Technologies for the Down and Out 

Duct tape
Scratch-off
Bedbug repellent
Plunger
Pennies
Anti-itch cream
Wet vac
Tax lawyer
Pay phone
Cover-up
Glue solvent
Airplane toilet
Gravestone

Eskimo Words for  

The common conception that Eskimos have "dozens" or "a hundred" or "hundreds" of words for brunch is a problematic one on many fronts. First, there is no single language called "Eskimo": this is merely a convenient (and offensive) grouping of two major cultural groups of the region, more correctly known as the Inuit and Aleut.

Second, what is a "word"? It is difficult to know when to distinguish between noun-verb pairs, complex or irregular verb conjugations, gerunds, phrasal verbs, etc. Part-of-speech disambiguation is a challenge in any language.

However: the peoples of this region do in fact make many fine linguistic distinctions regarding this ritualistic midday meal. For instance, the Inuit use no fewer than twenty-four separate lexemes¹ to describe in greater specificity what we in English characterize simply as "brunch."

qanuk

Brunch before noon

kaneq

Early afternoon brunch

kanevvluk

Brunch after 2:30pm

sanajait

Brunch cooked at home

namiippunga

Brunch eaten out

muruaneq

Brunch with a lover

nutaryuk

Brunch with a new lover

qetrar

Brunch with your friends

nevluk

Brunch with your family

tuktu

A savory brunch

mutuk

A sweet brunch

mamaqtuq

A brunch mixing sweet and savory

qujannamiik

Brunch with powdered sugar

pirta

Brunch in the air

aniu

Brunch crusting on the ground

qanisqineq

A mimosa brunch

quisuktunga

A Bloody Mary brunch

qanikcaq

Brunch involving three or more alcoholic beverages

qengaruk

All-you-can-eat brunch

utvak

Mother's Day brunch

ajjiliurumajagit

Weekday brunch (seldom used)

navcaq

Wedding brunch

natquik

Breakup brunch

navcite

Unexpected breakup brunch

As you can see, there is meaning to be derived from the truism about "Eskimos" and the number of words for brunch, despite its problematic and non-academic origin.

---

1. The list is organized according to lexeme meanings. Perhaps somewhat arbitrarily I have counted twenty-four of them. But an even more arbitrary decision is left to the discretion of the reader: the decision of how to count the lexemes themselves. Here are some of the problems you face:

    (a) Are all twenty-four lexeme meanings really 'brunch'-meanings? That is, do words with these meanings really count for you as words for brunch?

    (b) There are some synonyms present—alternative lexemes with the same meaning, like 'effete' vs. 'academic' in English. Are you going to count them separately, or together?

    (c) If you decided to count synonyms together, will you also count together both of the members of noun-verb pairs having basically the same meaning? (The members are, technically speaking, separate lexemes since partly idiosyncratic morphological changes mark the verbal forms, and must therefore be listed separately in any truly informative dictionary, as indeed Jacobson's dictionary does.)

    (d) Following Jacobson, I've specially labelled those lexemes that only occur in a small subpart of the Central Alaskan Yupik-speaking region. Are you going to try to make counts for each separate dialect? If yes, you will wonder if you really have enough information to do so. (You're not alone in this. Such information is difficult to compile, whether or not you are a linguist, and also whether or not you are a native speaker of a language.)

The Right Punchline 

(Try again?)

Escape is Everything 

The escape is everything. The car with the top down, and a tornado's worth of wind in the back seat, and our hair is crazy in it. We dangle our arms outside the open windows and the wind tosses them like skinny kites. We're shouting and screaming and singing and laughing, and the wind and the car engine are both roaring angry gods. Everything we ever knew is in the rear view mirror, getting smaller, and the road in front of us is infinity miles long; and we've got a full tank of gas.

That New Flatware 

Where I work, they recently bought new flatware, to supplement the dwindling supply in our kitchen. The new set is tinny and disappointing, and I go to some pain to avoid using it. By "some pain," I mean I prefer using (in order) the old set, chopsticks, disposable plastic sporks, my fingers, or your fingers, before I'll reach for any of the new utensils.

I like to believe I do this because the old ones are so much better than the new ones (so, because I am a snob) rather than because the new ones are new (and so, because I'm afraid of change).

But it's so hard to know ourselves...

The Margarine Manifesto 

Part One: Counting My Blessings

In no particular order:

1. My apartment
2. My neighborhood
3. My city
4. My education
5. My quirk
6. My steady reliable income
7. My family
8. My friends

Part Two: Setting the Scene

I considered making toast for breakfast. Instead I ate half a chocolate bar and had four cups of coffee. I'm still in pajamas.

Part Three: Panic / First Response

In order:

• Sleep in
• Take a long shower
• Go for a walk
• Indulge long email threads with old friends
• Take the subway somewhere you've never been
• Read job listings in other career fields
• Flip through the dictionary, learn new words like feasance and outre
• Write a manifesto

Part Four: The Woods

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promissory notes to keep
And I have promissory notes to keep.

Part Five: Panic / Second Response

In no particular order:

• Take a class
• Get a dog
• Leave the city
• Leave the country
• Move to the country
• Enroll in grad school
• Get a houseboat
• Get an Airstream
• Get a horse
• Hike the back country
• Join the army
• Join the Peace Corp
• Join anything
• Start a magazine
• Start a novel
• Start a memoir
• Start a religion
• Finish something
• etc.

