Monthly Archives: June 2013

Another true story

Last week I got caught in the rain coming out of work. I didn’t want to get soaked, so I ducked into a bar and sat down to order a drink. It was still somewhat early in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to get drunk right away, but the rain didn’t let up, and I could only nurse my pint of beer for so long. I ordered another. By the third glass I couldn’t really make sense of my magazine anymore so I put it away and took a look around.

The bar was basically empty, save the half dozen or so people that were already well on their way before I stepped foot inside. Outside the sky was black and the streets were empty. I would have thought there’d be more of a crowd, especially considering the rain. I mean, that’s what drove me inside. But everyone else must have made a beeline to the subway. Maybe they all knew something I didn’t. Maybe the rain wasn’t ever going to let up.

I considered taking out my iPhone to do one of those weather checks, but the same inability to focus on my magazine made finding the right app similarly difficult. I put my phone away and thought about a next move. Should I go? The rain was coming down harder than ever. There was a little puddle of water accumulating by the entrance, seeping in through the crack under the front door. I figured, well, I’m already three, four drinks in. This night’s basically over already. I might as well ride it out here. No sense in getting unnecessarily soaked.

“I’ll take another beer,” I had to grab the bartender’s attention because, like I said, the place was all but empty, and he was busy watching the TV at the other end of the bar. “I don’t think this rain’s ever going to stop.”

Who said that? Was it the bartender? He had his back to me, filling up a clean glass. “Yeah it’s coming down pretty hard,” I responded, staring straight ahead.

“Rain like this, it makes you think about all sorts of dark stuff, about life, about the end of the world.”

It wasn’t the bartender. It was this old guy three stools down from me. I hadn’t even considered his presence until now. I had this feeling, I always get this feeling when I’m by myself and someone starts talking to me, someone I don’t know, it’s like a wall goes up, like come on man, leave me alone, I don’t feel like having an interaction right now.

But I’ve had this reaction for so long, so automatically, that a lot of the time I can recognize it as just that, a reaction. And so I get it, that wall, and I make a choice whether or not I want to get past it. I looked toward my magazine, as incomprehensible as it was ten minutes ago. My phone only had like twenty percent of its battery left.

Sure, why not, I’ll indulge this old timer in a little conversation.

“What do you mean?” I asked him, even though I knew exactly what he meant, “It’s got to rain some time. We need it, right?”

And he didn’t look at me, he didn’t look up from his drink, whatever it was he was drinking, a rocks glass, probably whiskey, he started in on this speech, I wondered if he was ever really talking to me in the first place, or maybe he was just talking to talk, to himself, to nobody.

“I know you can’t tell to look at me as I am now, but I used to be a productive member of society. A doctor. A physician.”

I didn’t know if I should reply or not. Really. What kind of doctor? Something like that. But he wasn’t looking up and I didn’t really feel like I had to say anything. He went on.

“One day a young man came into my office. He was complaining about his leg. Apparently he fell off his bike and worried that he might have broken something. He could still walk, not really a walk, but a hobble, he hopped into my office, he couldn’t put any weight on it. I said, all right, let’s get some x-rays and see if we can’t see what’s the matter. We sent him to radiography and twenty minutes or so later I had the results. I couldn’t make sense of them. I wondered, is the machine acting up? Did the technician make some sort of a mistake? Because nothing was where it should have been. Everything was wrong, off. And I looked closer, I looked at his leg, at his bad leg, and I tried comparing it to his good leg. The good leg, well, it looked like a leg, they both looked like legs, like my leg or your leg, but on the inside … I don’t know. The bad leg, something was definitely off.

“And even though I couldn’t figure out what was going on, I could make out right under his thigh what I though was an unusual looking growth. Was it some sort of cancer? Could this explain what was wrong on a more systematic level with his whole body? I had no idea, but I figured I might as well send him in for a biopsy.

“Well, you wouldn’t believe it, but that growth wasn’t a growth at all. It was a little capsule. The young man was just as alarmed as I was, but I didn’t want to scare him any further, so I sat up a little straighter and pretended to act like this was all within the realm of my expertise. I looked the capsule over in my hand and … and I don’t know exactly what I did to activate it, but the top opened up, like a little cigar case. Inside was a tiny scroll of paper, it was a hand-written note. It read:

If you are reading this note, you’ve realized by now that this young man is not a young man at all; rather, he is a highly sophisticated robot. I built him years ago to take care of my day-to-day work so that I might have more time to pursue my scientific experiments while at the same time saving a couple of hours each day for some necessary leisure activities. If this robot is in any way damaged, please look under the other leg for detailed schematics on how to fix him. Whatever you do, I urge you not to let him know that he’s a robot. I’m not sure if his positronic brain would be able to handle the shock.

