Shrunken loyalty

I love my dog, and I am pretty sure my dog loves me. Or at least she has the dog equivalent of love for me. She likes to cuddle with me, and she chooses me over other people when other people are around.

She is a typical dog, she loves playing with other dogs, and chasing squirrels, and she loves killing bugs if she sees one. So the question is, if I got shrunk down to an inch tall, "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" style, would my adorable little doggy love me and help me, or would she try and eat me?

I don't know on which side of the question I come down on. I think I would still have the same smell if I was minuscule, and smell is such an important sense for a dog, I know she would remember it, but would her millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of selective breeding be able to be overcome by a sense of loyalty to my smell? My suspicion is that she would not recognize tiny me, and would try and kill and eat me.

I have been pondering this idea for the last couple of days. I saw a cartoon that had some sort of shrinking machine, and that made me wonder. I know it is a silly thing to think about, but I have been thinking about the dog's reaction, looking at it from all directions, and I think it is beginning to have a slight effect on how I view my relationship with my furry little companion. Even though she has no sentient thoughts in her adorable cuddly head, I can't help but feel a little betrayed by her. It is like the time when she was a puppy and she climbed on the couch looked straight at me and started peeing. I know she has no sense of malice, but I couldn't help but feel hurt by that action. This time she has hurt my feelings without even doing anything (thankfully there isn't any sort of clean up needed this time except emotionally). The fact that she is a dog, and the fact that shrinking is impossible (and impossible for her to even comprehend) do little to alleviate the damage I have done by getting this dumb idea stuck in my head.

I think I may have to cut back on watching Phineas and Ferb cartoons for a time while my relationship with the dog heals from this perceived slight.

 

Reinvention

I had a conversation with my mother last week, and I was telling her about my refound enthusiasm for writing and my feeble attempts at playing the ukulele. She mentioned that I seemed to be reinventing myself as a writer and musician, and while it isn't fair to real writers and musicians, I understood the point she was trying to make, that through effort you can change how you see yourself

My first week at college, the dorm advisor collected all the guys on my floor for a little icebreaker. We all sat in a circle in the basement on the in a circle. We went around the circle introducing ourselves to our new floormates. I don't really remember any of the specific guys except for one stand out named Ivan.

Ivan was a weird looking dude. He had the look of a frog that had woken up one morning and decided to be a person. He had a kind of swampy quality that was really off putting. he had kind of moist looking skin and muddy blond hair with glasses that made his eyes seem farther apart than they should have been. He had an english accent and said he was from a small town in England that was famous for being the most haunted town in England. everyone agreed that was an exotic fact considering that this was a regional college in North Carolina. Other than Ivan the closest thing our school had to a foreign student was a guy from Central Pennsylvania.

There was something about the guy that I didn't like, but I just figured a nerd was a nerd whether he was from the middle of North Carolina or the middle of England. Then one night a couple of days later some people were hanging out in the common room and there were some guys from a different floor there. Ivan walked in with a couple of girls who couldn't get enough of his weirdo British stories. One of the visitors shouted at the guy "hey John, they let you into college?" Well Ivan took one look at that guy and ran out of the room.

It turns out that one of the visitors had gone to high school with "Ivan". Ivan's real name was John and he wasn't from England at all. He was from Salisbury (which is the name of a city in the UK, but in this case it is the 24th biggest city in North Carolina). See "Ivan" had been one of those mean kids in high school who was a dick to everyone, but could never figure out why every disliked him. He had decided that starting college would be a perfect time to reinvent himself.

"Ivan" had a pretty decent plan with just two enormous flaws. One flaw in his plan is that he stayed too close to home. He choose a college where half the kids in his high school went to, basically guaranteeing that he would be found out, he should have gone much further away. His big flaw was that he tried to reinvent himself with a lie. He wasn't from some stupid haunted town in England, he was from some stupid boring town in America.

Reinventing yourself or reframing how others see you is a fundamentally American endeavor, but unless you are true to yourself you are bound to fail. You can't make yourself from England when you are not. "Ivan" lasted another 2 weeks at school before dropping out. If instead reinventing himself as some english exile while remaining a mean person, he had just started being nicer and telling the truth about his origins I am sure his story would have been much happier.

That is why when I decided I needed some creative outlet I started to change. I am still the same person, I am just trying to make myself a more complete person. I started playing music because I wanted to do it for myself, and I started writing because I thought I had something to say. I am still Micah P. Cooper. Just a slightly better Micah P. Cooper. I am trying to reinvent myself with the truth and hopefully this story will have a happier ending.

Some Lame Ramblings about eyeglasses

I need a new pair of glasses. Well, I actually don't need a new pair of glasses, but I have had the same prescription for almost two years, and the same frame for around a year. A year is a long time to star at the same stupid pair of glasses. I happen to really like my current glasses so I am not just going to settle for the first thing the girl at the optician shows me.

Eyeglass retailers are a kind of interesting bunch. They are ostensibly selling a medical device, but they combine the medical aspects of their business with fashion and then add in a moderately cute 20 year old girl behind the counter to say flattering things to you to make you buy something from the limited selection the store carries.

Maybe it is because I am getting old, or maybe I had so much success with the clear sunglasses experiment last year, but these glasses store tactics no longer seem to have an effect on me. I went to three eyeglasses stores over the weekend, and I didn't find a pair of glasses that match what I am looking for, and fit my head correctly. I have heard the phrase "yeah, that looks really good on you" from a girl more times this weekend than I ever have in the rest of my life. Now some of these frames did look pretty good on me, but they weren't what I was looking for, and others looked so bad that as the salesgirls kept a straight face while they lied to me made want to give them an oscar. I heard the hard sell from them, but it did not sway me.

