An open letter to Constantin Makrelis

Dear Constantin Makrelis,

You are a royal douchebag. You called me at 8 am last Sunday morning and hung up as soon as I picked up the phone. You didn't even have the decency to wait a minute and say, "Sorry, wrong number." No, you simply hung up as soon as I picked up. That makes you a douchebag. Or maybe an asshole. If you're googling yourself, I hope this page is one of the first to come up, in which case let's say you're both a douchebag and asshole; perhaps then your day will be ruined in much the same way as my Sunday was ruined.

Saturday night I didn't get home until 1:30 am, Constantin Makrelis. I was deliriously tired, but in a good way, in a "I can sleep in tomorrow morning" way. Sure, maybe I shouldn't have pushed it by starting to watch Halloween 3: Season of the Witch at 2 am, but I figured I could sleep late the next morning.

I'd never seen Halloween 3 before, Constantin Makrelis, but how bad could it be? Constantin Makrelis, it could be pretty bad. Every lead actor was terrible, with bad guy Dan O'Herlihy so mush-mouthed that I couldn't understand him when he explained his evil motivation; I had to look it up online the next morning. (That morning came earlier than expected thanks to you, Constantin Makrelis. But I digress. And I parenthesize. And now I end-parenthesize.)

Do you have an opinion of Halloween 3, Constantin Makrelis? If you do, I don't give a shit because it's the opinion of an asshole and I don't pay attention to the opinions of assholes. What I do pay attention to is my caller I.D.

(I originally put "caller id," but that is too easily confused with "caller id as in caller id, caller ego, and caller superego," so I shall write "caller I.D." which is probably the correct way of writing it anyway. I've got an Associated Press Style Guide within arm's reach, but I don't care enough to flip through it. Oh, am I boring you, Constantin Makrelis? Well fuck you. Maybe you should have thought of that before you woke me up at 8 am on a Sunday morning. Hey, did you know that AP style prohibits the use of "snafu" because of what the "f" stands for? Fun fact!)

My called I.D. got your number, Constantin Makrelis, and googling your number got me your name. It also got me a website that indicated you share your phone number with Katherina Leftheris and Costas Makrelis. Maybe "Costas" is a familiar form of "Constantin" but I'll never know because you hung up on me before I got the chance to ask you. I can safely assume that Katherina Leftheris is a person who isn't you. Maybe she's the one who called at 8 am on a Sunday morning. I doubt it, though, because it's been well established [by me, without anything other than my asshole detecting skills] that you're the asshole in this story, Costantin Makrelis.

Does it bother you that I'm calling you an asshole, Constantin Makrelis? Well, it bothered me that you woke me at 8 am on a Sunday morning and hung up on me. Call it even.

Best,
DYB

And Thursday is like Friday

The one day I don't bring a book to work is the day I have the most opportunity and desire to read. Fuck it.

Apparently I have tomorrow off because it's Good Friday. I was to be given my choice of Catholic Good Friday or Orthodox Good Friday, but the fact that I have a car maintenance appointment for tomorrow morning made my decision for me. I was prepared to give the old "I'll be a couple of hours late getting to work," but there is apparently no need now. I don't even know if anyone is keeping track. I hope no one is. But I don't care.

Nomen mihi est Nihilism!

That's all the Latin I remember from my first year at McGill, and that was from the first day. I have no recollection of anything after that. I do remember forgetting the name of a classmate and trying to figure out some way she would tell me without me having to divulge that I'd forgotten it. She never told me. I never asked. This wouldn't have been a problem if we'd had Facebook back then, or if I'd never taken Latin in the first place.

