Thursday, January 29, 2009 :::
There are at least a dozen rationalizations for why I've neglected FlickFool, quashed any inclinations to log in since the day I disappeared, but even now I feel my resolve crumbling. I see all the excuses spread neatly across the table: how I only have patience for one site, not two. How movies are far more enjoyable sans running mental commentary. How I could easily fizzle out again after a false start. Or how difficult it is to count to 50.
But damn it if that alliterative URL doesn't slyly work its way into my thoughts from time to time, buoyed by the knowledge that the site persists even now, borne by the industry of others, its pulse ever indomitable. What started as a silly inability to sign into WordPress one evening ballooned, at some point, into a kind of digital estrangement. It certainly feels like its real-world counterpart, where something as simple as picking up the phone requires so much effort that deferment becomes the refrain.
I mentioned a few weeks ago how neat it would be to create something, and the irony isn't lost on me. Because something was created, however small and modestly visited, and I'm not sure I abandoned FlickFool well enough. It calls to me! There really is no way around it. Perhaps if conditions are optimum this weekend I'll type out my full username, maybe even the whole password along with it. We'll see.
Posted by Ben at 11:57 PM
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 :::
Family, especially extended family, tends to suffer from a fleeting shelf life of three days, with each additional hour a window of opportunity for wholly justifiable homicide. A single breakfast together isn't so bad, however, though I will freely admit to RSVPing to this past Saturday's gathering with a "maybe" initially, citing golf of all things as a potential excuse from the festivities. Yes, golf. Holy Aunt Jemima alive! In the end, I decided the Pancake House would be more tolerable, even after pulling up to it and discovering, much to my disappointment, the House was made of brick instead of cake.
The choice made economic sense. I mean, you've got free food on one hand and green fees on the other. It was also a chance to be normal. I've found it's far easier to be introspective during times like these--the Great Recession, so deemed by current parlance--rather than boom times. Maybe it's because the latter ceaselessly bears you to the next big thing, beat by beat, from plasma TV to car to promotion, whereas this era calls attention to what is, which in this case was a pancake-fueled shot at normalcy.
And normal it certainly was, where for more than an hour I remade myself into the person I knew I should want to be: genial, collected, freely dispensing both hugs and talk, drawn to society. My granduncle inquired at one point why, despite only living half an hour away from them, I've only visited once, and the truthful answers flashed across my mind: because interacting with people triple my age simply doesn't interest me, or because I can be an apathetic bastard, or because there's a hard limit to my capacity for familial obligation.
"It's just been so busy," I replied.
It was partly correct and mostly a white lie, one of those untruths we offer to preserve the bonds of cordiality. I was content with leaving it at that because sharing the same family tree isn't enough. There needs to be more, right? When ties are based solely on blood, there seems to be a very real chance of having them clot and scab over.
Posted by Ben at 11:46 PM
Thursday, January 22, 2009 :::
A few weeks ago I tasted, however briefly, the vegetarian lifestyle when I bit into a Morningstar breakfast patty, ruminating as I chewed one of the food industry's most cunning inventions. What was cobbled together from soy, more phosphates than modern science ever thought possible, and a laboratory's worth of chemicals should've by rights resembled the very cardboard that wrapped it. But it didn't. The first bite truly registered as breakfast sausage, though each subsequent piece was subject to the law of diminishing returns, not to mention edibility.
Still, I consider my mind a little expanded, since vegetarianism previously meant eating cows that once ate grass. I was also struck by a seeming inequality in the dining landscape. Why do companies manufacture products that simulate meat and blatantly disregard the inverse market? Easy answer is because people don't demand it, but this doesn't address the injustice within. After all, why shouldn't there be apples made entirely out of pepperoni, or broccoli florets lovingly crafted with beef and cheese? It'd be gross, that's why.
The health regimen continues to hum along. You probably won't ever see me invest in a fitness membership in this lifetime, because I've discovered the same sedentary lifestyle that may be powering the blog this very minute keeps junk food out of my house. I might crave chips or cookies one afternoon, for example, but the same laziness that glues me to this chair also prevents me from gunning it to the supermarket. The pantry is accordingly empty these days. There's a tube of oatmeal. Some frozen vegetables. A thing of sugar.
And a box of dirty rice, which I attempted to cook yesterday. For the uninitiated, dirty rice isn't morally reprehensible, nor is it tainted with melamine or depleted plutonium, as the name might suggest. It's simply seasoned rice that is Cajun in origin. That didn't stop me from opening the package and wondering, for at least 45 seconds, whether the small, round black things were beans or rat droppings. The dish turned out fine, but it was a firm reminder that I could benefit from cooking more, and wouldn't you know it, the local resort is featuring an "All Things Louisiana" cooking class in a few weeks. It almost seems like fate. I'm just not sure if it's fate to the tune of $85 plus tax and gratuity.
