II. Marketing to Youth pre-MSA

This is part of what I've been working on for the past few days. It is very boring, and I would suggest that you keep in mind I'm tired and frustrated and unwilling to write up something. Take note of the lackluster prose, the lack of care in editing, the general malaise that accompanies my work. Check back in next week when I'll be even more cranky because, hey, it's the holidays.

***

The tobacco manufacturers adopted the Cigarette Advertising Code as a voluntary control on how it would advertise towards youth.[1] “All major cigarette companies in the United States claim to follow the provisions of the Cigarette Advertising Code.”[2] Included in the code’s restrictions on advertising were prohibitions against advertising to youth in comics, at schools, on television and radio, and during commercials.[3] Samples were not to be distributed to those under the age of twenty-one, nor on college campuses.[4] The advertising did not imply that smoking would lead to success or make one more sexually attractive, and models in advertisements were to be older than twenty-five and appear as such.[5] They were not to be portrayed in any such manner that would imply they had just participated in any physical activity.[6] Were these restrictions to be followed, it would have made great strides towards helping to prevent youth smoking.

Despite these restrictions, the tobacco companies continued targeting youth in their advertising campaigns. At the time, increasing information about the compound hazards of smoking worried the public, and this Code was part of the public relations reaction.[7] Three years after the Code’s inception, an FTC report found the Code without teeth, as the tobacco companies continued marketing towards youth.[8] Considering no traces of sanctions for violations of the Code exist,[9] it seems clear the main function was to appease a public looking for accountability and responsibility from companies unwilling to make changes.

Further, within the tobacco companies’ internal documents, there exists evidence that marketing towards youth continued unabated. Their internal documents often did not directly refer to youth under the age of eighteen. Instead, they applied several code phrases, such as YAS, FUBYAS, switchers, and so on, which corresponded to older demographics on their face, but secretly applied to teenagers.

The acronym YAS refers to Young Adult Smokers,[10] and encompasses eighteen to twenty-four year olds,[11] one of the most highly coveted demographics among businesses. This term started to replace references to “youth” starting in the late 70s.[12] FUBYAS stands for First Usual Brand Young Adult Smokers, “[t]hose younger adults who are already smokers but have reached the stage of choosing a First Usual Brand.” [13] Having yet developed loyalty to any particular cigarette brand, FUBYAS skew younger than YAS, but still, in the documentation, remain above age eighteen. The term is inconsistent, at 80% of smokers have already established a first brand by the age of eighteen.[14] Switchers are those YAS already brand-loyal,[15] dubbed due to the possibility they might be enticed into switching their brand allegiance.

These internal documents follow the proper channels in focusing their marketing efforts on eighteen and older demographics. However, the subtle reality paints a much different landscape, that this marketing concentrates on teenagers. A Lorillard internal memorandum from 1978 proclaimed that the business’ success would be predicated upon high school students.[16] Some of the market research describes YAS needs and desires as “belonging, being different, upward striving, excitement, sex.”[17] These needs and desires correspond with the needs and desires of every American teenager in every era. R. J. Reynolds’ 1984 internal research lists the “FUBYAS Social Groups Spectrum” from conformist to nonconformist: “Goody Goodies, Preps, GQs, Discos, Rockers, Party Parties, Punkers, Burnouts.”[18] These labels do not affix smooth upon today’s youth’s chests; despite a few statements to the contrary, disco has indeed died. Instead, substitute Hip-hops, Raps, or whichever designation in place of Discos, and that list would describe teen society in 2005.

In a separate research report on FUBYAS, R.J. Reynolds chose to study eighteen to twenty year olds without any college education.[19] The research found married FUBYAS exhibited traits and characteristics reminiscent of older smokers, while single FUBYAS reflected their peers, so the most attention was spent on single FUBYAS.[20] Younger unmarried individuals lacking a college education represent the teenage demographic quite well. Outliers that fit into those two categories might not even meet the marketing expectations and desires of the tobacco companies. If not conclusive, this evidence certainly lends great support to the proposition that in tobacco marketing parlance, YAS, and FUBYAS in particular, mean teenagers.

The tobacco companies require “news,” (new smokers) to replace the “quits,” (smokers that have ceased smoking, whether through voluntary or involuntary cessation).[21] Successful YAS-centric marketing represents the ultimate goal.[22] R.J. Reynolds have described FUBYAS as the only source of replacement smokers, and want to market towards them in order to continue to grow their brands.[23] Let their own words condemn them: “A Brand or Company’s ability to attract and maintain younger adult smokers is vital to longer term success.”[24] Much of the research converges upon attempts to decipher and understand the younger generation’s motivations.

Even when the tobacco companies tried not to explicitly come out and show their marketing towards children, sometimes, they couldn’t help it. An internal memo states, “There’s nothing like starting them out young! ‘Ritchie’ is a wonderful little guy and, while he doesn’t smoke, he tells me he talks up Newports all the time.”[25] The enclosed image is of a young child accepting a cigarette proffered by an elderly lady.[26] The memo and image speak for themselves.

At Brown & Williamson, a brainstorming session resulted in some very disturbing thoughts concerning marketing towards youth. Included in the thoughts were trying to link parental smoking to children smoking, considering how smoking and nonsmoking parents felt about their children smoking, extrapolating based on current information whether there were predictors in children that would predispose them towards become adult smokers, even contacting a youth research firm for help on the project.[27] Camel-brand cigarettes, under a somewhat similar analysis, wanted to approach the young adult smoker market, in order to become the brand of young adult smokers, and to ensure that Camel could continue into the future.[28] That these companies are attempting to market towards youth is evident.

There is a comprehensive attempt at breaking down underlying FUBYAS motivations, radically different from middle-aged executives’ and managers’ motivations. FUBYAS want to belong to a peer group at the exclusion of other peer groups and their families.[29] No doubt the executives enjoyed more stable family lives, and their families played a more important role in their upbringing. Hedonistic FUBYAS continuously partook of adrenaline-high activities.[30] The executives probably led more sedate lifestyles. If they pursued active, exciting hobbies, they also demonstrated moderation. FUBYAS regarded sexuality in a promiscuous manner, and the more the better.[31] The executives had probably been married for decades, or kept a mistress or two, but never really experimented as sexually freely as the FUBYAS had, or wanted to. FUBYAS wanted to excel in life, but to them, this entailed becoming popular, going to a good party, being respected by peers.[32] To the executives in a lucrative market, excelling translated into profit, profit, profit, and popularity be damned. In summing up their findings, the researchers concluded: “Make the marketing fit… 1. TODAY, not tomorrow 2. STAYING YOUNG/not in the rut 3. ON THE EDGE, not the middle ground.”[33] For all the fundamental differences in worldview, these executives might have been trying to sell cigarettes to aliens from outer space.

The research considered a variety of methods. The example of Budweiser marketing on television’s Saturday Night Live is cited to demonstrate a successful means of reaching youth.[34] One of the propositions involves creating a cigarette that corresponds with a lifestyle, to appeal to the youthful desire to take risks and live fast.[35] Discounts, premiums and contests, all forms of immediate gratification, were listed as some of the most effective means for marketing towards FUBYAS.[36] Again, this required a different way of doing things, far different than what the executives were used to, in order to appeal to a class of people they were unfamiliar with.

In creating a possible new brand, R.J. Reynolds ran through many different possibilities to connect with youth. They considered linking the new brand to rock music.[37] Another proposition involved creating “heroes in a fantasy or mysterious environment,”[38] or “a folk hero who instead of a cowboy is a musician,”[39] appealing to the escapist notions omnipresent in teenagers. They created games which required the packaging as a sort of goal, and cigarettes as tokens.[40] Most of these ideas alienate the older market in order to attract the younger. The ultimate goal was to hook the smokers while young through connecting on an emotional/spiritual level, then allow the addictive properties of cigarettes to keep them hooked through the oncoming years. Given the effort exerted to produce these ideas, the teenage market is exceedingly important to the tobacco companies’ continued existence.

---

[1] Cigarette Advertising Code 1. 1964. Bates: 503813713-503813721,

http://tobaccodocuments.org/youth/AmToMUL19640000.Co.html.

[2] John W. Richards et al., The Tobacco Industry’s Code of Advertising in the United States: Myth and Reality, Tob. 5 Control 295, 295 (1996) (quoting Samuel D. Chilcote, Jr., President of the Tobacco Institute, Mar 5 1991).

[3] Cigarette Advertising Code, supra note 1, at 5.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Id. at 6.

[7] Richards at 296.

[8] Id. at 297-298.

[9] Id, at 296.

