Moving to Surburbia

The longer the spans between blogs, the longer it seems to find a starting place. So here goes the thirty-day tour-de-force.

The Gulf hackle raisers, Gustav and Ike, the Storms That Will End All Storms, came and went with little fuss. The new job is moving along well and I’ve been doing a great deal of graphic design with some expensive software I know little about. My role is starting to crystallize: everything document related is me—product reviews, sales pitches, savings presentations, business letters, logo creation, tutorials, etcetera. It’s one of the first times in my life I drive to work not really knowing what I will be doing or trying to do that day. That’s not a complaint.

Other news is the purchase of a new house. Here are a couple pics.

Jean and I have historically moved fast on things like this. From first thinking to buying was about a week. We will close on Oct 24^th but want to move that up to the 17^th.

Between the storms and buying the house, Centenary hosted their annual Book Bizarre, arguably one the main reasons I moved back here. I picked up a collection of Carver, Cheever and three Beckett novels. I grabbed some Faulkner (Light in August, The Unvanquished, Requiem for a Nun, The Wild Palms) to complete my collection. Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, Dubus’ Dancing After Hours, and Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time were some cheap snags on authors I had been on the fence about. Also found an original copy of Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a new staple edition to the toilet library. There were a dozen more I can’t name offhand. All of it came to about $8. One criticism of the Bizarre, though. The sale was at a large gymnasium, chock-full of tables with the bleachers retreated. Around 100 tables and +15,000 books (they estimated)—all of this—and not 1 book of poetry. The books are all donated. This explains the biting sarcasm and overriding anger I notice in every poet I’ve known.

Yukon Ho!

For once, I don’t have to spend a few minutes pondering an excuse for not blogging. I have a job, and a real one this time. I actually wake up early, go somewhere for most of the day, and then come home. I got on as a tech writer for a really American company. We sell drugs and guns. We also make the technology for people to buy those guns and drugs, which is where I come in. I work with a team of programmers—code ninjas—as they are often nicknamed. In short, they build software and I build web authoring (the stuff that flies open when you hit the Help button), or at least that’s what I’m attempting to do.

I’ve always thought of myself as pretty techno-geeky, but I’m clanking through the Nordic Bronze Age compared to the know-how of some of these guys. I enjoy it, though. My love for minimalism may very well pay off.

Some shots from the hip.

Jean was in Canada the last few days (and as good timing works, Maggie gets bit on the eyelid by a mosquito in the night, and wakes with it swollen shut. Got some nice looks from the folks in town when I was out and about with her). I then got a voicemail from Jean mentioning that she had called her mother about “the storm,” and they had made plans to leave New Orleans, if need be. My reaction: What storm? I pulled up the radar and found Gustav, the loose tropical depression, at best, hanging over Cuba. For a second I thought maybe it was a message that was lost in the air some years ago before Katrina. This couldn’t have been the storm I was looking at on the radar. I called Jean back and she confirmed that she was speaking of Gustav. To her credit, she was in the boondocks of Canada and the only information that made it that way was some micowaved media mush. Hours later I was at the drive through buying chicken fingers at Cane’s. It was taking forever and the drive-up window person apologizes, claiming that the system was running slow because of the “storm.”

I said, “It stopped raining hours ago. It’s crystal clear out here.”

She said, “No, the big storm, Gustav.”

I said, “That’s still way, way down there.”

“I know. Our computers run off our main office down in Baton Rouge,” she said. (I won’t even go into how many other things are wrong about that answer besides basic physics.)

Maybe there is another Baton Rouge in the Haiti, I think to myself. There was a pretty strong French influence there at one time.

I mutter something to Maggie about the human race, and whip on home only to find a flier taped to my door from the apartment manager. It’s an evacuation plan. A fucking evacuation plan for us living in Shreveport roughly 300 miles from the coast.

What kind of culture of fear have we become? I read a headline on Google: New Orleans Plans Mass Evacuation, Braces for Catastrophic Hurricane. Jeeez, maybe this is serious I think. Then on about the 4^th line of the “news” article it reads that experts say the storm could hit from the inner panhandle of Florida to southern Texas, and could be anywhere from a Cat 2-5 hurricane. WTF? So they are saying that the storm (that’s already in the gulf) will hit somewhere else in the gulf? And then the storm could be just about any size or shape that hurricanes can be? This is news? I feel so embarrassed when I read things like this.

It’s bad enough hearing them speak with an air of disappointment when a storm misses someone, but this is a new low by ramping up weather possibilities in the same sensationalists manners of all other journalisms. What’s next? Pollen levels? Maybe plain old oxygen, since it is the chemical that causes cell aging and destruction. We’ll soon be on oxygen alerts and conservation. Breath shallow and less often, Timmy, we are Code Blue right now. Lots of air out there today.

