The RobBlog

Blog Warning

2011-11-29T17:56:00.001-08:00

See those glyphs over the blog title? They're a representation for when the blog was written. Collectively we call them "the date." We all find dates important. Not only do we spend our teens searching for them, we also spend our adult lives watching them pass. We use dates to catalogue all that has gone before. Well, in the pages to come, don't count the days between blogs and don't count the dates on the blogs; they mean nothing. There is no chronology. I have several blogs in several stages of completion. I'll complete them as I have time, but time has no meaning to them. Thank you and read on. There will be more to read in no time.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-28T09:43:00.001-08:00

“Are you going home for Thanksgiving?” That’s what themanager asked me. She wasconcerned. The night before Thanksgivingis a time for giving, a time for caring.

She cared.

So I gave, “I’m good. My fiancé and I are watching the Lions. Thanks for asking. What are youdoing?”

“Watching, the game. Go Lions!”

Everybody here watches the game. The police do random housesearches.

“Who’s in Whoville? This will not do! Turn on the game. Turn it on quick! I know you’re kindand your kind makes me quite sick!”

See? A heapingplate of local support.

We also offer a steaming spoonful of detail deflection. It’swhy I didn’t answer the manager’s home question directly. I wasn’t goinganywhere. I was staying here. I deflected her question with a “go Lions!” That’swhat we nouveau Americans do well. Thank God the Native Americans were perceptive.

“Would you like some turkey?”

“No, really we’re doing quite good, thanks.”

“I can see your ribs--.”

“We pilgrims are a lean lot.”

“—Through your heavy pilgrim garb.”

“It’s the latest style. And when did you natives learn theword garb?”

“Since our words were written by a twenty-first centuryblogger-dude. We’re not reallycomfortable with it either. I’ll get the turkey.”

“If you must.”

Americans deflect our problems. It’s who we are. It’s American pride. We’re thankful forit. It’s why we “occupy” cities instead of living with purpose. I had pride thenI moved to Detroit. My dream-queennow works her dream job while I dream about mine.

“Would you like a job in retail? We have some.”

“No, really I’m quite good, thanks…”

So I’m working in a job I swore I’d never do again. Thanks,God. Working on pride again? Ok, if you can find it, it’s yours…

The one thing retail has accomplished is it’s gotten me backout in public. I talk with everyday people every day. Did you know that we’re undergoing aneconomic crisis? That’s what everyday people have taught me.

“We’re undergoing economic crisis.”

“Huh, you learn something everyday.”

They’ve taught me other things as well. They’ve taught meabout Detroit, the city. Ifthere’s a symbol of American pride, I think Michigan’s thumb-based city is thethumb to the American nose wiggling an assortment of pride fingers at theworld.

Detroit’s pride took a serious hit during the 80s when thebig three motor companies shut down the bulk of their manufacturing plants,killing employment across the state of Michigan. The only one to walk away richfrom that deal was Michael Moore.

Since then, Moore’s images of poverty gutted Flint haveblended into news footage of Detroit’s Devil’s Night burnings and angrydenizens who’d sooner shoot you than look at you.

“We Detroitians are a lean lot.”

“—through your heavy winter garb.”

Bang!

“Now we’re a little leaner.”

It’s the outsider view of Detroit. Since I’ve been here,I’ve seen that this Detroit is not the real Detroit. It’s a snow globe stilllife. Shake it. Faux snow and ash swirls over the dirty landscape, changingnothing. Look from the top, thesides, California, It’s all the same. You have to step into Detroit to know thereal Detroit.

Why? It’s Detroit pride. It’s a people who say, “I don’tcare what you think. You’re not me. You don’t know me.” Detroit pride. It’s anamazing thing. The people of the region have suffered for so long and havefound a way to move forward.

One way they move forward is their local sports.

Go Lions!

These people love their Pistons, Wings, Tigers, and Lions.Yet the Lions were saddest metaphor for a city filled with pride. The Lions 19 game losing-streak, endingin 2009, exemplified the image we all knew: An ashy decaying city, one shakeaway from collapse.

This year that’s changed. This year, the Lions stand at the precipice. They’re playinga game on Thanksgiving against the toughest opponents in the NFL, the Green BayPackers. Green Bay is the dread Pirate Roberts ready to crush the hearts anddevoir the souls of Detroit’s mighty Lions.

It’s retail, ready to crush Blogging Rob’s writing dreams.

It’s a bad economy crushing Detroit city’s pride, hope anddreams.

See, when I moved here I stepped into the globe. I sawsomething I hadn’t seen before. Detroit is a city on the rebound. The people ofDetroit have pride, and they have heart. They’ve been the butt of so many jokesfor over 30 years, but they don’t concentrate life’s prat-falls. They concentrate on the steps they takemoving forward.

Where forward is taking them includes this: The big 3 automakersare bouncing back better than Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. They’re evenhiring. Downtown Detroit looksdifferent from the one in your snow globe. It’s changing unused factories andwarehouses into a glittery waterfront district.

Nothing’s perfect. There are still homeless, houseless, andjobless, and parts of town not for the weak or unarmed, but the local populace workstoward accomplishment, and notstalling on what’s holding them back. Just like the Detroit Lions.

The Lions aren’t perfect either. Their pre-Thanksgivingrecord was 7-3. They don’t play pretty. Their star defenseman, Ndamukong Suh, is accused of playing like a thug.The Lions are struggling scrappers trying to survive.

And that’s why I find myself rooting for the Lions--androoting for Detroit.

Both city and team still have a stigma, but they keeptrying.

And they keep getting beat. Thanksgiving Day the Green BayPackers did what everybody knew they would: They won—because that’s who theyare.

But come Black Friday it wasn’t the silent ash of defeatsticking to everybody’s tongue. Itwas the Detroit Whoville song of happy shoppers praising a tomorrow that wouldbring a new game and another chance.

It’s part of our pride. Because if Detroit can turn theirrecord around, then the City can overcome their recession, America can recovertheir economy, and I can get the hell out of retail.

“I’ll get the turkey.”

We have a lot to be thankful for, and Faith and action willheap more blessings on our plate in the years to comea. Detroit seems tounderstand that.

“Are you going home?”

Of course I’m going home.

I am home.

Training

2011-10-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

Every day has a beginning. Every car has an unread manual,and every job has a training. Yesterday I had mine.

Training. It’s all about learning to do things right. There are right ways and wrong ways ofhandling things. Right ways to start the day, start your car, and start yourjob.

I've attended training several times on several subjects. Old dog, new tricks?Not a problem here. Give me paper; I will pee. See? I even attended college for four years oftraining. When I graduated, they gave me a ceremony and a sheet of paper.

“Bad Rob! Bad Rob! Not on the dean’s leg!”

Training. Every training I've attended has had one thing incommon: other trainees.

Until now.

That's right. Yesterday's retail training was created for a pee army of one:me. I show up; human resources shows me a room, a computer, and a set ofheadphones. This is how I trained to serve customers.

"To serve customers! It's a cookbook!"

Ok, not really, but at least that makes sense. Ask any farm-raised kid, youdon't want to get too familiar with your meal. You get friendly, and they getharder to kill. That’s what one on one computer training is good for.

But when it comes to people training to work with people, Idon’t get it. A computer can create a composite situation. It can show you howto address computers. It can’t create ahuman experience. Dealing with people is tricky, and every situation isdifferent. Using a computer alone? No papers, no people, kind of a piss pooridea if you ask me.

They didn’t. They set me in a room and told me, “Follow thescreen instructions.”

Now I'm not disparaging my new employer or even suggesting they create acannibal line of human byproducts. As far as retail folk go, I like myemployer. I shopped with them before I worked for them. There's just somethingweird about learning customer service alone.

"Please press 1 for 'hello,' 2 for 'may I help you,' and 3 for sleepbehind the fixtures."

Half way through the training, my head started nodding and myeyes spun. Maybe this was a trap. Theydon’t want to train me as much as they want to brainwash me. That concerned me; I like my dirty mind. I needed a break. I needed to pee.

Luckily there was a paper in the corner. After watering downthe news, I recognized something I hadn’t seen before.

Did you know that people are marching in our streets?

I had no idea until I stopped to wet the roses. I’d been too wrapped in my own unemploymentand foreclosure to notice the world around me was falling apart. According tothe trickling pages between my moist fingers, that is exactly what the peoplewere marching about. Well, unemployment,foreclosure, world falling apart, and several other Armageddon issues. Environment, global warming, scratchy toilet tissue;if it dissatisfied, people marched.

Now I don’t want to sound bitchy, but I’m a registeredgrumpy old man. I’ve got a lot to bitch about. Why didn’t I get a personal invite to this pity party? I mean I livedalmost twenty years in Los Angeles. I know a thing or two aboutentitlement. Now I’m being shunned bythe disenfranchised? Whassup with that?

“Sorry Rob. You’renot pretty enough for our revolution. And did I mention that you’re in retail?”

The ink dripping in my hand said this was the future ofsocial upheaval. I have to admit, I threw up a little in the back of my mouthand took a computer break to weep for my generation.

See, we’re screwed and we don’t even know it. It’s not our fault;we haven’t had any social injustice response training. We were too young whenour parents took it to the streets. We’ve gone almost forty years growing fatat the man’s table. Now our revolution muscles are atrophied and we’re expectedto march.

Some of us want to do it cuz it’s cool. I mean, we’re the blank generation. We gotskipped. This is our chance.

Others want to do it because of parental pressure. We’ve gotour mom and dad telling us that we need social drama to live. A legacy. A causeto rally behind, otherwise Gen X will mark the spot of what could have been.We’ll be the generation of coulda-shoulda-woulda. And what’s scarier than a hoard overbearingbaby boomer mom-and-pops bearing down on us like a toxic guilt cloud?

“My son could have been a dissident but instead he chose tobe an architect. We’re so ashamed.”

On the other front we’ve got the backup generation behind uspee-pee-shuffling for their chance at the bowl. They’re unsatisfied with the litter we’ve left in their way and they’renot afraid to pee on a few legs to make their point. They’ve listened to GrandmaGrandpa and Rockstar Video Games. Boomers say, you need some civildisobedience, and according to Grand Theft Auto, that begins by driving over afew hookers. Next Geners would march, but their Bluetooth controllers only senda signal so far. And they’re pissed at Gen X for that limited power.

If only there was some precedent for the struggle of today’ssocietal woes.

“There’s no wi-fi. Let them use dial-up!”

Look at us! We’re Gen X. We’re the confused generation inthe middle. We’ve made the best of whatwe can of the world that was given to us. The generation before didn’t teach usto share; now the generation behind us wants to bite us in the ass. We want todo right, but we don’t know how. Our movies tell us that “Greed is good.” Wewant to please everybody. We’ll march. Please just stop calling us slackers.

So here we are, expected to lead a social revolution, and wecan’t pick a cause. We’re spoiledchildren and we want it all, but we can’t agree on what “all” is.

The closest we’ve come to a focal point is money. Is thatreally what we want? Are we so lost that we think money will cure it all. Cyndi Lauper said that money changedeverything. She also liked to bop. I don’t think her version of bopping isappropriate for a social demonstration message. Although our parent’s generation did chant, “make love not war.” In ouralone with a computer generation, maybe bopping is the answer.

But we’re doing this on Wall Street. So is our statementthat we want their money? Do we really want to trade places with the bankers? Did my generation forget to read Animal Farm?

I don’t even think we watched the cartoon. Maybe if it was anAnime we’d have seen it. We love everything that comes from Japan; they work sohard.

We also love commercials. They’re the anthems slogans and marches of our generation. Whileprevious generations had to rely on pamphleteers to give them liberty or givethem death, my generation finds their voice in a J. G. Wentworth commercial,“It’s my money, and I need it now!”

Look up irony in the dictionary. You’ll see these marcherpictured there. Marchers are using money-men slogans to show their disapprovalof the money-men. What’s next, picketing Wendy’s yelling, “Where’s the beef?”

We all have a beef. We just can’t agree on what it is or whoto blame for it. We just know that it’s not us, so it has to be somebody weperceive as having what we want.

Without focus, this revolution won’t go anywhere. Nobodywith power will take us seriously. When was the last time you marched into yourboss’s office with that kind of game plan?

“What do you want?”

“Stuff.”

“Uhm, OK…”

And what if we do get enough propulsion behind ourrevolutionary jets? What if we do overthrow the system? What next? We’ve thengot a disorganized crowd getting nothing done and helping nobody. We’ll wallow in red tape of such proportionsthat a month’s supply of Cialis couldn’t help our performance. Is this what wewant for our Gen X legacy?

If it ain’t fixed, we’ll break it further.

Now don’t get me wrong. I know I won’t see Social Security.I know I’ve been released by an employer for repurposing by a society that can’tfigure out what to do with my talents. I’ve lost a home to a bank that wouldn’twork out a payment plan, because it made better sense to them that Freddie Macwould buy back the property at full price (so that Freddie Mac could turnaround and sell it for half the value they paid), leaving me alone with in apit with my second mortgage lions hungry for monetary morsels.

I believe that we’re gambling on a system rigged against thecommon man, but if we’re going to stand up and make it right, we need to pickour battles, and strike with focus and make demands that the system canunderstand.

Think about the battle of---Sorry, I forgot my demographic.Remember that scene in Serenity, where Malcolm pisses off the Reavers to dragthem into the battle against the alliance? Well Serenity is the focal point. It’s the object, dragging the force of everything else behind it.Without the Serenity catalyst, nothing happens, and without focus, a gen-xrevolution is nothing but a bunch of headless chickens wandering about.

“I won't get et! You shoot me if they take me…Well, don'tshoot me first!”

There’s something else that our revolution forgets.Revolution takes time. Most everybody standing up for our “benefit” is sittingdown in the job line. People aren’t taking vacations time to do this. They’retaking unemployment. Or, unfortunately, for those 99ers, they’re taking nothingbut Baby Boomer contributions, stoking the fire.

I’m a little grumpy about this. I’ve been forced back into a life of retail,because I can’t live out my dream. I’msitting in a room alone with a computer, because I need money. There are people out there marching whorefuse to stoop to the levels I’ve had to stoop. What makes them better thanme? There are jobs. Trust me when Isay that they suck, but they do keep us alive. So while I’m practicing to ringup a person with money for a paycheck of little money, some dissatisfied x-eris taking money from another person to sit on the steps of Wall Street. You know what’s even worse? Both of us areprobably getting paid by the same source:the same people making money on WallStreet. See, they don’t really care about the people on the street. If they did, they’d have done something aboutit long ago. We’re not hurtingthem. Without a focus we’re gnats ofnuisance. It’s not until you touch theirmoney that you’ll have their attention. Right now you’re serving their purpose by stealing the focus from what’sreally important.

