Opening coffee store

        "Think of it, in just a few days this place will be covered in grime and dirt, young couples will be making out on our upstairs sofa, we'll have to continually fix the expresso machine."
        "Homeless people will have conversations with our baristas about whether or not World War 2 happened."
        "Drunk passerbies will vandalize our windows!  If we're lucky, we'll get some graffiti."
         Charlie wiped down the counter.  It felt like moving into a new apartment.  Other than the rent check, which was more and didn't include heat or electric.  And all of the annoying certificates they had to file for.
         John opened up a UPS envelope and pulled a plastic sign out that read "Now Hiring".
         "Seriously, you ordered a sign online?  That's an unnecessary expense."
         "But look, it's nice."
         "Write that into our budget."  Charlie said, drawing out a sign on a piece of computer paper that said "Now Hiring", and placing it next to the plastic one.

         "Welcome to the neighborhood."  A man wearing a suit with the pant legs rolled up said, extending his hand at the door.
         "You've been here for awhile?"
         "Yeah, I run the bar across the street."
         The sign read "Bar and Coffee Lounge."  This was a massive oversight.  They had direct competition across the street.
         "I think we can coexist.  My clientele is mostly college kids.   They'll get bored of my store and go to yours, then get bored of yours and come over to mine."

         "We better open earlier than him."  Charlie said to Damian. 
         They changed the "open" sign to 6:00 AM.  That was a full two hours before the Bar and Coffee Lounge opened. 
         "We should probably have a more interesting name for our little shop than his, too."
         They produced a sign.

Study guide for Rick Popps 562

Geertz:  Social Anthropology
Symbolic anthropology studies symbols and the processes,such as myth and ritual, by which humans assign meanings to these symbols to address fundamental questions about human social life (Spencer 1996:535). According to Geertz, man is in need of symbolic "sources of illumination" to orient himself with respect to the system of meaning that is any particular culture (1973a:45). Turner states that symbols initiate social action and are "determinable influences inclining persons and groups to action" (1967:36). Geertz's position illustrates the interpretive approach to symbolic anthropology, while Turner's illustrates the symbolic approach.

Carey:  Communication

Two alternative conceptions of communication have been alive in American culture since this term entered common discourse in the nineteenth century. Both definitions derive, as with much in secular culture, from religious oirigins, though they refer to somewhat different regions of religious experience. We might label these descriptions, if only to provide handy pegs upon which to hang our thought, a transmission view of communication and a ritual view of communication.
The transmission view of communication is the commonest in our culture–perhaps in all industrial cultures–and dominates contemporary dictionary entries under the term. It is defined by terms such as "impaffing," "sending," "transmitting," or "giving information to others." It is formed from a metaphor of geography or transportation. In the nineteenth century but to a lesser extent today, the movement of goods or people and the movement of information were seen as essentially identical processes and both were described by the common noun "communication." The center of this idea of communication is the transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control. It is a view of communication that derives from one of the most ancient of human dreams: the desire to increase the speed and effect of messages as they travel in space. From the time upper and lower Egypt were unified under the First Dynasty down through the invention of the telegraph, transportation and communication were inseparably linked. Although messages might be centrally produced and controlled, through monopolization of writing or the rapid production of print, these messages, carried in the hands of a messenger or between the bindings of a book, still had to be distributed, if they were to have their desired effect, by rapid transportation. The telegraph ended the identity but did not destroy the metaphor. Our basic orientation to communication remains grounded, at the deepest roots of our thinking, in the idea of transmission: communication is a process whereby messages are transmitted and distributed in space for the control of distance and people.


 Guy Debord:  Commodity as Spectacle

The Commodity as Spectacle

  The commodity can only be understood in its undistorted essence when it
  becomes the universal category of society as a whole. Only in this context
  does the reification produced by commodity relations assume decisive
  importance both for the objective evolution of society and for the stance
  adopted by men towards it. Only then does the commodity become crucial for
  the subjugation of men's consciousness to the forms in which this
  reification finds expression.... As labor is progressively rationalized
  and mechanized man's lack of will is reinforced by the way in which his
  activity becomes less and less active and more and more contemplative. 

