2.01.2011

hooray for readers!

2/1/2011, 12:26 AM

THE PRETEXT: Does anybody have any old blog posts from "good ideas on paper"? I deleted a ton of them by mistake. You could ask why or how this happened, but you'd get the same unsatisfying answer that I've already gotten.

I refer you now to "Comments." Love, Benb xoinfinity

9 comments:

  1. Thank you to that wonderful person (who might not want to be named) who furnished the posts that I'd deleted. Wow!

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  2. Since it would be foolish to put old posts into a new post (sorta like a reunion tour without new songs), I'll simply post them here. Look out!

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  3. Dec 25, 2010 2:48 PM
    A Thing That Has Occurred
    by Benb Gallaher
    Hi, everybody:
    Merry Christmas, even (especially?) if it's not your "thing."
    This next bit is straight-up dismal, but my computer is not functioning. Not even malfunctioning, which I find somewhat appealing (at least theoretically), but not functioning in any wise or to any degree. I swore at it and gave it the finger and told it insipid jokes and affected a sophisticated accent and everything, each and all to no apparent avail. I'm using Molly's computer at the moment, but I've needed to devise alternate strategies, just to be adverbially adjective.
    So, this is what's gonna happen: Until further notice, posts to this blog will originate at the public library. This will have no discernible impact on the process of posting, save maybe for the fact that I'll be shrouded in a vivid cross-section of the Brunswick, Maine experience as I make sentences. Thrilling, I know.
    So, thanks for your patience and understanding, and I'll be back on Monday (when the library opens).

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  4. (this next one i'd wanted to "hide," as it was upsetting to some people, which i regret. i'm working on discretion, is all that i can really say.)

    Jan 12, 2011 8:25 PM
    Futility Is the New Utility
    by Benb Gallaher
    I've got a bizarre amount of explaining to do, although not really TO anyone. That, I suppose, is blogging's raison d’ĂȘtre, but that doesn't really mean that much yet in my life with a dead computer and the fact that I've been paralyzed by financial desperation and the claustrophobic crescendo of January's abject stupefaction.
    Yesterday and the day before that, people came and replaced our windows and did all sorts of sawdusty [Ziggy Sawdust?] things, so we showered in Bath (funny funny) at the YMCA (they'd given us a "2 WEEKS FREE!" membership for unspecified reasons) and tried to occupy ourselves, to some avail. I suppose that the windows aren't offensive, but gosh, do I ever miss their beautiful, unwieldy predecessors.
    I attended a function today, amid a horrid blizzardy apparatus. I'm really good at attending functions when there's a blizzard happening. Other times, it's a crapshoot. That may sound flippant, but it's more apparent with each huge storm.
    (DIGRESSION: Everyone that's known me in day-to-day life knows about my fixation upon people discussing the weather--not the weather per se, but people talking about it like they have some kind of handle on what's vaguely imminent at all times. Paid to lie, just like most policymakers [and, while we're being candid, most other grown-ups], meteorologists have categorically undue sway over and say in how life [insofar as any of us has one of those] gets conducted in their aftermath. Wouldn't it be weird if every person that you saw in a day were to predict some other element of your life in the immediate future? Like Miss Cleo, but inescapable?)
    (ADDITIONAL DIGRESSION: Speaking of Miss Cleo, and bringing us niftily if not neatly to an existing narrative that's rather in progress, my father went to see a psychic a couple of years ago. This itself is far from newsworthy, as people tend to do things like that. [Indeed, the attendant stigma of yore regarding psychics is possibly why the telephonic franchise of Miss Cleo herself was so popular, and its dissipation is probably why her star receded.] Anyway, this particular psychic told him that, in order to get a job, "your son with MS [that's me] needs to join Mensa. My folks offered to pay for it and everything, so I opted to ignore my decades-long distaste for people that think of themselves as being intelligent [which is just plain silly] and test for it.)

