Interview (Maybe?) Questions

4/29/2010 12:03 PM – 12:26 PM

Oh, Lordy. What I want, what I always want when I sit down and write these things is a cigarette. It’s the 6 years or so of repetitive action. Sit, write, smoke. That’s the order. I just got home from what I don’t quite know what to call it. Normally, I would be sitting in the stairwell going through a smoke or seven.

I mentioned to one of my co-workers that I enjoyed woodworking and wished that I could do that instead of washing dishes. She said that I should talk to her dad, because he runs a cabinetmaking shop. So I did. It got delayed a couple of times but today was the day when it finally occurred. She wasn’t exactly clear about whether we were just going out to the shop to see it or if I was interviewing for a job. It is now two hours later and I still don’t know. Don’t get me wrong – Dude was cool. I’m just not sure if we had an intense conversation or a job interview. And now my head is very fuzzy and I want to take a nap.

If it was an interview, I don’t have a clue how I did. I’m pretty sure the dude didn’t consider that the point anyway. He used the phrase “military-industrial complex” both ironically and in earnest. He asked me what I wanted and I was pretty sure he wasn’t asking in a “phrase your response in such a way as to make this job that I’m considering you for sound like a goddamn answer to lifelong prayer.” I hate those interview questions. “No. No, really. This position of scrubbing floors with my fingernails is everything that I’ve ever wanted my life to be and I believe that I was genetically designed for just this task. If I didn’t have to pay rent, I’d demand that you pay me – that’s how much I love this job.” Fuck you. No. The reason that I’m looking to get this shitty job, and make no mistake, this is a shitty of shitty jobs is because I don’t want to be homeless and I feel very bad about living off the dole. The cabinetmaking job wouldn’t have been shitty. Probably would have been cool. I’m probably not going to be working there. Or maybe I am. Maybe I got hired and just didn’t realize it. So what do I want? What sprang to mind but I did not answer was, “I want to live in the woods and be left alone and not feel compelled to answer questions in a way that paints me in a favorable light.” I’m a selfish, hermit bastard most of the time. I do not find this emotionally unfulfilling really. Just financially impossible. If I were to answer questions honestly, the vast majority of people would find me offensive. We live in a fairly civil society. I want to live in the woods. I want to live in the woods and not be compelled to answer questions civilly. Or at all. That’s what I really want.

People that Write Things are People that Suck

4/21/2010 8:39 AM – 9:01 AM

Now this is how the instants are supposed to go. I have nothing in particular that I want to write about and I just woke up. It’s a fuzzy gray sky outside. I am, of course, thinking about cigarettes. Non-smokers just don’t appreciate how awesome smoking is.

There is a possibility that I’ll actually finish the workbench that I started last year sometime this summer. That’s good. Something to look forward to. I have to do my laundry today. I need to remember that. I should actually work on writing something. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. And I need to run. Two hours or so from now. So I should have some breakfast. Know what would be awesome? A cigarette. That’s what would be awesome. Stupid universe. I’ve been listening to books on CD a lot lately. Actually, books on MP3. They fill the time well.

All of them have been non-fiction. It’s weird. I don’t really like listening to fiction being read to me. Or maybe it’s just that switch that’s happened in the last few years where I prefer to read non-fiction to fiction. This, for someone that says he wants to be a novelist is probably not a great thing. But I’ve read interviews with writers that don’t really like to read. Which, honestly, I can’t understand. It might be that I’m too easily drawn into the emotions of fiction. If a story is any good, it’s going to have some compelling emotions and it’s easier for a writer to take a reader convincingly to a dark place than a happy one. I don’t even like to watch dark emotion movies anymore and they only last for around two hours. I’m much less likely to commit to eight, twelve or sixteen hours in a nice long novel because the vast majority of novelists think it necessary to kick their readers in the balls and say, “ha! Existence blows! Vote Democrat.” Damn do I hate politics that differ from mine. Especially in the hands of people who can wordsmith well. You’re not convincing me. You’re not actually convincing anyone. The only people that will enjoy that are the people that already agree with you. Sigh. And the exact same thing could be said about me when I do it. Okay. Woodworking next it is.

Run, Poo (again) and More -er Than -est

4/19/2010 9:27 AM – 9:48 AM

I’ve been waking up early the past week or so. Since a few days after I quit smoking. I’m guessing that the two are connected, but I can’t be sure. It’s also been more spring-ish and I’ve been running every day. Those two might be the reasons as well. Can there ever be a pure experiment in real life? For that matter, can there ever be a pure experiment in a lab?