“And that’s when I stopped. I had been reading that note out loud, and just as I got to the end, I could tell something was happening. It was like he was having a seizure. He twitched around for a little bit before collapsing. My nurse and I tried everything, but we couldn’t revive him. It was over. He was dead.”

The bartender wasn’t paying any attention and the old guy hadn’t looked up from his drink. I settled up, apparently I’d had six drinks, not four, and I wondered if there were any buy-backs I also didn’t know about. “Hey man, I’m sorry about that whole robot thing,” I said to the old guy as I got up to leave. I was out the door, the rain was just as heavy as it was an hour ago, one of those rains where, without an umbrella, I was soaked to the core within a minute.

Six kids and one Nintendo

Growing up it was always this battle to play video games, to get some quality time with the Nintendo without one of my brothers or sisters spoiling my fun. I’m the oldest of six, we’re all really close in age, it wasn’t like I was in charge of the Nintendo, and so everybody wanted to play. We had one TV, one console, and they were shared property.

There was really only one rule that governed our video game play, and that was the principle of mutually assured destruction. Regardless of who happened to be using the Nintendo, if one of us started complaining to my mom or dad, the result was always as swift as it was consistent: “That’s it. Turn off the TV. Turn off the Nintendo.”

And if I was playing, I’d maybe start in on a defense, like, “But mom! Come on! I was playing first! I had the controller! I was playing a one-player game! Come on mom! That’s not fair! Mo-om! Come on!”

I’m talking here as if I was the victim. More than likely I was the one who got bored, decided to see what was going on in the living room, I’d find one of my brothers playing some video game, and just because of the fact that I was a huge asshole, I’d start being a jerk. “Move over, we’re playing two player.”

It was a cheap move, yeah, but that was the system by which we self-governed our Nintendo use. The rule was, as laid down by our parents, if you want to play Nintendo, and someone else wants to play Nintendo, then move over and play something that’s two-player, because it’s not your Nintendo, and if you resist, if you have to get mom and dad involved, that’s going to be the end of it.

My mom would be like, “Look, if you kids are going to fight about the Nintendo, nobody’s going to play. You want to keep fighting? I’ll throw that Nintendo in the trash. You want to try me?”

That always shut any of us up. Because even though I kind of doubted my parents’ willingness to trash something that they bought, a piece of electronics that they spent over a hundred dollars for, I never wanted to take the chance. There was always this story that my dad told about how when he was a little kid, one time he and his brothers and sisters, had so annoyed my grandmother that she cut the chord to the TV with a pair of scissors.

I mean, no, I was never really afraid that the TV would get trashed. Take away the Nintendo, maybe, but no TV? That would have been hell for my mom, having us all cooped up inside the house, no Saved By the Bell to keep us somewhat quiet.

Because that’s what we did, we watched TV and played Nintendo. We had several games, we’d get them for Christmas or, sometimes at the end of the school year we’d be surprised with a new one. I remember when I convinced my mom to buy us The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was awesome. For months I had read in Nintendo Power magazine about all of the different dungeons that I’d have to explore, all of the various weaponry at my disposal.

This Zelda game though, it was a double-edged sword. As a one-player game, one that I really, really wanted to play, like all of the time, it meant that the rest of my brothers and sisters now wielded an inordinate amount of power over me. Any time I sat there playing Zelda, all one of them had to do was open his or her mouth and say loud enough for my mom to hear, “Hey Robbie, can I play?”

To make matters worse, this game came with only three save files. Granted, only three of us barely had the hand-eye coordination necessary to actually play this game, but try being a ten year old kid and attempting to explain this argument to your mom and dad. Halfway through the first sentence, I can already imagine my parents shaking their heads, saying to themselves, I knew we shouldn’t have bought that Zelda. Maybe there’s still time to return it for one of those baby educational Fisher-Price two-player games. We actually had one of those for regular Nintendo. It was the equivalent of Barney & Friends for video games.

And so yeah, I complain about never really getting much quality time alone with the Nintendo, but if I really take a look in the mirror, I know that it was mostly my own fault. I’m the oldest, and I had a hand in crafting the tactic of mutually assured destruction. I’d be doing something else, I’d get bored, and I’d walk into the TV room to find one of my brothers minding his own business playing a video game.