I thanked these salespeople for their time and walked out of the stores with my old frames intact on my face. I am going to hit some other stores this week, and I know I can find what I am looking for. Sometimes the early bird catches the worm, and sometimes the bird that digs until he finds what he is looking for gets the better worm.

 

BlogPress sucks!

Hey Blog press, Fuck You!

Writing every day is hard. It is hard to be motivated to do it. That is why most people start a blog and write one or two posts and then stop. I am guilty of that too. I have had this blog for years and sometimes I go more than a year without a post. So when I finally do sit down and write something I want it to post to the web. I had been using an app to write on my iPad called BlogPress. It is a no frills kind of an app, but it got the job done until tonight.

I had just finished writing my annual screed against socks and pushed publish when the unthinkable happened. I pushed the publish button and the app crashed. The locally saved copy disappeared and all the work was gone. You know what else is gone now? BlogPress is now gone from my iPad. It has been deleted, suck it BlogPress, for a paid app you sure do suck balls. I hope some minor tragedy befalls the people who make that app, something like a stubbed toe, or maybe they burn the dinner that they are cooking to impress a date. I also hope their favorite TV show gets cancelled and and their electric bill is higher than they expect. I hate them so much.

In summation I used BlogPress and I had a bad experience. Suck it BlogPress.

Toy Airplanes

Photo by  Arnaud Gaulupeau  Some rights reserved

 Some kids like dolls or action figures, and some kids like guns, but I always liked airplanes. My favorite toys were always airplanes. Airliners to be specific. Most toy makers like to focus on military jets, but I was always drawn to big passenger planes like the 747, or L-1011. Without a doubt my favorite was always the Douglas DC-10.

The DC-10 was such a curious plane, it just oozed power. It was the rarest bird of all, not a twin engine jet like a boring Airbus, or a 4 engined giant like the 747, but a three engined brut. Sure the L-1011 was a more elegant design with its third engine blended smoothly into the rear, but the DC-10 didn't fuck around with cosmetic niceties like that. It just stuck that third engine into the middle of it its tail like a bulging bicep on a juiced up body builder.

Even today when I land at some airport i occasionally see a rusting hulk of a Douglas' monster sitting on some abandoned ramp I get excited. That airplane is a reminder of a more hopeful time in the world. Nowadays airplane manufacturers are concerned with lower emissions and quieter engines. The DC-10 was from a time when Americans would say "if I can safely build a plane with two engines, then surely lets just stick one more gigantic jet engine on its back". It was a world where too much was never enough. The DC-10 was built by a country that could save the world from Nazis and conquer the moon because As President Kennedy said "not because it is easy, but because it is hard".

Today the best the American aviation industry can do is build something called the "Dreamliner" whose main advantage is that it has blue lights inside and the windows are a little bigger than before. I know the world is running out of resources and America can't strut around like the we used to, but I just lament that the world my nephew has to grow up in will never again make the biggest or fastest or baddest, but instead will make the quietest or most efficient, or most sensible. When I was small we had toys that were boring copies of amazing planes, today kids have toys that are amazing copies of boring planes. Just kinda bums me out.

- Posted using my iPad

They had nothing to say to each other

They sat in a beautiful and formal room with two big chairs facing a marble fireplace. It was freezing, but curiously the fireplace looked as though it had never been used. The Colonel stared at him with a combination of fear and confusion. He had been summoned by The Dear Leader to this place.

The Colonel had never been to the palace before, and under the circumstances the Colonel assumed it might be the last place he ever went. He must have really fucked up to find himself in this circumstance, but no matter how hard he tried, the Colonel couldn't think of any reason that he should be standing here in this place, with the most powerful man in the country.

The Dear Leader said to the Colonel "do you have any idea how your actions have embarrassed the country? The Americans have been playing that video of you mooning their border post for days. What do you have to say for yourself?

The Colonel couldn't believe what he was hearing, he was aware of the hilarious gesture one of his fellow officers made but when the incident occurred he had been hundreds of miles from the border escorting a delivery of potatoes to the army's agricultural weapons factory.

"Dear Leader, I must protest but that wasn't me." The Colonel explained his whereabouts during the event. The Dear Leader listened and at the end of the tale a big smile spread across his lips. The Dear Leader reached into a small wooden box sitting on the mantle above the fireplace. It was about the size of a shoe box but very ornately decorated. He pulled out a gold colored pistol with a mother of pearl handle that glistened in the light.

The Dear Leader said "Colonel it doesn't matter if it was you or not, the moment you are summoned to the palace judgement has been passed. I'm very sorry to do this but someone has to pay, and today you are that someone". The president raised the gun and pointed it at the Colonels heart and pulled trigger.

Day 10: RAMEN!

I love ramen noodles, and Japanese food is great. Ramen from a ramen shop is totally different from the instant stuff we ate in college. I went to Terakawa Ramen near my office, but seeing as how it is the middle of summer I went for the Katsu chicken. Katsu Chicken is panko fried chicken cutlet over rice with a Japanese style curry sauce. It is still pretty rich, but I just didn’t want to eat a huge bowl of soup.

Day 9: Hill Country

 

Today is Wednesday, better known as SeamlessWeb day. I ordered from a barbecue spot called Hill Country. Barbecue in New York is never better than average, more like a Disney version of barbecue, than the real stuff from the south. I had a shredded beef sandwich and sweet tea. The sandwich was nice and the sauce was passable, but the tea was at the bottom end of drinkable.

 

Being a southerner, I am somewhat of an expert in sweet tea. I have thrown out more than my fair share of undrinkable swill marketed as sweet tea here in New York. This stuff passed the test, but barely. It did come in a mason jar that I got to keep, but when a comment about the glass it came in is the nicest thing you can say about a drink, you know it can’t be a good sign.