I do not like JJ Abrams

I do not like JJ Abrams, nor in my limited experience, have I found much reason to. I feel he’s a hype machine more than someone of actual talent. Perhaps he’s a decent talent evaluator, I’m not really educated to say. There are two reasons I don’t particularly think he’s worth much.

One is, he’s so far seemingly incapable of crafting endings to things. He’s good at building things up, sure, but his endings, when existent (not including cancelled shows and whatnot) are ambiguous or open-ended. This will obviously have a chance to change, when the biggest mass of unresolved mysteries this side of Twin Peaks actually comes to an end next year with “Lost”. If he can finish that one off satisfactorily, I will take back everything negative I’ve said about him. I don’t watch the show myself, but from the ploy synopses I’ve read and heard, there’s an awful lot of balls he’s got in the air there, and it’s hard to juggle that many without it ending in a huge mess.

This is the second reason, something I read earlier today. Apparently JJ Abrams had a script written up for the last Superman movie, the movie that eventually because the utterly useless and pretentious Superman Returns. Here is an exerpt from the article I read:

Abrams’s story re-imagined Superman as a Kryptonian prince sent to earth as a baby to avoid an impending civil war between king Jor-El and his brother Kata-Zor. Raised as Midwestern teen Clark Kent, and in love with his high school sweetheart Lois, Superman becomes humanity's defender when Kata-Zor invades Earth, aided by CIA Agent Lex Luthor, who is actually a Kryptonian in disguise. The film ended with Superman returning to Krypton to rule over his people after the death of Jor-El.

This is one of the stupidest and outrageous things I’ve heard. The only conclusion I could draw from this is that JJ Abrams never saw the Superman movies, nor read the comics, and thus assumed most other people hadn’t either, and would have no problem totally changing every god damn thing about them, other than some of the names.

As a caveat, I enjoyed Star Trek this summer, though I had incredibly low expectations going into it. Most of the performances in that were very good, though the story was hella-stupid.

Next time, I’m going to talk about what celebrity women I’m sick of being told are attractive. That’s a pet peeve of mine!

Lasagna

My blog is just starting to be about disturbing things I've seen. This is going to have to change.

Have you ever had a piece of lasagna? I'm sure you have. I love it. I don't have it enough, but it's on my top three foods (the others being pepperoni pizza and McDonald's french fries). I want you to picture cutting yourself a piece of lasagna now. You're placing it on your plate. You see the cheese and the sauce, all red and white, running out of the layers of pasta. Can you picture it in your head? Good. Hold it there, you're going to need it later.

When I come home from work, and get off the Staten Island train, I am faced with two options on how to travel home. One is the more traditional way, using streets and sidewalks and the like. This gets me home in about ten minutes, at a leisurely, end of the day, walk. The other is a shortcut, a weed and grass infested dirt plain, that runs parallel to the train, and behind some stores on Annadale Road. Taking this path shaves two minutes off my travel time, though I do have to walk on a small dirt path between weedy overgrowth. Any type of rain or anything, and this path is no good. In the summer, it's almost unwalkable anyway, as the dirt path is really just two feet wide or so, and the weeds completely over take it.
Also, when leaving the train and starting along this shortcut, you first have to pass the back of a deli and a nail salon, where foul fumes mingle with rotting garbage, and you have to dodge the old, stale bagels that are underfoot. I'm constantly surprised by the lack of vermin, though there are often pigeons.

Two days ago, on Tuesday, I was walking home along this path, as I do when the weather's nice enough. Halfway along, directly underfoot, I see the body of a rat. This rat had no head, it was torn clean off. Truth be told, it was missing the front part of it's torso too.

When I was a kid, in elementary school, they brought in animals to show us, and teach us about nature, I guess. I'm pretty sure it was the Staten Island Zoo that did it, though I don't really remember. But they had all sorts of cool animals they brought into the class, a big constrictor, which the zookeeper took around and let us touch, and a bird of prey, I want to say an eagle. He was in a big glass cage, like a super aquarium.
Well, while that bird was there, they decided to feed him, to show us all what these animals looked like eating in the wild. So they threw a mouse in the cage. And this bird decimated it. Just killed it, and started pulling it apart. Why they thought this was something kids should see is really beyond me. But I remember thinking, as a kid, as this bird of prey pulled muscle and sinew and blood and guts from this mouse was this: Lasagna. It looks just like lasagna.

Of course, I thought the same thing Tuesday, when faced with this mauled rat. To say I was horrified would be an understatement. I can't handle rodents really at all, and this...well, it was just terrible. I actually dithered there for thirty seconds or so, until I made myself jump over it, and not look back. In fact, I haven't even gone back there the last few days, as I don't want to see it's decomposing corpse, or worse, see more of it gone. It'll rain most of the week now, so maybe on Monday it'll be washed away. Or maybe on Monday, I'll feel the need to stretch my legs and continue taking that longer walk.

This blog is starting to be about disturbing things I've seen. This is going to have to change.

Just not yet.

I Woke Up This Morning To The Cold Cold Water

I woke up this morning and found a water bug in my bathroom sink.1 Now, this was literally less than a minute after I had woken up, and my brain didn’t know quite how to process this. I looked at the bug. I blinked. Twice. I decided I would go pick out my clothes first, and deal with this shortly. I left the light on, thinking that this water bug might just scurry away for parts unknown with the light on, much like a cockroach.

