Success! Vacation!

The Snark is back!

Friends, I did not realize how difficult it can be to take a vacation until I had the glorious opportunity, recently, to take a week-long beach trip with some of my closest friends. I spent the week hobnobbing with Hogarth, a seagull with an extraordinary homing device for sour cream and onion potato chips.

Hogarth

Nonetheless, had we not been sequestered in an Internet-free zone on an island in the Outer Banks, I would have lasted barely a day before sneaking away, shamefaced, to access Gmail and WorkZone. Turns out I’m lost without my inter-office social media platforms.

The experience got me thinking about what it takes for a workaholic to find rest in the midst of a busy working life, and I am happy to report that I have arrived at three fail-safe solutions. You’re welcome.

Scenario 1: The Tropical Storm

Travel to a small island connected to the mainland (really, any mainland will do) with a single bridge. Summon a tropical storm (we all know you can do it). Wait for the bridge to flood and the wind to knock out the power. Success! Vacation!

Scenario 2: The Locked Door

Place your keys on the counter and your computer and phone on the kitchen table. Promise not to yell at your spouse, your roommate, your kids, or your pets when you get back. Secure the lock on the front door, walk outside, and shut the door firmly behind you. Resist the urge to go to your neighbor’s house and borrow the phone. Do not, in any case, test the windows or the back door. Success! Vacation!

Scenario 3: Off the Map (for truly incurable workaholics)

Tie a clean handkerchief over your eyes and put on your headphones, playing something loud. Recruit a close friend who owns a rusty Jeep. Climb carefully into the car. Do not ask your friend where you are going. When you reach the center of a distant wood, climb out of the car (let it come to a complete stop first), walk further into the woods, spin around until you get dizzy while your friend drives away, wait 30 seconds, and then remove the blindfold. Success! Vacation!

Or, you could just be a normal human being and take a vacation. That’s an option, too. I guess. If you’re into that kind of thing.

Occlumency for Sleep Talkers

“Occlumency, Potter. The magical defense of the mind against external penetration. An obscure branch of magic, but a highly useful one.”
–Professor Snape (Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

One ominous night in fourth grade, I confronted my mother at 3a.m. to demand why my guinea pig was not on the bookshelf next to the radio, where everyone knows that guinea pigs belong.

I was fast asleep then, and I have been amusing friends and family with my sleep-talking antics ever since.

In college, my poor roommates and traveling companions were subjected to late-night no-blinking contests for which only one participant was awake. I moved pillows into the bathroom, dangled upside-down over bunk beds to give them the evil (sleeping) eye, searched for invisible pencils in the middle of the area rug, sang, and spoke in French with greater fluency than I could demonstrate on my best oral exam.

Last week, I roomed with several of my coworkers during an annual team meeting, and my subconscious struck again. While I attempted to gain a restful night’s sleep, my sleeping mind babbled aloud about all things work related.

The real issue is that I have no way of knowing what I have and have not said as a result of my restless dreams. Awake, I tend to be a relatively private person, but, clearly, my subconscious does not share my reticence for divulging information. The subject might be refrigeration, recitations of Shakespeare, tasting room etiquette, or middle school crushes, for all I know. Well, this particular vulnerability has gone on long enough. It’s time to bring in the big guns.

Me.

Professor Snape.

Occlumency lessons.

We’re starting on Monday.

I Can’t Wear Pants Anymore.

This past week has been taken to another hemisphere by the hoard of itty bitty ants that decided to colonize my ceiling light fixture in their attempt to escape from the weekend rains. It might take a few more metaphors to describe my loathing for the tiny Coast-Guard-rescue-swimmer wannabees who spent the week BASE jumping onto my bed.

As of yesterday, I am thrilled to report that the majority of the pests have left the building; however, they have left me with the twitchy sense that ants could be anywhere. Anywhere.

That’s why I can’t wear pants anymore.

Not only that, but I can’t visit Antwerp or the Antarctic.

I can’t rant about antelopes, elephants, or the antennae on insects.

I can’t grant that elegant chants are cool.

I can’t slant my eyes in the brilliant light.

I can’t transplant giant cantaloupe plants.

I can’t take antacids or drink from a canteen.

Are you beginning to understand the true horror of this situation? The ants may have left my bedroom, but they have taken over the English language.

They’re everywhere…

A Mind Gone to the Dogs

I may not be a “dog person” in the strictest sense of the word, but neither am I a puppy hater (these are, according to Urban Dictionary, “currently competing for the worst group of humans that have and will ever exist, along side Nazis, neo-Nazis, the KKK, and Muslim extremeists [sic]”). Nobody wants that.

