feats I accomplished this week. I knocked out 30 pages of papers and 2 finals in the span of three days. Yes. I may never be able to walk again, but the doctors are hopeful I'll still be able to fill out my financial aid forms. I'm really going to miss my classes from this semester. Maybe that's why I can't sleep - once I go to sleep, that means I'll have to wake up that much closer to graduating. I feel incredibly blessed - my Ancient Epic class was an orgasm a week. I took seven pages of typed, single-spaced notes almost every week, and I actually read over them for fun (I am a nerd). My other class, Arthurian Legend and Cultural Change, forever altered my view of Arthur and the Middle Ages. I now see him as a vessel into which we pour our own hopes and fears and ambitions - he is merely the frame through which we project our own colonialist image. I wrote the best essay in my life in this class - an examination how experience is a problematic rhetorical strategy for the Wife of Bath - and the professor was always positive and encouraging. I'm going to miss her. I worked harder on her account than on my own, I think - I wanted to achieve for her, to show her I had come a long way from the last class we'd had together.

small things. sometimes I have a maelstrom of self-consciousness where I wonder why I think anyone would remotely care to ingest my minutiae. and then, at 7:46 in the morning, I end up going "fuck it" and typing whatever is there, percolating. it's crazy time. how crazy? i am not going to capitalize anything in this paragraph. this is how hard shit has hit the fan. look at this. not. one. single. capital. Letter. dammit.

Alright, I'm going to lay down and see if anything interesting happens. Hope your pillows are always fluffy.

-m

Sucks or Swallows?

Oh shut up you're not really offended.

So the truth is I'm writing to you with two pairs of socks on and no shirt. My room is an easy 5 degrees warmer than the rest of my apartment, and apparently, even though it is like 0 outside, all I need are two pairs of socks and I'm good to go.

Is it wrong for a man to hum "I Feel Pretty"? [Ironically, these paragraphs are not related]. I know your instinctual answer is yes, and I know that because it is also my instinctual answer, even if I am perhaps the one doing the humming, but it's a good melody shut up. And it gets stuck in your head. And it is a good affirmation - she's not saying, "I feel pretty" in a hetero-normative, look-how-soft-my-breasts-are way; she is affirming that she feels comfortable and happy in her own skin, her heart and body aligned in love. What kind of person would speak out against that kind of inner harmony? I think we just learned a lot about you, didn't we.

I went to the football game tonight versus Cleveland with Scott, Brian, and their friend Dan. Aside from the amazing victory and the beer, the best part of the night was a shirt I saw a man wearing. On the front was written "Cleveland Sucks" but, not to be outdone, on the back was written, "Baltimore Swallows." Delicious. Though usually if someone swallows, doesn't it mean they like crazy love you? That is my interpretation but I, wisely I think, failed to mention this to said man, who was, after all, poking at a fire he had started on the asphalt of the parking lot. One must simply come to Pittsburgh and go to a game to really appreciate its subtleties.

For instance, if you are wearing a Steelers jersey on game night/day, you are instantly obligated to either bark, holler, or scream at any other group of people wearing jerseys (why do I keep wanting to spell it "jourseys?") and/or hats, no matter how sketchy or drunk or belligerent said group might be. Truth, I found this camaraderie to be strangely intimate, and I guess stuffing 55,000 people into a 44,000 person stadium requires a bit of love and patience on the part of the fans, so it's certainly not something I'm complaining about. Also, you are going to piss in a trough, so deal with it. I think what I'm really trying to say is I felt like a Pittsburgher tonight. It's a flannel city, a city of overalls and worn leather gloves, of hard hats and large beers and sandwiches with fries and coleslaw slathered all over them. We use words like "ayron city" and "dahntahn," and actually have a whole dialect dedicated to pronouncing words in a way that never requires us to actually close our mouths (did you know that Pittsburghese is referred to, in scholarly treatments, as a "west-midland dialect"?). Having grown up here, I find myself appreciating the city in a way I couldn't before - it's accessible without being overwhelming, clean, has a great skyline, good restaurants, some of the best sports names in history, it's safe, relatively affordable, not far from NYC or the east coast, etc... Some people can't wait to leave Pittsburgh, but I like it a lot. Definitely a good place to raise a family. I figure I'm going to go off, have a few adventures, see the world, and then come back when I'm ready and have kids.

