Strange Days Indeed

So I'm at the "Celebrate Mother Earth Festival" at the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery today. I'm sitting among the headstones, listening to a live rock band play a song called "Zombie Jesus". The lead singer is dressed in a goat costume. I turn around and a chicken is about to peck me. I shoo away the chicken, and then a strange woman sits down next to me and says "Haven't we met before?" Strange days indeed.

Open 'The Iron Box': Kindle Thriller

Michael Gates, author of The Word I'm Thinking Of, doesn't just write about ostrobogulous lexemes (weird words). He also writes short fiction, and one of his stories, "The Iron Box", is now available on Amazon Kindle. It's a noir thriller about two men on a treasure hunt in the Adirondacks wilderness who encounter a bizarre and dangerous adversary. Two short bonus stories are also included. So fire up your Kindle and download it today. You have nothing to lose but your sangfroid.

The Iron Box

Twitter Litter (by me)

The most famous living philosopher in contemporary America is apparently Shia LeBeouf.

If you say someone is "low man on the totem pole", is that offensive to Native Americans?

I need a new vacuum cleaner. Our old one sucks -- not! Any recommendations?

I have seen "The Interview". Don't tell any North Koreans.

Santa, send some negative ions down my chimney.

There's nothing I enjoy more than untangling strings of Xmas tree lights--except then finding that they don't light.

Odd request of the day: "Please vacuum the Christmas tree."

On my literary wish list: 'The Strange Library' by Murakami. That would be a good title for my entire book collection.

I've decided to name my coffee table "tsundoku", the Japanese word for a pile of unread books.

Talking to people at a loud party can be amusing. "We went to a tapas bar," he said. "You went to a topless bar??" I asked.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Pumpkins, pumpkins, everywhere I look these days. Not in my backyard though, despite the enormous -- I would even say monstrous -- pumpkin vine growing, winding, creeping back there. It's the result of dumping a decomposing pumpkin in the garden last year; obviously, the seeds liked our soil. Maybe it's too early for a crop though. Maybe the Great Pumpkin will visit us yet by Halloween. If so, I don't think I'll murder it (him?) with a knife in a misguided attempt to create a Brobdingnagian jack-o'-lantern. Let it be.

(photo by me)

Much Ado about NOTHING

There are so many people who have the same name as me. As I told a friend at work today, I think of them as my doppelgangers, although most of them don't look anything like me. I wonder how many of them have googled their names and stumbled across this blog. Sometimes I think I should start a club or online chat room just for people who have my name. I could ask them questions. Do we have anything else in common besides our name? Are we distantly related? Are any of them related to Bill the billionaire? Maybe we could even switch identities temporarily, just to see how each other lives. "What's in a name?" Shakespeare asked. I'd like to find out. But more than that, I'd like to have a unique, distinctive name.

TWITO is "the Opposite of Atrabilious!"

Here is one of my favorite reviews of my book on Amazon, by someone named "Grampy", who made a verified purchase (bless him!):

The Opposite of Atrabilious!

"The Word I'm Thinking Of" by Michael Gates is a foudroyant, often gelastic lexicography of polysyllabic perspicacity. I don't wish to obnubilate, nor do I want to be rebarbative, but "The Word I'm Thinking Of" will remedy your hebetudinous nescience, allowing you to be the sciolist your Mother always thought you should be.

Allow me to enucleate. Michael Gates is no blatherskite. Au contraire, Mon ami. Nor does he bloviate like a common blatteroon. And "The Word I'm Thinking Of" is neither gasconade nor glaikery. No longer will you feel threatened by an invidious, gormless gowk or peccant killcow. This luciferous tome will help you peregrinate from stultiloquence to puissance in short order.

