A Disaster Waiting

Everyone has something that sets his hair on end. Fingernails on a chalkboard. A high-pitched dog yapping. Bugs and spiders. An old high school friend of mine could not even bear to look at a picture of a snake in a science book. I know someone for whom the thought of touching raw wood is literally nauseating. Mixing that brownie batter with a wooden spoon? As good as a toothbrush down the throat. A doctor with a tongue depressor? Call an ambulance.

For me, it's glass — from a paper-thin martini glass to a gigantic window pane. This morning, walking the dog we're sitting this week, I was already annoyed that she was stopping for a thorough examination of every five feet of sniffable surface. But when she picked a tree to piss on that placed me right next to a parked glass-delivery truck, my ankles began to sweat.

The truck backed up, and I tugged the lead slightly to encourage Honey to move on. I eyed the layered panes, completely stationary and secure yet still threatening at any moment to spontaneously shatter and explode, embedding irretrievable shards into my face and neck and arms. I imagined one of the larger ones buckling under its own weight to send a shimmering guillotine sliding down on my neck.

How does that truck make it all the way from the shop without shattering its cargo all across the highway? Why are the sheets of glass all arranged on the outermost edges of the truck bed — where they can do ordinary citizens the most harm? How do those workers each still have all 10 of their fingers? How can you allow small children and old people to pass within close proximity of this truck?

I have also always intensely disliked floor-to-ceiling mirrors. For one thing, in a home it's usually just tacky and done for all the wrong reasons. (Want to make your room look bigger? Knock out a wall. Move into a different apartment.) Mostly, though, it's just the sheer size of that sheet of glass. Moving a large unframed mirror from a friend's apartment to another friend's pickup truck, there was a moment when I thought it might slip through the gap between the elevator and the floor. It could easily happen. Loosen your grip for less than a blink, and someone's certain death is suddenly hurtling through 32 floors of elevator shaft.

Glass table tops? Gag me. Ever see Heathers? Or that other movie (I think it's a David Lynch) where the guy falls into the corner of a glass coffee table and it hacks halfway into his head — starting with the eye — like a sharp hatchet through a boiled egg?

When I first moved to my neighborhood, I met my ultimate horror in a set of glass shelves in a storefront window. Rising maybe five or six levels, each horizontal pane is suspended by a set of four tall, narrow pint glasses. A little too much weight on any one shelf, and you've got yourself a death scene. What merchandise could possibly be worth such a risk?

I'll Walk, Thanks.

Reading about the recent death of marathoner Ryan Shay, it strikes me how incredibly out of shape I am yet how relatively unbothered I am about it. At age 28, at the top of his game, he collapsed at the 2008 Olympic Marathon trials.

It absolutely can happen to anyone. Yet how disgusting that it should happen to him. If the good Lord comes ringing for me before my time, I hope I have the good sense to screen my calls.

He is from a family of runners, which I take as a testament to the dearth of amusements available to a growing boy up in Central Lake, Michigan, population 1,000. Every sibling runs or has run. His sister stills holds some sort of obscene high school record. Plus his parents coach. Is it dedication or obsession? Whatever it is, it's bloody impressive.

"Trials" is an appropriate word. In today's Times article about the tragedy, his coach's training scheme for such trials is described thus: a 14-week training period, peaking at about 130 to 140 miles of training a week, with workouts including 8 x 1 mile at 4:45 to 4:50 pace at 7,000 feet (in Arizona) with two minutes' rest in between.

Yikes! (Two minutes' rest? They are so fat and lazy. What hope do they have?)

People who are driven to be the best at what they do have to work for it, no doubt. And I respect that. But I don't want nearly as much. So I am perfectly content not to work nearly as hard as Ryan Shay, who can run a marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes, proposed to.

Even a friend of mine, finishing last weekend's New York Marathon in 4:09 (a personal best for him, I think), leaves me in the dust. I wouldn't even try it. I detest running. I can't even think of something I enjoy doing for four hours and nine minutes!

