The following morning Steve was wearing one of his unusual smirks which only left me wondering why he could still find something that amusing at eight thirty in the morning. He seemed to shoot me continuous glances as he would pass my office door, and I even caught him making a gesture with his fingers which I could only interpret to mean “you’re the man!” When my nerves could take it no more I had no choice but to pull him inside the office and badger away until I received a full explanation as to why he found it fit to waltz gleefully through the halls, when everyone else was wishing the clock didn’t alarm that morning.
His almost dead on recollection of the conversation which had taken place between Cynthia and I the evening before, had left me with only one conclusion. Maybe the sweet and innocent girl who I had seen fiddling her way through the hallways was just like the other low life’s I had come to know in this work place. Maybe while I believed that she and I were sharing a moment, she and a band of fifteen or twenty other females were really conjuring up ways to make me look like an idiot on the other side of the screen. After a while it appeared that Steve sensed my discomfort and quickly found a reason to be excused from my presence.
With a huge sigh, I dropped my weight back into the office chair so hard that it rolled a little under the quick transfer of momentum. I allowed my work bag to just collapse to the floor, forcing the lid open, and a few of the stationary that had previously been at the bottom of the bag made its way onto the hardwood. I starred at the ceiling for a few minutes with a look on my face which would only suggest that I was feeling defeated or indifferent, which ever it was my frustration was almost on par with my lack of wanting to be up at that hour of the morning.
When I finally managed to gather myself, I collected what items had been scattered on the floor and dumped them in the half ajar desk drawer, before clicking the power button on my computer. These prehistoric machines had been around from the era when computers were first made, so I knew I had enough time to grab a coffee, hunt for the paper and use the bathroom before it would completely boot up. I managed to complete my task in just under 7 minutes, and it was somewhere between the thought of the meeting I had to attend at eleven o clock and what I would be eating for lunch that day, that I saw a weird flash on the screen of my computer.
At first I thought it was an error message, or some notice telling me about updates I would need to install. But slowly I concentrated my gaze towards the name at the top of the message box, and much to my horror and excitement, I saw the words, ‘new message from Cynthia ‘Flor’ Ortega’. There was a moment of hesitation, either to convince myself that I was not as mad as I thought I was at her for relaying the contents of our private conversation the day before, or to control the excitement I was now feeling at the thought of what the message could be. I finally worked up the courage to click “open” and the words “sorry about yesterday” appeared on the screen. To my luck the date and time at which the message came in was at the bottom corner of the box, and I realized that only 2 minutes has lapsed from when it was sent.
As much as I wanted to just leave the occurrences of yesterday in the past, a small part of me felt the urge to get some answers. After all this was still the initial stages of getting to know an almost complete stranger who you’re interested in, and the worse thing you can do at this point in time is come across desperate or pushy. I figured the best way to play the whole thing off was to sound as ‘matter of fact as possible’ and my response was something like…
“Had to get out of here fast yesterday, eh?”
I wasn’t completely sure she would understand the sarcasm in the question, so I hesitated for a brief moment at what her response would be, and after a minute she responded again by saying
“yes, and I am sorry. Are you mad?”
“Of course not, I wanted to leave the office en seguida”. I thought it would help my lie if I threw some over used Spanish in.
“What do you do for lunch today?” was her next response.
Now normally I would have assumed this to be a subtle invitation at an informal date, but I couldn’t help panic at the fact that her English was just that bad, and the simple rules of engagement (or assumption) should not be applied in this situation.
“The same thing I do everyday”…. Was my initial thought, but then I realized a lot more than I expected was riding on this answer.
“I don’t know, what do we want to do”, was the cheekiest, most flirtatious, response I could come up with, without sounding too imposing. Part of me felt satisfied, while another part hesitated at the thought of what could possibly be going on in her head at this very moment.
Its not strange for visitors to a strange country to be over-cautious when dealing with native people. After all the first set of words we teach foreign exchange students are the bad ones, the first set of explanations we offer for things are the wrong ones and the first set of things we try to do to foreigners are sleep with them! So it was quite possible making a pass at someone who I have maybe exchanged a total of a paragraph of words with with was not so smooth at all. I was actually halfway to the keys to ‘correct’ my response when she immediately blurted out…
“Garden Grill… 12:30”
Before I had a chance to reply she had once again signed off of her computer. With my eyes still concentrating on the screen, I slowly eased back into my poor excuse for an office chair and began to retrace my thoughts. I was having a hard time trying to decide if I was frustrated or excited. This was the second of only two times that Cynthia had made such an abrupt exit, but only this time she had given me something to look forward to. It was then that I realized that I should stop feeling sorry for myself and be happy with the fact that…..… she had actually asked me out!
It was at this point in time, being at work so early in the morning was not such a bad idea, however lunch time could not come soon enough.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
(Untitled) Part 5 of a short story I began writing... read the first 4 parts first!!!
I froze for a moment, as any normal overly excited individual might have, before I double clicked on the message, just to make sure what I had seen was authentic. Before I had a chance to gather my thoughts and elicit a response a smiling face appeared in the message box on my screen. I knew at that point in time, I had no choice but to respond, as it appeared this was my best chance for an opening line. I had replayed the scenario several times in my head before, which looked sort of like something from the movie “You Got Mail”. I envisioned Cynthia hunched over her computer at her work station, using her already elf sized body to block the screen as she pattered away at the keys. She would maybe even make a glance or two to the side to verify no one was watching, before adding her reply to my response, which I was yet to compose. However, my mind went blank for those few seconds, and all I could think to send in return was…
“ :)“
I knew at this point in time, any chance of making a good first impression was lost, so I had to immediately follow up my response with a typical question.
“how’s it hangin?”
I instantly caught myself and remembered that she spoke very little English, so maybe slang wasn’t the best mode of communication. My thoughts were right, because she didn’t seem to make any sort of reply the few minutes I was waiting. What could have easily been interpreted as a short period of time, would seem that much longer to a person who is already over analyzing a situation involving a union between two people, especially when one party is definitely interested in the other. I corrected myself and then typed
“are you having a busy day?” to which she instantly replied
“yes it is very buzy :) ”
“really! Why is it so busy?”
I felt it wise to throw a quick question in, just to keep the conversation going. It gives ‘them’ a reason to have to reply.
