Husband of The Year (Or, How I Ended Up in NJ)

I do a lot of pretty rad stuff as a married man, and most of it is for my wife.  And while I quietly self-congratulate, this feat, I feel, deserves some attention.

Last weekend my wife was off visiting friends and family in New Orleans, leaving me behind to pet- and house-sit.  I didn't mind.  Manweekend, what I was calling it; I did very little except run, eat wasabi peas and banana chips, drink a Guinness or two, and play Xbox.

You might've noticed that "showering" was not on that list.

Regardless, my wife was due back in New England by Monday afternoon.  When the appointed time came, I made my way up to Boston's Logan Airport, to (do what any good husband who doesn't want to find his balls chopped off in the middle of the night does) pick up his travel weary wife.

Only, ... I was a bit early.  And.  My wife's connecting flight from Newark, NJ had been canceled.

For this very reason, I always opt for direct flights.  I hate having to de-plane, hustle across to a different terminal, hope to god my checked luggage (if I was stupid enough to check any of it) makes the connection with me, to queue up to board what is essentially the same plane all over again, with the same obnoxious passengers.

As much as I enjoy the idea of flying from place to place (it's convenient, fast, makes me feel like a spy sometimes) the people have essentially ruined the experience, from a personal and security standpoint. 

No longer do you see men and women dressed up to fly someplace.  If anything, you see people in sweats and flip-flops.  "I want to be comfortable," is generally the complaint.  "I don't want to have to strip at security" comes the other end of it. 

Can't say I blame them, as I shuffle thru a metal detector, holding my pants up in one hand, my shoes in another like a village idiot.

So, back to the story, my wife's flight from Newark to Boston had been canceled.  She was on "standby status" til about 1pm, when she MIGHT get a flight from there.

My beef was ... Newark is a hub... meaning, there's a ton of flights leaving Newark, all day.... going in all directions, to every other major hub in the country (Boston included).  Why in the blue fuck was there a four hour wait for another Boston-bound flight?

And the flight wasn't even GUARANTEED!  Her only guaranteed flight status was for a flight departing Newark at 9pm... a full 12 hours away.

There was no fucking way I was about to let me wife sit in New Jersey for that long, lest she be mutated into a Snooki.

The request came quickly, via text message: "Will you come and get me."  And honestly, I made my decision with the same raised pulse I would have if she asked me to pick up some bread on the way home.  It was a natural conclusion for me to make.

To be sure, I texted back: "You want me to drive to NJ to come and get you?"  And she said "Yes please."

And just like that, I was off.  I had everything I needed: a full tank in the Prius, GPS, full charge on my phone, gun, money.... I made my way to pull out of the short-term parking lot.

"Didn't you just get here?"  Said the attendant when she read my ticket.  I explained the situation in as few words as possible, making sure to mention I was driving all the way to New Jersey to pick up my tiny wife.  The woman in the booth sigh and flipped a switch.  The gate in front of me lifted.

"Get out of here," she said, and failed to charge me the $3 minimum.

I was fortunate that I was getting on the road at a time when there was virtually no traffic; Rt 90W was empty and I was making excellent time thru Conn. as well.  I was being filled with these long-lost memories of making this same drive to Brooklyn and Queens years ago.  Everything was bathed in this weird sort of trans-dimensional glow.

I pulled off at a highway rest area to pee and top off the tank (I didn't want to imagine a scenario where I'd have to look for a gas station in The Bronx).  This was one of those McDonald's/Mobile/Chintzy Souvenir places that require an American to ask for an interpreter to facilitate any sort of commerce. 

In the parking lot, I watched two 11 year olds punch the living Bejesus out of each other, over only what I could imagine was the last McNugget.  And I mean, they weren't just "rasslin" like brothers, but actually throwing (and landing in some cases) real-deal, closed fisted blows to each other's face.

It was pretty intense. 

No one was breaking them up, just a ring of adults looking on, perhaps making bets or egging them on in a crude parking lot gladiatorial spectacle.