Part Six: Things That Sometimes Hold Me Back

In no particular order:

1. My apartment
2. My neighborhood
3. My city
4. My education
5. My quirk
6. My steady reliable income
7. My family
8. My friends

Part Seven: Capitalism

Capitalism is the system by which we (the capitalists) take whatever amount of initial wealth we are dealt (the capital), and then, by hook or crook, make our best effort to multiply this wealth through the opportunities afforded to us.

If one's wealth is zero, then no amount of opportunity will lead to more wealth: zero times anything is zero.

If one's opportunity is low, then no amount of initial wealth will lead to more wealth. Pursuing a poor opportunity (i.e., a multiplier < 1) may in fact lead to less wealth—even if it is the best opportunity available at the time.

The model is complicated by the fact that greater wealth leads to greater opportunity, and lesser wealth to lesser opportunity.

Part Eight: On Margarine

I considered making toast for breakfast. The making of toast presents a choice. One may:

1. apply butter to one's toast
2. apply margarine
3. leave one's toast as is

Butter is a bad choice, because it contains saturated animal fat, which leads to heart disease; and because it contains lactose, which is hard to digest.

Margarine is a bad choice, because it contains hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is high in cholesterol and is associated with cancer; and anyway, it tastes a little funny.

Dry toast is a bad choice, because it is not very satisfying, and one only eats breakfast once a day, so it should be satisfying.

Sometimes all of the choices are bad. Hence, I had half a chocolate bar.

Part Nine: Global Free Trade

The premise of global free trade is that, unfettered by local restrictions, we are free to choose from a wider set of capitalistic opportunities: if Country Y offer more opportunities to multiply one's wealth than Country X, logically one should pursue those opportunities with Country Y. One is "free" to "trade" loyalties and obligations, when presented with a better chance at greater wealth.

Thus, if one has the opportunity to flee a country, and leave the jurisdiction of one's massive debt, thereby breaking the promise to repay, for the sake of a fresh start, then this is simply holding with the premise of global free trade:

An outre solution: not submissive feasance; not irresponsible malfeasance; but legitimized non-feasance.

Part Ten: The Woods

In the deepest parts of the woods, there are no forking paths, because there are no paths. The eye looks at the spaces between the trees and, connecting them, imagines a path where there is none. We walk these imaginary paths, marching forward into the woods, unafraid, till something causes our faith to waiver; and then we wonder: Am I lost? Is this a path I'm on now? Or am I merely in the unconnected spaces between trees? Am I on a walk, or have I gone for a hike in the back country? This thing that I started, this thing that I am doing—is it something I can finish? Can I finish anything? When a path seems to fork, are any of the choices good ones? Or is there no path at all?

Ravel / Unravel 

Somewhat unique in the English language, the word "ravel" has the same definition as the word "unravel":

ravel: 1. to disentangle or unravel the threads or fibers of (a woven or knitted fabric, rope, etc.).
unravel: 1. to separate or disentangle the threads of (a woven or knitted fabric, a rope, etc.).

Additionally, each word also means its own opposite:

ravel: 2. to tangle or entangle. 3. to involve, confuse, perplex. 4. to make clear; unravel.
unravel: 2. to free from complication or difficulty; make plain or clear; solve. 3. to take apart; undo; destroy.

If there is (as some scientists suggest) a single unified theory that is capable of expressing all of the complexity of the universe in one simple formula, then this is it:

ravel = unravel

2 or 3 

or, Raison d'être, pt. 4

You ever wonder?—maybe you only get two or three good ideas in your entire life, and if you don't write them down, you forget them: they evaporate, like a hazy dream. And if you do write them down, but in the wrong place, or in the wrong way, then they were wasted on you, anyway...

But if you manage to remember them, and you spend the rest of your life trying over and over to spell them out, and you never do anything but that, maybe it's okay, because then you'll have had two or three good ideas in your life, and found some use for them...

Sunset 

All that's left now is whatever comes next.

Wood I Could 

Hank Moody: We have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four-figure wank machines. The Internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24-hour-a-day access to kiddie porn. People—they don't write anymore; they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English.
Henry Rollins: Yet you're part of the problem, I mean you're out there blogging with the best of them.
Hank Moody: Hence my self-loathing.
- from Showtime's Californication

The fifth anniversary of The Urban Sherpa fast approaches, with all the expected and hard-earned fanfare.¹ Gifts are of course welcome. ("Wood, representing strength and a solidified relationship.") Five years is a long time to do any one thing,² but especially to do a thing without any real plan as to what one is doing, or why. And a blog is a funny thing, an in-between thing—not quite epistolary, not quite literary.

This "wood anniversary" catches me in the midst of a transition; and like anyone in any transition, I am at the worst possible vantage point to be able to see where I'll wind up. I catch glimpses in the mirror that offer evidence of change: I'm surprised to see I've grown a "near-beard." I'm surprised to see you, or you, at my side, and not you. I'm surprised that I've started eating salads, going to the gym, going to the pub, going to book readings and cooking classes and going back to the theatre—going anywhere but home. I'm surprised to see bills paid, in full and on time, and I'm surprised to find there's a kind of quiet satisfaction in monotony.

Best of all, I'm surprised to be able to hear myself think, and surprised that I don't always recognize what I hear. "Truth, when it comes, comes never in a single note, only in chords, " I wrote a few weeks ago, without really understanding, "—and then we might hear only part of it and not the whole."

A blog: single notes. Flash-fictive glimpses at small truths, circling around bigger ones and unable to get any closer.

A blog: not quite necessary, not quite sufficient.³

[Hank Moody's blog, of course, isn't the reason for Hank Moody's self-loathing: his inability to create anything more substantial or meaningful or lasting (or long) is the reason for his self-loathing.]