Do not think I am ultracrepidarian, or spouting ugsome tushery. Nor am I a mendacious makebate. If ataraxia is your goal, "The Word I'm Thinking Of" provides an anfractuous desideratum. I recommend it for your personal edification, or just for jocularity. Eschew obfuscation! Kthxbye.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Free Money

I looked down and there it was: a small, folded piece of green and gray paper on the sidewalk, with the number 20 printed on one corner. The Victorian font made it look like a twenty-dollar bill, but I doubted it. Probably a coupon or an advertisement for some 900-number phone-sex scam, I thought, picking it up (just in case). I unfolded it, and there he was: Andrew Jackson with his shock of wind-swept hair, looking more like a mad scientist than a 19th-century president. A real twenty -- or was it? I held it up to the sun, half expecting it to be counterfeit. The ghostly little hologram of Jackson's face appeared. Genuine. What luck! Right away, as I stuffed it into my pocket, I began to feel guilty. Who had dropped it? Probably some cash-strapped single mom with a squalling baby to feed. I thought about spending it, saving it, donating it to charity, or even dropping it. Surely someone more deserving than middle-class me would find it, someone who regularly stooped to pick up all the lost pennies I was too lazy to retrieve from the sidewalk. Before I could decide, I arrived back home from my walk. Ambivalence, my old enemy, had triumphed again. Only this time I was $20 richer in defeat. For now, the improbable bill resides in my wallet, in my back pocket. I'm sitting on it, warming it, thinking about it, but I'll probably forget about it sooner or later. And it will disappear, like all the others, into some merchant's cash register. Easy go.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Irked. I never get as much done as I want on the weekend. It didn't help that today is Cinco de Mayo, and I got caught up in the celebration.

Cheered. At least I finally got my damn book published today. The literary world can now breathe a happy sigh of relief. Details to come.

Befuddled. I was riding the PATH train today, when some people with small children got on. I wondered if I should get up and let one of them sit down, but there were a few empty seats in the car, so I decided they must want to stand for some reason. I got off at the next stop, and one of them promptly sat down in the seat I had just vacated. Only to make me feel like a jerk?

Reluctant. The landline keeps ringing every evening lately, but I don't answer it. There's a mayoral election coming up in about 10 days, and I know it's either a robo-call or someone claiming to be taking a poll. Generally speaking, a landline call is never a welcome interruption.

Perplexed. It must really be spring now; I'm confused about what to wear. It was sunny but coolish, so today I wore a short-sleeved polo shirt under a jacket. Cognitive dissonance.

Head Rattle

I.I saw The Place Beyond the Pines, and thought it an excellent film. I couldn't figure out the title though, since I didn't see any pines in the movie -- just lots of deciduous trees. Then I later stumbled across the meaning: the film takes place in (and was shot in) Schenectady, New York, and "Schenectady" is a Indian word meaning "place beyond the pines". My brother and nephews live in nearby Scotia, New York, which is also where some of it was filmed. I'll have to ask them how things are in the place beyond the pines and see if they know what I'm talking about.

II.I actually used the word "onerous" in a conversation today, without thinking about it. I was speaking with someone about my familiarity with and ability to use British spelling, so she wouldn't have to worry about it if it was too onerous. "Well, maybe we'll send you some Scottish and see how you do with that," she said, jokingly. At least I hope it was a joke. Ho ye! Whit's fur ye'll no go past ye.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Ambivalent; I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about iPhone 6 rumors. Ho hum.

Rankled by the continuing presence of a "Johnny on the Spot" in front of the construction site next door. I have never seen anyone use it. Why can't they make the first thing they construct in the building a rest room?

Disconcerted by the heavy police presence at the train station I use. Clearly, it's considered a potential target.

Distrustful of various politicians suddenly taking a pseudo-interest in me. There's a local election looming next month.

Sheepish about tripping and falling in public recently.

Gratified by finally getting a break, late in the game.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Take a sad song: 'Hey Jude' reworked in a minor scale.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Nostalgic. The last few weekends, I've been trekking to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to visit a relative who's in rehab at Phoenix House on 74th Street. I haven't been up there in ages, and it reminds me of a past life when I used to spend a lot of time in that neighborhood. They're mostly bad memories, but those can be the most poignant.

Elitist. I went to a birthday party for a three-legged cat last night. How many people in the world can say that?

Frustrated. It's taking forever to get this damn book of mine finished. I keep finding little things I want to tweak, especially in the way the pages are laid out. Even in this futuristic era of DIY, print on demand, and e-publishing -- it's still a bitch to pump a book out, even a short (170-page) one.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Warm. Rode home on the train tonight with an acquaintance who was returning from today's Presidential Inauguration. He gushed about how inspiring it was, and I was jealous -- for about a minute. Then I thought about standing outdoors in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd -- in 30-degree (-1 C) weather -- for five hours. There's always YouTube.