Back on the road, Ang and I stayed in pretty much hourly contact, giving each other sit-reps.  According to the GPS, I'd be arriving at Newark around 245pm.

The GPS, however, failed to account for the massive parking lot taking form at the GWB approach.

For those of you who are not familiar with the greater NYC area, the George Washington Bridge is one of the few connectors between the city and Northern NJ.  I had never traveled this far into the city before, on my own (I usually took the Whitestone on to the LIE, or Long Island Expressway, into College Point, Qns).  I had no idea I'd be stuck on the GWB for over an hour....

Relaying this info to my wife, who by now was tired, cranky and scared, did nothing to alleviate the growing tension.  I took the time to ask her to find out exactly where she was in the airport (terminal wise) to facilitate a quicker pick up.

Once I squirted thru the GWB, I was only maybe ten minutes from the airport.  I called again, asking for a terminal.

"They don't have terminals here... I'm at international arrivals...."

I should point out here, too, that my wife might have been delusional from eating New Jersey Airport Sushi for lunch.  ....No one has ever accused my wife of being a savvy traveler.

On my approach to the airport, I saw signs for different terminals.  A, B, C airlines were at Terminal A, X, Y, Z airlines were at Terminal B.... international flights were at Terminal C.... ok, I thought.... she must be at Terminal C....

Or one would think.

It would take us a solid 15 minutes to find each other, due to frustration and miscommunications.  During that time, I got yelled at by the cops (twice by the same guy, who was looking more and more mad everytime I made another lap.  But then again, if I were a cop in NJ, I'd probably want to kill myself too), cut off by some arab in a gypsy cab, and nearly ran over a family of Indians with more luggage than pounds in Kim Kardashian's left ass cheek.

Finally, we figured out where each other were, and I made my approach.  I could see my bride, in her sweats and tank top and flip-flops, clutching her duffel bag, looking beat but happy.  I pulled to the curb and eyed another cop making his way towards me.

I hopped out of the Prius, helped her with her bag and for the first time in about seven years, said: "Lets get the fuck out of Jersey...."

We had 6 hours of driving ahead of us.  For being apart for a whole weekend, I didn't mind.

Buck Up, Grads

It seems like for the last few years around late spring/early summer, a slew of media put out stories describing what a bleak job market is lined up for recent or soon-to-be college graduates.  Since about 2005 (coincidentally when I graduated with my BA) television, newspapers, websites, etc have painted this picture of pessimism for the future leaders of the country.

"There's no jobs!"

"These fertile young minds will be forced back into a world of retail!"

"Isn't there anything we can do!"

Yeah, you can shut the fuck up.

Look grads, let me sit you down for a second and explain how the world works:  When you graduate college, no one expects you to have a "career" lined up.  And I'm defining "career" in traditional terms, like a job you're going to work five days a week for the next 20 to 25 years, receive benefits, etc.  Some of you may find "jobs" which are gigs you'll work for 2-5 years before you come to some sort of epiphany while seated at your tiny desk in a cube farm and realize this is not what you want to spend the rest of your life doing, and have a quarter-life crisis as a result.

No grads, most of you.... dare I say 80-90% of you, will move back in with mom and dad and spend the summer "looking for jobs" which will inevitably bleed over into the fall.  You'll be shell-shocked to find yourself still unemployed at a time when you, for the last nearly 20 years, have been your most productive.

One of two things will happen: you'll either go on unemployment and fall into deep depression, or you'll settle for that job listing on Craigslist and fall into deep depression when you realize there's no way for you to get your own place, pay all your mounting bills (mom and dad are going to cut off your cell phone, car insurance, health insurance, gas money, etc) and maintain that comfy social life all on a $10/hr "job."

To compound things, your $100K four year degree, you learn, doesn't mean shit in the real world... all the "careers" you apply for, touting your newly minted bachelors, you find, are being filled internally by guys with only "some college experience" who went to work for the company the moment they left high school, four years ago.

It's all about who you know and experience, sadly.  No one hires a 22 year old kid straight out of college, with his degree, who knows nothing about how the company works.  This has ALWAYS been the case.