I am just this side of hopeless. Truly, I miss my rugby team, which dragged me kicking and screaming into the best shape of my life over the last couple of years. Having taken a season away from the team, I am reduced with amazing speed to a quivering white pudding, winded by the staircase ascent from the subway, aware of every aching joint and wondering how long it will be before I end up an Old Man. This is how it starts! I think.

UPDATE: I stand corrected. From the horse's mouth: 4:04:27. Yikes!

I am Jazz

Um... great. This is the one who gets killed in the movie.


Find out which Transformer you are at LiquidGeneration!

R.i.Pod

	A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. [theistore.com]

Last week, walking to work one morning, in the first 30 seconds of "Big Wheel" by Tori Amos, my iPod suddenly shut off. When I turned it on, it had registered half battery life, so I tried firing it up again. But it wouldn't start up. It just cycled through the reboot and never got through to the menu screen. The battery had been acting up for well over a year, so I assumed it would shut off on its own, as usual, and I would just charge it up again at work.

When I pulled it out later to charge it, it was still running. It was still rebooting. Over and over and over. And it was hot to the touch. I held the Menu and the Play/Pause buttons to reset it, but it never got past its opening screen. Click, whirrrrrr, bzzzzz... pause. Click, whirrrrrr, bzzzzz... pause. Click, whirrrrrr, bzzzzz... pause.

I began to panic and went to the Apple Web site, but I couldn't do anything about it with my work PC. I needed my Mac at home. Eventually it puttered out and stopped spinning. Safe ... for now.

That night I couldn't even get it to mount to the desktop; nor could I get iTunes to recognize it — so I could do absolutely nothing to reset or restore. No amount of troubleshooting would help.

After five years, my iPod's number is up. His little ticker has finally gone out. Long will I remember the countless hours of Madonna, Tori Amos, Cyndi Lauper, Indigo Girls, Gorillaz, '80s playlists, the Wicked soundtrack. I will be forever grateful for years of encouragement on the Bally's treadmill with Ultimate Kylie and Confessions on a Dancefloor. Those days are over.

My iPod was Generation 3, the last model before the display went color. Before the click wheel. Before the 30GB model. Before video.

He filled my heart with joy, but at 20 GB — five times the size of my first Mac G3 desktop machine, mind you &8212; he had not yet been filled with music.

Now he has gone to Abraham's bosom. He's bitten the big one, the biscuit, the dust. He's kicked the bucket. He's bought the farm, cashed in (or cached, for the geeks) his chips, checked out, climbed the golden staircase. He's cooking for the Kennedys. He is passing over Jordan. He is gathered to his fathers. He has met his maker. He has joined the ancestors. He's croaked. He's snuffed it. He's toast. He's dead meat. He's given an obolus to Charon, crossed the river on the Stygian ferry — to the undiscovered country, fallen into the dreamless sleep. He is at journey's end. He is sailing on the grey ships. He's done like dinner. He's flat-lined. It's curtains for my poor iPod. It's Taps. He is information superhighway roadkill. He's feeding the fishes. He's worm food. He's going home feet first, toes up. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for my iPod. He's shuffled off his mortal coil. He's shit the bed. He's gone to his just reward, his last home, his rest, his last account, the last roundup, the sweet hereafter, the happy hunting ground. He is sowing the Elysian Fields. He's met the grim ferryman, the grim reaper, the great leveller. He's hung up his tack. He's picking up his harp. He has left the building. He has been launched into eternity. He's on the road to nowhere. He's paid the piper. Pegged out. Pulled the plug. He's given up the ghost. He's pushing up daisies, singing with the angels, sleeping with the fishes. He's six feet under.

I'm gonna miss you, little guy.

(Special thanks to Dead & Buried.)

What? No, really... what?

Mad, crazy turkey, or the link between dinosaurs and birds?

Last night I had a dream that I was stalking an archaeopteryx. This would be the long-extinct link between reptiles and birds. The "first bird," if you will.