Like anyone in any transition, I am at the worst possible vantage point to be able to see where I'll wind up. But I'm surprised to see that—not knowing—for the first time in years—I'm very curious....

---

1. None.

2. And five years, in blog years, is a lifetime.

3. I've always been better at quitting old things than starting new ones....

Fathers' Day 

Two stories nearly side by side in the New York Daily News1, each one terrible in its own way, each one describing the unnecessary death of a child.2

The first story, "Dad crushed over death of little Kyle," tells the story of one Elliot Smith, suffering through the loss of his recently-murdered 3-year old son:

The boy's guardian, Nymeen Cheatham, 30, has admitted to beating Kyle with a hairbrush and her hands in the Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment she shared with her boyfriend, Lemar Martin, 25. Martin told cops he hit the boy repeatedly in the arm.

The article claims that Kyle's "drug addict mother was unable to take care of him," thus he wound up in the safekeeping of Cheatham, a woman who had no legal claim to the boy, and who had had her own four biological children removed from her custody, before moving to New York from Texas.

But the article brings us no closer to the true mystery of the story, the question that's between each of its lines. All it says on that subject: "It was unclear why Smith did not claim his younger son." A question that Smith is very likely asking himself tonight.

*      *      *

Seeking refuge from the awfulness, I turn the page3 and find "Bronx girl at play struck by cabbie"—this time, the story of M'Mah Bangoura, playing in an open fire hydrant. The spray of water apparently hid her from view: she was struck by a cab and killed.

The cabbie immediately called his girlfriend, to say he "thought he had hit a little girl." "He wasn't certain," the girlfriend told police. Then the cabbie drove the injured girl to the hospital, where she died.

The article said nothing of the girl's mother, but described the father, understandably, as "brokenhearted." "Every day, after school, she calls me," sobbed the dad, "and today I didn't get the call."

*      *      *

As holidays go, Father's Day is often taken to be a somewhat artificial and arbitrary one: it lacks pedigree (having been invented in the 20th century) and lacks uniformity (celebrated on different days in different countries). "In recent years, retailers have adapted to the holiday by promoting male-oriented gifts such as electronics, tools and greeting cards," says Wikipedia. And that's most of what there is to say about Father's Day.

Without fail, day after day, newspapers report on random, sudden acts of violence, and label them "tragic." They are "tragedies," the papers say—as if we, the chorus, bearing witness to the unfolding awfulness, stand something to learn from it all. I don't know what to learn from it all. But I do know that this year, Father's Day will be, to me, a little less artificial, a little less arbitrary.

---

1. New York City's paper of ill repute.

2. The adjective would seem to imply that there is such a thing as the "necessary" death of a child.

3. This being the Daily News, if I were really seeking refuge from the awfulness, I'd have put the paper down.

Hitler's Birthday 

I have the worst time remembering birthdays, but there are a couple I remember without fail: Mom, of course (March 26); Dad (February 5; it took me years to remember that one...); my sister (June 3, but she sends daily countdown emails at least a month in advance); Paul McCartney (June 18, though I've never even gotten him a card); and Ado lf Hitler, who was born April 20 -- five days after taxes are due, and usually the date that I'm actually mailing mine. And also, not coincidentally, the date of the Columbine school shootings, in 1999.

There isn't much to celebrate about Hitler's birthday. We celebrate Columbus's birthday, though he was a for-hire explorer who got lost on his way to India; he"discovered" a continent that the Vikings had colonized five hundred of years prior, and in any case the continent was inhabited for the 5,000 years leading up to that "discovery." And Columbus's discovery led, indirectly, to the near genocide of all its indigenous people. But Columbus 's birthday is celebrated nationwide ... while Hitler, whose genocide was much more direct, has a birthday remembered only (unintentionally) by me.

I have a friend born on Hitler's birthday. That's why I remember it. She'd complain about how terrible and ominous it is to share a birthday with one of the most reviled men in history, though she knew all the while that it made people more likely to remember her birthday. That was Hitler's gift to her: an unforgettable birthday. Though as an inspiration for a themed birthday party, or a cake decoration, or gifts, the Hitler connection is not very fruitful.

I have another friend who was born on September 11. I'd like these two people to meet, ideally in the context of a birthday party, and maybe they could buy for each other all of the inappropriate tasteless gag gifts that the rest of us are too afraid to buy: for the one, a lampshade, or model boxcars; for the other, that snow globe I've seen that predates 2001, with the two towers of the World Trade Center and, when you shake the globe, airplanes made of shiny foil circling the buildings.

Victoria's Other Secret 

Fridge Full of Condiments and No Food 

Current inventory of the refrigerator, as of April 16, 2008:

Extra Hot Dijon Mustard, Zhou Black Bean Chili Sauce, Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce, Tabasco Brand Green Pepper Sauce, Tabasco Brand Chipotle Pepper Sauce, Salsa Picante de Chile Habanero, Harissa Paste, French's Classic Yellow Mustard, Sarabeth's Orange Apricot Marmalade, Sarabeth's Peach Apricot, Melinda's XXXXtra Reserve Habanero Pepper Sauce, Sarabeth's Pineapple Mango, Lemon Curb, Rice Wine Vinegar, Stonewall Kitchen Champagne Mustard, Thai Kitchen Roasted Red Chili Paste, Kikkoman Soy Sauce, Kikkoman Reduced Salt Soy Sauce, Annie's Natural Tuscany Italian Dressing, Annie's Fat Free Balsamic Vinaigrette, Oyster Sauce, Preserved Lemons, Gold's Horseradish, Rhubarb and Ginger Preserve, Sambal Oelek Chili Paste, Ma Po Spicy Bean Sauce, Pla Dug Chili Paste, Strawberry Preserves, Moroccan Green Olives, Maple Syrup, Hellman's Mayonnaise, Hellman's Light Mayonnaise, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Heinz Reduced Sugar Tomato Ketchup, Chili Paste with Sweet Basil Leaves, Sambal Bajak, Lakeshore Wholegrain Mustard, Mae Ploy Green Curry Paste, Assorted Beer, one egg.