So what do you do?  Do you roll your diploma up and smoke that cheap skunk weed you're forced to now buy?  Do you go eat a barrel at 1 am in the Kmart's parking lot?

No.  You buck the fuck up.

It gets better, you just have to give it time.  EVERYONE, except maybe for a privileged few, is going through the same thing you're going thru.

When I graduated college in '05 I only had a few options lined up, and they all fell thru within weeks of each other.  I was forced to pack my shit and move back home, which was soul crushing.  It's taken me nearly five years of hard work in various avenues to land someplace (just now) that's putting my degree to work.  And even then, it was a host of other experiences that really put me over the top.

So my advice to recent grads entering our so-called "job market": wait it out.  Every guy you see working today, in some way, shape or form, has gone through what you're going to be going through and their better for it.  You're like, 21, 22.... enjoy being young and free, without adult obligations.  Even kids who graduated from places like Harvard, Yale and Vassar tend to couch it out for a while and take "jobs" they don't really want to take, just to survive.

You're no where near rock bottom, trust me.  It's not you're turning tricks on Craigstlist.  Yet.

(From 2009) Dispatch: Southern Maine's Great Ammo Crunch

Not my bike at the time, but similar

I think it would be easier to find a red headed virgin in Rosalita, Mexico who wasn’t suffering from Swine Flu before I’ll ever find 9mm bullets in Southern Maine.

At least, this is what I was lead to believe last Sunday morning while traveling over fifty miles on a motorcycle when temperatures hit 83 degrees before I even left the house.

I made the tactical error of putting on a shit-ton of personal protective equipment – more than necessary, which included UnderArmor, thick gloves, Kevlar jacket liner, etc – before ever walking out the door of my mother’s house.  By the time I got to my bike, one street over at my father’s house, I was pretty much covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

My objective was simple, though pulling it off would be a beast of a completely different temperament:  I had to find bullets for the new Glock pistol I bought the day before at the local Biddeford Gun Show, a gun show that was once the flagship gun collector’s exhibition in Southern Maine, but since the winding down of the Bush Administration, has somewhat become a shell of it’s former glory.  Gone now are the giant booths with tactical webbing-based vests and shoulder harnesses.  Displays of military-grade firepower that only Level Three Licensees can legal own, gone as well.  Even the old guy with the snow-white beard to his belt buckle, pushing a hand truck with an old Browning air-cooled .30 cal mounted machine gun was absent from the proceedings.  No, all that seemed to remain were a few logie-looking booths and venders with various instruments of death and destruction, marked up by at least 15% to as high as 50% depending on whom you were dealing with, and how exotic the piece was.

But what had returned were the crowds.  In recent years the Biddeford Gun Show’s attendance has somewhat fallen off, which in turn, diminished the level of prestige of the participating venders.  The surge in populace this year seems to stem from the current Democratic Presidential Administration, and the fears that a black Democratic President will “any day now” pass legislation abolishing the Second Amendment and send federal law enforcement officers into the homes of every Red Blooded American who owns firearms to forcibly strip the weapons from their owners, and possibly march them to a cattle car to be shipped into the wilderness in the dead of night.

This and other mythoi were being exchanged amongst the crowd of surly late-middle-aged panic-mongers in attendance at the gun show.  As I weaved through the crowd examining table after table of weaponry I overheard a number of what some could consider outlandish accusations, rumors and innuendo from those who paid seven dollars to get their hand stamped at the door.

“Any day now, Obama’s going to raid our homes and take our guns away,” grumbled one gun owner in farm-chic clothing.  Another:  “We’re only as safe as we make ourselves, no one’s going to take that away from me!”

The crowd of about one thousand constantly seemed to be teetering on the edge of full blown riot, with tensions flowing with every disgruntled half-truth that was being uttered as (mostly) men fingered cheap Spanish-imports of cloned 1911-A1 .45 ACPs and grease-packed AK47s.  Overall the mood was dark, and if you tried to inject another point of view, shed of optimism if you will, you were seen at best as a simpleton, and at worst, a spy.

