A Renewed Post

This is an old post.

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’être, 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?)

Oh, hold up.

(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.

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 an error so 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-mile?" I insisted with diminishing confidence and icicled eyebrows that it was?

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 went into the chapel to study, while I went to the testing room in the church's fluorescent-lit 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 sample question correctly. And I wasn't making any kind of statement other than, "Oh my effing WORD" by default. Everybody present 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. Oh is the new zero—Join Mensa today!

Which brings us to the sadistic climatic tomfoolery of yesterday.)

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 inscrutable wont toward placing 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 of me, he certainly hadn't expected my appearance amid a blizzard, and I think that my being there (for lack of a better term) effed 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.

Feb 18, 2011

11:58 PM 

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

Feb 19, 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'?

4:50 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 often-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.

Going on with Our Bad Selves

hi there short post today oh look and free of punctuates
but worry not for i will deploy them shortly

!@#$%R^Y&*(.?"? pretend it's a swear word.

Anywise, it's life in Brunswick, M to the E.

Weather people apparatus creatures said, for at least the fourth time this week, that it's set to snow today, but they lie.We are that person's sniveling consituency.

I think that I am numb from having fried my suspense nerves (suspenders?) without resolution this week in terms of the job. It's still infinitely possible.

Everybody in the family is ill with this admirably persistent nettlefest of a cold. The boys, who refer to mucus as "oogum boogums"  (in deference to that excellent Brenton Wood song; maybe I'll attach it to this post and have a listen now, just to remind me of what I should never forget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLXvMb5bYHE

Now I'm All Serious

Humans need to have some work done on their stupefying human brains.

Here in Brunswick, Maine, we are out of oil, with perhaps a thimbleful remaining.

Anyhow, I've just adjusted the thermostat upwards by 20% to 60°, so that my wife and children don’t feel like they’re hostages on an involuntary sojourn to a distinctly frostful hinterland. It’ll definitely drain what remains in our tank, which had been relatively plentiful prior to a polar yestereve. But, consequences be damned, say I, when it comes to my family knowing at least a semblance of comfort in their shared slumber. I’m staying awake in preparation of the emergency-refill call that I know that I’ll have to place sooner than later, even though I’ve no means of paying for a delivery (due to a succession of foibles that is keeping the money that I’ve earned at arm’s length). People say that compensation is forthcoming, and I hope that it is.

Granted, the party (where’s the party?) line is that a person should lie in the bed that they made, which is perfectly aligned with the puritanical and punitive notions that founded this intermittently great land. “Serve the heavens with your deprivation.”

This is all well and good, but why do we live in a country that appears to be allergic to alternatives, even as it is ruled by profiteering? It is actually, legitimately preposterous. To fill our oil tank would cost—and this is no joke—$974.00! Without the $50 in fees that we’d be obliged to pay. Per month, at this rate. How on earth can a person afford that in addition to everything else? There is assistance available, but Governor Paul LePage has decided to cut the amount by 70% so that he can provide tax cuts for wealthy people. He says that this spurs job creation, but it does no such thing. What is does do is let people be cold. We won’t freeze to death (I am, as I've stated before, famously exothermic), but there are heaps of impoverished people in the middle of nowhere. Many of them are ancient and proud, and what will become of them in all of this? What will happen? We’ll have a sudden onslaught of AARPsicles, that’s what.

Research into alternative heating has proven to be a fruitless enterprise; a summer visit from a Solar-Power consultant confirmed that a switch away from oil is, more or less, cost-prohibitive ($20,000) for people like us; we could finance it, and there are (rather piddly) tax credits, but they don’t outweigh a bleak employment and income scenario, and they won’t defray initial costs to any appreciable extent. So, in this very nasty meanwhile, we have to continue to “shell” out for heat, which mandates that we’ll accrue no savings.

And this is how the Great, Big “Them” works. I don’t think that it was ever really possible for me to appreciate before this cardboard-salad sector of my life, just what a joke the notion of class mobility is for most people. I would not be writing this post had I not been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis during my final semester of graduate school, only to be shunned on multiple occasions by Social Security and others like them when I sought assistance regarding my disabilities.

It happens to people all the time—gradually, momentum is lost, and you’re suddenly embalmed in the formaldehyde of class rigidity. It’s assumed that you have nothing to contribute, or that you’re cognitively incapable, or that you’re unable to manage adult life. The people that think thus, and strive to impress that upon you so that your limitations are bandied about constantly, don’t see the OTHER, more pernicious, set of limitations—borne of the fact that this culture is fueled by judgment and hierarchy, and that that's the default that every one of us is beholden to examining. 