[10] Are Younger Adult Smokers Important? 3. 08 Nov 1984. Bates: 502205035-502205142.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/502205035-5142.html.

[11]Younger Adult Smokers 1. 21 Jul 1988. Bates: 507309677-507309746.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/507309677-9746.html.

[12] K.M. Cummings and C.P. Morley, Marketing to America’s Youth: Evidence from Corporate Documents, Tob. 11 Supp. I Tob. Control i5, i7 (2002).

[13] Outline 3. Jan 1985. Bates: 503706142-503706184.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/503706142-6184.html.

[14] Cummings, supra note 12, at i9.

[15] Outline, supra note 13.

[16] Cummings, supra note 12, at i7.

[17] Are Younger Adult Smokers Important?, supra note 10, at 55.

[18] Id. at 88.

[19] Rjr; Harden, R.J. Marketing Research Report. First Usual Brand Younger Adult Smoker Media and Promotion Exploratory 4. 20 Feb 1985. Bates: 504596556-504596566.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/504596556-6566.html 4

[20] Id. at 5.

[21] Id. at 34.

[22] Id. at 50.

[23] Cummings, supra note 12, at i10.

[24] Younger Adult Smokers, supra note 11, at 2.

[25] Kessely, Nicholas E; Lennen, & Newell Inc. 1. "[Re: Lorillard's Habit-Forming Kit]". 08 Nov 1963. Bates: 84409798-84409799, 88927085,.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/youth/AmYoLOR19631108.Lt.html

[26] Kessely, supra note 25, at 2.

[27] George, Jon; Jon. "[Re: Meeting Minutes of B & W Problem Lab]" 2. 27 Apr 1977. Bates: 170040579-170040582, 170041305. http://tobaccodocuments.org/youth/AmYoBWC19770427.Mm.html

[28] "Task" 1-2. 1989. Bates: 506757956-506757965.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/youth/AmCgRJR19890000.Ls.html

[29] Id. at 58.

[30] Id. at 68, 76.

[31] Id. at 77.

[32] Id. at 63.

[33] Are Younger Adult Smokers Important?, supra note 10, at 101.

[34] Successful Marketing to Younger Adult Smokers 18. 19840101;19870320. Bates: 504748516-504748613.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/504748516-8613.html. Cigarette manufacturers cannot advertise their products on television due to the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969. The import of this anecdote was that you have to appeal to the youth by going with what they watch, not necessarily what you (the establishment) watch.

[35] Cambridge Group. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Project Planning Status Update 25. 05 Dec 1984. Bates: 502786492-502786576.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/502786492-6576.html.

[36] Rjr [sic]; Harden, R.J. Marketing Research Report. First Usual Brand Younger Adult Smoker Media and Promotion Exploratory 6, 8. 20 Feb 1985. Bates: 504596556-504596566.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/504596556-6566.html.

[37] First Session Agenda Items 6. 1984. Bates: 504104454-504104495.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/rjr/504104454-4495.html.

[38] Id. at 10.

[39] Id. at 17. The reference to the cowboy is likely a veiled reference to the Marlboro Man, long a “folk hero” to generations of male smokers.

[40] Id. at 21.

Test Run

“Can we trade Jamal Lewis to the Texans next year and get Reggie Bush?” – Young caller to the Brian Billick (Radio) Show. This eleven year old is now my hero.

***

Finals week makes me paranoid. Like marijuana, except... well, they make me high. And they make me want to sit around and do nothing. And they make me eat all the time. What do you know, finals week is marijuana. Even a lot of furtive smoking when no one’s looking.

***

There I am, in a sprinter’s starting stance, as if I was in the blocks, pointed at the door to room 460. At the fifteen second warning, I arched my back, ass pointing upward. I’m sure the people in the back of the room couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing. All they could see was my ass. At five seconds, my legs started to hurt, so I had to stand up, and at zero seconds, I picked up my exam and left the room.

Open book exams are the worst. Sanctioned cheating, if you will, except the difficulty scales upward in conjunction with the ability to scan all your notes. When you cheat on normal exams, its crap like “Choose the correct word: There are _____ letters in the English language.” Now, the sanctioned cheating doesn’t work on questions like “What is wrong with the form of this complaint?” Even worse, studying is that much harder because you’ve got access to all the information at your fingertips. You have to study, just to know where to find all the information, but at the same time, you sort of want to study just to know where it is, rather than assimilating the information itself. So many times I’ve just memorized the form of the information, then flipped furiously through my outline in order to find the information during the test.

Time limits? Hah. Time limits are for mere mortals. Like the speed limit, time limits are just guidelines. I look at time limits and I laugh. Then I go faster, and faster, until I'm flying past the time limits, past the speed limits, past time and space. Granted, I laugh only because it is a simple miracle that this is where my life has taken me, to a few sheets of paper with convoluted directions, and questions that I can’t answer in any fashion that will please the good professor.

The school grants us the privilege of using our computers to type our exams. For the most part, this helps the poor professors, in the past doomed either to smudgy typewriters or poor poor handwriting. You know that today, with the increased reliance on keyboards and typewriters, incidences of legible handwriting have declined, perhaps to the point where it will become a prized art form, like post-modernism. People will see it, pretend to understand it, interpret it as they see fit, but have no real clue as to why it exists.

The worst computer use moment at the law school was our first semester finals, first final. This was one of the first years the law school allowed computer use on exams. The computer literacy level, even now, is somewhat mixed at the school. Back then, we might as all have been clubbing each other with the laptops as typing with them. I might well have been one of the most computer proficient individuals, which is quite sad. Room one-oh-seven is the largest lecture hall, and was made available for students during exams. I hate big rooms, so I went to some other room, some twenty to thirty person seminar room, typed, finished. As I left, many of my compatriots ran up and down the main stairwell, carrying their open laptops in their hands, their ethernet cables flailing, still attached to the ethernet jacks. No one could submit from that room. It turned out that one person had a virus, and that virus spread to everyone in the room. Keep in mind we were all freaked out at having to take these insane finals.

I’ve gotten better at taking finals, but there’s still some unholy energy that surges through my body, jumping from synapse to synapse like a frog on crack. When I wake up at six, six-thirty, seven on exam day, I can’t study, even though I have nothing else to do. Just sit there and stare off into the distance, envisioning what might be on the exam, rather than studying what might be on the exam. The seconds tick past. Still I sit. One-thirty. Damn, why do I have to wait? Can’t do anything all day. Can’t sit and wait, can’t study, can’t throw up.

Shaking, jittery, I can’t even concentrate on any single thought for more than thirty seconds. Even now, as I type this, in the afterglow of that intimate moment with the final, when the two of us are locked in a brutal embrace, hands metaphorically clasped around each others’ throats, I can’t see straight, can’t keep my mind along one path. Walking along a leaf’s tracework veins, picking a left, a right, a random direction. Everything in my mind is smashed into one giant bolus, ready for me to swallow into my gullet.

So all I can do, all I can ever do, is let it all mix together. Jump around from point A to point B. Watch the second hand trip over each single tickline. Step into the runner’s blocks, pretend that this race is one that I can run, one I can win. Pick up the papers, walk back to my computer, and stare at the questions that speak sweet nothings to no one except me. Where am I going with this? Where can anyone go during a race, except to the final, the finish line?

Fan-freaking-tastic!

K.T.: I’m going to finish this [Maryland Practice and Civil Procedure] exam in an hour.

C.S.: You say that every year.

K.T.: Yeah, but remember for Con[stitutional] Law II when I said I’d finish in an hour? And, I barely finished in the time limit. Ah. Right.

I did finish in two hours, out of two and a half alloted. Someday, someday my prince will come. Wait, wrong lifetime.

***

I play fantasy football. So do something on the order of ninety-five percent of all Americans. At this point, naturalization exams should include a question on fantasy football. Let’s be real, football has supplanted baseball as our national pastime, and fantasy football has replaced sitting on the couch with a bag of salt and vinegar kettle-cooked chips as the perfect way to follow the National Football League.

However, it is starting to lose its delicate flavor and aroma, much as a bottle of wine spoiled into vinegar. We need new variations on fantasy football, and not just the obvious rule changes like starting two quarterbacks or starting individual defensive players. Of course, I have some suggestions. Those of you unable to stomach an extended joke based on bad puns would be better served updating your fantasy rosters right now.

Fantasy Futbol: The heart of fantasy football is offensive statistics. Futbol traditionally keeps track of goals. And penalties. And shots on goal. If you thought fantasy football was way too high scoring, you’ll love weeks of four to three final scores! Thought Ichiro and Nene had a good thing going? Keep track of players known by only one name, like Ronaldo and Ronaldinho! Tired of everyone knowing all the players? Now you can keep track of of players known by only one name, like Ronaldo and Ronaldinho!

