Citizen of the Month

the writing and photography of Neil Kramer

Category: Life in General (Page 17 of 46)

Ozymandias and PB&J

August 11, 2009 / / 29 Comments

ozymandias

I’m not a particular religious or spiritual person, but I do notice connections between events, people, and ideas that lead me to believe that there is some unifying force, sort of a Six Degrees of Life.   I usually have no idea what the connections mean, if anything, but I get a calming sense in my body when things make sense in the world, and God isn’t just randomly throwing dice onto the Yahtzee board.

Like many of us, I have reconnected with some old schoolmates on Facebook.  Yesterday morning, I had a brief chat with a girl from elementary school.  Well, when I say “girl,” I still visualize her as one, still with pigtails, when she is really a married attorney with two children.  We joked about this poem we forced to memorize in sixth grade – Ozymandias by Percy Shelley.

“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

At the time, it seemed a completely useless exercise in rote learning.  None of us, at that age, had any idea what this boring poem meant, but we were required to stand, one at a time, like in one of those movies about some prep school in England, and recite it out loud.  I remember practicing this stupid poem in front of my mother for hours.

My schoolmate and I were surprised that we still remembered some of the lines, particularly the opening.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

In high school, I encountered this famous poem again in Mrs. Waters’ class.  Now I could better understood the meaning, even if I still didn’t care — about how even the mighty eventually fade into dust, with Ozymandias being another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt.

Yesterday, during lunch, I took a walk, still laughing about my early morning conversation with an old friend.   When I say “old friend,” I think I liked her a lot more than she liked me, and I used to doodle her name on the back of my notebook and she probably never thought about me, but that’s all in the past now.  I think.

Anyway, as I’m walking along Kissena Boulevard, I passed a parked car.  An couple in their late sixties were putting shopping bags into their trunk from the supermarket.   Hey — the woman was my former kindergarten teacher, now retired!  We chatted, and I told her that I had just spoken to another classmate who was in her class.  We talked about Facebook and email.  My former kindergarten teacher is learning more about the internet herself.

Here’s a photo I took (I know you see more of her chest than her face.  You can read WHATEVER you want into that)

kg

After my falafel lunch, I encountered some kids returning from private school.   I forgot!  It is mid-August.  It is time for school again for some kids!  I know different schools start earlier and later, depending on the state and whether it is public or private.    But here they were — friendly looking kids with their new notebooks and pencils.

Since I had just eaten lunch, I suddenly had memories of school lunches — of metal lunch boxes promoting  the hottest TV shows (the first example of branding — are there American Idol lunch boxes?  Top Chef?) and the atrocious hot lunches we were served in the school cafeteria, filled with mystery meat and served by what seemed like angry prison guards.  School lunch was a blast, because we were always making fun about the awful nutritional level of the meals, but enjoyed it anyway.

Like many of you, my mother packed a PB&J sandwich almost every day in my lunchbox.  It was the STANDARD.

pbj

When I returned to my computer after lunch, I went on Twitter, with school lunches dancing in my head.  I asked all the mothers online if they still are mostly giving their kids peanut and jelly sandwiches for lunch.  I was surprised by the response — a unanimous cry of “no” — showing how out of it I am regarding children.  While I certainly knew about peanut allergies in kids, I didn’t realize how rampant it is today in the states.  I thought it was McDonald’s just trying not to get sued by separating the peanuts from the ice cream sundae, as told to by their smart lawyers.  But apparently, peanut butter is banned from most schools, like an obscene book.  At first I joked about the extremism of “peanut haters,” but then a few parents told me of the horror stories of their kids just touching a peanut butter jar and getting dangerously sick.

I had no idea this was such a serious matter.  I wonder why peanut allergies have become so rampant nowadays?

But this post is not really about peanut allergies.  It is about connections.  I started the day talking with a classmate about the poem Ozymandias.  We joked about it, much like we did when we learned geometry.  Why do we need to learn this?  What relevance will it ever have in our lives?

Yesterday, it finally had some relevance.   Yesterday, I learned that the KING of school lunches, the PB&J, had fallen from his throne.  Like Ozymandias, Pharoahs, Presidents, Actors, Singers — all of us — never stay King forever…

Yesterday, was a day to connect random events to my school days.  I talked to an old classmate.  I met my old teacher.   And I remembered that school — or something more mysterious — had taught me to connect poetry to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

(This post is dedicated to Dana in honor of her birthday because she loves poetry. She writes at Read Write Poem and My Gorgeous Somewhere)

Silent Night

August 3, 2009 / / 22 Comments

When readers — even Sophia — write comments, saying they liked a post, it puts me in the difficult position of deciding what to do next.  I am familiar with the old Yiddish saying –  a man should never try to strike a hot coal twice, or the embers will burn his toes.

