The Saga of Jack Long

Generally speaking, newspaper delivery is a fairly easy job - time-consuming, yes; potentially tedious, in a locale less breathtaking than mine, but easy enough for junior high students to do it.  My specific routes are trickier, since they include the majority of downtown Small City, OR, and thus a great many stairs, apartment buildings, bars, etc and so on.  It's illegal for anyone under 21 to do this route, which I guess nobody I deliver to is really aware of, since the general consensus on my age seems to be "he's about eighteen."

However, having had since April to learn it, I can very nearly do the route in my sleep.  Sure, sometimes people will add or drop, but that's par for the course and you just have to keep an eye on your delivery list.  I can say without bragging that I'm a damn good newsboy.

Annnnnnnnd then there's Jack Long*.  Jack Long's entry on my delivery list said he lived in Mint Chocolate Chip Apartments (the insides are mint green, with dark wood accents,) though it did say that MCCA could be found on block 15 when I know it's on block 14.  Still, small change.  Typos happen. MCCA has a reputation for weirdness, anyway - there's one customer whose door I'd slid the paper under every day since the office actually saw fit to notify me that she'd renewed her prescription, who insisted that someone stole it out from under her door.  I'm pretty sure one of the residents is a wizard.  That is all beside the point.

By Any Other Name

Names are odd.  So is the fact that I think names are odd, but so it goes.  Well, perhaps not odd, but certainly interesting - a lot of stories, from folklore to published novels, hold that names have power.  In my favourite series of novels, everyone in the world in which the books are set has a true name which they only tell to their closest friends, relatives and lovers.

Though best used in this series, it's a pretty common thread, and real life experience seems, to a degree, to bear it out.  People get tetchy about their names, even, or especially, the weird ones.  I'm fine with any variation on Christopher - Kit, Cat, Chris, etc - but heaven forbid you misspell Ashlygh, who says her name just like Ashley.  Furthermore, certain names seem to go with certain sorts of people.  My fiancee informed me about seven months ago that she and her brother use Chad as a synonym for "douchebag."  Having not really met a Chad, but seen lots and lots of references to Chad as a dipstick guido name, I agreed with her.

Since then I've met three Chads.  They've all been quite good company and thoroughly decent human beings, and not one of them wore orange skin or a popped collar.  Stranger yet, I've also met a Brian whose mere presence doesn't remind me why German has a word translating to "a face in need of punching."  As a matter of fact, I actually like the guy, and not just because he has a dog named Boo who looks almost exactly like George Harrison, except four-footed, somewhat hairier, and not dead.  Every other Brian/Bryan/Ryan I've met has redefined "pain in the butt."  Same goes for Angelas/Angelicas/Angies - right up until a friend of my mum's.

Relax - You're not Completely Screwed

I recently started up at another part-time job as waiter at a teriyaki restaurant.  While I've worked in food service before, this is my first time both as a waiter and at someplace that is neither a cafe nor a fast food joint.  Everything's going really well, except for the fact that I come up with extra on the register when closing out every evening because I, a college graduate in his mid-twenties, can't friggen' count.  As a matter of fact, things are going well enough that my awesome boss has decided to train me in the kitchen.

This came up sort of out of the blue.  We found ourselves conversing (a bit brokenly, as she's a Peruvian immigrant and the extent of my non-English linguistic skills is Terrible Pidgin French) during a lull at work and it came to light that she's looking for someone to train in the kitchens, aside from her two current cooks, so that she doesn't have to work seven days a week.  Genius that I am, I immediately volunteered. Hey, it's more hours!  And maybe even not in nine-hour blocks on Sundays!

Water

"Oh holy crap, there's water! Just sitting there, being water!"

My fiancee and her mother burst out laughing as we cruised down one of the main streets of her Illinois hometown.  If I'd been a normal human being, I probably would have turned beet-red, but since I'm some sort of alien I just patted myself on the back for having successfully, if inadvertently, amused people.  And it really was inadvertent.  After spending nineteen of my twenty-one years, including the entirety of the last decade, in New Mexico, the sight of a large pond just...being a large pond...came as a sort of revelation.

And then, a year and a half later, I moved to western Oregon.  Oregon is one of those fantastic places that includes pretty much every kind of ecosystem - there's the high deserts of the east, the rainforest, the coast, and so on, but this was Portland, roughly the greenest, trees-iest city known to man.  It's like living in Lothlorien or something, but with more hipsters.  My poor little desert brain is still reeling, and I like it that way.