“All right,” I’d say with a shit-eating smile, “Let’s play two-player.” And if my brother started to object, I’d say in a really low voice, “Moo-oom.” Then we’d both be sitting there playing two-player Tetris, neither one of us really interested in falling bricks, but both of us too stubborn to leave the TV alone. So we’d sit like that for hours, every time I scored a line I’d do this overblown celebration, “Yes!” just to rub it in his face.

Man, I was such an asshole.

Eight to ten paragraphs

It’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty. I’ve been putting this off for as long as I could, and I don’t think I can put it off any longer. I mean, I could, but then I’d be bone-dry, totally out of blog posts. There’s almost nothing left. So I’ve got to get down to business. I’ve got to start writing, and I’m not going to stop writing until I’ve got a whole blog post here, something that, well, and I think I’ve said this like twelve times already, but something that, if you came into this room right now, you’d look at the computer, and you’d be too far away to actually read anything written on the screen, but you’d see the writing, you’d say to yourself, “Oh wow, Rob’s writing right now. And it looks pretty serious. I’ll come back later.”

And I’d see you coming in, in fact, I’d have made a big noise, maybe dropped a stack of books on the floor, with the intention of getting you to stand up, come into the room to see what the noise was all about, but, like I said last paragraph, you’d look at the computer screen, and look, I’m already two paragraphs deep here, how long would you stand there watching me write? Two, three more paragraphs? You’d be transfixed, you’d think, man, that’s a lot of typing. It looks even more serious that it looked before.

And, again, even though I’d be pretending to ignore you, standing there, muttering stuff to yourself about the seriousness at which I’m going about my business, I’d be more focused on you standing there watching me write than actually writing whatever it is I’m writing right now. Because, look at this, three paragraphs and I haven’t really gotten at anything yet. And so I don’t want you to ever really read any of this stuff, I just want you to look at it, to look at all of it, all of these words, day after day, just think of me toiling away here, say to yourself again, “How does he do it? Where does he get all of these words from?”

Because if you actually took the time to sit here and read this, you’d be like, what, he’s just going to keep writing about how many paragraphs he’s writing? It’s four by the way, so far, you know, hopefully I’ll have eight to ten by the time I’m done here. And again, if you do happen to be reading all of this, I apologize. Well, it’s only a half apology, really, because I’ve told you already, this is more like landscape writing. You know, like a landscape painting. You’re not going to get up close and examine each brushstroke, no, you take a few steps back, it’s a huge painting, this is a huge blog post, you look at it, you go, “Wow!” and then you move on to the next one.

And so, to start off this fifth paragraph of words here, I’d like to say that, if you’re looking for something a little more concise, well, there’s always Twitter. And please, feel free to follow me on Twitter. But again, I caution you, don’t take individual tweets as meant for individual consumption. More often than not, I’ll just start tweeting individual sentences, beefing up the tweet count, making it look like I’m super busy, it’s the same with my Facebook posts minus the whole character count limit you have to worry about on Twitter.

Just don’t even bother. Follow me on Twitter, but don’t read the tweets, because if you see a lone tweet having something to do with a sixth paragraph, it won’t make any sense, it’s out of context, you’re supposed to be reading them all together, and what I mean by that is, not really reading them at all, so you know, you can see the paragraph breaks, maybe I put like an image somewhere in there that I stole from Google Images. It’s about the whole.

Which is, I mean to say, that the whole isn’t about anything. Just … just look at it. That’s it. These blog posts are great for looking at. Like if you’re sitting in the living room with someone in your family, I don’t know, your husband or wife, and you don’t feel like listening to them or talking to them, just pull up one of these blog posts. You don’t have to read it, you just keep it on the screen. Whoever it is that’s sharing the room with you that you’re trying to ignore, they’ll see you, they might see this wall of text, they’ll think, wow, you’re really reading, huh. That’s a lot of reading to do. And they’ll respect that, you reading, they’ll see this, it’ll look serious, you’ll look serious, you won’t be bothered, feel free to stare off into space, get some thinking done. Seven paragraphs by the way. I could force it to eight, I know that I said eight earlier, I actually said eight to ten, but whatever, this is enough. Right? This looks serious enough. I don’t need to go any further, right?