As I picked out socks, I considered that the bug was at the bottom of my sink, scampering like a lunatic; if it could get out, it likely already would have. My initial feeling of revulsion was transposed with pity. I would help this bug, scoop it out of the sink with a piece of junk mail I had received yesterday and bring it outside the house, to live the remainder of its bug life the best it could. I went back to the bathroom, junk mail in hand, feeling much better.

Back in the bathroom, I looked in the sink. The bug was there, it’s twenty or thirty legs and long antennae mobbing around trying to find some kind of foothold. But this ain’t no plastic toilet! No, the white porcelain of my sink was smooth. I stick the piece of mail in the sink, so that the bug could crawl onto it. At first touch, the bug went nuts, running all over the place, segmented body rippling, legs and feelers akimbo. Pity gone, revulsion back. Still I tried a few more times, each time more half-heartedly.2 I realized that if the bug ran up the mail towards my hand, I’d likely drop the mail. Then I’d have to step on the bug, and clean up the mess…and I still didn’t have any shoes on. No good.

Now, this thing was too big to fit down the drain, but what about the over-flow drain on the inside lip of the sink? That would do fine! I decided to fill the sink with water, and the bug could just float or swim to a new life in the over-flow drain! I mean, it’s a water bug. This should be a piece of cake for it.

I turn on the faucet, and it takes about five seconds for the bug to flip out, flip over, and drown. In retrospect, I likely shouldn’t have made the water scalding hot. Now to top it off, the current, combined with the weight of the bug, has pulled it to the exact opposite side of the sink from where I wanted it to be. Seriously, a direct downward diagonal from the overflow drain. So I release the stopper and in ten seconds try again.

This, too, does not work.

I drain the sing again, grab a wad of toilet paper and grab the bug’s motionless body (what’s left of it, at least, as there are little black specks in the sink 3). I throw the remains in the toilet bowl and flush. This is, let’s face it, where we all knew the story was ending up anyways.

So there that is.

*******

A few days ago, Joe and I were walking up 32nd street, towards Madison Square Garden. As we passed a church, we saw an old Indian woman begging for money. She looked rather like Mother Teresa, only without the whole married to God thing. She was leaning against the fence of the church, cup outstretched to passerby. Why she didn’t just go in the church is beyond me. I mean, I haven’t been to church in a long time, but I’m pretty sure they’re still obliged to help people. But that’s neither here nor there.

Near the curbside, there was an old black man, on crutches, obviously crippled in his legs, also prepared to start begging for money, though perhaps for some cause. He leaned his crutches against a bus stop, hobbled across the sidewalk, and dropped some money in the old woman’s cup. I considered this to be some kind of super-charity. There should have been a flash of light!

*******

Can we agree that anyone who uses the phrase “liberal elite” in an argument sounds like an idiot?

*******

This is not the first time this has happened.

I went to the men’s room at work the other day. Someone had, well… someone had masturbated in the toilet. Now, I think everyone can say that at least once they have been aroused in a public place, even to the point where they wish they could go take care of business. But to actually do it in a place of business? Just a tad disgusting. Also, I’m sorry, it just makes using the toilet kind of gross, and sometimes, you don’t have another stall option. You never want to actually picture someone using a stall before you, now you have a crystal clear image of what that person was doing. Blecch!

My first thought was that it must have been a home health aide, but I realized that’s me being class-ist, or job-ist, or something. What, just because they don’t work in an office means they have no manners? That’s some faulty reasoning there.

No matter what, there’s a guy out there who needs to get laid, and that right soon! And also, in the interim, learn what is, and what is not proper to do in a work bathroom.

Once again, this is not the first time this has happened.

*******

I believe in omens. I believe in portents, in visions, I don’t necessarily attribute these things to some supernatural power4, but occasionally you see something, and for some reason it strikes a chord inside of you, it gives you some kind of message meant for, or understood only by, you. On the ferry earlier this week, such a thing happened to me.

It was a normal morning, I sitting across from Brendan, about to start our morning conversation of sports, comic books, and making fun of people we don’t like. Brendan was just sitting down; I had gotten to the seat first, and so had just put away my GAMES magazine, where I had been doing a crossword variant. Then the man came to sit near us.

He was older, but not old. Maybe in his mid-40’s, maybe 50, it was hard to say. He had salt and pepper hair in a messy, barely styled 5 bird’s nest surrounding a bald spot in the center. His hair was longish and high and puffy, so that from the front you couldn’t see that he was balding, there was so much hair there. I rather imagine my hair could look like that in the future.

He was pudgy as well, at least 50 pounds overweight, without being really visibly too fat. His clothes were worn as if they were uncomfortable, as if they didn’t fit properly. He carried two paperback books and the New York Times, as well as a small white bag, the kind you’d get from a deli. As he sat, I saw he was apparently in the middle of reading both books, as they were interlocked, holding each other’s ages. One book was a pulp fantasy, looking the same in style and quality as those Dragonlance books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The other was a non-fiction study of Jewish-American relations with the rest of American society.