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  5. Jan 12, 2011 8:25 PM
    Futility Is the New Utility (cont.)
    by Benb Gallaher
    There was a snow event, occurring on R. Stevie Moore's 57th birthday (January 18, 2009) and appearing in Maine shortly following the arrival of my very-wonderful friend Bridget Moore (no relation to R. Stevie), who not only was living in Boston while attending grad school, but also had agreed in advance to accompany me on the half-mile walk from our new-to-us house to the testing facility. "How great," I thought.
    My predictions regarding that process merited my failure before the test even began. First, the snowfall began to intensify as if timed to coincide with our walk (I remain amazed at how people [like me] can actually take the weather really/actually/legitimately/sincerely personally. Wow. That makes meteorologists into sinister henchmen rather than average guessers.)
    Speaking of guesses and how awry some guesses go, it should be said that the distance was not what I had calculated. (Blind in my left eye, I have a distorted perception of depth. But that doesn't explain something this egregious.) Instead of 0.5 miles, the distance was 1.6 miles. (I only learned that later.) And the snow started hurling itself at us, my already-large eyebrows transmuted to gigantic Narnia caterpillars, and Bridget graciously trudged beside me, asking only on occasion, "Are you sure that it's only half a mile?"
    (I have to put the young ones to bed, but I'll continue tomorrow. For real.)
    By and by, Bridget and I hobbled across "the finish line," arriving punctually at the testing location (if memory serves, it was a Presbyterian church). No matter what or which, however, there was some kind of emergency unfolding, with fire trucks and related trappings of emergency response (I'm pretty sure about this, but I could very well have been hallucinating by that point). Bridget when into the chapel to study, while I went to the testing room in the church's basement (again, it's as I recall), feeling profoundly screwed up at how vividly surreal life had smelted itself into being. Time was passing spasmodically, lurching and skidding to such extremes that a person (like me) could grow woozy (like I did) just by watching the hands on the wall clock (like I was doing, compulsively). And I was surrounded by either Mensans (eek!) or hopeful Mensans (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!) under these willfully wearisome fluorescent lights, and we had to take this test that would somehow make a factual statement about our smarts. Curiously, we were given an "obvious" practice question (to boost morale? to ensure adherence to testing procedures?) as a prelude to the proper test.
    I say to you now, with pride, that I gave it my best shot, and that I did not answer that question correctly. And I wasn't making any kind of statement other than, "Oh my effing WORD" by default. Everybody there thought that I was joking. I decided to go through with the test regardless, mostly because I wanted to explore maximally the alien feelings that were my only companion for this episode's duration. Anyway, we got a ride home from a very-gracious proctor-in-training, and I passed the damned test, but that did not discernibly affect my job prospects. Zero is the new oh—Join Mensa today!
    Which brings us to the sadistic climatic tomfoolery of yesterday.

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  6. (this is where it gets nasty. i imagine that the people implicated will never read this, but, for what anything is ever worth, i'm sorry that the following words were hurtful. my feelings were hurt at what i perceived as mistrust from voc rehab, and i'm very tired of having to prove anything when all that i'd like to do is provide for my family and experience the joy and dignity of being an adult.)

    Jan 12, 2011 8:25 PM
    Futility Is the New Utility (part 3 of 3)
    by Benb Gallaher
    On account of my illness, which is considered a disability (for which I would receive a pittance in perpetuity), I have been affiliated with Vocational Rehabilitation for about a year now. They don't know what to do about me and my inconsistent physical considerations (i.e., no restaurant or construction work), so not only have they adopted a default of blaming me for not having found work, but I have to resist at every turn their insrutable wont to place me into positions in which I will definitely not succeed (I've pursued such positions with all sincerity, but have been met unfailingly with resounding lassitude.). This is rather well-worn territory—plenty of people have behaved ignorantly and hurtfully toward me on a basis of things that they don't understand—but this is a STATE PROGRAM. This doesn't feel any better than the legion of occasions on which strangers have assumed my drunkenness because of my variable dexterity. Well, it feels worse, because it's the job of these people to take me seriously; they're paid to take me seriously—not to rest upon my shoulders the "fault" of my not getting paid.
    So, I went to the newspaper for a Voc-Rehab-endorsed "interest interview." Even though that interview was not for any vacancy or available position, I was grateful for the opportunity to meet someone that was maybe capable of providing some insights. At any rate, the outdoor bluster began hours beforehand (thus necessitating a taxi ride to the interview; conditions were deteriorating so rapidly that, as I was en route, the decision was made to discontinue taxi service for the day). I met my Voc-Rehab contact person there. True to his doubting view if me, he certainly hadn't expected my appearance amid a blizzard, and I think that my being there (for lack of a better term) fucked with him. It seemed to me that, throughout the meeting, he was actively pursuing any possible avenue for (a) proclaiming stratified demarcations between us, and (b) creating dissonance within me.
    The friendly and warm-hearted gentleman with whom we met did indeed provide me with some insights, but they were retreads of prior insights. (It's difficult to project confidence when rejection becomes so routine.) I didn't have the heart to evaporate, but I couldn't see any reason why I shouldn't have done just that. As my contact person gave me a ride home, white-knuckling and scared stiff by road conditions, he was probably wondering about what had been gained by way of this exercise in "I told you so" hubris. Meanwhile, I sat in the passenger seat, thinking about how spite can motivate people in ways that they'd never foreseen.

