In Which Your Faithful Narrator Gets Noirish

tonight, after work in the library i sat in my car and flipped through my book of cds that resides, currently in said car. i flipped through that bastard three times and couldn't find anything that really said "oh, listen to me!" i had a rather frightening thought: i've moved on. most, if not all of the cds in that book are from college and some from high school. its a combination of rock, alt rock, and some hip hop. i listen to it and become nostalgic. i actually felt a little sad about the whole affair. so, instead of listening to a cd, i turned on the radio and let the sounds of bee-bop jazz take me through the cold, misty streets of indy.

the streets of indy have a weird light to them at night. particularly madison and meridian. there is a certain amount of creepiness that exudes from those streets. i'm sure it has something to do with the neon lights from the bars and clubs, but also from the steam that rises from the manhole covers that dot the streets. tonight, in particular, was strangely weird. i could see the images of people on the sidewalks, but not the people themselves. i saw a blond standing next to a stretch humvee, but it wasn't a person, no, it was more of an anomorphic image. an extra, if you will, in a noir film that i happened to find myself in. the stop lights glowed menacingly and the steam blew at me in shifty clouds. i was safe in my four wheeled capsule listening to bee-boppin dizzy gillepsie. i felt like i needed to bottle it all up, to save for later. to re-experience it, to unpack it and view it from different sides. i was in the scene, but not of the scene. it was a weird discontected feeling.

maybe it was the music that made the scene. maybe it was my far away thinking the caused it. i wasn't thinking of anything in particular, just kind of going with it, if you will. i felt like an observer, not an interactor.

as soon as i got passed the lilly pharmacutical headquarters and continued south the spell was somewhat broken, but it nagged me all the way home. it became stronger again for a while when i got into traffic and i became part of a group waiting at a stoplight. images flashed at me, not in a schizophrenic way, but in that weird unfolding way. it became spooky for a while. but just as the images washed over me, they left. i was part of it again. whatever "it" was. it wasn't a scene. it wasn't staged. it just was.

In Which Your Faithful Narrator Dips His Big Toe Into the Pool of "Normalcy

It felt good to type that title. It really did. I know that the "In Which Your Faithful Narrator..." titles annoy some, but for some reason I really like using them, I'm not exactly sure why, but I do.

Things have come back to normal, for the most part. My father is safely tucked into a rehabilitation center. He is happy and anxious to get going. I think he is relieved that he came through as well as he did and any damage has been "minimal." The power of prayer is evident in his recovery, I firmly believe that. He had his first good shower since Friday and he looked even better after that. His hair was combed and he had on good clean clothes. He was, for lack of a better term, a happy guy.

This incident has made me pause and think about my own life. I don't mean in regards to dying or anything like that, but how I want to live it. Where I want to live, etc. Since I am an only child, the responsibility falls on me. I'm not angry or upset about that, its just a fact that I have come to accept. As a result of this I have to weigh geography and distance in any decision I might make about applying for and taking a library job. I don't/can't go too far away. I don't know when something like this might happen again.

After the excitement of this past week, I look forward to a continued return to normalcy. That, and a nice cold beer.

In Which Your Faithful Narrator Dons the Blue and Joins the Blue Clad Masses Loses Some Hearing, Flees, and Watches a Football Game at Home

Yesterday was the big day. The first day of the 88th NFL football season. It got a rousing kickstart here in little Ol Indianapolis with a free concert in the center of town, in front of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. I forgot my camera so I was unable to take pictures, however it was a sea of blue clad masses. I got downtown after work (about 3, or so) used my IUPUI parking permit, parked my car in the IUPUI lot, changed from work clothes to Colts Cammouflage (blue jeans, blue colts 29 jersey-- Joseph Addai runing back-- and blue Colts baseball cap) and followed the crowd. It was a surreal experience, truthfully because everyone was walking around wearing the same thing-- blue (or white) Colts jerseys. The place was, to be honest, awash in blue. Any one wearing a Saints jersey stuck out like a sore thumb.