I found this out when I stupidly tried to bring to the attention of one show goer who I was 90% convinced was a member of either the Klu Klux Klan or the Hell’s Angels that Mr. Obama has a little too much on his plate to deal with the issue of Second Amendment Rights at the moment, especially concerning the economy, filling out the rest of his cabinet, partisan politics, and that whole “Middle East Thing.”  I tried to assure the barbarian that if the issue was ever going to be approached, that number one, it wouldn’t be at least until the far side of two years from now, and number two, there’s far too much support against anti-firearms legislation in the country to make a significant impact on the individual gun owner.  Similar to anti-abortion, -gay rights, and -marijuana legislation, the laws enacted would be far too controversial, and no elected official would dare disenfranchise at least half of his electoral base.

“What are you?  One of those statistic-spewing faggots?”  Said the Klansman-Biker, who then worked up enough phlegm in his throat to convince me he was going to hock it into my face if I didn’t get enough room between me and him very quickly.

For the rest of the gun show I kept a very low profile. 

Purchasing a firearm is still incredibly easy, despite what gun-owners in attendance would like the layperson to think.  Aside from the fact I was standing in the middle of a 100,000 square-foot converted ice arena, surrounded by tables and tables of guns with only one police officer standing duty by the front door, procuring a pistol, rifle, shotgun, authentic Nazi memorabilia from World War 2, or whatever you fancy is a matter of spending a few moments filling out a simple page of generic government paperwork (“no, I’m not a convicted felon,” and “no, I’m not addicted to any controlled substance, including marijuana” are actual questions with YES/NO boxes next to them.), submitting to a Federal Background Check through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and handing over a credit card to the federally licensed gun dealer to whom you’re giving your business to.

After haggling over the price of my Sig Sauer P230 .380 that I wanted to trade up to a Glock 19 9mm, as well as buying a new Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun (my father is moving to a trailer park in Florida later this summer, and asked if he could have my old Mossberg 500 for home defense), I tried to get the dealer to give me a “sweetheart deal” on an DPMS/Panther AR15 that he had listed for 1100 dollars.  I explained to him that being that the DPMS was a “flat top” receiver with no sights, I would have to go out and buy a sighting system at a cost of about 200-300 dollars.  I also brought up the point that I was already buying two guns off of him and if he wanted to move the products, he should cut me a deal.

He gave it some thought and came back with an offer of 950, a considerable mark down, but I figured he could do better.  On average, an AR15, which three years ago would have retailed for about 600 bucks, were going for between 975-1300 dollars at this gun show.  Getting him even below those numbers was a good deal, but I figured I had this guy on the ropes and he could go lower.

And I was right because he came down as low as 850 after a few more minutes of my complaining.  I then told him I didn’t want it and that I’d take just the pistol and shotgun, which seemed to piss him off a little (there were probably a dozen other customers standing right next to me who heard his generous offer of 850, who no doubt would sweep in on that deal after I walked away).  I realized that I had no real practical use for a high powered rifle in a dilapidated apartment complex, and that the likelihood of me shooting through our walls and into the apartment of one of the neighbors, although enticing, could cause greater legal ramifications for me down the line.

So I sat down in a metal folding chair and filled out the proper paper work.  And even though I accidentally omitted my social security number on the federal gun buyers form (I honestly usually put it down, as I’m inclined to believe that by not, if gives the BATF an excuse to deny my background request, even though it’s marked in bold letters that providing that information is completely OPTIONAL), less than five minutes after I put ass to chair, I was handing my credit card over to the dealer, and walking away with two highly lethal weapons that I could virtually do anything I wanted.

I just had to load them first.

I walked around the floor of the gun show a little longer and came to a booth that was selling re-loaded-at-home rounds and hefted a box of 9mms.  When the booth’s vendor told me that the box of 50-count bullets was going to cost me 25 dollars (usually a box – or “square” as it’s called in certain gun-circles – of 9mms goes for about 15-20 bucks, reloads less, obviously) I dropped the box along with my jaw and walked away.  The vender called after me, telling me that he had already sold two cases (roughly twenty boxes per case, and the case I plucked that one box out of was about down to three squares left) and would probably be sold out by tomorrow.