Posted by Ben at 11:22 PM
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 :::
The first snowfall in Charlotte brings with it a number of comforting traditions, chief among them a kind of localized apocalypse, and today was a timely reminder of what exactly goes into the list. There is, of course, the subdued panic the night prior, marked by a silent run on the supermarket for nonperishables, followed by overexposure to dire news coverage. Then, there's the waiting. Oh, the interminable waiting. And when the snow finally hits--the whole terrifying quarter-inch of it--chaos is unleashed. School districts close. Parking lots empty. Cars plunge into ditches. The lone snowplow owned by the state deploys, only to find itself trapped in that one confounding cul de sac. Truly, the end of days is come.
People die. Graveyards tear asunder, pouring out their grim harvest, until the Charlottean zombies realize the snow has now accumulated to a third of an inch and promptly retreat. And today, my normally four-minute commute ballooned to just over 40, courtesy of two pile-ups not more than 15 feet apart. As I sat there in gridlock, it dawned on me that if an abnormally longer commute qualifies as a problem, then life must be pretty good. There are many who would want the problem of a commute these days, you know?
It's time to lay off, in a manner of speaking, the news a bit. Day in, day out, there is a steady influx of articles about jobs lost. While these cuts are certainly happening, I realize reporters need to eat as well, and what could be relayed to the public in a few dispassionate sentences instead transforms into three-page exposés. Sure, I enjoy scanning headlines, but I'm at the saturation point and up to my neck in survivor's guilt. It's, like, with everything imploding everywhere, why am I still setting my alarm for 7:40 AM? When will the corporate reaper come to collect? But then, a deep breath. The three- to five-inch snowfall they reported yesterday? Try less than one, and by mid-afternoon it had melted under a clear blue sky. Newsflash! Action news blackout, coming up next.
Posted by Ben at 11:58 PM
Thursday, January 15, 2009 :::
Much to my dismay and--let's be honest--complete relief, I discovered just now that "A Day in Pompeii," a months-long exhibit about the famous doomed city, had left uptown almost two weeks ago. I guess I figured a spread about a society perfectly preserved in ash for two millennia would itself stick around for at least a thousand years, but that's museum programming for you. The new exhibit, "Circus," looks slightly out of my age group.
It's for the best, too, because in my case the idea of engaging in cultural enrichment invariably proves more engrossing than the events themselves. If I step into a museum, I'll make good on the educational promise initially, milling around, reading plaques, pressing buttons to elicit earnest audio clips, but not 14 minutes into the trip, the urge to jam those same buttons rapidly will seize me, my eyes will glaze over, and rather than reading plaques I'll simply be looking at them, diligently trying to give a shit. Similarly, you could drop me into a dress shirt, tie, fancy pants, and then a mezzanine seat at the local symphony, and within eight minutes I'll be wondering why, if this is indeed Brahms's first movement, nothing seems to be moving at all. You could say there's a deficit of attention here.
That's not to say attentiveness and full engagement are always preferred, of course. I remember the last time I partook of high culture. It was either at the Chicago Cultural Center or a gallery of some sort, in a large room filled with artwork. After casting a critical eye on a few choice pieces, I wondered in hushed tones to Cicero what kind of retards could possibly have painted these monstrosities. I wasn't hushed enough, apparently, because the security guard shot me a withering look, and duly rebuked I returned to browsing. Turns out I was right, upon closer inspection of the placards. The entire exhibit consisted of artwork produced by the mentally challenged--mentally challenged children, to be exact. I felt horrible.
Fortunately I replaced my heart with a fusion generator shortly thereafter, so let me coldly guide us back to the prior train of thought. Attention span. I find myself surfing over to Wikipedia almost daily. I suppose I'm learning every time I do so, though there's something disingenuous about it. Sure, I could read the entry on Pompeii and probably learn more than I would've from the exhibit, but the convenience of having knowledge on demand just doesn't seem right. It's like a youseum rather than a museum, the educational equivalent of Splenda, and intuitively I know it'd be more valuable to hop the train and step through those doors. But it's a moot point because Pompeii's gone, again, and with a chilly Saturday on the horizon, coupled with John Adams and Freaks and Geeks on tap, I'm ready to watch television until my eyes bleed.
Posted by Ben at 11:33 PM
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 :::
When you boil it down, much as you would a few industrial-sized pots of spaghetti, volunteering is the act of pouring time into a cause. Whereas normally you're trading minutes for dollars or entertainment or some other commodity, there's nothing changing hands here, at least overtly, and sure enough what I culled from this weekend was intangible but valuable: a different way of thinking, along with a better understanding of why I volunteer so rarely.
I went with the Professor to a shelter for recovering alcoholics on Saturday, not to discuss with the tenants how much I dislike drinking, nor to ponder why every bartender mysteriously runs out of mint leaves whenever I order a mojito, or why I shouldn't tell those same bartenders to march out back and grow me a few goddamned sprigs, but to serve lunch. That's it. A good ol' fashioned spaghetti plate. We were merely cooking a meal, not saving the world, and I was pleased to find the experience much as I pictured it, simply by taking past volunteer work and overlaying some foodservice memories on top of it.
