Lunch would be too awkward; let’s get coffee.

If I was going to write a gimmicky book, something that would get me on the Today Show in a salmon colored pullover to explain my “inspiration” and a guest spot on Hollywood Squares, I would spend a year alternating between Peet’s Coffee and Starbucks and recording my observations. I wouldn’t waste my time on drinking the coffee or thinking about the freshness of the beans; I would go between the two devoting myself entirely to observing, cataloging and comparing the people who loiter in each establishment.

One-on-one consumer rivalry is all about promoting the lifestyle (which is how I know that Pepsi drinkers are born hooligans), and I’m suspicious of this particular dichotomy. No matter how much Celtic music they play in Peet’s, I suspect that the average patron is not discernable from the average Starbies jerkwad.

I’m not saying this because I want to knock the legs out from under Peet’s free-trade reputation or because I think that Starbucks gets the short end of the stick – I don’t have any loyalty to coffee shops beyond a personal loyalty to warm, sugary beverages and free wifi. I’m saying it because I spent the afternoon in Peet’s recently and found myself part of a mid-day ensemble that I’d thought only possible within the foamy embrace of a Starbucks. Because I have a soft spot for Celtic music and because I once saw some old guy in a sailor suit outside of a Peet’s, I was a little surprised to find the coffee-going populace so…regular.

I know that I talk about coffee shops a lot and I realize that it takes a dramatic suspension of the hypocrisy-impulse to listen to someone who hangs out in coffee shops bitch about the people who loiter there. Lack of perspective duly noted. But for the purpose of this rant, I’ll continue.

I spent an afternoon in Peet’s last week because I needed to get out of the house to recharge my faltering brain. While there I did quiet, coffee shop things like read, take notes, and drink tea. I also participated in my favorite coffee shop activity: spying.

I watched ladies in white-leather watches refer to their dogs by their first names, talk about kitchen remodels and plan birthday parties at the Macaroni Grille. I watched struggling father-son conversations where the young man stared at his cell phone and the father referenced various “hilarious” television commercials. I stared at two hipsters sitting at a table outside of the shop, plaided and bearded, with colorful Bic lighters balanced on top of their twin cigarette packs. I sat beside a young man who periodically read his (presumed) essay aloud in a whisper. Before I left I saw an old man in cowboy boots order a hot chocolate.

I wasn’t annoyed by this crowd – I’d left my house intentionally to refresh my brain – but my keen sense of elitism recognized them as annoying. So annoying, in fact, that I tried to recall the last time I’d been in a place with so many conspicuous characters. Eventually, it dawned on me. The last time that I’d been crowded in with middle-aged dames, hipsters and failed paternal bonding (“Lunch would be too awkward; let’s get coffee”) was my last trip to Starbucks.

And between those characters and the Peet’s people there was no moral or lifestyle difference that I could discern. Come on, Peet’s, throw us romantics a bone. I wanted there to at least be a substantial increase in people wearing REI-brand fleece jackets or something.

Holy crap, someone had better stop me or I’m going to discover that going to Target isn’t any different than going to Wal-Mart.

Friar-Tucking around

This post is on posture and it won’t be amazing or uplifting because posture, like all other things, is shitty. That’s my POV today and I won’t take any flak for it, or for my use of obnoxious abbreviations to communicate “point of view.”

You may notice that I frequently describe my actions here as “hunching around.” That is because I have terrible, slouching posture and I tend to hunch over with the least provocation – tiny keyboard, little hatchback, boring book with small print or a candy bar dropped below my desk. Hunching is bad for you, in that it doesn’t shape your spine in the way your spine wants to be shaped, but it is also natural. I don’t see well, so I naturally bend at my mid-spine too scope out the interesting developments on my computer screen.

So I’ve been thinking about trying to improve my posture, first because it would make me seem a little less like Friar Tuck, but also because good posture makes people want to give you jobs. Posture makes people trust you more quickly than having a Golden Retriever.

But I feel that there is an alternate stigma against having good posture, as though good posture is indicative of being a real WASP-y son-of-a-bitch. I was reading a story by Dorothy Parker last night and the frigid woman in it lives in envy of her richer friend and has cocktails with her to flatter her into giving gifts. Anyway, this frigid, poor lady with the bad clothes and the pug-face had good posture and sat without her back touching the chair.

Well, with one slur against Golden Retrievers, another against WASPs and a final blow against the pug-faced populace, I consider my work here done. Oh, Thursday.

Lofty Aims (and not the messenger)

Today I was writing on the topic of romantic preoccupations and the way that they are used to shield us from actually getting any work done and I had a most unpleasant realization. I was typing cheerfully, tongue-in-cheek, brutalizing the foolish ideas that I held as a youngster about artistic work and it occurred to me that I had just finished a romantic shielding ritual of my own.

I was about to sit down at my computer (after several little procrastination techniques: g-chatting with the b.f., reading the news, orange juice) when I reached, almost subconsciously, to grab a book of essays that I had left on the table and quickly finished the one that I was reading. This was only a lapse of about 15 minutes but I find it very unnerving in hindsight and so will discuss the miniscule event at length. Here I am, writing about the way the way that I used to fixate on finished-product fantasies to avoid the terrible fear of getting started on anything, and I actually put off working on my essay by reading another essay – a finished essay by a skilled writer. That is a finished-product fixation if I’ve ever heard one.