I say this to establish my credibility as a sincere, ingenuous individual before I express my genuine bafflement at a particular feature of dog-person society: the granddog.

Now, I can understand the desire to validate individuals who are childless by choice or necessity, giving their family unit equal affirmation, but this method seems to present certain nominal difficulties.

Namely, what do you call your son’s dog’s puppy? Your great-granddog? But what if your son also has a daughter who also has a dog? They can’t both have the same name! Furthermore, what would you call yourself?—do dogs have grandhumans or grandowners? And then, where would one even begin to apply the degrees of removal?

Dog people of the world, I beg you to resolve this source of cognitive dissonance! My peace of mind depends upon it.

The Empty-Bottle Hour of YouTube Parties

Not belonging to the iPhone generation is a real disadvantage sometimes. It’s worse than having a clock that is perpetually 34 minutes slow. (Yeah. I still use clocks to tell time.) By the time I come across an Internet phenomenon, everyone else has already seen it.

Who knew that someone other than me found “Thrift Shop” amusing? Wait, The Harlem Shake is a thing? What are “Real Beauty sketches“? To put it simply, I always arrive at the empty-bottle hour of YouTube parties.

Allow me to explain.

The party planners are the ones who find a particular video or blog post when it only has 10 views, six of which are Aunt June and two of which are the creator him/herself. They set the stage, pick the music, and roll up the carpet.

The early birds find it when it first goes viral. They set up camp around the snack table, where they Instagram everything that is edible and pass the video phenomenon to their networks of 30, 80, or 2,000 Twitter followers. They don’t bother with Facebook; it’s so 2005.

Then the Huffington Post arrives at the party, and the real crowd shows up. They crank the music, pass around the Facebook “likes” and “shares,” and create masses and masses of karaoke-style tribute renditions that they videotape on their iPhone.

The cool crew shows up late because they don’t consider the original party worth their time. There are still snacks and drinks left, but they’re not worried. These are the parody and mock-up creators (“Dove Real Beauty Sketches – Men“) who use Macs exclusively and sneer at anyone who still finds the original amusing or touching.

Then there’s me. By the time I arrive, it’s the empty-bottle hour. The hosts have closed the front door and the party has moved to the basement to avoid angering the neighbors. The snack table has been decimated, and the recycling bin is full.

Today was a perfect example. After several weeks with the link sitting in my inbox, I finally got around to watching a poetry slam video called “The Crickets Have Arthritis.” Everyone else in my social scene had already seen it. It was old news. And yet, because it was beautifully written and powerfully delivered, I had to post it on Twitter anyway. Sometimes, even if you arrive at empty-bottle hour, the music is so good you have to stay and dance for a song or two, even if everyone else has gone home or is asleep on the couch.

Those are the parties that are worth attending.

…

…

Hey, by the way – have you heard about this song called Gangnam Style? It’s pretty great.

Mix Tape for a Wine Festival

Movies are better than life only in that they come with a soundtrack. Life’s lack of soundtrack is a serious deficiency–especially when it comes to wine festivals.

This weekend, I kicked back (i.e. tripped over a tent stake) and upended a few bottles of wine (i.e. pouring it into customers’ glasses) while enjoying the sunshine (i.e. the spot lighting under the tent) and crisp breeze (i.e. the not quite gale-force winds that toppled the tent overnight) in the beautiful North Carolina mountains (that part is literal) for the Blue Ridge Wine and Food Festival in Blowing Rock.

All that was missing was an appropriate soundtrack for the weekend. You know what they say: when life gives you lemons…No, that’s not what they say. No one wants lemons at a wine festival. If you build it they will come...No, that’s not quite right either.

Suffice it to say, I’m making a playlist for the soundtrack of a wine festival, if life were as awesome as the movies. In other words: Dearest wine festival, in the spirit of the 90s, I’m gonna make you a mix tape.