I only eat cashews

I just love cashews. They’re definitely my favorite nuts. I’m at the point right now where, if I’m eating nuts, I’m eating cashews exclusively, without any exception. It’s not like I’m trying to be rude, like if I’m over someone’s house, and there’s a bowl of mixed nuts out, it’s not like I’m going to start picking through, sorting out all of the cashews for myself. No way, I wouldn’t touch any cashews that have been contaminated by sharing a bowl with inferior nuts. Besides, just because those particular cashews aren’t up to my exacting cashew standards, I realize that somebody else at the party might eat them, might have their own cashew epiphany. And that’s another person who’s going to be hooked on cashews. It’s good for cashews, it’s good for the industry, it’s good for me and my access to the finest cashews available.

They’re the Rolls Royce of nuts. I’ve actually found it impossible to ingest, let alone enjoy, any other type of nut. Like I said, I only eat cashews. I used to like almonds, sometimes, I’d always enjoy peanut butter. But not anymore. Now it’s only cashew butter. It gets a little difficult sometimes like if I’m at a restaurant, the chefs might try to throw in some other nuts in their recipes. I just tell every waiter or waitress that I’m deathly allergic to every nut except cashews. They might look at me funny, but they have to listen to me. It’s their job. It’s the law. And if I even so much as suspect the presence of a non-cashew nut, I’ll fake a seizure, I’ll throw some Alka-Seltzer in my mouth, make a whole scene, a big dramatic show.

Because, seriously, only cashews. One time I was on an overbooked airplane and, for some reason or another, I got bumped up to first class. “Sir,” the stewardess handed me a glass of champagne while all the other passengers were still fighting their way onto the plane, “Would you like a hot towel? A bowl of warm nuts?”

And I said, “Hot towel, yes. Warm nuts, what kind of nuts?”

She responded, “Why macadamia nuts of course,” this pompous grin, “only the best in first class.”

And I got pissed. “What?” I snapped at her, “You don’t have any cashews?”

“Cashews?” You know how people in the service industry always get immediately defensive when questioned, “No, only the macadamia …”

“Look, I don’t appreciate you not taking my needs seriously. Just get out of my face and don’t disturb me for the rest of the flight.”

Talk about incompetence. And whatever, I’m not totally unreasonable. I mean, if they don’t have cashews, they don’t have cashews. What I did not appreciate was this lady and the way she talked about her precious macadamia nuts. As if they’re even in the same league as the cashew. Please, macadamia nuts are bullshit. It’s these rich people that don’t even have any appreciation for a true nutty taste, they walk into the nut shop and start barking out, “Bring me the most expensive nuts! Now!”

Whatever, it’s actually a blessing in disguise, because that leaves more cashews for me. Do you realize what a jam I’d be in if cashews were as exclusive as the macadamia? Did you know that it takes one cashew tree about thirty-three years to make one cashew? It defies economies of scale. The only thing keeping my cupboards filled with cashews are the fact that there’s not as much demand as there should be.

Which is crazy because, like I said, cashews are an almost perfect food. Scratch the almost part. They are the perfect food. Every time I see a tree that’s not a cashew tree I think, damn, there’s a perfectly good spot where a cashew tree could be growing. Not some stupid oak or pine. I say we cut them all down, get rid of them, start a new ecosystem dominated by the mighty cashew.

I just took a little break and went down to the kitchen for some more cashews, and all of that talk about supply and demand got me a little nervous, like am I really using my day wisely? Isn’t there more I could be doing, going to the grocery store, stocking up on more cashews, just in case eventually prices raise and supplies dwindle? So I went to the grocery store and I was met with every cashew lover’s nightmare, a box of Mr. Peanut cashews.

Forget all about that tired argument, that peanuts are neither peas nor nuts. I don’t care. I find it reprehensible that a can of delicious cashews can be tarnished with the Mr. Peanut label. Who does Mr. Peanut think he is? Like cashews need help from a cartoon peanut to find their way into the hands of the consumer? And what about the processing, the packaging? Are these cashews handled at the same plant as other, lesser quality nuts?

I couldn’t. I can’t. So now I do this thing, every once in a while anyway, I’ll buy like a sheet of labels that I can print out at home. I make these homemade labels that say Mr. Cashew and every time I go to the grocery store I affix them over the Mr. Peanut labels. Not only that, but I copy the barcode for a real cashew-only cashew producer, so that way when anybody buys Mr. Peanut cashews, the store’s register rings it up as just cashews.

Some manager will be doing inventory weeks from now, he’ll be like, jeez, nobody’s buying Mr. Peanut anymore. We might as well stop ordering them altogether. And also, look at this, the independent cashew guy’s cashews are selling like crazy. It’s like, somehow we’re selling more cashews than we’re ordering in. Incredible!

