Author: Jeff

Myrtle-Edwards Park, I sit down on the beach and soak in the sun. I laugh at my t-shirt and jeans, they’re practically my uniform, I never wear anything else. A nice breeze, I lay back against a log and read my book. A steady stream of joggers go by on the path above me. A tired-looking man sits among the debris at the other end of the beach smoking a cigarette. A woman wearing layers is picking through the rocks; she hides from the glare of the sun under a giant umbrella. Two girls on lunch break from work run out onto the beach, stop in different places and lay down in the pebbles.

At home I inspect my sunburn: the back of my arms and my face. The area of my neck that was covered by my chin’s shadow and the left side of my forehead (covered by the non-cowlick part of my bangs) are unaffected.

Six things that are true, one that isn’t true, and three books I own but haven’t read (in no particular order):

1. At the zoo, I saw a monkey slip between the bars of its cage into another cage. No one else noticed and I didn’t tell anybody.
2. Don Quixote
3. At a bar someone asked me, “What are you laughing at?” in a threatening way. I responded by laughing.
4. I watched the first season cliffhanger episode of Friends when it originally aired.
5. I redesigned an EDI system.
6. I ate a dog biscuit because I wanted to know what it would taste like.
7. Kesey’s Garage Sale
8. Data Modeling
9. I reached over a barricade to touch an exhibit at Rembrandt’s house and set off an alarm.
10. When I cut myself shaving, it’s always in the same place.

I’m not so much writing as I am listing. In place of 1, 2, 3’s, I’m using “I said”, “I went”, “anyway”, and “so”. Inspiration strikes, I may just as well compose a top ten bands list.

There’s a little picture of a maple leaf on the label of the brand of maple syrup that I get, so I thought that it must be made in Canada. Then I realized that as maple syrup, it has an excuse to have a maple leaf on the label without being Canadian. But then I looked at the label again and it said “Made in Canada”. So now I don’t know if the maple leaf is for the tree or if it’s for Canada.

I got this email on Monday morning: “Guess what… you’ve got a secret admirer! Want to find out who it is? Just click to [URL excised]!”

I immediately suspected one friend who might be teasing me. I considered calling her on it, but I had some doubt and wondered if someone else may have registered a genuine crush or was playing some mind games. I investigating the site a little, made up a list (taking into consideration the time the email was sent, Monday before 9:00.), but decided it was just to much of a mind-fuck to mess with. Plus I thought, I would basically be fishing for a crush – which might be against the nature of the thing.

On Tuesday the “service provider” sent me a hint. Or rather, hey sent me through a couple of hoops to find a hint. I had to register for a job search site (for which I guess they got a referral fee) using a phony address, then fill in a quote from the job search site to show I’d been there.

The clue was that my secret admirer’s first name started with a letter from within a particular range of the alphabet. I checked my list, but only one name didn’t fit the bill. The odd thing was that, though there’d been no other clues, the email and the site both said, “This is your THIRD hint.” “THIRD” in allcaps, I assumed that this meant it was from someone whose first initial is the third letter from that range, i.e.: my original suspect. I checked my sent & deleted folders and my address book for others’ with that initial, but didn’t find another likely candidate.

I forgot about it for awhile, but this morning decided to call her on it. I filled in her email address and hit “send”. There was no confirmation, meaning it wasn’t her and I’d just sent her an anonymous email. A little later I asked her about it and she’d immediately passed it on to people she suspected were messing with her head. And so it spreads among the insecure – like a computer virus or like the email about PBS funding.

I’m not going to play this anymore. I’d like to know who it was, but I don’t want to expose myself to potential embarrassment. I think I’ll give someone from that list a call though.

My tea kettle has died.

I first realized that something was wrong about a week ago – as water reached a boil the whistle began by sputtering before going into a slightly lower tone than before. I inspected the stained top and the mottled bottom, but found no cracks or oddities. In the same way that my right knee has become a little creaky and in the way that Pop Rocks just don’t taste the same, I decided, the kettle is aging. That’s fine – it’s not old, it’s just older.

It is blue and of the variety that has no lid – it receives and evacuates water through the same spout. It belonged to my old roommate Joe. When we moved, he was ready to throw it away; his new home had plenty of dishes. I would have let him, I’d left my kettle at a house where I’d lived before. But I went to retrieve it there, saw the state that it was in – lidless and rusty where the paint had chipped – so I claimed Joe’s kettle.

Since then it’s been the same old story (albeit at three different houses). It waits on the back burner, ready to boil water whenever the need for tea surfaces.

Today I washed it, scrubbing the outside and thoroughly rinsing out the inside. I opened the spout and peaked inside – there was a pinprick of light, a tiny hole. I filled it with water and held the kettle out in front of me. Alas, a little stream of water peed into the sink from the hole.