Since the last post was about words, I decided to be playful, and write a post about silence.  Aren’t I a clever fool?  Ha Ha Ha, I love blogging.  I can write any shit and at least one person will read it.

Silence.

This post idea had me laughing and laughing and laughing, amusing myself to no end, when it occurred to me that I was making a racket with my guffaws and wheezing (allergy season).  Could I even write a post about silence?

Writing about silence is not an easy task for someone like me.  I come from a long line of talky Jews.  I like the noisy city.  Urban life wraps me like a worn, but comfy blanket.   I do my best writing in crowded public locales where traffic is whizzing by, offbeat horns honking in cacophony.   A few years ago, I stayed a month in a small Vermont hamlet, populations mostly cows.  It was so quiet at night that it FREAKED me out!   Every night, I expected a bear, or serial killer, or monstrous cow to jump out at me from each shadow.  I felt naked in the silence.

Silence.  Page One.

I cleared the couch of random papers and iphone chargers, and stretched out, flat on my back.  My goal was to lie quietly, focusing on the nothingness around me, until I could hear the silence.

It was late at night, so there was little traffic outside.  I could hear a car or two pass by, and a police siren in the distance, probably near the liquor store, but Queens had settled in for the night.  I was alone at home.  The computer was off.  The television was off.  The radio was off.  Usually, when I come home, and I am alone, I flick on one of these electronic objects, just so I will have some company sent my way through the cables of Time Warner.

But now I was alone.  Really alone.  I tried to focus on the quiet, but there was a distraction.  There was a buzzing in the background.  I tried to ignore it, but I could not.  I decided to track it down.  I closed my eyes, using my ears as my compass, and felt my way to the sound.  I ended up in front the Kenmore refrigerator.  Of course.  Despite their advertising it as a “quiet cool” in Sears,  this huge appliance was the noisiest monolith in the apartment.

I unplugged the refrigerator.  Yes, I was so motivated to hear the silence, so loyal to my experiment, that I pushed past my comfort zone and took my food source off her respirator.  And this was not an empty refrigerator.  I had recently gone shopping, and it was bursting with food products — turkey slices, peanut butter, even some expensive Butter Pecan ice cream in the freezer!  I was risking it all for my writing.  I was Blogging with Integrity!

I returned to the living room couch and assumed my position.  I closed my eyes, and prepared for the silence.  Any moment, and I would be a Buddhist monk, a Zen Master, a Kabbalist, at one with the nothingness in the world.

But silence does not come easy.  The brain does not fucking stay quiet.

“The ice cream is melting!” said my nagging mind.  “The milk is getting sour.  What if the refrigerator doesn’t turn on again?  What kind of idiot turns off the refrigerator to listen to the silence?”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I screamed.  “I can’t hear the silence.”

But it was hopeless.  I gave a walk of shame into the kitchen, and re-plugged the refrigerator into the wall.  The familiar hum of the Kenmore returned and it relaxed me.   I never had noticed this sound before, but now I considered it a friend, as if we were neighbors gossiping in the kitchen.  I turned on the TV, radio, and computer, opened the window so I could better hear the distant traffic, took some Butter Pecan ice cream, still mostly frozen, and sat down to write this post.

The Baby Photo

July 21, 2009 / / 14 Comments

I hadn’t seen my cousin Ronald in quite in few years, since the last big family wedding.  Last weekend, he was doing a lecture on math at Columbia, and called me up.  I met him at a university parking structure.  We were going to take the #1 Train downtown to see a Broadway show.  As we walked together past Low Library, he handed me a baby photo of myself.  His mother had found it in her home in Connecticut and thought I might like it.  I had seen this photo before.  It was a typical baby photo — one your parents might take at the “photo studio” inside Macy’s.   My mother had the exact same photo in the house, but she had stored it in a cheap-o photo album back in the 1980’s (WITH SCOTCH TAPE!), and the photo had become ragged and yellow.

Ronald’s mother apparently knew how to store a photo.  My baby picture was pristine, mint condition, as if she had never opened the envelope my mother sent to her with the photo so many years ago.

“Here you go,” he said, as he put my baby picture in my hand.