Take a tip from me my riotous friends. Training isimportant, so is appropriate training: learn what’s important and focus onthat. Without that, you haven’t got a paper to piss on.

Now where was I?

The computer says, repeat after me, “Would you like to putthat on your in-house credit account?”

The Interview

2011-10-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Today I interviewed for myseasonal retail job.

I attended my big retail reunion. Everybody was there. Scampering manager,paper shuffling human resources lady and computer savvy assistant.

“…but it wasn't a dream! It was a place! And you - and you - and you -and you were there.”

"Are you nervous?" asked my queen, before I left, as I stared intothe mirror.

"No," I assured her, cinching my tie with a really cool dimple just underthe Windsor knot. My hands were steady, my mind was sure. Sure that I didn’t needto worry about a retail interview. I could show up dead and know equalexcitement.

“More brains…”

Still, once I’m in the car and down the road, the coffee in my veins offeredmore concerns than mindless zombism. I jittered with antici…………pation . It wasn’tan “I won’t get the job” jitter--okay, it was exactly that, but for differentreasons than you might think. The coffee tapped Morse code reasonable factoids ona left brain node, reminding me that interviewers are anything but constants. Thissent my right brain into a scenario free-fall. What if I interviewed with sometwenty-something lackey, as familiar with the interview process as Zsa ZsaGabor was familiar with Motel 6?

Left brain analysis followed:

Q: What's worse than landing a retail job?

A: Beingrejected by a retail job.

Now both brain sides are spiraling into chaos. I speed past my turn-off. Great,now I might be late. Nothing makes a better interview first opinion.

Shut up, coffee.

I rein my brain back in, turningall control over to my ego.

“Bout time,” he says, slappingboth lobes into submission as I park the car.

It’s funny. Once I walk in the door, it's like I never left: cosmetics on thebottom floor, home store on the top.

"Where are the elevators?"

That’s not me. That's a customer asking me. Yeah, apparently I look like Ibelong here. My ego raises my right arm, pointing to the elevator alcove to theback of the building. “It’s over there ma’am.”

It’s time to disengage the ego.

He did his job though. Its 11,I'm on time for my interview.

"They're running late, someone will be with you shortly. Have aseat."

"Thanks." I take one.

So does Lidia, the 11:30 and Bonnie, the 12:00. The good news is thatthere are two more seats, should the interviewers current activities run laterthan 1:00. The HR woman mentions that department managers are conducting theinterviews.

Great, that’s just what I wasworried about. The coffee in my veins starts brain tapping again. I try to ignore it. Caffeine is my leftshouldered devil whispering failure. I concentrateon the world around me instead. Somebody’s no longer working in onedepartment. A manager comes up to get thehours released so that anybody else can work them.

Shortly after 12:00, a side dooropens beside the HR counter and a small blonde woman steps out, “Robert?”

I stand, and smile. I’d like not to, but it’s like the smile isingrained. What kind of weird watertorture did they do to me the last time I worked retail that I can’t standwithout smiling? What other weird idiosyncrasies are programmed in my brain?

” I think I’m getting this rash.Oh! I forgot my nametag!”

Greeter woman’s nametag says “Nancy.”Nancy leads me down a long corridor. We pass several rooms with people sittingbehind desks. I don’t know these people,but I know who they are. These people are the “executives.” The dukes andduchesses of the retail world.

Almost at the end of the corridoris a small room. Nancy peeps her head inthe door and says,

“This’ll work. Come on in Robert.”

I won’t bore you with theinterview details. Only one of us should be bored through that. Nancy asked mehypotheticals like, “Tell me about a time when you saw somebody, a friend or afellow employee, do something dishonest. How did you handle it?”

I didn’t even think about myresponse. The words flew out my mouthlike a flock of truisms (yes, truisms travel in flocks and yes, these flockswere spewing from my mouth). She noddedand moved to the next easy question which was answered by another flock. I wasastonished. This was the first time in a long time that anything other than amurder of crows came near my lips.

Fifteen minutes in the interview,Nancy leaves the room. “I need to checksomething. Don’t worry, I’m hiring you!”

Trust me that was the least of my worries.

I know? I sound like such a pompous jerk! If you were them would you hire me? Meneither! They’ll let anybody run interviews in retail! Still, Nancy loves me, and I don’t know why.

Nancy returns with another womanwho introduces herself as Betsy. Betsy is the manager I saw at the HR counterasking to get hours opened. She has a position in suits she needs filled. It’s a commission department and she wants toknow if I want it?

After what Nancy’s told me aboutthe non-commissioned hourly wage, commission doesn’t sound too bad. Still,commission is the reason I left retail. I don’t want more sales pressure. I just want to make a little spare money.

Betsy and I discuss her opening.Betsy’s a great manager. I’d love to work for her. She’s honest. She knows herpeoples strengths and their weaknesses. We both agree that when it comes to heropening, I might be the weakest link. See, although Betsy’s great, her department is what I’ve known in mypast retail life as a shark tank. They smell blood, and leave no trace of theirprey.

I’ve worked the tank. I’ve beenthe shark. No more. As I explain toBetsy, my strengths are building relationships with the customers and thefellow employees—and this part I don’t tell her—even if I’m not planning onbeing here forever.

So Betsy and I shake hands andagree to stay in touch.

After Betsy leaves, another womancomes in to talk with Nancy. There’ssome confusion over Lidia and Bonnie, the other two girls interviewing. Nancywants to interview the one who’s applying for a cosmetics job, and wants theother woman to interview the other. Unfortunately, there is some confusion asto which interviewee is which.

“Bonnie’s the cosmetics girl.Lidia is the other interview.” That’s me. I know the answer. I was sitting inthe HR office with both these girls. My ego’s burst his bonds with the “I toldyou so” tone.

Nancy and the other woman look atme then at each other, and then the problem is solved. The other woman leaves.Yup that’s me. Retail Rob: problem solver. Sigh, I feel myself slipping backinto a skin I shed so long ago.

I try to shake it. Looking at Nancy,I ask, “so when does this seasonal position end?”

Nancy stands and offers a handand her big retail smile, “This isn’t a seasonal position. We’re hiring you asa regular employee. Welcome aboard.”

I feel an itch in my chest. I thinkI’m getting a rash. My left brain reminds me that it’s not a rash. It’s onlythat I’m missing my nametag.

The Job of Humility

2011-10-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

"You act like you already have it," my queen says.

"That's because I do," I reply.

That's right, after two-and-a-half years of "freelance work" (pronounced "unemployment") I've got a job interview I know I'll nail. How do I know the job is mine? Because I don't want it.

In all my blog-long days, I've aimed my little pointer at a wall-poster portraying a writer as seen page 1543 of Webster’s New World Dictionary and said, “That’s me.”

“Rob I thought I asked you to keep your pointer private in public.”

In public or private, I’m a writer. I’ve soul searched, career searched and word searched. Paid or unpaid, a writer, that’s who I am.

That's why tomorrow's seasonal retail sales associate interview transfuses my vein’s blood to bile. Trust me. There’ll be no writing there. It’s all smiles and serving the whims of a less than adoring public.

“Do you have this same muffler in a microfiber teal?”

“Well, it’s called ‘the great grey wooly.’ I’m gonna say no.”

“Why don’t you check anyway?”

Ready to serve…

"I hate retail!” so went my post-collegiate cry, followed by the words, “I will never return!” Notice the audacious pride in my voice. That's how you know I really said it. The mark of a true writer is his proclamations of pure melodrama.

“I’m wounded to the soul!”

“uhm, suck it up honey, it’s called a hangnail.”

“My lifeblood…spills…out…”

“Yeah, I’ll catch that in this great grey wooly thing you brought home.”

So if we move the self-pity train back down the tracks to six months ago, we’ll see my queen and I talking about work: why she does it, and why I don’t. Words are tossed in the air, “writer,” “underappreciated,” “freeloader,” and the like. This is where I walk off in a huff. Right after she suggests I take a “nametag” gig.

"Retail is like saying, 'I failed.'" I say. Unemployed or not, I am not a failure. Once again I proclaim to never see my name punch-stamped and glued to a plastic logo-broach again—ever—never-ever.

“…and I’m here to tell you, that’s a mighty long time.”

So here I am, at the end of a mighty long time feeling mighty disgruntled.

I mean, what the heck? I spent twelve years of my life in retail. I did everything from sales, to stock, to manager. It's why I went to college. Then there's the four years to earn a bachelor's degree, the ten years in another career, and all the lines in-between scrawling out my after school special story. Why the hell would I return to retail?

Because apparently God wants me to.

Yes. For anyone who's read my life, there shouldn't be any confusion: Where God leads, I follow. Usually I follow feet first while my hands claw for finger-holds in the where-I-wanted-to-go tundra.

In the past two years I've clutched for regular work. I'm a writer. Employers need writers, why don't they need me? Their lacking has been my disheartening. In the time I've known the Pirate Queen, she's landed two jobs while I can’t stick one.

That hasn’t stopped me from trying. I've applied for jobs as copywriter, web writer, and even Hallmark writer and still have only gotten one callback.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

You need a job

But we don’t want you.

Happy Unemployment!

Hallmark

And yet (and this is an even more important and yet) writing may be who I am, it may even be who I'm called to be, but it's not feeding my family. My queen makes good money, and it's enough to survive, but it's not enough to pay for one wedding, four tires and uncounted emergencies. We need Rob to get paid.

I've been doing some reading to counter my writing. I read a book on facing giants, like David faced Goliath. At this moment, a job is a big giant staring me down, daring me to work.

One of the chapters in the David book dealt with humility. It talked about looking down on others in lesser standing. Sort of a reverse giant deal. You know, suddenly I’m the giant, and some lesser retail idiot is the—yeah, anyway I don't do that, but I do look at some work being more worthy my time than others. I am, after all, a writer, and writers don't do retail.

But out of work writers do what they have to. I thought of what I could do. I can't get a job, so now what? I remembered the book I was reading. I remembered retail. I remembered humility.

So I said a prayer. I reminded God how much I hated retail, how much I hated working weekends and holidays, and I reminded him how little I could actually make and that I'd need suits. I told him that I would give him my cry, and let him decide.

I applied for Christmas seasonal work, and spent the rest of the day in mourning. By Wednesday God gave me my answer. I'd been invited for an interview.

Now it's my turn to keep up my end. Tomorrow I swallow my pride, and I give the interview that gives me the job. Right now, this is about humility.

Hog Wash

2011-09-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

The blog you have reached has been changed. Please check the ISP and dial again.

I've moved.

Hey! Remember back, in the old days, when you'd move and have to change everything from your cable service provider to your butt hair braider to match your new address? Remember how it seemed like that was just yesterday?

For me it was yesterday.

And today.

And tomorrow.

And on into next week; that’s when I call the braider. The list of changes due to moving is never ending. So is the list of surprises.

"Honey, have you seen the checkbook?"
"Wasn't that in the grey file-box?"
"The one we threw away?"

Surprise!

Many people think the move is the hard part. The move is wonderland cake piece.

Eat Me!

Unless you handle your personal life like FEMA in Katrina-wake, the move is simple. You load boxes; boxes go on truck; wave good-bye to truck; now move! Blow out your cake candles cuz that’s all there is to it.

Oh, you can stress about breaking stuff, but let's face it. We break stuff everyday. What’s more, if you're the Pirate Queen, it's not called "breaking" it's called "spring cleaning."

"But that was my Fra-gee-lay lamp!"
"And it's now lighting a landfill somewhere in East Ontario."

The point is, things break. Things change. There's nothing you can do to stop it; so why stress about a move that will only further the inevitable? Move or no move your list of unbroken stuff inevitably shortens.

If you've invited family for a slice of move cake, disregard all that "don't stress" crap. Put on diapers. Family will make you wet your pants as they wedge grandma’s 200-year-old curio cabinet between the broken glass relief of Abraham Lincoln and the Canadian bear trap collection. A diaper will give you something to toss at uncle Teddy as he proclaims, "It fits!"

No, family and moving was actually on a college entry exam I took once. "Family is to move as bull is to

a) Pamplonian toe goo.
b) American Politician.
c) China shop.
d) Wisconsin Cheerleading."

I know. I got that one right.

And I got this move right. No family was used in the dissemination of Rob-goods. No family except the Pirate Queen, and she had a vested interest.

"Uhm, what happened to my boxes of comic books?"
"I packed them in the shredder."
"oh..."

Our move was exhausting, but simple. So was the drive across country. That's not to say that two cats in the backseat of a Hyundai Sonata didn't create challenges, but really it's not any different than traveling with kids, except the smell of cat urine is a little more ammonia-like and takes longer to get out of leather.

Yeah. I know that too.

But still, it's all just a great big adventure, until the truck is emptied and the box pile blocks everything from bedroom to bathroom. In that instant, that very moment, a line of demarcation is crossed. The side of fun adventure bleeds into the seventh ring of hell. Yes, That's the Devil dancing on the box of Ho-Hos. He didn't think they were packed tight enough.

Remember being a kid? The pile of toys you'd create in the middle of the floor to hold the burning Barbie sacrifice? Remember when you're parents would say, "You aren't going anywhere until you clean your room and that smell of burnt plastic is gone?" Well imagine the Barbie sacrifice actually called the Kraken from your closet and every item in the house, from Mom's authentic faux Elvis figurine collection to Dad's nose-hair of the presidents presentation, was pushed atop the altered-Barbie altar for you to clean. That's a post move.

That's our post move. Right down to the presidential nose-hairs. Now it’s time to figure out where it all goes. Post move is all about gathering the pieces of your old life and finding an equivalent fit in your new life.

It’s boxes. It’s notifications. It’s madness. It’s finding cat puke in a bowl and knowing that you moved that plop of joy across country.

At the same time it’s like Christmas. It’s finding things that you didn’t remember owning, and then losing them again amidst all the packing.

I think this is the time that speaks most to your faith. This is the time where you trust that God will show you the location of the TV remote. It should have gone in the TV box, but that’s life, right? Nothing is ever as it should be. Life is making the best of what you have and hope the neighbors don’t get too mad while the volume of Alex Trebek’s voice rattles the walls.

That doesn’t make it easier though. Life, like moving, is change. Change is hard because even when we know what’s going on, we don’t know what to expect. We just open the next box, leading to the next day of surprises.

I guess moving is like reading my blog, only with direction. So here’s your box to open today. Go ahead.

Don’t worry. I’ve already found the nose hair collection.

Ducks in a Row

2011-08-16T12:04:00.001-07:00

This week I’m getting all my ducks in a row. Every ducks is a moving duck, so better duck: duck-stuff’s a’ flying. Well in our case Rob-duck-stuff is moving in a big duck truck, not really flying per se, but don’t let that stop you; you should still duck.

