Writing on the Wall

Yesterday a sign that read "out of order"was posted on one of the office copy machines. This morning another sign joined it reading "service has been called." I was tempted to add a third sign, "when will they come?" This would in essence create a fully functioning, all accessible message board, taking place right on one of our own office copy machines (talk about using a device for something completely different than what the developer origianlly designed it for).

This happening reminded me of similar instances I was witness to in middle school. One day a message of some kind appeared on the boys' bathroom wall, nothing inappropriate or crude, just a message, something like, "this is the nicer of the bathrooms in the school." Seriously, just that simple, like a prophetic view into the furture world of facebook and twitter messages each of us is barraged with each hour (there being only about 1% we actually care to read, but end up reading them all because they're so short. In a way, facebook and twitter have tricked us into engaging in small talk. After about 20 seconds going through my facebook page a cold sweat begins as I realize I have become engaged in not only one small talk based converation but several, and to make matters worse each thread has nothing to do with the others. The only thing worse than small talk is disjointed banter small talk which is usually reserved for the homeless guy you were tricked into listening to, but that's a whole other post).

A message appeared on the bathroom wall and the next day, another message was found beneath the original. Over the next week the "threads" multiplied, some in reply to the original, others to other replies, and still others began entire new rabbit trails into completely new topics. Lines ran through the scribbles and around the quickly scrawled middle school musings connecting "posts" to their correct responses.

The frequency of bathroom breaks spiked that week (the why unknown to the faculty). A visit to the restroom became a visit to the message board to see if any agreements or snide comments had been added to your previous day's insight. An odd happenstance to all this is, at least for me, I never witnessed anyone actively writing on the wall. It was as if, subconciously and in perfect Jungian syncrotism, we visited the bathroom one by one, alone, to write our thoughts in anonaminity.

Then, one day, not unlike the corporations that step into society's social networks and attempt to present and sell the people with some template, some "correct" place and style of communicating, that that corporation may then make money off, inevitably and sadly, one day walking into the bathroom I was met with the janitor painting over the masterpiece, mumbling to himself as he silenced the voices of the students in a few short strokes of a paint roller. We looked in horror at the white, emptiness that was once a vibrant forest of thoughts, evolving into a single idea, maybe a revolution.

We shook our fists in the air in protest (silently, as no one knew who had written on the wall and no one would tell of their own bathroom musings for fear of taking on the punishment of the whole). "You, establishment (the vocab word that week), can't sell communication, you can't stop it simply because you don't benefit!" If you cap the top, it will ooze out the sides, if you shut out the light, it will grope in the dark and find another and another until it has rebuilt itself, independent and without you.

Those who will succeed in the tech/communitcation growth are those that look at the wall, spattered with middle school penmanship and see not a mess or vandalism but an evolution. Who will then take that and say, "yes, this is what it has become and is becomming, how can I help its expansion?"

Where the Wild Things Were

"Where the Wild Things are" is now a movie. It's a sign of the times. My generation is officially growing up and looking back. I always thought it was just me who was overly nostalgic but I find I'm not alone. Throughout any given day I am met with a number of signs that my generation is now in the nostalgic, adult chapter. Buying lunch I find myself bobbing my head to "My Jones" by Counting Crows or something off No Doubt's "Tragic Kingdom." I'm reminded of the first time I may have heard these. The high school track during a meet, marching band practice or my first car's radio as I rushed from school to work.

Looking through the newspapers I see advertisements for the "High School Prom" event, a way for us late 20 somethings to relive our prom I suppose. I watch "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and realize that these characters are my age and were my peers in high school and they reflect that scared, selfish, lost feeling many of my generation struggle with right now.

The trailer for Where the Wild Things are recently came out. I can't complain, it looks like it's going to be a beautiful, nostalgic movie. The trailer is complete with wide shots of a perfect Max look-alike and all his adventurous, shy glory and Arcade Fire's song "Wake Up," a song about growing up, loss of innocence and, ironically, released in 2004, when most of my generation was finishing undergrad and feeling those first anxious pulls of life. The first time we looked back instead of forward and wondered, "was it better then; do I want now?"

My mother could not help but compare me to Max, the main character of Where the Wild Things are and It'd be foolish of me to think that I was the only little boy of my generation who was compared as such. Max was a symbol to us all that though we had eternity in our hearts we still longed for our mothers come day's end. I was also compared to Alexander of "The Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." I had the same perpetually messy hair (which I still have, go figure), the same little scowl during a bad day and of course, bad days (no good, very bad days). I'm really waiting for this one to be made into a movie too, but I also hope this never happens. A movie would ruin the simplicity. A movie would need to add more personality and depth to Alex and his family when this is not the point of the book. The point is simply that there are bad days and you will have them, even if you go to Australia.

Now that Where the Wild Things are is a movie, I fear for it for similar reasons. It's a simple story, short, to the point and beloved. Most of us could identify with Max and we had our favorite wild thing and there were those few wild things we could never quite figure out or place. So what happens when the attributes we've inputed into a beloved story are rocked by the awesome force that is 21st century surround sound, computer generated glory and really well made wolf pajamas?