With a chronic and (supposedly) terminal disease like MS, it’s so often the case that nobody believes in any chance of your improvement, but they’ll placate you when you talk about it by refraining from yawning when you speak. But then, when you are experiencing wellness, expectations of you are frightfully unrealistic, like your health is a bank account that you MUST empty whenever possible—usually by way of exposing yourself to the same stress-filled nonsense that begot this whole cycle in the first place.

And now, there are my wonderful, wonderful children and my stunningly excellent wife, who is my best-ever friend. They’re so, so important to me. And, truly, the love that we have for each other serves as a barometer for a life that is lived harmoniously with my self. That is precisely why all of this tedium has got to, and (I hereby declare) is going to, STOP.

Sell See Us

Brunswick, Maine.

Last Saturday of January.

Sunny, lithely approaching 5°C.

The metric system is good practice for us. It scares most Americans. I will lay it down here to be simple about it.

Water freezes. Water boils. Both of these things happen at certain temperatures.

Take the temperature range between freezing and boiling.

Divide that space between into 100 pieces—for the sake of this post, they’ll be known as degrees.

Freezing is 0°. Boiling is 100°. Consider that 50° (the midpoint, if you will, between boiling and freezing) is scarcely borne by most humans (it’s 122° Fahrenheit). I’ll “chart” it up to that in increments of 5° for anyone that cares, along with some moralistic proclamation of little-or-less repute:

0°C                              32°F                Freezing. Many objects/subjects are frozen solid, especially objects/subjects that were solid beforehand. Water turns to ice, which had been water beforehand. This is not right. Nobody can pretend anymore once freezing occurs; even if you like ice, it must be acknowledged that you can’t do things without clothes without problems.

5°C                              41°F                Cold enough to curse yourself and others, but pretty survivable, if you don’t get wet. Some people are really into this. They are not right. (This is the temperature threshold for refrigeration, by the way. Please refrain from carrying anyone over this threshold.)

10°C                            50°F                Warm enough for the people to be jubilant in winter, yet cool enough for parents on a camping trip to want to hurl themselves off of elevated surfaces in despair. They’re both right.

15°C                            59°F                Mild and pretty merciful. This is also a tropical paradise for people ensconced by the hostile-indeed elements. Yet it’s not a panacea—if it were accompanied by precipitation, then it would be most unpleasant. You’d swear it as divine retribution for some illusory trespass, but bystanders would suggest that you were wallowing a bit. They would be right.

20°C                            68°F                “Room temperature” is a misnomer whose use is sufficiently frequent as to enjoy near-unanimous recognition in our sad little lives. A room can be any temperature when a bunch of whateverness is pumped into it. It is not right.

25°C                            77°F                This is possibly the only neighborhood of temperatures that can boast having universality of appeal. No one complains—even in New England, where that’s kind of their “thing.” Instead, they complain about the past (it’s over) or the future (it’s endless). Everyone is right, but everything remains wrong.

30°C                            86°F                Transcribing these values just now, I swooned in my idealization of this beatific temperature. On a day of this temperature, if you really want to do so, you can listen closely for the unconvincing mutterings/utterances from elderly gadfly types; it is crucial to remember, however, that they're continuing to live only out of spite. Or you can mutter your own utterance. It's only right and natural.

35°C                            95°F                This satisfies existing thermal criteria for hot. It does not have to be unpleasant, either—I used to drive a little Geo Metro, and on days where conditions were thus, I’d get into my car, roll up the windows (if they’d been opened), start the car, activate the heater at full intensity, and sit there. That was right before my diagnosis.

40°C                            104°F              I have always referred to this as “riot weather,” because unrest is fomented in all living things, and it can get very nasty. This is a real swelter. I’m not even enjoying writing to you about it in my blog; I’ve caught myself holding my breath and tensing my shoulders. It couldn’t possibly be right.

45°C                            113°F              Does anybody actually like this kind of heat? As a species, we can generally handle 40° (104°F) before things go awry with our bodies. After that, we lose the right to make rational choices, like the heat has flagrantly usurped Power of Attorney, but worse, because your brain is cooking inside your head. Basically, by now it behooves us not to think of ourselves as living creatures per se, but to adjust our expectations of ourselves and each other.

50°C                            122°F              Previously discussed.