Day 1

  • One More Cup of Coffee (Bob Dylan)
  • Non Dairy Creamer (Third Eye Blind)
  • Upward Over the Mountain (Iron & Wine)
  • Boxes & Bottles (Fish & Bird)
  • Tent City (Dead Swans)
  • Wine After Whiskey (Carrie Underwood)
  • Red Red Wine (UB40)
  • The Nights of Wine and Roses (Japandroids)
  • God of Wine (Third Eye Blind)
  • Watch the Wind Blow By (Tim McGraw)
  • Chill Out Tent (The Hold Steady)

Day 2

  • Dismantle and Rebuild (The Ramona Flowers)
  • Wine Slow (Gyptian)
  • Half Full Glass of Wine (Tame Impala)
  • Summer Wine (Nancy Sinatra)
  • Red Wine, Success! (Cold War Kids)
  • More, More, More (Bananarama)
  • Wandering Eye (Fat Freddys Drop)
  • Excuse Me, My Eyes Are Up Here (Ian Evans)
  • Evil Eye (Josh Ritter)
  • Don’t Drink That Wine (N.W.A.)
  • Going Unsteady (Daedelus)
  • Spill the Wine (Eric Burdon)
  • Red Wine, Mistakes, Mythology (Jack Johnson)
  • All the Wine (The National)
  • Wobble (Wobble Baby)
  • Please Drink More Water (Jakewolf)
  • Last of the Summer Wine (Palma Violets)
  • Half Filled Boxes (Three Legged Fox)

I love you, wine festivals!

The Fate of a Happy Snark

There is a bird singing outside my “office” window as I sit in a patch of sunshine at the end of another business day. Three hours of daylight remain. Do you know how dangerous these conditions are for the embattled race of snarks?

Every time a child eats an ice cream cone while holding a daisy, a snark moves to Siberia, never to return. Yeah. It’s that serious.*

Vitamin D levels are getting dangerously high for the snark, which thrives in the cold, dark corners where people huddle and convulse in piles of shivering sadness. This spring creature, The Season That Must Not Be Named, is a deadly foe.

Led by his nefarious superhero, Commander Sunshine, TSTMNBN specializes in disrupting and diverting attacks of snark.

  • College students running with bikini-shaped thought bubbles bobbing behind them? Mmmm, feel that warm breeze lending wings to my feet. I love you guys!
  • Comma errors in local advertisements? Look at the flower petal rainstorm below the sign. I love this city!
  • The dilemma of buying men’s or women’s soap in the grocery store? The sunscreen is right across from the soap. I love the smell of sunscreen!

The situation is getting desperate, and I blame you, Commander Sunshine. For the love of all that is snarky, cease and desist! Cease and–

…

…

Thank goodness for the influx of tiny ants creeping across my bathroom sink. Without them, the snark might not outlast the week.

*This message brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of Snark.

The Revenge of the Fish

I love Goldfish® crackers.

I love them in a bag.

I love them in a box.

I love them in a carton.

I love them in the multi-p(ox).*

But, apparently, Goldfish® crackers do not suffer forever the rampant gormandizing of our species. Sometimes, they fight back.

Yesterday, I fell victim to one such attack. It was an ordinary day. Because I work from home, I eat meals at irregular intervals throughout the working day, often while continuing to work at my laptop. I had placed a business call and, as is often the case, reached voicemail. The subject of the call was timely, so I was determined not to miss the return call. But, around the lunch hour, I paused from my other tasks to snack on some innocent-looking Whole Grain Cheddar Goldfish® crackers.

Innocent, my foot.

As soon as I had [delicately placed] [one] goldfish crackers in my mouth and had begun to chew, a horrible thing happened. Triggered by a secret invisible pulse signal from the devious fish, the cell phone sitting beside me lit up and began to ring.

If you have ever tried to speak to someone immediately after consuming a saltine cracker, you know what comes next. Attempts to swallow quickly are futile. Desperate to take the call and discontinue the game of phone tag, I had no chance against the evil carassius auratus auratus. A nearby napkin was my only hope.

…

I will spare you the rest of the tale, for it is not for the ears of the genteel. Suffice it to say that I will never again take arms against [the inhabitants of] a sea of troubles. Or, at least, I will wait until EOB to do so.

*But for the failed rhymes, the Pepperidge Farm® website reads a little bit like a Dr. Seuss book, if a Dr. Seuss book were littered with registered trademark symbols.

Frozen April Poetry

In true irony, showcasing my eternally pessimistic nature, I welcomed in the spring with a poem called “Frozen.”

Just kidding. Except not.

I was thrilled to have my poem accepted by the poetry blog vox poetica! They are featuring the poem on “today’s words“; it will migrate to the poemblog after today.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out voxpoetica.com. It features work by a few of my fellow BC Eagles, Stan Galloway and Nicky Yurcaba, as well as many, many other talented individuals. Three cheers for an excellent community of writers!

P.S. It’s hard to be properly snarky when you’re doing a happy dance.