Incontrovertible Proof of the Existence of God  

God exists and I can prove it.

My proof is simple, elegant and easy to verify. It shows God is benevolent, and has engineered our world with intelligent design.

Spaghetti squash. You cook it, run a fork through it, and it turns into pasta—but healthy!

(Thank God.)

Savasana is Hard (pt. 2) 

My yoga teacher walks around the class, correcting people's postures. She stops next to my mat, watches, and finally says, "You're very flexible!"

I'm beaming. I've gotten the teacher's stamp of approval. I've gotten a star on the refrigerator.

Then I notice she's frowning.

"You're very flexible," she repeats. "That's probably why you get hurt so often. You're so flexible you never bothered to build up any core strength. You should work on that."

Yes I should.

Working from Home 

I'm new to it, and I'm certainly not going to say that I'd prefer waking every morning to fight my way through the subway en route to the proverbial water cooler. But it occurs to me...

Am I just cutting out one-quarter of my life's excitement?

How cellophane 

Sometimes it's as though the aliens are reaching out to us, or the dolphins—if only we knew how to hear them... This fell into my spam folder this morning, from "Cherie", with the subject heading, i'm sad chris:

Is ransom buddha the gravid enthusiasm melee or galatea enthusiasm?

The micronesia detonate not mardi but luxuriant matsumoto rawhide and genevieve afterword. Sometimes buttery is eddy but gravid, glandular ah adsorb scot tacitus dunkirk prelude servitor!

How cellophane? aitken! afterword dreamlike keenan rawhide!

Is cousin diatomaceous the agony cloture deck or superfluous handstand?

The blythe rubble not cloture but aminobenzoic boson bound and rawhide handstand. Sometimes andiron is agony but blythe, token aspheric describe cepheus contradict urea cyril drown!

How totalitarian? iniquity! maggoty toenail lathe goof!

I want to help, Cherie. I hear you. Sometimes buttery is gravid. How totalitarian.

Cherie—I'm sad, too...

Having Cake Versus Eating It 

When does anyone ever, ever have cake without eating it too? I thought that's what having cake was...

Food Court 

I'm in a food court.

The inventor of the food court should get some kind of Congressional medal, because I can't think of anything that better encapsulates the way Americans live: crowds of people, some with families and some alone, half-sitting / half-standing, on a break from work or from shopping, hurriedly eating various passable innocuous meals, everyone getting exactly what they want (sort of) without having had to agree or accommodate each other's taste.

(Are there pastimes other than working and shopping?)

The food court has so many nations represented, it feels like the Olympics: China, India, Mexico, Japan, Vermont. It feels like the United Nations.

(I'll bet they have an amazing food court at the United Nations...)

Actually, the U.N. could learn a few things from this food court, because people seem to be getting along amazingly and putting aside their petty national concerns for the sake of the greater good (fast food): the Koreans are cooking the Mexican food, Mexicans work at the Chinese place, the Chinese work at the Kashmiri Buffet.

It's beautiful.

"We are the world."

Chicory 

I've started drinking chicory coffee.

I'm not sure how chicory coffee ever came to be known as chicory coffee. My can of the stuff (brand name: Teeccino) clearly says on the label, "Contains No Coffee Beans," right next to where it calls itself "herbal coffee." Are you or aren't you?

The fact is, if you drink chicory coffee expecting something new, refreshing and unusual, you'll be quite happy. If you drink it expecting coffee, it will taste like ass.

What's inside the can might pass for coffee to someone who has no sense of smell. [Are there these people? There are deaf people and blind people. Are there people with no sense of smell? Is there a word for that? Do they qualify for handicapped license plates? Are their other senses heightened to compensate? Are they more comfortable than the rest of us, when driving through New Jersey? I digress.]

Inside my can of "herbal coffee" is basically what amounts to ground up tree bark. Because I felt like living large that day at Whole Foods, I picked up the "Mocha" flavor, so my can of ground-up tree bark "coffee" also has something to give it a chocolate-like flavor. Not chocolate, of course.

Carob is to chocolate as chicory is to coffee.

Why do I do this to myself?

It's not my first time with Teeccino; I don't even have that excuse. A few years back I was dating a vegan woman who righteously proclaimed that she also wouldn't eat refined sugar or caffeine (I forgot that simple pleasure of vegetarianism—the easy righteousness. God, I miss that...)

We usually ate in.

It was she who gave me my first can of Teeccino: "It's naturally high in heart-healthy potassium and helps promote regularity!"

The relationship didn't last long.

But as for my on-again, off-again relationship with chicory coffee, well, I'll always think fondly of it. Poor, misunderstood chicory. I'm drinking a cup of it right now. I feel good. I feel regular. I feel righteous.

Back to School 

I am a grumpy old man.

I twisted my ankle jogging across the street today, with a pop so loud people turned and stared. I looked around for a pothole or cobblestone to scapegoat, but there was nothing, and I had to shoulder the blame all by myself. I simply failed to put one foot in front of the other.

I'd spent the better part of the previous evening sitting on my ass, in front of a computer—which is how I spent the better part of the afternoon, and the morning, and the entire three days before. My body was so ill-prepared for the simple act of crossing the street that when I turned my ankle this morning, I pulled muscles in my back.