“lots of bookings. What are you doing?” was how she wrote back. Clever girl, it seems she may have caught on to my technique. I began sputtering away almost a full paragraph on the reports I had written in the morning and how I was working on a list to send to purchasing. With all my efforts she replied with a simple
“ok :)”
At this point in time I was feeling a little uneasy, coupled with a small sense of satisfaction. I had already overcome the first step of establishing contact with this girl, and was now working my way into what I had hoped would be an interest jerking conversation. However, her very short answers had me wondering if she was interested at all. I began to run through a multitude of situations in my head, from the lackadaisical office girl, who was indulged in some 3 day old report, flipping back and forth to our conversation when she felt the need to give her eyes a break from the page. Or maybe even the very interested girl who had hoped that she would have been pages away into a mind blowing conversation by now, only to realize she encountered an average Joe who only saw it fit to send her useless facial expression and rhetorical questions. It also didn’t help that I was now lost in a train of thought and hadn’t written anything in the last few minutes, which may have her believing that maybe I had run out of things to say, or had nothing to say to begin with.
“I am sorry my inglish is very bad”, was her next response, which immediately killed all prior thought and put me back in the drivers seat. I began to pour out compliments of how I thought she spoke really good English, “a lot better than mine, that’s for sure”, to which she continued to respond with electronic smiles and gestures of written approval. When my kindergarten English began getting the best of me, I resorted to throwing a few one liner Spanish words that I may have remembered from the subtitles on movies I had seen months before. I could tell she wasn’t impressed, but gave me credit for making the effort.
As we grew more comfortable with each other, I started to do as any man would have done, and I ran ahead of myself. Replaying images in my mind of me and her walking up and down a beach, reciting lines from the numerous titles I had come to know, maybe even taking her up to my room and introducing her to my cat. That would make her feel sorry enough for me, or maybe even relate to the difficult situation I now found myself, being nose deep in this remote part of the world, with no easy way of finding escape. I could play for her some of my favorite Latin tracks, to which we could break out into one of those passionate, in sync, Antonio Banderes/ Jennifer Lopez type dance routines, where our bodies would move like a liquid substrate in a chemistry beaker being twirled round and round. Or maybe I could just invite her to go watch Dirty Dancing!
“do you like movies?” was my next question to her, which I thought she could answer easily in the same breath. But to my surprise her next response was…
“I am sorry, but I have to leave now… bye”.
And there was no smiling face, or written gesture of good will. Before I could even reply she had signed off from her computer, which meant any attempt to contact her at this point in time would have been useless. I would have been forced to stop her in the hallway and ask her for her phone number if there was any hope of us continuing my ballroom fantasy, because the hour of the day suggested that she would no longer be returning to her computer.
Still motivated by my phantasmal urges, I made an attempt to rush out of my office hoping that I would catch her evacuating the hall. No longer did I see the urgency to be candid about my expressions of interest. At this point in time all I could think about was rekindling the connection we had made for those few minutes on the computer, with the hope of jump starting something that would take me away from this social genocide that I now called home. Little did I realize that the state that I previously mistook for patience, would so quickly be transformed into desperation as my one hope of a comfortable existence had just left me out to dry with my eyes still glued to my computer screen.
I heard the echoes of a door shut in the hallway, and I couldn’t help but leap from my seat towards my window to catch a glimpse of what might be Cynthia making her way to the office exit door. My office was the last door perpendicular to the exit at the bottom of a very long and medieval like tunnel of business rooms and potted plants. Her office was located closer to the top of the hallway, which would give me just enough time to witness her make her departure, or stop her dead in the tracks. I hadn’t even gotten my door fully open when our eyes made four… but for only the slightest second, as she tucked her chin back into her collar and walked straight towards the exit as she always did. I barely had enough time to analyze the lines on her face to know if she flashed me a look of disdain, pity, apathy or contentment. All I knew was that my short lived consolation had transformed into agitation and I could not help but question myself.
Could she have been the one I was talking to only moments earlier? What could have driven her to scurry away so quickly? And would I ever get the chance to talk to her again?
“ :)“
I knew at this point in time, any chance of making a good first impression was lost, so I had to immediately follow up my response with a typical question.
“how’s it hangin?”
I instantly caught myself and remembered that she spoke very little English, so maybe slang wasn’t the best mode of communication. My thoughts were right, because she didn’t seem to make any sort of reply the few minutes I was waiting. What could have easily been interpreted as a short period of time, would seem that much longer to a person who is already over analyzing a situation involving a union between two people, especially when one party is definitely interested in the other. I corrected myself and then typed
“are you having a busy day?” to which she instantly replied
“yes it is very buzy :) ”
“really! Why is it so busy?”
I felt it wise to throw a quick question in, just to keep the conversation going. It gives ‘them’ a reason to have to reply.
“lots of bookings. What are you doing?” was how she wrote back. Clever girl, it seems she may have caught on to my technique. I began sputtering away almost a full paragraph on the reports I had written in the morning and how I was working on a list to send to purchasing. With all my efforts she replied with a simple
“ok :)”
At this point in time I was feeling a little uneasy, coupled with a small sense of satisfaction. I had already overcome the first step of establishing contact with this girl, and was now working my way into what I had hoped would be an interest jerking conversation. However, her very short answers had me wondering if she was interested at all. I began to run through a multitude of situations in my head, from the lackadaisical office girl, who was indulged in some 3 day old report, flipping back and forth to our conversation when she felt the need to give her eyes a break from the page. Or maybe even the very interested girl who had hoped that she would have been pages away into a mind blowing conversation by now, only to realize she encountered an average Joe who only saw it fit to send her useless facial expression and rhetorical questions. It also didn’t help that I was now lost in a train of thought and hadn’t written anything in the last few minutes, which may have her believing that maybe I had run out of things to say, or had nothing to say to begin with.
“I am sorry my inglish is very bad”, was her next response, which immediately killed all prior thought and put me back in the drivers seat. I began to pour out compliments of how I thought she spoke really good English, “a lot better than mine, that’s for sure”, to which she continued to respond with electronic smiles and gestures of written approval. When my kindergarten English began getting the best of me, I resorted to throwing a few one liner Spanish words that I may have remembered from the subtitles on movies I had seen months before. I could tell she wasn’t impressed, but gave me credit for making the effort.
