Here’s a real AAA moment for you, gentle reader. I’m making a left turn, frazzled after a long day of work, and I suddenly hear a child scream. I look to my left. Nothing. I look to my right, and what do you know? There’s a stinking kid standing there and smiling, arms still raised after having tossed some leaves onto my car.
You might qualify that as “cute,” but I thought I’d tossed my hood onto the little shit’s head and raised my auto insurance premium by one Vietnamese boy. There’s a lesson to be learned from this, so think hard. Okay, time’s up.
While Sunday evenings are generally reserved for dreading the coming week, gentle reader, I decided to buck the trend and throw myself a party. Present at this brouhaha were myself, more than 125 “Help Wanted” posters, and a big roll of masking tape. You might call this a recipe for boredom, but I believe the phrase you’re searching for is “fun variant of ‘pin the tail on the donkey.'”
The donkey in question wasn’t a donkey per se; it was actually a sweet mess of lampposts and restaurants. And after a good four hours of wholesome fun, I challenge you to walk for a minute in Evanston without realizing that we’re hiring.
Now, you’ve probably realized something at this point, and it took me a good long while to realize the same thing. In fact, if it weren’t for Lt. Neatfreak and a certain news bureau in one at Buenos Aries, I would’ve still been sitting in the dark, content that I’d fulfilled my life’s calling.
“Haven’t you grown up yet?” they shouted, one from across the room and the other from across the airwaves. “Did you graduate only to flyer, only to make…”
Real-life pop-ups? Pop-ups fluttering in the wind. Art in motion, as it were. The problem with advertising on this property, however, is that I’m dealing not only with Evanston’s enviro-police, but with the Good Webmaster Himself as well. And He doesn’t need no frickin’ Google Toolbar to clean my clock. I thought I’d covered my bases by checking the Weather Channel and making sure it wouldn’t rain, but there’s this little thing called the WIND that I forgot about. I swear it’s been just a little bit breezier ever since last evening. Oh, well. I’ll just give myself a “P” for effort.
I’m wondering, gentle reader, how I should break my weeklong communicative fast. Should I begin with an apology as I have many times before? Should I pretend that nothing happened, that all my responsibility–my obligation to correspond regularly with you–actually rests on your shoulders? Perhaps your eyes deceived you, and I updated on a day-by-day basis. You just didn’t see anything beyond a pithy quote from Mr. Martel.
But we all know that isn’t the case. I also know that I will not apologize. I’ll just tell you what’s on my mind, and you can decide for yourself. I am telling you this not because I want to stab you in the eye with the Sharp Toothpick of Angst, but because I think you deserve an explanation. We are past the point where an apology will suffice. What I’m trying to avoid here is misplaced gravity. At the end of the day, this is just another site in the wide E-xpanse–nothing more, nothing less.
So, here we are. Part of my reticence stems from work. I’ve given a large piece of myself to the heady world of Internet advertising. Wait, did I say advertising? What I meant was “sweepstakes.” On many days I come home physically drained, a veritable picture of apatheticism driven to succeed in a completely fabricated world. This, however, isn’t my real answer. I’m beginning to realize I don’t enjoy reading and writing as much as I once did. And that’s a sad, sad realization, let me tell you. If you play an instrument, write, or paint, or make music, then you’ll understand the horror of passion gone pale and dry. It’s like pouring yourself into something, only to realize one fine morning that the “something” was a drain.
The question, then, is how to salvage an interest from the daily press of the mundane. Right now, I’ve got one answer in hand: to do, do, do. And now, I’m off to make paper pop-ups appear. More on that later!