None of this would have bothered me much at all, except I did it in full view of a pack of back-to-school college girls, and then had to limp straight through the whole bunch of them.

Damn my old bones.

* * *

All over town, the streets are suddenly crowded. The T sags on its hydraulics trying to support the weight of all the new people. In less than a week, the city's population has bulged by an extra third: it's a city that hibernates in the summer and in winter comes to life. Suddenly the humidity's gone and the streets are overflowing with young, hopeful, clean-skinned golden boys and girls.

Welcome back to school.

They are a breed apart. Their eyes are bright and their hair is well-conditioned. They recognize each other in the bars, on the train. They hug.

They are the world. They are the children.

I resent them, yes, because I'm a grumpy old man, but not only. I resent them, too, because they're coddled with so many advantages, because they think they're fully-formed, rollerblading through their life under the mistaken impression that their life now bears semblance to real life. I resent them, then, for having all of the things that I had once. I resent them for not being wise. I resent them for being young.

Oh. So I guess it is only because I'm a grumpy old man.

La Dolce Vita 

"A gimlet, please."

"A dry martini."

"Two mojitos, two saketinis and a vodka cranberry."

"Would you like to hear the specials?"

"Sweet or savory? Savory or sweet?"

"My noodles are cold. Are they supposed to be cold?"

"These are the best oysters. I can't believe there are only six of them."

"Can I get some hot sauce on the side?"

"Can we get extra plates? We're splitting everything?"

"A bottle of the white Burgundy."

"Two glasses of the Pinot noir."

"How long is the wait?"

"...crispy duck in a pomegranate sauce..."

"...tastes like Goldfish..."

"...are there nuts...?"

"May I see your Scotch list?"

"May I see your wine list?"

"Can we get two Remys and an Oban, neat?"

"Can we get two espressos and one Americano?"

"Would you like to see the dessert menu?"

"No, God no. No thank you. We're full."

"It's too hot to eat..."

(Thanks to SL and JD.)

Kindness 

I wonder if I'm too nice.

I've always imagined kindness to be like throwing logs on a fire: throw more logs and the fire gets bigger. Then the fire makes you warm. The more kindness, the more warmth.

Maybe it's not like that.

Maybe it's like a bank: you have a balance of it, and it's okay to take the excess and give it away—give to Oxfam, give to the Red Cross, help those people who are out of luck, out of food, out on the street. It's okay and good to do this. But spend it carefully, where it's appreciated, where the resource will be well-used—and leave enough in the account to pay your own rent, or you'll become one of the people you're trying to help...

[See also, Sainthood.]

---

The Wraths of Grape 

Maybe you all knew this already, and if that's true, I hate you for not telling me:

Burgundy is Pinot noir.

My whole life I've avoided drinking Burgundy because I thought it was a thick, heavy wine. I think my point of reference must have been the thick, heavy curtains at my aunt and uncle's house, which I described once as "red," only to be corrected: "That's burgundy."

Anyway, this weekend I learned that Burgundy is Pinot noir ("oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet..."), and I haven't stopped drinking it since.

That's it. That's the whole story. There's no point. There's no punchline. Except that my head really really hurts:

Call it the wraths of grape...

P.S. Maybe you knew this already: there's white Burgundy.

Why doesn't anyone tell me anything?

Letters of Recommendation 

DubAllStar409: so I really like chris
DubAllStar409: I think he is really smart...
DubAllStar409: and...
DubAllStar409: and he has a sense of humor
DubAllStar409: and he likes booze just as much as we do
DubAllStar409: really warm hands
DubAllStar409: I am going to use him as my personal hand warmer
DubAllStar409: for my hands
DubAllStar409: because they are cold
DubAllStar409: I vote we keep him around no matter what.

---

I've been watching this every day for a month...

60 Seconds Under a Black Star 

I was running late because I'd forgotten to set my alarm. I walked through the freezing rain. I was still a little groggy. I put on my iPod, trying to wake myself up or buffer myself from the morning. But the battery was dead. I left the headphones on.

I was standing in line waiting to buy subway tokens. "Four, please." I couldn't hear myself through my own iPod headphones. I opened my wallet and a brand new book of stamps flew out of it—whoosh—and, gone.

A train was pulling into the station. I ran for the turnstile. I put in one token, and sent the other three flying into the air, down the stairs, and onto the tracks. Bye bye.

I dashed for the stairs. "Run for office, run for your favorite charity, but don't run for the train." I slipped on the ice and fell down the stairs. "I'm fine!," I shouted at no one in particular. My coat was covered in slush. My butt hurt. As I picked myself up, I noticed I'd broken my iPod headphones.

The train pulled out of the station.

Total time: sixty seconds. Net loss: $71.55. And my dignity.

P.S. Late for work.

---

Haiku 

The days are long and
my butt gets bigger. Outside,
a gentle rain falls.

11 

In all the tumult of the last two months, I haven't had a whole lot of social contact with people and I haven't really missed it much, either: each time I change cities, I take another step deeper into introversion, I become a little less interested in mingling with strangers, and, so far at least, I'm okay with that.

But I wonder if it's not having some unexpected side effects, for example—a growing interest in my horoscope. Today, September 11, an auspicious day, offers me up this wisdom:

Keep being fickle and you could end up in quite a pickle... You try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one (including yourself) by avoiding a decision that's been dogging your heels for ages. Give up trying to make everybody happy. What would make you happy? Now follow through on that decision.

I'm not really one to let a snippet of (rhyming) astrology dictate my life, but, all other things being equal, ... why not? There have been a couple decisions I've been sitting on, and today is as good a day as any to take action.