I remember my beginner courses in journalism and propaganda in grade school. Some of the first things taught were tools of bad journalism, bad tactics, and using them was merely the benthic feeding ways of tabloid magazines. I’m not naïve enough to believe that our respected sources of information haven’t drawn upon those tactics in the past, but we seem to be in a Golden Age of them now. What was once unethical and unprofessional has become the preferred and only viable tactics. Red herrings and false analogies are probably still taught in those beginning courses, but aren’t taught as cheap, discrediting devices to be avoided.

Then I stumbled over another great article to end my night. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be reading TIME news to start with, but today I came across a gem. It seems the FBI nabbed their bionutcase for the anthrax incident, an incident that had fallen from my radar. I couldn’t make it through the first paragraph when the writer exposed what she thought was the overwhelming evidence in the case:

“there were electronic records documenting Ivins' late-night sojourns in the lab, e-mails revealing a mind wracked by paranoia and an inventory of a November 2007 FBI search of his home, which turned up a paperback copy of Albert Camus's novel The Plague.”

The Plague. Our new Catcher in the Rye, I guess. I have both books on my shelf so Bradbury’s library police should come busting through any minute now. This is one of the lamest attempts at taking a kidney punch at literature readers and the constant American paranoia towards the intellectual. The irony of this jab. The Plague is essentially about pervading the preoccupation with dread, suffering, anxieties, about the need to act instead of wallowing in rat feces and hopelessness—unless I totally misread the thing—the old cliché of living on your feet instead of dying on your knees. In fact, I felt the book may have been a little too optimistic at times, a little heavy handed for my taste. And it wouldn’t be that far of a stretch to transplant the plague with something like terrorism if a modern reader chooses to do so. It’s a sort of call-to-arms, but in the opposite direction this reporter, Laura Fitzpatrick, clumsily tried to insinuate. In short, we have a work of literature that maps ideas on how a culture can surmount, or should at least try to surmount, mass hysteria and paranoia, but, in turn, Fitzpatrick name-tosses it out there as linked to the support of terrorism. Thus, adding more lubrication for the fear machine, propagating more paranoia, and spreading more media plague. Abracadabra, Presto!

Around 9pm, Jean finally gets in from Canada (apparently there was no delay from the storm). I can’t help but think maybe Maggie and I should have just met her up there. Yukon Ho!

Transition complete

Officially now moved to Shreveport. Even the final boxes have been unpacked, those last-packed boxes that are ridiculously eclectic—a toothbrush, a couch pillow, DVDs, silverware, power cords for unknown gadgets. The steamy sweat-sock air of South Florida wasn’t escaped. On the move-in-day it was 106 degrees in S-port, 99 at about 930 one night. Maggie was a trooper through it all, probably more relaxed than any of us. She does ask about her old friends, her school, some places we use to visit.

The new apartment is surprisingly much nicer than ours in Deerfield, and also unbelievably cheaper. I thought I had a haunt in my new office. Every few minutes late at night I’d here this deep breathing sound from something large and sleeping. Jean came in to confirm the sound. Jean then dispelled it when she noticed the sprinkler sweeping the side of the apartment. So there goes my ghost.

I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things. Reading, writing, thinking. I have an interview tomorrow for an entry level position as a tech writer at a pharmaceutical company. Hopefully that goes well and I can be a productive citizen again. Even though it is still suffocating hot, you can sense fall closing in and the prospect of winter. It’s been four years since I’ve had to don on a coat and gloves. My writing is not one of color, sun, and puffy white clouds, making it difficult for me to write in South Florida. I can’t wait until the first run of overcast days of damp and unmoving air.

Operation Phoenix

One of the marks of the recently retired punk band Good Riddance was dubbing in political speech clips into their songs. Some were then subverted, and some stood as overtures for the call-to-arms music which usually followed. I have a scratchy copy of Operation Phoenix, and one clip drove me nuts over its source. I had a faint memory of the speech from a sociology class. Thanks to the Google and YouTube machine, I finally found it. Here it is:



I think this goes well with coffee in the morning.

And speaking of questioning the machine, I think there needs to be a large scale investigation into the company of Kraft, particularly the Macaroni and Cheese department. I have a hard time believing enriched starches and powdered cheese sauce mix can create such a universal good for children. Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 must have some addictive properties.

Animatronics

I’ve added animatronics to my personalized hell. My new hell would be stuck on “…it’s a small world” with animatronic clowns singing a commencement speech (in musical) to the tune of “…it’s a small world” with the only chance of escape is to grade giant stacks of freshmen papers on the topic of globalization. Maybe to boot would be having one of the real life Disney princesses (which is difficult at times to distinguish from an animatronic) as my ferryman/ferrywoman to my hell.

Despite the inherent creepiness I find in much of Disney, it’s still a kick ass place to go. Maggie was able to do much more this time around and we covered most of the Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom easily. It’s interesting to see where Disney is headed: Country Jamboree by the hillbilly bears (it baffles me that is still running) verses Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. The Monsters Inc. is our hope to conquer the animatronic. The Laugh Floor is digitized puppetry with real improv comedians working behind the screen, creating real interactivity—no mawkish puppetry, no pneumatic hisses when turning, no clicking eyeballs and klacking mouths here.