Ron and I walked down the steps and into the hot and sticky subway.  The moment gave me pause.  For decades, my baby photo had survived the elements, locked away in some closet in suburban Connecticut.  Because of this hermetic life, I had remained a smiling, naive, innocent baby for years, only knowing my mother’s breast.   Now, here I was, like any great hero, being forced into a journey he was unprepared for — into the hot, dangerous hell of the 116th Street station.

What was I supposed to do with this photo?  I couldn’t just walk around, gripping it my hand the entire night, protecting it from muggers, theieves, and tourists.  I thought about giving it back to Ronald for safe protection, but one glance at his dishelved, math genius, academic exterior completely changed my mind.

“Where the hell is that Metro Pass I bought today?”  he said, as he fumbled into the pockets of his tan, way too short, Dockers.

I wish we had taken his car downtown and paid for a garage on Times Square.  I could have kept the photo in the glove compartment.  It was my dumb idea to take the subway.

I decided to put the photo in the wallet in my back pocket.

During the subway ride, we talked about family (and Twitter!), but I was distracted.  I was thinking about my baby photo in my wallet.  Sometimes, I get a business card and I stick it into my wallet.  Later on, when I go to look at it, the card is bent due to the pressure from my friendly behind.  Was my behind finally having it’s revenge for getting slapped at childbirth by creasing my pristine photo?  I opened my wallet.  Yes, it was.  As we departed the subway train, I noticed an indentation in the middle of the photo, and the cardboard stock had taken on an arc-shaped curve.

It is a cliche to say that a child grows up fast, but in one fifteen minute subway ride, my baby photo had gone from perfection to a lived in child, dirty from the playground.  Another cliche is that you can’t go home again.  I was hoping this little photo would be a connection to my perfect past – the time was anything and everything was possible, until the elements, such as being stuck and folded into a leather wallet from Target, roughed you up a bit.  But these days of innocence don’t last long when you leave the comforts of home.  My new photo, my perfect baby photo, had a crease.  And the night was not over yet.

We still had an hour before the show, so we stopped into a pizzeria for slices.  I placed the baby photo on the table, as far as way from the dripping spaghetti sauce as possible.  I placed a napkin over the photo and the salt and pepper shakers on top, hoping that the weight of the seasoning will increase the photo.  It didn’t work.  Even worse, as we left the restaurant, I noticed something sticky on the back of the photo.  Somehow, a piece of mozzarella cheese had adhered itself to the back of the photo.  I was able to peel it off, but it left a slight stain on the white back, where my mother had written the words “Neil.”  I considered this humiliation of the cheese on the photo the equivalent of my baby photo now entering junior high school, where no one leaves without scars.

And then it started to pour outside. A thunderstorm like in a horror movie.  I know this sounds fictional, but this is all true.  I put the photo in the chest pocket of my button-down shirt for safety.  I had brought an umbrella along with me because the forecast was for rain, but I had to share the umbrella with Ronald.  As I walked, trying to keep all three of us dry, I held my hand to my heart, like Napoleon, in a vain attempt to protect my “baby” from the dangers of the world.  I finally understood what it was like to be a parent, where you care more for the other than yourself, but in this case, the baby was ME, an image of purity from a day long gone.

It will be interesting going to BlogHer this weekend and meeting so many other bloggers.  Like many of us, I’ve probably presented an image of myself on this blog through the prism of my own mind.  We want others to see us in the best light.  We want to see ourselves in a certain way.  We remember how everyone doted on us as a perfect-looking baby, before we get all our creases, stains, and watermarks.  Perhaps we spend most of our lives trying to recapture that feeling.  Growing up is learning to love yourself despite these imperfections you picked up along the way.

Here is the baby photo.   It now has a crease, a stain, and a watermark.  But it is still me.

me

Chase Manhattan

July 15, 2009 / / 20 Comments

chase

I’m back in New York.    Wow.    Blank page.    Wait, I didn’t mean that as a metaphor for my life.   I meant an actual blank page that I am writing on.  You see, I’m not ready yet to write anything.   But a great man once said, “Just start writing something and the rest will flow.”  He was an asshole, but others accepted his thought as wisdom, so why not? — I am putting on my writer’s cloak, made in the finest shop in London, and will attempt to write something.

