i think that instead of the sage of the mundane my character will be the sage of the decision making process. i like that better, as it more properly illustrates the art and specialty of this individual and it mocks a former boss i had once in corporate, whose favorite question of condescension was “what was the decision making process?” that was his way of setting up for ridicule almost any explanation, and implying from the git-go that the results of the decision making process would not be subject to ridicule if the process itself was not similarly vulnerable. i could imagine that some of these explanations and recounting of every miniscule thought process that contributed to a single act could go on for years.
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i feel lousy today. the meaning of the word “lousy” is an interesting nugget i picked up from david letterman. if you say someone is lousy with money then that means they have lots of money. it could also mean they have poor money management skills, but that’s the interesting thing about the word. it seems to have contradictory synonyms. there are other such words, of course, but it was letterman who introduced me to “lousy” as a term of respect when he described — i think it was professional football players — as big, tough, and lousy. not lousy with anything, just lousy. i thought he would retract that comment, assuming as i did that lousy was used in the more common meaning of the word. but he never did. that’s because his knowledge of the word is the 3rd definition of Merriam Websters: replete.
i don’t feel replete with anything good today. just good old lousy.
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sometimes i see peoples’ faces as if they are etchings, or world-famous paintings studied by critics and scholars for centuries.
on a bus one afternoon, in some asshole part of queens, a crowd of middle-aged men stood at a bus stop. they looked like day workers to me. probably mexican, probably going home from some contract or maybe a courier job.
the bus i was in pulled up to the bus station, and i saw one man among the others start to walk toward the bus. then he realized, either through his own observation or the movement of the people around him, that the bus he and the others needed was actually arriving behind the bus i was on. he had already opened his wallet to get his MetroCard when, in mid-motion, he changed direction. as he turned i saw his face. his mouth tightened, and his eyes were distracted by the act of turning to get to the other bus while simultaneously continuing to withdraw the MetroCard from his wallet. then his eyes looked up toward the other bus, a tone of concern shot forth from the tired gloaming of his eyes. he did not want to miss the bus, and his body language adjusted accordingly to communicate to the bus driver not to skip the stop for any reason, for several people standing there had been waiting and needed to get on that bus for the ride home. (sometimes busdrivers will skip a stop if they think another bus of the same line currently or was very recently picked up passengers at that stop.)
another face i saw last night was of a pizza guy. i got a slice of pizza for $2.25 and paid with a $10 bill. the cashier/pizza guy had trouble getting the right change. he had to crack open a roll of quarters. there were no $5 bills, so he had to count up 7 $1 bills. 2 of the $1 bills appeared to stick together. all the while as he sorted the dollar bills he held in his hand 75 cents in quarters. he had some trouble but exhibited some skill at keeping the quarters in his hand whilst sorting out the dollar bills. throughout this transaction the man’s face had the keenest, strongest, most impementrable look of concentration i have seen in a long time. if you did not see his hands or did not kow what he was doing you might have thought he was engaged in the work of a great master: sculpting, perhaps, or performing a Paganini violin concerto. even as he handed me the money that look of intense concentration never wavered until the money was in my hand, at which point the man’s face resumed the friendly, ingratiating demeanor i saw when i first entered the pizzeria.
i wanted that face captured for all times.
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the other day i upgraded the publishing system for this web site. i had a moment of clarity when, unexpectedly, something went wrong. after the upgrade the admin control panel threw a php error. everything worked except the top screen of the admin section. my forehead commenced to sweat and i commenced to curse, for the most recent backup i had of the site was from about a week earlier, meaning the world might have lost the glories of the last 5 or 6 days at this magnificent web production. (hah)
the point of explaining is that it made me realize: i’ve been doing this little .MOBI web thingamajig since 2006.. i don’t really think twice about it any more. i just do it. the site is blocked from all legitimate search engines on account of the sometimes confessional content and the fact that this type of content simply does not benefit from drive-by search engine keyword mis-directed eyeballs looking for something about the corporate decision making process and instead finding my utterly irrelevant dream journal about the sage of such processes. i don’t know if anybody reads this stuff.
my point being, when the errors started happening the other day (they were quickly fixed) i discovered that for as long as i’ve been throwing text matter into this space it has taken this long for me to admit that i actually care about it. this site mostly survived the big blowout of 2010 — i think a bunch of images from 2009 are forever gone — and its native simplicity makes it hard fear that it’s going to crash to pieces the way my other web sites can and do.
what’s the point of this? i do not know. i have had an idea, since i was at Tosca on Tuesday, to add something new to this site. in keeping with my .MOBI reverse charter (whereby content here is not so much formatted for mobile devices but it originates from mobile and non-PC devices) i decided that my long-planned payphone-related project would make the most sense here, and not over on the old payphone site.
this project is simple enough in concept: i call a voicemail box from payphones aaround NYC, and i tell a story about something that happened to me (or did not happen to me) at or near this payphone. i have a bunch of these recordings in the can, but i consider those rehearsals. i was going to add it to the payphone site as a new section, but since a payphone is essentially a mobile device (albeit stationary) i think i’ll try including it here instead.
so, we’ll see what happens, and where that goes. the software to automate this process is already annoying me, and the seemingly simple process of recording voicemail messages is unduly complicated by the vagaries of public telephones. it’s not just that they don’t always work or that call quality sucks, it’s that sometimes you think you’re recording a call when you are not, because the mic on the phone does not work. you wouldn’t know that whilst recording a voicemail, though you would know if you were trying to talk to someone.
the precariousness of the project, of any project that relies on public payphones, is a significant factor.
why post this project here, when all search engines are blocked and but a handful of humans are likely to discover it?
well, i do not know, except that even at my steadily advancing age i still maintain the adolescent philosophy that i am at my best when i feel like no one is listening.
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i watched the first-released Star Wars last night. contrary to what i might have said before, the special effects in that film are not as timid as i might have remembered. Jabba the Hut looked pretty fake, but the rest of the special effects (are they still called that? special effects? they’re not special any more!) are pretty righteous even by modern standards. and of course the storylines and the characters are lightspeed ahead of anything that tried to rise up from Parts 1-3. i saw one of those last year and could not believe how bad it was. Natalie Portman: good actor and all, but in that film she’s as wooden as this table on which i type these words.
another thing about Star Wars that i think makes it stand the test of time is that the electronica and gadgetry still seem pretty futuristic. compare the light saber and bionic arm replacements to junky technology seen in James Bond movies and i think you’ll see that Star Wars was smarter about use of those things.
tonight i shall attempt to watch Cul De Sac, by Polanski. and i shall try out the new 3D glasses that arrived tonight. my bigass TV includes 3D, but all vendors were sold out of the required glasses when i bought the set last month. so i got them today. i am not thrilled about 3D, but it should be amusing.
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GOING TO SEE JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR IN MARCH. yeahs. spotted somewhere on the Internet that a revival was afoot, and i snapped up the first aisle seat i could find.
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Christ, i feel lousy.