Initially I tried preparing the pile of ground beef in piecemeal, hastily darting from one quadrant to the next, until it was revealed to me that flattening out the whole business would be far more elegant. It was a revelation, a reminder to reduce reality to its main ideas. I was preoccupied with browning every inch, when I should've viewed it as a gigantic burger. I had gained a handy new thought pattern. And it's always been about the beef, I suppose. I remember clocking in grill time at the dining hall in college and needing to make, say, a dozen cheeseburgers. My inclination was to assemble them individually. The preferred way to do it, though, was to lay out twelve pieces of bread, then slap on twelve patties, then the cheese, and so on. It was this idea of thinking in layers, and it's proven repeatedly useful since then.
It was also refreshing to take a break from the corporate mindset, where reports and crazy numbers fly every which where, and measure progress differently. Obviously I wasn't whipping up rosemary-seasoned flank au jus here. Just seven pounds of beef. Metrics for success? I counted two: browned beef. And nobody dies from eating the browned beef. I'm still standing after finishing a plate, plus enough days have elapsed without any dire phone calls from the shelter, so I can safely declare mission accomplished.
Having said all this, when am I going back? Tough to say. One reason for why I tend to avoid volunteering is a potential allergy to that ooey-gooey feeling of camaraderie. It's, like, I just want to brown this meat and dish out some lunch, you know? I don't want to empathize with the other volunteers or chat about my aspirations or engage in small talk about where I'm from. But I realize I'm the odd duck out here. Community. It's the Rubik's Cube with the same color on every side.
Posted by Ben at 11:36 PM
Thursday, January 08, 2009 :::
There is a Mexican siren who summons me sometimes, pressing me to consume unspeakably delicious burritos, and tonight I found her secret music too compelling to resist. Of course, I had to hop in my car, tear down the highway, and peel off four exits later in order to even heed the call, but consider me allured and, a hearty pound of food later, absolutely satisfied.
I needed to have dinner, on one hand, but on the other hand I also set into motion a healthier lifestyle a few weeks ago, complete with reasonable bedtimes, exercise, even a new organic multivitamin that's been energizing. Call them resolutions, if you must, though I've grown to despise New Year's resolutions. They're destined to fizzle, you know, and why wouldn't they? How could lists predicated on a completely arbitrary unit of time possibly fail? It's no wonder most only have a shelf-life of a month, and woe be to January for shouldering this burden. I mean, look at October. The only resolution there is to power down shitloads of candy.
You could call it a diet, I suppose. For me, though, a good portion of the word evokes images of mortality or, even worse, the ancient art of treating cloth to specified colors. Handicrafts are utterly terrifying to me. Instead of "diet," I'm going to call it a correction. All I know is, somewhere in between the cajun-rubbed bleu cheese burger and the fried pickles and the holiday treats and the Big Block, something broke and I started feeling terrible. Pants still fit, fortunately, but it's time for action, the likes of which will tip the scale without necessarily breaking it.
Posted by Ben at 11:44 PM
Tuesday, January 06, 2009 :::
Here's a thought for you: eff golf. Or better yet, if you'll excuse my French, fuck le golf. A few months ago, I solemnly vowed to resurrect the topic only if I reached my goal of 110, a pipe dream that now, two dozen posts later, seems like it should've instead been spent on mastering teleportation or firing laser beams from my eyes. Now, if the goal were revised to multiples of 110, we could very well celebrate at the clubhouse, but for now I'd like to take a break from the vile sport.
I realized something last Saturday as I mucked around a water trap on the 8th, new golf shoes collecting mud at a fantastic pace, trusty retriever flashing in the sun, the rage of a thousand angry old men encased in argyle pressing me onward. Why pay $40 to $70 to $350 in green fees, never mind the $120 for what must be the hideous lovechild of cleats and bowling shoes, plus $15 to $40 for balls you may as well toss into field and stream, when you could find just as much enjoyment in running barefoot across an interstate into an oncoming truck? For free?
Now, before you hold forth on the ample exercise possible on a 5-mile course, I'll need you to specify precisely how often I should pump the golf cart accelerator to maximize caloric loss, or whether I should get a chili dog with relish for a quarter serving of vegetables. You want to walk five miles? Try the sidewalk. Want to spend $70 for the privilege of walking five miles? Get on the sidewalk, then throw your wallet down a sewer grate.
Certainly there's some gratification to be had from hitting the ball correctly. But then what? I get to swing again. The carrot, in this case, is simply more of something I don't want. The reward isn't there. The health benefits, negligible. The cost, exorbitant. I was thinking about all these things on the 10th, which in golf parlance was shaped like a "dog leg." Well, I'll tell you where you can shove that dog leg. Around the same time, I also noticed I had lost my beloved 3-iron. That's called "heartbreak" in the lingo of the green. Or providence.
Posted by Ben at 11:35 PM