No Fun Intended

The vicissitudes of January in Maine bother the heck out of me. I will admit, however reluctantly, that I am grateful to be living on this frigid overcast unday, but just because my vocally espousing the alternative (i.e., not living) would abnegate all of the specific goodnesses, general greatness and so forth of this milieu, but today is like a hackneyed quip at which there is a perceived obligation to respond pleasantly, even though such denial is incrementally lethal.

This post was going to comprise bits that I'd begun but was too exhausted to complete, but no.

Instead, I'll talk about something else, in the hopes that it will improve my altogether-turdly disposition.

Ready? I bet you are.

I'm gonna write a book. (You don't have to read it or anything.)

"What kind of book?" is a rhetorical question that I refuse answer until the sentence that follows this sentence.

It'll be an encyclopædia that contains "facts" and "opinions" (including theories).

The subject? Popular music, because current studies indicate that popularity is sexier than intercourse itself.

Aaaannnd…because a claim of objectivity, like a clumsy generalization, is itself a recipe for betrayal on its own terms (never trust anything that identifies itself as "true" or "accurate," because I could broadcast the "fact" that I would bite myself if I were a dog, and the audience would have NO BASIS for dissension), there can be a caveat in the book's opening pages about the urgent importance of metaphor to describe "untranslatable" sentiments, events, trends, ad nauseam.


I posted an entry just now, for nobody's benefit, but then I removed it, for nobody's benefit. And I badly want to conclude this post, but first I'll tell you about young Desmond's new family of not-exactly-visible friends. What I find most thrilling about them is, I'll admit, a bit shallow. I will leave you with their names, preceded by household-member "type":

The Churches

Father: Sushi Church

Mother: Berkland Church

Child: Trash Night Church

Oh, how I swoon.

I Am Ebbing (Hear Me Ebb)

What is it a Whensday oh gee

I got my MRI results! No bad news equals good news. Good news equals jubilation!

Yet, I tire. I'm sure that we're in unrealistic proximity to the North Pole.

What to do? All sorts of people have all sorts of smug gratification upon seeing our struggles, and that is of no use whatsoever to me. This whole time, I've actually intended to solve conundrums rather than inciting them. I've tried, and I've failed, to exist happily with my family in Maine, and I've got to be honest about that failure.

Maybe this is what it's like to start up a cornershop that sees no activity whatsoever. Produce goes bad, freezers leak, the weather extinguishes tourist season, and everything that happens feel portentous. You (probably do not) know what I mean.

In twenty years, Maine should be warm enough to guarantee us eternal comfort if we get to that point without irreversible misadventure. But it's an ever-safer bet within this ever-deafening crescendo of urgency that we should just go and be someplace else.

Hey! I'll tack something onto this that's somewhat life-affirming soon.

Correctifications

See, I didn't even realize yesterday that I'd posted this exceptional program (programme, for you Anglotypes) as a separate blog entry—I thought that it was part of "Watch and Observe." So, that should tell you something, but likely doesn't.

Nonetheless, when I awakened at 1:30 in the morning, haunted by heartbreak, I began to reflect upon everything in my life that I've done incorrectly. And this post came to mind. Its original title was "Molly F, filmed this masterpiece," but I'd intended that as a descriptive sentence. Then I saw that I'd already posted a link in "Watch and Observe," and I realized that I had created a miniature golf course from a molehill. I still have very little idea of how blogging works, but that's more than I can say for before now.

Watch and Observe

I have allowed my slothful typing skills to deter my posting to this blog. Also, the fact that my computer is captive to a nearby computer-repair store. But, it is no longer a single shit that I give about any of that.  

How does a person curry favor with the cosmos? I'm speaking in terms of climate. This winter, a brutal and surreal creature, has fragmented us, kinda. We're still very much ourselves and everything, but that's just such an unsettled milieu. In order to like winter, I think that we'd have to sacrifice all of the parts of ourselves that are unique and beautiful at the altar of some allegorical Voldemort. Our disdain for cold just means that we should fucking move. (It's not as if anyone would issue sincere protestation.) I tire of being jubilant when the weather doesn't punish me. I prefer nice things and nice people, and I really couldn't care less about what that makes me.

Sakes alive, have I ever digressed! The true identity of this posting is positive indeed, and I will prove it.

I HAVE WORK! Yes! Writing and editing and omg! From home!

WE HAVE OIL! It's mindblowing and miraculous. Molly and I have resolved already not to repeat this humiliating hand-to-mouth next year, by way of situating ourselves in a considerably milder place.