My lack of focus with this post is amusing because earlier today, I was on the phone with Amy about our storytelling session at BlogHer, discussing the agenda, particularly what makes a “good” story.  After typing out an outline about  the  fundamental, engraved-in-stone rules of an effective narrative, handed down by storytelling gurus from campfire to campfire, Irish bar to Irish bar, I now sit down and write this piece of crap, which follows none of the precepts of storytelling.  “Where is the drama?” I ask you.   Or you should be asking me.  You’re the dumb one reading this.

The drama is here, of course, but it is internal.   It is locked away in a safety deposit box, behind a steel gate, in the main branch of the Chase Manhattan of my mind.  You’ll notice how I just wrote, “Chase Manhattan.”  That bank is now gone.  It is now repackaged as “Chase,” and it is a conglomerate of several banks that went under during the past year.    Is there anyone who hasn’t had their bank change hands at least three times in the last ten years?

Even though the marketers have renamed the bank Chase, I still call it Chase Manhattan, because I am used to it, and I am stubborn.  It is comforting to grab onto something from the past and keep it from leaving your consciousness, even if it is a struggle at times, like the tugging of the rope to prevents a colorful hot air balloon from taking off from you backyard, while travelers are inside the basket, hoping to make a journey over the Napa Valley, cursing at you and throwing apples and baguettes from their picnic baskets at your head for delaying their trip, thinking you the most selfish individual in the universe.

You want, you need, to keep the status quo, your history, from flying away.  You yearn for it so badly that you ignore the pain, the feeling of the muscles in your biceps ripping apart as you reach for an unobtainable victory in this one-sided  tug-of-war with the elements.  The future is pushing forward, the balloon is taking off, the heat and fire are burning you scalp, but you want one more taste of the past, a cookie that your mother baked, some comfort food.

Chase Manhattan may be long gone, but fuck it; you’re still going to use the old name, just to be spiteful.  Screw you, name changing bitches and harlots of the world.  And you know what, suckers? — even after Pic-N-Save became Big Lots, I still called it Pic-N-Save.  Until this day, I still say Pic-N-Save, whenever I go into the store to buy cheap energy saving light bulbs to brighten my office with off-color light, stubbornly holding onto a disappearing world like the elderly Brooklyn Dodger fan still blabbing about Ebbets Field.  I hate the name Big Lots.  It sounds repulsive.    Like huge pieces of shit.  “I just made a couple of big lots!”  What kind of name is that for a store?  Pic-N-Save was pure elegance!

I know I am sounding like a grouch, but I don’t care.  At some point, every man has to stomp his sneaker onto the ground and say, that’s enough.  Some things are not going to change, and if they are for everyone else, I will just follow my own army into battle, even if it is a useless, bloody war.

But don’t worry about me.  All of my emotions are locked up in the safe in Chase Manhattan.  I’m mellow as yellow, well-read and well-fed.    These dangerous feelings, unsteady emotions with no place to go, will not come out like a stumbling, hungry Yeti to bother you.  They are in a box, behind a metal gate.

Because I Know

July 9, 2009 / / 46 Comments

I’m getting a real kick from reading tweets and blog posts about BlogHer.  So many women are anxious about the conference!   Women are worrying about looking fat.   Women worrying about being ignored.   Women worrying about cliques.   Women worrying about standing by themselves while everyone else squeals with joy and dances in a conga line.

What a relief.    I don’t have to worry AT ALL.   I’ve been blogging for almost five years.   I know tons of people in this personal blogging arena.   I am a man at a woman’s conference.   People like me.   They like my blog.   I have been invited to parties.   My biggest problem will be finding the time to talk to all the bloggers who seem to think I am the cat’s meow!    I am feeling so confident and sexy about this event that I laugh at the anxiety at the others.   How silly you are!   What worrywarts!   It’s a stupid blogging conference.   Grow up.

But the laugh is a nervous one.   Because I know.

God help me if I was a blogging newbie.   A Mack truck could not drag me to a blogging conference.   I wouldn’t know what to do there.   I would either bite my tongue or chatter endlessly like my mother does when she gets nervous.   I would latch onto one person and spend the whole weekend talking to that person.    Or, more likely, I would retire to my room early and watch TV.   I would then mock you as a bunch of assholes.

Over the years, I have wimped out of attending many real-life parties and events out of fear of being exposed as unimportant or a loser or not successful enough.   I didn’t go to my high school prom. I was afraid of asking the girl.    I didn’t go to a networking event just LAST WEEK because I was insecure about meeting someone from school who just got a big movie deal.   I am not a brave person.