As we grew more comfortable with each other, I started to do as any man would have done, and I ran ahead of myself. Replaying images in my mind of me and her walking up and down a beach, reciting lines from the numerous titles I had come to know, maybe even taking her up to my room and introducing her to my cat. That would make her feel sorry enough for me, or maybe even relate to the difficult situation I now found myself, being nose deep in this remote part of the world, with no easy way of finding escape. I could play for her some of my favorite Latin tracks, to which we could break out into one of those passionate, in sync, Antonio Banderes/ Jennifer Lopez type dance routines, where our bodies would move like a liquid substrate in a chemistry beaker being twirled round and round. Or maybe I could just invite her to go watch Dirty Dancing!
“do you like movies?” was my next question to her, which I thought she could answer easily in the same breath. But to my surprise her next response was…
“I am sorry, but I have to leave now… bye”.
And there was no smiling face, or written gesture of good will. Before I could even reply she had signed off from her computer, which meant any attempt to contact her at this point in time would have been useless. I would have been forced to stop her in the hallway and ask her for her phone number if there was any hope of us continuing my ballroom fantasy, because the hour of the day suggested that she would no longer be returning to her computer.
Still motivated by my phantasmal urges, I made an attempt to rush out of my office hoping that I would catch her evacuating the hall. No longer did I see the urgency to be candid about my expressions of interest. At this point in time all I could think about was rekindling the connection we had made for those few minutes on the computer, with the hope of jump starting something that would take me away from this social genocide that I now called home. Little did I realize that the state that I previously mistook for patience, would so quickly be transformed into desperation as my one hope of a comfortable existence had just left me out to dry with my eyes still glued to my computer screen.
I heard the echoes of a door shut in the hallway, and I couldn’t help but leap from my seat towards my window to catch a glimpse of what might be Cynthia making her way to the office exit door. My office was the last door perpendicular to the exit at the bottom of a very long and medieval like tunnel of business rooms and potted plants. Her office was located closer to the top of the hallway, which would give me just enough time to witness her make her departure, or stop her dead in the tracks. I hadn’t even gotten my door fully open when our eyes made four… but for only the slightest second, as she tucked her chin back into her collar and walked straight towards the exit as she always did. I barely had enough time to analyze the lines on her face to know if she flashed me a look of disdain, pity, apathy or contentment. All I knew was that my short lived consolation had transformed into agitation and I could not help but question myself.
Could she have been the one I was talking to only moments earlier? What could have driven her to scurry away so quickly? And would I ever get the chance to talk to her again?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
(Untitled) Part 4 of a short story I began writing... read the first 3 parts first!!!
Having been out of the dating game for a while I had to rely on an alternative source for providing me with the ‘low down’ on Cynthia, as a simple “Hi my name is”, was way too much for my nerves to handle. Let’s just say it’s only wise that if you haven’t driven stick shift for a while, don’t expect to look like anything from out of Fast and Furious when you jump back into a vehicle that requires you to work the transmission. Especially if there are a number of other mechanical problems you have to overcome. Therefore, calling in reinforcements wasn’t too out of the ordinary. I turned to the one guy in the workplace I could actually trust when it came to this sort of a thing. It would only require that he was not interested in the target himself, and that he was given play by play descriptions of everything that took place, from the first meeting, to anything that transpired after wards!
So I wasn’t that surprised when Steve appeared in my office with a sheepish smirk on his face, as if he has just won a very large bet. He was holding a piece of paper in his hand in which he had done a horrible job of folding properly enough, because it didn’t conceal the email address which was scribbled on it. It led me to believe that maybe he purposefully wanted the entire workplace to know that he was delivering a message that should have been kept private, and was even more carefree about the fact that there was enough evidence showing to incriminate who he was carrying the message from. With great haste I snatched the prize from his clutches and immediately began pounding away at my keys, entering the initials which had been scribed on the leaflet.
I’m not sure what made me believe that Steve would have saw it fit to give me some privacy at this point in time, but all I knew was that it grew incredibly difficult to remain oblivious to his constant questions, and over-exaggerated comments on the female specie. There was no doubt he was feeling immense satisfaction for himself, and would stop at nothing to make sure I was aware of the great deal of gratitude I now owned him. You see, Steve was the kind of character you may have never even knew existed, had he not been required to leave the comfort of his work station to make random office calls to staff who experienced computer mishaps. He was the hotel’s computer guy, and could perform a number of hidden tasks that would seem incredible to us normal click-and-point off-liners, as he would call us. I still remember when, Steve made a half naked picture of the Sales Manager ‘accidentally’ appear in everyone’s inbox, just because she refused to sign for a few computer monitor’s he was expecting that week. Or when he made the Resident Manager’s computer mysteriously start changing reservations and moving around itinerary. I still suspect he was the one that broke into my myspace page and changed my info to include that I was now ‘interested in men’ and looking for ‘a very sexual relationship’. He was the kind of guy you would want on your side if you began typing up an email to the head of the company telling him how much you wanted to grab him by the throat and drown him in the swimming pool, and then you accidentally clicked “send”.
In the midst of his comments on successfully getting a girl to bed, and the right kind of music to play in the sac, I managed to enter the email address into my computer. I knew there would be an additional waiting period before I would finally be able to say I captured Cynthia’s interests, because even though the message was sent, it was now left for her to accept my invitation. I decided I would quell my anticipation by running head first into some real office work.
It wasn’t a-typical for us office rats to take a break every now and then and just babble on about someone else’s misfortunes or some personal occurrence, but Steve had seemed to take up a considerable amount of my time now and I was eager to play the role of ‘enthused employee’ once again. I think he sensed my impatience and lack of response at this point and time and with a gesture that lacked desperation he made his way out the door. I guess it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say I was happy to see him go, as it was nearing that point of the day we called ‘the hour of power’; the dying 60 minutes before it was time to call an end to the days activities. I quickly turned my attention to my work station again, and it just so happened that in the middle of composing a Purchasing list, a message suddenly appeared on my computer screen…
“Cynthia has accepted you invitation..”
So I wasn’t that surprised when Steve appeared in my office with a sheepish smirk on his face, as if he has just won a very large bet. He was holding a piece of paper in his hand in which he had done a horrible job of folding properly enough, because it didn’t conceal the email address which was scribbled on it. It led me to believe that maybe he purposefully wanted the entire workplace to know that he was delivering a message that should have been kept private, and was even more carefree about the fact that there was enough evidence showing to incriminate who he was carrying the message from. With great haste I snatched the prize from his clutches and immediately began pounding away at my keys, entering the initials which had been scribed on the leaflet.