I have always argued the side of literature that states stories are about something specific, have specific points and purposes and should not be openly interpreted to meet one's own needs and convictions. Only those blindly post-modern or simply ignorant would venture into the "it's whatever you want it to be about" camp. Short children's stories such as Where the Wild Things are are no different as far as I'm concerned, however the characters in these stories are often left open to more reader interpretation and imputation. Of all the wild things in the book, Max is the only one with any depth. The other wild things are a tad more than cool drawings, left wide open for the reader to decide what they're like, which ones are scary, which are cute, which are happy, which are lost.

The attributes we give these "blank" characters are pieces of us, our attributes, spread out where they can be managed and dealt with. After stating that these characters are open to our interpretation, I cannot say that a movie producer does not have the same right to impute characterizations. However, once a movie is made our own imputations are challenged. Perhaps some of the movie characterizations don't fit our own. The scope and range of a movie's interpretations are so far reaching, it's a dangerous power, a hideous strength.

We are simply left to wait it out and hope the beauty of the movie does not destroy our memories, but at the same time, may our own memories not make us hard and cynical to another's art and expressions. Who are we to withhold praise where it is due because of our own insecurities?

May we recent adults learn to love what we've got and continue forward. Looking back to our memories as beginning markers allowing our nostalgia to grow into wisdom and not fester into regret and longing for what no longer is. May the eternity in our hearts someday find rest, may our mothers' ancient words lead it there.

Prone to Failure

If you ever want to surprise a friend don't tell me about it. When planning that perfect surprise birthday party for your spouse or roommate I'm happy to be just as surprised as they are when the moment comes. I have ruined or near ruined too many surprises to be comfortable thinking about. It's not that I want to or like to give away surprises. I'm not trying to steal the attention of a moment and I don't get weird highs from destroying someone else's efforts.

I just end up saying something I'm not supposed to. I mix up who's supposed to know and who is not. I refer to something that inadvertantly begins a stream of thought in that one who is to be surprised which leads them straight to the truth. I am also known to mess up secret announcements. If you're going to move and don't want everyone to know yet, keep me in the "everyone" group. Don't worry, I'm fine with not being privy to inside information no matter how close you consider me. I promise I won't be hurt or offended if I'm the last to know you're moving to Australia. As long as I didn't mess up any secret announcements or ruin someone's surprise trust that I am completely fine.

In high school a friend of mine had a dream one night that he was literally trying to keep a cat from clawing its way out of a bag. He had to continue holding the bag while pulling up the falling, ripped flaps. The bag became harder and harder to hold together and its ability to contain the cat was quickly diminishing. He woke up before the cat escaped, but he couldn't help asking himself the question the next day, "what 'cat' am I trying to not let out?" I've learned one thing from his dream and I'll impart it to you and you can then help me not fail. Cats cannot be bound by bags.

Perhaps some have other methods of keeping these "cats" pent up. Maybe you have some metaphorical 2x4 you can periodically smack the cat within the bag with taking some of the fight out of it. Perhaps your bag is made of thick leather. Maybe your cat is just calm and content to remain in the bag until properly released. Whatever your surprise concealing method is you're safe to assume I don't possess it. My bag is paper, plastic at best and the cat has claws and does not want to be in the bag. Of course, this is beginning to sound like I can't help but give surprises away, which is not the case at all. I want to keep your surprise party and/or announcement secret as much as you want me to. I think it's more that I just end up leaving my bag laying somewhere, in the room, unattended, and the cat kinda just walks out.

It's hard for me to live day to day keeping surprises all in line and properly organized, shielded from the right people and freely offered to and amended by those who've clearance to them. What I know is what I know. To clear something up, it's not that I can't keep knowledge safe or that I can't keep important tidbits about close friends to myself. I'm speaking of surprises. Parties and events that will be known to everyone soon but not at the moment. Things that are ultimately good, but better when known by the right people at the right times. I am that right person. Of course, in writing this I make a hypocrite of myself because I recently organized a surprise party for my wife in which I needed to trust all my close friends to keep a secret from her. I'm not sure at this time if there's another in our midst that struggles with the same surprise inability I do. In the case there is another in my circle of friends, much like offering your recovering alcoholic friend a drink, I recently asked them to do something they may have not been able to handle. However, it's not that I don't like surprises or find them immoral, it's just that I'm not good at them, so I'm best left out.

The Nightmare

Always a similar nightmare. I'm a child, somewhere between 7 and 12, and I walk out the back door of the house I grew up in in Ohio. I look toward the field that extends from the back yard. At the end of this field is a woods where I spent countless hours as a child. However, this time when I look past the field to the back woods something has changed. The woods have come undone in a way, parts are still there, a few clumps of trees, but spread throughout the area are houses. A cookie-cutter development with equally cookie-cutter houses now sits where that beautiful woods used to be. I writhe in anger, sadness and disappointment. I am powerless to do anything about it, I was powerless to stop the development of the land and there is nothing that can be done to restore it.