Fantasy Bench Football: Anyone can start the likes of LaDainian Tomlinson and Peyton Manning, but who has the nuts to start Darren Sproles and Jim Sorgi? He Hate Me? We love you Rod Smart. Dust off those depth charts and plumb the bottom of the barrel for the greatest backups to never hit the big stage. The longer they go between any offensive production, the higher you score. Clarence Moore is buried so deep on the Ravens’ depth chart, and their passing game is so anemic, starting him on your fantasy team would be suicide. Start him on your Bench team and ride him to victory!

Reality Football: Draft the best NFL players to have made it onto reality television! Gary Hogeboom! Chris Valletta! Wait, that’s it. Hm, looks like this will be a one-on-one race to the finish.

Final Fantasy Football: What if the myriad characters from the Final Fantasy series converged on a football field? Who would emerge victorious? Select your final roster from any and all of the games! Cecil, Terra, Ramza, Tidus, Fighter! Draft your close range bruisers as receiving tight ends, archers and magic users for your quarterbacks, undersized, underage females as speedy receivers, even townships for defense and special teams! Insane? In the words of Kefka, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Fantasy Fantasy Football: Draft your team from the millions worldwide that play fantasy football, then score points based on how well their teams and rosters score points. Jeff “Teh M4st4 K1ll4” Scroggins’ three hundred and fifty pound frame might scare you away from picking him for kickball, but his time spent confined to a chair means his rosters will score you a multitude of points! Draft him first overall and listen to the groans of your opponents as they realize your roster can’t lose!

One Month

K.T.: Why must you all mock me so? Oh, right, I bring it on myself. Well, carry on.

***

V.P. has stated his intention to write fifty thousand words in thirty days. I hope he wasn’t kidding. I have to assume that they for the most part be different words. Though it would be the easiest path, “A A A A A A A A A A A A A” doesn’t make for the most compelling reading. However, I also have to assume because he hasn’t revealed what the great topic will be. For all I know, he may choose to write about typefaces throughout history, selecting the letter “A” as his example letter. In which case, “ A A A A A A A A A A A A A A” might become a bit more compelling. To be fair, I’ve never found historical reviews of typefaces that interesting. Regardless, more power to him. I hope he succeeds, because V.P. has that same itch I scratch, that need to get down and get funky with the pen and paper.

Now, in order to achieve this goal, V.P. needs to write one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven words each day. A single standard double-spaced page of text in twelve point font, Times New Roman, is generally around two hundred and fifty words. V.P. needs to produce just over six and a half pages of text per day to meet this goal. He’s stated that he will set aside two and a half hours per day to write, or one hundred and fifty minutes. This further breaks down to just over eleven words a minute, or one word every five and a half seconds. When you consider that this sentence here contains over eleven words and took about twenty seconds to type, you think that V.P. will meet his goal quite easily.

What will inevitably freeze V.P., and I hope that it does not, but it will, is the omnipresent writer’s block. What exacerbates the writer’s block in this situation is V.P.’s high standards for a sentence. Some people bang out their prose then edit at a later date. V.P. agonizes over one sentence, one word, until it comes out right. V.P. ponders his sentences, discontented until they feel right. V.P. mulls over his word choice, his sentence structure, molding the words until they work well. Clasping his crystal fountain pen, V.P. slouches at his desk, squinting at the page, crossing and re-crossing out his script, shifting his thoughts until the formation coincides with the music of the spheres. V.P. could become his own worst enemy over the course of his month.

V.P. wasn’t going to start until the arbitrary crossing over of this year into next, so he’s got three-fourths of a month to plan it all out. It’s a significant chunk of text, two hundred double spaced pages. A very short novel. One month. Robert Jordan wrote the first Wheel of Time novel in a month, though he was in a hospital and had nothing else to do. V.P. has work (Catgut collector? Gay rodeo cowboy? Computer programmer? I can never remember.), family obligations (all those little bastards running around. Tie your tubes.), and a life to live (though I suppose the life to live is wrapped up in all the little bastards running around). Who hasn’t tried to write fifty thousand words? I know I have several times. It’s not easy. I hope like hell V.P. has the wherewithal and inner fortitude to pull it off. And since he’s not updating his blog, I hope like hell this will lead to something that he can be proud of.

A Life of Quiet Desperation

K.T.: I FLEW FROM JAPAN FOR X-BOX THREE SIXTY! I AM SALARYMAN! I WORK EIGHTY F*CKING HOURS! I HAVE NOTHING! GET ME X-BOX!

This is one of those quotes that is so much better in person than online. Imagine me screaming this to a poor E.B. Games employee over the course of five minutes, trying to convince her that I need, nay, deserve, an X-box three sixty. Oh, and the poor accent doesn’t hurt matters. Nor did the wild arm waving.

***

Merry Christmas everyone! It’s been such an eventful year this year! So much has happened within our family, and we hardly ever get the chance to see most of you! We wanted to catch you up with what’s happening in our family over the past year!

Our youngest, Sally, is now three and three quarters come this Christmas! She’s so smart, she can count to five, without her fingers! Sally also knows how to use the potty all by herself! We bought her a special pink seat that fits her little tushy perfect! When she’s got to go, she calls out “Daddy, I have to count to two!” The first few times, we had a few accidents because we weren’t sure what she meant! But ever since, it’s been a joy to watch her go by herself! Just like her daddy!

Marty’s six years old, and just like his mom! They’ve both got her quick wit and strong-headed nature! Now that he’s started the first grade, we’re always getting calls from Mrs. Jenkins! She’s always telling us how spirited Marty is, how he’s always questioning her, how he’s always willing to speak his mind! She’s so impressed she’s moving him to Mrs. Fletcher’s special class in the spring! He’ll be with the best and the brightest, nothing but the best for us!

Willa’s fifteen, and oh what a thespian she’s becoming! In the community theater’s performance of the Vagina Monologues, she’s got the role of the woman in the military protecting our country! It’s so much fun to see how militant she is, how angry she can get about her vagina! How she regrets having to protect men with their oppressive penises, and how if she could use her bayonet to cut them all off she would! And she’s become so close to her director, Kristin! Kristin has taught Willa so much, and not just about the theater! We’re so lucky to have Kristin in our lives!

Tara’s got promoted at her firm again! She made partner! Of course, this means that she’s spending so much more time there than at home, but that’s alright because this makes her happy! I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks, but she calls me at two in the morning to tell me about her day! Lately I’ve tried to take her dinner at work, but she’s never there! Always busy, that’s my wife!

As for me, just another year of being a house-husband! I don’t know what I was thinking when I tried to be a doctor, that just wasn’t for me! Who needs all that stress when you can have day after predictable day making lunches, cleaning the drapes, shopping for groceries! Plus, there are unpredictable moments, like whenever one of the kids gets sick at school, or when the grocery store is out of grape jelly! Oh we had some horrible fights about that grape jelly! Honestly, if you can’t eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich who cares!

So that’s been our year, and we all look forward to hearing about your years! Have a merry Christmas everyone!

Memorable

J.F.: I’ve hung a couple of doors, and let me tell you, the liquor I’ve gone through….

Hanging doors causes many problems. I suppose the alignment along all three axes would be the sticking point.

***

Web logs are at their heart journals made public. There’s a dual dilemma inherent in maintaining this, my online journal. First, since anyone can read it, I censor myself more than normal. Over the long haul, this works to everyone’s advantage, as it keeps this from devolving into a meandering whinefest doused in angst and first impressions. Since I can’t fall back on everyone’s favorite fallback, it forces me to dip into the creative au jus (which when translates means “with juice.” Therefore, I should have just typed “creative jus,” but not only does that smack of pedantry, no one would actually get the reference. The upshot is that, yes, I am a French Dip for taking you through all this.). The second problem is that I cannot reliably monitor the readers. Each post has to strain through an elaborate meshwork detailing personal and personnel conflicts. Even so, I’ve probably missed a few such conflicts, resulting in people reading things that they may not necessarily want to. Note that the first constraint is more rigid than the second.

Why did I type that? Because I’m mired in Finals Mode (FM) and most of what I intended to write would have read like a wartime refugee’s memoirs, except without any redeeming qualities. Times like this, periods of high stress and unwavering scheduling focus, tend to lead me along a very narrow path, a dark, twisted path, full of overgrown briars and broken bottles under children’s feet, bodies strewn across the dead end street. But I won’t heed that battle call, it puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall. (Thank you U2 for letting me coopt your anthem for my simple and unworthy needs.) I’ve said what I’ve needed to about the Peace Corps, law school, writing, solitude, finals, misapprehension, misunderstanding, uncertain futures, ticking clocks. We’ll come back to all that later, but not now. Not now. There’s news to be announced across the digital divide.