I’m not sure what made me believe that Steve would have saw it fit to give me some privacy at this point in time, but all I knew was that it grew incredibly difficult to remain oblivious to his constant questions, and over-exaggerated comments on the female specie. There was no doubt he was feeling immense satisfaction for himself, and would stop at nothing to make sure I was aware of the great deal of gratitude I now owned him. You see, Steve was the kind of character you may have never even knew existed, had he not been required to leave the comfort of his work station to make random office calls to staff who experienced computer mishaps. He was the hotel’s computer guy, and could perform a number of hidden tasks that would seem incredible to us normal click-and-point off-liners, as he would call us. I still remember when, Steve made a half naked picture of the Sales Manager ‘accidentally’ appear in everyone’s inbox, just because she refused to sign for a few computer monitor’s he was expecting that week. Or when he made the Resident Manager’s computer mysteriously start changing reservations and moving around itinerary. I still suspect he was the one that broke into my myspace page and changed my info to include that I was now ‘interested in men’ and looking for ‘a very sexual relationship’. He was the kind of guy you would want on your side if you began typing up an email to the head of the company telling him how much you wanted to grab him by the throat and drown him in the swimming pool, and then you accidentally clicked “send”.
In the midst of his comments on successfully getting a girl to bed, and the right kind of music to play in the sac, I managed to enter the email address into my computer. I knew there would be an additional waiting period before I would finally be able to say I captured Cynthia’s interests, because even though the message was sent, it was now left for her to accept my invitation. I decided I would quell my anticipation by running head first into some real office work.
It wasn’t a-typical for us office rats to take a break every now and then and just babble on about someone else’s misfortunes or some personal occurrence, but Steve had seemed to take up a considerable amount of my time now and I was eager to play the role of ‘enthused employee’ once again. I think he sensed my impatience and lack of response at this point and time and with a gesture that lacked desperation he made his way out the door. I guess it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say I was happy to see him go, as it was nearing that point of the day we called ‘the hour of power’; the dying 60 minutes before it was time to call an end to the days activities. I quickly turned my attention to my work station again, and it just so happened that in the middle of composing a Purchasing list, a message suddenly appeared on my computer screen…
“Cynthia has accepted you invitation..”
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Racist? I know you are but what am I
So on this particular morning as I was completing the last set of sit ups on my almost extinct ab lounge machine, I was treated to a particularly interesting interview on one of my favourite BET shows, My Two Cents. The interviewee (whose name I am yet to determine) had published a book in which the premise was that the black community is to be divided into separate categories based off the intensity of the pigmentation in their skin, in other words, there should be a separation of light skinned blacks and dark skinned blacks. This brought me back to an idea I had in a University Social Psychology class, where we were given an essay to write on stereotypes, and I, being the already extreme ideologist that I am, suggested that racism was inevitable. It damn well cost me a good grade in that class I can tell you that! But the basis of my argument is something I see reflected in society today, which almost forces me to go back to that professor and demand a higher grade.
The idea comes from a social mechanism in which human beings tend to classify things in their surrounding, for several purposes. It’s a phenomenon that we see reflected in a Psychological process called classical conditioning, where a simple Skinner Box demonstrates how a rat can interpret a completely unrelated event like scratching it’s butt, to the distribution of a food pellet. Silly creatures you say… well where do you believe superstitions come from in homo sapiens ? Back in time unrelated events occurring too close to each other led to the belief in things like gods… In modern time it makes people scurry when they see a black cat, or think twice before they open an umbrella in a house. Or more popularly, makes someone forward an email to all the friends on their list, just to prevent having years of bad luck (or bad sex).
But going back to stereotypes, Psychology teaches that classifying certain characteristics, can even save your life in times of quick and urgent decisions (schema). Now I may not be a scientist, but something tells me that if I am ever lost in the woods, a plant with a particularly pungent smell may not be the first one I choose to eat from; An animal with a particularly unpleasant demeanor may not be the one I choose to pet, and a location with a particularly somber appeal may not be the one I choose to take shelter in. Similarly, if I’m walking in the city one night and I see a white bearded man behind me in a sleeveless leather jacket with tattoo’s and a bandana, he wouldn’t be the one I would choose to ask directions from. Maybe past events, experiences or something we read in a book may have taught us how to link these cues to unpleasant outcomes, and my first reaction would be “well maybe he’s a skin head looking to inflict harm on me as a black man”. The extremist may take my leather jacket example and argue that what I have demonstrated is stereotyping which may ultimately lead to racism; but in a split second sort of situation, I’d rather be wrong and alive then right and not alright! The explanation is that as human beings we tend to look for social cues, with the ultimate rationale being our survival.
This now brings me back to the idea I had in that University essay where I mentioned that racism is inevitable. Even if there were no whites, Indians, Chinese or Blacks, people would find some way to categorize human beings and place them into a social hierarchy. Imagine we were all literally colour blind, and all we could see are shades of grey, is it possible that we could all get along as variably grey individuals or would we see the need to classify people, based on hues? I ask this question because I have recognized the human ‘urge’ to classify things into good, better and best, and therefore believe that regardless of circumstance, we would continue to stereotype and group a set of people just to satisfy this ‘urge’.
This is not a completely left field idea. Why is that we see the need to see who is the better specie, the better gender, the better country? Why do we spend large sums of money to find out which country has the prettiest woman, the best designed car, or the smartest set of people? And again why is it necessary to know which country is the most famished, decorated, or even the most violent? The answer to many of these questions is survival, and it does make sense when we relate them to objects in most cases, but why is it necessary to relate them to human beings?
Could it just be narrowed down to an explanation as simple as… survival?
The idea comes from a social mechanism in which human beings tend to classify things in their surrounding, for several purposes. It’s a phenomenon that we see reflected in a Psychological process called classical conditioning, where a simple Skinner Box demonstrates how a rat can interpret a completely unrelated event like scratching it’s butt, to the distribution of a food pellet. Silly creatures you say… well where do you believe superstitions come from in homo sapiens ? Back in time unrelated events occurring too close to each other led to the belief in things like gods… In modern time it makes people scurry when they see a black cat, or think twice before they open an umbrella in a house. Or more popularly, makes someone forward an email to all the friends on their list, just to prevent having years of bad luck (or bad sex).