Raymond Williams:  Cultural Materialism

cultural materialism. This book was in part a response to structuralism
 in literary studies and pressure on Williams to make a more theoretical
 statement of his own position against criticisms that it was a humanist
 Marxism, based on unexamined assumptions about lived experience. 

Paul Willis:  Symbolic Creativity

"Every day is full of ideas which, although they are not art, share the same 

symbolic creativity of art processes."

Language, active body, drama, symbolic creativity.  "Remaking the world for 

ourselves"

Jonathan Gray:  Blowing up the brand
In the realm of film and television, promotional culture is often a key
and indistinguishable part of the artistic product. Behind corporate conglomerates’
horizontal and vertical integration and plans for synergistic
conquest of the audience are frequently videogames, posters, ad campaigns,
merchandise lines, toys, and trailers that are active sites for the creation,
consumption, and enjoyment of the narrative. Many of these “spinoffs,”
“extratextuals,” and “peripherals” surround film and television texts with
hype, generating revenue themselves at times but also serving the larger goal
of directing audiences to the film, show, or franchise. Comparatively little
has been written about them, even though they command an inordinately
large amount of public space.

Adorno:  Pop music snob

Adorno believes that there are 'two spheres of music'. He calls these, serious and popular music. In this article, Adorno talks about the differences between the two. He talks about 'standardisation', how all popular music is the same. It repeatedly uses the same subjects and the same rules.

In comparison, he says that every detail of a serious piece of music is unique, if notes were missing the music would not be the same. Unlike popular music where, 'every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine' (Adorno, On Popular Music, 1941). Therefore, to listen to this music you don't need to think or be engaged.

 

Another one!

        So I'm driving up to the fancy art place to meet her.  It's an exhibit and I have a free ticket.  The hall is packed with finely dressed people and I am wearing a green hooded sweatshirt and jeans that are too long (all of my jeans are too long). 
        I drive up to the valet parking guy, because up and down the block there is bumper to bumper parking.  There's even some people parked on the grass, but the grass is on the other side of a construction barrier and it's hard to tell how they got there. 
        "10 dollars."  The valet states.  He is wearing a white tuxedo and a hat with a red feather in it.
         "Do you take cards?"  I say.
        He looks up at me nonplussed.  This is the perfect opportunity to use that word.
        The silence continues.
        I ease off the break a little and he slaps the hood of my car.
        "Can I just park for free?"
        "No one ever asks that."  He shows some humanity.
         It seems like he is going to let me do it when a car behind pulls up. 
         "That guy is going to know you didn't pay if you don't pay, so you have to pay."  He says.
         "But I don't have any cash."
         "Then you can't park here."
          I put on the brake and get out, and knock on the tinted window of the black limousine behind me.  A gentleman with a monocle and a top hat is driving... and there's no one else in there. 
         "Are you the limo driver?"  I ask.  "Why are you driving a limo with no one else in it."
         "Sir, what are you doing?"  The valet pulls me aside.  The line of cars is full of well behaved drivers, still.
         "Can I have 10 bucks?"  I ask.
          He just stares at me through his one squinted eye.
       ___________________________________________
         I park a few miles away, in a section of downtown by the Chili Store.  I don't like chili, but I like that places chili.  So I get chili and then I'm on my way.
         I look at my watch.  I'm already 20 minutes late.  The plan to initiate this part of the plan was more fun and interesting than the actual plan. 
         I pivot on one foot and nearly turn around and stumble back into the car and drive it home.  My raggedy legal pad has all of the questions I've planned out to ask her on it.