I followed the crowd to the monument after getting turned around I found my way to the stage area. I had to get frisked, women to the left, men to the right. Now here's the thing. It was a free concert, but the musical talent that performed didn't fit my idea of "football." The first group who I'd never heard of called Hinder. Came out rocked the cashba, they reminded me alot of Aerosmith. I've never really like Aerosmith. They were the band that made me lose hearing. An outside concert and my ear drums begged for mercy. After they screeched through their 45 minute set, we got Kelly Clarkson. This is the first time I'd ever really heard Kelly Clarkson. Let me put it to you this way: I left after ten minutes, so, aww shucks, I missed Faith Hill. Here's the rub, though, Hinder, Kelly Clarkson, and Faith Hill don't really scream football to me. NASCAR, maybe, but not football and certainly not NFL. Hank Williams, Kid Rock, and Terri Clark: they scream football to me. I think that's why I left. I just wasn't feeling it, that my feet were starting to hurt from standing for so long.

Leaving was, in and of itself, an experience. It is difficult, to say the least, to work your way through a sardine packed group mob of people. I'd say there were probably 15-20,000 people in front of me and probably 100,000 behind me. I found a stream of people moving through the crowd and got onto that train. I got to the back of the crowd where it was quite thinned out and felt a bit more trapped because everywhere I looked were fence-barriers. I finally sat down on the sidewalk to watch the crowd for a few minutes and try and figure out how to get out of the madness. Actually, it wasn't madness at all, it was quite calm, it was just very crowded. I used my powers of observation and discovered another single file stream of people meandering through the sea of people behind me. I got on that train, again and pushed my way through the crowd.

I finally popped out on a side street and that was when the surrealism got a bit overwhelming. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was dressed in Colts blue. They were sitting in restaraunts eating and drinking, they were steaming to the stadium, they were chatting on cell phones (I think that was the weirdest part of it, I don't know why, but it was) there were street performers playing guitars, they were panhandlers shaking their cups, there were ticket scalpers buying tickets, selling tickets, they cops trying to keep some kind of order, I found myself wondering how I would shoot something like this on film.

I was goig against the flow, I was heading to my car, but everyone else was heading towards the stadium. I got back to my car, and headed out of the city. The strangness didn't stop there. I had to drive by the stadium to get out of town. There guys standing in the street with bright orange flags beseeching me to park my car in their lot. The prices ranged anywhere from 10-20 dollars. I wasn't having any of it, I wanted to go home. I finally got myself on Meridian Street and headed south. The final surrealism was this: the further I got away from the stadium and madness behind me the more "normal" life became. Some guy was weedeating his yard, another looked like he was pulling some weeds, you know just ordinary stuff.

I got home, ate some dinner, and watched the madness on tv. I was quite amazed when I saw how many people were there... I was in that? So much for my agoraphobia kicking in.

I tried to watch the football game, I really did. I made it up to halftime and then I started to fall asleep. I know the Colts won, but I didn't see much of the second half through my lidded eyes. I was just tuckered and my knees hurt from standing all day.

In Which Your Faithfaul Narrator Recounts His Strangely Boring Yet Uncomfortably Weird Day and In Which He Uses the Word "Tizzy"

Last night after leaving the law library I drove home, I was trying not to be mad, but I couldn't help it. I am having some issues with my other job, not the law library, and they are starting to really cause me angst and make me rethink the whole "lets stay with this company for a long, long time" thing (I should of put dashes between those words, since in fact it was not a quotation, but more of a compound word kind of thing, but that would take more work than it is worth and I'm just not in the mood). So, by the time I got home I had worked myself into quite a tizzy. I was just put off and angry and I was fired up because I had worked in the law library and that's what I really want to do. But that's neither here nor there.

In an effort to calm myself down I got bowl of chocolate chip ice cream and turned on the boob-tube and, believe it or not, there wasn't a single thing on. Though, I did fall upon an infomercial that touted the benefits of a wonder drug that supposedly added inches to "that particular male organ" and I quite enjoyed the man-on-the-street interviews with couples whose male half just happened to be using the product, whew, thank god for that. It was interesting for about ten minutes, but even the pretty chick doing the interviews couldn't keep my interest. I eventually went to bed, filled with ice cream and a bit more relaxed than I started.