But going back to stereotypes, Psychology teaches that classifying certain characteristics, can even save your life in times of quick and urgent decisions (schema). Now I may not be a scientist, but something tells me that if I am ever lost in the woods, a plant with a particularly pungent smell may not be the first one I choose to eat from; An animal with a particularly unpleasant demeanor may not be the one I choose to pet, and a location with a particularly somber appeal may not be the one I choose to take shelter in. Similarly, if I’m walking in the city one night and I see a white bearded man behind me in a sleeveless leather jacket with tattoo’s and a bandana, he wouldn’t be the one I would choose to ask directions from. Maybe past events, experiences or something we read in a book may have taught us how to link these cues to unpleasant outcomes, and my first reaction would be “well maybe he’s a skin head looking to inflict harm on me as a black man”. The extremist may take my leather jacket example and argue that what I have demonstrated is stereotyping which may ultimately lead to racism; but in a split second sort of situation, I’d rather be wrong and alive then right and not alright! The explanation is that as human beings we tend to look for social cues, with the ultimate rationale being our survival.
This now brings me back to the idea I had in that University essay where I mentioned that racism is inevitable. Even if there were no whites, Indians, Chinese or Blacks, people would find some way to categorize human beings and place them into a social hierarchy. Imagine we were all literally colour blind, and all we could see are shades of grey, is it possible that we could all get along as variably grey individuals or would we see the need to classify people, based on hues? I ask this question because I have recognized the human ‘urge’ to classify things into good, better and best, and therefore believe that regardless of circumstance, we would continue to stereotype and group a set of people just to satisfy this ‘urge’.
This is not a completely left field idea. Why is that we see the need to see who is the better specie, the better gender, the better country? Why do we spend large sums of money to find out which country has the prettiest woman, the best designed car, or the smartest set of people? And again why is it necessary to know which country is the most famished, decorated, or even the most violent? The answer to many of these questions is survival, and it does make sense when we relate them to objects in most cases, but why is it necessary to relate them to human beings?
Could it just be narrowed down to an explanation as simple as… survival?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
(Untitled) Part 3 of a short story I began writing... read the first 2 parts first!!!
So I gave her the common courtesy of not making much contact for the next couple of months, though my job never really called for us to encounter that much on a regular basis.
It was only when I was going through my ‘interaction drought’ that I had even given her existence a second thought. You see even though I had entered the new situation at work completely devoid of making any new relations, every person who is put in a new environment is forced to assess their new surroundings. In other words, we tend to look for places we feel safe and people we feel comfortable being around. Your average person, regardless of being in a relationship or not, may even look for what I call ‘possibilities’. The single soul may feel they need to look for someone to bond with, while the committed soul may simply be looking for a back up! I had given the place a quick scouring when I arrived and had tagged this hidden treasure as a possibility, if ever the urge to open up again resurfaced.
The work place was an unsound meeting ground, home to gossipers and scribers of false news, in fact, it’s hard to imagine a modern business place without this similar structure. One mans private affairs is another mans, coffee break entertainment. The situation was so horrible that one would have to “play their cards close to their chest” if they were on the phone with a friend, or simply relaying the contents of a soap opera they may have watched the night before. You never know when a fictional Brooke Logan could become an at work Brooke Sherley, and for the rest of the week, the entire office would wonder if there was something going on worth blackmailing you for, just so they could get an extra spot in the lunch line. Before my third month had ended, I had learnt that I already slept with the boss to get the new office by the beach (him being a man meant nothing in this situation), taken four girls from the office for a drink, and apparently ended the night with two of them, and I was pursuing one of the only girls in the office, I didn’t feel bad calling a prostitute to her face! Which I’m sure she wouldn’t mind owning up to if the name had ever met her ears.
It was only then that I realized if I ever were to approach Cynthia and avoid the army net of rumors, it would have to be in the privacy of a secluded meeting spot; one free from tape record ears and satellite eyes. Even using the internet was threatening given the over occurrence of identity falsification that took place in this new electronic savvy generation. It didn’t take an experienced chick flick and day time drama lover to know that women would do anything to create a more interesting situation when it involves a man. Not that the whole introduction, pursuit and constant interjection of new material to keep a woman interested wasn’t enough stress on the male specie, oh no, women also had to add a slight twist when it came to meeting someone in an unorthodox setting. So one couldn’t depend on the words that would appear on a computer screen or even the voice on a telephone as evidence enough that they were interacting with the person they had envisioned.
And since we’re on the subject of female behavior, another of my observations have taught me that women tend to take comfort in numbers. In high school I used to stare in bewilderment as a drove of lanky limbs, bouncing hair and flashing skirts would make their way to the rest room, as if they were required to build the toilet before they could actually use it! Or in a club, a score of women would cluster on the dance floor whilst making the most provocative of gestures at male onlookers. You would even see a group of them packed so tightly into a large SUV at a stop light, adjusting their bra’s and touching up their make up, eleven o clock at night… or see them piled at a table in the lunch room giggling to themselves and flashing dirty looks at uninformed males seeking to approach them, under the pretense that they could disband this tightly knit fellowship of overcharged estrogen. The more seasoned male ‘rejectee’ would watch in amusement as one after one guys would make failed attempt after failed attempt to ‘tumble the pins’, with the hope that they would ‘score’ with the final one standing.
Well girls would continue this behavior into adulthood and women found it necessary to make constant checks and balances with the female she would consider her closest friend, who ironically was the same female she wouldn’t trust with her 12 year old nephew. So while I would see a picture of Cynthia Ortega appear on my computer screen above the words “Cynthia ‘Flor’ Ortega”, I couldn’t help wonder if the recurrent ‘LOL’s’ and smiling emoticons was the curvaceous poppy eyed girl I had come to see in the halls and in meetings. Also, I felt uneasy about the conversation I was having with her on my computer screen, given the nature of how I had arrived at her personal information.
It was only when I was going through my ‘interaction drought’ that I had even given her existence a second thought. You see even though I had entered the new situation at work completely devoid of making any new relations, every person who is put in a new environment is forced to assess their new surroundings. In other words, we tend to look for places we feel safe and people we feel comfortable being around. Your average person, regardless of being in a relationship or not, may even look for what I call ‘possibilities’. The single soul may feel they need to look for someone to bond with, while the committed soul may simply be looking for a back up! I had given the place a quick scouring when I arrived and had tagged this hidden treasure as a possibility, if ever the urge to open up again resurfaced.
