Sense Impressions

It occurred to me the other day that no sense is more
intimate and mystical than smell. When you smell
someone, you are actually taking a part of them inside
yourself invisibly through the air. You actually take
a part of someone inside yourself when you taste them,
too, but that's called cannibalism and doesn't have
the same mystique.

Smell evokes memory more completely than any other
sense as well. You could be 40 years old and catch a
whiff of Bubble Yum mixed with Chanel and instantly
think about the moment you entered puberty thanks to
your fifth grade teacher's way of writing on the
chalkboard ... even if you haven't thought about Ms.
Buttonschon in decades. Madre de Dios.

In my 13th summer, I used to slather my pits with Old
Spice and read Conan novels every day for three
months. So imagine my surprise when, at 18, my college
roommate decided to forego his shower and OD'd on the
OS. I ran into him in the hall and was suddenly
transported to a realm of high adventure. He's lucky
I didn't take his damn head off like that guy in the
Tower of the Elephant.

Everybody dies alone ...

...unless they die in a plane crash.

French fries with gravy

I am a bit of a foody. Which is too bad for me really since America is a vast wasteland of fast food, convenience products and God awful restaurants. Go into a diner or a cafe where the food SHOULD be good and reasonably fresh and you'll find yourself dining on canned veggies and watered down soups, pre-packaged fried chicken and sauce from a can. Why do people pay good money to eat this crap? Either you want to eat vegetables or you don't. He who wants to eat those veggies soggy and salty as hell from a can does not truly love veggies.

I'm not a snob about these things, mind you. I just know that Papa John's Pizza isn't the best pizza regardless of how fresh they say their toppings are. I've yet to see a tomato garden atop the strip mall where Papa John's makes these miracle pies that are supposed to put Pizza Hut and Dominoes to shame, so I'm just gonna assume their sauce is canned or frozen in a bag as well, OK? Unlike most Americans, I know when I'm getting something that "tastes funny" because it's fresh. Most Americans can't eat anything unless it's got high quality packaging and then they think it tastes good. Taco Bell is a great example. NOTHING at Taco Bell tastes better than the food at my local taco shack/burrito barn Alvarado's, yet I hear people with pedestrian palates shit on them all the time in favor of their usual run for the border. Fuck all that shit.

Most Americans eat fast food a hell of a lot more often than they admit. I see people who eat it daily, but if you asked them, they'd probably only admit to once or twice a week. Some of them are so used to eating the dead, stale crap fast food restaurants prepare that they get sick eating fresh food, which only reinforces their misguided interpretation that the fresh stuff is actually not "good food."

I don't anybody who doesn't know what a Big Mac is, but talk about the American classic fries with gravy, even to a waitress at a diner these days, and you get this look like you're a fucking foreigner who doesn't know any better. Time was, one could count on some local specialties, too, now you get the same jalapeño poppers and bloomin' onions from Maine to New Mexico. I'm from Iowa and I've never had a stuffed porkchop nor have I met anyone who even knows that that is supposed to be one of our signature dishes. We also make one of the finest bleu cheeses in the world, Maytag. But I can't get it in my local corporate mega store or catch a glimpse of recognition on the face of the dairy case manager when I ask about it.

Where are the hot beef sandwiches? The meatloaf dinners? The Texas toast? Where are the crab cakes? Where is the hand-cut, hand-breaded, pan-fried pork tenderloin of my youth? Biscuits and gravy? Hoe cakes? Natural casing wieners? Hand-pressed hamburger patties? How about a loaf of bread made from scratch, huh? When was the last time you saw one of those?

There's just no love in our grub any more and we should all consider that the next time we think about what dive restaurant we want to help keep open.

Objections are opportunites, but are opportunities objections?

Who comes up with these freaking sales aphorisms? They're all like some serious Zen for retards shit, man.""When a customer says 'no,' think 'know' as in 'I'd like to know more about what I just fucking told you I don't want to buy, asshole!'"

Anything that has to do with the making of money for the sake of profit is a sin. At least that's what the Bible says, so don't take it out on me if you disagree. Take it up with Jesus. Starving to death sucks, of course, as does going without cable TV and diet Mountain Dew. But the pursuit of profit just to accumulate ... that's a one-way ticket to Hell, my friend.

Upselling and other bullshit ways to make a living

Back in training today to get the corporate bung-holing on how to sell, sell, sell!

I hate selling. The only thing I hate more than selling are the people who love to sell. It takes a certain kind of genetic deviant to get off on hammering people who call in for tech support with "upsells."

