seemed appropriate today...

Drunken Bees

As you're about to find out I'm going to start working photography into this blog. It will be a mix of photography I write about, photography posts alone for opinions, and writing alone. Today I had the day to put together my some books I needed to work on, however I got distracted and played a little. The props: A bottle of wine from the night before, a glass of wine, and a mirror. Oh, and a bee:

This is obviously the part where the bee wanders into my project and almost drowns in wine. I can't thank him enough for getting drunk on my set. His accident turned into my main focus. Ha! get it? I made a camera pun. Sorry. (not really.) After his feast the bee actually flew (crookedly) into my room. I haven't seen or heard from him, though, so I can only assume he's passed out in a corner. I'll put out a huge glass of water (vodka!) for him in the morning...

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I've affectionately named the last photo (seen below) "Tuesday Morning."

PLEASE let me know which photos you like. Obviously this is kind of a series, but I'd like to narrow them down, so pretty please let me know which are your favorites, and why if you so please.

***This is the most absurdly retarded photo formatting I've ever encountered. Sorry it looks like a kindergardener pasted these pictures on mom's fridge. Hopefully it can be remedied.

My desk.

I never sit on the couch that sits in my room. Sometimes I sit 1/3 of my ass on it long enough to tie my shoes. Sometimes I use it as a foot rest. Mostly, I put stuff on it. All kinds of stuff. Like clothes, or cameras, or cereal bowls that I rest briefly on the armrest and immediately kick over, spilling milk all over the couch. Good thing it has a cover. From now on, I'll call it a table. With a table cloth. Instead of a couch. With a couch cover. "Have a seat on my couch...oh wait, you can't because it's full of stuff; because, it's a table and not a couch." That's how I'll introduce it's transition to friends.

epiphany

knee-caps first,

i melt down to my thighs, 

and then completely, 

until i'm just shipwrecked heels. 

stagnant, 

i stare. 

the water falls well beneath my toes, 

and i realize.   

i feel the full weight of it all. 

Change can be good.

In this case, it's bad. After much deliberation I chose to buy Lemon Chalet Creams instead of Tagalongs. The Girlscouts changed the recipe for lemon chalet creams, and now I’m pissed.


That's all I can handle writing until I calm down.

Today is Judgement Day

Her name was Ashley. I know this because I named her, and he was definitely from New Jersey. She was tan in February and clad in uggs, a white vest with a fur hood, huge cheap oversized sunglasses. Eeverything was bedazzled. She placed her order with the woman behind the counter, who I’ve named Ruby, “a large coffee with milk and 15 sugars.”

Ruby looked at her like she was nuts, because Ashely probably was, “wait wait! No. skim milk and 16 sugars. “ Ashley said. This really threw Ruby for a loop, “siiixteen sugars 'mam!?” Ashley must have already had 15 sugars as she yelled “ummm. YEESSSS.” With quite an attitude, acting like her order was for black coffee and a sesame bagel. Ruby protested, “mam that is up to here in the cup” and indicated almost ½ way up the 24 ounce cup. “A little lower, a little higher, riiight there,” ashley settled her sugar quota 1/2 way up the cup. It was 12 ounces of sugar. Ashley could do some serious damage to pixie sticks.

As I walked down the street I judged Ashley in my head. ‘Goddamn America is so disgusting,’ and I popped the last donut hole into my mouth. ‘My diet is balanced. I had a pear for breakfast…’

Spacious things I like.

The handicap stall
In here I can spread my arms wide like an eagle and spin around in circles until my heart is content, or stomach is sick. And, since I’m already by a toilet, it’s a great place to take spinning to next level. It’s also a great place to hang out if you’re really bored at work.

The door nook on the train
The gateway to the next train care. People are really afraid of the calculated thrashing the train cars make as they rock back and forth right outside this nook. They’re afraid they may fall out and get diced so there’s usually a spacious little pocket. I’m not, afraid because I live in the hood, so most days I settle into my freedom pocket. Mmm freedom pockets.

Lincoln Town Cars
Town cars are great because I can put my euro car in the trunk. Not may cars can carry cars. Except car carriers, but I can’t ride safely on one of those so it doesn’t count. As an added bonus, town cars smell like leather, unless of course, they smell like old people.

