Archive for November, 2004

Fuck.

In case you didn’t realize from my Dick quoting post, I was a bit frustrated when Kerry conceded. This coupled with the fact that I know that some of my family voted for w in Ohio. Nonetheless I was a bit pissed.

If they’re going to get a from me pass on this one I don’t know. While I know choosing a President should not be decided a single issue, it often is by individuals. As much as the aforementioned family members theoretically profess to care about me, voting for someone with such a bigoted attitude toward me doesn’t bode well in my book. (Yeah, I’m going to hold a grudge.) I’ll take responsibility for not talking with them about same-gender marriage and that I’m still of draft age for another year, but I assume that they’re smart.

I know that this could be perceived as self-centered and self-serving. It is. There is undeniably nothing wrong with defending your own interests when it does not hurt or infringe on the rights of another. Family should look out for one another. In this case I feel that my family has turned a blind eye to my best interests. Yes, this election is personal. When you have the leader of the free world describing your relationships and you as wrong, its personal, no other way about it.

So here is my game plan for the near future. I have a novel to write, you can check up on my progress at my NaNoWrimo Author Profile page. I feel content with my current word count, while it is low, it is in the range of the current word count of others who won last year.

Other items on the game plan for the near future include going to Canada. (No, I’m not moving, just a little road trip.) I’m quite sure that sometime around w’s first election I said if he was reelected I’m moving to Canada. I have myself a bit of a predicament here. I wrote in the beginning of May that I’m not moving until I’m 185. While thats a bit overblown, I still want to somehow keep both of my pledges to myself. (i.e. Go to Canada because w was reelected and not move, because its a pain in the rear) So I’ll be spending the weekend in Windsor, Ontario. I need to get away from this and wait for it to blow over a little, little bit. As one of my favorite bloggers has simply, but brilliantly elaborated, life goes on. (Also check it out for my mini-blog entry. (yes that was self aggrandizing.))

I’m going to end this entry with an excerpt from December 15, 2000 written in my my Spilling Open (Its like a Journal, but not. One of my teachers was inspired by Spilling Open : The Art of Becoming Yourself and had us all start Spilling Opens for our “Creative Writing” class. (yeah I’m scarred for life from that course.))

I am confident that its flashback reveals that I’m an optimist.

Without further adieu here is the entry:

Dec 15, 20000

[An arrow pointing towards a scrawling note written about 6 am or so after election 2000] This letter, an idea why I am so wrapped up in this — No doubt. I have seen the legal/political battle of Election 2000 as a personal struggle. Why would something like an election provoke a deeply personal response?

In someways I see it as a macro view struggle of my gay peer’s struggles. The fact that the christian churches feel a need to think deny me a legal right to love whom I want to love, and share profoundly and devoutly in my partners life pisses the living shit out of me. These are the same people who not 100 years ago fought to prevent interracial marriages.

While I realize that a president cannot change policy on his own, he has a Republican lead congress – which means he has great power. George W. Bush has expressed a desire to restrict Abortion, Gay Marriage, Women’s rights among others to this I say fuck you. Keep your hand out of my life. I am angry about this election, I see it as a legal coup while Bush has exposed being bi-partisan he could not accept one of the many olive branches his opponent offered him — So much for brining the parties together — great way to start out with a lie reinforced by inaction. Down w/ Bush.

So for those of you who thought I was joking about going to Canada this weekend: Nick has left the country.

Initial impressions:

• I think all of Northern Kentucky is taking a short migration up to Windsor. I saw one car from Boone county in the states between Toledo and Detroit, and the car I was behind at customs at 3:30 am was from Kenton, the same county I’m from.
• There is nothing inherent about Canadian road design that makes it harder to get lost. Not less than three turns into the country I had gotten lost.
• The custom officer is actually friendly at three in the morning. He actually asked me which way my county went on Tuesday. Perhaps I’m not the only one with this idea
• Windsor is a real college town. Not that half-assed Fairborn shit.
• I somehow landed a hotel on Priceline thats bigger than my apartment.
• This is also the first time I’ve seen a recycle bin in a hotel room. (Yes, I’ve used it.)

Well.. I’m looking forward to a relaxing few days….