I woke up at 6:30 this morning. I wondered if I should go running. I did. It took about an hour and a half for me to wake up and get dressed but I was out by 8. About 10 minutes in, I realized that I had to poo. I thought I could hold it till I got back home. By minute 14 of running (I walk for about 10 minutes at the start), I had to divert to the bathrooms that were on the back side of Cass park, near the dog run. I don’t know that I’ve been in a bathroom that scary in a while. Didn’t matter. I had to go. It might have something to do with the three large bowls of salad that I ate yesterday for lunch and dinner. Well, three bowls of salad and two large pieces of chocolate cake.

I’ve been able to get away with only the first poo lately, but today was definitely not that. Later, I will go to the store. Stores actually. I need to pick of a few items from a few different places. If I ride my bike, it won’t take as long, but I’ll have to ride through town and I won’t be able to listen to my podcasts. If I walk, it will take a while but I’ll be able to listen and I won’t have to think like a vehicle. The non-smoking is most annoying at work. I have fewer things to look forward to. It used to be that I could remind myself that in an hour, say, I’d get to have a cigarette when I took the trash to the dumpster. Now I just take the trash to the dumpster. The moments that I look forward to now are lunch, illegal (not really but sort-of) break before final push, and going home. Those that say pleasure is an illusion are idiots. Pleasure is delightful and real. It’s just that some pleasures sometimes need to be put away. “–est” is an over-used suffix. I’m just as guilty of it. I like my hyperbole. But there’s a lot more -er’s than there are –est’s.

Spike's 50 Favorite Movies

Since John asked -

This is a list that I've been working on for a few years and it evolves as time progresses.

The requirements for it are fairly simple - 1)Limit the list to 50 (just because that makes it more fun); 2)Only one movie per personally defined "category" (note that there is only one Marx Brothers movie and only one Meg and Tom movie, both of which would see more representation on the list if that limit weren't in place); 3)I must have re-watched the movie at least twice (at least 3 viewings total) by myself, by which I do not necessarily mean "alone" (though that does tend to point out movies that I really like) but "of my own volition or impetus."

These are NOT necessarily the movies that I consider "Great." These are NOT the movies that I think should go on "the Ark" to be preserved for future generations (though a few of them are). These are the 50 movies that, if I was stuck on the Ark for who knows how long, I think that I could handle watching exclusively and repeatedly.

I still don't think that it's 100% honest. Right off the bat, I can tell you that my favorite Charlie Chaplin is not "The Gold Rush" it's "The Immigrant," but "The Immigrant" is a short and, in this configuration of the list, only full length movies are allowed, and I didn't want to get stuck on the Ark without any Chaplin, so "Gold Rush" which is my favorite Chaplin feature length (though not most respected, that'd be "City Lights") made the list even though it's probably only a personal 2nd tier.

There are some movies that I have loved intensely for a while and would have easily made the list a few years ago but, for one reason of another, don't seem to stick at the moment ("Fearless," for example, my second favorite Jeff Bridges movie). Maybe they'll return later. Maybe they'll fade entirely. There are some currently on the list that I'm m not sure if they'll last another year ("Mumford," - but I do love it so and it's my only Kasdan...).

There are so many other things to talk about that go into making a list like this. I could go on for several more paragraphs discussing just my "personally defined categories," and someday, I'd like to write about each movie in depth, but for now, this is just the list and how it stands today.

And so in chronological order and with little further ado, here are...


Spike's 50 Favorite Movies:

1925 – The Gold Rush
1930 - Animal Crackers
1934 – The Thin Man
1938 - Bringing Up Baby
1940 - The Philadelphia Story
1952 - Ikiru
1955 – The Trouble with Harry
1957 - Wild Strawberries
1960 - L’ Avventura
1960 - La Dolce Vita
1961 - Last Year at Marienbad
1965 - Sound of Music
1968 - 2001: A Space Odyssey
1970 - M*A*S*H
1975 - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
1975 - Picnic at Hanging Rock
1977 - Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
1978 - Gates of Heaven
1979 - Alien
1981 - My Dinner with Andre’
1981 - Raiders of the Lost Ark
1983 – The Big Chill
1984 - A Sunday in the Country
1986 - Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
1986 – Stand by Me
1987 - Evil Dead II
1987 - Moonstruck
1989 - Crimes and Misdemeanors
1989 - When Harry Met Sally…
1990 - Joe Verses the Volcano
1993 - Groundhog Day
1993 - Much Ado About Nothing
1993 - The Nightmare Before Christmas
1994 - Clerks
1994 - Pulp Fiction
1994 - The Shawshank Redemption
1995 - Before Sunrise
1996 - Microcosmos
1998 - Dark City
1998 - The Big Lebowski
1999 - Mumford
1999 - Office Space
2000 - High Fidelity
2001 – A Knights Tale
2001 - Spirited Away
2001 - The Royal Tenenbaums
2001 - Waking Life
2002 - Lilo & Stitch
2003 - Finding Nemo
2004 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Three Brands and the Rollies

