Pirates of the Bulb

This year Mr. Bir Toujour and I came up with the cool idea of hiding tins of presents at this old industrial landfill and then sending our friends clues so they could locate their Christmas treasures. The landfill isn't like a big toxic stinkpit with razor blades and mattress coils sticking up, though--it's a spot off of our shoreline in the SF bay that was used as a dump for construction debris in the 50s through the 80s. The dump became this bulb-shaped protrustion into the bay, almost perversely mimicking "Spiral Jetty" (this one artist made his own landform in the Great Salt Lake, I think, in 1970, but now it's underwater--http://www.spiraljetty.org/).

So anyhow, this dump was eventually overtaken with castoff seeds of non-native vegitation; fennel overran rusty tangles of rebar, blackberry bushes crept over corroded corregated steel. Long-lost mud flats reappeared, and with them aquatic birds.

The Bulb, as it is now called, is a no-man's-land. Nowadays it's a park owned by the city of Albany, but about ten years ago few regular folks ventured out there and a clutch of homeless dudes and ladies made it their own (this is all documented in the film "Bum's Paradise", www.bumsparadise.com) Then a group of artists began gathering on the flanks of the bulb to paint makeshift plywood canvasses and sculpt stray blocks of styrofoam into guardian figures (www.sniff.com). Then a bunch of dog owners came to let their doggies out to play and romp in the stinky surf and thickets of weeds.

Now the Bulb is a part of Eastshore State Park, a protected wetland. They want to kick the dogs off, but years ago they already took care of the bums. Families go there to "hike" and couples ride their bikes over to check out the scenery.

The Bulb is very magnetic and confounding. Mr. Bir Toujour and I first went out there about two years ago in the heat of summer as the sun baked the fennel fronds. We saw the homeless guys' tents in the brambles, the icon-laden Sniff paintings, the enclave of reborn trash we dubbed "Thunderdome". To go out to the Bulb and realize you are standing on 100% trash is a creepy feeling, but it's also heart-warming in a way, seeing how nature and people on the fringes have claimed this thing and made it alive.

Protecting the bulb makes sense, but at the same time it makes no sense at all. I mean, it's a landfill populated with invasive plants--what is there to preserve? Let the dogs run free and let the subterranian trash resurface as art. It's completely the opposite of everything we are supposed to value in public space, which is why it's valuable to those who can sense its significance.

So hiding these treasures out there was a flash of brilliance, I thought. I got some old cookie tins at the junk store and we filled them with cheap little kid toys. We selaed them in plastic bags with duct tape and hid them in a few good spots. Then I planted clues around to Bulb and sent hints on postcards to the treasure-seekers.

My brother and our friend Tony found theirs okay, but our other friends didn't get their postcard until after Christmas. By that time, their treasure had been plundered; all the remained was a Mad Libs pad.

I was shocked, kind of. Someone either found the clues unintentionally or just blundered across the treasure clueless...a threat we'd slightly expected, since the landscape of the Bulb constantly shifts as new works of castoff art are razed and raised. I tried to imagine if I'd keep a stranger's treasure if I found it. For sure I'd open it up and peek inside, but wouldn't you figure it was out there for a reason?

Well, whoever did find it--Pirates of the Bulb, I guess--they don't like Mad Libs. I'm bummed that our friends didn't get their treasure, but in a way I'm pleased to see evidence of people out on the Bulb, exploring and pirating. You pirates, I hope you enjoy your ball game and slimy stretchy plastic body parts and 80s-style spiral slinky bracelets. Maybe I will see you at the Bulb one day.

We Were the Wall

I was in our high school marching band for two years, 1990 and 1991--my freshman and sophmore years. After that I quit. Band and I were not well suited for each other.

I played the clarinet, badly. I could have been a decent musician had I practiced, but I never did. I barely took my horn out of my case unless it was for band class or an official band practice--and while that was often, I spent our rehersals in a constant state of fear and loathing. What if I screwed up? What if our band director made me play solo? What if everyone else noticed what a crummy musician I was and then I'd never be liked? It was a viscous cylce, played out day after day.

Our school, which was of a modest size and dubious atheletic renown, had a critically acclaimed marching band, around 120 members strong. Once you got into high school, you were in marching band or you were in no band at all. That's all there was to it. In the summer they shipped us off to band camp for a week, where we learned our drill for the year and marched until our feet became bloody stumps. When we weren't marching, we were playing. We breathed band.

