I'M BACK!

Where have I been? Sick as a dog. Got some kind of infection and the doctor wanted a... urinalysis sample. Embarrassing, I know. So I bargained for the right to bring one in from home at my own convenience (I can't bear the thought of having to "produce" on demand). 

The nurse gave me this little plastic cup; needless to say, I promptly lost it and had to use an empty mason jar I found in the recycling bin. On my way to the Doc's, I stopped at the Commons. It was such a nice warm day, and I wanted to sit outside and have a coffee, a burrito, and a couple slices of pizza. Now here's the crazy part: relaxing on a bench, I spotted at least three other people walking around with Mason jars, presumably containing their "samples." What were the chances, I wondered? Had they too lost their plastic specimen cups?

One of the jar carriers actually sat down next to me and struck up a conversation about the weather and birds and shit. He was a pasty frail-looking guy in a beard, knee high Muck boots, and one of those sweaters your grandma knits for you when you're 14; I only hoped that my urine sample didn't come up positive for whatever he had. I mean, I'd love to be skinny, but not see-through, and certainly not if it meant looking like a cast-off from the Organic Goat Farm version of Survivor.   

A couple of days later, I got a call from the Doctor's office. "Mr. Santos, are you aware that your urine sample contained 70% organic green tea and 30% pear juice?" asked the nurse. 

I explained that I was not a tea drinker, and didn't even know there was such a thing as pear juice. There must have been some mistake, I said. 

"No mistake, Mr. Santos. I've been a nurse for 20 years, and yours was the only sample I've ever seen that arrived in a jelly jar." 

And then it dawned on me. The frail guy in the Muck boots had been carrying his tea in a mason jar. But why? I really didn't know. Maybe it was some local culture thing, like women wearing skirts over their jeans. Or maybe the $15 Lexan water bottles and the $25 stainless steel ones that they sell at EMS and Wegman's had been outed as unsafe. Perhaps the only safe drinking bottle in the world now is the glass mason jar! And maybe we will all be doomed to walk the commons in ridiculous hundred dollar farm boots, cradling the handle-less glass vessels, our teas and vanilla chais and juice blends sloshing gently within. A work of caution, though, if you're going to carry one around: be careful who you sit next to. And to the poor guy who ended up with my jar, sorry dude!         

GIVING UP

Okay, I give. My effort to forego technology for 2 weeks was a total failure. But it's not like I didn't try! On my fifth day, that little fucker, Esteban, upped his rates to 20 bucks per typed post. Can you believe it? I know, he'll probably make a great corporate guy some day. But on this day I wasn't taking any of his shit, so I pulled the plug on the whole project and told him to piss off. Then he threatened to strong-arm me and hack into my site and crash it. I had no choice but to let the air out of his bicycle tires and tell his girlfriend (who just happened to be parking her car in the street) that Esteban had left for the free clinic to get some treatment for his social disease. 

So on to bigger and better things.  Tonight I started a new book: Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon. Amazing book, if you haven't already had the pleasure. Here's a random line from the 4th page: 

"Although I had the vague impression that my oldest friend was speaking to me in tones of anger and remonstrance, his words just blew by me, like curling scraps of excelsior and fish wrap, and I waved at them as they passed."   

I don't know about you, but I've never before heard of "fish wrap." What the hell is it? And what's excelsior? I read about it in Cannery Row where Frankie, the messed up kid who hangs out at Doc's lab, used to climb in the excelsior box when he was scared. But I still don't know what it is. If I had the energy, I'd probably look it up. But I don't really care about the meaning. What I care about is how Chabon can use language and crazy words that I don't know and will never know  so beautifully. Words blowing by me like curling scraps of excelsior and fish wrap. It's pretty cool, isn't it? Come on. Admit it! So read something good tonight. Pick up a book by someone who really knows what he or she is doing. Absorb yourself in that person's characters' world. Open a bottle of something you've been saving. Eat something totally fattening and unhealthy that tastes really good. Open the doors to the woods stove and bask in the heat! Because that's what I'm doing tonight. See ya.

Frank 

DAY ONE: NO TECHNOLOGY

Saturday was the first day of my self-imposed withdrawal from high technology. It sucked. I didn't have my nice alarm clock/Ipod docking station, so I accidentally slept until 12:30 and so missed the bank and the post office. Thus, no money. Thus, I had to cook for myself and there was not much in the kitchen. Managed to throw together a decent seafood bisque, though, using some frozen shrimp, scallops, and calimari. Also, because the P.O. was closed by the time I made it out of the house, I never mailed in the final revisions to the publisher on my graphic novel, Serial Psycho. I actually had to pay the neighbor kid, a 14 year-old hacker named Esteban, $10 just to type this in to my Blogger account! The little bastard tried to bump the price up to $15 - but he backed off once I threatened to tell his mother about the MySpace page where he goes by the name of Super Pimp, Stevie Rios. 

And if all that wasn't bad enough, work turned out to be a fucking nightmare without my Palm Pilot. I missed two meetings and had to feign an abscessed tooth so I didn't look totally incompetent (better to look unhealthy than stupid). I really want to make it through the week without needing the interwebs, but it's getting tough. About all I can do is watch t.v. (hardly technology, right?), smoke cigars, and eat. Come to think of it, maybe this won't be so bad. Will have to treat myself to a box of something really special though. Maybe some Hemmingways. And some good brandy. Maybe some steaks. Alright - got to go shopping. 

Later! 

Frank's Wild Years

After nearly going blind from an 18 hour video game marathon with a few of my friends, I decided to unplug myself from all technology for two whole weeks. That's right. No Ipod, Blackberry, laptop, desktop, etc. No email. No MyFace. No PlayStation Portable. No Nintendo DS Lite. No vintage Atari. No bluetooth. Nada. What will happen, I wonder? Will I find peace, just like Henry David Thoreau when he managed to live for an entire year on Walden Pond without his MacBook? Or will I crash and burn like my friend Melvin Cylart (a.k.a., FlyFart) who got caught breaking and entering into a neighbor's house when his computer fried and he couldn't think of another way to logon and get to Second Life at a critical moment? I am willing enter this brave frontier and write about it for your entertainment on this blog. I will keep you posted. 

- Frank