He ignored the books, putting them down on the seat beside him, along with a satchel bag and the small white bag. He opened the paper and started reading the front page. Without looking, he pulled a soda from the bag, opened it, took a swig, and put it down on the floor between his legs. Still without looking, he reached into the bag and pulled out a bagel overflowing with cream cheese and wrapped in plastic-wrap. He unwrapped the bagel from the plastic, put one half back in the bag, took a big bite of the other half, and started chewing, all without unlocking his eyes from the paper. When he finished one half of the bagel, he started on the other.

I thought to myself with horror, he’s not even tasting the food, he’s just eating it because that’s what he does every morning.

The horror was not with the man himself, but was from the fact that as I watched him, I felt I was waiting a possible vision of my own future.

I saw a whole life in this brief glimpse of the man. A dead end job, one where he could not afford, nor need to wear nice clothes; a life so sedentary and routine that he ate a disgusting breakfast every day as a habit, and considered the walk up the stairs of his office good exercise; a life devoid of personal contact, where reading two books at once, and keeping informed of daily events was a desperate attempt to stimulate his mind and to distract him from just what kind of pseudo-life he was actually living. It was terrible.

Now clearly, I’m not making judgments on this man’s actual life, a man who I’ve only seen once and never met. No, I’m projecting my own fears and insecurities on him, I know that. But did that make the vision less potent? I don’t think so. It was disturbing, not to my morals or to my sensibilities, where most things disturb us, but to my core. No one wants to lead a life that impacts no one, and that’s got to be one of my biggest fears. What I saw that day just fueled that fire in me, that it would it be a fear unrealized.

1. How an elephant got in my pajamas, I’ll never know.
2. Quarter-heartedly? Eighth-heartedly?
3. Maybe it was dirty?
4. Though I don’t not attribute them to such.
5. It looked like a comb touched it briefly.

You know what really grinds my gears?

Ah Family Guy...I used to watch you.

Anyways, something about this thing that you're reading now bothers me, and here's what it is. Web logs, or blogs as they're known nowadays, are basically online journals for you to write in so everyone can see how clever you are, what you think about everyday issues, or what a miserable person you happen to be. You know what I'm saying here.
They're basically public journals, and that's the part that gets me. Because it's public, you can't really write what you may want to, on the chance that someone who might read it might get offended.
I mentioned this to my friend Brendan the other day, and he said, "Well, that's what you have a private journal for." And he's right of course, from a certain point of view, but there are thoughts that I have, that I'd like to share and get other people's opinions on in the way that this blog allows me to, but I can't. So, like I said, annoying.

Really, what's annoying about that is my dissatisfaction with myself. I argue with myself about things like this a lot, on whether I care too much about what other people think, or whether that's how you're supposed to be, and I spent a lot of my life being a egocentric prick. Most of the time, I think it's a little of both.

So I end up holding my tongue here, not because I don't want to hurt people's feelings, not even because I don't want to deal with crap, but mostly because I'm afraid of negative consequences. Is speaking my mind worth getting people I care about upset? I don't know, but I'm afraid it might be. And that's never a good thing to base a decision on.

Oh, and to be the opposite of clear, here, there's no specific issue I'm talking about here. There's been plenty of specific issues, but not one thing. I've been censoring myself since I started the darn thing.

********

In other news, White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle threw a perfect game today, which is exceedingly rare, and amazingly difficult to do. For those who don't know, a perfect game is something only a pitcher can do, where they face 27 batters over nine innings, and record 27 outs. There can be no hits, no walks, no errors by the fielders behind him. It's an amazing feat, and even more amazing in today's day and age of baseball, where relievers and pitch counts, and innings counts all come into play. It also appeared to be the kind of perfect game I really like to see, where there was plenty of good defense backing up the pitcher, making it a total team effort.
Before Mr. Buehrle's effort today, only 17 men had thrown perfect games in major league history. That's ridiculous. So congrats to him.

The nose knows...

Okay... this is terrible.

After work today, I had to go shopping, I needed new slacks for work. As a result, of course, I caught a later train. As I sat down, I noticed across from me was an older man who had a bandage across the middle of his face. He had this bandage there because he had no nose. None. At the bottom of the bandage the holes where his nostrils were. Pretty gruesome, and unfortunate for the guy. Even better, I swear, these are my ACTUAL THOUGHTS:

Wow, that stinks.

Not that he can tell!

I am the best ever.

Learning Spanish...

I've been spending the last week working out like crazy (two times a day, plus taking the stairs eight flights at work), and radically reducing my food intake, both in volume and calories. I've been getting up at twenty after five to work out before getting ready for work, and then going for a run when I've getting home.
This is all stuff that's good for me, of course, and I'm glad I'm doing it, but man, have I been irritable this past week. I'm just getting frustrated and antsy at work every day, which is not something that usually happens. I imagine it'll be like this for another week or two, as my body adjusts to the lack of intake and the surplus of stimulation. Of course, the idea is, while not pushing myself too hard, of course, to maintain intensity of my workouts, otherwise I'm never going to keep losing weight, which is something I really need to do.
I bought a knee brace this week, as I banged my left knee at work a couple of weeks ago, and it's not healed up right away. Of course, this is something you have to get used to, as I'm three weeks away from entering the last year of my twenties. That combined with the daily stress I put on my knees, it's no wonder it taken some time to get better. In the meantime, I run like one leg is now robotic, which is kind of cool in a little kid sort of way.