In recent weeks Maggie has been into “scaring” (I use the quotations on purpose here), and being scared. She has also become truly skittish on some things so we weren’t sure how she would react to some of Disney. She went through the Haunted Mansion reserved and skeptic. At the end she turned to me and said “more ghosts?” That’s my girl.

I started reading Diane Shoemperlen’s Forms of Devotion. Not really a Disney time kind of read, but it is a book with pictures. Usually I don’t like books that juxtapose images (most look like eighteenth century anatomical or religious sketches or engravings) with its prose. The distance she creates between the two is rather nice. Many times one (image or prose) doesn’t seem to foreground the other, nor do they seem wily-nilly. Much to go in the book though. Luke warm on it at the moment.

Stuck on the Covers

The first time I stayed awake plus 24 hours was due to Skate or Die and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out on a rented NES. Almost twenty years later, video games still have a purgatorial effect on me. 9:30pm, blink blink, 2:30am.

Consciously avoiding any intellectual projects, I’ve been stuck on covers, cover songs that is. It started when I picked up a CD of cover songs by Ministry succinctly named “Cover Up.” Some good ones, some laughable ones, some which were terrible, terrible because the original was terrible. (Their version of “Radar Love” will soon be staple in strip clubs across America. A thankful refreshing.) And this is where I get confused. The term “cover” doesn’t always make sense. By remaking a song already on record, isn’t that an act of “uncovering?” But then if you take a crappy song and overlay it with a new and legitimate version, that seems more like a cover? This seems like a true cover, like when a cat rakes litter over their shit and the crystals absorb all the toxins giving us the chemically-reacted mountain rain scent. But like the kitty litter scent, it only smells “better” because we know how bad the original smelled.

I’ve always been a sucker for the good cover, though. With a better organized music system, I was able to pin down roughly 180 cover songs in my collection. Punk bands noticeably were responsible for roughly 70% of what I had. Through them runs a pattern of subversion, songs that are wonderfully irreverent. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes are probably responsible for most of these. Shot through with punk energy and subtle sarcasm, many of the “classics” become laughable if they were not already. The Gimme Gimmes also have their moments of cover magic when they simply produce a good version without apparent subversion (Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” comes to mind). I’ve noticed another strain that I don’t care for, the "karaoke" cover. I notice this with many tribute records where a band basically plays the same song the same way with the only difference being the musical technology--Wow, you played a Presley song through a Marshall amp and added crunch distortion.

One that really disturbed me was a Misfits tribute record. There were some good ones, but some sapped all the dirty, garaged, and literal slashed-speaker sound out to replace with clean guitars and distinguishable snare drums. The worse I have is a cover of The Bangles' “Manic Monday” by a band called Relient K. This version was pure turd polishing. It looked like a promising trashing song, but quietly performed it much like the Bangles. One version of that on record was enough.

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When I started this post I thought I would say something about dead George Carlin (I see the Stygian did one, though). I re-read Napalm and Silly Putty and Brain Droppings as a personal tribute. My conclusion was that any elegiac thoughts may cause a haunting from Mr. Carlin. So long George, and thanks for all the stuff.

Finding something to do

So at 30 years old, I can still pass a Marine Corps physical fitness test—by a hair and probably a beat or two away from a heart attack. Question is whether I can keep it up. In regards to fizzling out, both my writing and reading have been on a strange hiatus. The writing feels sort of deserved after the brain-sapping thesis. If creativity can be compared to ejaculation, a romantic notion, then I’m currently spent. The reading hiatus is more bothersome for me since I am now free to rummage through books of my choice without a tower on my shelf that I “ought” to be reading. Much of it seems to stem from a paralyzing wave of sudden downtime and the inability to find a starting point: “then how should I begin.” There are several Jean Rhys books I want to read including a less taxing re-read of Good Morning, Midnight. I started Ames’ Wake Up, Sir, a raconteur novel derivative of Wodehouse but darker at times, and often less funny. The differences Ames has injected from the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster sagas has yet to impress, and unless a distinguished story arises besides being dirtier and more grotesque, this book may sail away to the land of the unfinished. I am also giving it more time because it has simply been quite some time since I read an organized narrative. The dark arts of poetry and “vanguard” short fiction may have caused irreparable damage on my reading habits.

I seem to be inching closer to the federal jobs. I got a notice yesterday that my resume package (package is a good word to describe all the shit you have to put together) was sent up for a print media job for the Army in Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs…that I can do. My name is still in the mix for a job with the NIH in Maryland. That one is much brainier than the Colorado gig. I’m surprised I even made the candidacy. Looks like a busy ending to June. Besides preemptive packing, there will be a Disney trip, and then Eric and Shannon are flying in for a few days.