Today was an interesting day, though boring, to a point. My cousin, Chris, lives in a part of town that I generally don't go to. It is, I wouldn't call it a ghetto, but a more PC term might be "economically challenged," or "depressed." It looks like maybe fifty years ago it might of been a happening place, but time and money seem to have passed it by. My cousin lives in this area because he can afford it and its close to work for him. His parents, my aunt and uncle, decided to buy him Direct TV or the DishNetwork, there's a story behind it, but its not that important. Since my aunt and uncle are out of town (Florida) we were asked if we could go to his apartment and meet the installer. We did. It wasn't creepy, per se, but I certainly felt that I didn't belong there. There was a guy in a second floor apartment that was watching us through his window, he tried to be inconspicuous, but he didn't do a very good job. I kept catching him watching us and then he decided to use a mirror, he sat just on the side of the window and held out a small mirror watching us, I was able to see it out of the corner of my eye and I look up, he'd pull the mirror back quickly, usually bumping the window sill in the process. It would of been funny if it didn't add to the discomfort level I had.

When the installer guy finally got there, I had to into Chris' apartment, that was creepy, too. I had to unlock a couple doors and I again had spectral shadow-people watching me. One guy named, so he said, Chris, walked up to me to see if I was moving in. I said I was just there to help my cousin. For some reason, I felt really uncomfortable in the whole situation. My cousins apartment is nice, rundown, but nice. Its a one bedroom affair with the living room and kitchen kind off attached into a big room. His small bathroom is off from his bedroom. The longer I stayed in the apartment, though, I just wanted to get out. I started pacing back and forth, sweating (no AC).

When I was finally able to leave I drove through Indy and I had to make sure I avoided the Circle (Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument) because its closed down and on lockdown because of the big show they are going to have tomorrow night for the NFL, from what I understand you'll be able to see it on national TV. I may go and check it out, I'll see how I feel after work tomorrow.

Now, I'm sitting in the computer lab of the law library. Its cool here. The AC is going and there are only two people in here with me: a girl in a red hoodie shirt looking at some kind of anatomy program and some guy two rows down on the left looking something on the internet, I'm not sure what. Either way, I'm a bit more comfortable.

In This Episode Your Faithful Narrator Admits to Being a Wimp and a Scardey-Cat All In One Entry

My blog is the home for sexual deviants. I have proof. I'm not sure why they find my blog, but they do. I seem to be a stop off point for searches that deal with "pedal pushing," which seems, after some very cautious, careful, and brief research has led me to believe that it is, it you will, a subcategory of foot fetishism. Weird. I could've, if I so wanted, gotten video of some red toenail painted women pushing on a brake pedal. The only reason I know that was an "enticing" still picture was posted of said red painted toe. I declined the offer.

I know that just writing about this will allow more pedal pushing fetishists to find my little slice of blog-heaven.

I have decided that this little blue marble we inhabit is indeed a weird place. Its simple to see that with the traffic I get. I should probably do a "how you find me" post again. Those are always enlightening. At least to me they are and I'll admit at times I'm a wee bit flumuxed and at others I am somewhat aghast, and a time or two I've been agog at the keywords and searches folks use to find me. Can you tell that I'm bored and I've gotten the writing bug suddenly. Thirdworst will be so proud, or maybe just perplexed by my sudden literary output, its not literary, but it is output.

For fun earlier, I went to a website for roommates. I have a dream, I'm not sure why, well I do, but I'll get to that some other time, about living in New York City, or one of the boroughs (particularly Brooklyn). I was looking at roommate postings and I found a few that looked interesting, but I have a couple problems. The first and this is the regular refrain to my life's verse is this: I ain't got the scratch to do something as harebrained as move to New York City, much less live there. The second thing is this: I'm a scaredy cat. I'm a wimp. I'm 33 years old and I'm scared to death do something like that. Though, I have come close to sending my resume to the New York City Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library. When I even thought that I had the weird sensation of being atop the high dive...

Why am I such a schnook?

So, instead of picking up stakes and doing something like that, I read books about New York and watch movies about New York (the Rick Burns New York Documentary is a favorite). Another is the book (short essay really) entitled Here is New York, by EB White.