I hated band. I hated it for its rigidity, for its unquestioning militaristic mentality, for its extreme dorkiness. Though I myself was far from cool, the mode of my freakishness was in a very different cast than that of the average band dork. They proudly wore varsity-style band jackets; I slouched in my older brother's baggy hand-me-downs. They suffered from acne and out-of-fashion hair styles; I didn't even style my hair. They embraced the sensation of being one small, key part in this huge, precise organism; I spurned it. They laughed at our band director's jokes; I rolled my eyes.

Our band was called "The Wall of Sound", based on this manouver built into our show every year where the entire band would collape into one pin-straight, single-file line spanning the entire football field. The wall advanced toward the audience at a stately pace and played sustained notes at obscene volumes. Loud, bold--these are all things I covet in music, but when we did the Wall, I just didn't feel it. Other band members spoke of the Wall as some kind of ecstacy, a transformative state. I tried, but when we all aligned and began the stride forward, I felt only relief: the Wall came at the show's climax, and therefore indicated that it was nearly over.

It was hard to quit band, mostly because I'd always been in band. I didn't like the idea of quitting...but I also didn't like the idea of the discomfort of not belonging to a group that I didn't care to belong to in the first place. Sure, I could have practiced and been a great horn player, perhaps popular in band. But I'd be popular IN BAND, and that was not the point.

Marching band still marks me, even after those two years. To this day, Marshall C. Kimball continues to haunt my dreams as my own miscrocosmic symbol of disapproval. I don't recall much about those years outside of band practices, band competitions, band camp, and band humiliation.

So I was taken aback last night when Mr. Bir Toujour found a videocassette labled "BAND '91 DO NOT TAPE OVER!" jammed behind a bunch of "Northern Exposure" tapes. Last time I was at home I brought a bunch of old tapes back with me for safekeeping, but I never got around to watching them.

We popped the tape into the VCR. It contatined footaged taped by various Band Booster parents, loosely edited together in chonological order to present a look at the season, from band camp in August to Nationals in November.

The tape was spooled right to the middle, and the first thing we saw was the Wall standing in ranks in bleachers at the Bands of America Regional Championship in Morgantown, WV. We were posing for our gropu photo. Mr. Bir Toujour spotted me right away in the midst of 100-some other uniformed band geeks. There was my 15-year-old self, a big swag of sloppy dark hair hanging down into my face. All of the other girls had their hair tucked in tidy French braids, but mine was too unruly to be restrained in such a manner; by then I had taken to slipping a nylon hair net on right before showtime. I guess I tore the thing off right after showtime, too.

The tape droned on. We watched the Wall perform our 1991 show twice, once at regular speed and once in fast-forward. The figures on the field formed arcs, starbursts, and sharp angles that flowed into one another as we piped out variations on "Swan Lake."

Then the tape cut to footage of bandmembers hanging out on charter busses and in the gymnasium of the Indianapolis high school that was hosting our band during the Bands of America National Championships. The camera panned over packs of teenagers, all of them looking so small and young. I saw faces of older, cooler kids--the chosen few whose good looks and involvement with varsity sports teams deemed them popular both in the band world and the larger context of the entire school--kids I idolized for their social poise and capable musicianship. Their names, which I had not thought of for years, exploded in my head with an almost painful urgency. I had spent half of my time in high school covering under the weight of the aura of perfection they cast, and now with my screen of hindsight I saw in their faces how utterly average they really were, how puny the "hot" guys were and how unremarkable the "pretty" girls looked. I thought about what they were doing now, though I was familiar with the actual fates of very few.

I saw the kids in the grade below me, too--the freshmen, some of whom went on to quit band and either reveal their homosexuality or embrace drugs and bad gothic fashion. But most of them, I belive, remained dorks.

Mr. Bir Toujour wanted to keep watching the tape to spot me. And I did, too, which is embarassing to admit. I wanted to see this ghost of myself flash across the screen and somehow grasp a bit of this person I used to be, reclaim some of the fumbling passion and stumbling creativity I associate with that time. But when I saw myself sitting indian-style on the gym floor in my long-lost ex-favorite pair of jeans and likewise long-lost Marietta High School Crew t-shirt, I didn't see it. And when I saw myself stumble on the practice field while marching backwards at an evening rehersal, I didn't get it either. All I saw was me. I look almost exactly the same now, only with glasses, shorter hair, and (I hope) a better fashion sense. I still stand the same, still slouch the same, still move in the same spaztic jerks.