Why do I feel like I just simultaneously described the plan for my life and "March of the Penguins"?

Anyways the game was great. Had a blast. I demanded that Bryan and Scott teach me how to talk man-speak so I wouldn't be an ass and say the wrong things (apparently asking for a fish sandwich at a football game is not kosher, unlike the foot-long "look how long my penis isn't" hot dog, which is kosher). I understand the basics of football. I know what the penalties mean, even have a bit of understanding in regards to strategy. But when it comes to how to act at said sport, or talk about said sport, I am a clueless babe naked in the woods with two pairs of socks on. Oh my titties it was cold out thar. I'm just now, five hours later, getting feeling back in my toes. We bundled, and we were still freezing our asses off.

I seriously need to get one of those Blackberries and keep a running blog of my life. Just, you know, take you with me and blog as things happen. I'll wait a couple days, and then be overwhelmed at the number of things I wanted to talk about that I didn't. For instance, Mat passed out at a movie theater and was in the hospital for four days (this could be, and should be, it's own post), my next-to-last semester is ending, etcetera. I hope you're all staying warm and getting ready for Christmas. I, for one, am glad to see some snow.

-m

Hang Michael Richards

So, thank God the media found the last white man in America to harbor any unspoken racist feelings. In Cosmo Kramer, no less. Is anyone else already sick of this story? They dragged the poor guy out on Letterman in the middle of an interview with (my all-time favorite comedian) Jerry Seinfeld and then proceeded to have the most awkward five minutes of television since Tasha Yar made it with Lieutenant Data.

Here is the bottom line: either we can all use the N-word, or nobody can. If it's an evil word, which I believe it is, let us not brandish it, nor define ourselves by it, nor laugh at it. Black comics use this word all the time, but if a white guy uses it, all of a sudden Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton must be appeased. The great 'racial divide' is exposed. I think the bigger problem Al Sharpton should be worried about are the black people who go on Maury Povich. This is about the worst possible representation of a minority you can have, every day affirming the stereotypes of blacks as promiscuous, out of control, dumb, hypersexual, etc... I slept with 10 men and I don't know who the daddy be! You done slept with ma daughter and wife at the same time! Maury should paint his face black and his lips red and sing "Swanee" as his opening monologue.

Yes, Michael Richards is an ass, and at least he has the benefit now of being forced to confront his own racism. I believe him when he said he didn't know he was a racist; this stuff is in the water we drink, no matter how many posters of Martin Luther King they put up. But come on, to roll him out and publicly lacerate him as the only racist white man in America is, frankly, retarded and distracts from the larger institutional racism that is really the enemy of equality.

Anyways. The Captain's Blog is sailing into uncharted territory with the whole race thing, but this particular instance made me mad as hell. It is a distraction from the real problem. We like to pretend by humiliating Cosmo Kramer we've somehow confronted our own racism and made it all better.

The one upside of this is a new phrase, which I did not coin but would like to continue, and that is to "go Cosmo Kramer on his ass." This is interchangeable with "Go all Mel Gibson on him," and both denote totally flipping your shit. Let the games begin.

Life. I wish I knew how to dance. I have a suspicion that most of the problems in my life would be solved if knew how to move my feet in a compelling way. Many things are going well, don't let my attention to negative details cloud that: Christmas is coming, I'm healthy if heavy, Jess and I are doing as well as we can, Mat and I meet often for hilarious and productive writer's meetings. It's just that I feel like I'm twirling in a circle, round and round, slowly draining into another universe, where dreams become the word "can't" and nobody knows how to sing. [I should put a sign up here that says "Caution: Metaphors."] I wish I wish I wish I had a clue, an inkling, about what I wanted to be when I grow up.

I had an interview at UPS on Tuesday morning. [How do people keep up with these blogs? I have like 100 things I want to write about.] I'll save it for another post, but I'll leave you with these images: cinder block, maroon, glacier, Robert Farence, raffle, lemon-scented, and 1989. If you know that of which I speak, leave now, for I am but the learner and you are the master. For the rest, I'll post tomorrow.

sweet dreams. may your tomorrows be brighter than your todays, and your forevers longer than your nevers,

martin