And it’ll reach a tipping point eventually where hopefully Mr. Peanut goes out of business completely, where peanuts won’t even be grown or sold at all, and as the decades pass and peanuts and all other non-cashew nuts fall out of favor, humans will lose all abilities to digest them, we’ll all develop extreme allergies to peanuts, to tree nuts. Just not cashews. And we’ll look back at the history books and say, “People actually ate that poisonous garbage? Gross. Hey, pass me some cashews.”

Happy Father’s Day, Mitt Romney!

Happy Father’s Day, to everyone, well, not to everyone, just the dads. I’m thinking of one dad in particular, Mitt Romney. I wrote this way back in October, back when I was positive Mitt Romney was going to be elected President. My mind was racing, full of optimism, firm in the belief that America was about to be given back to the real Americans, finally, a real President.

And in my excitement I started writing all of these blog posts, getting way too ahead of myself. Like I wrote one for Christmas, Merry Christmas President Romney. And I wrote a bunch of other premature celebratory essays, congratulations on the best first hundred days of any American presidency, stuff like that. Most of them, well, I was too embarrassed by Romney’s loss, I figured, there’s no way I can put any of these online, I’ll look like a crazy person. So they all wound up in the trash.

But every once in a while I’ll wake up and I’ll be consumed by that awful feeling, radiating outward, from the core of my being. I remember, ugh, Romney didn’t win, we’re still all stuck with that fake President, jeez, the communist, I don’t even want to write his name down, maybe centuries from now we can all forget about him, he won’t leave any mark on history at all. And I get depressed and realize that the world is plunging into socialist hell, and the only thing that cheers me up is reading my old future President Romney blog posts.

Like this one, Happy Father’s Day Mitt Romney. The original title was, Happy Father’s Day, President Mitt Romney. It was all about Mitt, as President, he’d be like America’s father, and, as Americans, we’d all stop saying happy Father’s Day to our real fathers, and for one day only, we’d all get to pretend that Mitt Romney is our actual father.

And Mitt would go along with it also. He’d start this lottery every year, he’d pick one lucky American to be whisked away and dropped off at the White House. For that Father’s Day, the winner of this lottery would actually get to be Mitt Romney’s fifth son (or first daughter) for the whole day. I would win, and they’d print out a whole bunch of official government documents to make it really convincing. Like I’d get a new driver’s license that says, Rob Romney, and he’d hand it to me, President Mitt, and he’d give me the firmest handshake I’ve ever had and he’d say, “Welcome to the family, son.”

We’d head straight to the front lawn of the White House and there’d be all of Mitt’s other sons, they’d all be playing catch. One of them would call out to me, “Hey brother! Catch!” and he’d throw me a glove, a really nice one, it would be inscribed “Rob Romney’s Mitt”, and then Mitt would shout out, “Son! Head’s up!” and the Pres would toss me a wild fly ball. And I’d have to run, it would be a really close catch. Maybe I’d even have to dive, but I’d still catch it.

Huh, I’d think to myself, I would’ve thought Mitt Romney, seeing as how he’s raised five sons, maybe he’d be a little better at throwing pop-ups. But then he’d look at me with that crazy Romney smile, and I’d realize that he threw it like that on purpose, he made me reach down inside, run for that ball, dive for it. That’s the Romney way, doing things for yourself. And as that lesson dawned upon me, I’d look back at my new dad and he’d be laughing and smiling, “That’s right son!” he’d say, “You earned it! You earned that catch!”

Because being Mitt Romney’s sixth son won’t be easy. Nothing in life is. Nothing worth Romneying for, anyway. We’d spend the rest of the day laughing, we’d roughhouse a little, nothing too serious, just a bunch of knuckleheads, me, the President, my five new brothers, and we’d be causing a huge ruckus, laughing, giving each other noogies, and my new mom Mrs. Romney would be standing at the base of the stairs shouting, “Boys! Boys stop this at once!” before giving up, laughing at us, her boys, her seven boys having a wild time, and she’d say something like, “Oh boys!”

But Romney lost. And now he’ll never be my dad. Mitt, if you ever read this, I hope you have a great Father’s Day. If I ever gain access to a time machine, I promise to do everything in my power to try and alter the timeline so that you emerge victorious against the fascist. I love you – can I call you dad? Just right now? Just pretend? I love you dad. I’m sorry you’re not President. If all of the fathers in the world got together to elect a president of all fathers, a Father President, I’m almost positive you’d be elected, and not the other guy.