4/13/2010 11:42 AM – 12:10 PM

It’s been 70 hours since my last cigarette. It’s mostly just really annoying but I have had odd little flashes of anxiety that I haven’t really experienced in many months. I’ve been listening to David Sedaris. The day after I quit, Ben and I drove up to Rochester to meet up with Ben’s parents and pick up the dog. We listened to “When You Are Engulfed…” up and back.

I have not listened to most of the book, so, happily, I’ve had something to distract me for the last couple of days. In my experience, there are really only three brands of cigarettes – Marlboro, Camel and Newport’s. Everything else was just decoration. I smoked Camels, as did most of my smoking friends – artsy, hipster, weird kids. Marlboros were smoked by frat boys and the assorted white people that didn’t want to pretend they were poor urban black kids but weren’t hipster kids. Newport’s were for poor urban black kids or those that wanted to pretend they were poor urban black kids.

But those were just the brands – the packaged, pre-rolled, filtered cigarettes. There is a little more variety in the hand-rolleds. On the low end were Bugler, Tops, Kite and Roll Rich. The Roll Rich has been harder to find lately, but Bugler and Tops have been moving in a big way since the State decided to help us help ourselves even more. On the upper end were Drum, Samson and Bali Shag. Drum was my tobacco of choice, its normal, boring blend. It was in the middle in terms of its moisture. When you got it, it wasn’t overly moist like Samson or dry like Bali tended to be. I learned how to roll cigarettes by watching a kid (actually, the kid that I bummed my first cigarette off of) roll joints. I spend a lot of time thinking about cigarettes. This is the first time that I haven’t relied on a “you’ll be able to smoke in X amount of time.” There are benefits. But costs too. Day three of the rest of my life. Goddamn I hate clichés.

Farewell, My Beautiful Stupidity

4/10/2010 12:27 PM – 12:53 PM

Sitting next to me. Right there, about 8 inches away from my left hand. It’s the last cigarette I’ll ever smoke. If I don’t fuck it up. I’ve fucked it up before. But there it is now and I might not. I am 34 now. I was supposed to have quit two years ago. So here I am now. It’s a beautiful day outside.

One of the things that I read that I’m supposed to do is make a list of all the things that I won’t miss about smoking. There isn’t much. Bad lungs for running. Throat nuggets in the morning. The burnt taste in the back of my throat and on my teeth and tongue. How little I can smell. Constantly stuffed-up nose. I liked running to the store in the rain at two in the morning for a pack of smokes. I like spending my money on such a wasteful enterprise. It’s my money. Which is in the same spirit as why I started and kept smoking. My money. My lungs. My body. The government and church can go fuck themselves. This is my stupid little life. It still is.

But this stupid little life of mine is getting older. The small body of mine has been smoking for 14 years. Most of it with unfiltered, hand-rolleds. Twice the punch. This last cigarette isn’t a hand-rolled. It’s a Camel 99. As close to what I started on as they carry. Well, it would have been a Camel Light 99, but those are too weak for what I like now. I smoked my first cigarette in Southampton, Long Island sometime in the fall of ’94. I was at the first college of my choice. I had started to pull into my shell by then, planning my escape. Planning to go home. The power went out. I bummed a cigarette off of the kid that lived next to me. He smoked Camel Light 100s. Later, he told the small group of my acquaintances there that I had bummed one and they thought it was funny. I was a good kid still then. I lay down on the couch in the dorm’s public area. There were no emergency lights in that part of the building. Someone had left the door open. I looked out the doorway and smoked. “This is something Hemmingway would do,” I thought. A man in himself. A man has to grow up and make his own choices. Not his mommy. His dad is dead. Not his pastor. His God never really says anything. Not his government. Sure as fuck not his government. Fuck them all. Men smoke alone in the dark and think about Big Things. Ha. Stupid little boy. Beautiful stupid little boy. Times up. Out to the porch. The Last One. And then the work of throwing out everything that marks me as a smoker. I still haven’t given up on our stupid dream, little boy. We just need to find another way to get there.

