Time Files (Things Away)

I may or may not have told you that, after several years of computing at home through the kindness of strangers, I celebrated the arrival of my first-ever serious salary bonus by purchasing a new laptop. It's a Macbook Pro.

This is kinda amazing on several fronts. First, if you had told me – even a year ago – that I would be able to afford a Macbook Pro, I'd have (a) laughed out loud at you for your unbelievable foolishness and (b) punched you in the neck for taunting me with things I could never have.

Actually, not long ago, I wouldn't have bought a Apple Computer even if I had been able to afford it. I was a PC guy. I'd been working on PCs since I first started working with computers way back in the early 90s, compliments of the Original Velvet Prison.

But things change. Thanks to The Velvet Prison, for the last year my work laptop has been a Macbook Pro, and I've not only learned not to hate them, I've grown to love them for the trouble-free existence I've evolved. No more, for me, the unexplained crashes, the ridiculous slowing of performance when multiple programs are running.

I'm like a pig in shite.

All of which leads me to something that struck me the other day.

You see, one of the features of my new laptop is that I use my own photos as a screensaver (I know, I know, a Windows PC can do the same thing... less elegantly; I'm a convert, don't forget, and there's nothing so rabid as a convert), and I just happened to look over at my screensaver not long ago, and saw the photo to the right being displayed (worst. grammatical construction. ever.)

Seeing the photo made me realize that I had, for the most part, completely blocked out memories of the four months I spent living in Bushwick. The time I spent with DeKalb Avenue as my stop on the L line; the time I spent living in the roach-infested railroad apartment in which, for a midnight pee, I had a choice of stumbling through my roommate's bedroom or throwing on a robe, finding me keys, and exiting the apartment through the separate entrance in my bedroom only to re-enter through the front door.

Oh my god, I don't know how I ever justified living like that. Was it the $600 in monthly rent, all included? Might've been.

Still, I'm a little bit amazed that I could simply remove a whole section of memories from my brain.

A.Pants, of course, would argue that this isn't terribly surprising, since he is under the impression that I'm an Alzheimer's patient. I think he's a Mentat,ferchrissakes, but we won't go there.

A Little Change

Anyone who's accompanied me as I've traveled through midtown Manhattan while toting a camera knows that I have an inexplicable obsession with The Velvet Prison. The building, not the company. Although, sometimes the company, too.

But wherein the camera is concerned, I don't seem to be able to stop photographing that big ol' pile of glass and steel.

I've been using the same photo for a very long time, so I thought I'd try to get a new one.

As I've been traveling to work incarceration the last few weeks, I've been keeping an eye out for a combination of light and clouds that I found interesting (as a side note: I've discovered that, when the sky is completely clouded over, it's obvious why people think the building is ugly. It gets all slate gray and monolithic-looking; not at all attractive).

Anyway, last week I came up out of the subway just as the sun was clearing the buildings on the eastern side of the park, and there were just enough clouds reflected in the plate glass to make it interesting. What I didn't realize was what was happening on the side of the building (the atrium of the shops in the building) that faces Columbus Circle.

Needless to say, it's a happy accident that I got a new picture to use when referring to The Velvet Prison. But I'm just not sure how the fact that I caught it completely by accident reflects on the vaunted photographer's "eye" about which my friends opine.

The Crushing Oppression

Like my Irish ancestors at the hands of the British, my dog suffers untold humiliation and degradation under my ham-fisted rule.

But even the poor, benighted Irish never had to suffer a camera-happy tormentor following them around, obsessively documenting their most private moments.

I'm just saying.

Fun With Photo Booth

So, my new Macbook Pro comes with this program called Photo Booth, which uses the built in web cam to capture pictures, right? And you can apply effects to the pictures, so of course I've wasted more time than reasonable humans should playing with it:

My Idols Are Dropping Like Flies

RIP Sir Arthur.

Kids These Days

Let's face it: I struggle, these days, to blog coherently about things other than my dog.

I think I've run out of things to say, and seriously wonder if I should even bother to continue this endeavor.

I will say, though, that – as I grow older – I have stronger and stronger opinions about stuff; it's just that I find them less and less defensible and really don't care to explain them.

Maybe I'm becoming calcified. Maybe I'm turning into a crotchety old man. Maybe I'm turning into a Republican, except, you know, for the unconscionable politics.

I kid, my Republican friends, I kid.

A little.

Anyway, I just find that, in those moments when I find the time to sit down and give some thought to some little pearl of shiny brilliance I'd like to share, I often come up blank, or think to myself, "Why the fuck does anyone care what you think?"

Maybe it's that I've turned this into a little dog and pony show meant to please and amuse you, and forsaken its original purpose, which was to allow my far-flung friends to catch up with my life and amuse myself all at the same time.

But, see, there's been a sea-change in my life in the last couple of years. I've stopped traveling so much. I've stopped acting altogether. I've changed my life, my friends, into the following daily routine:

1. I wake up.
   
2. I feed and water my dog.
   
3. I stumble, bleary-eyed, into the shower
   
4. I do things in the shower that I'll leave to your imagination; mostly they involve shaving cream and soap.
   
5. I leave the shower and finish my daily ablutions.
   
6. I take my morning vitamins.
   
7. I dress
   
8. I drag my dog out for his morning walk. This involves picking up some pretty stinky poop.
   
9. I go to work.
   
10. I work all day.
    
11. I come home and – depending on whether the dogwalker has deigned to grace us with her presence – I rush my poor dog out the door so he can empty his ridiculously over-full bladder.
    
12. I feed and water my dog.
    
13. I decide if there's work that didn't get finished that I should attack from home.
    
14. I drag my dog out for his evening walk. This involves picking up some pretty stinky poop. Usually twice.
    
15. I play briefly with my dog.
    
16. I go to bed.
    
17. I get up and start it all over again.

Recently, I've added a boyfriend into that mix, which is nice and has added both variety and warmth to my otherwise barren existence, but the point remains that I don't have quite the varied and interesting life I had as an actor. No longer, for me, meeting new people while working, the walking and talking with those people, haunting the neighborhoods of the city in which I'm working at 4 a.m.

On the whole, I'm happy to have traded those days for the security that comes with working at The Velvet Prison. But there are days when I'm sitting here staring at the blank computer screen and I wonder if all the interestingness has gone out of my life. I wonder what it is I've become. I wonder who it is I've become.

The most interesting part (to me, of course; you may not give a shit about what I'm thinking) is that I'm must less inclined to judge the person I've become for my lack of interestingness. In many ways, I'm perfectly happy to endlessly loop that list above (with occasional interactions with The Friends and A.Pants thrown in).

Or maybe I'm just tired lately and need a vacation.

This Freaks Me Out

This kinda freaks me out. There's just no escaping you people, is there?

I'm Just An Everyday Normal Guy

Courtesy of the Jaybird of Happiness:

I Concur

I wanted, really wanted, to like John McCain. And I did, when he was a free-thinker who went his own way when his conscience told him that his party just plain didn't have it right.

Now, of course, he's had to pander to the crazy wing of his party to get the nomination. And that's why now I couldn't, in good conscience, ever vote for him, and feel, actually, the need to mock him a little:

Long Live the King

Okay, I'll admit that, after he lost control of his creation and started complaining about how it evolved and changed, I kinda thought he was an annoying, braying ass, but still: the man had a HUGE impact on my childhood.

So long, Gary.

What Do You Do With a Monster?

I'm not sure what else there is to say about this except, "Go you, little girl."