Kate's Point of View

The Product of Creative Frustration

Month: September 2004 Page 2 of 3

Trashy

Every place you live has its quirks.

At my old place I had James (James; Laundry). Back in college my friend Tim was woken up every morning promptly at 7 am to the sound of Jimi Hendrix’ Star Spangled Banner at top volume from the room next door. My friend Jason used to go to the bed listening to very distinct and audible squeaky springs from the bedroom above him.

Now I moved back in May and I expected some period of time where I would have to get used to weird noises and habits of my neighborhood. But I never imagined this…

Every Tuesday night (garbage is picked up on Wednesday mornings) the Laundromat across the street from me take out its garbage. At 11:30 pm. Okay, that’s fine, right? I mean, whatever. But, despite being a seemingly successful Laundromat with quite a bit of trash and two dumpsters, someone from the Laundromat takes the laundry out to the curb bag by bag and box by box. They could have someone just come and empty their dumpsters for them, but instead they choose to take out the trash themselves and by hand. And just to make sure you have the picture here, I am not talking about two or three bags of trash. Oh no – it’s more like 30 and another 30 or so boxes of trash. It’s like a full city block taken up with trash!

Now you could be saying to yourself, “Get over it. Maybe they’re just cheap asses who want to save a buck by taking their trash out by themselves.”

Perhaps. But the hour at which this activity occurs leads me to some other conclusions.

  • Bill (a fictional character, I swear), the owner of the drycleaners uses chemicals at his drycleaners that were banned by the government in 1963. He is scared that is a truck roughly empties his dumpsters, the trash receptacles and trucks will explode, killing the garbage men and drawing attention to the illegal chemical use.
  • The dry-cleaning is just a cover. Really Bill is running a murder-for-hire business and uses the drycleaner dumpsters to dispose of the bodies. He chops up each body into many, many bits and disperses them among many trash bags. He then carefully transports the bodies to the curb, being careful that no body bits fall out.
  • Bill has a crush on the girl on the second floor of the apartment building across the street. One Tuesday he almost forgot to take out the trash and had to do it really late at night. He noticed that the beautiful girl on the second floor watched his every move from her window and in her pajamas. He has taken out his trash late at night every week since hoping to get a glimpse of the girl.

Clip

Isn’t it weird what things are and aren’t acceptable to do in public? Let’s review:

Acceptable
Not Acceptable
Filing your nails
Chewing your fingernails
Scratching your head
Picking your candidate
Picking a radio station
Licking your lollipop
Smoking too much
Smoking ciggies
Pleasing your boss
Clipping your nails
Chewing your toenails
Scratching your crotch (yes – really)
Picking your nose
Picking your scab
Licking your friend
Drinking too much
Smoking crack
Pleasing yourself (you know…)

About that first one:

Clipping nails, finger and toe, has a very distinctive sound. It should be done only where other people cannot hear you – in a bathroom, for instance.

In the eight grade I had this science teacher we’ll call Mr. C. I don’t remember a whole lot about him. I wrote a research paper about dogs for him that was copied entirely from encyclopedias and he never caught me. He taught me that a penny can be pounded so thin that the metal can cover an entire football field. He said a man could carry a baby in his stomach lining and deliver it cesarean, though I didn’t believe that one.

In one of his classes we had to dissect worms and a boy told me this joke:

Q: What is green, slimy and smells like pork?
A: Kermit the Frog’s finger

Two years after I had him, one of my sisters has Mr. C for science. He was fired that year. For clipping his toenails in class.

Inspiration

Inspired by Steve G.:Inspiration takes some funny forms. I started this web site simply because a friend told me she thought it was a good idea. (Thanks, Andrea!) Some great studies have been inspired by parents watching their children (Myers-Briggs, Charles Horton Cooley and the Looking Glass Self). Why not inspiration from found objects then?