My friend Dan decided that he wouldn't cut his hair this year, at least until we go to Disney in a month or so. After getting a haircut in late January, I at first inadvertantly, the deliberately, have been following in his footsteps. I never had really long hair, like rocker or hillbilly long, but my hair used to be kind of longish back in high school and early college, and then has been kind of shorter as I've gotten older, and there's been less of it. Maybe this is a last hurrah for this kind of thing, or maybe this is a way to try and get in touch with my past, which is something, for the first time in my life, really, I'm kind of jealous of. I'm not exactly sure, but I'm guessing it's more of the latter.

Well, this is about to get really depressing here on my end, so I'm going to wrap this one up. I've been trying to write more in this blog, just to get in the habit of writing more often. I figured, hey, if I'm trying to eat better, and get in shape, I may as well work on improving other aspects of my life, right? Now I just have to move on learning Spanish.

A quick one!

I am not a thin man, not any more, and I haven't been for many years. Yet there are many men far fatter than I am. One of these today was on the ferry going home, I noticed him as I was getting on the boat. He was sitting down (not surprising, as he was probably around 300 pounds), and was wearing a black shirt that on the front just said "WHY?".

I thought to myself: "Probably too many donuts."

A-thank you!

A weird story...

So last Saturday, I spent the day with my girlfriend and her family, which was a great time. On the way back from my girlfriend’s sister’s house upstate, we stopped back at her parent’s house in Jersey. Just putzing around, Michelle (my gal), myself, and each of her parents are in different rooms. Michelle decides to plink about on her old piano, which she hasn’t played with in a while, and no one in the house plays it at all. So she opens the cover of the piano (the thing that covers the piano keys, I’m talking about), and from the next room I hear something spill out. I come in, and there’s dog food on the floor!

She tells me that it came out of the piano, and I ask her if she’s mistaken, if it was on top, she says no, and there’s only one way to find out. So she opens the cover, and she can’t even open it all the way, because the entire bass side of the piano is crammed full of kibble!

This is bizarre, okay? Words can’t do it justice. It’s surreal, like something out of a Dali painting or something. It’s just two things you wouldn’t expect to see juxtaposed.

So Michelle calls her mother in, because frankly, the first thing we think is that someone did this on purpose. She of course expresses shock. Michelle asks her if they should ask her father, and her mother says that she thinks they have to.

Michelle’s father comes in, and he’s the person who actually figures out what happened, in that a mouse was taking the dog food, and storing it in the piano.

Just an odd story, really, but I think that image of dog food packed in between the black keys of a piano will stay with me long after I forget the particulars of this story.

You know what I hate?

You know what I hate? Really, really hate with a burning passion? Hand cart luggage. You know, those suitcases that people have on wheels, and drag them around by a handle? Somehow, over the past couple of years, these things have become prevalent, not only among travelers in airports, but amongst commuters travelling in the city. I know where this comes from, actually, as a few years ago there was a fairly big news report on how back packs were bad for your kids, that they led to back problems, and these were marketed as an alternative. From the kids they went up to the parents, who use them instead of backpacks, shoulder bags, or briefcases. I can’t wait until a study in five or ten years reveal how bad these things are for your shoulder.

You know why I hate them? Well there’s not just one reason. Firstly, and primarily, they take up two people’s spaces in a crowd, because people drag their belongings behind them, instead of carrying them like an adult who’s not crippled. Secondly, as a corollary, in a crowd, because they’re so low, you can’t tell they’re there, so you see what you think is an empty space, attempt to move towards it , or get angry at those in front of you who do (and you know how anger on commutes builds and builds, leading to explosions on someone over the course of your week). Also, people have no idea what’s going on behind them, so these things are usually directly in your way as you attempt to walk like a normal human being. Also, it just says something about those people who use them (and if you do, I’m sorry, this is the impression I have of you) , that these people are completely self-absorbed, because they don’t realize what an unbelievable hassle these things are.

Now, I know backpacks are sometimes no great shakes either, but at least you can see them coming, and do something to get yourself out of the way, if a 10th grader with fifty books swings that thing in your face while you’re sitting on the subway.

So you know what I do when I see people with these fucking things? I kick them. Or step on the backs of them. Not hard, not to break anything inside of them, just to maybe turn them over, or cause them to skip, something to break up the rhythm of the person dragging their personal belongings behind them to save all that insane stress on their back or shoulders, and let them know, if just for a second, the annoyance I deal with every day.

Man, I hate those fuckers.

I'm back, baby!

The Hour with The Power!

I’m getting a visual migraine. Pretty sure these are psycho-somatic, something I heard Michelle got, and so now I get them too when the situation arises. Either way, it’s getting hard to see. I can still write though. That’s good.

Last week (ye gods, has it been over a week already?), coming home from a Mets game, I got to the new South Ferry train station and observed the new escalators. They’re impressive, in a low-key sort of way. Until someone goes to use them, they run at a very slow pace, saving energy. Then when someone walks up, they increase speed to draw the person or people up the stairs. There’s a metaphor in there. Maybe a song.