We only saw about one fourth of the tape, but I had to stop. It was too intense. Even after twelve years I think about quitting band and gloat to myself, indulging in the pleasure of knowing I'll never, ever have to go to band camp or polish my white marching bucks or desperately borrow a new reed from anyone ever again. I'll never have to answer to Marshall C. Kimball, who was a good band director, but to total jackass to me.

That feeling is a good feeling, but it wasn't enough to beat out the rush of inadequacy from g all of the kids I never fit in with. Those years with the Wall were character-building in a way a stint in prison or a bout with cancer are--I don't willingly look back upon them, but it's satisfying to see myself today, so distanced from it, and know that in the end, I won.

Christmas Ghost Town

This year for the first time ever I didn't spend Christmas with my family. We went to Mr. Bir Toujour's hometown and had our Christmas there, with his good and kind family. I was looking forward to seeing Christmas from the perspective of another family's traditions, and even though the drive down can be a killer (6 hours in the hazy stink of the Cnetral Valley in I-5) I was excited to take a trip and take in new surroundings.

I've been to see Mr. Bir Toujour's family a few times before. They live in the high desert town of Lancaster, about an hour northeast of LA. It's a strange plass with an unsellting abutting of the open sameness of liberating desert horizons and the soul-crushing sameness of sloppy faceless suburbia. The place consists of nothing but big box stores and strip malls in various states of decay--they build one stip mall, which fails, so they build a bigger strip mall in another part of town and porn DVD outlets and 99-cent stores move in to the vacated strip mall. "This town is the king of 99-cent stores," Mr. Bir Toujour noted.

All of the buildings are covered in dirty stucco with peach trim and Spanish tile roofs. Hardly any little stores are freestanding--even the bars are in strip malls. All of the streets look alike to me and I never got my bearings about what part of town we were in. I don't understnad how anyone can live there and not go crazy.

Actually, most of them have gone crazy. All they do is shop for junky disposable crap all of the time. We saw some record-breaking tacky Christmas lawn decorations, lots of inflatable snowmen, wire-frame reindeer and twinkling electric-light sleighs. All of this in the desert--where, though it does snow occasionally in the winter, it's not the snow of sled rides and snowballs.

Christmas itself was...well, it was the same, really. Too much food, too many presents, too much restlessness. You can be 3,000 miles away with an completely different family, and Christmas won't change much. Every year I get all excited for Christmas, and then when it comes you find out how stale and stuffy it makes you feel. So I guess the excitement is the important part. I did have fun the last few days, though the majority of it had less to do with stockings and turkey dinner than just hanging out with family. Now all of us will go back into the regular workday world--a desert full of strip malls or an overcrowded urban libral enclave or a Midwestern hick town on the river--and let time decorate our holiday memories.

Christmas Eve Eve

There's a vacuum running down the hall...either that or an air shaft. It's totally driving me nuts, Barton Fink-style. Late afternoon motivation block also setting in. It's a "Barton Fink" Christmas!

Nothing is worse than an afternoon at work with nothing to do. Sigh.

Company Party

At the risk of being overly graphic and tasteless—actually, at the guarantee of being overly graphic and tasteless--have you ever gone to the bathroom, assessed your handiwork, and wondered "how the hell did that thing come out of me?" Today is the mother of that. Last night I ingested a potent, explosive cocktail of rich, greasy BBQ and multiple beers that led to record-breaking turds and gas. I’m stuck at work, walking the line between accomplishing tasks and not soiling my desk chair.