• Starbucks still tastes just as good. Plus you get to impress the baristas with something they’ve never seen before, my Duetto Card.
• Canadians do say “eh?” Its not some messed up american joke about our northern neighbors. No they don’t say it as much as we think, but they do. Eh, it makes the language more interesting.
• All the signage is similar to the signage in the US, except you have French instead of Spanish.
• Milk comes in a bag. While I’m not sure for the exact reason for this, I assume it has something to do with that a bag ends up being cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
• I still despise malls, even Canadian ones.
• This exchange rate thingy distorts my sense of value. I’m currently getting the Canadian dollar for about .80 US cents. So Starbucks Coffee seems even more expensive here. Also, seeing a gas price of C$.77, while on first glance seems really cheap (especially to an american used to gas for US$2.00), is for 1l per Canadian dollar. So it translates into C$2.91 per US Gal or about US$2.33.)

Notes about America:

• GM’s headquarters — well it makes me think that their executives are insecure about something, either their market position or their penis (or vagina) size. Its the tallest set of building on the whole skyline of the area. Its not just one tower, but a collection of no less than five.
• US Post Office has a knack for wasting money on useless things. There is a rather large, four story or so building directly on the Detroit River. It appears to be a sorting/processing facility. The building has a large sign that states “United States Post Office” that faces the river, the sign is large enough and mounted high enough that nobody on the US side can read it, it is only for the consumption of boats on the river and people on the Canadian side of the border. Glad to know the USPS is being fiscally responsible. (In their defense, the sign appears to be c1975.)

Other Notes:

• Forgetting to bring a coat to Canada in November is a pain in the ass. Err, to be more accurate is a recipe for Nick ice cube.
• Typing on your laptop sitting by the Detroit River at 5:07 pm on a day in November, is a formula for frozen hands and a really really slow typing, with a high error rate.

I admit it. I’m a kid when it comes to flying. I can still look at planes and tell you what type they are (sometimes even down to the sub-model (e.g. a 737-200 vs a 737 in general.)

We just took off and surpassed 10 minute ban on using laptops and other electronic devices. I think I had the same expression and feeling of awe at taking off as I probably did when I was seven. Its an amazing magical gift to be able to fly. Just over 100 years ago powered flight was the fringe technology of inventors and visionaries. Now people get frustrated when everything does not go as planned. At the magical moment of rotation (the point during takeoff where the nose leaves the ground and the plane is no longer supported by its wheels but instead supported by the amazing imbalance of air pressure between the top and bottom of the wings) I looked around at my fellow passengers, and all of them that I could see were unaware of the magical physics of flight that we were partaking of. They were in a zone of uninterested complacency, unaware of the magic of physics that was occurring around them.

Stop, take a moment to stop and relish in the little magical and amazing things around us. If this week has taught me anything, its that while I feel good when I’m a busy beaver and productive and getting lots of things done, I miss stopping and people watching. (Although people watching is dually helpful for and horribly non-conducive to novel writing)

From 20,000 or so feet, suspended by the magic of air rushing over two metal branches, I give you my two cents on smelling the ros… err the magic around us.

Just for the record by the end of this week I will have been in no fewer than six states, one province, and two countries just during this week. Yes. I’m going to New York this weekend. I promise this will be the last little weekend trip because well, I’m getting tired of them, and the novel is suffering horribly, next weekend will be novel writing and I will get 8,000 words in. This my friends is how you kill procrastination.

The Canada trip last weekend was well quite impromptu. Basically the night before I would’ve had to leave I got on Priceline and said, if I get the room I’ll go, if I don’t get a room, i won’t go. And well I got the room, and went.

The trip to New York City on the other hand, well this started back in 2002 with a movie shoot that I worked on right after I got back from my internship in Atlanta. This time feels a lot like that time. I’m rushed, flyin by the seat of my pants all over the place and not really having any idea what I’m doing tomorrow. Yeah, film shoots are fun, and so are galavanting trips across the country.

My plane is getting ready to board, but I’ll just say something short and quickly. I love airports. There is something amazing about the inherent ballet that occurs and the human drama that unfolds as well.. More about that later after I have time to process what I just recently heard.

You gotta stick to that Vice Presidential language. It seems to have served Dick well so, I feel the more I work his level of language in the better it’ll be.

So, well all in all this has been a great trip so far. It started out last night as I was packing and pre-preparing to go to work. (I went to work then directly to the airport.) In the middle of finishing up my packing, the electric goes out. So in addition to not being able to actually see what I’m packing, I’m also faced with the problem of ensuring that I turned off all the lights, because I’m not going to be at my apartment for a few days and I don’t want to leave a light on.