There are great works of art in museums all over the world (MOMA, The Tate, The Noyes Museum) made from found objects. But why not use this sort of inspiration for a blog, right?

I Found Some of Your Life is a blog inspired by a memory card found by the author. Beginning with a pretty little poem, this blog is part Lost and Found, part twisted and part creative genius.

You are unknown to me.
Your camera’s memory card was in a taxi; I have it now.
I am going to post one of your pictures each day.
I will also narrate as if I were you.
Maybe you will come here and reclaim this piece of your life.

The author of this site has been creating stories to go with the pictures on the memory card and posting them online, with the assumption that someone will eventually find the site and go, “Hey, that’s me!” and ask for the card back.

Ducks

Submitted by Wonder Boy

Someday we will render ourselves extinct or mysteriously vanish like the Mayans did. I predict that in the future some poor archeologist-like life form will be forced to sift through the remains of our culture and try to make some sense of what they find. This being will be puzzled as there will probably only be a few relics that will survive the ages. The first will be Styrofoam cups and the other … cement ducks. The function of the cups will be easy enough to figure out (they were used in mating rituals right?), but the ducks will baffle all for years to come. They will spend years trying to decide why we collected so many of them and most importantly why we chose to dress them up in outfits.

Every now and then for work I have to travel to Barrington, a small suburb of Chicago, for software training. The town is very affluent and you pretty much can’t touch a home for under $700,000. The lots that houses are built on are flat as can be without any trees. They erect these enormous houses on what used to be a corn field which in turn makes them stick out like Dick Cheney at a Soul Train Convention.

As a rule I think having boat loads of money will not necessarily buy you good taste. Case in point the house: In Barrington there is a house that my work compadres and I like to call, “My Big Fat Greek House”. The modest 5000 square foot house is nestled on a flat lot where you will find the yard adorned with Greek statues, columns, wishing wells, fountains and, yes, ducks. Lots of ducks. Now the owners don’t dress up the ducks, partly because I think they blew their budget on the house and the large Greek statue of Zeus….or was it the fountain?

I think I get the reason why people like statues or Yard Gnomes. They’re fun! They spice up the yard and Gnomes bring good juju to all lawns they inhabit. But I will never understand why someone would take a cement duck and dress it up in lingerie. Neither will archeologists 2000 years from now.

The House

Statues at the House

Ducks at the House

Check

You walk down the street and an attractive person walks by. You notice. The question is, Do you notice well?

Checking people out effectively is a skill that many people don’t have. I remember a while back my sister, who was still in high school (an all-girls high school) visited me at college. As we walked through the streets of Athens I thought she would give herself whiplash the way she kept craning her neck to look at boys.

“!” she admonished me, “it’s as if you don’t even notice them – there are cute boys everywhere!”

I noticed them. I was just more subtle in my noticing. She looked like a hedgehog during the height mating season.

Besides the Whiplash Crane, some other checking out methods I have observed include:

  • Jeweled Admiration
    Back in college some of my fellow Swarm of Dyke members told me that the signature lesbian check out / pick-up was to touch and compliment a girl’s necklace.
    Reverse Head Placement Last night I was taking out my trash – sexy, I know – and some guy was walking with his buddy across the streetfrom where I live. The entire time he walked, away from me I might add, his neck was turned entirely around watching me. How he kept walking without falling over amazes me.
  • Hollah
    This is when guy walk or drive past you (or maybe they do it to you while you drive or walk by) and they just yell. Sometimes they’re actually saying words, sometimes just yelling… “Hey! Hey! I said, Hey!”
  • Bark
    In high school we did this exchange program with an all-boys high school where we talked about sex and whatnot. Some guy got the lucky privilege of walking through group of ten or so of us all girls) to the classroom where we would be talking. He led us on the scenic route so he could be seen by as many people as possible at school with girls. When he led us through the cafeteria, boys started barking at us! And, some of the boys barking were doing so to girls in our group they were dating!

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