What he didn’t tell me was that there’s virtually no ammunition in Southern Maine at all.

Due to the fear and panic in Southern Maine, which is more “red state” than the rest of the traditionally “blue Maine” people have been buying and stockpiling ammunition in bulk at alarming and albeit, unsettling rates.  I had no clue that the case was so severe until later that afternoon, after leaving the gun show with two firearms and no ammo (making them two of the most expensive paper weights I’ve ever purchased) I headed over to the local Wal Mart, where previously I’ve bought ammo on the cheap, which is exactly what I told the ammo vender at the gun show.

Blinded by ignorance, I walked into the Wal Mart and headed back towards the Sporting Goods section.  The inside of the Wal Mart looked third-world: gutted, stripped of any semblance of that cheery yellow-smiley face conglomerate that once dominated Biddeford Crossing for the last fifteen or so years.  No, the monolith with her ever expanding parking lot seemed frail and decayed, shelving bare, what I imagine a Wal Mart in some remote part of Serbia would look like on a good day.

When I got to the Sporting Goods section I ran into another red-stater, dressed in a typical aggressively patriotic t shirt featuring wording about “colors” and “running” and a picture of a soaring eagle or something to that effect, buying a hunting license of some sort.

I don’t hunt, so I have no idea what game season is in vogue right now, but being that summer’s coming up, and Maine tends to get overpopulated with tourists during this time, something about a bald, big-eared, mouth breathing caveman buying a hunting license didn’t sit well with me. 

As the clerk behind the counter diddled the register to print out the hunting license I wandered around the section looking for the display of bullets.  When I found the display, a large locked glass case, I stopped suddenly with confusion.  I turned to see if anyone was watching me, any employee that could help me, but I was alone.  So I went back to the clerk at the register and inquired with him as he finished up the total on the red-stater’s order.

“Excuse me, but are you guys like,” and I trailed off for a second.  The Budweiser-swilling tradesman was barking at his collection of children, aged 6-11, about five or six of them, and his gutturally sharp chunks of words took me off balance for a second.

“That’s strike one!” he snapped at one of his brood, who were horsing around by the register.  “One more strike and you’re not getting ice cream!” 

I wanted to clear my throat and correct him, in front of his children, that you technically get three strikes, (based off of baseball or Family Feud rules) but I kept my mouth shut and went back to the clerk.

“Are you guys, like, renovating or something?  Because your ammo case back there is empty and I…” and the clerk cut me off.

“We can’t keep that shit in stock for more than a day.  We put out orders for handgun ammo, rifle ammo, you name it, at least once a week, and by the time it comes in, we have so much of the stuff on back order, that it’s all sold by the time the truck pulls up.”  Jesus, I thought, they’re hording all the goddamn bullets!

The red-stater decided to inject his opinion on the matter as well:

“It’s a real pain in the balls,” he started, his voice phlegmy and choked, as if he was speaking from underneath a boot across his windpipe.  “I’ve been buying online, you can’t get bullets anywhere, not the Wal Mart in Scarborough, the Cabelas, LL Beans, Dicks,” he went on. 

I was shell shocked, in utter disbelief.  There had to be someplace I could readily buy bullets today, right now.  What if there was an emergency, and I needed to shoot someone TONIGHT!  Nothing is worse than an unloaded gun sitting by itself at home when you go out to a family restaurant with your wife and mother and spend the entire night alternating your field of view between the Red Sox/Yankees game on the tv over your head and the front door of the establishment, waiting for some barbarian to come barreling in to kill everyone on Margarita Two-fer Night.

The next morning I got up early-ish and took off on my motorcycle, with messenger bag slung around my shoulders, to try every conceivable store that would be selling ammunition. 

The thought had occurred to me that I could just go back to the gun show and try my luck there.  I just didn’t want to pay out the nose for cheaply “remanufactured” bullets, given the price of admission is seven dollars, and the mark up on the ammo is about 100%. 