So what is the point of this diatribe? Mostly I am writing it to blow off the steam accumulated as a resulting of finding that although I am writing about the foolish habits of myself in tones of haughty self realization, I am exhibiting the same unproductive behaviors. The problem with the finished-product fixation, of course, is that you never start anything and therefore you never realize the finished product that you have long fantasized about. It’s a technique for eluding the obnoxious parts of reality, the possibility of failure and ect.

I read an article on grit once (Is it a learned trait? All of the richest people in the world have grit in abundance!) and I’m pretty sure that I don’t have it. I’m an alright person; I have somewhat lofty aims and a good enough work ethic when I work for someone else but I’m not amazingly ambitious or driven. Because of this I have to be on my guard against unproductive habits like the finish-product fixation.

And to close, something entertaining, because I’m sure no one clicked on this link in hopes of seeing my personal procrastinator demons laid bare. My main squeeze and I hung up a clothesline in our kitchen because we want to feel like a early 20th century immigrant couple living in a tenement apartment. Lofty aims, indeed.

I blame those sad seeming dragons

On Thursday night, as I stood in my bathroom trying to floss while reading about defeat of corrupt gods by righteous sorcerers, I realized I have been doing some fairly atrocious regressing over the last week.

Though I know it’ll sound petulant, I can honestly attest to having avoided fantasy novels for a solid couple of years. Sure, I’ve carted their familiar pastel covers with raised lettering and buckling spines from apartment to apartment, but I haven’t actually indulged in some time. It’s not entirely that I’m too ashamed these days to go around with a sci-fi book sticking out of the front pocket of my overalls (read: my adolescence), though that is a hefty portion of the reason. The other slimmer, but more legitimate, reason is that I truly do enjoy reading what might be termed as “classic literature” and as an added plus I feel as though I’ve earned my plastic-rimmed glasses and poor attitude when I’m through.

For example, when I spend the day lying on the floor chronically re-reading Willa Cather, I consider it a day well spent. When I spend the day lying on the floor reading fantasy novels, however, I feel sort of like washing my eyes out with soap and writing really mean anonymous comments on Tolkien fan fiction sites when I regain my vision. And yet, I can’t stop.

It’s terrible, actually. It all started last week when my main squeeze brought home a book rejected by the library. It was a hefty tome with a giant dragon face on the cover and an incomprehensible title; outwardly I joked about the inexplicable fondness of fantasy writers for bisecting names with apostrophes but inwardly I was mighty curious about this sad seeming dragon. My main squeeze laughingly suggested that I might want to read it, and I laughed to in a furtive sort of way.

Unfortunately, I barreled through the dragon book in a few days, and then immediately took solace in another (less commercial, if that is any more defensible) fantasy novel.

To be clear, I know that fantasy novels are crap. I even make a point of reading them quickly because I’ve fond that oftentimes the 300-page subplots about warring amongst the dwarfish people are completely irrelevant to the overarching (and it’s way overly arched) storyline. But there is something strangely endearing about them.

The problem is this: when I read lines of convoluted passages made up of the words “fate,” “empire,” and “moonstone” strung together in 20 different ways, I will snort sarcastically and roll my eyes but this doesn’t seem to deter me from continuing through that book (or its inevitable sequels).

My only hope is a resurgence of my equally unappealing George Elliot phase.

Do people still send memos?

Memorandum to all rockabilly kids:

Stop putting cherries on everything that I want to buy. It's really freaking me out.

I almost used an exclamation mark in this sucker

Sometimes I am a bit overwhelmed by my general resistance to change. Don’t worry, I’m not about to go plowing through what laugh-tracked sitcoms might call my “issues;” I just wanted to revel in my dogged love of re-reading crappy books.

I just finished reading Under the Volcano by M. Lowry, which was a challenge, since I usually tend to zone out during swirly, multi-consciousness passages that lack quotation marks. I have been disappointed several times by my inability to stomach stream-of-consciousness modernist writing. Generally I start to waiver and then rebuke myself with a stern slap of pretentiousness. Surely the book isn’t boring, pointless, or a crack dream. It’s obviously art, and I’m obviously a moron.

To return to my point, if I can indeed claim to have one, I read Under the Volcano for two reasons. One is that amazon told me that I might like it. The second is that it is referenced rather frequently in another book, Second Hand that I somewhat regularly re-read. I like Second Hand; it’s obvious and pop-y and the main chap wears tweed pants and suffers from “emotional hang-overs” after embarrassing events, which is certainly something I can relate to.

I liked Under the Volcano slightly less. I like things to be conclusive, and although it ended with plenty of carnage, I didn’t get the feeling of any real catharsis. I like things neatly concluded (tragically or not), which is perhaps why I spent yesterday afternoon holed up in my apartment watching It’s a Wonderful Life and eating spaghetti from a Tupperware. Now that is a firmly concluded story.

Speaking of things referenced, one of my favorite bits of Under the Volcano was when the brother laments being served tea as a sailor because he had read Jack London’s The Sea Wolf. I read The Sea Wolf recently (during my London phase, closely documented on THIS VERY BLOG) and it was a real naturalist ringer. Full of stabbings and hard-tack and people who try to burn the boat down after they’ve been presumed in a coma because they are plumb crazy atheist sailors with hands like shanks of meat.