Upselling is one of those bastardized corporate terms for getting someone who is already on the hook a little more on the hook. If they were already stupid enough to buy a cheeseburger from you, push the fries and drink. Every God damn time I go to get an oil change at Jiffy Lube now, they try to upsell me an air filter though my current one is barely dusty. I called them on it though. I told the kid if he honestly thought I needed a new air filter for $12, I would leave it entirely up to his conscience as to whether or not I got one. I turned the table a bit. He could have just taken the sale and been done with it, but I took away his ability to close me by imbuing him with the moral responsibility for the decision. He wasn't salesman enough to take it. But to be honest, had he actually tried to sell it to me, I probably would have told him to fuck off.

A boy's first three-way or "The Gyro Incident"

I thought the time had come for me to tell the tale
that every man wants to be able to share with his
fellow men at some point in his life, but rarely gets
to. I'm talking about the Threesome Story, of course.
It's a dream as old as Adam and Eve likely.

For most, it's just a dream that never comes close to
reality. For me, the dream was frighteningly real. I
was working at a cruddy telemarketing job with this
chick (whose name I cannot remember) who was also
working as a stripper. She was a former call girl and
a recovering crack addict to boot. She was not one of
those really hot strippers (or recovering crack
addicts for that matter) you see at the gentleman's
club. She was more like a daytime stripper with a few
miles on her. She seemed comfortable in her body,
which was, by most accounts, a bit chubby but
certainly not unattractive. Having someone like her
working with all those straight types though caused a
bit of a stir. I didn't blink though. I'd been hanging
out in a strip club for some time and didn't think of
strippers as weird and alien. I actually found her to
be an admirable and upright citizen. After all, how
many strippers hold down a day job as well?

One Friday, I had planned to pick up some train
tickets for a ride I was taking across Iowa the next
day. The station was in downtown Omaha and not far
from the strippers apartment. She took the bus to and
from work, an ordeal that lasted anywhere from 45
minutes to an hour. I thought she might like a 20
minute ride in my Chevy station wagon instead. We got
along well enough at work. We went to lunch one day
and she told me she was pregnant, so believe me when I
tell you I was being polite when I offered the ride. I
wasn't looking for a piece of the action.

The ride went smooth enough. I got my tickets, we
chatted politely about what it's like to smoke crack,
ride on a train, fuck strangers for money and how good
gyros are. When we got to her apartment, I had planned
on dropping her off then hitting my local game store,
grabbing a gyro and watching "The X-Files." The
stripper asked me if I'd like to come up and burn some
very good weed she had. I said sure.

So I go up to her apartment for the purpose. Her
roommate -- also a stripper -- was getting ready for
work. This meant putting on underwear I guess. My
co-worker said she had to get ready for work also so
it wasn't much of a surprise when she got a teddy on.
I did think that was a bit low rent for stripper gear,
but she was a low rent stripper. Her club was kind of
a piece of shit and the strippers mostly just waddled
around on stage, then waited tables between sets.

I told the stripper that if she was leaving for work
soon, I could take her. She said she didn't have to be
there for several hours. OK, I thought, as I cashed a
bowl, watched "Highlander" on TNT and thought about
the gyro I was about to have that was going to taste
better than any gyro I'd ever had before. And how.

"You can come in here if you want," she called from
the bedroom.
"That's OK," I said. "I can wait."

My buzz was pretty strong, but not so strong that the
ladies didn't seem tempting. I had just gotten so used
to not being thought of in that way that I didn't even
bother getting worked up or thinking about it too
hard. I'd sneak a peek and feel a bit like a pervert.
Meanwhile, the stripper ran to the living room window
in her underwear to look out the window because a
siren went off.

"What's that," she asked?
"I dunno," I said. And I didn't.

Her roommate was half naked too. I thought they were
pretty immodest. Eventually, I got bored with just
sitting around waiting for this chick to come out of
her bedroom with some clothes on.

"I better head out," I said. "I gotta go to bed if I'm
gonna catch that train tomorrow and I still need to
get that gyro."

From the doorway of their apartment they stood next to
each other looking at me in disbelief. I waved, got in
the elevator and went down to my car. Later, as I sat
eating my gyro watching Mulder and Scully, it suddenly
occurred to me what I'd just passed up.

"Dammit,'" I thought. I wondered if it was too late to
go back. What would I say? Would it make a difference?
Probably not.

It's just as well, I suppose. I'm not an orgy kind of
guy and these two were pretty wild. I would have
gotten to know what it was like to disappoint two
women at once ... at best. I'm realistic. Still, I got
closer than most men.

Tools, cameras, artists and which is which

The problem with photographers. I've worked with a
buttload of photographers. There is not one who
doesn't think of himself as a freakin' artist. What
I've come to appreciate about most of them is
that, in addition to being full of shit, they are just
equipment operators.