DESMOND AND IVOR ARE AWESOME!  Caught on tape, for all to enjoy, is their cooking program. It's posted on here somewheres via that link. As my beyond-awesome mother says, "Watch and observe."

http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/mrfyfitz/February%20Love/?action=view&current=SAM_8069.mp4

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."

Declining (in order) to Explain

2/5/2011, 4:25 PM

Ha!


February says that. It awakens me daily.

Mother Nature has undertaken a convincing portrayal of a redneck at a sports bar after his team loses and he discovers that an anonymous party has done something damaging to his truck.

I refer to myself unreservedly as "a fairweather friend." I'm very sad that I live in such a cold place. Isn't there some kind of natural law that at least suggests a need for the relationship between organism and environment to be free of adversarial attrition? As we await a winter deposit of all-too-typically colossal magnitude, it brings me dismay that people have evolved at all. I am sadder still that tenets of our evolution as a species essentially sanction delusion. People should just... I don't know. Only one force can abet my navigating this mock-polar grumpiness with anything approaching success. Whatever Man.


I'm sorry that I haven't been blogging, but I haven't been able to pony up the $255 to retrieve my computer. My apologies. I hope that everybody is well. Love, Benb xoxoxoxoxoxo

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

Don't Joke

12/15/2010, 11:45 AM

I realize that, of late, I have shared precious little in terms of ideas, but the holiday season has ensnared me, and I am forever a fool for it.

At the moment, Molly and I are vacillating regarding the evolving quandary over which aspects of holiday-era things to observe and recognize. It is (in general) getting colder, and people are progressively erratic - both sentimental and temperamental, while more a few of them are "tired and emotional" with ever-stiffer holiday cocktails. There's inappropriate matter in pockets the world over (e.g., the Netherlands with Santa's dwarf slave, "Black Pete"). The chromatic palette of the West shrinks to absurd, near-complementary combinations. I wonder what sense there is to be made. And, furthermore, whether we stand any chance at making it.

I already know that we won't be going to Wal-Mart, which is as close as possible to a foregone conclusion. It needs saying that I am relieved not to see those grotesque inflatable Wal-Mart ornaments adorning the yards of otherwise-taciturn townsfolk. I have never endorsed vandalism or destruction of property that isn't mine, but never have I felt such temptation to poke anything with a pin. So there's none of that. We live right in the center of a smallish downtown that's positively effing abuzz and wreathy and fancypants everything so as to render reverie an inescapable fact. Like a beautiful ball to which nobody is ever invited.

Will we honor Winter Solstice instead? I mean, it happens to everybody, and any reasonable person could make a reasonable case for: (a) the calendar flushing a toilet on itself; (b) indulging hibernatory instincts; and/or (c) lowering the bar for what "good" feels like.

My own favorite way to approach it is to act like we're all stuck in a meat locker and don't know when (or, indeed, if) we'll ever get out. This explains it all: the inordinate weirdness and the encroaching sense of urgency and the anomalously feverish compulsions for consumption and conviviality. Not to mention the pop-culture fixation upon babies being born in barns, as if having been conceived immaculately weren't enough for all involved. And being given myrrh and frankincense from "wise" men like it's somehow helpful on a frigid night. That's just what we'll be doing in that meat locker - praying for myrrh.

But, what about Santa Claus? We've not gone to specified lengths in any specific direction regarding Santa, although we remain on friendly terms. We figure that Desmond will absorb that which he wishes to absorb, because the holidays are so much about celebrating that we have each other that the iconography is moot.

Last week, while Desmond and I were out on a tiny grocery shopping expedition (we try to make our jaunts tiny ones because people everywhere have this type of rabies that makes them impetuous and flagrant), we saw Santa standing atop a construction lift in the middle of the train station that is being built in Brunswick (Maine Street Station, about 500 feet from our house). Despite the dubious legitimacy of his wearing cop-style sunglasses, we went to him, he ho-ho-hoed at us, and Desmond had his photograph taken with him. Desmond told him about the various things that Brunswick, Maine has to offer ("Over there is the Brunswick Explorer bus. It goes around Brunswick on weekdays."), inquired as to the whereabouts of Santa's cadre of reindeer (he reported, not very imaginatively, that they were "eating lunch"), and demonstrated his extant talent for finding topics of conversation that leave most grown-ups (myself included) eating his damn dust. And if he thinks for a second that he's not being taken seriously, then he'll tell you straight up, in a voice whose grave intensity matches his unwavering glare:

"DON'T JOKE."