Last Thursday, at Niagara Falls (Canadian faction), V.V. crossed up S.P. V.V. crossed up S.P. so bad S.P.’s ankle broke like a twig. S.P. then fell to one knee and proposed to V.V. (There may or may not also have been the proposition of getting an evening meal. Though romantic, these are also voracious people, capable of consuming several times their bodyweight in biomass). It was a watershed moment, in many senses of the word. They were next to one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world. V.V. shed many tears, partly overwhelmed by the moment, partly because her ring still had a peanut from the Crackerjack box attached to the cubic zirconium. And, it was a watershed turning point. A crystal moment in time, constituting an actual Memory, not one of the pedestrian, “Ah, I had waffles for breakfast,” but rather, the special “Ah, I got engaged” moments. Initial conflicting reports had S.P. flung over the falls, V.V. flung over the falls, S.P. and V.V. plunging over the falls locked in a deathmatch, and LSD altering your perception. However, enough information trickled in, confirming V.V.’s assent to the contractual offer to marry.

For those of you accusing me of insensitivity, what with my making jokes about it, let me assure you that I have earned the right to make light of the situation. I’ve seen S.P. and V.V. at less than their best, and tried to help them. Now that those times are mere memories (like waffles!), now we can laugh with joy, even if some chuckling is irreverent. Besides, there are only two people that know exactly how it went, and the rest of us are forced to imagine and fill in the details. However, if you want a serious version, perhaps the best way to state it is the simplest. S.P. proposed marriage to V.V. and V.V. accepted.

Congratulations go out to S.P. and V.V. on their engagement!

To go full circle, I’ve been offered the opportunity to speak at their wedding, and after the initial fright at the thought of public speaking, I humbly accept. Now, rather than typing out my thoughts to the public, I get the chance to speak words that I should censor (“F*ck yeah! It’s f*cking great to be here! F*ck!”) to an audience I cannot select. Woo I feel sick.

Preemptive Strike

I've two weeks of finals upcoming, so prepare for (even more) sporadic updating. We'll see how poor this all turns out.

In the meantime, go tell someone you love them, and mean it. Maybe this will make someone's day a little brighter.

...And Come Out Fighting

L.T.: She said ninety-nine dollars for salmon?

K.T.: No, she said twenty-four dollars. Ninety-nine dollars, better be some really good fish.

L.T.: Goldfish.

Like smartass father, like smartass son.

***

I can’t shake hands or greet anyone anymore. It is just too complicated. My baseline preference involves a simple right-hand wave. Hold it up, quick shake, put it down. Hell, sometimes not even a shake. Simple, unmistakable, quick. Fine.

That’s not what other people like. Here’s what I’ve encountered in the past month. Simple traditional handshake, hand in hand. Modified traditional handshake, gripping thumbs. Hand slap and pull away. Hand slap, gripping fingers as if ready to thumb wrestle, shaking. Hand shake, pull in for awkward hug, pressing arms between people. Chest bounce. Fist smash. Fist smash followed by chest bounce. Hug. Head nod. “Hey stupid.”

The problem is that personalized greetings are both salutation and secret message, an admission that you belong. Now, society has so fractured our collective into tiny cliques that each group has their own traditions. Each tribe creates their own ways, and by inviting others in the fold, expand and include others.

I’ve been blessed (cursed) with being a part of a great variety of cliques, much as everyone knows and belongs to different groups of people. Hell, up to a certain point, some of the original cliques have started to fracture themselves, further expanding the depth of knowledge I require in order to interact successfully with all of them. In addition, I have to keep straight which group requires what set of motions and gestures. If this has been any indication, I have no clue when to use what, or even what’s acceptable and not acceptable these days.

As I understand it, the origin of the handshake was to ensure the person opposite you held nothing up their sleeve. Hence, the shaking of the hands would expose any hidden weaponry or devicery. Handshakes are, by nature, quite distrustful and reflect a base pessimism inherent in human society. Yet, we’ve taken them in so many different directions, with so many iterations, losing sight of what they were originally.

Handshakes are also one of the best ways to convey diseases, especially in the winter months. So many germs converge upon these metacarpals, and are so easily transferred from person to person. Your hands touch everything else thereafter, your face, your legs, your butt, my butt, anyone’s butt, everyone’s butt... wrong story.

There’s got to be a better way to greet people, something that doesn’t require such up-close and personal contact. Perhaps telepathy, or a simple wave. If you really want to transfer fluids and other intimate bodily information, upon meeting, we should all make love. This has the interesting side effect of creating some rather interesting dinner parties. “Hi, have you met my husband J.B.?” “No, hi J.B., where would you like to say hello, on the foyer or in the bedroom?” “Let’s use the table, why waste the time?”

Really, making love to a person reveals a lot about them. I’m sure that if you really want to know someone, this would be a more effective way to get to know them than shaking their hand. Shake that ass girl, shake that ass.

The Best Offense

I.B.: Well, I’ve finished everything I wanted to talk about, so I’ll let you out early today. But before I do, a couple of things.

Don’t ever tell a class you’ll let them out early, then hold them for another ten minutes. Especially right before Thanksgiving break.

***

Too much defense is a bad thing. I purchased Norton Antivirus from the school to replace outdated McAfee Antivirus. McAfee shipped with the laptop, and required me to pay for updates on a regular basis. Norton from the school has a longer update period. The choice was clear. Figuring that too much defense couldn’t hurt, I decided to install Norton, then uninstall McAfee. After all, if one antivirus program protects my computer, two must do twice as much. Turns out that two running in conjunction crashed my computer every time it booted up.

For forty-five minutes in the law school’s library I futzed with the settings on this old laptop, unable to deactivate the system beeps that punctuated the library’s still like an epileptic seamstress watching a strobelight. There is no “Safe Mode” option immediately available at the boot screen; you have to enter the setup menu before safe mode becomes available. In addition, you have to yank the battery from the laptop while it’s frozen in order to make safe mode available. Funner video games I’ve enjoyed than this one. It reminded me of Sphere by Michael Crichton.

/SPOILER ALERT.

When the protagonists discussed the very nature of the titular sphere, after having all experienced it, one compared their situation to that of a cockroach or other tiny insect within a space probe, or similar electronic device. Though it may have seemed to the cockroach that the device, filled with danger and peril and electricity at every turn, constituted an intelligence test, to the inventors, the probe collected data from deep space. Similarly, the humans were ill-equipped to comprehend the sphere’s true purpose. This rectangular laptop is my sphere, though I gained a swelling sense of frustration, not a near-Godlike omnipotence.

/END SPOILER ALERT.

Though computers lack intelligence, pundits frequently ascribe that quality with the cliché: “Computers are only as smart as their users.” For all its broad capability, your average computer is no less and no more basic tool than a hammer. When I was cursing the computer in the library, whispered expletives brushing past my lips, it was really my own incompetence and ignorance that deserved the harsh words.

Here I stand ‘pon a precarious precipice, a precipice that separates the computer lover from the cyber-Luddite. I represent a rare breed, the in-betweener. You are either comfortable with computers or you think them more arcane and incomprehensible than the newest Medicare Prescription Drug Discount Program. (Incidentally, in helping my over seventy years of age father fill out the various forms, it stuns me how Medicare expects the elderly to subscribe when I have to sit and study the scant sheets for upwards of forty minutes just to begin to have an inkling of what it is all about.) As we age and supplant those without knowledge of computers, and raise our children computer-literate, those that fear computers will be limited to the third world and the Amish. Even then, pop culture, increased charitable opportunities and Rumspringa will expose them to computers. Until then, a precious few children of the sun shall use computers yet not understand what and why they are.

Do not misunderstand me (on this issue. Feel free to misunderstand me on everything else, as is your wont.). I appreciate the convenience computing offers. However, if I had my druthers, I’d be working with mechanical typewriters and helper monkeys, and pigeons would carry my missives to and fro, rather than electrical impulses. Computers have so interlaced into our society that we cannot extricate ourselves without disconnecting from society altogether. Sure, people live off of the grid, but what does that constitute but that old simp, or that old simp’s son, off in the woods, coming into town every few weeks for supplies. The exception rather than the rule. Even now, typing this entry in, backspacing away the myriad mistakes my fat fingers visit upon this virtual paper, the hypocrisy settles in my lap like a sleepy cat.