Of course, I do not want to show you that part of my personality.  I want you to think of me as confident.   And — I’m excited about going to Chicago.   Things will be different there.   Beautiful women, popular women, extremely intelligent women all want to meet ME!   Some newbie is going to ask a friend, “Who is that?” and her friend is going to answer, “That’s Neilochka! I would go say hello to him but he probably doesn’t want to talk to someone like me when Redneck Mommy is practically bowing at his feet like a Canadian Geisha girl.”

I am looking forward to that.

BlogHer is going to be a breeze for me.   Blogging has been good for me because it lets me write my way into your consciousness, allowing me to use my creativity to get into your pants.   This assertive part of me is becoming more and more a part of my real life, but change is slow.    I’d still rather chat on Twitter than go to a bar by myself.

I have never been to an event before where I will be known by so many people — even before I walk into the room.   While I won’t exactly be Tom Hanks of the blogging world, I will at least be the Richard Simmons of the blogosphere, known by name by at least 168 people.   It does not require any bravery on my part to attend BlogHer.   I am way more impressed by the new blogger who walks into this viper’s den without knowing one single person.   You are a better man (or woman) than me.

Good luck to you nervous newbie! Maybe we will get to talk together.   Maybe not.   But I will tell you one thing.   If I see you standing by yourself, biting your nails, drinking a beer and making believe you are enjoying yourself when you aren’t, I suggest that you… well, I don’t know what to suggest.   Do something crazy?   Expose yourself?   Throw a drink in someone’s face?   Whatever.   I know that I won’t be looking down on you and your anxiety.

Because I know.

Words Cannot

June 19, 2009 / / 35 Comments

Words cannot capture the energy I feel around me, all the time.

But I do not believe in those things. I cannot. I am a skeptic. I do not believe in ghosts or talking to the dead. I do not believe in astrology. Psychics are frauds, as are county fair hypnosists. No one loses control and starts squawking like a chicken within five minutes time. I will not squawk like a chicken for you. I am controlled and logical and organized, like my writing.

A memory. I am drinking my first bottle of Coke. I am ten. I have only had Coke in an aluminum can or in a paper cup from the pizza joint. A Cuban woman gives me a Coke in a bottle. It is so cold and the glass bottle feels so adult in my tiny hands, and I gulp it down like a beer, like a man, and I enjoy that carbonation burn in my throat. I want to have that sensation again. That time of youthful pleasure before I retreated behind the safety of words, of abstractions.

I’d much rather play my guitar for you, than write. If only I could. I would be on stage, the quiet light beaming onto my face, and I could finally be myself, floating on waves of melody, free of the rules of stern, bespectacled English grammar. Words are like stale bread, or an old man in a wheelchair waiting for the silence. Music can kiss you on the lips or fuck you.

Words cannot capture the energy I feel around me, all the time.

Thinking About Money

June 8, 2009 / / 8 Comments

bofa
Is it that bad for Bank of America?!  (actually a bank in a Los Angeles supermarket)

With friends and family members getting laid off and the economy growing sour, I think a lot more about money lately, and how important it is to have a decent amount of this precious commodity if you want to live a certain lifestyle  (like LIVING IN an apartment in New York or LA).

My trip to Las Vegas last week was enough to remind me what it is like to stay at hotels, eat and drink well, go to expensive shows, and have to pay for it!  Even BlogHer will end up costing a $1000 dollars, right?  How do some of you afford to go to a different online conference every other week?

I used to make fun of your constant advertising and pimping, but maybe you are the smart ones.  Your main priority is to your family and self.  What’s the point of doing anything if it isn’t helping you get front row seats to Cirque de Soleil?

Of course, I’m not sure I believe any of this — that’s the problem — or else I wouldn’t have to write this here making believe I do.  I have a habit of writing things I don’t believe in an effort to force myself to accept it, as if I repeat it over and over, I will hypnotise myself into submission.

Color

June 5, 2009 / / 24 Comments

My life was forever changed when I met you.  The color of my world changed from black to white, and all was good, until the intensity of the bright white glare became like an inquisitor’s lamp at Guantanamo Bay and I felt naked and trapped and filled with anger, and the white became as empty as the black, and I yearned again for the muted colors of gentleness, like the red and blue and greens that I once dreamed about in my childhood bed.

What Happens in Vegas, Gets Blogged About in Vegas

June 2, 2009 / / 23 Comments

lv5

Marci of LvGurl, Shana of Gorillabuns, Kim of 180/360, Andrea of Alphababy, and Elisabeth of Little Miss Mel.

