Write, Rinse, Repeat*

Those Other Jobs

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 01:50:56 GMT

Hollywood Boulevard is ripe with the smell of urine and the dancing antics of people dressed up as familiar movie and comic book characters. It seems that their main objective is to pose in photos for tips.

Today I saw the guy that dresses like Freddy Kreuger.

Well, Freddy didn't have his mask on yet, as he was not horribly burned and did indeed required one, and was walking to a more populated area.

He looked sad, like he hated going to work too. Somehow, that seems unexpected.

Missing the Boat

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:59:41 GMT

For whatever reason, I began thinking about the phrase "missing the boat" today. As in "I sure missed the boat on that one," in which "that one" is any current event, style, trend, or social grace that one may learn about long after its initial appeal to the masses.

Now in this day and age, it doesn't feel as though "missing the boat" can't be all that bad. In regards to ferries and other water transports, they tend to run on schedules of thiry minutes to two hours. Thus "missing the boat" is only a minor inconvenience.

But imagine ye olden days. Imagine you just missed the first boat leaving for the New World. That's like missing out on a lifetime. "Honey, the rooster was just killed by the plague and I didn't wake up in time. I missed the boat." In those days "missing the boat" could refer to never getting the memo, or hooved messenger, regarding the fact that red tunics were suddenly the mark of adulterers and you lived out the rest of your days being silently judged with the harsh burning eyes around you.

"Oh, there's a cure for influenza? I must have missed the boat on that one, my wife just died of it last night." In that case you just "missed the boat to the new world" with the extent of not having the knowledge.

So in a sense, there are different levels of boat missing.

1. Missing your ride across a lake via rowboat and/or canoe.

This is a case where, for example, maybe you forgot to wear underwear. You missed the boat, but hey, you can swim a day without the extra fabric.

2. Missing a ferry.

Using this wording might mean you showed up to a sold out movie and have to wait a while until the next one, thus, you missed the boat on knowing how popular a movie was. Please note that this can in turn relate to missing a much bigger boat if you don't see the movie until it comes out on video.

3. Missing the boot.

Check the closet.

4. Missing an olde fashioned ship with sails.

As previously mentioned, a fault of this magnitude could lead to death, ridicule by one's peers, and an overall cluelessness to what is right and wrong. Missing this ship can mean delays of months or even years.

This is definitely as useful a phrase today as it was way back when. But you may want to specifiy what the magnitude of your boat missing was, such as my "level 3 olde fashioned ship missing" of owning a cell phone.

Darkness at Noon

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 02:36:15 GMT

We seem to live in a culture of saving. Saving money, saving lives, saving souls, saving documents, saving hobbies, and saving time. It's the saving of time that I have grown weary of. I speak from time to time with a friend of mine in Arizona, where they have kicked the use of Daylight Savings Time. And when it comes down to it, the practice is truly a stale remnant of farming days when daylight was necessary for the day to day existence of the human race. No either I've misplaced my plow or this doesn't apply to the modern world. The only positive aspect of ending Daylight Savings Time in the fall, is waking up one Sunday morning and realizing that you're not as positively slothful as you previously thought. It's as though you just won a prize, one hour of your life back. You can apply that hour to terrible films you wasted your time on, working overtime, listening to stupid people, or that one class you just couldn't stand. But when you realize the sun is going down as you're cooking bacon, you realize that the tradeoff wasn't as sweet a deal as it initially seemed. Each and every workday seems longer, because the sun droops before you can leave. The birds are up and chirping while you're still experiencing the thirty second yawn at 6am. The single, solitary hope is the promise of spring. That one day when an hour is stolen from your day and you're mad until you realize that it can stay light until 9 or 10pm and you feel so much more alive. I whine. I complain. But I think the first time you give up an hour of your day in the spring to experience longer days might just make it all worth it.