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| Man, it's been a long time. I have lots to talk about...I'll put it up as I think of it. After all, it is you, the loyal reader, that I live for. Also, this is almost like telling everyone your secrets, but no one reads my posts, so it is completely safe!
HAHAHA
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| So I was signed up for some sort of survey program that will make money for ADG. To make a long story short, it is the shittiest thing ever. I can't qualify for these surveys to save my life, so basically wasting my time. In fact, the last survey I qualified for asked me how much I knew about specific cable companies, and then proceeded to take 45 minutes of my time while I had to answer in depth questions about companies I told it I didn't know anything about! I would also like to point out a faulty marketing PLOY by these survey
people. Margaret and I were taking a survey for 15 minutes about a new
Jim Carrey movie which sounded good but based on the preview the movie
looks horrible. After the preview, it asked how good we thought the movie would be. When I said "might or might not see it", it said, oh, well, why not definitely? It asked if we could "see
everything", "see almost everything", "see some" of the preview, etc. Then it asked how
much we could hear. Margaret says, "Oh, I couldn't hear that one guy
at the beginning," so I clicked "could hear almost everything." So then the
survey says, "We're sorry, we guess you didn't catch all of the preview so your opinion doesn't count"! How much bullshit is that? I am going to go to the Plaza and picket that goddamn movie when it comes out, that's how much I hate this shit.
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| "Oh Xanga."
Mr. Timothy Willett made that statement a while ago. I thought it odd to leave such a short post. But then I began to think.
Today I decided to look through the friends I subscribe to on Xanga.
And then I realized that Xanga is becoming a sort of burial ground.
People have poured out their hearts and minds onto their computers and sent it headlong into the public domain.
And then they forgot.
They decided that Xanga was not worth their time. They decided that the real world was more important than the faceless people that they lopsidedly argued with, socialized with, vented on. Slowly they pulled away, slowly they moved on, until only the shell was left. Forgotten arguments, archaic opinions.
I sift through forgotten posts, some left years ago, that only few bothered to comment on, whose comments were never read, whose posters themselves have moved on. Those posters' final entries were brooding, sometimes comical, sometimes random, but always short.
And so I now know why Mr. Timothy Willett made that infinitely poignant statement:
"Oh Xanga."
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|  So I like the phrase "lavender fields" for some reason, so I was going to write a poem that incorporated it. However, poetry isn't my strong suit, so I stopped. But then I noticed that Provence, which I thought was known for lavender, was right across the Ligurian Sea from Tuscany, which I also thought was known for lavender. I wondered if there were some prevailing winds or something that distributed lavender seeds eons ago. But then I looked at a map of Italy, and I found out that Liguria and Piemonte, the two regions in Italy directly between Provence and Tuscany, are also known for their lavender. So of course, I am wondering where exactly lavender is located, but I can't find a map of lavender distribution. So I made a map of the area in question. Based on the westernmost edge, reading left to right the regions are Provence, Piemonte, Liguria, and Tuscany. Unfortunately, I have already grown very bored of this topic, so I did not look up other surrounding areas. I am just going to go to bed and never mentioning lavender again. Not that you would want me to.
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| "Jason, where are my jeans?"
"What?"
"Where are my jeans?"
A pause. An ugly realization. Her jeans.
"Oh!" I rolled out of bed, not yet fully awake but fully aware of the problem that had just presented itself to me. I knew where her jeans were, but I was hesitant to say. “They’re out on the line,” I mumbled as I shuffled past her pantless form, more out of fear than sleepiness.
The previous evening, Emma Green had given me a very simple task: take her jeans out of the washer when they were done and put them in the dryer. She said she didn’t like leaving wet clothing lying in the washer because they would start to stink. So my job was to take them out and put them in the dryer. After giving me this one-sentence instruction, she and Margaret walked out the door and left to go see Feist at the Starlight. Yes, a blindingly simple task, but one that I was destined to screw up.
Not ten minutes after the girls had gone, the washer clicked off. Silence. I got off the couch and walked over to the laundry area. After pulling out the freshly washed jeans, I made the fateful decision to only follow half of the already short instructions. Instead of reaching for the dryer door, I reached instead for the clothespin basket. Why run the dryer for one pair of jeans? I thought to myself. How typical of my mistaken logic.
Turning the jeans inside out so the dying rays of the sun would not tarnish the rich dark color, I hung the pants upside down on the clothesline in the backyard. Propping it up with an old board, I went inside, pleased at my environmental conscientiousness.
Now, as I walked out the front door and around the house, I cursed my eco-friendly outlook the night before. I futilely chanted to myself “Please be dry please be dry please be dry.” Compared to the gentle breeze of the day before, the silence of the morning was oppressing; the sun rose behind me and mocked me for being afraid of it the previous evening.
The jeans, of course, were not dry at all. Whether they had ever been dry was irrelevant; the morning dew would have erased any warm dry feeling by this point. So I walked back into the house, holding a still-wet pair of jeans.
Emma was at the kitchen counter, doing who-knows-what; I didn’t have the courage to look up. “Well, they didn’t dry all the way,” I lied feebly, stuffing them into the dryer and turning the heat setting to high. Unfortunately, I proceeded to yank the “Push to Start” knob clean off the machine. While the dryer began to shake, I shoved the knob back into place and started to walk to my room.
“Thank you.” Emma had spoke her third sentence of the morning. Was that sarcasm? Ignorance? There was no way to tell. I expected the fourth sentence to be something like “I have a blunt instrument and I am coming to kill you,” but that would be seconds, maybe even minutes, into the future. As it stood, I had time to make it back to my bed and reflect on my life.
Laying in bed, trying desperately to appear as asleep as possible, I listened to the clunk clunk clunk of the dryer as the jeans tumbled inside. While I had never held a grudge against a household appliance, I hated that dryer right then for one reason: it did not heat up. For some reason the $25 price tag did not include heat, and utter resentment now welled up in my soul for it. Had I only known that would piss Emma off and consequently impact my ability to have children, I would never have agreed to buy it.
Not ten minutes later, the dryer door opened and the machine shut off. I could feel her mind working as I thought of her feeling the damp denim. And then, something familiar greeted my ears: silence. I imagined her going upstairs to find another pair of pants to wear, but I didn’t hear a sound on the creaky stairs. The next noise I heard was that of the front door shutting as she left for the morning.
So did she wear the pants? I didn’t stop to look in the dryer, and she will already have changed clothes the next time I see her, so I have no way of knowing. I hope that if she did wear the wet pants, I won’t hear about it. But perhaps I too will feel slightly uncomfortable the next time I wear my jeans.
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