And just like that, I'm a puppet of Fate.

* * *

Two months ago, I started seeing 11:11 on the clock. I'm not really much of a clock-watcher, I'm not terribly superstitious, I know almost nothing about numerology. All I know for sure is that each night for the last two months, no matter where I've been, with only three exceptions, I happen to be looking at a clock and it happens to read "11:11." At first it was just an odd coincidence, but before long, it started to seem more ominous—like it must mean something, but the meaning was inscrutable.

It's silly, paranoid, to be afraid of a clock, but last night, while I was on the phone, my eye fell on the clockface at exactly that magic moment, and I stopped what I was saying in mid-sentence. I had no idea what I'd been saying. I was shaking. Tonight I'll probably put the clock in a box or a bag, or maybe I'll put myself in one, till I'm sure it's midnight at least.

And just like that, I'm a puppet of Fate.

I mention all this to a New Agey friend and it turns out she does know numerology, enough to mention, offhandedly, "Your name, Christopher, in numerology, is eleven." I go on to learn:

With the number 11 the issue is always one of subtlety, intuition, sensitivity, awareness, and the presence of knowledge that is not being applied. You need to trust your intuition. Your gut feelings tend to be more reliable than your "rational" understanding. You are making the wrong decisions based on what you think you know, while deep down your intuitive understanding is telling you to go a different direction... In short, you have to take a close look at your life and read between the lines. Your inner self is attempting to communicate with you and you are not listening. Open up and acknowledge what you know.

I also discover there are whole Internet communities, whole bulletin boards, whole books, dedicated to people who see the clock at 11:11. "This has been widely reported for the last 5-10 years, and is now commonly referred to as the 11:11 Experience."

I started seeing 11:11 on clocks, receipts, bank clocks, EVERYWHERE about 7 years ago. Here is what I've learned since then. 11:11 is a wake-up call for lightworkers. Lightworkers are people who signed up for a "green beret" type of mission when they were on the spirit plane ( before being incarnated on Earth). What the mission is, in short, is to hold as much Light as possible, as strongly as possible, on this planet.

The "explanations" get elaborate and arcane, treading paths through the Book of Revelations ("After the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood on their feet"), the Freemasons, and even, somewhat a propos, the World Trade Center attack.

But what does it mean? Is my clock speaking to me from the spirit realm? Have I somehow lost my way? I have no idea. Except that I suppose, like everyone else, I'm a puppet of Fate: "Keep being fickle and you could end up in quite a pickle." "9/11 = 9+1+1 = 11." "Hold as much Light as possible, as strongly as possible, on this planet."

---

Movie of My Life (pt. 3) 

First of all, Cf. the original entry, if you care to gander.

Second, I always feel bad repurposing an email. But here I go:

"I'm in a mood and I'm wondering if Freddie Prinze Jr. can play me in the movie of my life. I'm thinking about She's All That, where he's so popular, which means of course we're all jealous of him because we want to be popular. But we also assume if he's popular, he must be shallow. Then, there's a scene where he does a painting that's interesting and sincere, and we're like, "Wow, there's a real person in there." And, from them on, the movie is filled with this subtext about how he's a sensitive person, trapped in a popular person's body. Oh, so sad for him, etc.

"The woman with the sublet in Davis Square, the one that fell through a while back, has been a bona fide buddy since I've been here (i.e., yesterday, without any bidding, she tracked down a second-hand Aerobed for me on Craig's List). But she teases me because everywhere I go, people seem to want to talk to me. I'm the guy who gets asked for directions. She's right: I am that guy. And it's good, I guess, if one moves to a new city, to be that guy, the guy people want to talk to, instead of the other way around. But it doesn't really account for the fact that most of the time, I don't especially want to talk to these people, that it takes some effort to put on the happy face, and that really, I take a good amount of pleasure from sulking alone...

"So it's that kind of mood..."

All-Star 

I have a friend who is a playwright, which is a little bit like saying "I have a friend who is a mime" or "I have a friend who is a professional curler" insofar as it probably garners the same amount of respect. But the thing is, my friend is a really, really good playwright. She's top-notch. She's at-the-level. She's a playwriting all-star.

One difference between being a playwriting all-star and being a curling all-star is that playwrights, by nature of their work, are generally literary folk—they're a smart bunch, and they're sensitive. This means that (unlike curling) their professional skill set could be applied elsewhere: they could be great advertisers or marketeers; they could be writing screenplays or political speeches or award-winning copy for the backs of DVDs. They could, if they chose to do it, leave the theatre behind, give up the carney lifestyle, move to the 'burbs. They could have health insurance.

But they don't.

I've never been able to decide whether to cheer this as heroic and noble, or rebuke it as obstinate and foolhardy. Most of the playwrights I know haven't been able to decide, either. But one thing seems pretty certain: it's good to be an all-star, even if you're an all-star mime, curler, or playwright. Congratulations.

The Importance of Being Ernest 

Here's a story, probably apocryphal, but still good: Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old, and about to release A Farewell to Arms, when his father committed suicide with a shotgun. His mother, her grief overpowered by her anger, bequeathed the gun to her son Ernest. He used the gun regularly, though whether with or without irony, I suppose we'll never know. In fact, he claimed that it was his favorite gun, and proved it when he chose it for his own suicide many years later, on this day in 1961.*

It's been years since I read Hemingway, but I read him at a very impressionable age, and still think of him as one of my favorite writers. If you asked me to tell you what happens in The Sun Also Rises, I could not—partly the fault of my bad memory, but more because nothing much happens in The Sun Also Rises. And that is the point, isn't it?

