tuesday, january 1, 2013

She emailed me a picture of a spider on her wall and asked me to identify it. I replied that its name was Frank, he's a Pisces, and perfectly harmless as long as she kept him away from the booze.

tuesday, december 14th 2010

I now take my coffee black. It's because I'm living in South America and I don't care for steamed milk. Half-and-half just isn't around. Perhaps I just don't know what it's called.

I'm on the veranda taking an unearned break from the light chores I've completed and avoiding the heavy lifting yet to be done. Murakami abets me in relegating job-hunting to the margins.

There's a cloudless, blue sky over Buenos Aires today. I am beginning to learn that the truly vicious days - the ones in which the humidity and the heat combine to wring my life's very essence from my body an oily drop at a time, multiplied by one hundred thousand individual pores - are the days in which the sky is mottled white, like the fat on rotting bacon. But today's sky is cheerful and the temperature is equally warm and inoffensive. My coffee reflects the sky. It is a sleek black and blue. Like Superman's hair.

wednesday, may 15, 2007

Dusk and mist soften the view from my apartment. Lighted windows glow gold and amber from the rectangles of buildings across the yard, across the street, across miles of city. They are like miniatures. I can reach up and move them around if I like. Tiny office workers would step dazedly from granite lobbies onto strange new plazas. Junkies would be shaken like ants from the sidewalk edges of buildings. Young mothers would comfort their strollered tots, bravely masking their own unsettling confusion. Pizza delivery drivers would circle strange new blocks, cursing under their breaths. Contemplative drunks in bars would remain unsuprised.

The Corporate Divorce

I found a paper clip on one of the copiers at Kinko's today.
I slipped it into my pocket.
Wanna know what you miss when you no longer work in an office? Office supplies. Who buys paper clips? Not me.
I will cling to this clip like a post-armageddon survivalist hoarding cans of spam.

What I Saw on the Street Today

This is what i saw on the street today: an old-fashioned tin lunch box, lying wide open, right there on the sidewalk near the curb. Tucked inside and gently, teasingly, ever-so-slightly spilling over the open top was the largest pile of shit i've ever seen. two thick logs. it was a bluebottle fly party. the reek followed me for about four or five paces. nonetheless i couldn't help but smile thinking of the effort someone took to put together such a parcel.

Spam Filter - Notes for the Do-It-Yourselfer

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.
Being between jobs right now, I've become adept at stretching the dollar. In that vein, an idea struck me that has helped flesh out my pantry on the cheap.
My spam filter had been overactive lately and I began to think, "what would this thing do for me beyond the confines of my computer?" So I hooked it up to my friend's air conditioner, as well as the filtration system in her apartment building's swimming pool. Checking back a couple days later - sure enough: trapped spam. Now I realize that my forthcoming advice will be lost on the vegetarians out there, but for the meat-eaters on budgets, read on about my experiences in turning what was ostensibly a pc security system into a modern day food-gatherer.

The pool spam filter was a lot more productive than the air filter, by about three-to-one. However, it is important to harvest pool spam frequently. Left too long, leaves and dead frogs can accumulate. A tasty salad to accompany the spam dinner? Perhaps, but this is for acquired tastes only.

Although new to me, a little research showed that the spam filter is only the latest tool to be employed in a long history of spam-gathering. Native Americans had been trapping spam in the wild for generations. As was their way, they would use every part of the spam, letting nothing go to waste. In fact, skilled spamherds could fashion their pelts into great coin purses. These would prove quite valuable centuries later when white men would introduce American Indians to "coins."

Sorry to say, though, that in the age of technology, spam collecting has become increasingly the domain of big agribusiness. The romantic notions of the wild spam hunts of yore, for the purposes of subsistence, have been relegated to the past. Today's factory farms employ much less humane methods in their soulless search for profits. In fact, almost from birth, young spamlets are raised inside rectangular tins where they spend the whole of their miserable lives. The upside is that spam filters are increasingly common and cheap these days. Put yours to work for you and don't throw your money at the heartless spam tycoons!

October 10, 2004: A Cat's Life

Each weekday at 7:25 I hear my next-door neighbor leave her apartment for work. This may well be the best part of my day. I roll over in bed, finding a more comfortable position among the pillows and sheets. The skies are invariably clear this time of year and morning sunlight streams in through the blinds. The remnants of dreams linger in the bedclothes, scurry into the corners, before dissipating into the blue sky. There is nowhere that I need to be. I'll reclaim those scraps of dreams that remain. My mind will breakfast on them while my body drifts away again.
I'll wake when I want to, and face each day fully restored.

This won't last. There are bills. There is rent. There is a resume I haven't yet set to work on. I'll savor these mornings while I can.