Actually, a lot of problems would not have occurred if I'd never taken Latin. Obviously, I can't think of any, meaning this situation is ripe for my own "It's a Wonderful Life" moment:

Clarence: Do you want to know what would have happened if you'd never take Latin?
Dave: Sure.
Clarence: You'd have taken some other language, maybe Ancient Greek, and you'd have gotten a C+ in that.
Dave: I got a C+ in Latin, too, so my GPA would have stayed the same. What else would have changed?
Clarence: Nothing. You'd still be on this bridge in a snowstorm, contemplating suicide.
Dave: I thought I don't believe in fate; why am I writing a mini-play on my blog that suggests the existence of fate?
Clarence: I don't know, but if I don't get my wings I'll push you in the river myself.

While we're on the topic of mini-plays (shut up, we are so on the topic and you know it), I'll include this one. I don't feel like typing out the whole story, so I'll copy and paste what I put in an email to Laura yesterday. I had this exchange with my building superintendent as I was getting into my car to leave for work yesterday morning:

Super: Morning.
Dave: Morning.
Super: The building owner saw this scratch on the building and wants me to fix it and charge you for it. It's ok, I won't charge you, just be careful in the future.
Dave: But I didn't cause that scratch.
Super: I can see the white paint on your car and the green paint on the scratch on the building.
Dave: That white paint is from this tiny scratch on the building, and that up here isn't green paint, it's gray like the car in the next parking spot. She's a terrible driver and she's always encroaching on my spot.
Super: It's ok, I'm not charging you!
Dave: But I didn't cause the scratch! Look, the scratch is a foot higher than my bumper even reaches.
Super: Just be careful in the future.
Dave: Here, let me back my car up and I'll show you that I couldn't have caused the scratch.
Super: I'm not charging you, just be careful in the future! [Super quickly walks into the building. Dave is left fustrated at the unjust accusation and the fact that his neighbor gets away with it again. Dave would describe his situation as Kafkaesque, but he is now late for work and not thinking clearly.]

I know the play doesn't start in media res (that's Latin, too, but I picked that up in high school), but if I wanted to start in media res I'd have to take out the first two lines, which in my opinion offer an important starting point for our characters' arcs.

Later I was talking to Laura on the phone. The end of our conversation went something like this:

Dave: Have fun writing your essay.
Laura: Have fun plotting vengeance against your neighbor.
Dave: Actually, I was thinking of going to the movies, but I suppose I could fit some vengeance in there. Vengeance is like Jell-o: there's always room for it.

Sheets of Easter ... everywhere!

Yesterday when I was writing my post about Oneida, I tried to find an mp3 of "Sheets of Easter" because it encapsulates everything that's wholesome and good about Oneida. I googled "Sheets of Easter" and found this Pitchfork article from January 2007. The gist: Furniture Records in Austin, TX, created a tape-of-the-every-other-month club where every release contains only cover versions of "Sheets of Easter."

Coolest thing ever? Yes.

According to the article, Furniture Records would release one tape every other month for a year, with each tape being limited to 300 copies. Each tape would also come with a booklet containing the cover artists' thoughts on the project, as well as a cd containing the same material as the tape. Why not just make it a cd-of-the-every-other-month club? The article doesn't mention, but I think it's because tapes are cooler, duh.

Looking up Furniture Records, I saw that the first tape was released on schedule, but the second tape came out in November ... which is a few months late. Considering this tardiness, it can be argued that the project is ongoing instead of defunct – well, that was my argument, anyway – so I emailed Furniture Records to see if there was room for one more subscriber in the tape club. I haven't received a response, possibly because they no longer check that email because it was tape-club-specific and the tape club's full, possibly because South by Southwest is going on now, possibly because who cares because the original version still rocks.

I still think the cover versions tape club is a great idea. I'm sick to death of Beatles covers and Rolling Stones covers and who-gives-a-fuck covers. Let's celebrate the new classics!

You've got to look into the light-light-light-light- ...

"This next song is not like other songs ... it's in B-flat."

That line was spoken by lead singer Fat Bobby at the Oneida show I attended last Friday. I downloaded a bootleg of it in the hopes I could re-live the sonic experience (Oneida rules, even if they didn't play "Sheets of Easter") without the visual experience (amateur photographers who can't take concert photos without using the flash can go fuck themselves).