Our stuff is flying and we don’t know where.

That makes duck lining a tough thing to get down. How do you make a line to nowhere? Right now I guess it’s more of a circle-line than line-line. Our stuff is a ring of dropping ducks around your coffee cups.

Remember those shooting gallery tin-ducks, ducking off the edge of a conveyer only to reappear on the other side? Well, while those vision tins of painted-ducks dance through your head, picture each duck with a box on its back. You’d think the box would slide off tin-duck like water off a ducks back, but it doesn’t. It just come back up the other side. Same ducks. More boxes. Never ending.

Endless ducks in endless row carrying endless boxes. Our boxes. Our stuff. Our Ducks.

Leading those ducks over the edge are our duck scouts. Our ducks scouts are portrayed by Ma and Pa Pirate Queen. Think of the pirate parents as the Lewis and Clarke ducks exploring the Michigan wilderness for the new Rob and PQ homestead.

The pirate parent duck scouts are the old wise ducks, pa duck the old duck, ma duck the wise duck. Picture Gandalf the grey duck and Elmer the Fudd duck waddling from open house to open house like traveling pilgrim evangelist ducks.

“Have you heard the good news? RobBlogger may be moving here!”

This line of duck talk will probably get me Dick Cheney buck shot.

“Wobby season!”

So I’ll continue.

The Queen and I wanted to be house ducks. We’ve acquired whole lots of duck stuff and we need a duck nest to house it. A house nest holds more duck stuff than an apartment nest does.

QED.

Storing boxes means moving boxes and all our storage needs require a flock of moving packages. Some find the duck boxing daunting. I don’t.

Aim for the bill. I don’t know what that means. Go ahead and reread it. You’ll figure something out. I’m sure it refers to the expense moving. Moving isn’t about the moving price though. Moving is about the moving experience.

You know what? For all the times that I’ve moved, I don’t mind being moving ducks. It’s better than being sitting ducks, and like many other life events, moving a thoughtless moving task. If someone shoots the box out of my hand, it’s done. There’ll always be another box to replace it in the next circular revolution.

In our revolution, Lewis and Clarke ducks scouted prime landing sites. Unfortunately Michigan homes are swooped up by other migrant ducks undergoing America’s economic resettlement before we can quack an offer. Squatters thwarting our manifest destiny. I offered a solution:

“We’ve bring you blankets.”

The Pirate Queen said no.

This moves us across the line to apartment ducks. That means more of our duck stuff is duck dropping and not duck coming. Can we survive that?

I dunno. I line a deep nest, but I’ve been lining my nest with Thoreau lately. All that box duck stuff just weighs us down. If we didn’t have stuff, we wouldn’t have to move stuff. I’m burdened by a duck conveyer of my own making.

Time to cut ducks and trim fat. I’m the judge jury and executioner of all things Rob-ducky and I’m knee deep in duck stuff. I have to evaluate if every duck should stay or go. I’ve kept and coddled these ducklings for 15 years. Is it time to let them fly--if for no other reason than that there’s one less duck in the row?

And the ducks I reject may haunt me forever.

“Out! Out! Damn spotty Daffy rug!”

My feathers are more than a little ruffled and there are other ducks besides stuff ducks to line against the wall. This is my quacking orchestration. Power ducks, gas ducks, phone ducks, travel logistic ducks all need to be set into motion. If the right ducks don’t tow the duck line, my duck row could look like British teeth. Or even worse, I may lose all ducks altogether.

Duck season. Heh, heh, heh, heh…

Sigh...

I’ve spent 43 years accumulating and moving my ducks. I’ve done it longer than any career I’ve held. I take my ducks personally.

I’m a ducking professional.

The first time I moved, it was a great adventure; stepping out into the world, becoming my own drake. I didn’t have much more than a room to move so it was pretty easy.

The next time I moved I wasn’t as eager but it was still fun. I had friends, beer and pizza to keep the duck-walk moving.

Then next move I grew a new appreciation for Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Oh, I still don’t enjoy the story, but burning a pile of books before a move now seems benevolent.

Today, moving is no longer about the adventure, it’s about the drudgery.

As a kid, the first time I saw a duck it was a ducking new experience. The duck might as well be a unicorn, cuz that duck was a first duck. As I got older, each new duck becomes just another duck packed together in a flock of ducks.

This time my duck walk leads to a duck apartment. The Queen has landed with a lease in bill and we’re moving on. Now my ducks are all moving ducks. I’m done. I’m tired. It’s no longer about the great adventure on the other side ( and I assure you, for a SoCal boy moving to Michigan, it is a great adventure), it’s about the same-ol’ same-ol’ process that gets me there.

Oh, I’ll snap out of my repetition, just as soon as the Rob ducks get on the road. Until then, well…everything is just ducky.

Detroit or bust.

Location.

2011-08-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

Location, location, location.

Ask any Realtor and they’ll tell you it’s all about location. Bull riders agree; the location on the bulls back is far more agreeable than the location on the bull’s horns.

Earthquakes are about location. You don’t have them everywhere. We have them here. That’s our location. Location, location, location. We say it three times because we’re trying to point out a location while the earth is shaking.

Earthquakes teach you three things about location. One: any structure built on any location will come down after enough shaking. Two: a location’s value isn’t permanent. Three: location is more than location. Location is people, place, and atmosphere. They’re everything that makes a location a Location. After the Northridge earthquake, I lived in a Location built on rebuilding. People grouped together, standing on the shoulders of what had collapsed, and reached upward. The night the earthquake fell was pitch and flat, but the day after, a Location rose from its knees, determined.

The next week we forgot the whole thing, and started hating each other again, but that’s LA. It’s all about location, and earthquakes.

Tornados don’t care about location. In fact, they’re all about location redistribution.

“My house was in this location, now it’s in that location…”

Tornados are more about timeliness.

So am I.

What good is a good location if your timeliness is bad? Any swimming pool is a great summer location, until Mrs. McGitche’s third grade class shows up to pee in it. That’s just bad timing--and too much lemonade.

“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee...."

I’ve spent almost twenty years in this SoCal location. Sometimes my timeliness has been great, other times my timeliness has been pee pool poor. Ask MyEx. She’ll tell you.

Talk to my queen, she’ll say she loves my timing. She’s not wild about my location. My queen hales from the land where the timing-tornados are great and the location-lakes are greater.

"’Superior,’ they said, ‘never gives up her dead when the gales of November come early…’"

Timing, timing, timing.

Timing is not a SoCal concept. For me, timing and finding employment in this location is like locating a snowball’s timing in Hell. I’ve knocked on every door at every location not selling french fries. My timing syncopates with opportunity’s knocking rhythm. Call me the little match girl.

No, really. I’m trying to start a trend. Trends are all about timing, and LA needs a new one.

My queen started a trend; she got a new job. Yeah, I can’t find a job needle in a unemployment stack, and she can’t shake her peg leg without stepping in one. This time she stepped in something big and squishy and it stuck.

It’s all about timing.

We’re moving.

And location.

Timing and location, I’m beside myself. And myself is leaving California.

It’s weird. For all the great leaving Los Angeles songs, I never thought that I would ever sing one. I’ve left LA before, but I’ve always returned. This time, I don’t think so. This time, the change of location song sings with the tones of permanence, like the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, only I don’t know these words.

‘At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said, ‘Fellas, it's bin good t'know ya…’"

Yeah, shut up Gordan. Nobody likes a six-minute and thirty-second know-it-all.

Location. I chose this location almost twenty years ago. I stood on the great ship LA, and here I stayed even when everything nearly capsized, and staying didn’t seem like what I wanted. It’s been a love/hate bull-ride relationship. I’ve taken the butt. I’ve taken the horns. Now I’m taking my leave.

“The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times…”

Goodbye Southern California.

I won’t miss much, but I will always miss your location.

Membership

2011-07-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Club 27. It’s exclusive. If you’re famous enough to join, you only need pay one onetime fee and you’re in the door. The fee? You have to die when you’re 27.

So yeah, the entrance fee is extreme, but so is the life. George Harrison sang, “you got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues.” I’m not sure the 27 club is what George had in mind; he lived too long anyway. He didn’t get in the club.

For that, his guitar gently weeps.

Amy Winehouse made the club. She died last week. Causes are still unknown, but one thing is known: She joined the pantheon of musicians who died at 27, making her a member of club 27. The member list is impressive. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimmy Hendrix top the roster. Depending on your musical preference, Brian Jones, Robert Johnson, and Jacob Miller are noted members as well.

I know, I know. You have questions.

I have answers. That’s my job. I’m not famous. I keep time while the famous pass, and jot unread footnotes in their postscripts. They have their race. I have mine. I’m 43.

I like my race.

So, back to your questions. They probably have to do with pantheon. What is one and who gets in? Pantheon is a Greek word derived from the words Panth and eon, or age of the panth.

Whath’s a panth? It’s what I wear to keep my legs warm.

Yeah, sorry. And that’s why I won’t be famous. Let’s try again.

A pantheon is the Greek temple of all the gods or all the gods themselves. It’s a building where famous dead people buried.

“I see Fred Savage.”

Sorry, Fred isn’t dead, only his acting career lies six feet under. His wonder years are over and he didn’t get in the door either.

Haley Joel Osment could get in the door. He’s only 23, but he’ll need to become a much better musician. He’s got four years. It could happen. Jim Morrison came from nowhere in six years. The Doors started in 1965 before Morrison died in 1971.

That seems to be something Jim, Amy, and fellow panthe-ites have in common. They exploded from no-names to superstars in fast hot blasts. Amy released her first CD in 2003. She never released a third.

Another thing they share is blame. They never blamed themselves for their fame or for their death. They blamed their friends, their fams, and their fans.

“I did it my way.”

Yeah. Frank Sinatra sang that. He lived to be old and bought a pantheon all his own, built over a burial ground of early era Club 27ers and maybe even Jimmy Hoffa. We call it Palm Springs.

Club 27 ers didn’t do it their way. Oh, they had egos, but they’ll assure you that if they could do it their way, it wouldn’t be this way. The road Robert Frost took was the best road. Club 27 road is well lit by A&R men heaping platitudes like lei nooses around young travelers necks.

“You’re the greatest!”

And that brings another question: who is the greatest? Who deserves to belong to club 27 and who deserves to be forgotton?

When Kurt Cobain died, my first words where, “I thought he was already dead.”

To which my doom herald replied, “No, that was just an attempted suicide. This time he got it right.”

“Oh.”

I have to admit. I liked Kurt, but I never thought he was that great. Yeah, I can feel you hitting the back browser button now. It’s OK. I get it. It’s just that he had more to prove before winning me over, and he failed. Sure, he had potential, but he ran his race short and fast. He never completed the distance.

In that, the club 27 members are equal. They take a pantheon in our mind. Your Zeus is my Odin, but they reside in our heads because they all represent a world where we could have lived.

Was Amy Winehouse this generations Vesta? Maybe not, but we’ll never know. And that’s the tragedy. The same way that we’ll never know that freckly kid who lived down the block until he stepped on a mine in Iraq. He’s in my pantheon as well. He should be in yours, but you never knew him.

It doesn’t matter whom we consider greater. In death we’re all equal. What matters is that we remember the loss of those who could have been and share that with the lives that can still be. Whether they belong to club 27, 34, 49, or 86, it matters that we remember the lives lived and hold them in our pantheon, otherwise we’re empty temples housing nothing for nobody.

Borders Envy

2011-07-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

Last week, a man lost his penis. This week, a nation loses a bookstore. Which is more important?

That depends on who you ask. Ask me, I’ll vote for the store. Books are my livelihood. Ask Mr. Woke-up No-Johnson, and he’ll see the forest with no tree. Ask my cat, and she’ll lick her shanks thoughtfully, before staring and yawning.

“Mew?”

Persephone is wise beyond her cat-years.

I’m still learning.

Last semester I took journalism. I thought I could elevate from mere blogger to real writer. In class, I learned about “newsworthiness”: a characteristic that makes stories worth writing; an important criterion that both blogger and writer blatantly disregard. I mean, books are published about things to do with penes, attached or not. Who really needs to know that? I didn’t have an instruction manual for mine, but I mastered the mechanism—and I certainly don’t need to know what to do with an unattached one.

Meanwhile bloggers are like Seinfeld: a blog about nothing.

“Just like the stork-o-pult baby placer, the world just isn't ready.”

So what’s the difference between blogger and writer? Bloggers are either superstars placating their fanbase or also-rans casting the illusion of importance. Writers are…uhm…no different really—except the paycheck.

My queen says I need one of those: a paycheck. I guess that’s why my vote for important news goes to Borders’ bookstore closing. If I’m gonna elevate to paid-writer, I’d kinda like a storefront to sell my goods. Otherwise I’m just a blogger who cuts down forests of wood.

“Timber!”

Just like that wood chopping woman in Garden Grove. Here’s the thing though: that woman knew the importance of newsworthiness. Penis chopping is so Lorena Bobbit 1994. It’s been done. It’s like blogging: nobody cares. This woman knew that making papers required more than cutting down trees. She also needed to pulp the wood. She’s McGyver. She utilized the tools available: she used a garbage disposal.

Yeah. For all the guys, this is where we’ll take a moment of silence, cuz we’re all looking down to make sure it’s still there. Go ahead; touch it if you need to. Nobody is gonna blame you.

It’s there? Yes. Good.

Now back to our story.

I’m amazed. Four out of four guys surveyed will tell you the real news here starts at the garbage disposal. Don’t get me wrong, we all wince at the chopping part, but the garbage disposal pushes things up a notch. It’s Emeril leaning over our crotch and shouting, “Bam!” And nobody wants that. In fact, most guys become quite thankful for the dismembered member once the garbage disposal cuts onto the news stage.

“Well at least she cut it off first…”

That’s right, cuz no man wants to come-to, lying on their belly, strapped over the kitchen sink to the sound of whirring blades while the woman they once loved pushes at their butt like a Bond villain with a toilet plunger.

“No Mr. Bond, I want you to cry. “

I’m not man enough to cry. No, seriously. Go ahead, strap me to the sink. Those blades? They aren’t coming anywhere near my privates. I’m hung like a 12-year-old white boy in an ice-cold swimming pool.

Who’s laughing now Mandingo?

Here’s another interesting newsbyte. More women read than men. No, it’s not that men can’t read it’s more that hunter/gatherers don’t require reading stimuli. We’ve got other things to worry about. That said, men do read. We just read differently, and not as much--at least not as much fiction. Men like history. We don’t want to learn from it; we just like the pictures. We like to learn other stuff. Teach us how to build or demolish anything except relationships and we’re on it, hammer in one hand, book in the other.