So all morning I rode up and down US Rt 1, looking for a place that sold bullets.  I first pulled into the local Cabela’s monstrosity and found that they wouldn’t open until 10 am, which by then would be too late for me, as my mother committed me to helping my tacky aunt and uncle move “unwanted” furniture from my father’s place to their place.  So up the road I traveled still, finding myself at the Scarborough Wal Mart.

Mind you, I’m on a motorcycle, dressed in a black Kevlar jacket, black “murder” bandana around my neck, black messenger bag, black boots, black Oakley Flak Jacket HJXs, and my throat is all weird from the ride.  I stride into the Wal Mart and try to find the Sporting Goods section, but if you’ve ever been into a different Wal Mart than what you’re used to, you know that their store is SLIGHTLY laid out differently.

So after walking around a bit, I find the section and come across similar results.  I’m pretty dejected, but on my way out I find a stock girl- young, petite, blonde – with a clipboard, doing some sort of inventory.  I walk up to her and get her attention.  Immediately she’s intimidated by me; it’s all but written on her face in magic marker, so I lift my shades to my forehead so she can see I’m no threat.

“Hey, you got any ammunition out back?”  I ask.  Unbeknownst to me ahead of time, my voice comes out as if I’m Dirty Harry and I just found out my dog has rabies.  Her eyes develop a sheen of wetness and her lip trembles.  Her voice small, tinny:

“No, we’re all out,” I figured for this based on the evidence and snarl a little to myself.

“Mm, what about the Dick’s up the road?  Know anything about them?”  I unintentionally growl.

“No…” it’s like a stalking lion talking to a church mouse. 

“Don’t worry,” I try to ease her obvious fear of this big biker looming over her, asking about affordable munitions.  “I’m not mad, I’m not going to kill anyone,” she lets a nervous smile slip out.  “…because I don’t have any bullets.”  Her smile fades quickly and I leave the store, watching my back on the road for the next few miles for police cars looking for a homicide-crazed lunatic on a motorbike.

I have similar results at the next few places I try, either they’re sold out or not open this early on a Sunday, and after running out of time, I head back to my mother’s house to help move furniture, which is like eating a big plate of glass shards for breakfast.

Later in the day I called what was going to be my “last resort” before being forced to pay for rounds at the gun show.  I used to work for the Kittery Trading Post, an Outdoor Outfitter in Southern Maine that I’m somewhat persona-non-grata with due to an incident in their parking lot that involved myself, a stalker, and the Kittery Police Department over two years ago.  They have a huge firearms selection, dedicating their entire second floor to just guns.  If they didn’t have ammunition I could buy, no one in Southern Maine would.

I called and after being batted around from associate to associate for ten minutes, I finally got a hold of someone on the gun floor.

“Hey, I’m trying to find 9mms, you guys got any in stock?”

“No, all we got on hand right now are .41 magnums and .22s, we can’t keep anything in stock for more than a day,” the associate said into the phone.  “Once word gets out, we get nailed.  We had a shipment of ammo on Friday and we were just about sold out last night.  You’re best bet is online,”

In the end, I went back to the gun show and bought an overpriced box of 9mms, but only because I didn’t want to travel without a loaded gun.  And to add another element of horror to my story, I thought the ammo-epidemic was contained in Maine and other-like minded ignorant locales.  No.  It’s not. 

When I we finally got back to The Hook, I logged on to a few different sites that specialize in “hunting accessories” to see if I could purchase ammunition in bulk, only falling into my fellow statesmen’s hysteria half way, more concerned that the ammo crunch will continue to make getting rounds in the future difficult.  Three of the four sites I visited had handgun ammo on backorder, and another had some available, but it wasn’t anything special, just Full Metal Jacketed bullets at 115 grain.

So in the end, what does this mean?  It means I’m going to call Charles Schwab later today and buy stock in Winchester, American Federal, and UCM.

A Tweet Too Long to Post about Sandwiches, Jokes and Married Life

Wife: this butter and honey sandwich is like sex on bread!

