History

Slouching toward extinction

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16 September 2012

Salt Lake City is quiet on Sundays. The streets are slow and the sun is warm, but beginning to lose its power to the coolness of autumn. The residents of the LDS capital are shopping, indoors with family at church or in cute coffee shops and Whole Foods.

I go to brunch with GF and her brother, Adamantium. GF and I drive to the University of Utah dorms to pick up Adamantium and drive back down to Caffé Niche on 300 South and 800 West. We walk in with the hopes of eating on the patio, yet the patio is full. The hostess with the braid tells us we may have to wait for a table. She explains there is a table by the window, but it is having a “fly situation” at the moment. Due to her further explanation, I am able quickly to dismiss two possible scenarios: (A) The table is having issues zipping up its blue jeans and is too embarrassed or ill-prepared for company. (B) The table is experiencing the height of 1990s cool, yet that acme of awesome has landed it into some sort of kerfuffle, similar to the ones Kid N Play frequently found themselves in. The truth is the simpler version: (C) Several flies of the insect variety buzz around the table. I excuse myself to the restroom in which the reggae music is loud. I return to find a suitable table is ready. We sit, look at the menu and prepare to order.

Throughout brunch, I realize the patrons and restaurant staff are too cool for me. I am resigned to perpetual unfashionability. I cannot hang with hipsters in tucked in black shirts, hipsters with tattoos that have deep meaning and are lyrics from Bon Iver songs, hipsters with thrift store ensembles nicer than anything I own. I am getting too old to matter or fit, not that I ever have found myself comfortable in any setting. I am the gorilla in the midst of glamorous gibbons.

I am becoming irrelevant and anachronistic. GF and I listen to the radio while driving because she prefers the radio and I frequently commandeer the musical choices, which almost never include music found on popular radio. (This statement is not to imply I have any sort of taste, but to highlight the fact that I prefer intolerable music that causes indigestion and has no appeal whatsoever. I am a difficult person to be around.) GF tunes the dial to the “oldies” station. We hear Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” both of which are admonishing us to refrain from quitting (at least until we get enough). These are now oldies? When I was younger, oldies were songs from the 1960s and 1970s, but I suppose we made the leap to the 1980s as the distant past sometime in the last 10 years. Instead of paying attention, I was busy slouching toward extinction.

We are now in our apartment after dropping Adamantium at the dorms and after I purchase a pumpkin spice latte at Whole Foods. While GF does work, I listen to “Armagideon Time” by The Clash and “Sitting Still” by REM. I suppose the songs are fitting for my mood, as I am reaching my personal Armageddon of appositeness. I am sitting still, refusing to upgrade my many-years-old flip phone, thinking that human connection can still exist via email, phone call and letter and postcard writing.

I am the oldies station tuned to only for a second of rosy nostalgia. I am quickly switched in favour of glitzy, ADD rock and Autotuned technopop. I am the post-apocalyptic curmudgeon in self-exile.

-JPR

[Typed on my MacBook Pro, posted on my online blog and promoted via Twitter.]

Simon says

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10 October 2011

Good evening beautiful friends and sexy loves.

The smell of family recipe cookies wafts (or way-fts for our Swedish readers) through our apartment as I sit almost too tired to move from the couch. I’m paralyzed by early mornings and late nights and a perpetual motion of mental activity.

I am listening to “Graceland” and thinking life is the best thing since sliced bread and one day we all “will be received down in Graceland.” I’m taken by simply knowing “losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow.”

Today I walked through the park on the way home and stood with the occupants of Occupy DC and realized that life is changing. Old fucks and their ways will die and be washed away and will only be stories nostalgic parents tell their incredulous children.

When dancing at bars and clubs, does anyone go to just dance or must one be on display, dancing to lure and gyrating to capture the attention of “crashing bores”?

Thanks to a friend who is incredibly talented, I had the opportunity to be in a short film that was beautifully shot and ended up winning two awards at the 72 Hour Film Fest.

Life is what it is and it is mine.

As they say, “What a fine day for a parade.”

The sun also ceases to rise

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3 September 2011

Good evening beloved lovelies.

After our adventure in Baltimore yesterday, GF and I decided to sit around like sloths this Saturday, snacking and watching Sleepless in Seattle. While GF napped earlier, I played what has been called the best video game of all time, Chrono Trigger. So far, I agree with the praise bestowed upon the game.

As the sun set in the distance, GF awoke and we talked of dinner and plans for the evening. We had the idea to see if Netflix for the Wii had Disney Channel series Good Luck Charlie and Phineas and Ferb. While looking, we found a National Geographic documentary on Egypt.

During the documentary, the narrator describes the ancient Egyptian worship of the sun, praying each night the sun would raise from its death in the west to bring life again the next day.

What if it did not?

What if the sun simply did not rise? I have done no research (as usual), but I am sure someone has written in length about what would happen if the sun simply stopped rising.

I imagine (and I’m no scientist) that life on Earth would cease to exist. The end of civilization, humanity and life on this planet fascinates me.

I have a perhaps disturbing fascination with thinking about a worldwide cataclysm that would wipe us from memory and history – an event that would render everything we have ever accomplished completely null and void.

I think about the possibility of a super virus that is absolutely unstoppable. I think about a global crisis of money, food and water that causes the last war. I think about an army of evil automatons killing us all – slowly at first through “freak accidents” like toasters falling into bathtubs or vacuum cleaners sucking off faces. I think about the sun setting one final time.

I do not know why exactly, but I find comfort in the thought that one day, none of us will exist anymore. Everything we love, know and do will be nothing. Our names and actions will be as if they never happened. I find supreme happiness and contentment remembering how insignificant I am.

Like a month to a flame

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1 September 2011

This is it! September! The best month of the year.

Not convinced? Perhaps these great September moments in history will change your mind:

  • September 3, 1808 CE – James Bismuth of Topeka, KS invents the world’s first coal-powered gaming system. The first game, Coalmine Canary Adventure, would be memorialized by The Police many years later.
  • September 24, 435 BCE – Tammy Joans er Al-Veranda catapults a pig over the Great Wall of China setting off a series of events that would eventually lead to the creation of Mongolian Barbecue.
  • September 18, 1405 CE – Three Visigoths wonder whether or not they still exist at this point in history.
  • September 30, 3408 CE – Flying car finally invented. Unfortunately, massive traffic jams continue as floaterists constantly bump into massive heaps of information stored in the Clouds.

Now you know.