Borders disappearing from the book market won’t affect men. When buying books, we shop with purpose. We can do that on Amazon.

“Honey, I just bought a how-to book on installing a garbage disposal.”

Ok, men wouldn’t buy that book. Women would buy that book for us. Just because the paramedics removed us from the neighbor’s tree the last time we installed an outdoor wall socket, she thinks it’s a good idea to read.

“How ‘bout now?”

TZZZT!

But men do buy stuff. Men may not understand the import of closing a bookstore, but try closing a Home Depot in our home town and we’re mad as hell and we won’t take it anymore. Where else can we buy our garbage disposals?

And that’s where you separate the men knowledge from boy inexperience. Sure, we all winced at the disposal story, but the real men worked through the problem and found the disposal story half full. “Well, they lived in a condo and that might as well be an apartment. A condo is not gonna spring for anything more than the $19.99 garbage disposal special. That won’t chop through a sink of potato peels without backing up. His dick is fine. Pull it out, wipe it off, slap it back on, good as new. Now if he replaced the disposal with the InSinkErator Evolution Excel, he’s a eunuch--that think grinds bone…”

No, you reach in and get it.

That’s why beyond shock and “awww…” the penis story is missing something. It’s missing long term impact—unless you’re Mr. Johnsonless

Even if Americans don’t read books, we’ll still weep the loss of Borders for quite some time. First, our economy hasn’t recovered. We’re drugged and tied to the bed. We don’t know what’s going on. For those of us already scouring the job market for work, we’re going to wake up tomorrow with 10,700 new competitors vying for the same job.

Second, despite slumping book sales, malls will miss Borders. They’re losing an anchor store. Anchor stores drive up mall traffic and bring in new retailers. With local store fronts already closing, some malls will find it very difficult to stay open. Many property owners may find that the town without Borders is a town without a mall.

I know what you’re saying, “Rob, it’s just a bookstore. It’s not like they’ve lost their manhood.”

Maybe. It depends on how things swing. This could just be a kick to the groin, or it could be the Ginsu lopping off the whole retail market. I don’t think it’s permanent, but I don’t think it’s going to be painless either.

If you’re a reader, this is a bittersweet moment. It seems like just ten years ago that Barnes & Noble and Borders swung their sizable prepackaged packages into town and frightened your favorite local competitor away. Now Borders’ package has shriveled up, and there’s nothing big about them. Go ahead, laugh. They’re girly.

There’s also nobody around to fill the void.

For many towns, that leaves Barnes & Nobel as your sole brick and mortar bookstore pick, for others, like Moreno Valley, California, it leaves you in a town without a bookstore, except for the adult bookstore downtown, and they don’t sell books.

Bookstore free communities can go online. I don’t know about you though, but I like to touch a book before I read it.

Yeah. For all the readers, this is where we’ll take a moment of silence, cuz we’re all looking around to make sure our books are still there. Go ahead; touch them if you need to. Nobody is gonna blame you.

They’re not there? Yeah, sorry.

Now back to our story.

Readers do still have libraries, but libraries are government entities with tiny budgets and ebook envy. More and more libraries are reinventing themselves as civic gathering places and informational hubs, overcompensating for what they don’t have: books. They’d write a book about it, but nobody would check it out.

But all of this is yesterday’s news. We’ve already read it. The disposal victim was released from the hospital earlier this week. Like his name, the status of genitalia is undisclosed. He’s moving forward learning to live in a new world. He now has a lot more time to read a book.

He’d better hurry and buy one, though. Many Borders stores will close their doors Thursday.

I know that everything is cyclical. Eventually other stores will replace Borders. The economy will recover. People will still read books. Still, I’m gonna miss Borders as much as I miss the other local bookstores they replaced.

It’s a loss, and like a penis in a disposal, it’s just a waste.

The Mythology of Subtext

2011-07-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

“Thanks. Yeah, we’ll talk soon.”

Text is a close encounter with a Devil’s tower of unsaid mashed potatoes. See what I mean? What the hell did I just say?

No, text is more like conversational makeup slathered over the harpy face of context.

“Those open sores really give you facial character.”

Yeah. Text is vanity.

Subtext is everything.

Subtext is the harpy claws hiding in panty hose.

Why all this happy harpy talk, and, more importantly, what the heck is a harpy? For those of you not up on your current affairs, a harpy is a mythological mash-up creature from the past.

Those who know Greek mythology know the harpy as an ugly winged bird creature with a woman’s face and torso. Don’t get too excited about the torso part, boys. The harpy also has talons; no groping here. Those talons are sort of like the harpy version of subtext.

Those who don’t know mythology might know Dungeons & Dragons. For them, a harpy as a seven hit dice monster, or the woman coming down the basement stairs.

“Tommy! Go get a job!”

An image also containing a whole subtext of it’s own.

Harpy or no, subtext is everywhere. So, why is Robby harping on harpies? They’re the perfect metaphor for dialog. They’re winged, they’re deadly, and they can be exceptionally ugly.

Ok. So maybe it’s not the perfect metaphor, but it works for me because this week I dated a harpy.

I know! And the Pirate Queen approved!

She approved because it wasn’t a romantic date. It was a different date. A date with another person you want to get to know better. A person you hope to one day stand at an alter and say, “I do,” before an HR representative announces, “I now pronounce you, insured and employed.”

That’s right I had a first date with an interviewer.

Little Robby draws from harpy bad-touch memory

This week I interviewed with Gary Gary from Bigshot Media. Gary squared is looking for somebody to web edit his cluster of Middle America radio stations so that they sound like individual slices of Middle American mom made apple pie, gooing with personality and not like the compressed conglomerate pre-wrapped and stuffed Hostess sugar licks that they are.

Does that sound harsh? It’s not. I find pre-fab corporate America quite fab. I love Walmart, Target, and Starbucks as much as mom and pop down the block do. It doesn’t bother me that corporations pretend to be local, so long as they’re paying local people, like mom and pop.

“Hi! Welcome to Walmart!”

“Didn’t you used to own mom and pops…?”

It’s all in how we pursue the American Dream.

That’s what Gary is doing, pursuing his dream.

Well, if Gary likes me, his dream will include moving me into a local market so that I can take a job there. I can make that part of my dream.

Gary wants his currently local radio team to write conversational blogs and raise the radio website like a multimedia barn. Gary wants the websites to look like the RobBlog on Hee Haw steroids. As the RobBlog writer I’m well aware of what Gary wants.

“I’m a pickin!’”

“And I’m a grinnin’!”

I know it’s me.

How do I know this? I applied for the job.

I don’t go one butt-cheek into an interview; I take everything full butt. I Googled Gary Gary, and let me tell you, Gary is an impressive guy. You know Rupert Murdock? He polishes Gary’s Jag for extra cash on the weekends. If Howard Stern is the King of all Media, Gary is the stinky-fisted puppeteer moving Howard’s lips.

Ok. I might be exaggerating, but in RobWorld Gary squared is doubly impressive. If I want t Gary’s Bigshot gig, I need to know what Gary is looking for and be damn sure that I’m it.

I know, I am.

I need to prove that to Gary, because I do have obstacles.

See, my kryptonite here is my experience as an online editor. It’s limited. Yeah, I’ve edited the RobBlog and Viewpoints Online, but how do I translate that into Gary love for Rob when all I’ve got are good looks?

I am so screwed.

Still, I can do the job. I have sent in an honest resume and strong portfolio, and Gary liked them enough to call back. That’s gotta mean something, right? Gary’s a big shot. You don’t become a media big shot without scouring the land with your army of search-harpies riled up like Ozian flying monkeys. They must have brought back some results that said, “You’ll like him, and his little cat too,” cuz I ‘ve got an interview.

So I gather all the Rob confidence I can muster. I stalk—er, uh study Gary for a week and I research what Gary wants in the job, so that when he calls me, I ‘m ready.

He calls. “Rob?”

I answer, “So whatcha wearing?”

I’m a little nervous. Sweat rivers glide down my face, forming grit deltas amongst my chest hair.

“I mean, hi! This is Rob.”

So begins the dance of the harpy. We’re two guys saying words, trying to see what’s underneath the skirt of subtext.

Does he like me?

Is he what I’m looking for?

Can he treat me as I deserve?

Can he make breakfast before he leaves?

Gary starts with a vocal smile: a glorious biography of the man, the legend, the hero that is Gary Gary. I listen. Everything he’s telling me, I know. I’ve stalked—er, researched this. He’s telling me everything except that he likes puppies and September breezes.

I already know those things too.

I’m quiet. I’m good. I listen. When he’s done I prove I know him like he needs to be known and I know what he wants, “So, how is your beagle, Jake?”

“Uhm, he’s fine. So Rob, what do you have to offer Bigshot media?”

I tell him. I’d tell you too but I don’t want to bore you with the details. Let’s just say I offer lots of long walks, holding hands, and plenty of snuggles.

“Snuggles? OK…Uh, How do you approach good SEO practices?”

Gary and I don’t seem to be jibing. It’s ok. He’ll like me once he gets to know me. I know I’ve got his SEO answers too. I amaze him with tales of keywords and metadata living together and bringing the Google queen and all her web-crawler friends along for the party. I even reveal how I incorporate keywords into article title tags.

“That’s great, “ say’s Gary. “Let’s talk about this article you wrote for Viewpoints on Stargate Universe.”

That’s a fan favorite. Let’s talk about that! “Ok.” I unbutton my top button.

“Your title, ‘Goodbye Old Friend’ doesn’t meet those SEO practices you were talking about. Why?”

The next sound you here is me spittaking my wine into Gary’s face.

He’s right and I hate him for it.

“Well, it was designed for print not for online.” I’m pulling the back-petals off of my flowers cuz I don’t bring my backpedaling bike on dates. “I left the title because I found it appropriate for the story.”

Great. I admit to leaving it because I’m a writer, not because I’m an editor. I might as well add some sweet nothings smooth over, “Oh, and that tie? It makes you look fat, you whore.”

“Ok…let’s talk about this Viewpoints Online. I’m looking at the site right now. What have you done for them?”

What? Can’t you see it? What part doesn’t scream “Rob was here?” What part doesn’t look like the tailor made pictorial answer I created you when you asked, “What do you offer Bigshot Media.”

Yeah. It was obvious that Gary and I were getting the same feelings from our date. Still we’re professional: we stick through the gore and slime until we’ve said all we need to say since neither of us have prepared emergency text messages from friends.

We’re locked in a spinning harpy gyre to the death.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Asks Gary.

I want to ask, “Yeah, what about my resume made you thing I was the guy you wanted when I’m obviously not?” Instead I moved in for a kiss.

“Uhm, what are you doing?” Gary’s working some back petals of his own.

Ok, so maybe I meant a more metaphoric kiss: “Where are you in your job search?”

“We’re really early. Right now we’re just talking to lots of people, gathering names, then we’ll pick who works best.” He brushes his lips against my forehead.

We don’t mesh, but at least we understand each other. We promise to stay in touch, but both of us have lost the other’s number before the phone goes silent.

Me? I’m alright with that. I have no hard feelings for Gary. I hope he finds what he’s looking for, the same way I know that I’ll find what I’m looking for.

It’s just going to take some time for both of us. More dating and more subtext. Lucky for me, I know how to speak harpy and Mom’s basement is big enough for all my Dungeons & Dragons needs.

Waxing Nostalgic, Peeling the funny.

2011-07-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

Where’s the funny?
If I read the RobBlog, that’s what I’d ask. I mean, I’ve heard that Cupid Pops, and On Top of Spaghetti are spit-take funny. This latest stuff? Not funny. No spit.

I’ve also heard that bananas and “k” words are good for laughs. I dunno. If I’ve gotta
resort to kumquats and banana peels, maybe it’s time to hank thinks up.

See?

Nothing.

No funny.

Sigh…

Maybe it’s the music in my diet. Music isn’t funny. Even worse I’m bloating on The
Carpenters. I’m nostalgic lately.

“When I was young I listened to the radio…”

Last weekend I heard that song for the first time in ages. Karen Carpenter sang
it. That’s not funny. Neither is the song. It’s a reminiscent song. It’s about sitting
around listening to the songs of her youth.

I can get behind that. This year I’m making plans for my future with the Pirate
Queen, and I’m saying good-bye to some old ghosts. I’m not usually a nostalgic
type guy, but fake nostalgic cigars have been exploding in my face and buzzing my
memories with joy.

“…those were such happy times…but now they’re back again…”

Why couldn’t they bring the funny with them? Why couldn’t they be anecdotal
ghosts not just nostalgic ones.

I found a post on my Facebook page:

“About 15 years ago, you were the first person to inform me that Jimmy Page was
a ‘sloppy’ guitar player (and I know for certain this is the exact word you used)…”

The Pirate Queen asked me about it. She’s trying to help me find my funny. She
suggested I look in back-story. It might be amusing.

I humored her

I told her.

It wasn’t funny.

Some Jokes are location jokes: you have to be there.

She wasn’t; the story wasn’t funny.

“Trust me, I was there. It wasn’t funny then either.”

“Oh, then have you tried writing about bananas?”

Most days life isn’t funny. Not naturally. We really have to search for the humor.
Karen Carpenter didn’t find the funny.

“Every whoa-oh-woe…”

Me, during the Cupid Pops days, I needed the funny. I was going through a divorce,
looking for something good.

Today I have something good. I don’t need the funny to fuel my day. I still enjoy it
but, if I don’t get it, I’m not sitting on my closet floor clenched in a fetal ball. Not that
I ever did that…I’m just saying, “what if?”

No really. Stop looking at me like that. You’re creeping me out.

That’s not funny.

Fine, whatever.

“Tell them about the guy at the Hall and Oats concert.”

That’s the Pirate Queen. Now she’s over my shoulder, editing for the funny. She
wants me to tell you about the fireworks show on the fourth. She love’s Hall and
Oats. So we celebrated the birth of our nation with a Hollywood Bowl full of Hall and
Oat-meal with pyrotechnic sprinkles.

Our seats were great. They were so cool they had a special name: the garden section.
That’s not quite as cool as the “Pool Circle,” but it totally rocks over “Section NN.”

You, back in the back. See my hand waving? No? Well just imagine what the band is
going to look like from back there. From here they look great.

“That’s not funny, Rob. Tell them the funny.”

Ok, so there were these people at the table next to us—yeah, we had tables! I told
you our seats rocked, NN dude! Not only do we have tables, but we also had a hip-
high garden wall, fencing us off from our good neighbor’s garden box. We’ve got
privacy!