Me: gimmie a bite.
Her: no get your own!

=

I heard a joke today, but you'll have to find the guy who told it to me.

Emailing Me is a Privilege, Not a Right

You have no right to email me.

Emailing me is strictly a privilege I extend to a certain few people.  This is because email, to me, is a primary form of communication, on the same level as a phone call or text message.  I try to think back to when this took place; this idea that email has gone from something I rarely-if-ever checked, to one of three ways to get in touch with me directly.

I draw the lineage back to my first "smart phone," a Blackberry 8300-series Curve, red in color.  It was 2008, smart phones were becoming ubiquitous and better, faster and cheaper.  Before this point in mobile technology, only super elite businessmen and doctors carried the big, chunky phones with their dainty little plastic stylus that could fetch emails and in a limited way surf the internet.

But technology got better and manufacturers saw a market ready to pop.  The smart phone was a status symbol for the rich and entitled.  I was due for an upgrade, so for the low-low price of 200 dollars, I bought my first Blackberry (a phone that I believe is now part of a government-sponsored "free phones for the poor" program).

With my Blackberry I became no longer tethered to an ethernet cable-attached computer terminal to read an email.  But then again, no one was really emailing me.  So I started emailing them.  I sent people emails instead of texts (my phone plan features "unlimited data" but limited text messaging.  It was cheaper to send emails, is what I'm getting at.) and that's how it all started.

Now my email-ing has become a monster.  I have a professional looking signature that I stole after being inspired by one I saw on a boss's email.  I fire off emails like thank you notes or to keep the ball rolling on projects.  I make sure everyone is on the same page with a CC (or a BCC, depending).

My Blackberry became an iPhone 3GS, which allowed me to email even faster, but not at first because I had Blackberry Thumb and found typing on the sometimes temperamental touchscreen bothersome.

But then came this backlash of all the emailing I was doing.  My email address was getting around, getting into the wrong hands, or at least in the hands of people I didn't want having it.

It's one thing to use my email address to get me access to something.  For instance: if I'm ordering something online, I need to use my email address to confirm the purchase.  This in turn will result in unsolicited emailings from said-company about shit I don't want.  This is solved by either A) sending a reply email with the word "remove" in it, so I'm taken off the list (problematic, because if I want to order from the site again, I start this whole process all over) or B) I can just set up a filter, where I program my email client to "filter" unwanted emails meeting a certain criteria to the trash or archive, unread and uncared for.

I'm usually an option B guy.

But sometimes my email address with fall into the wrong hands unintentionally.  Distant family members get a hold of it, and then bombard your inbox with "funny fwds."  These are usually older aunts or uncles or family friends who came into the internet age with trepidation and never adapted beyond AOL and HTML scripting, or developed "email etiquette".

I'm sure we all remember chain emails from the 1990s.  "Send this forward to five friends or ____ will happen to you," was a threat.  Or "If you want to find true love, forward this to X amount of friends within two hours..." came the promise.

No one, at least I'm fairly positive, believed in any of that, but sent the forwards on to everyone in their address book, ensuring, like some sickly penis unhinged on the local town, we would all get a virus or two, or because the email would be so thick with glittery HTML .gif graphics, our Dell laptops would instantly come to a screeching halt trying to load the entire 25-page email.

(I can remember back to one of my college days... getting one of these giant emails and subsequently every email correspondence relating to the original email, because two idiots kept "reply all"-ing each other to tell the other how funny the email was.  It nearly made me throw my Compaq laptop out of my third story window)

There's no tactful way to get these emails to stop, unless you outright block or filter the sender.  Reasoning with your 50-sum-odd-old aunt won't help.  She won't "get it."

"Auntie Muriel, it was so nice seeing you last month, but could you please stop sending me these forwards...." she'll become indignant, complain to your mother, and now you have two of these goddamn harpies breathing guilt down your neck.

Then there's the overtly racist forwards from your backwoods uncle who tries to stuff his political views down your throat at every opportunity he can find.  And since you see him only once a year, usually completely plastered at Thanksgiving, sending you endless emails from fringe right wing groups that have names similar to KKK splinter cells operating autonomously out in the woods of Michigan seems like his best bet. 