*******

Last Tuesday night, I got together with a few of my friends and played a game, a drinking game. A Power Hour to be exact. This is, for those who don’t know, when you drink a shot of beer every minute on the minute, for an hour straight. If my math is correct, you end up drinking seven and a half cans of beer in an hour, getting you quite drunk. That, of course, is the whole purpose of the game. It certainly worked, but that’s not what this is about. This is about doing it on a Tuesday night.

On the surface, and pretty much every level below, this seems like a bad idea. I had gotten up pretty early for work that morning, and would be doing the same on Wednesday. On this particular week, I had quite a lot to do at work to boot, so the ability to focus would be useful. Besides, drinking on the weeknights is something I generally try to avoid, as I worry it will lead to just drinking all the time, something I feel I may be in danger of doing. Plus, if this was just a one-off desire to cut loose and get wasted, why? Was there something wrong, something stressing me out that drove me to want to do this so much I had to convince my friends to do it with me1?

I think, and I emphasize “think” because I feel I know myself far worse than I used to, that I wanted to do this so much to prove a point. You see, sure I’m 28 years old, sure I’m holding down a real job-type job, sure I pay rent. But you know what? That rent’s baby rent, I live with my folks, all the separate entrance in the world doesn’t change that. I’m not married, I don’t have kids. I don’t have pets. I don’t have a house, or a car, or a cell phone. I don’t even have a credit card. All I have is my rent and my student loans. If I lost my job tomorrow, while it would obviously suck huge, I’m not in a position where my life would spiral out of control. There is no reason for me not to cut loose, except life, or societal pressure, tells me not too.

You see, at 28, people have real substantial lives. Families. Responsibilities. Some of my friends have them. I think I got carried along in that. I get older, and think that I have to act or behave in a certain way, a way befitting my age, because that’s what everyone else is doing.

The retort I hear ringing in my head already2 is that this was just some desperate salvo in the face of growing up, then. That I should stop trying to live in the past and at least act like I’m an adult.

I am an adult. I don’t have to act like it, it’s just what I am. What I’m getting at is that the other stuff is an act. All that baggage, the burden of responsibility, the pressures of work, that’s the act. And it’s not a simple act either. It’s like I’m one of those South American frogs they talk about in Jurassic Park. The ones who start acting like females, then moving like females, then pretend to be females, then they actually become females. All that responsibility, all that worry, all that keep-treading-water attitude that we all take on hardens, it calcifies around you and then it’s what you actually are. That’s what I was fighting against last Tuesday.

So… here’s to drinking games on Tuesdays. To staying up ‘til 2am playing video games. To doing whatever it is you do – You know what? This is too hokey, even for me. That’s why I wanted to drink last Tuesday though.

The writing got rid of the migraine. Huh.

1. They’re glad they did!
2. Whenever I debate with myself, I always picture people I know (or knew) talking to me, never my own voice.

Some purely superficial observations (fa-fa-fa, fa, fa-fa fa-fa fa)

I was told recently that I tend to notice a lot of superficial things about people, and feel free to talk about them. I tend to disagree, actually, I just tend to notice a lot of things about people, and some of them, people feel are superficial. Others, people feel I’m just conjecturing, as there’s no way I could know those things. Of course, there is no way I could know some things about people; there’s no way to really know how someone is feeling, or what they’re thinking, unless you’re them. But believe it or not, I don’t like getting into semantic arguments with people1, so if I look at someone, or hear someone say something, and say aloud that that person is happy, or sad, or whatever, and then someone counters with “there’s no way you could possibly know that,” I simply agree that there isn’t, and let it drop.
Somewhere along the way a lot of the people I know are incapable of having conversations about things where the people in the conversation have different opinions. Either they start fighting with you, think you are fighting with them, or if a third party, confuse the whole thing with fighting. As a result, I feel sometimes conversation stagnate, as you can only talk about things you both agree on, or have conversations where one person asks questions of another. It’s odd, and I feel it’s hurt my own conversational skills, which I used to pride myself on.2
Anyways, as I kind of got off on a tangent there, over the past couple of days I’ve noticed people on my commute, people who, for different reasons, I felt were interesting, at least to me. So here’s what I’ve noticed about them, starting in reverse chronological order, with this morning:

There’s a girl who, both yesterday and today, is sitting outside on the ferry. She’s the only one out there, as it’s really too cold to be sitting out there, and windy besides (especially on the boat). But you know what? This weekend it was 70 degrees. It’s spring, winter is over, and she’s sitting outside. Even if she freezes her buns off.

Yesterday, I’m getting out of the subway station at work, about to go in and start my day. I see an enormously fat man carrying a number of shopping bags, lumbering his way across the street, having some difficulty. He is grotesquely fat, almost unbelievably so. I’m not a good judge of weight, but I’d guess he was somewhere in-between four and five hundred pounds, and he was shorter than me. I consider seeing if he needs help but, a) I’m on my way to work, b) people who don’t need help doing an annoying task usually get bothered when people offer help, and c) I figured he could honestly use the exercise.