I was crawling on my belly on a forest floor. After waiting for who knows how long, I looked up and saw it through a gap in the leafy canopy. Its flight followed a graceful arc, its wings beating effortlessly. I don't think an archaeopteryx actually flew this way. It was not a bird as we know it. It was a reptile, much heavier than a bird. Its bones were not hollow. It glided, and it flew short distances like a bird, but it was not like an albatross or an eagle or a sparrow.

The creature in my dream was beautiful, with a spectrum of feathers splayed out along its wings like a multicolored poker hand. It had fins of feathers on its head, too, like a gryphon. They looked like horns or ears. The head in real life would actually probably have been covered with something more like scales than feathers. And it would not have had horns. I remembered this after I woke, but during the dream I saw the creature as a normal specimen.

It soon spotted me and began to approach. I remembered it was a carnivore and that I probably looked pretty tasty, but I didn't know where I could run to avoid it. And anyway, this being a dream, I couldn't move. The closer it got, the uglier it looked and the slower it moved. Soon it was just floating down, like the petal of a blossom or a piece of fluff from the laundry.

When it reached the ground with a soft bounce, the creature looked nothing like it did when it was in the sky. It was brown, gray, withered, shabby. It looked like pieces were missing — its eyes, for one thing. It had no feathers. It was dried up. It was dead. But it was still moving.

It was trying to communicate with me, but it made no sound. It just hopped and flapped impotently, thrashing around through the dead leaves. I had the impression that these movements were meant in a menacing way. It wanted to hurt me, but it was harmless.

Then I became aware that there was someone else on the ground next to me. He or she was a companion. I knew that much, but I didn't know who it was. This person was similarly dead and dried up in a gray, intact, zombie sort of way, able to move arms and legs but not apparently able to stand or walk or talk. Then I realized the archaeopteryx was communicating with — threatening, in fact — this dead friend. The corpse was scared of this creature, I could tell. And I realized that I was not. Rather than being startled by a partially mobile dead person, I was mainly annoyed that I couldn't tell who it was.

I stood up and ran away. I tore through the brush, forgetting where I had just come from.

Death and ... (Well, You Know...)

Three things are inevitable in this world. In order of difficulty: Death, taxes and the propensity for party guests to stain one's rugs. (This, among other reasons, is why white carpet is a cardinal sin.)

Death... well, let's not get into that right now.

And I am coping rather well, I think, with the recent news that I owe thousands of dollars to the governments of the United States and the state of New York. That's the big news in my life, at present. I just did my taxes last night and accidentally opened an artery. Those paper cuts can be a bitch.

At this rate I'll be serving government cheese and generic brand soda crackers at the Oscar Night gathering we're planning for Sunday. It's not a party, I hasten to clarify. It's a very small gathering.

At an Easter party we threw last year — bloody marys and mimosas; boiled eggs, kielbasa and saurkraut — a few of our thirstier guests wreaked unintentional (i.e., drunken) havoc on our floors, spilling red wine or cranberry juice (or both — who brought the wine anyway?) on literally every rug in our apartment. The colors in our rugs run from beige to gold, gray to brown. Mostly neutral tones, except for a blue, white and gray rug in the bedroom. You don't exactly need a map to hit the lighter, easy-to-stain areas, but our guests were a consistent lucky shot.

A tempest in my head roiled and sent electricity coursing up my spine every time I saw someone teetering this way and that, red wine or a strong cape cod sloshing dangerously close to the edge of his or her plastic cup.

I had been told that cold water and salt will usually lift the color out of a wine stain. So I got all Martha Stewart and managed get the stains out. I kept calm and maintained a good host's smile — and, to a degree, conversation — while I flitted from spot to spot all night, liberally sprinkling Morton's. (When it rains, it does indeed pour.) The rugs remained largely unspoiled, and I felt spiritually and emotionally purged. It was a triumph.

After that trauma, however, I think we'll have white wine this time on Sunday. And white cranberry juice. (But I'll have my spot remover, my yellow rubber gloves and a salt shaker at the ready, stashed behind the couch, anyway — just in case!)