So we’re sitting there and the Pirate Queen isn’t respecting our neighbor’s privacy.
She looks at me and whispers, “That guy next to us looks like Ron Jeremy and that
old singer who sang time in a bottle—“
“You mean Jim Croce?”
“Yeah, he looks like they had a lovechild.”
“A brokeback, love moment?”
“Exactly! You should blog about that.”
“Cuz it’s funny?”
“Funnier than what you’ve been writing lately.”

I am no longer my harshest critic.

Still, she’s right.

One of the women Jim Jeremy sat with was this Kim Catrell Sex and the City type.
Jim and Kim adhere to SoCal cultural mores. Cell phones and garden walls represent
cones of silence. It’s like dogs hiding their head.

“You can’t see me.”

Only in LA can you get personalized freeway Fireworks.

We can hear Jim and Kim. They’re talking about rehab, lesbians and piles of coke that would make Hunter S. Thompson back away slowly.

“And the good times I had make today seem rather sad…”

Kim is getting nostalgic too. She’s talking about her 40th birthday party. Remember
Major League? Kim had a swingers’ weekend. I know, that doesn’t have anything to
do with Major League. Major League had a Wild thing, no swingers. Still, bear with
me. Kim told Jim, in garden-wall confidentiality, that she had a nude cutout of herself
at the swinger party: Just like the one in Major League. Except for her cutout, instead
of uncovering it, she had people cover up parts of her body. To me, that’s a little
counter swinger productive, but who am I to judge. I’m only the neighbor with his
ear to the wall.

Sitting next to us, Kim drops names of people who were there. We don’t hear

anybody we know. We don’t hear a thing. My queen and I just pour our champagne
and toast. Compared to Kim’s Palm Springs party, we don’t know how to have a
good time.

Our side of the wall doesn’t know how to hold a garden party. Just like that Ricky
Nelson song I heard last weekend.

“…I learned my lesson well…”

Still, moving forward, my queen and I do have fun. As Hall and Oats walked out on
stage, I took her hand and I remembered why I used to love concerts. They’re not
funny, but they are fun. They’re three hours of heartbeat bass pounding in your
chest, and melodic blood pumping through your veins.

So my queen and I are singing along and dancing. Oh yes. There was dancing! Such
cacophonic convulsing as only our parents would appreciate (as they had taught us
to dance the very same said seizure of freedom in their youth).

“You make my dreams come true…”

As I’m butt pendulum-swaying to the beat, my hands, clenched tight in ten and two
formation, syncopate with a rhythm all their own. I amaze my queen with my moves
of love.

“Excuse me sir.” It’s the usher. “The gentleman in NN is asking you to sit down.
You’re ruining the show.”

See? It’s not that funny of a story. Right now my queen is telling me that I didn’t tell
it right.

I dunno. Maybe this is the year of the unfunny blog. Maybe this is the year of
sentimentality singing and white-boy dancing. This is the year of moving forward.
And unfunny or not, this is the year of the Rob.

Stay tuned.

Great Kameron’s Klaxons! It’s a banana peel…

Senioritis

2011-06-30T18:16:00.000-07:00

86 kicks ass.

Someone wrote that in my yearbook, more than one someone, several someones. Somewhere on every page someones using black and blue indelible ink reinforced the sentiment as if overstatement made the mantra true.

Eighty-six, to be or not to be kicking ass, that is the question. That’s what I’m considering as I flip through my senior yearbook.

Last weekend my high school senior class reunited. It’s been 25 years since we stood, corralled herd-members of doe-eyed idealists, waiting for some faculty-rancher to lift our gate and whoop, “Hey-ya!”

Stampeding into the open, we tramped our way where angus-angels feared to tread. I wondered who’d survived the wild rush and who was grilled into a nice sirloin, topped with onions and served with wild rice.

That’s why I was excited about getting back together with my classroom-moo-mates. I wanted to know what happened after we’d hit the ground running, never looking back, like a Bruce Springsteen scrawled note in a Bob Seger yearbook.

Bob,

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream!
At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines!
Stay cool,

Bruce

Bru-bro!

The secrets that we shared!

The mountains that we moved!

Caught like a wildfire out of control 'til there was nothing left to burn and nothing left to prove.

Better to burn out or fade away!

The Bobster!

I wanted to know who’d burned out and who’d faded away.

86 Kicks ass!

Bruce Springsteen didn’t write that. Tim Mathews did—on the inner cover of my senior yearbook. Bruce Santos wrote next to it, “I’ll always remember you as the guy who shot a fire extinguisher in class!!!” The triple exclamation point made it sound so real. I couldn’t wait to catch up with Bruce Santos.

“Hey Bruce!”

“Hey….uh…Roberboy?”

“No, Robert. Robert Boyd. They misspelled my nametag.”

“Robert Boyd? Oh, yeah! You’re the guy who wet himself in third grade!”

“No, that was Robbie Kilpatrick. I’m the guy who shot the fire extinguisher.”

“Really? A fire extinguisher? I don’t remember that.”

“Yeah. In Mr. Mac’s? Look, It’s right here in my yearbook.”

“Uhm…ok—Oh look! It’s Danny Martinez! He lit a cockroach on fire. Hey Danny!”

We’re all remembered for our infamous antics. That’s how high school reunions go. I wasn’t worried. Bruce would remember me. So would everybody else. The question was, would they remember me for who I was or see me for who I am?

“Yeah, that’s Rob Boyd over there.”
“I know. Kinda sad, huh? He peaked in third grade when he peed himself.”

“…downhill from there.”

Senior year was the year we all vowed to be rockstars with a capitol “Stars” in our eyes. “Rockstar” meant different things to each of us: some wanted to be the next Sly Fox, others wanted to be the next Andrew McCarthy; I didn’t want to be either. I wanted to be the next mysterious cumulonimbus of cool. I didn’t know what I was going to do after school but it was going to be big. I was going to be the most awesome Rob I could.

In 25 years had I succeeded? How could I know if I’d achieved cumulonimbus of cool rockstar? The answer was a weekend away.

High school reunion.

Like any other test, this was on a comparative scale. No, I wouldn’t be compared to my peers. I’d be compared against myself by my peers. If I could get them to believe I’d come far, it must be true.

86 kicks ass!

Friday, my queen and I would drive away from the sunny horizon toward the foreground of my past. Saturday, we’d reunite with my classmates. This reunion I would thunder! If for no other reason than my sexy fiancé!

Robert Freakin’ Boyd kicks ass! (Insert thunder and flash lightening here.)

Robert Freakin’ Boyd never made it to his 25year high school reunion.

Friday morning my Queen rolled over and said, “I don’t feel so good.”

“It’s ok,” I replied, hopping out of bed and throwing the overnight bag on the blankets warming her shivering legs. “You’ll feel better. It’s just a cold. You can sleep in the back of the car. I’ll get you some NyQuil. You’ll never know the difference. Could you hold still? Your shivering is moving my bag.” I’m tossing underwear and socks into the case. Gotta get ready!

She didn’t feel better. In fact, by noon, she felt worse. She sounded worse too. “Baby, I don tink I can make it. You go wit’out me.”

Inconceivable!

I couldn’t go “wit’out” her. Who would make me look good? Even more important: who would stay to look after her?

The fist of importance and priorities struck me in the forehead. There was a right thing to do here, and I needed to do it. I slumped down in my corner of the couch, took a breath and made the calls I needed to make. The reunion would go on without me.

Success is a matter of perspective

“Hey look, Rob Boyd’s nametag is still on the table.”

“He must have wet himself on the way here.”

Saturday night my queen even felt worse yet. We huddled on the couch watching bad sci-fi. She likes bad sci-fi. It’s Pirate Queen comfort food. To her, a Skywalker, Baggins sofa roll-up is better than a vat of chicken noodle. Me, I enjoy those movies, but watching once every few years is plenty for me. She’s the sick one though, and whatever it takes to relieve her pain is what we’ll do. My weekend is now all about her.

We’re lolling on the couch. I’ve got my arm wrapped around the PQ. On TV, the rebel forces try to take planet Muppet. My Queen leans against my chest, hot breath billowing down, lapping my bulging belly in steamy heat bursts. Snot or drool seeps into my shirt, matting my chest hairs together.

My mind says: It’s drool. It’s drool. It’s drool…

I rub her back and look at the clock: it’s 8:30 p.m. This is not the reunion buffet I was looking for.

During a commercial my queen looks up, “I wub you.”

I smile back. That’s all the affirmation I need. I don’t need a reunion of peers to tell me: I am a rockstar. So says my Pirate Queen.

Ageism

2011-06-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

Age of discovery.

Age of reason.

Age of Aquarius.

I just turned 43. What age is that? It’s not the age of presents. All I got this year were two cards.

Age of self-discovery?

No. I reached that when I turned 14. I’m 43. I’ve had ages of self-discovery since then.

I think if I were married 43 years they’d call it the age of miracles. My parents didn’t make marriage last 43 years. Yeah, I see the bulb flickering over your head. You’ve reached the age of enlightenment: They’re divorced.

They’re also both remarried and quite happy. That’s cuz they’re not remarried to each other. Welcome to the age of second chances.

I’m hoping I learned as much as they did from the age of first chances. I want my age of the Pirate Queen to be the age of wonder they seem to share. Oh, I know it’s not ages of wine and roses, but loving somebody enough to stick through the dark ages, I want that. That’s something to celebrate.

As I celebrated my age of 43 years last weekend I did the math. I don’t know that I’ll know 43 years of marriage to the Pirate Queen. I found that a little disheartening. Not because I thought I’d die too soon. I know when my time comes I’ll be old, senile and semi-incontinent.

Welcome to the age of depends.

Cow cards: this years Angry Birds.

No, I found it disheartening because when I go to church, I see old couples who’ve stayed together longer than color and TV. I’m a prideful stubborn person. I believe that should be me.

And yet it isn’t me…because I’m a prideful stubborn person. Now all I can hope for is whatever time I have left with the woman I love.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t Rob’s age of fatalism. I’ve got a lot of life left—I think the Pirate Queen will be praying for a little less Age of Rob--and I plan on spending that age with the woman I love. I just regret that her time will be without my firstca 40 years of….we’ll call it “Rob education.”

And she’s not even starting with my best years. I know me. She’s getting me at 43. I’m obnoxious. I’m stoic (or stodgy, depending on how your dictionary spells it). I’m a freelance writer—emphasis on the free. She’s getting the Rob age of Mystery.

And that makes me love her more. She sees all the ages of Rob. She knows where I’ve come from. She knows where I am, and she’s not frightened by where I’m going. Nor is she’s blinded. She’s spotted the Rob behind the curtain and told him, “I love you.”

I’ve got nothing left to hide, and I haven’t scared her off.

This year I turned 43 and I got the best gift an old Rob could get: I got loved.

It's like rain on your wedding day....

2011-06-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

It's like bran flakes, when you wanted Cap'n Crunch.
It's another Alanis Morissette verse when you wanted a hooky chorus.
It's like another week without a RobBlog when all he gives us is links to his crappy articles.

Yeah, it's a lot like that. Check out the latest. I wrote three.

Volunteerism down in the IE

Stargate down on the TV

Fingers down. Gestures you can give ME

School ends next Monday. So look for more RobBlog as summer heats up!

Truth in Advertising

2011-05-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to month 26 of Rob's unemployment. For all the resumes I've submitted, I've received 2 interviews, 1 second interview and no job offers.

Even Amway said, "We'll get back to you, Rob."

That's not encouraging.

I've applied for writing jobs, marketing jobs, communication jobs and employment coach jobs. In hindsight maybe the last idea was poorly conceived, but I need a job, any job.

"Do as I say, not as I can't do."

The Pirate Queen and I have already conducted several state of the union conferences. She recommended a new work mantra:

"Would you like fries with that?"

I can't. It's like Fonzie saying, "I was wrong." The words don't fit. I've swallowed too much crow so far. I can't eat those words too.

"What about entry level jobs," my queen asks.

I can work those jobs. I've applied for those jobs. Those employers don't call me back any more than the other employers do. I don't know if it's my approach or that 42-year-old beginners aren't as fashionable as they were 10 years ago.

Age and inexperience: It's the new black.

And isn't that the thing? I'm not alone. For every hundred of you reading my blog--Ok, I know, just play along here--there are almost 9 of you without jobs. That would be eight of you without jobs, and Dave. His left hand is still working, but his right hand doesn't know what the left is doing: the rest of him is unemployed.

If you're reading me in California, that's 11 of you with Dave, but at least Dave's whole left arm is a functioning member of society. The rest of Dave is pretty pissed.

If you're in Riverside County, then 14 of you are standing in job lines with Dave's left hand--The rest of Dave works here while the rest of us suffer. Shake his left hand anyway, no hard feelings. In fact his hand is soft but firm. Dave is a good guy.

Me? Not so much. I'm a little grumbly about standing in line with everybody else, trying for the same job. The line is even more discouraging, because there are more than 100 people in Riverside County. For every one of my 100 readers (yeah, stop laughing. It's not that funny) there are over 294,000 people, besides Dave, competing for the job I want.

The cream always rises to the top.

If that's the case, what do we call the stuff that sinks to the bottom? Oh yeah...great.

So, after beating my head against opportunity's door waiting for God to open a window, I've decided on a new approach: honesty.

That's right. Everybody out there is trying to oversell and out-maneuver the competition. It's time to just tell it like it is. That brings us to my latest cover letter/resume:

Situation needed: Rob of all media trades seeks employment.

Do you have standards? Me too/neither! I am an over-trained under-worked workhorse with a minimal track record, seeking to be exploited for alfalfa sprigs and sparse attaboys.

Are you tired of requiring five years of work experience in your job postings? I'm tired of lying that have them! But I'm not going to get those five years unless somebody lowers their standards. Why shouldn't that somebody be you?

Because what I do have is five years radio and television broadcast and production school-studio time. I can run and troubleshoot any hardware that makes sounds or casts shadows. That includes studio staff.

As the student manager of a redheaded stepchild college radio station, I led a staff of credit grubbing freshmen and munchy hungry stoners through three semesters. In that time the station garnered a reputation for least offensive miscreants gathered on campus. Our record of zero administration enforced shutdowns and one reprimand (for referring to the school administration as, “Castro and his cronies”) still stands unmatched. This is not only a testament to an experimental dry campus policy, but also a demonstration of my laissez-faire leadership skills.

This experience is just a light questionable film on my stripper-pole of training. I also have design/office software experience dripping down my leg. If Adobe published it or Microsoft mico-tweaked the functionality from it, I have spent hours cursing it, breaking it, reinstalling it, and making it my bitch. This not only qualifies me with a professional level of expertise, but it also means that your in-house IT team can continue monitoring the spyware you installed into the corporate email browse while I answer everybody else’s dumbass questions.