On the train ride in that morning, I’m sitting across from an older lady, perhaps mid-to-late 40’s, not particularly attractive. She starts putting on makeup.
Two seats down from her is a pre-teen girl being accompanied to school by her guardian. This is not the person who usually brings her to school, the person who usually brings her to school is a rather loud homosexual man, who is way too young to be her father. I assume, due to a family resemblance, that this man is either her older brother, or a young uncle. Either way, he seems to be the one taking care of the girl. I assume that the person travelling with the girl today, a huge hulking, bearded, hairy man, who reminds me a bit of Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies, is the partner of the usual guardian, as the man also seems to have a pseudo-parental relationship with the girl, without being old enough to be a parent. I also know this girl goes to school on 12th street. It’s the kind of knowledge you pick up from commuting with the same people every day, nevertheless, I wish I didn’t know it, it seems almost…too intimate a fact for me to know.
They get off at 14th street, along with many other people. The older lady across the way becomes visible for the first time in about ten minutes, and the change the makeup makes is remarkable. She looks about ten years younger, and much less unattractive. The concept of makeup amazes me.

On the way home from work, on the ferry, Joe and I see a group of urban youth, cutting loose and having fun. These youth, from all visual cues, appear to have stepped out of 1991 or so. One of them has a high, Kid and Play-esque flattop, another has an equally high flat-top, with a fade on the sides, plus the flattop comes down in steps, and there are various shapes and patterns carved into his hair. One has Dwayne Wayne flip-shades/glasses, another is dressed like Mushmouth from Fat Albert. I watch for any sign that this is some kind of façade, and see none. I seriously consider following them for a bit, just to see what they’re doing, but unfortunately, I have plans. Also, that would just be creepy of me.

Monday morning, on the train platform on Staten Island, waiting to go to the city, a girl stands near me that doesn’t usually take the train. She is tall, taller than me (at least with her shoes on), and wrapped up tight against the elements that really aren’t bothering anyone else. She’s wearing big tinted sunglasses, and has huge lips that stand out on her general WASP-y appearance. Have you heard of bee-stung lips? These are well beyond that. She looks like she got punched in the mouth, that’s how swollen these things are. I wonder, did she get punched? She’s wearing big sunglasses, perhaps that’s to hide a black eye. Of course, she looks perfectly serene. I chalk it up to likely bad surgery, a la Goldie Hawn.

I realize that those thoughts may read odd, they certainly write that way. But I thought it’d be interesting nonetheless. So there you go.

1. At least, not anymore!
2. Oh, that post on weird things I pride myself on, when will you ever be written?!

I've been busy living...

I just saw a commerical on the MLB network, and older commercial, against using steroids. In it, a voiceover tells you that steroids are bad for you, and while that's happening, a bunch of sports balls (a football, a baseball, a basketball, what have you) shrink and shrivel up. The announcer then tells you there's a special bad side effect for the boys out there. A classy commercial, but hey, it's a good message. If you use steroids, your balls will shrivel up.

I haven't written in a while, as I've spent the last two weeks being quite sick, if not the flu, something really close to it. High fever, bad, bad cough, congestion, aches and pains, the whole nine yards. I had to leave work early one day, and I had to call out as well, something I hate to do, as I have so much work to do in a day, it's almost impossible to catch up without working late and/or weekends. But I would have just made errors and such had I tried to work, as well as making myself much worse. As it is, with all the rest I've had, my cough is still around, though it's much, much better.

I'm going to start working out again tomorrow, as I've taken the last two weeks off, having no lung capacity, and generally feeling like crud. But tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, and it's a good time to start up again. I've lost ten pounds since the beginning of the year, and look to make a big push over the next forty days, to try and make my mark of thirty pounds by August. I'm a third of the way there, but it's only going to get harder.

Usually for Lent, I give up a lot of stuff, like a good Catholic (which I am by no means). But I like the idea of Lent, the sacrifice of things you like and enjoy, to show your understanding of the sacrifices others (mainly Jesus) made for you. Also, I like the triumph of my will over my desires (another strange thing I'm proud of, for that blog post that will always be teased).

So what this year? Usually I give up booze, but with my brother owning a bar, I'm not doing that this year. I'm already not eating junk food, so maybe dessert? Pizza again? Perhaps. I'm giving up ordering in dinner, which will save me money as well, though it'll make dinner boring, as I don't really make dinner all that much. Of course, I could just cook more. Only time will tell.

I've been watching a lot of the MLB network, which is just a great channel, as baseball is everything about America, not only good, not just bad, but everything. The triumph, the desire, the mythos...it's not just the National Pasttime because of it's popularity, it's...well, it's more than that. And thus, my next blog post is born, as I really want to take the time to explain why this sport, that I spent most of developing years, my youth, not paying much attention to at all, has so enraptured my thoughts as an adult.

So there's a bunch of random thoughts and such. I have to say, the last two weeks have been tough ones, and not particularly good over all, but nevertheless, I'm hopeful for the future. But then again, I always am.

Free Will?

I finished reading a rather good book last week, enititled 13 Things That Don't Make Sense. It's a book describing 13 science conundrums, things that modern science hasn't figured out or can't explain. It was entertaining, and informative, without getting bogged down in too many science details that would confuse the casual reader.

I just had one problem with the book, and that is it's chapter on Free Will. The central conceit of the chapter is that ask any human, and they'll say they have free will; it's a central tenant, not only religion-wise, but society wise, of what seperates us from other creatures, what makes us sentient. However, says the chapter, science seems to have proven that free will doesn't exist.