Here's how I tell the difference between and artist
using a tool and a tool using a camera. An equipment
operator is a guy who can point and shoot at pretty
images and take pretty pictures. He knows how to
adjust his shutter speed and all that shite. Most of
them know how to shoot like a machine gun and then
sort out the random good shots from the assorted crap.
Any monkey can shoot 100 pics in five minutes and come
up with one or two good ones. That's just luck. Any sack
can shoot a pretty girl and come back with a pretty picture.
Any hack can crop and adjust the color in photoshop and
call it his opus.

The artists distinguish themselves by two major
abilities. The first is they can actually find
beauty where others cannot. They can take a picture of
even an ugly person and come away with something that
makes you think, I bet that person has a story. The
second is that they can shoot slow, pick their moment,
compose the shot and then capture a moment in time
when the light and the action and the composition were
perfect. They don't need blind luck because they have
timing and skill.

Anyone can shoot sports if they know how to adjust for
the action and light then take the Gatling gun
approach to their subject. Walk into a cattle car
accident or a three bus/one car pile up with no more
than 27 frames and walk out with 25 options ... now that's a gift.
Take a candid shot of a fat man in a cowboy hat sitting at his
desk talking to a coworker that positively shines ... that takes an aritst.

Two names spring to mind, Tony Miceli, the guy who
shot me in the hat on the right of this blog, and Greg
White, my old buddy since junior high who once took a
picture of a chair in an alley in Italy with a black
and white disposable camera that just about made me
cry.

Everyone else can suck it.

Onan 360

The new XBOX 360 is due to come out soon. Every geek I
know is busy collecting orange Pepsi caps to sign up
for a chance to win on free. Frankly, I'm sick to
death of these God damn video games. When I was a kid,
a few quarters worth of Asteroids or Galaga was pretty
far out there. The home systems made it possible to
play video games at home whenever you wanted to, but
the quality was so low that you would've been pretty
hard pressed to spend hours and hours playing Robotron
or even Super Mario Bros.

I don't want to sound like an old fuck, but this new
generation of games and gamers is so intense, they're
frightening. I dig a good round of Soul Caliber II. I
even played Halo once. I've done Driver and some of
the Spiderman games. But any more, I'm bored in an
hour. What's more, I can't imagine being one of these
people who plays a game all night long, hour after
hour. My nephew's like that and it's just wrong. I
think his freewheelin' days of spacin' out in front of
the game console are over. He's had a PS1 and a PS2,
but if he thinks he's gettin' an XBOX or PSP from
anyone he knows, he better plan on disappointment. It
has become painfully obvious that no one wants to
encourage that behavior any more.

Personally, he should have never gotten a Gameboy or a
PS2. If I had had a say in it, he'd still be playing
PS1 games with the cavemen. As for me, I'll check out
the new systems and play a game or two, but I'll be
damned if I shell out the buck for them. Masturbation
just shouldn't cost that much, man.

Burn your game systems and pick up a freakin' book and
if you can't manage that, try sitting still and being quiet. That's
the video game system we played with before Pong and Atari 2600.

Of human bondage

I've always had a problem with authority. Not all
authority, just bullshit authority. You know the kind,
mall security guards, gym teachers, fast food
supervisors and pretty much anyone jumped up who
thinks their position exists to give them the
opportunity to take a great big shite down the neck of
everyone "beneath" them.

That's why I'm a big advocate of revolution. Not
necessarily on the scale of the American or French
Revolutions, but certainly of that genre. When in the
course of human events honest men find themselves
unable to pursue their interests honestly and without
fear, then dishonesty is their only option. Think
about it. Why should a man willing to work be punished
for his good intentions daily by the giants, and even
more often the worms, of corporatism?

The truth is we are all slaves, but we refuse to
believe it. A slave is someone who has no control over
their destiny. A slave is someone who has no choice
but to do what they are told no matter how
unreasonable. A slave comes and goes when he's told,
says what he's told to say, associates with those he's
told to associate with and punished, punished,
punished for his infractions.

Until we accept that we are slaves, stop kidding
ourselves that our Hondas, fast food choices and the
ability to quit if we don't like it make us free, we
always will be slaves.

Ain't that a bitch

That guy who sits next to me at work who worships Thor
went home early tonight. Apparently, his chemotherapy
is making him sick. Don't I feel like an asshole.
Don't get me wrong, Thor and and Odin are cool, but
that whole thing is still not a religion that any
modern man should practice with any kind of
seriousness. Still, I feel kind of bad that the dude
has cancer. If believing in Thor and Odin and that
whole bunch makes him feel better then why not? All I
know is that Jesus is never mad at us if we live with
him in our hearts.