The work place was an unsound meeting ground, home to gossipers and scribers of false news, in fact, it’s hard to imagine a modern business place without this similar structure. One mans private affairs is another mans, coffee break entertainment. The situation was so horrible that one would have to “play their cards close to their chest” if they were on the phone with a friend, or simply relaying the contents of a soap opera they may have watched the night before. You never know when a fictional Brooke Logan could become an at work Brooke Sherley, and for the rest of the week, the entire office would wonder if there was something going on worth blackmailing you for, just so they could get an extra spot in the lunch line. Before my third month had ended, I had learnt that I already slept with the boss to get the new office by the beach (him being a man meant nothing in this situation), taken four girls from the office for a drink, and apparently ended the night with two of them, and I was pursuing one of the only girls in the office, I didn’t feel bad calling a prostitute to her face! Which I’m sure she wouldn’t mind owning up to if the name had ever met her ears.
It was only then that I realized if I ever were to approach Cynthia and avoid the army net of rumors, it would have to be in the privacy of a secluded meeting spot; one free from tape record ears and satellite eyes. Even using the internet was threatening given the over occurrence of identity falsification that took place in this new electronic savvy generation. It didn’t take an experienced chick flick and day time drama lover to know that women would do anything to create a more interesting situation when it involves a man. Not that the whole introduction, pursuit and constant interjection of new material to keep a woman interested wasn’t enough stress on the male specie, oh no, women also had to add a slight twist when it came to meeting someone in an unorthodox setting. So one couldn’t depend on the words that would appear on a computer screen or even the voice on a telephone as evidence enough that they were interacting with the person they had envisioned.
And since we’re on the subject of female behavior, another of my observations have taught me that women tend to take comfort in numbers. In high school I used to stare in bewilderment as a drove of lanky limbs, bouncing hair and flashing skirts would make their way to the rest room, as if they were required to build the toilet before they could actually use it! Or in a club, a score of women would cluster on the dance floor whilst making the most provocative of gestures at male onlookers. You would even see a group of them packed so tightly into a large SUV at a stop light, adjusting their bra’s and touching up their make up, eleven o clock at night… or see them piled at a table in the lunch room giggling to themselves and flashing dirty looks at uninformed males seeking to approach them, under the pretense that they could disband this tightly knit fellowship of overcharged estrogen. The more seasoned male ‘rejectee’ would watch in amusement as one after one guys would make failed attempt after failed attempt to ‘tumble the pins’, with the hope that they would ‘score’ with the final one standing.
Well girls would continue this behavior into adulthood and women found it necessary to make constant checks and balances with the female she would consider her closest friend, who ironically was the same female she wouldn’t trust with her 12 year old nephew. So while I would see a picture of Cynthia Ortega appear on my computer screen above the words “Cynthia ‘Flor’ Ortega”, I couldn’t help wonder if the recurrent ‘LOL’s’ and smiling emoticons was the curvaceous poppy eyed girl I had come to see in the halls and in meetings. Also, I felt uneasy about the conversation I was having with her on my computer screen, given the nature of how I had arrived at her personal information.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
(Untitled) Part 2 of a short story I began writing... read part 1 first!!!
My love life had become as generic and rehearsed as the stories we see on television or hear our friends rant about when we go for lunch, or on that drive to the movies. Sometimes I would get so sick of hearing the same story, I became infatuated by chick flicks, just so I could believe that out of the ordinary, some ‘left field’ not by the books romance could develop. The kind of happy endings that existed in the Elizabethan era, without the incest and statutory rape.
Soon my DVD collection mutated to include movies like ’10 things I Hate About You’, ‘The Notebook’ and ‘Bridgette Jones Diary’. I only reserved movies like ‘Pretty Woman’ and ‘Dirty Dancing’ when I wanted a girl to feel comfortable enough to spend the evening with me till she was forced to fall asleep on my couch and ultimately in my arms!
It wasn’t long till I became one of those people that would slip into the routine of work, gym, shower, dinner and a movie. For those nights I had insomnia there was late night infomercials or that Maxim magazine I couldn’t help grab at the airport to quench my unbearable boredom on the flight home. You would always skim through the pictures, read an article or two and then fake like you were asleep, just so you could hide the fact that you were terrified the plane was bouncing so much.
It was in a book review section (right underneath Anna Kournikova) that I discovered Harry Potter, and would later have read all 7 books in the series. When that thrill was over my interest returned to the television set and I became a huge fan of the late night music videos on BET, or the ever popular reality show re-runs. Music channels had suddenly managed to change their agenda completely, and soon I discovered a new form of romance television that replaced the chick flick, only the stories weren’t as sweet, and the endings weren’t always as happy!
Right about the time I was getting over my ex was when I was slipping into the journal keeping part of my life which coincidentally coincides with what you are reading now. It just so happens that that was the same time my desire to break free of this introverted lifestyle started to make me feel uncomfortable just being in the same spot for more than 5 minutes. I was no longer happy being alone, and found myself making more long distance phone calls to friends back in the city. When my bank account could no longer manage that, I became a cliché to the handbook on Filling that Desire for company. When telling myself I was happy being along didn’t work anymore, I bought a cat. I played loud music in my room just so I didn’t have to listen to myself breathe. Because I had no internet at home, instant messaging and blogging was not an option.
It was also very difficult to make friends at the hotel, because half the people there were either prehistoric, pre-disposed or pre-occupied; that and an insurgence of different cultures. You see the hotel was built by a Spanish chain, which called for the inclusion of Latin cultures at the helm. It was impossible to walk through the halls without hearing the echo’s of rolling r’s and rapid gibberish. The Spanish I felt were a lot like the Japanese in that you couldn’t tell where one word ended and the other one began. Everyone back in high school was forced to learn a bit of Spanish grammar, which would ultimately amount to maybe a page of information by the time you graduated, but I discovered that a simple reply of ‘pocotito’ to “do you speak Spanish”, would amount to a nuclear attack of Spanish words that would leave even the most rehearsed linguist motionless.
I learned to just smile and nod my head as I would pass a co-worker in the halls. My IPOD became my best friend at lunch sessions, and I would pass the time in meetings doodling the faces of the managers I hated the most on my notepad. This was probably the reason I never noticed her before. She would always sit quietly in meetings with her hands tucked neatly in front of her ribs, so it would make her breast appear a lot larger than they actually were. Her responses were short and always followed by a schoolgirl smile. I’m not sure if she did this to distract the General Manager or to mask the fact that maybe she wasn’t so sure about everything she was talking about.