Shell-shocked. I live in a semi-detached townhouse, and the house next door, the one I'm attached to, is being renovated. It sounds like I'm sharing a wall with a bowling alley or a bumper-car ride. The workmen have also stationed an attractive Porta Potty out front.

Puzzled. Some people on LinkedIn -- ones I don't work with -- are "endorsing" me for skills I've never used for them (something anyone can do with just a click on LinkedIn these days). Gosh, thanks, but I'm wondering who they've been talking to about me.

Messy desk, messy mind? No.

Ten years ago today (give or take a day or two), I posted this:

"If you're a 'knowledge worker' feeling guilty about all the clutter on your desk, you can stop now. Psychologists say the 'mess' actually constitutes a useful 'mental map' of what's going on in that busy little head of yours. At least that's what this article claims:

In praise of clutter"

The article is still online and still interesting.

My cubicle at work isn't overly cluttered, but it does contain a few idiosyncratic items (besides my laptop and big-screen monitor):

• A wind up robot toy
• An old-fashioned green-glass insulator from a telephone pole, used as a paperweight
• A tiny Lucite house with an attached roach clip that holds up a spiky seed pod
• A stack of cards with quirky statements on them (such as "Anonymous: Nobody knows my name" and "Cake Walk") that an artist gave me
• Three very small framed artworks: an abstract; a picture of dark clouds (or possibly flying saucers?) hovering over a landscape; a stylized picture of a male figure being inundated with electronic zig-zags
• A mousepad that looks like a Persian carpet, which I inherited from a former employee
• A vintage 1913 postcard that says "Greetings from Newark"

So that's my mental map... just so you don't get lost.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Labor

I thought I was on my way home from a simple errand. We were in the car when my wyfe got a text from a friend, a young woman who was moving from one apartment in our neighborhood to another, via U-Haul. "I'm all packed and ready to go," the text said. "Can you help unload?"

My wyfe read the text to me and gave me "the look." What was I supposed to say? No?

A few minutes later I found myself standing inside a truck staring at a small mountain of cardboard and plastic boxes, and various pieces of mismatched furniture. Just when I thought I was going to be emptying this truck myself, several more of the woman's friends showed up. Salvation.

When it comes to moving stuff, gender roles revert, more or less of necessity, to stereotype: The males started unloading boxes, bureaus and bookcases, and lugging them up the stairs to the second-floor walk-up apartment; the females supervised and arranged the "chowder" at the top of the stairs. (I discovered during my own move several years ago that professional movers refer to boxes and such as "chowder".) They also ordered pizza for when this ordeal was over -- yes, moving someone's home, no matter how small, is always an ordeal.

So, I got a slice of pizza, a beer, some party talk, and a sore back out of this little episode.

That how my Labor Day weekend went -- my manual Labor Day weekend.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Accomplished. I'm on a "staycation", so I spent part of the day today doing yardwork. For a while, I was amputating weeds around the apple tree out back with some hand clippers, but a huge green bug starting buzzing around me, so I decided to postpone that and pick up the weed whacker. A couple of hours later, I had denuded not only the weed colony in the backyard, but the grasslands sprouting in front of the abandoned house next door. Chop, chop. I'm mean to the green.

Self-conscious. Copyediting a 140-page book that you wrote yourself is a somewhat different experience from editing the words of others. It's a little like watching yourself in a video -- you cringe. But the difference is that you can still do something about all of your little imperfections.

Mystified. My car key has disappeared. (I have to use my wyfe's.) So has one of my crucial USB cables. Could it have something to do with the micro black holes that scientists have theorized about?... People I don't know keep sending me friend requests on Facebook. We don't even have any friends in common. (I wouldn't mind friending them if they would explain what the connection is -- maybe they read this blog? -- and why they want to be "friends". But they don't.)... What's the deal with my neighbors, a couple of senior citizens who sit on their front porch all day every day and stare at me whenever I walk down the street? Don't they have a TV? Have they heard of the internets?

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Annoyed. It irritates me that I keep seeing dates written as (for example) "635 A.D." Don't people know what "A.D." stands for? It's an abbeviation for anno domini, Latin for "in the year of our Lord". So of course it should be "A.D. 635". Just because a bunch of ignoramuses persist in treating it like "B.C." doesn't mean that it should be allowed into "common usage". I'm talking to you, Wikipedia. As for me, I prefer the secular designations CE (common era) and BCE (before the common era). Let's leave Jeebus Holy Crisco out of it.