I need this laptop. I need Prism. Though devoid of emotion, intelligence, depth, anything that signifies humanity, Prism has become as much a part of my life as anything else. Indeed, much like a security blanket, I’ve started to form, heaven forfend, an attachment to this machine. Indeed, as much as it allows me to transcribe the professor’s notes in class, it also serves as a shield to hide me from professor’s eyes. I find myself hiding behind it sometimes as a toddler escapes behind her father’s leg. Too much defense is a bad thing.

Legal Fiction

“Go to lunch before you f*ck things up again.” – Random police officer shouting to other random police officer at ten in the ante meridian.

***

Despite my last post, now I shall regale you all with stories from my life as a law school student. When the crap hits the fan, we get some marginally interesting stories.

***

My internal priority system assigns various priorities to assignments and duties, then slots them into a master list of procrastination. This list tells me how long I have to put something important off to finish something less important but more interesting. For example, last week when I had to finish my paper, I stopped to swab my bathroom for an hour, though I had perhaps a half hour’s worth of work to complete on the paper. Thereafter, I also stared about my room for a good fifteen minutes, putting off the paper work.

The IPS also buffers giant wads of free time into the ranking system. One of the most important things I ever learned was to estimate the time till finish of any assignment as twice as much as it should normally take. Finish on time and you look like a hero. Problems crop up and you still have plenty of time to fix them. Thank you Star Trek. Please note that my IPS only works precisely because the buffers accept the less important assignments. Without the buffers, the system is worthless.

Take note that the IPS does start to break down during finals, if only because for some reason, I cannot properly estimate study time when it comes to cumulative finals. I generally screw myself over at this time, when it seemed that it would take forty minutes to learn a certain rule, and it takes two and a half hours. Taken in short, the IPS makes my life livable, since procrastination lets me put off certain things to enjoy life’s simpler pleasures.

Related to the IPS, I had a presentation on the semester’s work on Monday. The IPS placed this below sleep, breakfast, morning class, and lunch at the Inner Harbor. And that was Monday’s priority. The IPS ranked that hour-long presentation below smoking crack. As there was no crack smoking done, that tells you how much work was put into the flavored tobacco presentation.

Heights, the dark, clowns, being alone, public speaking. These are my driving fears, none moreso than public speaking. Ignoring the inevitable made it bearable. Like an ostrich on a beach with a tank bearing down on it, I wanted to hide my head in the sand.

So right before class, N.S. and J.M. hadn’t completed their powerpoint presentation. One, no one said we needed powerpoint. L.G. and I were just going to shoot from the hip. Two, they completed their separate halves of the powerpoint, and were going to merge it during the first hour, while we presented on flavored tobacco. Right, good luck.

L.G. and I sat at the side of the room, when K.D. said, “And why don’t you both move to the front of the room, to make it more official. And wow, they both just shot me dirty looks when I said that.”

To make it similar to a presentation before the general assembly, it was opened up to questions for the duration of the hour. A prohibition on flavored tobacco is extraordinarily difficult, if only because the questions that can be raised about the delineation of flavoring/non-flavoring and the questions with no easy answers, which cropped up throughout.

Do I remember what the discussion was like? Not a clue. However: L.B. whispered something, which I overheard, and that threw me out of my “rhythm.” This rhythm is most similar to white man’s rhythm, which follows a beat and pattern all its misguided own. I stuttered and started a lot. At one point, the words “I’ve gone completely blank” left my mouth. I had to take off my glasses in a vain attempt to “hide” from the class. If I can’t see you, you aren’t there. Unfortunately, this had the unintended side effect of “If I can’t see you, I can’t hear you.” Great for when you have to answer questions. At one point we were assaulted by three or four hostile questions in a row, which threw me into defensive mode. When a friendly question came up, I took it as hostile and nearly “attacked” the questioner. At one point, I wrote the words “I’m lost” on my sheet, sliding it over to L.G. My leg shook a mile a minute. Had a telegraph button been put under my foot, I could have sent “Oh crap oh crap oh crap” off to Germany, which, ironically, I would have rather been than in that classroom.

The next day, we had a meeting with K.D., one of the last two with her. After a semester, we’d almost concluded our project, or at least, our involvement with it. Starting out, I knew that it was somewhat futile, and there was no chance the bill would pass. I knew that. I knew that. And somehow, it washed out of my mind, lost in all the work we’d been doing, the effort we’d put in. I should have remembered that. Instead, something in me, that philanthropic, selfish urge to make a difference exposed itself. It felt like this work might make a difference, small though it might be.

K.D. was tired, somewhat demoralized. She told L.G. and myself that the bill wouldn’t pass, that we were almost done, that the work we’d done was more or less worthless, that we wouldn’t care after the next two weeks. It boiled down to all this being a sham, a legal fiction. The story that we’d lived, all for naught, save a little letter on the sheet. Finally, when I started caring (and yes, in spite of all the bitching, I did care), it gets shot down. One of the roughest moments in my law school life, if only because I opened up, and the door slammed shut.

Housewifery

K.R.: We were at Popeye’s, and she pissed me off, so I bit her.

K.T.: You bit your girlfriend?

K.R.: Yeah, I don’t believe in hitting women.

Moment of the year right there.

***

Maybe it was the concussion, but I decided to cook Sunday dinner this weekend.

“Maybe” nothing, it was the concussion.

Innocuous menu really, pork spring rolls for appetizers, marinated chicken breast in bell peppers and mushroom, and pork fried rice. Based on how many people play football on any given Sunday, I decided on cooking for six.

Never again. Spring roll preparation took seven hours, with a break to have some cereal. Thin-slice the pork chops, then marinate to add flavor. Shred the lettuce manually, then prep the bean sprouts. Here, I screwed up, I could have left the tips on probably, but something possessed me, the spirit of idiocy. Good ninety minutes to take the tips off. Cooking some scrambled eggs to throw in, then flinging the entire mélange into the pan. Fry baby fry. Let it cool for a little while, let the spring roll wrappers defrost a bit. Then, scoop a bit of the filling into the shell, roll, seal, place on pan. Seven freaking hours.

The rest of the cooking preparation was another five hours. Cut up and marinate the chicken breasts, cut up the peppers and mushrooms. Make the rice (and never buy a Cuisinart rice cooker. On base cook mode, even with extra water, it burns the rice. What the hell, you manufacture the machine specifically to cook rice. It has one primary purpose, to cook rice. How do you screw up the primary purpose of your machine? How?) Take the leftover bean sprouts and cabbage, fry them up a bit to throw into the rice. Go buy some spicy peppers for flavoring.

Football resembled more an idiot’s venture than actual football (if actual football is the strange amalgam of rules we follow). Granted, on Sunday all I did was fall back in deep coverage and pressure C.H. And that sucked, really, he’d rather wobble a pass three feet behind me after falling back ten feet, instead of sucking up the two-hand touch sack. Fine, so be it. I proved that I can’t throw to any receiver not named S.P. This mental infirmity, once such a gleaming jewel in my crown, now hangs about my neck like a dead albatross, three weeks rotting and stinking to Topeka.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to D.C.’s fevered screams and orders for me not to tackle anyone head-on straight up, but I think I like the pain of it all, the getting knocked around and having those strange feelings spike into my mind. Not quite as nihilistic as Fight Club, but I think when I get knocked around, whether or not I make a stop, I feel a little more alive than anywhen else. Let’s face it, that reckless/pointless attitude is what landed me in the hospital; it was not the first tackle attempt, but the second immediately following, that led to the concussion. For all that we did, when I couldn’t tackle, it didn’t feel like football.

Thereafter, add about ninety minutes for the actual heating section of the day, and we’re talking over thirteen hours of cooking. Things to solve for next time (in ten to twelve years), how do you clean up all the congealed chicken blood that oozes out during the process of cooking? The little bits get stuck all over the food and resemble tiny dead maggots. How best to marinate pork, especially for cooking in other dishes? The pork turned out markedly tasteless both in the rolls and the rice, despite everyone’s claims that it tasted good (and thank you all, that’s why I will cook again in a decade instead of a score of years). Can I create a midget army to help me prepare spring rolls? Seven hours for one person, one hour for seven dwarves. However, does that make me Snow White?

Boring Post to Fulfill Week Times Two Promise

J.F.: Its not whether you’re right or wrong, its whether you have the last say.

So there.

***

Why don’t I write more about my law school experience, aside from the ranting? I’ve mentally checked out. I don’t pay close attention in class anymore, or any attention really. There are the rare occasions involving random stupidity, of my own doing, which have faded away into my shaded past.