The BBQ was consumed at our company holiday party, held at the bowling alley down the street from my house. Few employees here frequent bowling alleys, but the black-lit lanes were fully stocked with bowlers I formerly identified as accountants, sales reps, and co-founders of the company. As Mr. Bir Toujour and I arrived, we were immediately accosted by our merry-making host, Mr. Co-Founder #1. He encouraged us to trade in our street shoes for snappy bowling shoes, visit the bar to get some grog in our veins, and take a spin on the "Dance Dance Revolution Extreme" interactive video game.
I had forgotten that most bowling alleys are now more or less disco-themed. There was a big video screen hovering over the lanes with footage of LaBelle and the Sugar Hill Gang as dance hits spewed from the sound system. I was game to bowl, but my bowling co-workers were by then very absorbed in the game and not ready to relinquish their spots. So Mr.. Bir Toujour and I went to the cocktail lounge, which, in company party terms, is like the place where the bad kids in high school go out and smoke.
Aforementioned BBQ was eaten, the company bar tab maximized. Mr. Bir Toujour left early and after many frivolous but enjoyable conversations with assorted co-workers, I stumbled home, marginally drunk, and collapsed in bed naked after taking a nice warm shower. I’m glad I work where I do and don’t dread social functions with the people I work with. Earlier this month, a company scheduled an after-hours factory tour as part of their holiday party. I volunteered to be the tour guide and made a whopping $20 or so in overtime when I should have asked the group to pay me about $150 cash.
It was painful, having to sit there while people from this boring tech company filtered in and pathetically tried to make small talk with each other. Instead of trying to be a neutral facilitator and stir things up, I hid. The one thing worse than being stuck at a lame holiday party is being stuck at another company’s lame holiday party.
Last year was my big time to make the work/celebration scene. I went to a co-worker’s party and drank a few too many glasses or a few too many types of alcohol. I recall seeing Mr. Co-Founder #2 arrive at the party in a tuxedo; he had just left an art museum’s gala and was making the rounds. He’s a good guy, and he came over and was asking me about my background in recipe testing (I was still very new to the company back then). He suggested I could possibly test chocolate recipes for them down the road.
"Yeah!" I must have bellowed. "That would be cool! Wow!" Later, on the way home, I puked out the window of my friend’s car while we barreled across the Bay Bridge. I’m still here, and I eventually did test recipes for the company. But throwing up sucks, if it’s a company function or not.

The Heartless Clerk

Today was my last day in the retail store of the chocolate factory where I work. Recently I was promoted to another department, which is beneficial for all parties concerned: were I forced to stay in the store I'd have put in my two months notice by now. If I had chosen to stay in the store, the company would have to fire me by now.

Some people can work retail and make a life career out of it. I am not one of those people. My job as a tour guide and store clerk at a small premium chocolate factory called for a tremendous deal of interaction with high-maintainance customers. We also had a few staffing clusterfucks over the past year...so the overall atmoshpere of what should ideally be a fun and stimulating job was, at times, pure hell.

Long ago I reached a breaking point with rude customers. I'm willing to put up with difficult people, but I am not willing to be humiliated or treated as a sublevel human or a slave to the retail beast. We have lost a few sales over this, which I have mixed feelings about --part of me thinks I should be a better employee and a better human, and part of me thinks that what goes around comes around, and that shitheads customers are entitled to shit for service.

This morning was my last hurrah as an evil employee. A larger woman in tunic-like series of cardigan, scarf, and skirt walked through the door and straight up to the register.

"May I help you?" I asked. She seemed focused, impatient.

"Yes--do you have any boxes of the assorted caramels left?"

I looked at our display of confections. "No, I'm afraid we're out of the assortment...we do have the sea salt caramels, though."

Halfway through my statement the woman turned around and made her way to the door. "Well, that not what I asked for, was it?" she said in a clipped tone, audible to everyone in the store.

So I bit back. "WELL," I sneered, "I guess it's NOT, is it?" Stupid bitch. I turned to the nice-looking man in front of the register. "Some people jusy let things get to them too much," I said.

He nodded knowingly. "They're just caramels."

Just caramels, indeed. We've had people fly off the handle because we were out of their favorite ice cream flavor, or because we'd run out of free hot cocoa samples, or because our chocolate is made with refined cane sugar instead of blueberries. We've had a woman bring chocolate purchased at another retailer--and covered in cat hair, I might add--back for a cash refund. We've had people stride into the store and demand a free tour on a day when we had no tours remaining. "We came all the way from New Jersey!" they say. Yeah, ever heard of a phone? Ever heard of planning ahead and making reservations?

The sense of entitlement that some of our customers toss around makes me aghast. When I go out in public, I try to be patient--to wait in line, to be understanding. I try to make contact with clerks and servers, to say thank you and mean it. I try to remind myself that I'm not more important than other people that might want help, too.

Most people behave this way--with civility, perhaps some kindness. But a small percentage does not, and these are the ones whom screw it all up for the others. These are the people who destroy the souls of retail clerks, bank tellers, hotel conciegres, servers in restaurants. Their sourness turns previously sweet souls sour as well. My heart is now black because of retail. I am a bad influence.