She spoke with a sort of broken accent which allowed me to understand more of the words she was using, but not enough to hold a full on debate about the state of affairs in the world market. She was shorter than your average Spanish girl; still very curvaceous with very simple features. A regular ‘chick-shark’ may not have given her a second glance had you not been able to see past her glasses into her curious yet understanding brown eyes, which always seemed to shoot open in amazement whenever you approached her with a question. Her cinnamon complexion was endemic to girls from her region in Mexico, but she wore her hair back and in a bulb which only meant that she wasn’t afraid to show her highlighted cheek bones and exaggerated lips. This girl almost looked like a creature from out of a fairy tale book that you would catch in the corner nibbling on hidden fruits, only to turn around and gaze at you in astonishment when they found out they had been discovered. She looked at me like I was the first one to notice she even existed, and her frightened demeanor, as if she had been called to the principal’s office, only made me conclude that maybe Cynthia was very shy.
Soon my DVD collection mutated to include movies like ’10 things I Hate About You’, ‘The Notebook’ and ‘Bridgette Jones Diary’. I only reserved movies like ‘Pretty Woman’ and ‘Dirty Dancing’ when I wanted a girl to feel comfortable enough to spend the evening with me till she was forced to fall asleep on my couch and ultimately in my arms!
It wasn’t long till I became one of those people that would slip into the routine of work, gym, shower, dinner and a movie. For those nights I had insomnia there was late night infomercials or that Maxim magazine I couldn’t help grab at the airport to quench my unbearable boredom on the flight home. You would always skim through the pictures, read an article or two and then fake like you were asleep, just so you could hide the fact that you were terrified the plane was bouncing so much.
It was in a book review section (right underneath Anna Kournikova) that I discovered Harry Potter, and would later have read all 7 books in the series. When that thrill was over my interest returned to the television set and I became a huge fan of the late night music videos on BET, or the ever popular reality show re-runs. Music channels had suddenly managed to change their agenda completely, and soon I discovered a new form of romance television that replaced the chick flick, only the stories weren’t as sweet, and the endings weren’t always as happy!
Right about the time I was getting over my ex was when I was slipping into the journal keeping part of my life which coincidentally coincides with what you are reading now. It just so happens that that was the same time my desire to break free of this introverted lifestyle started to make me feel uncomfortable just being in the same spot for more than 5 minutes. I was no longer happy being alone, and found myself making more long distance phone calls to friends back in the city. When my bank account could no longer manage that, I became a cliché to the handbook on Filling that Desire for company. When telling myself I was happy being along didn’t work anymore, I bought a cat. I played loud music in my room just so I didn’t have to listen to myself breathe. Because I had no internet at home, instant messaging and blogging was not an option.
It was also very difficult to make friends at the hotel, because half the people there were either prehistoric, pre-disposed or pre-occupied; that and an insurgence of different cultures. You see the hotel was built by a Spanish chain, which called for the inclusion of Latin cultures at the helm. It was impossible to walk through the halls without hearing the echo’s of rolling r’s and rapid gibberish. The Spanish I felt were a lot like the Japanese in that you couldn’t tell where one word ended and the other one began. Everyone back in high school was forced to learn a bit of Spanish grammar, which would ultimately amount to maybe a page of information by the time you graduated, but I discovered that a simple reply of ‘pocotito’ to “do you speak Spanish”, would amount to a nuclear attack of Spanish words that would leave even the most rehearsed linguist motionless.
I learned to just smile and nod my head as I would pass a co-worker in the halls. My IPOD became my best friend at lunch sessions, and I would pass the time in meetings doodling the faces of the managers I hated the most on my notepad. This was probably the reason I never noticed her before. She would always sit quietly in meetings with her hands tucked neatly in front of her ribs, so it would make her breast appear a lot larger than they actually were. Her responses were short and always followed by a schoolgirl smile. I’m not sure if she did this to distract the General Manager or to mask the fact that maybe she wasn’t so sure about everything she was talking about.
She spoke with a sort of broken accent which allowed me to understand more of the words she was using, but not enough to hold a full on debate about the state of affairs in the world market. She was shorter than your average Spanish girl; still very curvaceous with very simple features. A regular ‘chick-shark’ may not have given her a second glance had you not been able to see past her glasses into her curious yet understanding brown eyes, which always seemed to shoot open in amazement whenever you approached her with a question. Her cinnamon complexion was endemic to girls from her region in Mexico, but she wore her hair back and in a bulb which only meant that she wasn’t afraid to show her highlighted cheek bones and exaggerated lips. This girl almost looked like a creature from out of a fairy tale book that you would catch in the corner nibbling on hidden fruits, only to turn around and gaze at you in astonishment when they found out they had been discovered. She looked at me like I was the first one to notice she even existed, and her frightened demeanor, as if she had been called to the principal’s office, only made me conclude that maybe Cynthia was very shy.
Monday, September 15, 2008
(Untitled) Part 1 of a short story I began writing
It’s amazing ones level of persistence when it comes to particular circumstances. Maybe if I had tried a lot harder back in school, I wouldn’t be the struggling non achiever I turned out to be, bouncing from job to job in pursuit of something that can quench my insatiable desire for consistency in my life. If only someone had enlightened me back in the days, when I used to recite the numerous accomplishments I expected for myself by the age of 25, only to be 26 and nowhere close to those dreams and pursuits. Instead I jump from opportunity to opportunity hoping that one day I will stumble upon something that resembles the faintest idea of what I had hoped my life would ultimately become.
My latest pursuit, though the most suitable at the time, was a hotel job I landed earlier in the year. It was a far cry from the earlier turmoil of working back to back 18 hour days under the slave whip. You see in the beginning, I had become a dummy to the golden rule of business agreements… “read the fine print”… and was made to suffer as all the other imbeciles before me did, having failed to follow that rule. The sad thing about learned helplessness is that, it sometimes takes a wild jolt for you to realize the hole you have dug yourself in. Soon days turn to years and before you know it, you’re in the same position you swore you would overcome at your last New Years resolution. Well eventually you wake up to your senses and step out of the tunnel, and I felt my latest endeavor was the closest sign of a struggling rodent burrowing further out of the rabbit hole he’d grown to be so comfortable in.
The hours were different and the commitments were not as demanding. I found I created my own time table, and could even dictate the pace at which I had to move. I had come a long way from feeling like a puppet, but still some way off from living like a member of the Royal family.
