Things I'm Not Generally Interested In
Social networking. Your pants, and how tightly you can get the cuffs to wrap around your goddamn ironic, over-the-top, sneakers. Conference calls. Sounding smart, like you’re really smart.
There’s something about watching the national evening news that I like. The pace of it, the over the top military march-like theme music. The content these days almost exclusively consists of:
1. Economy, and what people are doing to get by.
2. Something is dangerous, and you should know about it.
3. We’re all going to die.
But I guess it reminds me of coming in when my mom called to eat dinner, and that’s a nice feeling. But Jesus the pharmaceutical ads.
I have a lot of fantasies lately about getting up real early on Saturday morning and getting into my car and driving someplace cool and quiet, where there’s some fog, some modest body of water, and a place where I can sit and not have to look at baby strollers and competitive people. Then maybe I get up and go for a walk up a mountain.
So I went and bought a car from a guy who knows quite a bit less than I do about the car I wanted to buy, and all I did was look at some stuff on the Internet.
But, whatever. I don’t have a lot of interest in negotiating my way out of $500 or so over the course of 36 payments. I like to save a dollar as much as the next guy, but I’ll find another place to save $13.88 a month, thanks much. I don’t need all that inter-personal tension.
I also fancy myself getting up early in the morning and running all the way down to the end of a pier and turning around and running back. Hearing the seagulls, smelling the salty air, feeling good about myself. I started, and then a I busted my foot. So, after a month of limping around I’m back to getting up early in the morning and going into a sweaty gym to strengthen up my weak ankles enough to run down to the pier in the mornings in a few months. Hopefully before it gets too cold out.
I’m romanticizing lately quiet and rural settings, in much the same way I romanticized urban settings as a 20yr old. I hope I can find a middle ground there. I don’t want to be 40 and saying, “I’ve got to get out of the goddamn woods it’s driving me nuts!” in the same way I am at 31 saying, “I’ve got to get out of the city it’s driving me nuts!”
Maybe by then I’ll be too old to care. Who the hell knows?
My salesman Seymour should be calling me sometime this week to tell me if they’ve found the car I agreed to buy.
I started playing the guitar. I can piece together a few chords in a way that almost sounds like a song. I figure I’ll pick up things as I can here and there at my own pace. Maybe someday I’ll get an old guy to show me some stuff. I’m pretty excited about the callouses developing on my finger tips.
Your fauxhawk is killing the spirit of America, kid. I want you to think about that.