Do you need a writer? I can do that too! As a writer, I’ve received a 3.5 GPA for my collective portfolio of brochures, pamphlets, ad copy, press releases, articles, public relations puff, and short fiction. Non-pay web-zines and other online gathering holes have already launched successful sites with my gratis labor, why wait your turn, when you can cut in line for a few pennies an hour?

“We love your work!” said Paula Sirois of divorce360.com where I submitted blogs for unpaid publication. Other free labor recommendations are available upon request.

My talent for adaptive voice can be your voice! I am a corporate tool waiting to be worked. No job too menial, no paycheck too small. I am your man, a yes man, a no man whichever man you want, man.

Idealists say, “I will never sink to that level.” I will sink that level like the Titanic at an iceberg party. There’s no limit to the depths I’ll plunge to keep my life afloat. If you can fathom the words, I’ll string them together till they touch the bottom of the Mariana Trench to make fifty cents.

If you’re interested, contact me soon because sycophants of my quality don’t come often and when we’re gone, we’re gone; barnacle lips on the corporate ass-ship until the day the ship goes down.

A little update

2011-05-13T22:22:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

I'm so sorry I haven't posted. My bad. Here's the thing: I'm busy. Yeah, I'm still unemployed, but I'm taking classes, and they're taking no Rob prisoners. Between the campus newspaper, Photoshop, and a few other courses, I'm burried in a homework blizzard. I promise to post when I can, and to pick things up a bit in the summer thaw.

In the meantime, here's a link, follow it. It's a story I wrote for a local paper. It's not nearly as self indulgent as my blog, but then again, what is? I save all that self love for you--and I promise it will be back.

So, follow me vicariously, and take in a little Rob:

My article

Identity Games

2011-03-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

Life. For Hasbro it’s a game, for others it’s a cabaret—ol’ chum. For me, it’s a place. A place to hang my hat. Oh, that’s a home? No, I don’t think so. My home echoes, and there’s nothing there to hang a hat on; it's empty—and no, that’s not my head, although I occasionally do hang my hat there too.

This week some lucky Monopoly bidder took possession of my blue property, ending the Rob era as homeowner-- Go ahead, play the little Kodak commercial Paul Anka soundtrack. Watch the Rob moments collage roll past as I sniff a little. I hate to see the house go. I guess that's the funny thing: it's not the house that's going; it's me.

Yeah, that’s funny.

That’s life.

Life is funny. Like the time I went to pick up Debbie Doe-eyes for a first date and she brought her older sister. It took me a little while to see the humor in that one too, but now it is a great conversational opener

“You’ll never believe what happened to me once…”

I don’t think the house story will ever make the conversational list. Luckily I’ve rolled bolts of other material. Material I've spent my life quilting together, while life’s machine stitches my fingers into cool patterns.

“This stitch is called ‘stitch in a ditch: Rob living in a trailer down by the river.’ There’s a funny story behind it…”

There’s a funny story behind everything, and while looking for the humor behind eviction I received grad school rejection letters from Iowa, Michigan and UC Irvine. Now I’m looking for the humor behind rejection too. That comes easier. The Debbie Doe-eyes story sets precedent.

Everybody say “awww…”

I’m sorry. You’re just not as good at the Rob pity as I am. Maybe it’s the practice. Maybe you just don’t have the vested pity-interest that I do; the pity doesn’t mean as much to you as it does to me. Here, try this: after every paragraph say “aww Rob,” really loud and hug the air where I would be, if you associated with me.

Yeah, that’s a good start. Ready? Here goes for real.

So, this pity tragedy I’m writing is life. My life is looking like that new Liam Neeson movie--the one where Liam thinks that somebody has stolen his identity so he throws a Charlie Sheen tantrum until people take notice. No, I’m not stark raving Sheen--my identity wasn't really stolen, it was just misplaced while self-detoxing. You get the point.

If the point seems less obvious and more convoluted than a pile of jackstraws, try this memory game: little Robby was once a kid, and like every other kid, he was lost. Oh, I played games such as Monopoly, Life, and Naughty Barbie; I knew thing about hot stoves, electrical sockets and never to mix the two in the same tub; I even knew all the things I liked, but what I didn't know was what I wanted to be or even not to be.

That moves my pity tragedy to the Hamlet realm, except I always knew that I didn’t want to rule Denmark. I hate the smell of dead fish. I knew that even when I was 8. I remember, something else from when I was 8. I remember writing about wanting to be an Indy-car driver. Before I had finished 365 laps though, I’d crashed into three trashcans, one mailbox and bent my bike-frame against a pickup truck. My 9-year-old career journal reflected on whether my 8-year-old brain had misread its lifelong destiny.

In my twenties, I wrote about wanting to DJ, because I loved music. Later I scratched that. I learned that DJing was more ego than music. Music was for musicians, and I couldn’t play an instrument better than I could play Life or drive an Indy-car.

It was through this trial and error process that a pattern began to appear. All the vocations displayed in my inner monitor, were all later boxed and hauled away, leaving only one constant: I had written about them all. Therefore, I must be a writer.

It made sense. A fireman rushes into buildings, saving lives. I rushed into sentences, sharing insight.

See Spot run. Run Spot run!

A lawyer works to set legal precedence, creating his unique place in the world. I worked to avoid plagiarism, creating my unique place in the world.

See Tops run! Run Tops run!

Like every other career choice, mine had goals: get published, get read, get paid--not necessarily in that order.

See Rob write--

And therein lay the disconnect: nobody saw Rob write. If a Rob writes in the words and nobody reads, does the Rob make a sound? I knew that War and Peace wasn’t built in a day, so I've tried supplementing my income, applying for peripheral jobs. Communications, media, marketing, even government gigs: all fields needing my skills.

All fields ignoring my talents.

See Rob’s resume! Print Rob print!

That was when I reconsidered school. Maybe my writing needed a push. Maybe I needed somebody outside my body to help me understand what the world outside my head wanted see me write. I submitted applications to the biggest and the best schools in the land. I mean, if I am a writer, they should see my marquee talent glowing 20 feet high dazzling with structural highlights and verbiage effects, right?

They didn’t see a thing. I am Liam Neeson auditioning for a John Belushi role.

“I’m a zit! Get it?”

My three biggest hopes wrote letters expressing their regrets, while reminding me that only the top 2 percent could earn the privilege learning in their institutions and indelibly highlighting that I didn't meet their mark.

How deep in the slush pile was I buried? I don’t know, but I can tell you that I couldn’t breathe. Rejection is tough to take, even at those odds. I mean, if I'm a writer, I should overcome avalanching odds, right?

That's how all the good stories end: Liam Neeson comes off the bench, scoring the final touchdown while the crowd chants “Ru-dy! Ru-dy!’ That should be me. That chant should be “Robby! Robby!” Sure, none of these schools are Notre Dame, but they are literary universities. Their literary is based on the same literal 26-letter alphabet that I use. It still uses the same language. The only difference is how many words they string together.

And, lo! There, yonder, we watched Tops prance through the bursting tipped wheat anthesis of our youth! Prance Tops prance! Later that day, Tops' thrashed in threshed detritus and the Tops we knew, the Tops of the glistening coat and unflappable grin gave way to rigored flesh and clumping fur.

Now I don’t know. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m not a writer. I mean I’ve latched onto this concept with terrier determination, but I’ve read the books: the line between delusion and determination is hair-brained thin. I have Scottish roots. I come from a people who’d chop off their right arm to win a bet that they have only five fingers. I don’t know if I’m qualified to tell the difference between dedication and delusion. There is at least enough evidence on the delusion side for me to count on all five of my fingers.

So where does that leave my identity? It’s left sitting with a group of pseudo-intellectuals playing the game of Life, waiting for a turn. Nobody wins because nobody moves. Instead, they sit arguing about why two blues or pinks can’t occupy the front car seat, or how playing Life doesn’t matter because life is all in our head anyway.

My identity isn’t a pseudo-intellectual. According to my GRE It’s not even a half-wit. I’m just a Rob Blogger taking up cyberspace.

According to the GRE.

According to my mortgage company.

According to three out of five grad schools.

These are all people who should know, right?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe they’re the pseudo-intellectuals deciding how the game is supposed to be played.

See, when I was a kid, yes I played Monopoly, Life, and Naughty Barbie. I played a lot of games. They all had different rules, but they also had one thing in common: you could never tell the outcome of the game until the last piece was played. If you were playing Monopoly, the person who endured till the game’s ending move decided the winner. That usually happened when the other players got bored and walked away around lap 365 or so. The Parker Brothers supplied so few of our rules; we made up because we knew the game better than its creators. We played the game

At the other extreme, the game of Life endured at least three major rulebook changes. Once upon a time there were stocks, and insurance. In the later years we randomly picked careers from a pile, because it was more like real life.

Even more like real life would be a bunch of Old Man Monopoly Moneybags shrugging over inside out pockets, losing turn after turn. Right now so many of us are out of work and out of sorts and we can’t find where we belong. Our game isn’t over though. There’s still time to play. Maybe I am as delusional as Liam Neeson, but I believe these schools, these mortgage brokers, these employers, all know what they’re looking for. Right now that isn’t me, but God gave me a purpose, and he controls the game. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen my words reach people, seen readers identify with my flailing identity, saying, “That’s me!” I’ve seen people remember ways my life has touched theirs, even if—especially if—I’ve forgotten the event ever occured.

The point is, we all have a purpose, a way, a path. Sometimes it’s not as obvious as one multi-colored path stretching across a game board. Sometimes we lose a turn and slide back to “go,” but if we believe in a good and righteous God, we’ll always win. Not in the way that Hasbro, the University of Iowa, or even employer XYZ rate progress or ability, but in the way that matters: in the way we touch other players trying to make their way across the board, playing their Life or living their cabaret right along with us.

So for now, I’m waiting on my next roll. Pass the dice to Liam; it’s his turn. I know who I am, and right now I am right where I’m supposed to be.

Life Imitates Blog.

2011-02-24T16:47:00.000-08:00

I just got an email from my father. That in itself isn't a bad thing. My dad loves me, and he likes to keep me updated on the life of a RobBlog-father and RobBlog-mother. He tells me about life in the old homestead, and I always ask for money. That is our relationship.

In an interesting note of serendipity, This week in Journalism, we studied journalistic law. I'd never been that interested in law, but as a blogger, I took special interest in words like "libel," and "slander." Especially after my Rita Coolidge comments earlier this week. I mean, I didn't bash her, but I could see where somebody named Rita Coolidge could read my blog and go, "That's not nice."

It brings me back to the days of Mom and Dad, when they used to say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I took that to heart; that's why I blog silently . Still, I did dedicate a whole blog to Rita, and I normally don't do that to celebrities. Oh, I may poke minor jabs at, but never do I stay on topic. You know my blog better than that! The thing was, she fit my theme, and no matter how bad I ramble, I adhere to my theme like it's made of taffy. Luckily for me, it usually is, and is kinda tasty too...

Today it tastes like crow, and not Sheryl either. I am happy to say that after careful deliberation over articles of libel, I discovered that, no, I hadn't de-famed Rita. Time did that.

Just like it defames all of us. Time makes us who we are, and we can't always be popular. If you're reading my blog, then you know exactly what that means. I am the bloggy black hole of popularity. Popularity comes in, and somewhere, in a distant galaxy, divine justice comes out.

That's why, when my father told me about the upcoming Prescott High School choir concert. I rushed to my blogging keyboard to say a few words about the wonderful and incomparable Rita Coolidge. See, tonight, Rita and her band will be accompanying the PHS singers. I'd rather she not take out her blog wrath on the innocents. She has a wonderful voice, and a great repertoire, she could vocally gut them--or make them sing "All Time High" just to punish me.

Rita, I'm a blogger. I'm not worth it. Please, step away from the children.

So, I'm apologizing for any unintentional cruelty. In fact, if you didn't gather it from my previous blog, I actually DO like Rita Coolidge--Mostly her early 70s stuff. It reminds me of being a kid. I love "You," as well as her versions of, "One Fine Day," "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," and "The Way You Do the Things You Do." My favorite Rita song is "We're All Alone," even though it wasn't until my 20s that I realized that it was a woman singing it. I always thought it was some mid-toned man like Kenny Nolan.

So, If you're anywhere near Prescott Arizona tonight, see Rita, save some singing children, and defame a blogger. It's all for a good cause.

The President Cuts a Single, and Other Reasons for Appendage Pulling

2011-02-22T16:40:00.000-08:00

Do you know what the day after President’s Day is? It’s Cautionary Blog Day. That’s right, go back to your history books. Look it up. Cautionary Blog Day was established shortly after president Rita Coolidge traded a stone face place on a South Dakota rock for a career in adult contemporary radio. In hindsight, a poor career move: everybody remembers the four mountain foreheads. Nobody remembers a Rita Coolidge song.

“Without you, there’s something special about you…”

Ok. Some of us remember more Rita than we’d care to admit. We remember all kinds of bad things. It’s not by choice; it’s just there in the back of our minds like a Jar-Jar Binks pop-up. I remember lovely Rita, when she was a meter maid, but this blog isn’t about her. It’s about me.

No, it’s not about me either. This is Cautionary Blog Day. This blog is about a writer friend of mine with a cautionary tale. And no. “writer friend” isn’t Rob code for “this blog is about me”—not this time.

This time, this blog is about an unemployed writer friend of mine. No, once again, I’m not the only unemployed writer out there. There are bunches of us. Why? Because the out of work actors have stolen all the good wait jobs. Besides, we’re writers. If we were happily employed, we’d have nothing to write about. We’re happiest in our self-absorbed misery.

“We’re all alone. We’re all alone…”

Preach on sister Rita!

Writers alone are easy targets--especially the unemployed ones. Unemployed writers need to eat. Writers are not starving artists. We’re usually well fed. Either by eating our words, or eating porch kibble left out for neighborhood cats.

“The doggone Meow Mix is mine!”

Rita didn’t write that. I did. It’s part of a cautionary tale told by writers to cold nose cats trying to nibble our kibble. That’s another cautionary tale though. This cautionary tale happened when my writer friend applied for a job.

Writers tend toward work-from-home situations; they adhere to our habitat. Unfortunately, most of these situations are either multi-tiered marketing schemes or multi-fool scams. Finding a work-from-home career is harder than finding a dirty needle in a haystack, but more people are searching for the job, meaning you’ll stick yourself with the dirty needle long before you get a job that lets you work from your house. That’s right, even Rita had to tour.

The work my friend applied for was a data entry job. Supposedly, he downloaded some special super secret database software, and then tallied up all the data they could find. My friend isn’t a fool. He knows his Mount Rushmore from his Six Grandfathers Mountain. He knew to ask questions, and to not hand out any money up-front.