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  7. Addenda
    by Benb Gallaher
    We'll be going to California on Sunday morning to see my lovely parents; it's such a welcome departure that we don't even give a care about the fact that it's Orange County, a Bubble Encrusted in Denial and Asphalt—in fact, we'll be too busy not dying from the daily diddling of January in Maine to even notice, really.
    Which brings me to the collective fact of other things: I have all sorts of piddly and/or substantial matter that I wish to share on this blog (including poems/"mix tapes"/proposals/conceptual apparatus)—yet I lack, in advance, the requisite fortitude to create Actual Blog Entries. So here is what I suggest:
    * When I can, I will write comments in the "comments" section, which you all should also be doing. I'll "get the ball rolling," so to speak, with a prototype before long.
    * When some mass has been attained or obtained or sustained, I will append those ideas expressed to this here (not that there) post.
    * If something special and/or/exciting happens, or if we run out of room, I will make a new post altogether.
    Thank you all very much for paying any kind of mind to this and/or me; I am grateful and humbled. Love, Benb xoxoxoxo
    January 14, 2011 11:31 AM
    Car seats. (What do cars eat?)
    It has been suggested that one of the reasons for surging rates of childhood obesity is that parents wish to hasten the process of their child's reaching the weight requirements to sit in their OWN seats (without penalty to the parents), finally permitting them to discard their awful, monstrous, plastic carseat contraptions.
    In Maine, the threshold for freedom is 80 pounds—upon hearing that, Molly said to me, "I weighed 80 pounds as a sophomore."
    Funny that people get so uptight about all this, and no one should ever endanger their children if it is at all avoidable. Then explain school buses—thin metal, no seat belts or temperature control, variously enfeebled operators... but at home they have to sit in a harness when they go anywhere.
    So, we strap 'em in, but what happens if we drive into a pond or lake? There's no emergency release button.
    Desmond is slender, and I think about all of the expense (time, money, frustration) that we could spare if we put rolls of quarters into his pockets. But we don't have that kind of money.

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  8. Anonymous2:58:00 AM

    if you had all your verbal gems minted, you'd be a vocablillionaire.

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  9. January 23, 2011

    4:30 PM
    where y'all comments at? does anyone else think that, when we get to the airport, we should sign a release form, get into huge smocks, and get knocked the expletive out until we arrive at our destination? the airlines would save a fortune! we'd live to overripe old ages!

    4:49 PM
    If possession is nine-tenths of the law, and "possession" is a 10-letter word, then could it stand to reason that 'possessio' is nine-tenths of possession'?

    January 24, 2011

    4:10 PM
    Julia said: I for two would love the idea of getting into a slanket, being given my knock out drops, and waking up refreshed and halfway round the world, it seeming that no time had elapsed.Better than downing all the free booze pronto and spending the flight passed out on the restroom floor.

    5:19 PM
    Benb responds: That's assuming that the restroom floor will contain you. It rarely happens thus; consider all of the people whose lives are irrevocably altered (almost exclusively for the worse) by obstreperous behavior while aloft. Tedious rockstars (like the once-worthwhile peter buck, the always-worthwhile viv prince, and the never- worthwhile jim morrison) have had this problem with some regularity, but in a nine-twelve world, everyone's always wrong. So knock us out, onetime. Please.

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