The verdict: I'm getting a headache as I suffer from phantom flash-induced blindness. My brain is seemingly unable to hear this set of music without remembering those goddamn flickr photographers. It's a shame, and not solely because that one photographer got only five usable photos after shooting for 30 minutes – come on, the stage is small and this ain't a glam band; you'll get the same photos after 5 minutes as you will after 30. No, it's also a shame because I was in a mostly good mood this afternoon, but now I have to worry about getting epilepsy from the vivid memory of those flashes.

Or not. I'm either too young or too old to get epilepsy, or maybe too stupid to know that you can't "get" epilepsy, but I'm definitely too lazy to look it up.

The photographer hired by Yo La Tengo to take photos during their Hanukkah shows? No flash. Sure, the pictures came out a little dark, but that's what it was like being there. And the pictures were still in focus. Whenever I see concert photos that were taken with flash, I can't help but think the photos belong in somebody's photocopied-n-stapled zine from 1993. And Oneida weren't even together then, so stop defying the laws of physics with your weak understanding of time travel!

Christ is risen and Dave is sleepy

Remember that post about my newspaper's annual Easter greetings section, and my mystification that people actually pay to have them included?

Of course you do; it was two posts ago.

Well, it ends up that not enough people love the concept of Easter greetings. That's the only reason I could think of for the ads manager selling 8 and 15/16ths pages of Easter greetings. The 8 page part, that's not so bad. The 15/16ths of a page part? That's bad. I could have filled that space with the standard "Check out our website!" space-killer, but we've got a finite number of those and we don't like to repeat them and I prefer to save them for pages readers will actually read.

Those who read the Sheaf when I did its layout will remember how much I enoyed writing ridiculous space-killers. Those who have met my current boss will know that I'll get fired if I try to write my own space-killers. BUT ... would she fire me if I slipped in my own space-killer if it was disguised as a Easter greeting? Our ads manager and office manager seemed ok with the idea, but our ads manager is ok with wearing way-hay-hay too much perfume and our office manager calls his wife "mommy," so I'm not sure I'm on solid ground when they approve of my ideas.

Fig 1: If this gets me fired, I am so stealing some pens.

Congratulations, America. You're the Third World now

According to this story at BBC.co.uk, BMW is cutting 8100 jobs in Germany and increasing production at its plant in South Carolina. American dollars are cheap, y'see:

Analysts say that by building more vehicles in its South Carolina plants, Munich-based BMW can pay less wages in euros ...

Hey, remember when American manufacturing went overseas because the dollar was strong compared to less-developed nations' currencies? It feels weird to be on the other side of that relationship. Maybe this was Bush's plan all along: drive the dollar so far down that wealthier countries will move their manufacturing here. Brilliant!

And now ... we wait!

This week we've got the usual amount of ads and probably the usual amount of content. We've also got several pages of Easter greetings, which are a lot like the ads your parents bought in the back of your high school yearbook, but replace "Congratulations, Rob! We always knew your trial would be postponed enough to let you graduate" with "Happy Easter to all our friends! Love, Rob's disappointed family."

Don't ask me to explain why people want to run these greetings. The Christmas greetings we run are understandable: people are too cheap to send Christmas cards to those they pretend to like but secretly can't tolerate. Easter greetings, though? It must be one of those "devout Christian" things I don't understand.

We're also running a four-page spread about this year's scholarship winners. (My paper, or rather my paper's publisher, gives out scholarships every year. I think there is a large chunk of money reserved for the scholarships and then whoever fills out the paperwork gets a piece; that's the only explanation I have for the meagerness of the amounts.)

(I wanted to use "paucity" but it didn't seem correct.)