Stretched. Writing a book is both satisfying and time consuming -- even if the "writing" is mostly a matter of assembling a lot of previously composed material. I want to work on it all the time, but life keeps getting in the way. So I work on it little by little. Accretion. Exactly the way it was all written. It's the same with the book I'm reading now: Macbeth, the recent highly praised novelization, not Shakespeare's spooky tragedy (also highly praised and previously read). I'd just as soon read it straight through, but I am forced to ingest it in fits and starts -- 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, often in some sort of conveyance. It will all happen, though. Fate.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Root Words

Today was my root canal ordeal, Part I. One of my back teeth, in which, according to Dr. _____, "the nerve has died", was power-drilled and "cleaned out". It actually wasn't painful, since most of my mouth, if not dead, at least felt that way thanks to the miracle of Novocaine or whatever endodontists use these days. The most disturbing thing was the high-pitched whine of the drill and the odd smell of my own pulverized tooth enamel. I have to go back for Part II in about a week so the tooth can be "filled up" with solder or concrete or something. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to take three Advils and two Tylenols every three hours and an antibiotic four times a day. So I'm not feeling any pain here. It's like I'm on the over-the-counter answer to morphine. Wheee....

I love how dentists like to fill up your mouth with apparatus and then start asking you questions, forcing you to grunt like a taciturn Neanderthal. This one, it turns out, is a fan of the company I work for and its products. I run into them in the strangest situations.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Hawaiian Shirt Day

Friday at work was "Hawaiian Shirt Day" -- the theme for the weekly Friday afternoon beer blast. Shocker: I happen to own a Hawaiian shirt. That's because I was once invited to a friend's mid-winter "beach" party and so went out and bought a cheap, very loud one with a hibiscus and palm tree pattern. That was the only time I ever wore it, I swear.

I took it with me to work in my backpack on Friday, rather than wearing it, because I suspected that everyone would chicken out -- and I didn't want to be the only one wearing an asshole shirt at work. To my surprise, however, quite a few guys showed up wearing tropical togs. (Women don't seem to own Hawaiian shirts, probably because they have better taste.)

So, at lunch time, after some prodding from co-workers, I changed into it. It felt weird doing work while dressed like a character from Miami Vice or Hawaii Five-O. It probably seemed even weirder to people who weren't similarly attired. As our producer, Scott "Sugar" B., said, "It's Hawaiian shirt day at the office and it looks like I'm surrounded by assassins who are trying to blend in."

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Strange. These unstructured holiday and vacation days of the last week have left me feeling relaxed but slightly unreal.

"Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television."
--Andy Warhol

I feel like Warhol at the moment, like I'm watching the world on TV. Tomorrow: back to work, back to the reality show. Changing the channel. And probably feeling very differently.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Hangover Haiku

A silver season
lingers in trinket-strewn rooms.
All questions unwrapped.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Mantle Piece

The contents of the mantlepiece in my living room (left to right):

A fishbowl containing a piece of coral and a porcelain fish, and no water; a stack of small, 1960s-era souvenir glass ashtrays from Los Angeles and Las Vegas (once owned by my wyfe's late aunt); a pine nut; a Michael Jackson doll (from the Thriller days) wearing a red uniform jacket and a white glove and lying flat on his back; a 3D wooden snowflake; a photograph of our fireplace (yes--on top of the fireplace); a small metal replica of the Eiffel Tower; a tiny metal replica of the Space Needle; a tin Lucky Strikes cigarette case containing various ID and membership cards from the 1940s through 1960s that belonged to my wyfe's late aunt and her ex-husband; another stack of souvenir glass ashtrays (we don't smoke) from various California and Nevada motels and casinos; a painted seashell; a small Hello Kitty candle; and two glass paperweights, one containing a yellowed photograph of a fancy hotel and the other a photo of an unknown, sad-faced woman (1920s era?) with a curlicue of hair in the middle of her forehead.

Sometimes I think a semiotician could have a field day with this place.

~~~

Meanwhile....

The 3 Rs by David Lynch