Alright Already

excuses reasons

excuse this reasoned excuse

Sorry about that hiatus. I didn't mean to do that.

Okay, well—we live in a town called Brunswick, Maine. Everybody must know this by now. We've been in Maine for 5.3 lonely years, and we'd like to change all of that soon. As we shovel from yesterday's wintry deposit, we're preparing for tonight's installment. I've grown somewhat bitter about all, albeit in a wholesome and jesty way (e.g, people that like it here are referred to now as Snow Humpers.)

How did we get here? Why, maybe? Well, we really didn't see ourselves as having anywhere else to go, and I'll write more about that disastrous chapter someday soon.

We made a decision in August of 2008 to purchase a home, just before everything in the area collapsed economically. I had left my stable position at a Crisis-Stabilization Unit for other work (which appeared at that time to be both lucrative and abundantly forthcoming). Most important was that the house was smack in the middle of a village. A flaaaaaat village. With all amenities in near-obnoxious proximity. This would enable us to perform various errands without suffering beholden to the vagaries of vehicles, which was (and remains) truly amazing (Molly has never been [and doesn't want to be] licensed to drive; I have all of those health problems that, legally speaking, should preclude my driving [but really, any moron could be like

"E. 

F P. 

T O Z. 

L P E D." 

when given a vision test]). I do declare. 

At any rate, here's our house (even though it looks like a lengthy link):

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=17+everett+st.+brunswick,+me+04011-2403&layer=c&sll=43.913113,-69.965974&cbp=13,161.93,,0,0.03&cbll=43.913278,-69.966052&hl=en&sspn=0.006295,0.006295&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=17+Everett+St,+Brunswick,+Cumberland,+Maine+04011&ll=43.913267,-69.966066&spn=0.004498,0.009645&t=h&z=17&iwloc=A&panoid=Cv3SUbzhBj2lRNm86GQodw

Due to the continual good graces of loved ones, we have managed to eke something approaching survival out of the swirling completeness of atrophy entropy dystrophy that's about as much a part of our dayafterday as Nitrogen is of air. We're poor, and have largely been just hanging on, and that is no secret. Corners are cut (if not ignored) wherever possible, and I pray that my continued diligence in finding viable work will lead to more-promising pastures (this has already begun to happen, but I'll probably address that later). Every expense for us has been a source of discomfort. Abysmal and/or dismal, truly—I could very easily go on and on about how this doesn't feel like actual life and what's the point anyhow, but I'd much rather not do that, especially when there are such good stories to share, and especially when impecunity dovetails so neatly into the first of them:

Because of our propitious in-town location, I've seen fit to forgo the $1-per-bag weekly trash service pickup, discarding our refuse instead in nearby municipal and/or commercial facilities. I justify the questionable ethics by stating indignantly that it's a quality-of-life issue for all involved. (Actually, it's just poverty.) This was a veritable boon for some time (years, actually), saving us untold dozens of dollars that we could splurge flagrantly on utilities. To wit, it's a rather popular strategy, judging by the mongrel assortment of bags and items in said dumpster. (To everyone's credit, cardboard is separated from other waste and deposited into a different bin.)

Then, two Sundays ago, a police car pulled into our driveway for unknown reasons. My first thought was that it regarded the family's vehicle. I have a car, purchased quite inexpensively from a wonderful and generous friend whom we've yet to pay (it's been over a year, but we're awaiting our tax returns), whose registration (not in my name) is 5-months expired (and whose certificate met a Desmond-oriented demise at some point early last year), and whose inspection lapsed last spring. (At least I have insurance.) So, I thought that I would justly be taken away and flogged or what have you. But this occasion was altogether different.

COP: Benjamin... Gallagher?

ME: Gallaher, yes. That's me.

COP: This is 17 Everett Street?

ME: Yes it is.

COP: And Molly FitzGerald—where is she?

ME: Oh, she's with our baby at the moment; can I help you?

COP (produces crumpled-up household bills): Well, Rite Aid wants you to have these back. Have you been dumping your trash into Rite Aid's dumpster?

ME: Only sometimes. I like to spice it up a bit. Being right downtown, I figured that it was all okay. Nowhere is it posted that that dumpster is Rite-Aid property!

COP: Sir, that's considered to be Theft of Services, and it's a crime.

ME: Really? Even trash that we create when we're walking around? Or diaper trash?

COP: Uh, you'd better use your own trash can. Just don't do this anymore.