The book goes on to give examples of how, using magnetic waves, or electric currents applied to the brain, your body could be made to move seemingly of it's own accord, even if you try and stop it from happening. This, apparently, is something akin to what happens to you if you have Parkinson's disease.

This is disturbing, undoubtedly, but the problem is, this isn't a question of free will. Free will could be defined many ways, certainly, and those definitions could clearly be split by semantics, but having a scientist perform a procedure on your brain to get you to move your arm isn't over-riding your free will, it's not making you choose to move your arm. This is akin to a bully grabbing your arm and making you slap yourself with it. Annoying, yes, but your free will allows you to make the choice not to steal a gun and shoot that bully.

The problem with free will and science is that free will is a concept more suited to philosophers, and less to people who study empiric data. It's not something that can be measured, or even really proven. It's a completely subjective motivation, because it's a term used to describe the impetus for things that take place completely inside your head.

Anyways, I just thought that was interesting. Thoughts on free will, or the lack thereof?


Oh, and next time: weird things that I'm proud of!

A New York State of Mind...

So earlier today I got an e-mail from one of my ex-girlfriends, a person who I was at one time very close to, and at this time, am very not. Nothing Earth-shattering there, it's the way of things, I guess. Though at one time I prided myself on my good relationships with my exes, that time has long past, and that's a weird thing to pride yourself on anyway. Hmm, perhaps that's another blog post in and of itself.

Anyway, I thought this an odd occurrence, the e-mail that is, because a) I haven't spoken to this girl (really) in years, and b) earlier in the day I was listening to the Billy Joel song "A New York State of Mind" which always makes me feel homesick, even if I'm in New York (a weird phenomenon, I know), but occasionally makes me think of this girl, for no particular reason at all, other than we both used to like Billy Joel.

Without getting too much into details, she was e-mailing me out of the blue because she saw something I mentioned online in regards to her, and thought I was taking a swipe at her. This wasn't the case, so it's unfortunate that she got worked up enough about it that she e-mailed me at work to let me know. But I just find it weird that she e-mailed me at all. I mean, after this amount of time, and what was said the last time we saw each other (more on that in a bit), I would think she could really care less, or at least she wouldn't be bothered to write. I mean, if she, or someone similar to that level of relationship with me, say a friend of mine whom I was close with in high school, but not really since, posted "Tom Cocozza is a retarded jerk-wad, and I hope he rots!" I'd probably be upset, but I likely wouldn't be motivated to get in touch with them and ask them why. And if I did, I likely wouldn't be all confrontational about it. But that's me, I guess.

I don't know what bothers me more, that in the middle of a stressful, busy workday (most of them are) I get an e-mail from someone who hasn't e-mailed me in years telling me to get bent, or the fact that that's the situation I find myself in with this person. I'd like to think the latter, because I like to think of myself as someone who's sentimental, and in touch with their emotions, a real hip, modern guy. More than likely though, it's the former, because I'm really just someone who hates getting all riled up, especially when I'm work. Personal matters are for personal time, and how am I supposed to deal with this stuff when I'm responsible for whatever work I'm supposed to be doing? That's what I want to know.
This is why I hate internet communication. You never have any idea of intent behind what is said, other than what you can read from context. The shorter the message, the more varied the context, and the more complex the thought, the more chance of it being interpreted different ways. This is why real things of import should be discussed face-to-face, or at least over the phone. And...end rant.

Oh, I guess I should mention what happened the last time I really saw this girl, as I alluded to it earlier, and while I understood the sentiment completely, and admired the forthrightness she had in saying it, it still kind of bummed me out for a while. I'm not sure when it was, I'm thinking a year or two ago, I was in Times Square, walking out of Toys 'R' Us, with a purchase for my nephew in a big bag, when literally, out of the blue, I run into this girl in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. This is always one of the more remarkable things about New York City to me, it's huge, with millions of millions of people, and you'll randomly run into someone you know at someplace neither of you knows the other will be. The odds have got to be astronomical, but it happens to me at least once a year.
Anyways, so we hug, and exchange small-talk pleasantries and the like, and since she's meeting her parents for dinner, and I have to get home and do my own things, we quickly part ways. I let her know that while we don't see each other anymore, if she ever wants to hang out, just let me know. We'll work something out. It's not just me, as she used to be friends with some of my friends as well, they'd like to see her too, and all. She responds to me thusly: that she's got her own life now, with her own things going on, and new friends and the like, and really doesn't think that will be happening. Okay. Like I said, got to admire the ability to be straightforward about it, but jeez. I mean, I was only saying what I was saying half out of being polite; it's what you say in situations like that. So I said okay, and went on my way. With the exception of some comments on each other's Facebook pages, that's been pretty much it until today.

Huh.

Ain't life a kick in the pants sometimes?

Still, it isn't all clouds and woe, not by a long shot. One, I got a nice blog entry out of it, so that's good. Two, my annoyance, while making it hard to focus at work, did help the afternoon move faster. Three, I feel I don't have enough chances for introspection, and while this isn't exactly what I would want to focus on, I can't look a gift horse in the mouth in that regard. To know yourself is to know the world, and often times I feel I don't know myself at all. So maybe this'll help in that regard.