Even though most of my domestic requirements were met: room, food, clothes and transportation, I couldn’t help feel that, as an individual approaching the twilight of his youthfulness, I may have been the victim of a non-existent personal life. You know the people we ridicule who spend their nights nestled in the latest self help manuscript, or hero impaled cover novel. Who could recite all the seasons of Law and Order or CSI (a magnificent feat I might add considering the mere number of episodes that now exist). The Soap Opera and Grey’s Anatomy era we call them. Well I found that an almost extinct love life and an exhausted imagination coupled with a location that wouldn’t fall on your ‘top ten places to visit’ list, could force you into that very same existence.
Let me tell you a bit about the town that I was now living in. 45 minutes in either direction from the closest cities in what could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere laid this lifeless rock that I now called home. Though the coast was an insightful addition to this already barren wasteland, it still couldn’t make up for the meager display of nomadic settlement and storybook country folk. Where there wasn’t another tree or shack there was a half eaten structure that I would later discover was a mini-mart, barber shop and (what I’m yet to verify) a police station. The people of this ‘boxed in’ culture may have recognized too earlier what I was just now discovering, and for the last too many years, only saw it fit to add a number of pubs and titty bars in the most random of locations. No wonder when the deep pocket suits of the new world saw it fit to build a hotel here, the town folk cringed at the idea. And now sat this ‘diamond in the rough’, the crown jewel of the West; a structure with it’s gargantuan walls and blinding lights. The town folk would say that at night it lit up the surrounding area for miles and miles.
What was first a quiet existence turned into a highway for overseas visitors. Foreigners were trafficked into the town like a swarm of bees returning to their hive before sun down. Even in what hotel management described as ‘low season’, the reservations department still experienced a barrage of bookings. Requests would come in by the thousands; bookings were made by the second and guests were channeled in and out of the hotel so regularly it was impossible to tell where one newcomer started and where the returnees ended.
The over-activity called for ‘more hands on deck’, and soon the hotel was sending to the closest cities for new employees. I still remember the day I got the job. I walked into the office, resume in hand, and within the next 15 minutes I was signing away at documents that were welcoming me to where I would be devoting my time for the next couple of months. It wasn’t a problem that I would be so far away from home as I had no outstanding commitments where I was coming from. I had just gotten out of a two year relationship, and was looking to revamp and piece my life back together.
My latest pursuit, though the most suitable at the time, was a hotel job I landed earlier in the year. It was a far cry from the earlier turmoil of working back to back 18 hour days under the slave whip. You see in the beginning, I had become a dummy to the golden rule of business agreements… “read the fine print”… and was made to suffer as all the other imbeciles before me did, having failed to follow that rule. The sad thing about learned helplessness is that, it sometimes takes a wild jolt for you to realize the hole you have dug yourself in. Soon days turn to years and before you know it, you’re in the same position you swore you would overcome at your last New Years resolution. Well eventually you wake up to your senses and step out of the tunnel, and I felt my latest endeavor was the closest sign of a struggling rodent burrowing further out of the rabbit hole he’d grown to be so comfortable in.
The hours were different and the commitments were not as demanding. I found I created my own time table, and could even dictate the pace at which I had to move. I had come a long way from feeling like a puppet, but still some way off from living like a member of the Royal family.
Even though most of my domestic requirements were met: room, food, clothes and transportation, I couldn’t help feel that, as an individual approaching the twilight of his youthfulness, I may have been the victim of a non-existent personal life. You know the people we ridicule who spend their nights nestled in the latest self help manuscript, or hero impaled cover novel. Who could recite all the seasons of Law and Order or CSI (a magnificent feat I might add considering the mere number of episodes that now exist). The Soap Opera and Grey’s Anatomy era we call them. Well I found that an almost extinct love life and an exhausted imagination coupled with a location that wouldn’t fall on your ‘top ten places to visit’ list, could force you into that very same existence.
Let me tell you a bit about the town that I was now living in. 45 minutes in either direction from the closest cities in what could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere laid this lifeless rock that I now called home. Though the coast was an insightful addition to this already barren wasteland, it still couldn’t make up for the meager display of nomadic settlement and storybook country folk. Where there wasn’t another tree or shack there was a half eaten structure that I would later discover was a mini-mart, barber shop and (what I’m yet to verify) a police station. The people of this ‘boxed in’ culture may have recognized too earlier what I was just now discovering, and for the last too many years, only saw it fit to add a number of pubs and titty bars in the most random of locations. No wonder when the deep pocket suits of the new world saw it fit to build a hotel here, the town folk cringed at the idea. And now sat this ‘diamond in the rough’, the crown jewel of the West; a structure with it’s gargantuan walls and blinding lights. The town folk would say that at night it lit up the surrounding area for miles and miles.
What was first a quiet existence turned into a highway for overseas visitors. Foreigners were trafficked into the town like a swarm of bees returning to their hive before sun down. Even in what hotel management described as ‘low season’, the reservations department still experienced a barrage of bookings. Requests would come in by the thousands; bookings were made by the second and guests were channeled in and out of the hotel so regularly it was impossible to tell where one newcomer started and where the returnees ended.
The over-activity called for ‘more hands on deck’, and soon the hotel was sending to the closest cities for new employees. I still remember the day I got the job. I walked into the office, resume in hand, and within the next 15 minutes I was signing away at documents that were welcoming me to where I would be devoting my time for the next couple of months. It wasn’t a problem that I would be so far away from home as I had no outstanding commitments where I was coming from. I had just gotten out of a two year relationship, and was looking to revamp and piece my life back together.
Lets Get The Ball Rolling
As I sit here and ponder what it is I really want to start out by saying, I can't help think that I may end up rambling on yet again about something I don't want the whole world to know. Guilty already of having a big mouth... even guiltier for using it at times that suit me the worst… a condition my family has come to describe as "Foot-In-Mouth" syndrome (Open wide and insert foot here). But I figure instead of therapy and confiding in friends who will probably take your business on the road anyway... I'll let it out into the world, and maybe, some of my ideas will become some of your inspiration.
I’ve lived a life that would probably be useful material for a best seller, or maybe a chapter or two in a self-help book… come to think of it I could make a column in a FHM (For Him Magazine) slot… but I figured you never know what may happen tomorrow, so why not spread the word and see who it affects.
So this is me… all ME… my ideas, thoughts, inspiration, emotions… the ramblings of an overactive mind… or what I like to call, Mindless Gibberish!
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