Goblets
People stay out of your way when you carry a goblet. Plus, there’s just so much room for my beer to swim around, and that’s what’s really important.

The slow lane in the pool
This is always very spacious because all the slow lane swimmers will crash into each other, in any other lane. They are wild, unruly, and generally flaily. Plus, they can’t swim a straight line. Probably because they’re drunk. The slow lane is where I practice swimming drunk.

11th ave.
People forget 11th Ave. exists, hence it’s gloom and liberty. This is where I practice weaving my bike between potholes and homeless people pushing their shopping carts in the fast lane.

Outerspace
It’s so spacious it’s outside of normal space. If it weren’t for asteroids I’d have this place all to myself. It’s a great place to practice driving your spaceship because there aren’t any cars to hit, only marshians. Marshians are made of jelly though, so you can always scrape them off your spaceship and eat them on toast.

Triple jacket weather is nothing like a triple-decker taco.

As we near the end of February in NYC the temperatures are dropping back into the single digits, and I still refuse to break out my Deep Chicago Winter jacket that makes me look like a glowworm in a sleeping bag. I’m just too close to the light at the end of the snow tunnel. At this point I’m fighting like hell solely on principle. However, what I’ve lost in mockery I’ve gained in anguish.

About a week ago we had a spring preview in NY. The weather was in the 50’s and it was awesome. I only had to wear one jacket. That was even more awesome. This week, the weather has sunken into a deep, dark, suicidal fit yet again so I am forced to emulate the warmth of my Glow Worm jacket with common jackets. It’s not easy and it takes at least three jackets. Now, I’m not sure if most people know what wearing 3 jackets feels like, but it’s much like a sausage squeezed inside a sausage stuffed with a sausage. If you’re riding a bike, it’s like a sausage squeezed inside a sausage stuffed with a sausage trapped in a vice. When one of these layers is fleece, which it usually is, it’s like a sausage squeezed inside a sausage stuffed with a sausage, soaked in alcohol and shoved in a toaster.

Those are some disgusting images so I give you this puppy waving:



Not only do these many coats make me deceivingly fat and unable to move most of my body parts, but these layers off havoc, slowly begin to reek upon my hair and my soul.

Perhaps examples are best to fully portray the misery of triple jacket weather to those of you who are not familiar. Imagine: I go into a store to get a pack of Bubblicious. The store has pumped up the heat to about a gazillion degrees and I have on three jackets and a vest because it’s a gazillion below outside. I try to bend over to examine all the delicious flavors, but I can’t because my mobility is severely hindered by too many jackets.


I begin to loose my balance because I’m top-heavy with jackets. Now I am flustered and will begin to sweat soon, so I have to delayer each jacket before I'm able to fully bend over and lean in for a closer look at the Bubleicious. Once all the jackets are off I am finally comfortable enough to concentrate on Bubblicious, and I settle on watermelon. Ah, the classic. I reach out to grab a pack and accidentally brush the metal display. My hair has maxed out on static and four thousand volts rush through my body, collide with the static in my hair, and throw me to the floor. I lie there, on the floor of Duane Reade and moan. The employees are yelling at me, but I can't hear what they're screaming, even though I'm certain it's profanity. I have been paralyzed in a quest for Watermelon Bubilicious. I cry into my fleece, causing several small electrocutions with each sob. Sob, bzzz, sob, bzzz, sob. I’m tired of living like a sad, electrified nesting doll. Where is spring? Where is single jacket weather?

My Bread Threshold is High... in My Dreams.

It was today that I realized my real life bread threshold isn’t quite as high as my fantasy bread threshold. I always imagine stuffing astronomical proportions of fluffy bread into my pie hole, but recent tests show that I cannot enjoy the same luxury in real life. Yesterday I really pushed it with a giant street pretzel, post potato gnocchi, pre swim class. This was a bad idea for many reasons, yet a great example of foreshadowing. Never have I ever been so close to barfing in a pool except for the last time I ate a giant street pretzel before swim class.