Here is my average school journey. I hope in the Silver Surfer and take Ninety-Five North to the law school. Because I drink a big glass of water fifteen minutes before getting into the Silver Surfer, my walk to the school is fraught with peril as my bladder threatens to release a golden prize all over my pants. When I make it to the entrance, I flash my identification card at the security guard, check my mailbox, and head off to class.

If it’s Sales and Sales Financing, I take my seat in the back of the room, turn on my laptop, and surf the internet for one or two hours, sometimes pecking a few notes here and there. If I’m especially bold, I’ll turn on the internet chat programs and make the rounds.

Tobacco Control is ten people plus the professor, so I turn on my laptop and stare blankly at the screen for two hours. I don’t take notes since we have no final exam, and most of the work is done out of class. Sometimes I’ll daydream about what might have been. Sometimes I won’t.

Maryland Civil Procedure is similar to Sales and Sales Financing, in that I don’t pay too close attention. Judge J.F.’s stories are quite amusing, and since he tells so many, the information we need to know is condensed into the last twenty minutes of class, or transcribed on the giant stacks of handouts we receive every class period.

If I have to stay in the law school for non-consecutive classes, then I’ll grab something from the vending machine or walk down to the Inner Harbor and grab some Chipotle. The Chipotle round-trip, with eating time, is an hour and ten minutes, down to an hour if I rush it. With a shower (if there was one available in the school), and me running, I think forty-five minutes is doable. One of these days, for the hell of it, I may test the run just to see what it’s like, jogging around the city with all its smog and traffic.

I can count on one hand the number of people in the law school I talk to. This is not because I cannot count higher than five, just another consequence of my antisociality. If I see one of them, I will stop to talk to them; since we’re between classes, these conversations tend to run short of the five minute mark.

Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, so that eliminates me from a majority of the social activities.

That’s it. That’s my law school experience in a nutshell. Pretty boring all around.

If I Remember Correctly

V.V.: Can you say, Boomshakalaka, Boomshakalaka, Boomshakalaka, Boom?

K.T.: Maybe later.

V.V.: You’ll forget about it later.

Damned right. I was in a wheelchair at the time, and no one will make a Family Guy joke at my expense if I can’t remember it later. Turned out I forgot five seconds later.

***

If I remember correctly, I had my Memento moment this weekend when, for the span of about four hours, my short-term memory malfunctioned and I was reduced to repeating the same seven to ten comments over and over in a feeble attempt to reconstruct what just happened. Yes, I had a concussion.

We’ve started playing football again, a modified version of the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules. This is the third week that we’ve played the football (tackle), and for me, it may very well be the last. In that hazy retrospect borne of my inability to recall many of yesterday’s events, I’ve not felt that close to mortality since I was thirteen and had chronic chest pain. I need my snot-clot, and having learned that it might leak out of my nose were the concussion more serious, well.

The first game went smashing well. I intercepted two errant lobs, one from C.R., one from C.H., and returned both for the almighty touchdown. Then, to celebrate the occasion (which happens so frequently you’d think we were playing football), I emulated the almighty Detroit Lion Barry Sanders and calmly placed the ball down on the field (we have no referees to hand the ball to post-touchdown. Call your own fouls/No blood no foul.).

The second game, ah, that was a most mysterious occurrence. As I recall, S.P. received a short pass in the middle of the field. D.C. tore S.P.’s shirt off, resulting in a mild homoerotic situation, leaving him barreling straight at me. From what the observers tell me, I ran headfirst at S.P., bounced off his form, spun around, and attempted a second tackle. At this point, he threw out the stiff-arm. This somehow launched me into the air.

At this point, I recall landing on the back of my head and neck, and everything falling dark black, like tunneling underground. I think I tumbled backwards further, then somehow came to a rest on my stomach or back. There was a great light, burning in my face, until A.W. stood over me, casting a long shadow that blocked out the sun.

Here is where I started to hit mass repeat. The rest of this is based on my memory trickling back into my head and everyone else’s comments. Thank you all for making sure I didn’t stumble back onto the field.

C.H. and S.P. grabbed me under an armpit each, and tried to heft me to my feet. The vertigo swirled my inner ear like a coffee stirrer, and I had to spin in a complete circle before crumpling back to the ground. C.H. then asked me to remember the following: football, cone, and A.W. The first time he asked me what I had to remember, I said football. Thereafter, I had no recollection of him telling me to remember anything at all.

Throughout, I kept asking people what happened. Half the time, I had to preface it with, “I know I asked this already, but.” I also kept inquiring what my class schedule was, and what my paper topic was. If I remember correctly.

At this point, we started the cold, numbing journey off towards the hospital, the name of which eludes me to this point. I think I’d had to inform S.P. several times to go get my wallet and my insurance card, which he did. During the ride, I told C.H., S.P. and V.V. that my foot had gone numb. They replied, are you sitting on your foot? Yes, yes I was. I’d forgotten that I was sitting awkward on my own foot. This had now become my senior moment, five years too early.

While at the hospital, they seated me within a lovely wheelchair, the physical details of which again elude me. It was a wheeled chair, and I sat in it. There were vending machines, but no one had any dollar bills. Several times, I’d told them to check my wallet, neither remembering that I had no one dollar bills, nor that I’d told them thirty seconds previous to do so.

At this point, things start to blur.

Since my injury was a heady one, they’d fairly rushed me through the admissions process. Whilst talking to the nurse, lovely girl that I can’t remember what she looked like, C.H. launched into a perplexing analysis of my injury, chock full of peculiar numbers, such as “three” and “one”. Three? One? This is what I am reduced to, a number?

As it turned out, I was, for the wristband they placed on my wrist designated me with several numbers. Multiple times, I’d had to say that I had no middle initial, to which everyone replied the M referred to my masculine (in theory) status. That I couldn’t shut up and kept talking, about the same three things no less, that I expected everyone to wait on me hand and foot, and tend to my every need (which consisted of telling me what happened) confirmed my temp. status as a bubble-headed blonde girl.

C.H. wheeled me into the hospital proper soon after, as only one person would be allowed in with me, and C.H. was an R.N. I think. There were large plasma screens with multiple colored blocks, large desks at eye level when I was sitting, people in blue, grey, pink scrubs milling around, curtains everywhere. Or was this just my false recollection of any number of medical comedies/dramas?

Another nurse came in to see me in my new room, another beautiful girl whose face is naught but a jumble of vaguely human features, put up the rails on the bed so I wouldn’t fall over (when did I end up on the bed? Wasn’t I in a wheelchair?) and had me take off my t-shirt, leaving me clad in a tight Under Armour shirt, black and my AI shorts. Later, when stumbling back to the apartment, it occurred to me that it was extraordinary good luck I chose to wear the black shirt, and not the white, which tended to become diaphanous whenever I sweat, or stood there.

Aside: Are all female nurses beautiful? I suppose they are when you’re ailing, even if you can’t remember what they look like, sound like, their general attitude even. In times of trouble like de-winged angels scrub-clad they are. Is the converse applicable to ailing women, are all male nurses beautiful?

When did I go get the CT scan? I don’t know. Did I go get a CT scan? I must have, for that damnable rotating ring scared the senselessness out of me. Lying on the bed, the ring rotating and thrumming like a giant’s heartbeat, surrounding me in the open air, I recall feeling distinct, individual, clear, afraid. Not until that point did it occur that I might have a serious problem. Up until then I was hard-pressed to recall what I’d eaten last night. The C’s and the T’s buffeting me changed all that. Fearsome medicine right there, even if it was just a diagnostic tool.

As with any other wound, time started to heal my concussion, and my head started to piece itself back together. Various conversations actually led somewhere, instead of looping towards the same five points in twenty seconds. From there, the wait to the eventual diagnosis of nothing out of the ordinary was the hardest part.

Yet another beautiful nurse entered to discharge me. Again, I cannot recall her features, immaculate though they must have been, and beg forgiveness of female nurses everywhere for my base transgression. I shall repent by taking you all out on dates, at the same time. She asked how many days I wanted off, and at this point, I came to my senses. I told her that sounded like a set up, and it was. She wanted to laugh at me for requesting a week off, like my original internal request. Instead, I got two days and an admonishment that if I started projectile vomiting, I had to return to the hospital. Fair enough.

I still get dizzy for no good reason every once in a while, but its nowhere near as bad as it once was. I’ve had to write my paper this entire week, and so had already called out from work, so I’ve been a sole student this whole week. This has been an odd week, very uneventful, but I do think that I would not recommend any of you receive a concussion, under any circumstances.

