Archive for the ‘Day-To-Day’ Category

NYC / Books

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Last week I had the face-melting pleasure of visiting the grand old city of New York, New York. It was incredible, and I’d have stayed much longer than a day had I the time. There’s hardly a drought of NYC vacation logs on the Internet, so I’ll spare the ramblings about the skyscrapers and Lady Liberty; but I must at least say this: Mars 2121, despite being both a delicious and fun restaurant, smacks of a fancied-up Chuck E. Cheese.

Something more interesting than the buildings, themed restaurants, and historical monuments was the immense variety of people. All shades of colors, all income levels, all with their own set of interests and personalities. And I had my camera.

But how do you photograph someone from a place like that? Everyone seems so pretty, so important, so hurried. I was tempted a few times to ask certain people, “Excuse me, may I take your photograph?” but stepped down out of fear of being punched in the eye or kicked in the navel. Instead, I just put on the appearance of a crazy tourist snapping pictures of buildings, when in reality I was really just a crazy tourist snapping pictures of people.

A collage of people from NYC, all with their eyes censored...or something.

In other news, I work at a bookstore now. With my employee discount and our already cheap prices, I’ve been tempted to buy a few books. After getting my first paycheck, I almost pulled out the few books I’ve been eying; but, in the nick of time, I decided against it and went to the library. It turns out you can save lots of money by just checking out books from your local library! And there are additional, even-more-significant bonuses that you get from library books that don’t come at a bookstore:

  • Strange smells
  • Yellowed pages
  • Ability to know that your book was first checked out on October 7, 1988
  • Brown smudges
  • Contagious diseases
  • Illegible markings

In fact, I’m still trying to decipher what the markings mean in my borrowed copy of The Screwtape Letters. For whatever reason, some dastardly fellow scribbled on multiple pages. Was his intent to highlight his favorite passages? Or did he (or she) simply not like the material on pages xix, xxv, 1, 41, 48, and 53?

I don’t know, and neither did “Rg”–the alias of one of the librarians–who first noted the markings on January 1, 2004.

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Issues of Late

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

There are a few things that have been bothering me as of late: a wild, unsupported argument for shouting a rhyme, and a guy who decided (on a whim, I suppose) to tell me how he’d kill someone with a spoon.

A few months ago I ran across a passage in a literature book that had the audacity to propose that simply speaking of a delicacy would give the speaker the same exact pleasure as if he or she had actually tasted the food. Although I am no culinary linguist, I will stand by my conviction that uttering the words “smooth, rich, gourmet-renowned, crunchy, delicious wafers” does not compare at all to sinking one’s teeth into a savory Necco coin. What’s even more preposterous than a claim of such nature is the example the book gives for one:

I scream, you scream
We all scream
For ice cream.

These lines are an exuberant evocation of the joy of ice cream. Indeed, chanting the words turns out to be as pleasurable as eating ice cream.

The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Edition, Page 675
ISBN: 0312259182

At best, we can assume that the author, Michael Meyer, is making an obscure reference to self-induced hypnosis. But on a hot day, surrounded by a bunch of grody kids incessantly chanting an irksome rhyme, nothing compares to an actual bowl of ice cream.

For the record, these are ice creams I like:

  • Peanut buttery ice creams
  • Caramel-drenched ice creams
  • Not-almond’ed ice creams
  • DONT FORGET THAT I MIGHT ALSO ENJOY HAVING BALLOONS FILLED WITH ICE CREAM AT MY NEXT BIRTHDAY PARTY. They would be fun and delicious to pop. I would bite them with my mouth.

But I can live amongst such ice-cream lunacy. The events surrounding lunch yesterday, however, sent shivers down my spine. As I was standing in line, as I am apt to do, a guy whom I have only briefly seen struck up a conversation with me.

“Hey,” he began, addressing me without any emotion whatsoever.
“Oh, hey.”

He was standing on top of a broken plastic spoon. A portion of the bowl had snapped off, and what remained was a jagged mess of utensil.

“You could kill someone with that,” he said, motioning to the spoon.
“Yeah, uh, I guess you could, huh?”
“I would do it like this,” he stated, demonstrating in a sort of thrust how he might murder someone with a spoon. “Or like this.” This time he had both of his hands in a fist, one on top of the other, and made a stabbing movement towards his neck. “Then I would tear out their throat.” At this, I turned away with a feeling of absolute terror in my heart.

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There Goes my Content

Monday, February 25th, 2008

Today I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of friends at a Chinese buffet at about 3 PM. Naturally, it was pretty empty with the exception of an elderly couple, the owners’ kids (concentrating hard on homework), and this bald guy who looked pretty cool. At one point, I got up to get myself some egg drop soup. While I was filling my bowl with the viscous stuff, which seemed to me more mucus-like than soup-like, the elderly woman engaged herself in pointing at some breaded, crispy, meaty looking things and croaking, “What is that? What is that? What is that?” Frankly, I did not know, and I was far enough away that her question obviously wasn’t directed at me. In due time, a man with cooking clothes (apron, chef’s hat, etc.) came over and pointed to the label above the dish. “Pizza,” he said, as he pointed to the crooked label that clearly read, “Pizza;” the food looked more like fried chicken than pizza, so I will unhesitatingly state that I fully believe that this restaurant worker had never seen a slice of pizza in his life.

Unsatisfied with the cook’s answer, the woman reverted to her consistent asking: “What is that? What is that? What is that?”

In less-anecdotal news:

Kristen and I recently broke up, and so I feel obligated to remove the link to the Valentine’s Day shrine to her. I’m a little reluctant, seeing as how it comprises about half of the content on my site, but I also don’t want her to beat me up. I’ve kept the page at http://www.ianmh.com/vday/ but removed it from the tab list on the main page.

I was also about a virtual inch away from having another page of content on my site, but, for legal reasons, I cannot put it up right away. (Don’t get too excited–it has nothing to do with drugs, sex, bombs, or John Elway. In fact, it has more to do with orthography than anything, which is considered by most of the world to be the most uninteresting subject ever devised.)

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Valentine’s Day, Everybody

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Any previous year I would’ve sat back and, with the general Valentine’s Day cynicism, scoffed at the abominable materialism of the whole holiday; how Wal-Mart sells giant plush animals for ten times the cost of any rustic carnival; how I used to be forced into bringing silly little Godzilla Valetines taped with Dum-Dums to my entire fourth-grade class; and how anything Necco produces is the sheer antithesis of “good.”

This year, however, things are a little different. What’s wrong with pandering to the extortionists if you’re doing it to show a loved one you care? Most things, I’m sure. But still. This year, I’ve given in to the Valentine’s Day phenomenon and, as of now, don’t regret it. I’ve got a wonderful girlfriend, and I want to show her I care. (I had a dream last night that I bought her mixed nuts, and I ate a handful of them. She ate the Brazil nuts, which was gross. When I woke up, I said to myself, “Psh, more like Fathers’ Day, if you ask me!”) So, I’ve made a little tribute to her, a recent addition to the site [link removed]. Happy Valentine’s Day, Kristen!

One of these days I’m going to find out if Valentines Day has an apostrophe in it. One of these days.

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