Sometimes I imagine myself as another Jake Barnes, in another "Lost Generation." I like to think that someone looking at my life from the outside would say of it that nothing much happens—because most of life's plot points and dramas are too subtle to flag with explosive verbs or garrulous adjectives. Instead, we drink a little, love a little, struggle internally with dilemmas we often won't speak out loud, and watch the bullfights, looking for heroic if arbitrary inspiration.

"Isn't it pretty to think so?"

* Some Internet research shows this story probably isn't true: Hemingway's father shot himself with a Civil War pistol.

The Legacies of Darth Vader 

1. Forensics

"[The patient's] spinal injury also leaves him unable to breathe unaided. It severs the connection between the lungs and the medula oblongata. A person requires a respirator if the spinal cord is severed at any of the first three cervical vertebrae. At the fourth vertebra (C-4), a respirator would be beneficial."

- from a website dedicated to medical analysis of the injuries of Darth Vader, based on x-ray evidence and professional medical opinion

2. Histrionics


- a postcard submitted to the confessional blog PostSecret

3. Plastics

"The Darth Vader helmet is not just ludicrously well made, but is the first of its kind that has an integrated voice changer and sound effects box. Become the most evil man alive! Pre-order yours now."

4. Polemics

"What was deemed suitable fare for children or teenage audiences in 1977 has
become the dominant entertainment genre for the American adult in 2005. Slowly, inexorably a kind of backward-hurtling, intellectually arrested development has devolved and coarsened populist tastes to the most undemanding, least sophisticated level, content with funny costumes and spectacular explosions. Why read Dickens or listen to Mozart when you can smirk with Adam Sandler or tune in to The Bachelor? Even the dumbest American can watch Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and feel superior."

- from Lawrence A. Johnson's op-ed on Star Wars, in South Florida's Sun-Sentinal

---

Funny thing is... 

I don't remember ever having been the Easter Bunny...

Winona Forever 

"I was thrilled when he got the tattoo. What woman wouldn't be?" - Winona Ryder, on the tattoo of then-fiance Johnny Depp, which read "Winona Forever"

"The split in 1993 was during the filming of Ed Wood, and there were days he would come crying, I felt so bad. I asked him why it happened but all he said was 'It wasn't her fault, it was mine.' And when he met Kate in January of 1994, it wasn't the same as Winona. I felt weird to be around him, like he wasn't acting like Johnny anymore. It's almost like Winona took Johnny's soul, Johnny's love." - Tim Burton, on the breakup between Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder

 

To celebrate their engagement and eternal love, in 1992 Johnny Depp had the words "Winona Forever" tattooed onto his arm. But nothing lasts forever. The couple split within a year, and even the tattoo didn't last long after that. (Through the miracles of laser surgery, it now reads "Wino Forever".)

There are lessons to be learned from tattooing, but permanence isn't one of them. Maybe a tattoo is just a simple reminder that a lot of things get under our skin, and that those things can hurt a bit. Maybe tattoos just help us remember times we don't want to forget. Or maybe they serve a reminder that nothing lasts forever, even when we want it to. Maybe especially then. Even the things we think are permanent or long-lasting, like tattoos themselves...

Visine Poisoning 

If you or someone you know might have ingested Visine or any other toxic substance, please do not waste your time on my blog. Contact a poison control center (in the U.S., call 800-222-1222), or dial 911.

Visine is, in fact, toxic. Its active ingredient is Tetrahydrozoline, a substance which, even in small doses, has caused nausea, vomiting, dangerously low blood pressure, dangerously low body temperature, and comas. The makers of Visine (Pfizer) are very clear: "If swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away."

TheUrbanSherpa.com is not a poison control center, but, every day, someone comes to this site looking for information on "Visine poisoning." The Internet is rife with stories of practical jokesters slipping Visine into people's drinks, because, the story goes, ingesting it causes sudden diarrhea. According to Snopes, diarrhea is one of the few side effects you won't get from Visine.

If you are trying to give someone the runs, my advice is stick to good, old-fashioned, ground-up Exlax: it's safer and has an almost-pleasant chocolatey taste. It mixes well with brownies, cake, and Coca Cola. Perhaps more to the point, please remember that secreting noxious substances into food and drink for the purpose of bringing harm to others is called poisoning, and most states, it's a felony offense.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by The Urban Sherpa, with additional support from Pfizer and Snopes.com.

Unmitigated Evil 

Unmitigated evil lives in me. I know this because every time I see a picture of the ailing Pope, I wish he'd just die already. He's been ailing for a long time, so I've had this thought a lot.

The Pope's never done me any wrong. He just happens to be a very influential person with whom I don't usually see eye-to-eye. The fact that I disagree with a guy who's infallible just burns me, and maybe that's why I want him dead.

But the more I think about it, the harder it is to come up with a rational explanation: I've never been excommunicated; I was not molested by a priest—or at least not that I can remember... (Defrocked priest Paul Shanley was recently found guilty of sexual abuse based on the testimony of a victim whose memories had been repressed for years.)

So my current theory is that I hate the Pope because I'm evil.

Evil is so in, though. Historians will probably point to Bush's invocation of the "E" word ("Axis of evil") as the beginning of the fad, and sure enough, it catapulted Kim Jong Il to stardom. Around the same time, the Internet was running rampant with the rumor (now confirmed) that Dick Cheney is actually Darth Vader. And lately, even sweet little Condi Rice has been dressing like a Sith Lord. Maybe she thinks that goes over in Europe: after all, Prince Harry's a Nazi, and the French are evil, too, right?