Today, I was just as stupid. Apparently there was still some pretzel in my blood stream because I couldn’t even fit a slab bread in my stomach at lunch. Imagine my excitement when I got a 5X5 block of buttery salted bread all for $1.50 to dip in my soup. After I got control of the nauseating excitement I settled in and unbuckled my pants secretly under my desk and just went for it. This was badly. ½ way through I felt like a kid who just chugged 15 breasts of milk, and my stomach looked the same. But, I forged on. I couldn’t believe I was full already. Why, just yesterday I had a daydream about the donut commute: I ride a donut train into canal street. The doors don’t open on the donut train because the glaze has stuck them together, so I have to eat my way out. Then, as I walk from the train to the office I collect all the loose morsels of sourdough that have come loose from the potholes of sourdough road and save them for lunch. This is precisely why I am always running into people and getting hit by stuff.

So there I was. ½ way through the battle and fading fast. I had to do it. The bread was soooo good and I hadn’t made it through all my soup yet. So I forged on with glory in my sights and pain in my stomach. But, I couldn’t do it. I had to surrender to the outer crust. Even though it’s the outcast crust is still a part of the family, and I just couldn’t get it down, because I was already too full to move and full enough to barf, and my desk is not in the bathroom. Any shift in pants tightness would set me off. So here I sit, wallowing in my delusional bread threshold. Staring straight ahead forced to live in my fantasies.

You're going to be so jealous of my future new career.

This morning I was downloading a better browser to replace Safari (1) because I have big plans to take safari on an African Safari, where I’ll then leave it in a field to be eaten savagely by something exotic.

Aaanyway… As firefox started to load it said something like “now importing information from Safari.” My knee jerk reaction (2) was to scream “nooo! Damn you safari!” But I changed my tune quickly (3) when the status changed from “importing passwords” to “importing cookies.” My life flashed before my eyes, and in an epiphany I figured out my life. I'm going into cookie importing. Immediately, I forgot all about Safari and its torments and slipped deep into La La land.

It has been decided that the happiest thing a human can be is to be a cookie importer. (4) I know what you’re thinking ‘liar! Cookie Tester is the happiest thing a human can be,’ but you’re wrong.
While Cookie testers appear to be quite happy, they are actually quite miserable. They're all extremely depressed about being fat and having diabetes/mood swings from all the sugar highs and lows, and they're all jealous of the cookie importer and secretly want to knock him off. A cookie importer has the best of every world. He gets to have any kind of cookie from any part of the world at his disposal without having to eat his way to obesity and heart disease, thus enjoying only the best cookies and his health.

While we’d all like to live in a perfect world where all cookies are created equal, the fact remains that they are not. Some are gross and taste like cardboard, like vegan cookies. Nonetheless, where there’s demand (5) there’s a Cookie Importer who must answer with supply, and there’s a cookie taster who must cram those pieces of crap in his pie whole(6), without holding his nose. Just another strike against the Cookie Tester. If you are the importer, you simply don’t eat the bad cookies, and you order yourself extra Awesome Cookies of Glory like Christmas cookies, and Carnival in the Mouth Cookies, and Cookie Schnitzels from ze Germans.

Pluse, everyone loves a Importer. Everyone hates a taster. Public opinion couldn’t be more different:

“Oh Cookie Importer thank you so much for providing me with these tasty Thin Mints and other such awesomeness.”

“Hey! There’s a Thin Mint missing from this box. Fucking cookie taster.”

In short, A Cookie Taster is a fat hench-man just counting the hours until his funeral, while and the Cookie Importer is a happy Al Capone, sitting high only his hands are covered with vanilla and sprinkle icing, instead of blood.

So I’ve decided to chase the dream and become a cookie Importer. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to make it happen, but I’m going to start by quitting my day job. I think that’s the most important (7) step to take. That’s all I can do aside from following the best advice I’ve ever heard, “Swing low sweet chariot.” I can only assume that means a low rider chariot will come pick me up and deliver me at my dreams so I can stop chasing them.

(1) Anything is better than Safari. Even currier pigeons are better than safari.
(2) I try not to have knee jerk reactions in crowded subways. This usually ends in punching.
(3) to dance of the sugarplum fairy
(4) wizzards don’t count.
(5) and trend
(6) or cookie hole
(7) and smartest