"Obama isn't our president," one would start, with quote-unquote "proof" of his "real birth certificate" "recovred" from a hospital in "Kenyah".

So I set up a two-prong defense against this type of shit-emails.  I give only certain people my "real address" email that goes directly to my phone, computer, iPad, etc.  In this email, I port in emails from other accounts, and in other accounts, I have filters set up, so only the REALLY IMPORTANT emails ever make it thru to my actual, live email.

Other people, crazy aunts and uncles, people I vaguely remember from high school or co-workers I wouldn't piss on to save from spontaneous combustion, they receive the other email addresses.  Usually a gmail.com address with something that might look like my name attached to it.

There's probably a total of five people, maybe up to ten, who have my real email address.  Because it's not an inherent right you have to email me, or anyone else.  It's a privilege I extend to you, like giving out my phone number or physical address.

Assignment: Procrastinate.

I'm a hardcore procrastinator.  This is something I freely admit, as most of those who contextually fuck ourselves over out of sheer habit (and maybe sheer maliase) understand.  It's a process that involves me sitting down, staring at my oversized computer screen blankly, trying to urge myself to actually write.

But I'm too easily distracted.  Hell, since starting this first post, I've gotten up no less than three times (twice at my wife's beck and call, and once to get the little baggie of dried cranberries that I meant to get the other two times I walked out to the kitchen.).  Add to that, I have five tabs on my browser open, each with java-enabled updates (twitter, espn, Huffpost, NYT, gmail) I habitually skip from one to the other as soon as I see an update.

I remember hearing a bunch of times that in order to write well, you need to be isolated away from distractions.  While I believe this to be absolutely true, I am without a cabin in the woods out in the far reaches of northern Maine.  Granted, where I live is essentially a geographic hole in the ground without cell service, but our wifi is strong.  Super strong actually, because I keep our router chained in a closet and feed it nothing but anabolic steroids farmed from Hungarian horse DNA.

True story:  one time I woke up in the middle of the night and found our router out of his closet, bent over the corpse of a rabbit it had caught and dragged into the kitchen, feasting on the poor beast's flesh.  It turned it's blinking-light face towards me, spattered with fresh-kill blood and growled.  I slowly backed into the bedroom and locked the door, making my wife switch sides of the bed so SHE was closer to the bedroom door leading to the kitchen.


But once I get going with whatever I want to write, I usually can't stop.  It becomes like what a meth addict doing his laundry is like; a feverish compulsion to complete the task lest the "bugs" get back under his skin.  Only the bugs in my case are distractions.  It doesn't help when my brain fires off synapses 12 times faster than yours does.  Because I'm super human.  Truth.

What else is hindering my writing ability today is that the java scripting on this hosting site is horrendous.  Everytime I have to hit "enter" to start a new paragraph, ... the cursor just sits there, plaintively blinking at me, as if it doesn't understand the goddamn command to hop down a level.  It just, blinks, almost as if to insult my creative abilities, to hamstring them even.

Ah Christ, it did it again!  Fuck!

Now I'm just being obnoxious.  But it is a huge pain, like a speed bump to my process.  You get your car up to a good clip, like 30mph, and then you pump the brakes and slow the F down to go over this little bump, only to pick speed back up, to slow down again.  Real aggravating.  This is why speed bumps are seldom in more than sets of ... like three or four.

Damnit!  I just spent the last minute futzing around with my iTunes library.  God, concentrate!  ....calm down.

And what's probably the last thing that's causing me to be so lax about my ability to sit down and write something meaningful is that I have literally a stack of stuff to write out:  Honors Contract proposal (only has to be a paragraph long, but something about getting what I want to say in just four or five sentences seems daunting), correspondence from my family on the west coast, other emails that require my attention. 

It's my adult responsibility to get back to these people all within a timely manner, but the simple thought of KNOWING I HAVE to do it makes me want to do it even less.  It's a helluva conundrum.