If I remember correctly.

Hold Your Horses

Hello everyone.

I suffered a mild concussion on Sunday while playing football. I have a paper due this Friday that is worth fifty percent of my final grade in my Tobacco Control class. Updates will come later than normal this calendar week, but they will eventually come.

Kids and Idiots

K.D.: Great costume, by the way. Very clever.

N.S.: Is that what that is? I was wondering why you were wearing that.

K.T.: I’m insane!

Somehow this tends to be a trend in my life. People accuse me of being strange, and I do little to prove them wrong.

***

The costume was me as the white pawn on a chessboard, or the black pawn, depending on whom you ask. White khakis, white button-down, white socks, black shoes, and my new favorite shirt, a white t-shirt with black fringe on the sleeves and neck, and a large pawn on the chest, with the word pawn below it. I move one step at a time anyway, and in fifteen years or so, I plan on becoming a queen, so this costume may work out much better than anticipated.

Now, in theory, in my head, this Halloween costume seemed great. In practice, I didn’t realize that I looked a little off. The collared shirt threw it off. If I’d had a white turtleneck, it would have been perfect.

For some reason, the near-all-white uniform plus me walking around led to a lot of stares. I haven’t been stared at that much since I went to church with C.T. Since that church’s attendance was all African-American, and I am not African-American, everyone I passed looked at me like a freak. Same effect today, especially since I must be at least ten years too old to be dressing up for Halloween.

Of course, in the law school during the morning, most people didn’t even notice. People tend not to notice when you sneak into the classroom and sit down quickly.

After Sales and Sales Financing, it was time to go to Chipotle, down at the Inner Harbor. Now, keep in mind that on Sunday, we’d played about two hours of football, and on Monday morning, I channeled VV and ran two and a half miles. I was tired, so I’m sure my walk had a slight hitch to it. Hell, I stumbled on the flat pavement more than once. This shambling white-clad fool certainly drew a hell of a lot of stares. The walk back was even worse, as my walk more resembled Keyser Soze than anything.

At this point, I saw D.B., and like a smartass, he wondered why, if I was the white pawn, why the pawn on my shirt was black.

In class, professor K.D. was the only person in the entire school to figure out what the hell I was doing with the shirt, as most everyone else thought I was just insane. Woo.

Later at Giant, I saw Raggedy Ann, a pack of frozen peas, and a sumo. Why don’t more people just be goofy and dress up for Halloween?

Fast forward to after sunset. I went to D.C. and M.C.’s apartment to trick or treat. They unlocked the door, I said “Trick or Treat,” and they just mutely held up the hollowed skull full of candy. Apparently I am too old to be doing this.

***

I had to visit the bank. My bank is trapped within a Giant supermarket, which is quite convenient. Better than cashing a check at the liquor store and blowing it on beer and chips. Now I can cash my checks at the grocery store and blow it on soda and chips.

I was waiting in line behind an androgynous client. Final conclusion, Caucasian female, though it wasn’t easy. Black hair, but fading, shot through with random white strands, a short cut, somewhat similar to my shank of hair, but a bit fuller. Appropriate for either sex. Rounded face, somewhat effeminate, but not to the point of being determinative. Very hairy forearms, but those don’t indicate male or female. Easily in his/her thirties. Purple polo shirt, loose blue jeans. Both gave no hint as to sexual identity, no hint of bosom, no ass. Just flat top to bottom. Looked at the shoes, grey athletic shoes. The hands were just veiny enough to make me wonder if she’d weathered a lot at work or if he was starting to get fat. No visible jewelry, and I didn’t want to ask about piercings. Hell, I tried to read the handwritten name off the check, and all I could decipher was St____.

It’s amazing how much you can notice when you’re trying not to be noticed. S/he kept looking all around, several times staring right at me, even though I was looking elsewhere. Finally, I managed to get a glance of his/her face from a profile, and noticed thick thick peach fuzz all around the cheeks and chin. Yes, it was in a beard formation, but it had never felt a blade’s edge. Had to be a female. Although, now that I sit here typing this, the possibility of hormone treatments and transsexuality enter my thoughts.

She continued to look all around, and I wondered why she was so silent, until I saw her throwing gang signs at the bank teller. MS thirteen in suburbia. Wait, no, she’s still throwing gang signs, and he’s throwing back. Oh, she’s deaf. No wonder she hasn’t made a peep. No wonder they’re not talking to each other. Ever have one of those stupid moments where you are dumb?

At one point, she was staring away from the teller, though he was trying to wave at her to get her attention. I tried tapping her on the shoulder, even just to see if a tap could give me any hints about her sexual identity. No.

Walking away from the bank, I had to go buy some mushrooms. I pass a rotund, humpty dumpty shaped person, and she whispers, “Excuse me.” What? Were you talking to me? I take a look at the person, and again, sexual characteristics don’t show themselves. S/he’s like a giant egg, wearing a skull cap, chocolate-skinned, really round face, thick down jacket, some of the strangest white eyes I’ve ever seen. The only all white eyes I’ve ever seen. I finally figure out she’s whispering to me, “Can you show me where the exit is.”

So, she’s carrying a cane, which she taps in front of her, and she’s got all-white eyes. Boy I’m real stupid today. But wait, it gets worse.

Maybe she wasn’t entirely blind, because she did stop me as I walked past, though it might have been she heard my footsteps. At any rate, I start walking ahead of her, and she does manage to follow, swinging her cane from left to right, tapping ahead of her. I give her verbal directions, telling her where to walk, what to avoid. Why it didn’t occur to me to take her arm and physically guide her, I’ll never know. It was almost like guiding a plane in at landing. We finally manage to get her out, with little more guidance than my words.

Deaf, dumb and blind. These things come in threes.

Breakfast Vignettes

K.T.: Stop, I don’t want to hear anymore about prolapsed vaginas.

J.W.: But you should.

K.T.: Why?

J.W.: Because you’re human. You should learn everything that you can.

All too true, but I think I’d rather read about prolapsed vaginas than hear about them.

***

These were too short to make into a full post, but enough of these and its like dim sum.

***

I was deburring and polishing aluminum at work, which consists of shaving off the machined edges, then sanding down the sides to a more uniform finish. I believe the sanding helps prepare it for the eventual painting. These edges tend to be very sharp, and I now sport a myriad of superficial cuts all over my fingertips and palms. Even I didn’t know about the cuts until my hands got really dirty later, when the black filth infiltrated the gaps, revealing hands that looked as if they’d juggled razor blades.

Deburring leaves tiny metal shavings all about the shop floor, which is fine since those can be sweeped up. They also tend to embed into the fibers of my clothes, which can result in a prickly cactus-like surprise at a later date if I’m not careful. Sanding, however, creates clouds of tiny particulate aluminum. I didn’t realize for a while that this stuff was the reason that I would blow my nose and it would come out silvery. Maybe instead of striking nose gold, I hit platinum? I started wearing breathing masks, but they don’t keep all of it out. Partly this is because my nose is so small no matter how I pinch the metal nose strip, the mask refuses to close tight on my face.

Last Friday I decided to take a t-shirt as an extra precaution, and wear it about my head like some sort of mad ninja mask. Its just a normal Hanes tagless t-shirt, white, medium sized, quite nondescript. However, when I finally got there, I realized that there was something crazy about standing there sanding aluminum with what would appear to be a burka headpiece. So, I left it on the back of a chair and went to work.

Six hours later, A.G. and K.R. came to check on me. There was a big pile of sanded aluminum plates sitting next to the pile of unsanded aluminum, both sixty strong. We’d polished a lot of those bastards over the previous three days. I turn back after taking a deep breath and clearing my head, and A.G. is polishing the polished aluminum with my t-shirt.

So, naturally, since I am wont to rage and rant, I leapt over the chair and a mighty melee ensued. It took eight people to force us apart. I’ve now been suspended for three weeks without pay.

No, wait, that’s a different story. Turned out he thought it was just a shop rag since it fell off the chair, and wadded up, it really is about the same size as a shop rag. K.R. took a look at it and asked me “This fits you?”

Damn, I’m not that short man.

***

Ever since daylight savings time, the sun sets much earlier, usually nearly down by the time I come back from work if I’ve been working until five post meridian that day. However, due to my new filthy habit of running, I’ve taken to eating much more. This vicious cycle means I need to run in order to keep my weight down, which means I need to consume more so I don’t consume my own muscle tissue. Damn that cycle. Yes, I could just eat healthier and less, but that’s not fun.