My editor wants the scholarship spread to go dead center in the paper, with the Easter greetings to follow that. The trouble is the advertising manager doesn't know how many pages the Easter greetings will take up, so I can't plan the overall size of this week's issue, much less place the regular ads or tell my editor how many pages she'll need to fill with actual content. I called the ads manager and asked her how many pages exactly the greetings will take up and her response was, "I'm thinking 8 to 10 pages." Hey, thanks. My editor laughed when I told her that.

I think the worst part is that the more I try to explain the hurdles I encounter in my job, the more boring they seem. In the first paragraph of this post, I was all "Yeah! This office is filled with diabolical blend of incompetence and craziness!" By the time I finished the paragraph above this one, I couldn't think of a reason to continue writing. I can only imagine what it's like to try to read it ... I'd have given up long ago. Maybe everyone has given up, and I'm typing only for myself. Sometimes that's what doing my actual job feels like: I lay out a newspaper and other than the copy I receive the next day, the design document might as well have been ftp'ed into Mel's Hole.

I think Mel's Hole is a lie, actually. Basically, any story that occured more than ten years ago that doesn't have multiple independent sources of verification is a lie. If there were no newspapers to document Michael Jordan's basketball career, in another twenty years the oral tradition would have turned him into the second coming of Jesus. Although I don't think Jesus would have made Space Jam, regardless of Bill Murray's involvement in that project.

But maybe he would have, and in July I'd be writing this same exact post, only replacing "Easter" with "Space Jam." I'm not sure if Space Jam Day would be a "Happy" or a "Holy" type of day. Depends on how well it did at the box office, probably.

My own real-life "The Wire"-style dilemma

The writers of The Wire have a piece in Time Magazine wherein they argue that the first step to ending inner-city problems is to stop jailing non-violent drug offenders. This can't be accomplished by going through official channels, e.g. pestering politicians to get with the program, so we are to heed the call of civil disobedience and vote to acquit non-violent drug offenders whenever we find ourselves on criminal court juries. The article is here.

I love The Wire and I'm vaguely in favor of drug legalization (bring on the ketamine!), so this idea sounds delightful. Here's the problem: To get on a jury of a drug-related case, I'd have to switch my official address from Greene County, NY (home of cases like "some guy stole my horse, horse as in the animal, not as in the 70's nickname for heroin"), to Essex County, NJ (home of cases like "Newark is in Essex County; do the math"). I like having my official residence be in NY State. It reminds me that this "living in New Jersey" nonsense is temporary, that my auto insurance will cost less, and that my vote in the 2008 presidential election will be by absentee ballot. Not only that, but being an eligible juror in Essex County means I'll get called at least twice a year (Have you done the math yet? Goddamned Newark is in Essex County). As much as I like The Wire, I like being paid more than the $5 a day I'd get as a juror.

As cowardly as it feels to turn my back on the writers of The Wire, it's tempered by the knowledge that they themselves don't know the next step of their plan. If you haven't read the article above, it can be distilled thus:

1. Good intentions
2. Acquit non-violent drug offenders
3. ???
4. Inner-cities are rejuvenated!

or to quote from the article:

It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn't resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.

Re-reading that paragraph, the writers strike me as just the sort of useless hippie I find most distasteful ... so as much they advocate acquitting non-violent drug offenders, I similarly advocate not re-reading the Time article. Otherwise The Wire will be tanished for all of us, and Bubbles' struggle will have been in vain.

And you, The Wire? I'll miss you most of all

The "who cares" bit was funny

Excerpted from an email I received this afternoon:

... I am sometimes retarded and have brought home a 6 month old kitten whose new favorite thing to do is sit next to my head while I sleep and yell at me. Stanley, the kitten (and no, it was not named after Stanleigh Byrne-- sp?? who cares..), is lucky he's a handsome devil or there'd be one more kitten in kittie heaven right now, let me tell you. ...

Friday, eerily close to what I had penciled in

10:00 – Arrive at the office

10:30 - 11:00 – Set up the template for next week's issue

11:00 - 11:30 – Eat lunch

11:30 - 2:30 – Watch American Gangster my desk

2:30 – Go home