Okay so we started with the power going out while I was packing. Work went fine. Although on my way out getting a bagel at the local Brugglers, I ran into a coworker on my way in. This is wasn’t any coworker, this was the uberbitch, “this is my Kinko’s so do what I say” coworker. Given that we were both off the clock and she was nicely goading me on, I just ignored her.

So. I did make it to the airport on-time, which I consider a miracle. While I was waiting for my flight to take off there was a woman in tears because she had missed her flight because of TSA-Rape. (Or at least thats what it seemed like from her reaction.) While initially I thought she was grandstanding to get what she wanted given her personal family situation I understand why she was so upset. To be tactful, I’ll leave out what had happened. So after the raving emotional mother, the power outage and running into uberbitch, I figured we had gotten everything that could go wrong out of the system.

How wrong I can be sometimes.

The forty five or so of us got on the plane, one of these wonderful regional-jet-sardine-cans that US Airways is relying on to provide the proper level of service for every city, and keep costs down. No sooner than we had gotten on the plane, the pilot announced there was a ground stop at our destination because of the weather and we’d be delayed, and he thought we’d be more comfortable in the terminal. Most people got off the plane for the fire drill. Then they got all back in. I having just went to the bathroom and well, not wanting to move around just hung around on the plane.. I guess me and my fellow minded passengers failed the fire drill. After battening down the hatches on the plane we taxied to the end of the runway and waited for another forty-five minutes, right next to a snazzy FedEx Express 727. (Note there is no such thing as Federal Express anymore.. Its now known at FedEx Express. Because we’ve got FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, FedEx Custom Solutions, and my employer: FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centers (Yeah we got screwed with the long name. Although there is a newer member of the family, FedEx Postal Solutions. Whee! Next thing you know we’ll have FedEx Food after we buy and fix McDonald’s, you’ll get your food by 10:30 am tomorrow, should be fast enough for anyone.)

But back to the point. So we ended up leaving Cincinnati about the time we were supposed to get to Charlotte. When we got there we didn’t have a gate. (Yeah, our flight was batting a 500.)

I ended up missing my connecting flight, which was good because well I got to get lunch at Chili’s and Starbucks. Free Starbucks. One of the wonderful things about most airports now adays is all of the food service is provided by the same company, when the credit card processing goes down, All of the credit card processing goes down. I grabbed some cash for food, and I got a free coffee after they couldn’t use my Starbucks Duetto Card.

We had a short ground stop leaving to Laguardia which didn’t cause us much trouble. And thats where I’m at now, on the A320 EOW waiting for some freaking beverage service, because these airliners are like the desert. (For good reason, they can’t raise the humidity too high because it is corrosive to the shell of the airplane.)

So well yeah its been a great trip besides the fact that I’m exhausted from being awake for twenty hours.

Oh another thing about this bullshit security. While they’ve gone through such pains and forcing people to break off their nail files from their nail clippers, They’ll gladly provide you with glass salt shakers and glass beer bottles which can be very easily broken and made into a weapon. This is of course while sit down restaurants are forced to pay lip service to security by only using plastic silverware.

Logic does not appear to be something that we americans have.

I just want to drop a quick note for posterity’s sake. I wrote the last three posts offline, and stored them in MarsEdit’s Drafts folder. When I went to post them online MarsEdit somehow lost the times I wrote the entries. (In the past its kept the post time.) So I had to guess at what they should be. So for the past three entries the finished writing time is a guess.

Yeah, I’m anal retentive.

You know, one of those implicit things about New York City: you walk a lot. I’ve actually not seen one of those bloblous people that are common in Ohio and Kentucky (One lives down the street from me. He has this bad habit of crossing the street barefoot and shirtless. Pleeze.)

But yeah, while some people have bellies, there are no grotesquely obese people that I’ve seen while I’ve been here. Maybe they’re all camping out in Brooklyn or on Long Island.. But they’re not in Manhattan.

Also, I’ven’t found the blue fairy, although I’ve not looked for her.

The film I worked on two years ago premiers in an hour or so. All I can think is that its a world away from where I am now in so many ways.

This entry must be short. (I’m writing it on the back of a Starbucks receipt @ Starbucks.) I’ve been debating of where to aim to move next. NYC? San Fran? Seattle? Canada?

I dunno.