About an hour later, a co-worker tapped me on the shoulder. "Someone is on the phone for you," she said. "She asked for the girl in the red sweater who helped her this morning."

So I picked up the phone. "Hello. How can I help you?"

"Yes--I am the customer who came in this morning and asked you a question, and I heard you make fun of me when I left." She spoke clearly, but in her determination was the essence of instability. You know what I mean. That lady was a living, breathing red flag.

"Yes?" I said.

"I just wanted to let you know that what you said really hurt me. I know that this is a busy time for you there, but my father committed suicide this year, and it's been very hard for me."

There was a tiny pause. I guess it was my turn to talk. "I'm sorry to hear that." It didn't seem to do the trick, so I offered her to speak with my manager.

"No," she said. "I just wanted to let you know that what you said will be with me all day long."

"I'm sorry about that," I said.

"It's going to be with me all day long," she reminded me.

"I won't forget," I said. She said goodbye and hung up.

I realized I hadn't apologized to her for what I said--I'd only said I was sorry about how she felt. But I was not sorry for what I did, and I was not going to lie to her about that. Does a personal tragedy give someone a free pass to be a dick?

I don't think so. I felt badly for this woman, who was unkind to people and then let the results get to her so much that a silly interraction with a stranger in a store ate away at her. Maybe I should have suggested she go to therapy or grief counseling. The problem at hand was clearly larger than an incident with a clerk at a chocolate factory.

She took the time to call--that's what blows my mind. I'm going to remember hurting her feelings for sure, but I'm not going to let it keep me from being a bitch when it's called for.

So it's good I'm not in the store anymore.

Little Darwin's Natcher Journal

The day I bought Samantha's journal (see "Lost Journal", below), I picked up another abandoned notebook. This one is hardback with drawings of tortises and penguins and lizards on the cover, and it says "Galapagos Islands." I don't imagine the kid who owned the diary has ever been to the Galapagos, though. Only ten or so pages have entries. Here's part of the first one:
"Natcher is very prity, So many trees and plants. Adding is nice butt it is also nice plane. Thar are a lot of sounes. Alot of produks come from natcher like sope, food, and seeds. I love natcher. Nather is everywhar! At night the tmoon shins."

Poor kid. Probably either dyslexic...or maybe just not fond of spelling. There's no name in the journal, so let's call the author of the journal Little Darwin. Little Darwin's sentiments about natcher, though hackneyed, seem sincere. Maybe someday I'll post segemtns of *my* old journal entries...I'm certain that Little Darwin's sentiments will seem refreshing when compared to my youthful screeds of mishmosh. I was a very romantic kid.

Anyhoo...I write a music column every other week for a paper called the North Bay Bohemian. I have a charged relationship with my column, but I guess that's okay--I'd rather have unstable relationships with things than with people. This week's column was about the abundant joys of Christmas music. I just now figured out how to make this link thing work, so here you go:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/12.15.04/xmasmusic-0451.html

The Story of Sneezy & Tacky

Mr. Bir Toujour ordered the movie "Session 9" from Netflix. He has band practice tonight, so when I got home from work Mr. Bir Toujour was gone...but Session 9 was there. I am very jumpy right now because I just finished watching it. All of you scary movie fans should do the same if you have not; though it has a made-for-TV feel at times, Session 9 is about 10 times freakier than other "scary" movies that have 20 times Session 9's budget.

It was silly to watch the movie alone. Now it's late and I had to turn on all of the lights in the apartment just to keep myself from getting freaked. Even the Lou Barlow song at the end of the movie is scary. When Mr Bir Toujour gets home it will be a relief, but he has a habit of trying to open the front door all sneaky-like. Any! second! now!

This blog has a very silly name. I realize that, and I think it's only fair to explain where the name "Sneezy & Tacky" came from.

My friend Kelly and I grew up in the same town (Marietta, OH--word) and met in 6th grade. In 8th grade, Kelly went away to boarding school, but we remained in close contact--in fact, I think it cemented our attachment to each other. During the school year we'd write to each other, but in the summertime--when we were once again both in the same town and there was no long-distance rate to contend with--we spent the whole summer talking to each other on the telephone. 8 hours a day. It was a full-time job for us, really. It drove our mothers nuts when they tried to call from work, because the line was always busy.

We had meaty conversations (about boys, mostly), but we also discussed what videos might be on MTV at the time, or one of us would describe an issue of Sassy magazine to the other. Since neither of us had a car and we didn't live withing biking distance, we had to made due by hanging out over the telephone.

