sounding the fury

The wheels sputter awake, and then it’s down the streets, jittery but still alive, hard turns and unexpected bursts of speed. Courting disaster, wooing her until we don’t know who’s going to take who home, prowling like a shark, one-way streets if ever you can, cause pedestrians and stoplights are slow pangs of misery. I curb the desire to drive to the home of every person I know. The stereo can only sing too loud or not at all, so spin the knob and let it land where it may. The words on signs reflected in the mirror blur with almost every heartbeat, screaming that I’d know where I am if I would just care enough to read them, but I’m soaking up what barely passes for home now, fully present and gone all at once.

The deep rumble of engine and speakers may be emanating solely from my chest now, and I’m driving low, not slouching, just coiled, free hand filled with a fistful of either hair or clothing, riding every minute of time to its component parts, less killing time than dissecting it, struggling for the scalpel, no anaesthesia for anybody involved. The window’s rolled down just enough to taste the air, carrying the smell of either perfect velocity or approaching sirens, and maybe not the kind that you’d think.

Hills pocked with potholes and speed bumps, alleys, dead ends, and constructions zones and streets, streets filled with students and muggers and lovers and assailants and just kids, all kids, and they all have something to say. If you drive hard enough, you can hear each voice raised in the same song. Can’t tell what it is; stereo’s too loud. The city growls and protests under my gaze. I’ve never seen it so beautiful.

When I get out, the sudden silence barely sighs before hoarse bleats split it. It takes me a second before I realize it’s from birds and look up at the huge line of birds, auks, if they’re heralding their own arrival. The formation wavers and breaks, the point inverting, and that point breaking and inverting, holding there until they wheel, by turns north, west, north, west.

If they herald somebody else’s arrival, too bad for him. I’m angry and caged, and disaster’s got a fifth of gin in her and her skirt hiked up. Leave a note.

Well, it’s been a hojillion years since I posted, so it seems like a decent start off to reposting would be to talk up the best damn site in the world if your parents or your grandparents need a place to live and need assistance. Senior Decision collects consumer reviews of senior living facilities: retirement homes, nursing homes, assisted living, as well as home health companions.

So go post a review or rating or both of a senior living facility you or your family has had experience with. The site’s still in its nascent phase, but with a few more reviews, it’s going to hit critical mass and become indispensable.

So go post something. Or send the link to someone who will – seniordecision.com. It is awesome.

I am not a big fan of ice. I mean, yes, yes, the ability to create and utilize ice is probably on par with the use of fire in the spectrum of human development, although it comes a lot later.

And, I mean, harnessing cooling processes like evaporation in a low-tech fashion and spreading that technique (take 1 big clay pot, put another smaller pot in it, put sand in the interstitial space, fill small pot with stuff needing refrigeration, make sand wet, ENJOY) across less-developed countries is, quite frankly, badass.

But I hate ice in my drink. Also, you know what else is neat¹? The Planck temperature, which is the hottest anything can get (1.41679 × 10³² K, and I like how that number is huge enough that you would think the extra .41679 wouldn’t make that much of a difference in terms of human conception, but somebody figured it out anyway), and to me seems to be the conceptual counterpart to absolute zero.

Hey, did you know that the Kelvin scale is the same as Celsius with different reference points?

Anyway, the point is, ice bumps into my teeth, dilutes my drink, and makes my throat cold. In your face, ice. In your FACE.

¹ See how I avoided the pun there? You’re welcome.

I was going to write something about fire, but I can’t think of any unifying theme that would allow me to mention Prometheus, Trogdor (the burninator), and the fact that fire conducts electricty.

But those three things are equally cool.

While employment is a big part of our lives, I’ve always wondered if it’s something worth doing. Paul Graham’s essays, particularly on startups, hold a definite fascination.

I’m leaving my current job soon, taking a leap into unemployment with nothing but admission to two bars, some will-writing experience under my belt, and the hope of something better.

Or, perhaps more properly, the hope of being something better than I am now. My job is by no means difficult, and while there are some challenges, they are uninteresting enough to actually be challenging. They’re boring, and so I’ve just been shutting down (with increasing depth and rapidity of late).

I guess I need to have a word with Adam Smith, because quite frankly, I am getting tired of being divorced from my labor. I want to own it. I want to do something hard and worthwhile, and I want my days to mean something. Anybody want to help?