After a few weeks of reciprocal online interviewing, my friend signed up for the data entry program. There only seemed to be one catch: for my friend to do the job asked of him, he would need to pay for extra special software. This isn’t too outrageous. Look at my resume; I’m schooled in several thousand dollars worth of software. Sure, writers use Microsoft Word, but to keep the kibble wolf from the door, we train in a variety of multi-functional programs. I speak to the spirits through Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, and many other mediums.

“Close the window calm the light…”

Extra software did little more than raise my friend’s eyebrow. Besides, his would-be employer promised to reimburse him for any out of pocket expenditures. Of course the trick was that the out of pocket expenditures went to that employer, because this was magic bean counting software. So my friend worked out a way to wire the software people money after the employer had sent him a cashier’s check.

When my friend received the check, he Western Unioned his payment. I’m not sure how they worked this simultaneous payment plan. This was a murkier part of the story. What became crystal clear in the tale was that shortly after my friend deposited the check, his bank closed his account. When he questioned why, they told him “We don’t do business with people who deposit fraudulent checks.”

Thus the cautionary tale reaches a climax. My friend needed to cover two paths at once. He needed to file a police report, and he needed to talk to Western Union. Luckily, he went to WU first. They told him that nobody had received his money yet, and that they would stop the transaction before somebody did. In his best Rita Coolidge, my friend sang Western Union praises.

“Your love keeps lifting me…”

The other path was less fruitful, but it needed to be handled. The reality is that in 2008 the Internet crime complaint center received over 275,000 reports of online fraud. Most online predators shed their skin so quickly that they don’t get caught. That said, it’s still important to report fraud, because criminals rarely act once and they rarely quit. Someday, if they do get caught, your report will be one more nail in their coffin. Besides patterns are easier to follow when there are more breadcrumbs.

My friend felt pretty crumby. To make matters worse, when the bank closed his account, they froze his funds. There was still real money in my friend’s account. Real money my friend still can’t touch until the bank investigates things to their satisfaction.

So that’s this year’s cautionary tale. It’s not as funny as President Rita’s Facebook faux pas of 1930, but then again, what is? But just like Rita’s mistake, it’s important to investigate facts thoroughly. Just because somebody says something you’d like to believe, doesn’t make it true. Ask Rita. She’ll tell ya.

Metaphorically Speaking

2011-02-16T17:54:00.000-08:00

So, last Monday was Valentine’s Day. The preceding Friday? That was “final pack your crap and go Day.” Yup, it was the time my mortgage company chose to slam the door on my metaphoric clutching fingers. Ok, maybe not metaphoric. They were quite real, and they really, really hurt.

For those of you who know—metaphorically speaking or not--my mortgage woe story is an epic tale. My mortgage company, Cenlar, and I have had a Beowulf/Grendel relationship. Well, except I’m not really Beowulf, and…well… they’re not really Grendel. I’d say that I’m more of a five-year-old with a Millennium Falcon and Cenlar is my father. Dad and I agree that as long as I do certain chores, I get to keep my toy.

My chores are established by Mom. This works great until mom decides to have more kids. Then there are more kids than chores—cuz apparently mom is prolific in the kid department. Mom is also a little arbitrary and drinks a lot, and that influences her ability to fairly deal out workloads. She decides the best way to handle this is to line us all up against the wall and let the Beebee gun of fair employment decide our fates.

Pump. Blam!

“Ow!”

That’s my little brother Charlie. He gets to water the horses. It’s a pretty easy job since we don’t have any horses.

Pump. Blam!

“Ow! Waaah!”

That’s my baby sister Gertrude. Mom asked her to go to the store and pick up some smokes. Gertrude pulls the power motor on her stroller and putters out. Gertrude may be young, but she’s got engine-uity. Yeah, all I’ve got are stupid puns and my Millennium Falco--

Thunk!

“Missed! No jobs for you, Rob!”

Scratch that. All I’ve got are puns.

Chewbacca wails from inside the ship.

Dad, being the benevolent father that he is, gives me time to find other chores before he takes away my toy. “You’ve had that toy too long. I can’t return it to the store, but you better get a job, or I’m gonna sell it to the gophers.

Damn gophers!

“Watch your mouth!”

“But I didn’t say it aloud!”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m Dad, now get a job.”

So I set out with my Millennium Falcon to search of a circus. Why a circus? Because, when I was three, I trained as a clown. The problem with three-year-old clowns though, is that they’re all terrified of other clowns. Why would a clown fearing three-year-old clown look for circus work? I don’t know! It’s a metaphor! Work with me! Let’s just say that that’s why I returned to work at home. Now I’m five. I’m a big boy, and I’m no longer afraid of clowns.

The problem is, there are a bunch of clowns looking for jobs out there. I’ve got the red nose and big shoes, but so do they—they have that and big-top experience: something I don’t have. Oh, I have entertained myself, but that hasn’t gotten me anything more than fuzzy hands. Even worse, I’m five and the prime funhouse hiring clown age is four-years-old. To them, I’m an over the hill ex-mama’s boy wannabe-fool.

Carnival after carnival I get tent flapped in my face. “Out of my way clown,” cry boorish barkers chasing after rube rabble cash. They don’t see my talent. They don’t see that I need work to save my Millennium Falcon. Nobody takes this crying on the inside clown seriously. I hang my whiteface in shame and return to my father.

“I can’t find work.”

“I know. “ he says, rubbing his chin. He’s eying my Falcon. It’s a little banged, and there’re makeup smudges on it. The landing gear doesn’t even pop out all the way anymore. I know he’s thinking about how disappointed I’d be if he took it.

Shaking his head, he says, “I’ll never get anything back for that piece of crap. You need to clean it up a bit.”

“I would, but I can’t afford the soap and sponge to clean it.” I spit on the plastic gun-bay windows, wiping it with my shirt. You can almost make out Han using Chewbacca as a dust mop inside. “See?”

Dad sighs and shakes his head in his usual, “I love you” fashion. “Ok, look. You write this twenty-page report on why I should let you keep the Millennium Falcon, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Ugh! I’m a joker not a writer! What choice do I have? I write the report, then I spend an extra three days correcting errors. Clowns can’t spell. I know that, so I give it to a girl at school. She looks it over, makes some suggestions. After she returns my paper, I make the final corrections, place the report in a nice folder, and bring it to my dad.

I find him working his front yard Star Wars spaceship sales emporium. He’s taking a tie-fighter from a brother and sister couple. “I’m sorry,” he says, handing their ship to my uncle Ted. Ted rents out spaceships. He hands my dad some change, and tosses the fighter in a pile marked, “fix and flip.”

I rush to Dad’s table. “Dad! Dad! Here’s my report!” I proudly extend the folder towards him.

He shakes his head. “I need you to mail it to me.”

“What?”

“It’s the rules. Mail it and then wait for my reply.”

So I mail it. Within two weeks I get a reply in the post box: “I did not receive pages 10-20. You’ll need to rewrite them.”

My floppy shoes hung low that night. Still, I’d done it once, I’d do it again--and I did! I mailed my new pages, and two weeks later I received my reply: “I need you to rewrite pages 10-20, we never received them.”

Wha?

This time I went out to talk to Dad again. I found him at the paper shredder. I thought I recognized my pages going in. Maybe I did. I knew that if that was the case, he was doing it to teach me something. I just needed to find out what it was. “Dad, I sent you those pages, why do you need them again.”

He continued shredding without saying a word.

“Dad?”

Silence.

“I see my pages right there, what’s going on?”

Another page enters the shredder.

Now, I’m clenching my fuzzy palmed fists. How frustrating! I’m doing all this work, and I’m not even guaranteed that I’ll keep my ship. I storm back to my room for another try at pages 10-20. Once again, I work them to perfection, and I send them in. My reply comes the next day.

We of Dad-lar are sorry. You have refused to complete our requested material in the allotted time. We have no choice but to move forward in our claim of your toy.

Love you bunches!

Dear ol’ Dad.

While dad slept, I tiptoed into his room. I wanted to show my love and appreciation for all he’d tried to do. Slowly, I undress. When I’m completely naked, I hop on his bed, both legs straddling him. Shocked, he sits up.

Smack! That’s the sound of a Millennium Falcon against his forehead it’s broken the door, but I feel better. Why am I naked? I wanted to make sure he remembered. And with that, my Falcon and I are out the door.

I’d run to join the circus, but I can’t. So, I take my Falcon, and flop down in an empty field. Dad is going to be mad. He’ll even come down hard on me when he does. It’s fine. I’ll enjoy my remaining time until he does. I begin motoring my ship around the field, dandelion fluff billowing in my wake.

Six months’ play time passes before Dad finally finds me. In the meantime, I’ve showed a little pirate girl my little spaceship.

“I always thought they were bigger.”

It may be small, but she likes it. She decides that she’d like to help me keep my Falcon. As a full-time pirate, she makes better than clown change. When swollen head dad stomps through my dandelion field, he’s got a little mini-note he tacks to the fuselage. It’s not the 95 theses. It’s a notice of auction. He’s gonna sell my toy to the highest bidder.

I knew this was going to happen. At least I have a little time to get Han, Luke and the rest of the rebels out before the ship goes on the block. My pirate girl offers to let me keep my toys on her Weeble ship to, and I call some friends from school to help me move them there.

That brings us to last Friday. Last Friday Dad called me and said “Send me twenty pages about why I should let you keep your falcon, and I’ll see what I can do. I wanted to hit him with the Falcon one more time, but the pirate girl said, “No, don’t. Send him the twenty pages.”

So I did. I’ve completed the packing, and Dad’s pushed the auction date back to March 15^th.We’ll see what happens.

That’s my situation in a chocolaty metaphor shell. Everything I own is packed up and waiting, just in case I need to move. Everything except this book I found, “Expressing life through allegory.” Maybe I can find a use for that…

Love Me!

2011-02-14T16:01:00.000-08:00

It’s Valentines Day! Did you get your valentine something special? If you say, “I don’t have a valentine,” slap yourself twice before continuing with this blog.

No, I’m not kidding. Do it.

I can wait all day.

Okay, now harder.

Once more, with feeling.

Okay, that’s better. Here’s the thing. Just because you don’t have some lovelorn fool salivating over your every hip-shimmy, doesn’t mean you don’t have a valentine. First and foremost, you have yourself. That’s right. Now give your valentine a big hug.

No, I’m not kidding. Do it.

I can wait all day.

Okay, now harder.

Once more, with feeling.

Thank you. Now since it’s Valentines Day, I suppose I could tell you all about what I’m doing for the Pirate Queen, and carry about it for a blog self-indulgent “look at me the cool blogger” kind of way. I could, but I won’t. See, I don’t want you to feel like I’m rubbing her in your face. I mean that’s kind of weird, and she’s not into the whole, rubby-rubby thing anyway. So forget it, even if that is what you want.

Some love is private.

So what’s left to talk about on V-Day? Well, we could sip and spin our traditional Kool-Aid cooler topics. Did you watch the Grammy’s? What about that Lady Gaga? What did you make of that pointy-shoulder prosthetic production? Kinda odd, huh? Still, that was her point. Speaking Valentine’s Day language, she’s saying “love me, cuz I was born this way.” Ok, well that’s not really true. I mean, it is what she said, but the fine lady was born a normal coo-coo goo-goo baby. She calculated her evolution into the crazy Gaga icon we see today.

“Look at me and love me! Talk about me! Talk about my egg!”

The PQ and I talk about her eggs, but we don’t put them on the stage for all to see. The intimacy of privacy adds legitimacy to our love. Gaga fans, don’t get me wrong; we all have a closet gaga. Well, I did, but the PQ threw mine out, along with my closet Stevie Nicks. Okay, she didn’t throw out Stevie. She just untied her from the chair and let her go.

“I’m sorry Miss Nicks, Rob isn’t really good at expressing love.

The PQ says there’s only room for one love in our house—and two cats. Our cats would love Gaga. They like anything they can play with. They can’t play with lady Gaga, but I’m sure they’d love to. See Gaga screams, “love me!” but you need to do it from afar. As a public figure, her private time is for self-love.

That’s fine. Don’t get me wrong oh Gaga-ites. She’s ”Born This Way.” I get it. It’s a nice song, and even if we’ve heard the message before (and it sounds uncommonly like Madonna’s “Express Yourself)”, I think it’s good message.

“Love me.”

Some people feel alone and unloved. I’ve felt that way before. It’s a bad place. Especially since we’re so blinded by the need to feel loved that we miss those reaching out with love. Sure, that last person who needs to worry about getting love is Lady Gaga. I’m sure she gets all forms of love in her mailbox every day.

“Uhm yeah, could you move that to the ‘rubber gloves only’ stack, please?”

We all deserve love, and on Valentine’s Day, and I think “Love Me” a great message. Let’s get it up on a billboard in bright letters and cram our love need down everybody’s throat. It’s better than all the plastic surgeon and divorce lawyer signs trying to cram themselves down my throat. Those signs are based in love insecurity.

“Who can love me?”

And if there’s something we Americans share in abundance, it’s insecurity. Maybe it’s the way we scream, “Love Me!” rather than whispering, “I love you.” Maybe that should be the next hit the next sincere artist. Not three-minutes about how cool I am that you’ve got to love me, but what about thirty seconds about how cool it is to share my love with you.

It is you know.

So if you’re reading my blog, thank you. I know that sometimes I come across as sarcastic and self-indulgent. That’s because I am. I’m a blogger. But, I love others too, and, yes, it’s a good and healthy love. So if you’re reading this blog, print it out, cut it in the shape of a little heart, and stick it to your fridge with that pizzeria magnet.

Me, I’m just a jobless blogger, but you, you’re loved.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Of Paws and Persistince.

2011-02-09T10:56:00.000-08:00

Bee-boop.

What the..?

Bee-boop.

Something electronic…

Bee-boop.

It’s eight am and electronic intrusions are unwelcome. Let’s face it, at eight am, there are very few intrusions that are Rob-welcomed. Pirate Queen snuggle. That’s a good thing…

Bee-boop.

Ok, but this noise isn’t. Persistence: It’s great when we have it, but when other things show ability to persist, it gets real annoying—

Bee-boop.

Real quick.

What the heck is the noise? I’m running down my list of annoying electronics and finally register the answer: PQ’s cell phone. It’s dying. It’s a painful waiting death, and it wants me to share. I should plug it in. That’s what it thinks.

Bee-boop.

I can’t help but agree. Hopping out of bed to find the phone, I find something better: cat yak. It’s now between my toes.

Great…

Bee-boop.