The New York Times recently ran an article stating that psychiatrists and forensic scientists are more and more willing to describe some killers as evil, because there's no other way to explain why our language needs words like "vivisection." One such scientist, Michael Stone, has even articulated a sort of "How Evil Are You?" personality test. He uses various violent criminals to set a baseline, and scores people on a 22-point scale.

I am curious if one of the questions is, "Do you wish the Pope would just die, already?"

I figure if I'm going to be evil, I should get myself some cool black boots. I wonder where Condi got hers?

Pom Reading 

You've seen the posters for the pomegranate juice in the funny-shaped bottles. But have you seen the price tag on the top of the funny-shaped bottle? $3.99 for 16oz.

A ripoff on that kind of scale I had to try.

Just for comparison, consider that gasoline prices in my neighborhood are about as high as I've ever seen them, at around $2 a gallon—and that is 8 times cheaper than "Pom Wonderful" pomegranate juice, despite the fact that the juice is not drilled from a mile underground, extracted from tar, or shipped halfway around the world.

In defense of the juice, though, the ads more or less promise that if I drink it, I will never get sick or old, and never die. So maybe the price isn't so steep after all.

At $3.99 for a 16oz. bottle, this stuff better cure cancer, at least.

As I stared into the two stacked crystal balls that make up the Pom bottle, I saw some other things pretty clearly:

• It is very hard indeed to individually hand-squeeze the juice out of each pomegranate seed.
• That clever marketing campaign of theirs was pretty expensive.
• In less than fifty years, they will sell their grossly-profitable pomegranate orchards to real estate developers for an even grosser profit.
• It stains like the dickens.
• It tastes bad with chocolate.
• I will completely fall for it, this modern day Larkspur lotion, and start buying it by the case.

Embrace the Kafka 

Some mysteries will never be solved.

They say people are creatures of habit, and I am no exception. I have a favorite mailbox, at the northwest corner of 34th Street and 7th Avenue. It's conveniently located at the top of the stairs as I get off the subway, and it gets emptied several times a day. Sometimes I drop mail there and discover that it's been delivered to its destination that same day. My mailbox is big and it's blue and I find its big blueness reassuring, as if the rivets that anchor it to the ground also anchor me: every time I drop a letter in this mailbox, I feel connected to the vast, powerful permanence that is the United States of America. (Anyone who thinks I'm exaggerating clearly hasn't watched Kevin Costner's The Postman, the premise of which is that a lone mail carrier is able to bring order back to his anarchic, post-apocalyptic country.) Say what you will about the United States Post Office: grumble about your mail carrier, long lines, or the economic inefficiencies of state-sponsored monopoly. I find it to be the most reliable and least nefarious manifestation of federal government that there is, and it makes me proud to be an American.

Maybe this preamble will begin to explain the shock—no, let's call it distress—I felt when I came out of the subway the other day and found my mailbox was missing. I looked to the spot where it had been, immovable, the day before, and there was no trace of it, just a little dent in the snow. I had a letter that needed mailing and I didn't know what to do; I walked back and forth, envelope in hand, in stupefied disbelief, while people passed by as if nothing catastrophic had happened.

How could a mailbox be missing? There must be some mistake.

Calm down. Take a breath. There's another mailbox at 36th and 8th. At least I hope there is. I hope to Christ there is.

I grabbed a mail carrier who was passed by. "Excuse me," I said, trying to slow my breathing. "What happened to the mailbox?" He looked back quizzically, and I had to consider the possibility that he wasn't yet aware of the crisis at hand. "The mailbox," I explained. "It's missing."

Oh, I'm sorry. Was I screeching?

What is it about the Post Office that taps so deeply into my bureaucratic paranoia? My grandfather worked at a post office, a big urban sorting center, and I still shiver remembering his tales of the vast underground network of sorters and filers, of conveyer belts and mail sacks, an entire underground city, layer upon layer of unfathomable bureaucracy. When a system grows large enough, it takes on uncomfortable resemblance to an organism: it grows desires, appetites, even sicknesses. My grandfather joked that people had gotten lost forever inside his sorting building, but I never thought it was very funny.

Why did I care about a missing mailbox? Even the reasonable explanations weren't reassuring: as when anything unusual happens in New York City, I blamed it on terrorists. "Al Qaeda took my mailbox!" "Full of anthrax and in CDC custody!" "Dirty bomb!!!"

But this fear was followed almost immediately by another, deeper one. If the Postal Service persists in the face of rain or sleet or snow or dark of night, then what worse catastrophe could have befallen my unmovable mailbox? The mailbox is representative of a law and order that I have been able to take for granted as fundamental, impervious to attack and immune to entropy—until now.

Sure, the lid was a little creaky and it didn't always close. It's completely possible that my mailbox was in for a repair, or had been retired after years of dependable service. But even this didn't offer me much solace. I thought of the de-commissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Intrepid, only a few blocks away—a giant steel symbol of aging, rusting empire—and wondered, is my mailbox another, smaller one?

It's all so strange, as if I awoke from unsettling dreams one morning, and found myself transformed...

Vacation to Saturn 

"Dreary winter so far. I was thinking we should get away. Take a trip."

"Where you want to go?"

"New place I keep reading about. Saturn."

"I saw pictures. Supposed to be nice."

"A lot of frequent flier miles. Like seven-hundred million."

"People go to Saturn?"

"Yeah. Well, no. Titan. Moon. That's where I was reading about. Oceans, beaches. Maybe some wildlife."

"We should do it. It'll be nice."

"We'll sit on the beach, we'll look at the sky: it'll be a full Saturn out."

"I love you."

"Love you too."