I don’t know what I’d eaten when I decided to run in the dark that night, but I think the day’s menu somehow included both Chipotle tacos and pizza? There was probably a turkey sandwich in there somewhere too. A ghetto repast, fit for the palate of bums and students alike. It seemed like a good idea at the time, as all poor ideas do before they crumble like a dry cookie.

When I run, I leave my glasses behind. My constant jostling makes them bounce like a mosh pit all over my face. I am forced to slide them back up my small nose, only to have them sweat-fall off a second later. The pushing inevitably leads to my eyelid crushing against the lens, leaving a wet wink against the lens, obscuring my vision. Then I have to hold them in my loose clasped hand, which is just even worse, as then I get handprints all over them, and have to wash them anyway. No sir, just let me run unencumbered. At least on the face, I take it our society frowns upon naked running through an apartment complex, but damnit if it was good enough for the Greeks its good enough for me. Now who wants to olive oil me up?

Ahem.

Since I came back from work and sat around, the world had grown dark (the cold had already settled in from weeks previous and the tilt of our earth’s axis moving us away from our celestial mother star). When I set out on my aimless journey, our artificial bastard streetlamps had torched into a dulled yellow, shameful for the pale glow it cast in weak imitation of the sun. The streets had been abandoned, save for the leaves and me. I started running, missed the curb, and almost sprained my ankle.

Running in the dark, in addition to being the perfect metaphor for my life, poses hazards you might not readily expect. I would run on the grass strips adjoining the sidewalks, and the signposts would pop out of nowhere, threatening to slam me backwards. Little pyramids of dog feces, often in stark contrast to the lush green grasses, now blended into the darkness. Nightfall also obscured the delineation between sidewalk and street . The track I usually run around, set into a number of trees, would now be as cold and dark as a frozen black diamond.

Thankfully, I made it back after a while, but was exhausted from the cruel venture. S.P., leaving the complex, drove up and asked me if I needed a ride. I stumbled to his Civic and told him it would cost twenty dollars for the first five minutes, and ten dollars each additional five minutes. Panting so hard, it took me thirty seconds to dribble out the words, and I’m not sure if he was reaching for his wallet or his cell phone.

***

S.P., V.V. and I went to a Korean supermarket called Lotte. It was like showing a ten year old boy a naked woman. I’ve never seen them gawk and stare for so long at anything.

The great thing about the Lotte seafood section is the wide variety of fresh creatures, some of which are still alive and in the open. The blue crabs, scuttling over each other, scuttling over the tongs, drew much interest, mostly for the attempts to grab the tongs away from a disgruntled crab.

There were a series of dieter’s teas which helped you lose weight, though they also tended to make you have more frequent bowel movements. Well, doesn’t that fit hand in hand.

In the dairy section were several Hispanic food selections, such as tortillas and yogurt geared towards Hispanics. Also cans of irish coffee, and Sac Sac orange juice, a personal favorite.

The produce section produced shallots. Shallots. Where in your life have you ever seen a shallot? I’m pretty sure none of you reading this are French chefs, sous or otherwise, so none of you have ever seen shallots. Are shallots even used in French cooking? Ah Iron Chef, how I have forgotten your lessons.

Perhaps the best part was the snack food section. You can tell a lot about a culture by what they eat for snacks. In this case, we’ve discovered that Korean Pocky is highly inferior to Japanese Pocky. So, with respect to chocolate-coated snacks, the Koreans have a long ways to go to catch up with the Japanese. A shame really, it looked so promising with the chocolate all about the cracker stick, but the chocolate bore chalky whitish stains, as if a bit too aged, and brittled apart in my mouth. Bah, none but straight Pocky from now on.

***

M.C. and J.W. thought it would be funny to feel my ass up. Small victory in that they’re both female; if D.C. and A.W. thought it would be funny to feel my ass up, oh my ire would have been up, there would have been much ranting and raving, etc. etc. Still, where the hell did that come from? One minute we’re all walking along, the next thing I know I’m tearing away from them like its second grade all over again. Had I not been gimped from football, I probably would have run a lot longer than I did.

In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I had to stop. Otherwise, I’d have to watch my ass all night. Even though I do this in the mirror every chance I get, that’s a different kind of ass watching.

They didn’t latch on or anything, but it was still awkward. I’m a strong proponent of personal space. I don’t feel comfortable if I talk to someone face to face inches away from each other. And here they are, feeling me up.

I suppose what gets me the most is that I didn’t get my revenge. So many times later that night, when someone would turn around and go to the bathroom, walking up the stairs and they’re in front of me, target presented, J.W. arching upward to get out of the way so we can buckle our seat belts, so many opportunities gone and passed up. Before every revenge attempt, I’d run through in my mind how it would go, and I just couldn’t pull the trigger, feel the buttock, make an ass out of myself, and so on and such like.

I will grant it was pretty funny to me when I picked up a fork and considered jabbing them in the ass. That last five seconds, but oh, what a hilarious five seconds.

Murder Most Foul

J.F. And on the exam, when I ask if you don’t need to give an order with the motion, you say?

K.T.: Yes.

J.F.: Are you kidding me?

K.T.: Yes.

The follow up saves me. I really thought the answer was yes.

***

I had to cut up P.A. before the rotting. That smell would have been awful.

I picked up P.A. in my hands, gently so as not to slip and drop, either myself or P.A. Rough brown skin, tiny spines starting to curl up from age, old prickly hair. Lighter than I expected. Maybe a dead corpus loses weight over time. Do you believe in souls? Do you believe that the soul leaving the body makes it lighter?

I took out my Farberware cutting knife. Nice twelve-inch blade, some cheap silvery metallic construct, with rust freckles all up and down the blade. Not stainless steel. Nice wooden handle, something you might find on a pop gun rather than a carving tool. It might be usable as a tanto, but for the fact that it can’t really cut anything. I read that in feudal Japan, the swords were tested by slicing through the bodies of dead criminals and otherwise dishonored individuals. Thus, swords could be rated as to how many bodies they could slice through. Three torsos cut. Four arms sliced. This Farberware gets a one paper cup. Not even plastic. Damn.

I laid P.A. out on the counter, after clearing off some space. Amazing how still P.A. could be. I grabbed P.A. with my left hand to steady, and with my right hand holding the Farberware, I cut P.A.’s head off. No, that’s not accurate. I sawed P.A.’s head off. The brown skin, demonstrating green flecks, resisted my cutting motion, toughened over time, like a hard rind. When I finally teased the blade through, it slapped onto the cutting surface with a thunk and a slight indentation left behind. Juice trickled out. Surprised me how clear it was, how little puddled beneath P.A. I touched it before it congealed and grew tacky. Put it to my lips. So sweet. So very sweet.

I put the head to the side after licking the exposed flesh. So very sweet, like an angel’s cheek, and just as soft and forgiving. I could have licked it all day, but there was a job to be done. Nobody else was going to do it, and if I just left the body there, the flies would have come within days. Feast upon my feast, steal my wealth.

Yes, that’s right, I planned on eating P.A. I still plan on eating P.A.

I picked up the body, sniffed the wound. Around this point, I noticed sweat beading on my upper lip, my eyes crinkled, focused on the body, glasses left somewhere by accident, last thing on my mind. Even though everything around me fell by the wayside into blurry pale whites, P.A. stood out like the foreign exchange student in prison.

I put P.A. back down, placed the blade edge to the neck wound, and started sawing again into P.A. Beneath the tough skin, the tender flesh beneath parted as easily as a whore’s legs. It was a test of my patience, that damn skin like jerky resisting me, keeping me from the precious gap inside. When I finally slammed through to the other side, the momentary joy had to be pressed to the side of my mind, and I had to keep sawing downward, through and through, rough and ready. P.A. finally fell apart, each half tumbling to the side, exposing the spectacular innards. I pressed lightly with my fingers, the flesh barely depressing, then springing back into place. P.A.’s juice covered my fingers, and I licked it off. Oh, oh.

P.A. was still unmanageable. I had to carve each half into halves, piercing and pushing on through. Then, the rind was too salty. That had to go, carefully ripping down the flesh, peeling off the dripping brown outer layers, disposing of them in the trash, planning how to dump the bag into the dumpster later. Then, starting from the bottom up, cutting slices off of what remained, what little remained, washing them to get rid of the salty brown skin, dumping them into my Tupperware. Once all the parts lay disassembled in the bucket, I picked up a slice, popped it into my mouth. Like carving an angel’s cheek off and popping it into my mouth.

I’ve since stashed the remains into the refrigerator, to let them cool, let them chill, enjoy them after dinner.

Keep in mind P.A. was a pineapple, and you start to understand how disturbed I am.