Difference of Opinion

Today's rant du jour centers on the concept that, apparently contrary to popular belief, you're allowed to enjoy something obscure or unpopular without being a snob about it; conversely, you can not enjoy something that is popular without spoiling it for everyone else!  To take an easy and self-centered example, because I'm a generous soul, let's talk about weather.

So, how 'bout this rain we've been having lately?

I kid, I kid.  Mostly.  As a newspaper carrier, I get so much small talk about what the sky's been doing that I could, and frequently do, chatter inanely about meteorological shenanigans in my sleep.   Much of it consists of people kvetching about the rain and me listening and making sympathetic noises.  Alternately, when the clouds part, there's a lot of "Well, at least it isn't raining on you today!" to which I smile and make noises of agreement and sometimes, if the customer is one I talk with fairly frequently, and the weather's been not only clear but warm, make some wry comment about my readiness to trade heat for rain.

The Importance of Syntax

Every weekday, I deliver the shockingly abysmal local newspaper to most of downtown, including the big brick building housing the municipal offices, public health centre, etc.  The latter deals largely with check-ups and vaccines and, outside it, is this big folding table with literature in English and Spanish on a variety of issues ranging from diabetes to why it's a good idea to vaccinate your children (seriously, Precious will NOT get autism!  And if by some weird fluke she does, it's a hell of a lot better than dying!) to STIs.

This literature takes the form of pamphlets, posters, and the occasional small booklet.  For my own sanity, I ought not look at these things.  They're not as awful as I at first feared them to be - some folks obviously sprayed them with punctuation grapeshot, but that's about it and, sadly, that's far better than I've come to expect out of anything short of a professionally published book.*

Cults of Negativity

I've noticed something very odd about elderly women and signs.  It's hard not to, with my newspaper carrier job - both old ladies and signs are pretty ubiquitous and by extension, so are little old ladies with signs.  Some of the signs actually make me cackle: signs like the weathered wooden arrow pointing the way to Memory Loss Lane, or the notification hanging on an apartment door, when the tenant's taking a nap, which reads "Do not disturb the already disturbed.  The rest of your life is your choice."

Then there's the inspirational type signs, about believing in miracles and various religious figures' affection for whoever's reading the sign and so on.  Kittens clinging to branches, captioned "Hang in there!"  That sort of thing.

Internet

Earlier this spring, my family and I got a new modem. Like so much else in our big red Victorian house, the previous one could best be described as “ancient.” We may have inherited it from the previous owners; I'm not clear on that point, and it's a moot one anyway. However, I'll allow that if we did inherit it, so did they – probably from whoever built the house, back in 1873. The relevant point is that we're renovating. The place has been swarming with contractors for about a year, we've replaced the dishwasher, we've purchased a new washer and dryer, our old water heater has gone to the great basement in the sky, and the cats even do their business in a recently purchased litter box. Despite the fact that half the new appliances have worked worse than their predecessors, my dearly beloved grandfather decided it was the modem's turn.

We've had hardly a day of reliable internet ever since. This bites, because all three of us do a lot of business on the web, and Mum and I have friends and, in my case, a significant other thousands of miles away. I'll be tooling along applying for jobs, working on the blogs, etc and Mum downstairs paying bills and suddenly, splchhht!, no more internet. I think it's giving my poor girlfriend an ulcer. Mum's bank account is losing weight at an alarming rate, thanks to the ISP-tapeworm feeding off of it.

Mornings

Once upon a time, my mum – Texas Mum, that is – told me it was no wonder she'd been sick since, it turned out, she was full of puke. A few years previously, Dad explained that his antipathy toward France sprung from its being chock full of French people. By similar logic, I wouldn't mind mornings half so much if they didn't happen so friggen' early.

That's not even sarcastic! Mornings are beautiful. Sunrise has a different cast to it than sunset, the colours more silvery, the sky more akin to moonstone than opal as first light tiptoes over the land and dances glittering across the mouth of the Columbia river. On rainy mornings, the trees sing to each other in whispers and the frog in my neighbour's pond sings the amphibian blues. The air itself is bright with the scent of green, growing things and spicy-sweet with spring flowers and the burgeoning sunlight sets the red, blue and white cargo ships aglow. Early mist makes the distant hills of the Coastal Range look like the layered ivory of a cameo portrait and gulls flying high catch, on their long white wings, bright golden sunlight that has yet to reach lower altitudes.