I Dreamed of My Father Again Last Night

3/24/2010 12:39 PM – 1:00 PM

I dreamed of my father again last night. Perhaps I’ve been dreaming of him frequently in the last few days, perhaps this is the first time in months. I don’t know. Since the panic attacks, I’ve tried to forget my dreams upon waking. The terror of immortal immolation given unbridled freedom by my unconscious imagination is not something that I like to hold on to.

They’ve been getting better over the last few years. The dreams, I mean. When I do remember a dream, it’s usually the normal dreams that I have had for most of my life. There was no terror in my dream of my father, just sadness. When I do remember a dream that belongs to a series, for a little while, I remember the series. I remembered the progression of my Father Dreams as they have been for a while. Those few that read the first draft of the Desert Novel know that a few years after my father died, I started to have dreams where I discovered that my father hadn’t really died, but had instead been forced to pretend to die because he was a spy and if the Bad Guys discovered that he was alive, they would have used my brother, myself and my mother to blackmail him.

These were fairly simple wish-fulfillment dreams. I understood them on waking and enjoyed them. My father and I would have spy adventures and he would help me find the Girl as well as foiling the Bad Guys. What I remembered upon waking and will hopefully forget again soon, was that the dreams started to change a few years back, even before the panic attacks. It turned out that my father had, in fact, died and by some unknown power, been brought back to life. In the dreams, it seemed that he had been brought back to life unwillingly to do some task. Whatever it was, he did it and now was just waiting to die again, which, for some unspecified reason, was expected to occur very soon. In the dreams, I have discovered that I too am dying and seeking some cure or comfort, I sought my father out. Last night’s dream, I found him again and asked him for help. He didn't. He didn't really refuse, he just didn’t really care. He didn’t want to be bothered. He’d done his part and just wanted to be left alone to die. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t sad. He just couldn’t be bothered as he made his way through a flea market, looking at things that he might want to buy for his apartment. I don’t believe in dream symbolism anymore. As dreaming creatures, I think we’re too dynamic to be put in such plain boxes. I don’t think that it means anything. It was just sad. Somehow, I knew that it was just a dream and so I left in disappointment and disgust. And then tried to seduce a girl on the fifth floor of an antiques store. I ran for eleven minutes straight today. I’m writing the instants. I sat. I’ll go to work in less than an hour. Doing is doing. Living is living. Dreams are just dreams. It's all they can be.

Running, Poo and Meekness

3/19/2010 11:31 AM – 11:52 AM

I went running forty-five minutes after I woke up today. That’s a good way to do it. I wish that I could be getting up earlier but it takes me a long time to fall asleep after I get home from work. One of the people in my department quit last night. Not my crew or shift, but I don’t know how they’re going to work out filling in the gaps.

The down-side of running that soon after I wake up is that I only have the chance to make my initial poo. I have two poo’s in the morning: the initial poo and the substantial poo. On the way back to my house on my run with only a block or so to go, I almost had the second poo. But I didn’t. I made it home and all was well. Hopefully, my body will adjust. I just finished sitting. I haven’t sat for about four days, but I’m up to fifteen minutes. After about ten minutes, the mind starts to calm down. It’s a pleasant feeling. I feel a bit fuzzy though. That’s not the best thing for my job. Whoosh. My job. I’m starting to want a new one real bad. They’ve got me hooked with the medical insurance though. How do I go without it, now that I’ve got it? Even though they’re most likely going to be making a lot more money off of me than I’ll get in return.

If I wasn’t paying for insurance, my second loan would have been paid off by now. Not that I realized that until after I’d started buying insurance. Habituation again. And my strength training is starting to feel drab, despite the fact that I’m still not quite to the solid know-what-I’m-doing level. I’ve started looking at new exercises though. Considering that I can’t even do one real pull-up, I’ve been considering pull-ups. Maybe a whole body-weight routine, but body-weight exercises are limited in some areas. So maybe mix-and-match. According to my scale, I’ve been putting on weight. But there are always those fluctuations in body-weight. That’s why you’re supposed to only weigh yourself once a week at the same time of day. But I’ve got the scale now, why not use it? Because it’s not really informative. I know this. What is meekness? I was talking to my brother about this a long time ago. My brother said that meekness was something like a solider with a BFG treating a crowd with kindness as he passed through it. I said it wasn’t like that. I said it was more like a person without any kind of G passing through a crowd knowing that that crowd could tear him to shreds at any second. But maybe my brother was right. I don’t know. I was just thinking about it while I was supposed to be just counting my breaths.