Oh, and like Detective Columbo, one last thing. In case he happens to be reading this, "Jason Suslak is a retarded jerk-wad, and I hope he rots!"

Weird dreams

For the last few days, I've been having odd, bizarre dreams. Last night was no different. Myself and a group of my friends (Michelle, Dan, Joe, and Brendan) were going to make a movie. This movie, while I'm a bit fuzzy on the plot, involved us live action filming animals, and then doing voice-overs for them. I think the animals were going to try and make a movie themselves, so it was a bit of meta-fiction. All the animals that were voiced by us had "opposite" personalities than the people voicing them, eg Brendan's goose was nice to everyone and was cleaning up after us all, Joe's chipmunk agreed with what everyone said, that sort of thing. Odd.
That's not the really weird part though, not that it gets surreal or anything. In coming up with a script, we decide that the film takes place near a coast, so we want to film in a coastal city, and not New York. Dan, for whatever reason, refuses to travel south, so I suggest we go out to Portland, mixing in a trip to see Devon. Hooray!
We take a train, to save money, and that part goes off without a hitch. As we're getting off the train, we meet Lou Cordani, who's surprised us by taking a plane out and meeting us. We all leave the train station and go to get on a bus, the only bus line there. We don't know where exactly we're going to film, but we decide we'll get on the bus, and get off when we see somewhere cool, then we'll call Devon and tell him to meet us there. Only a bus doesn't come. For like an hour. Then one bus comes, and drives right past us. We all freak out. By this time, there's other people waiting too. Another bus comes, and pulls up a block up the street, and a few people get on, I run after it, but it closes it's doors and pulls away, and I can't chase it down. There's a kid with a briefcase, he's the only one stuck with us waiting now. Everyone's getting antsy. Finally another bus is coming, I stand in the middle of the street to make sure it stops for us, and it does. I get on first, and push my way to the back, as a family of kids are just standing in the middle of the bus, oblivious to bus etiquette. I start yelling at them, and the bus driver tries to close the door on Michelle! I start seriously flipping out at this point, threatening violence. He opens the door, and everyone piles in on each other on the stairs of the bus, then get on and make their way to the back. And we have a surprise appearance, as Joe Jianetto has followed us out as a surprise, wearing an undershirt and a garish, too small, yellow and black checkered sportcoat. He and Lou start having a conversation about how Lou didn't bring boots, and that you should really have boots in this environment.
Then the dream ends and I wake up.

Now this is way too detailed, and complex, for me to believe that it means nothing. The only thing I've got is that J-Rod reminds me a lot of Kramer.

Post One - The Adventure Begins: Part One - The Beginning...

Okay, so I've been keeping a log on my laptop highlighting my thoughts on trying to lose weight, as I have made an oath to myself to lose about 30 pounds come my trip to DisneyWorld this August (August 15th, to be exact). Just something to help me keep focused, plus I thought it'd be interesting to look back on it once the job is done.
I'd figured I'd start this blog with an excerpt from that one, edited for details you'd likely have no interest in, like my food-eating plans and such. But there is something fairly amusing in there, so here it is:

1/7/09
I’ve been thinking about doing this for the last few days, and after the events of the last two hours, well, one event to be exact, I thought I really should get to it.

Disney is on August 15, so doing the math today, Dan and I figured it was 219 days. That’s a lot of time, and on the other hand isn’t that much time on all.

This brings me to working out. I haven’t done it that much so far this year, only twice, and I want to get it that up to three times a week in January, moving it up to four times a week in February, and then we’ll take it from there, eventually hopefully getting six or seven days a week of some kind of workout, whether it be running of weight training.
Today it was running, and that’s a funny story…
I have a treadmill in my house, and when I got home before my dad today, I decided to get a quick twenty minute run in (1.5 miles, natch!) before he had to use the room the treadmill was in, as that room also housed two computers, as well as a TV and a rocking chair that my dad relaxed in after work.
So I’m running, for about four minutes, when I feel I might be getting a good rhythm going, so I close my eyes to see if I can keep it up (and to rest my eyes, as I was fairly tired). The moment I do I can feel my strides going all over the place. I pop my eyes open again, but after a quick moment of contemplation, I decide I won’t give up without a fight and try it again. This is because I am brilliant. With my eyes closed…I lose all control of what I’m doing, as if I was running down a wooded path in the dark. My right foot goes right over the back of the treadmill, and the toe of my shoe (and my toe within it) get caught underneath the treadmill belt. I grab the automatic cutoff switch, and go to pull my foot out, but I can’t. As I consider this, I try and figure out how exactly my foot has room to be caught like that anyway. I look down, and sure enough, I’ve kicked my heel right through the wall. My foot was caught like a trap between the treadmill and a stud behind the wall.
Let me repeat that, as I feel it bears repeating. I got my right foot caught not only under the belt of a treadmill, but put it through a wall as well.

I’m sure if I thought about it, it’d seem a metaphor for something. But right now, I’m too tired to see it as anything but funny. Good news/addendum: I didn’t let that stop me, and after disengaging myself from the wall and cleaning off my shoe as to not track drywall everywhere, I got back on and ran 20 minutes.

*******

So there that is. The wall isn't fixed yet but there is a three day weekend coming up. I suppose I'll do it then.