So, anyway, I guess I’ll have to get a new one.

“A printing shop was built at Sachsenhausen and the SS gathered engravers and other craftsmen from among the population of the other concentration camps. They were brought here to counterfeit English pound notes. Which seems especially relevant considering your group’s occupation. The Nazis were attempting to undermine the British economy by bringing huge amounts of counterfeit currency into circulation, causing out of control inflation. But the prisoners introduced tiny differences between their versions of the money and the originals and were able to sneak a letter to the British government warning them about the counterfeits,” the young guide explained to the group in his precise German-inflected English. He peered through his thick lenses and turned to Mr. Hanson, who repeated a translated version to the group gathered in the rebuilt barracks.

Apparently at around the same time that Chris and I inserted ourselves (with permission) into this tour being conducted for a group who we deduced must have been made up largely of Scandinavian engravers, 60 Minutes was searching a remote lake in Austria for a box of this counterfeit money.

Among the crumbling volumes in the back of ancient bookstores, scavengers are scanning pages. They believe that all of the world’s knowledge is long out of print. “I will find it, save it, and work it into my thesis. Somewhere, mis-shelved in a university library, is the book for me.”

They don’t know that this is the only proper context for this kind of knowledge. Attempts to preserve it, actually take it further from its proper context. (A story is only in context when one is unaware of its context.)

More meaning can be extracted from the typeface, the stain that soaks through the first three chapters, and the author’s birthplace, than from the book’s Dewey Decimal Number.

Yesterday I went down to the Bite of Seattle (I live on a hill, so I’m always going down to somewhere, except when I’m going over to something.) to meet up with Jim. Aside from when I ran into him a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t seen him since I worked for him at That Phone Company six years ago. He’s a year into a leave of absence from the twice since merged version of That Phone Company, where he’s worked for more than ten years. He talked about wanting to travel around a bunch, about wanting to buy a Jeep, about how much he disliked Phoenix (where he lived for the last few years) and Renton (where he lives now). He told me stories about people who I’d worked with but don’t remember. We paced around with the teeming masses, had a couple of snacks.

We had a beer and I said an awkward hello to a vague Amazon acquaintance. I ran into this guy once after he’d just left Amazon and he explained how he was taking his time working out the excercises in What Color Is Your Parachute?, working out what he’ll do next. So this time I said, “How’re you doing?” “Good, what’re you up to these days?” At a loss as usual I answered, “I’m not really doing anything. Still just hanging out.” “I’m working at something.com now, doing customer service.” And I almost caught myself saying, with no cynical intent – really, “Did you ever find out what color your parachute is?”

I’ve meant to write about the Zadie Smith and Nick Hornby readings I went to this week, and their books for that matter. I’ll be filling out the week with two more readings/signings. James Sturm & Dylan Horrocks signing their new comics on Friday and David Byrne signing his new book on Saturday.

I almost took a break from reading White Teeth because I thought it was dragging its heals a bit near the middle. I gave it another chance though, sat down to read another chapter, and got pretty engrossed in it again. That’s lucky, because it turns out that every aspect of the many layered themes developing through most of the book become focused at the climax. Suddenly the most ambiguous bits of dialogue from early chapters are revealed to contain levels of meaning. Not a word is wasted (except most mentions of teeth). Reading it is like watching a portrait being painted, seeing every line applied not having a very complete picture of the final shape of the thing until it’s finished. Zadie Smith’s reading was good, it was in a big packed lecture hall at UW. A couple of things she said, out of context of course: “I think there are too many opinions and opinion-makers.” “The writer as guru phenomenon is really unhealthy.”

The book I was going to interrupt my reading of White Teeth with was Nick Hornby’s How To Be Good. It’s pretty nice so far, I set it aside today for Banvard’s Folly though. Nick Hornby’s reading was alright, I was worn out that day though and probably could’ve skipped it.

I’ve started reading Banvard’s Folly, a book I was really excited to see. Paul Collins has had a couple of these stories published in McSweeney’s. (Okay, headcount. How many of the writers mentioned so far are McSweeney’s contributors? Three of six? Well at least it’s not more than half.) These are essays about long forgotten people who were big thinkers/doers and big failures. It’s really interesting. I always enjoy reading about people with big plans charging ahead alone. That, I guess is also why I like Lawrence Weschler‘s (Another McSweeney’s contributor. There goes the curve.) books.

Also when I went to pick up the new Built To Spill CD, I was excited to see a new Firewater disc. I’ve just put in Firewater, haven’t digested it yet. Woohoo, it’s so good to hear new stuff from both these bands.