Top photo taken by Sophia!  Bottom photos by Kim.   More photos taken by the talented Kim on her flickr account.

Last December, I participated in a virtual baby shower for Shana of Gorillabuns.  In my post for her, I wrote the following —

Like with most bloggers, I don’t remember how I met Gorillabuns.  Probably through Ms. Sizzle.  Blogging creates weird blogfellows.  What I like most about Shana is that she is funny.  There is nothing sexier to a man than a funny woman.  Some of the best moments with Gorillabuns did not occur on our blogs, but in emails — we’ve had some amusing discussions about subjects such as marriage, her obsession with rock bands, and especially — juicy blogger gossip.

Why do we connect to one person and not another?  Is it random?  Timing?  Or does each individual have a unique spark that you either see or you don’t?

If I were to follow the advice of pro bloggers, I would not have befriended Gorillabuns.  She is not in my “niche.”  I’m not sure I  even want my manly Citizen of the Month “brand” to be associated with a bunch of girls involved in a surprise blogger baby shower.

But, you know what — if I was practical about using blogging for career advancement, I would have missed out on the friendship and humor of Gorillabuns, who is one of the coolest people I have met online.

Sadly, Gorillabuns lost her baby, Thalon Bruce Myers, in April.

This week, a few of Gorillabuns online friends brought Shana to Las Vegas for some days of drinking and debauchery.  I thought this was a smart idea, and not inappropriate at all.    It must get tiring to have everyone tip-toe around the sad event, or, in reverse, everyone forgetting to treat Shana like a regular person.   Shana’s trip would give her an opportunity to open up a little to her special friends, while still doing what women do while visiting Las Vegas — playing blackjack, drinking lemon drops, and attracting drunk men in the casino.

Sophia and I arrived at Kim’s home on Saturday night, the night after meeting Black Hockey Jesus.  I was so excited to meet Kim, one of my long-time blogging friends.  I gave her a big hug, as I did Shana.  I could still see the sadness in Shana’s eyes, but her humor and intelligence were still intact.  She is even funnier than on her blog.   She immediately hit it off with Sophia.

After a drink, the first of many, we went to Morels French Steakhouse in the Palazzo.  I sat at the head of the table, surrounded by six sexy, well-dressed women.  I must have looked like a rock star, or someone very very very rich.  Even the waiter nodded at me and said I was very lucky to be alive.  He then handed me the wine list, figuring it was my manly duty to order the correct wine.  Talk about poor gender profiling.   I immediately handed the wine list to Kim, because my choice would have just been “the cheapest thing you have on the menu because I drink the two dollar wine from Trader Joe’s and it is fine with me.”

Later, we drove to downtown Las Vegas and ended up at some casino bar, listening to a band playing Led Zeppelin tunes.  Gorillabuns and Sophia gambled their money away at a blackjack table, and I was forced to drink way too much by Kim.  The rest of the night was a blur.  The next day, I woke up at 3PM.

I can now quit blogging because on Saturday night, I pretty much achieved — and SAW — everything I wanted to in my blogging career.

Wants to Be Congratulated for Picking Up a Can

May 26, 2009 / / 26 Comments

When I sell a script or win a Nobel Prize, don’t congratulate me.  I don’t need your praise to have achieved these goals.  I would have done them anyway.   Besides, I will have just won the Nobel Prize!  What do I need YOU for?

When I succeed in something, I hope to be mocked.  Not hateful mocking, but amusing mocking.  I don’t want to get a big head.

Anyone just lose their job?  We should be praising YOU rather than someone who just landed a big deal.  We need to help you booster your confidence!  We have our priorites all wrong.

Today, I picked up a discarded Coke can that I found on the street and threw it into the trash can.  I would like to be congratulated on that action.   Is this why people believe in God?   So they feel rewarded for doing good?   Otherwise, why do it?   I’m iffy on the God thing, so I feel the urge to tell you instead.

Would anyone read a blog post about me picking up a can from the street?  Or does it seem like someone crying for attention?  And so what?  People are always blabbing on about stuff they are doing, parties they attended, or getting named as one of the Ten Best Blogger.  Why not tell you that I picked up a Coke can this morning and helped save the planet?

Honestly.  Which is a better and more impressive marketing line — Neilochka: One of the Ten Best Bloggers in the Universe or Neilochka: He picks up discarded cans!

Do you praise your child for helping the old woman across the street as much as winning the spelling bee?

Did anyone do anything today worthy of congratulations?

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