We came up with brilliant ideas together. Some of them were names for bands that we could be in (never mind we didn't play rock band instruments and didn't know anyone who did), and some of them were for articles for our zine.

Understand that we never, ever produced one issue of a zine. I had never even seen an actual zine, only read about them in the hallowed pages of Sassy. It sounded cool, though, and we got as far as creating nomes de plumes for each other: Lefty (me) and Brown (Kelly).

So "Lefty & Brow"n was going to be the name of our zine. Kelly even drew up a masthead on a sheet of notebook paper with her blue fountain pen (I knew no one else who used fountain pens). But one day Kelly called me with a sense of urgency, spilling her story into the phone.

"I was at the mall, and walking by PharmX. They had things displayed in the window--big tins of popcorn, cleaning products, stuff like that. But they also had these awful lamps in the shape of cheap plastic dolls with lacy southern belle skirts and huge lampshades that were lacy, to. They were, like, these doll-lamp things that lit up and stuff. They were s-o-o tacky! And right as I walked by them I had a sneezing attack that lasted about a minute. I'm totally serious."

"Whoa!" I must have said.

And then Kelly would have said "So that's it!"

"What's it?" I'd have asked.

"Why, Sneezy & Tacky! That's the name for our zine."

Sleepytime Leftovers

Every night I put things off, assuming I will do them later in the evening after experiencing a miracle second wind. And every night, I go to bed without having accomplished those things. Here is a list.
MOST COMMONLY UNFINISHED BEDTIME ACTIVITIES
1. Flossing
2. Folding clean laundry
3. Washing dirty ice cream dish
4. Phoning/emailing/writing friend/relative
5. Completing article whose deadline is next morning
6. Brushing teeth
7. Knocking off page or two of the ol' novel
8. Removing t-shirt worn all day long
9. Putting on any clothing whatsoever
I did not want to add "Composing new post for blog" to this list.

Lost Diary

A few weeks ago I bought this abandoned diary at a junk store. The entries span from 1999 to 2000 and were written by a 12-year-old girl named Samantha. She signs her entries as "Sam" or, sometimes, "Sammy". It's a little diary, a hardbound and satin-covered volume from Chinatown, and most of its pages are full. Sometimes Sam addresses her entries to "Mari", a made-up friend created on the Barbie website. There's a printout of what Mari looks like pasted onto the inside front cover of the diary. Mari is wearing blue jeans, a red hoodie sweatshirt, and had a big red beehive hairdo.

I've only read half of the diary so far. It's not particularly exceptional--normal 12-year-old girl stuff, quarrels with friends and passing but entirely innocent mentions of boys. Sam writes most passionately about riding horses.

So far there's no hint of what happened to the girl who wrote it. She must be 16 now, maybe 17. The diary's content is pretty bland, yes, but perhaps Sam ran across it and, in all of her teenaged wisdom, didn't want anything to do with the girl she was when she wrote it. Maybe it got tossed out against her will. Maybe she's not sentimental. In any case, I feel torn about the mundane reality of the Sam it reveals to me. The voyeuristic part of me wants to read scandalous drama, but the decent, moralistic part of me is pleased to see the stability and calmness of her life.

Me, though, I'd never throw away a diary. I guess that's why I bought this one.

Copycat.

Every day something funny happens--at least one funny thing. I was trying to think of a good story to tell about today, and there was not one. The only funny story is that my fiancee, Mr. Bir Toujour, had such bad gas that I thought he pooped his pants. I kicked him out of the room because the smell was so terrible that I could not concentrate. His farts smelled like vomit mixed with baby poo. That's an awful feeling, to have such bad gas. Usually I am the top dog in the stinky raspberry department, but tonight Mr. Bir Toujour took the cake. The cake of stink.

I got this blog because my friend Bryan has one. I always forget to read his blog, even though he's one of my best friends and we hardly get to see each other anymore. I figure that if I have a blog, maybe I'll remeber to read his, too.

It bugs me when websites don't get updated. The website of the company I work for is such a case. Part of my job is to write promotional material for the company, but I have no control over the website. This makes it difficult to update the site and therefore do my job correctly. So I suppose this blog is also my own way to have control of something. I can update this whenever I want. Possibly I will with a bit of frequency, as I don't want this to be a messy room of a blog. We'll see.