Into the bathroom I hop, foot held high, as to not stamp stomach jetsam all over the carpet. My toes feel gross. There’s a special goosh to cold cat yak that can only be experienced through spin shivers and chilled convulsions. Those spasms mingled with my manual dexterity add to the degree of hopping difficulty, so that my hop is more of a wall slam-dance really. There’s no worry of the feline goo dropping free. It’s good and stuck. I hit the bathroom linoleum with my good foot and slip-fall onto my bad ass.

Ow.

Bee-boop.

Mrowr.

I recognize the new noise: It’s a cat. It sounds like PQ’s. She’s probably letting me know that her tummy doesn’t feel good. My butt isn’t doing too great either, let me tell ya.

Mrowr.

“Shh! Cat, give me a se—“

Bee-boop.

For a phone ready to die, this one’s got enough charge to let me know for quite a while. It’s the martyr phone. I could make a PQ joke here, but she reads my blog. I’ll abstain. I’ll run with “Maybe the phone should save its strength.” You’ll laugh and we’ll pretend nothing happened.

Ix-nay on the artyr-may.

Mrowrrrr.

Well except for maybe that one.

I scoot to the toilet paper roll and pull a few sheets. Removing what ick I can from between my toes. The toes welcome the new dry feeling. Except my queen buys this cheap toilet paper, it’s sticking to the yak part it won’t remove. I’ve now successfully tarred and paper-fiber-feathered my foot.

Bee-boo—

Mrowr.

Great. I think the cat is telling me that there’s an annoying noise in the living room. Next step is to stand up. I need to wash my foot. I’m still half asleep, so I choose the sink over the tub. I know. Not a wise choice for the uncoordinated, but I’m persistent. With one hand I scrub my foot while the other hand clutches death tight around the sink basin and counter top.

Mrowr.

“Yes. And thank you too.” Some days are long before they even start. Some days we just have to push through like an unwieldy Rob-blog. I don’t mind them (the plow days—Unwieldy Rob-blogs are like watching an Earnest P. Worell film festival). Sure they’re annoying, but at least I know what I’m dealing with and I know that there’s an end.

Bee-boop.

See, the last few years were flying a holding pattern for me. A jobless foreclosure is not quite the storybook ending I was looking for, but at least I’m landing. Persistence is tough, but it’s nearly impossible in the face of the unknown. It’s easier to despair. I once read about a long distance swimmer who was trying to cross from Hawaii to California. She swam and swam, and then she hit a fog bank. She couldn’t see her goal. Thinking she couldn’t make it any further, she signaled her spotting team and she gave up. They pulled her into the boat just a few feet from her goal. If she could have seen how close she was, she could have made it.

Mrowr.

That’s me--Not the Mrowr. That’s the cat--I’m the guy trying to blindly reach my goal and for the past few years, I couldn’t see a thing.

Bee-boop.

And now with dry foot on the floor, I’m scanning the living room. I can’t see my queen’s phone either. Where the?

Mrowr.

“Shh cat! I’m waiting!”

And waiting…

Ever notice when you want something to happen it takes forever to transpire? Now that things have started happening, I’m feeling better. Sure they aren’t the things that I wanted, but I know how to react. I know what I need to do. There are other things out there too There’s—

Mrow—

Bee-boop.

The phone is over by the couch. I can’t see it, but it’s cornered. One more beep should do.

Mrowr.

“Sorry, not the same thing, cat.” I just need to be patient. Patience rolls in on cat feet and yaks on your floor, and makes you stand in it till it dries. I hate patience, but now there are time limits on things I can see them. I’ve applied for grad school. If I get in, I’ll find out by mid-April. If I don’t, well, I’ll find that out too, but then it’s on to plan b. I have a plan b.

Bee-boop.

I’m right! It’s by me, but where?

Between the cushions?

Now I’m tearing the couch apart.

Mrowr.

The cat’s standing by the kitchen door. It looks like she’s hungry. After what I cleaned off my foot, I can see why.

Bee-boop.

Behind the couch?

No.

Where?

It’s in the kitty tower beside the couch. How did it get there?

Bing-bong!

That’s the door. What the—

“Pizza! I have your anchovy special!”

Now the cat is standing by my leg purring. The morning fog is becoming cat-paw clear.

Bee-boop.

At least I’ve found the phone. Now I need to find the cord to plug it in. Maybe the cat will show me where that is, after I pay for the pizza.

Maybe.

It’s all a game of persistence.

You Don't Bug Me

2011-02-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was movie weekend at the Rob and Pirate house. The Pirate and I wanted to watch this year’s Oscar hopefuls, but too poor, we snuggled beneath blankets, and bathed in the glow of previous Oscar nods.

“What about Dances with Wolves?”

“Naw, let’s do Avatar. The effects are better.”

Who said which? It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. Unable to find either movie, we settled for Return of The King--well, sort of. See, my queen doesn’t believe in watching series movies out of order. It doesn’t matter if it’s Indiana Jones, Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings: you can’t appreciate one movie without watching them all. That’s great, and I do agree in a certain level of elevated appreciation, but sometimes I don’t want to dedicate my whole weekend to a marathon of one movie. When it comes to Lord of the Rings, the only things more epic than Peter Jackson’s middle earth vision are the couch sores on the middle of my butt. I can’t sit still that long.

“It rubs the ointment on my butt. It puts the lotion on the coffee table.”

The queen refused, so we moved further down our epic quest for Oscar edification. Having nixed cinematic quality, we settled on Jerry Maguire. PQ and I cuddled in under our blankets, blurting famous quotes on cue. We both hate when other people do that, but when it was just us, we ramp up the dialog to melodramatic proportions, creating our own cine-sofa interpretation.

“Show me the money!” Screams the pirate queen jumping up on the coffee table, smushing my ointment tube under her toes. White ooze envelopes her toes and splurts across the table.

“I hated myself! No, I hated my place in the world.” I say bursting into tears.

“That was good!” The queen smiled wiping her feet. “I actually believed it. Baby? Baby? Aww, baby it’ll be ok…”

Some movie lines are too close to be funny. Both Jerry and I are redefining our place in the world. Dramatic shifts like that take tectonic efforts. My queen didn’t give me much time to dwell on it though, because our place in the movie had shifted. Jerry’s now in the middle of the man-hater circle chumming his guts over the waters, until finally he says, “I love you…You complete me. “

“Shut up! Shut up!” says Renee and my queen, then the movie freezes. I look to the pirate. She’s clenching the remote. “What a bunch of crap. Do you believe that?”

I always thought it was sweet. Right now I’m willing my tear ducts into reverse osmosis. “No. You’re right.” I sniff. “ It’s crap.”

“I mean, call me a cynic—“

“Cynic.” I mutter under my breath.

“…but that’s just not right.” She continues, “Who completes anybody? If you can’t be whole on your own—you can’t go looking to somebody else to fill your void.”

A dirty joke crossed my mind, but I let it go; the Pirate Queen was taking no prisoners.

“You complete me? Please! That’s not even realistic. That’s just a bumper sticker for people who think that love can be encapsulated and sold. “

“Uhm…” I’m a writer. I like bumper sticker speak…sometimes…”Well, ok… What would you rather he say?”

My queen leans back. Her eyes close as her head faces the ceiling thinking through love’s bumper sticker. This lasts three moments, when her neck snaps back and her eyes pop open like some creepy Twilight Zone doll. She says, “You don’t bug me,” and restarts the film.

“You had me at ‘hello.’”

Now it’s my turn. I snatch the remote, jab my thumb into the pause button and ask, “You don’t bug me? What does that mean?”

“It means we get along.” She sighs, scrunching her back into the pillows, my queen sits up. “What causes most divorces?”

“Cheating?”

“No, people don’t get along.”

“I think it’s deeper than that.”

“Is it? People divorce because somebody gets annoyed past the point of no return.”

“What about cheating?”

PQ nods. “If you cheated, that would really bug me.”

“No, the person who cheats, they’re obviously missing something at home, but not necessarily annoyed.”

“I think they are. They’re bugged. Maybe it’s because they’re not getting laid every day.”

Leaning back, I say “That would bug me.” It’s a bluff.

“Yeah baby, I know” she pats my leg, “not gonna happen.”

Now I’m bugged. But I’m not convinced. “It sounds so callus though.”

“You’re the one who wanted the bumper sticker. Some truths don’t make pithy slogans.” The Pirate Queen leans in, resting her head on my shoulder. “Love isn’t a neat package. It’s a bunch of little gives and takes. It’s about, after the big giddy fades, and somebody wants to watch Strange Brew, you love them anyway. “Rocking her head back, she kissed my cheek. “Like I love you.”

Leaning forward, the queen rubs a dollop of ointment from the table, “Now let’s watch the Lord of the Rings.”

And so we did. Why? Because I love my queen: she doesn’t bug me.

Buying Monkeys For a Song

2011-02-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

“Let’s buy this one.” Six years ago that’s what MyEx said. And after exploring myriads of SoCal houses, I agreed: We’d found our home. I agreed so strongly, that when we split, I stayed. I knew the risk, but deed was done and it, and the loan were in my name. Why not? At that point, the house was all I had left to lose, and I wasn’t giving it up.

“…and this chair! I’m keeping this chair!”

Besides, selling my home was out of the question. I was a seller in a buyer’s market. Ten other houses on the block were offered, and others sold for a song. No, really, a song. Billy Ray Cyrus had picked up a new achey breaky home.

House sales were that bad.

I put David Hasselhoff on speed dial.

No! I didn’t want to sell. I didn’t have to. I had a job. I could face the music until the house value returned. Two lean years later I lost weight eating my words and ramen, and I lost my job. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret my decision. My pride was just bigger than my wallet—or my luck.

I mean really? Who predicted the perfect financial storm: wife, job, money? I’m really an average guy trying to eek out an average life. I just blog about it.

EEK!

Yeah, sorry readers, you bear the brunt of that decision. My point is, though is that the average guy doesn’t see all these things happen unless he has a serious monkey on his back. And yet, right now that monkey is the US economy and I am the average guy, and my monkey had come home to roost.

Monkeys roost. Who knew?

Half of America found out the hard way. We’ve got a mortgage monkeys on or back stealing our roost and flinging poo on all we see. But I can’t complain too loudly, I’m not the only one going through this. So this is what I did:

“Hello? David Hasselhofff?”

No, I tried weathering it out.

“Tut, tut, looks like rain.”

Yeah, I was a poo writer floating on a balloon payment I couldn’t afford. The writer’s job market is also a buyers market. So was the job market for machinists, carpenters, architects, police, pilots, copy assistants, backscrubbers…

I know. I applied for all of them. Ok, maybe only backscrubber. I heard Scarlett Johansson was needy, and I had a lufa. I did what I could do. Over the last ten months I tried convincing my mortgage company that they could reduce my payments. Maybe something affordable on unemployment? Unlike most of my readers, they laughed.

Monkey laughter still ringing in my ears, I’ve started packing life into u-haul exodus boxes. That’s my job now. This job is hard. Not only is the house filled with six years of stuff, it’s acquired six years of memories too--some with MyEx, some without. This work is like divorcing again. Not like divorcing MyEx, just divorcing, and leaving someone who shared some good times and bad. Someone who was a close companion, and someone who will no longer be a part of my life again. It’s hard.

There’s another familiarity too. Like divorce, there’s the feeling of failure. I told somebody, “Yeah, I’ll pay for this.” And now it’s like, “HAHA! Gotcha!” I’m not that Gotcha kind of guy. I do my best to pay my debts.

And yet my best won’t do.

It’s not even like I’m overextended. I mean other than the mortgage. I pay all my other bills. Everybody’s happy. Except them. So now what? Well like I said, I’ve been packing things into boxes. I don’t want to go, but I need a backup plan. This week I talked to the Pirate Queen on the phone.

“Let me ask you a question.” She says.

“Okay,” I sit down on the ladder in the garage. It’s a good time for a break. My trash barrel is full. The dust from my old shelves coats my hands and cloys my lungs. The sweat runs mud rivulets down my arms dripping to the floor. I won’t get much further today anyway.

“Can’t we use my income to try and keep your house?”

I’m silent. This is the first time we’ve breached this topic. It’s moot anyway. She doesn’t make what I was making with my last employer and even then I was barely making my payments. I spend the next few moments explaining this to her.

“So we talk to your mortgage company. Maybe they’ll reduce your rates.”

“I tried.” I then explain that process with her. It’s a long ugly story that includes them sending me forms. Me filling out forms. Me sending them forms. Them sending the same forms and ask why I never filled out the first forms. Repeating this process twice until I FedExed their forms back, with a signature required. They stopped sending forms after that. They sent me a new letter:

“Hey dude! Since you’re not filling out our forms, we’ve decided you don’t qualify for a loan modification.” Yeah, I paraphrased. Anyway, that is what they said. I sent them another letter explaining my feelings, and we haven’t talked since.

Still, my queen has instilled hope. Maybe with her income, we can do it. Spitting grit, I push the trashcan to the curb. Maybe I can unload my boxes!

As I’m rolling out the can, the PQ says, “I don’t know why we haven’t talked about this before.”

“Which?” I ask.

“The house. Why we haven’t talked about me helping you there.”

“Oh,” I dropped off the can, whipping dust against my pants. “I know I never mentioned it because it was my debt.”

There’s silence, then “What do you mean?”

“It’s my house. It’s something I bought with my ex. It’s something that you weren’t a part of, and I didn’t want to ask you to pay for that problem—especially when I wasn’t helping with more than unemployment.”

“Well,” she said. “We’re getting married, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“That’s something that married people do. Married people talk about these things. I’ve got lots of debt, that when we get married, you’re going to have to take on.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“Right now, you make the money.”

“Trust me. It won’t always be that way. Now what can we do to save your house.”

It was the weirdest feeling. I’d depended on myself for the past three years, and I forgot what it was like to have somebody to lean on.

When I got home, I called Springboard. Springboard is an intermediary. They’re a non-profit. They don’t ask for money. Their goal is to help reconcile relations between lenders and borrowers. After 45 minutes on the phone, they said, “We’ll see what we can do. We’re going to recommend loan modification for your situation.”

Whoo Hoo! I knew it wasn’t a guarantee, but at least somebody was trying to work with me. That felt good. That was my yesterday in the sun.

Today I got my answer. I drove to my house to check the mail. Sifting through my pile of bills and ads I looked up. On my door was a note:

NOTICE OF TRUSTEE SALE.

They’re auctioning my home.

It hurt. I was losing the one thing I’d fought to hold. But my hurt didn’t last. The house wasn’t the only thing I had left anymore. I can let go of the past. I have a future with my queen. I’ve boxed the screaming mortgage monkey and left him on the lawn for some other homeowner. I’ve also mailed a copy of the sale information to David Hasselhoff. You never know what a song can buy these days.