I deserved this. Well, I actually deserved far worse. Anyhow, my family has not permitted me to forget this unglamorous incident (although, to be fair, it is pretty recent). In quieter moments (which are few), I have sometimes mused about which is more disturbing—the fact that they searched through small bags of post-toddler waste to find "the culprit," or the fact that I was sufficiently thoughtless to discard my bills thus.

None of this changes that it's haunted me since. I am asked to declare the presence of trash (to Molly) before walking anywhere. And Desmond, who's variously astounding, created a painting, which is not news. The painting, though, is a rendering of the dumpster behind Rite Aid:

Note the yellow toward the bottom of the painting. Evidently, it is text. That text serves to notify passersby: 

"Pops is not allowed to put diapers and trash into the Rite Aid trashcans."

New Age against the Machine

1/27/2011, 1:36 PM


I've chosen to stop cusping. It's been ages that something of outrageous substance and/or significance has been "just around the corner," like anybody ever specified which corner, and imminence bothers me, and the things that have done have only been muted by comparison to how they feel in the intractably amorphous alchemy whence they originate. Where have the wires frayed? Is there merely a shyness of signal? I have innumerable carcasses that were never bodies of any kind, and it's a good idea to stop gathering (dust? acorns? senses?).

So, I'm forcing my own hand, and love not knowing what that means or if that means anything. Where do I begin? I was gonna, and have attempted to, write about how dog breeders should be prosecuted (which is true--they're a bunch of profiteering pervs).

Or about how a way to reduce unemployment while solving a myriad of infrastructural crises au courant would be to build an extensive and thorough cross-country network of underground trains, all with subway stops that are each denoted by a Subway™ shop (they already have signage, restrooms, and cash registers). 

Also, I was gonna write about my ages-old wannabe contributions to the Lexicon of Millennial Youth, now that they're older and their innards are rotting just like everybody else's always have (the term chilling like pie filling is the only reasonable antidote to the hopeless moronity of of chillin' like a villain and/or the obscenely insipid chillin' like Bob Dylan). But I won't get into any of that.

Instead, I'm going to celebrate my wife's birthday. She's absolutely marvelous.

The Future Was Then

1/4/2011, 9:47 PM


Yikes. Sorry for my protracted and unexcused absence (inferring that it was notable, which is a mite presumptuous), but all of my fingers have been, and are currently, crossed about the possibility of having work. This makes a dreadful mess of typing; I am quite sure that you understand.


Welcome to 2011! This, my first post of this year, should tell you all that we are officially now living in a time to which I'd devoted no advance thought, at all. I mean, it was fun to speculate about the future when it was still the future, but my vision of life essentially ended around 2010—not because of death or anything, but because it became hazy and/or I grew sick of thinking about it. 


As a youngster, the future bored me in ways that I could never explain, despite that I knew a lot about explanations and how to make them. As I've seen it (and I love being wrongheaded), one of the more frustrating qualities intrinsic to having been born fairly recently (I was born in 1978) is that my personal experience is, to some degree at least, inextricable from zeitgeist and cultural memory that wields roughshod authority to trump the subjective textures of my experience.  (Like, "Hey—that's not what this horrid slab of Hollywood tripe says you were doing.") 


Romanticizing in retrospect is easier than Sunday morning to do, because borne of the aforementioned trumping is a failure to recognize that the evolution of situational dynamics since that point for which you're pining has irrevocably altered the context of your saudade. When I was 16, I went to a show by the Dog Faced Hermans. They were, at the time, one of my very favorite groups, and I knew that they would be disbanding after their tour. Their show was mesmerizing, I say now, and I suppose that my feelings were largely consistent with that at the time, but I had this gigantor canker sore in my mouth that hurt like absolute heck. Subjectivity.


As I stood there, I made it a point to always remember that sore, because I suspected that the outcome of something so trivial (yet pivotal) would bear some amount of retrospective influence. (One of the openers, Helios Creed [formerly of Chrome], will probably remember that show as the one during which an audience member fell asleep on the lip of the stage. [If you ever read this blog, Mr. Creed—I'm sorry. I have Narcolepsy, but nobody would've guessed it at the time.]) 


And perhaps it's always been that way/this way with memory and its inordinate elasticity, but when people begin (as they have) to self-identify by way of the media that they consume (or the things that they acquire), we're in for some lame-arsed vicarious nonsense in which very little is decipherable between people. The interval between an event and its imprint dwindles to the point at which we shit as we swallow. 


It seems that 2011 begins and ends more or less instantly, in accordance with news cycles and natural disasters that dare the collective disunion that is humanity to live at its pace. I'm too lumpy to consider trying, but I feel really good about that. So there, future—you'll have to make your way to my present.