I have been having this dream all my life. Even to the present time I will have a dream like this at least once a year. The dream varies every time. Sometimes the development has completely wiped the trees away and I look on from far off, other times I walk up to the tree line and everything looks normal until I enter the woods and upon doing so I am met with houses and yards instead of the thick of the woods. In some variations I see the construction and clearing take place, in others it's already complete. But it's all the same theme.

To this day I fear that area's development. My family would never buy the land, even if it were offered to us and I do not see myself settling in that area anyways. I sometimes fantasize that the owners will some day donate the land as a preserve, rendering it untouchable and sealed, forever safe. I suppose until that happens I'll continue to have this same dream. If and when the day does finally come when the nightmare becomes reality I think I'll be found with disappointed tears. I will be heartbroken.

People that grew up moving a lot maintain that they have no roots and no nostalgia connected to place or land. Others simply are not fond of where they grew up even if it is all they know. Sometimes I wish I didn't feel such a connection to the place and the land where I grew up. Damn it that where I grew up is so prone to change. There are parts of me that are now looking, silently, for another piece of land. Some space to breath and move, a hint of where I grew up, quiet, dark at night and away from the hustle and bustle.

Blagojevich, a.k.a. (Former?) Governor of IL, or just insert the name of your favorite martyr

Even if IL governor Blagojevich is completely innocent and everything he's saying is true and he is a huge victim, he still has no choice at this point. the rest of the IL government has pretty clearly shown that they don't want to work with him anymore and they're spending a lot of energy and (again, in the event he is telling the truth) they're fabricating a whole lot of crap (which would be a major risk, yet not out of line for IL government) to dispose of Blago. However, even if the majority of the IL government is making all this up just to get him out I can't really complain. It would probably be the best the IL government has worked together in a long while and that's the showings of a healthy administration (for IL that is).

Blago just needs to walk away with whatever dignity he has left and stop wasting IL's money. He goes on and on about how much he's helped everything and now he's come up with this conspiracy theory that they just want him out so they can raise taxes, yeah, irony is once he is out, with all he made everyone go through, IL will have to raise taxes to make up for the deficit he's going to leave. Or maybe not, perhaps IL works this stuff into the budget given its track record.

If you Rearrange the Letters in "The Matrix" it Spells "War of the Worlds "

As it turns out, the Wachowski's were not as creative as was once suspected in formulating their idea of a pod imprisoned human race being fed on by super-human (in their case machine) beings. Upon finishing H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, the main construct of The Matrix idea comes from the half-crazy bantering of a lost soldier in WOTW. I'm not saying the Matrix was not a well crafted story and movie (the first one), I'm just connecting references that I have been ignorant of. The Matrix did a great job of adapting original idea into its story reality.


In WOTW a soldier discourses the fact that in the light of the Martian invasion, people, those strong enough, will need to go underground, use London's old sewers and train tunnels as their home (think hover crafts flying through old sewer systems and utility shafts...zion, the underground city). The soldier also mentions the fact that most humans are not ready for this. Those comfortable in their dead-end jobs and stagnant lives will not only fail to flee from the Marian oppressors, but will willingly accept the new order of being locked-up and "taken care of" by the new oppressors (they will willingly trade in one lifestyle for the other. In this, Wells draws a parallel between the way most live and downright imprisonment). Sounds much like Morpheus' speech with Neo in the Agent training program.

In WOTW, it becomes clear that the Martians seek to use the human race as a food source. This realization comes as the narrator observes over and over Martian machines taking and collecting humans as opposed to simply vaporizing them with their heat rays and later witnessing humans having their insides sucked out (much like the Second Renaissance shorts in the Animatrix collection, only in the Matrix humans are used for the electricity the body produces and not it's fluids).

Further, the design and look of the machines at large, especially when one watches the Animatrix, heavily borrow from Wells' descriptions of the Martian machines in WOTW. WOTW, like The Matrix, describes the machines as being tri-pod walking machines including many whip-like "arm" structures. Again, though, no foul on the Wachowski's part, Wells was onto something and it continues to strike fear into the readers and viewers of this day and age. If it's not broke, don't fix it.

As an aside, I also find it interesting that the Matrix film was finished with a greenish tint and in WOTW, a greenish glow/smoke is always emanating from the Martians.

If you have not yet had the chance to read War of the Worlds count this as my formal recommendation to go pick it up at your local library. You can make a weekend of it, read the book (not long), watch The Matrix (the first one) and The Animatrix (Second Renaissance I and II) and enjoy the adaptation by an interesting film and the self-Satisfaction that you've just read the book portraying ideas that have yet to be creatively outdone.

"1 in 500 is on us"

I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what population Chase Bank is
targeting with the "every 500th purchase is on us" ad. Who can get
excited over this? It's not even something you get the second
time around. Upon the first read there it is. It might as well read, "go ahead, you shoot your big toe off with a pump action shot gun and we'll give you a whole dollar."

It just seems this sort of number crunching is usually hidden deep within the corporation documents, not blaring in one foot tall, back-lit letters on a store front. Someone received and/or forwarded the wrong email and someone is getting fired for this one. We want competitive interest rates, Chase, when will you get that?