Continuing my Fiction

           This is a secret, don't tell anyone this.  You know the internet?  Of course you know the internet.  Let me stop trying to be funny.
          Well, you can look up any celebrity on the internet.  You know this as well.  You can find most celebrities email addresses on here, sometimes their PR teams.  It does not take very much energy to write an email, and some celebrities are susceptible to personal appeals.
          Find someone who has done some minor work, someone who does not feel like they are famous yet.  Maybe someone who wrote an article that you kind of enjoyed, not one that will change your life or leave any kind of lasting impression, just a decent story.  They probably slaved over this writing for longer than you would ever imagine, to them it's probably the equivalent of one hit wonder band that has been touring for 30 years and playing that same song over and over.  Write them and tell them that you enjoy that article, maybe break that article down sentence by sentence, apply it to real life situations, tell them that it made you feel better when you're having a bad day, something like that.
            Let them email gestate for a few months.  Maybe drop one here or there about their recent goings-ons, google them occasionally.  Tell them you do a lot of writing but you aren't confident enough to let them read it, they probably will offer to.  This is called a personal connection. 
            Now you can use this relationship for whatever reason you want.  At any given time, you can send them an email with a humble topic line like:  "Remember me?"  or "Your biggest fan."  (Your biggest fan in the outro line is a winner every time as well).  If it turns out somehow that this person is extremely successful, atleast at whatever place they happen to work, write and ask them about available internships, random writing advice, if they have any friends who are looking for personal assistants, etc. 
            I'm writing this because I did this.  Not me, the blogger, me the character in this fictional essay.  This is a fiction blog, so everything contained here is fiction.  Even the real stuff.
            So this woman who was a quasi-successful writer in the late 50s (came in second for a Pulitzer, something like that) has offered to lend me her tutelage.  She has a basement room with wall to wall file cabinets of correspondences with other semi-successful writers, newspaper articles of importance, dirt on the now defunct newspapers she worked at, and many more odds and ends.  She doesn't do anything now, doesn't even write (picture a wilted flower), but she still has a name that semi-famous people in the area will recognize.
           It's called networking.  It works retroactively this way.  It's about getting your feet into as many doors as possible, metaphorically as well as literally.
          Then the problem sprang on me:  What do you do when you get there?  You wonder if she's worrying about the same things, but it's the next morning already, and this is when you planned to get together.  You watch The Graduate that night, and wonder if she's going to be attractive.

Internet Sign On

This has become more of a mission to get as many words onto the page as possible in increasingly short periods of time.  Since grad school started my creative writing has really taken a hit.

Hamburgers.  He wanted hamburgers.

"I'm on the phone, buddy, can you wait just a minute?"  His bespectacled old man waved him off.

"You want hamburgers, buddy?  Hamburgers?"  The maid asked, stooping down to his eye level.

All of the internet connections were titled things like:  "Funny cock" and "Pocket pussy."  The kid better not learn any words like that, he thought.

First update in awhile

Hey it's really easy for me to just keep on typing.  This is an exercise in typing.  I have twenty minutes before a class.

So there's this guy.

He lives in a cave.

He has sandwiches that he makes from the animals that he hunts.  He looks in his pantry, which is a pile of rocks.  There's no more sandwich stuff left.  There's a residue left where the blood was.

He rolls out of bed, it's a large log.  He has cut out the inside.  It's pretty comfortable, so far the termites haven't gotten to it.

He picks up his sling and his bag of rocks.  He hates carrying the bag of rocks, but he hasn't thought of any easier way. It leaves a big red line on his shoulder blade, and the line has slowly became an indentation. 

He walks outside with his rocks, waves at the mailman and next door neighbors.

"Going down to creek, yup."  He says to himself.

The neighbor ladies are outside drinking tea.  They wave.  He is handsome.  They knew his mother.

He comes to a stop sign.  It's a big red circle painted on a rock.  There's a lot of noise coming from the forest.  He ignores the stop sign, if that's what it's supposed to be.  He's unclear whether or not it's trying to keep him out of the forest, but hunting is always dangerous.  He's been trampled by boars on multiple occasions.

There's an animal he hasn't seen before.

A new one

I have not proofread this, but I did write it.  I write every day yadda yadda yadda.  You can see improvement (maybe).

            It hadn’t been a year since my accident at Dr. Shoeman’s Shoe Emporium had got me all of the money I needed to last for a year on my own.  Mr. Shoeman was still angry with me like I had stolen the money directly out of his pocket, and my lawyer Hank Hannigan was still calling every day asking for his piece.

           I didn’t feel like the rest of the bums at the unemployment office.  A lot of these people were unemployable, as you could imagine.  Others looked like they had been forced to go by an angry spouse or money-mongering relative.

            “If you haven’t yet filed for direct deposit,”  The automated voice on the overhead speaker said.  “You can not yet appreciate the convenience.”  I had no bank account, no credit cards.  I cashed my checks at Walmart after they handed them over.  The front of the line was blocked by two elderly african american women with giant steel cage looking walkers, who were complaining about something completely unintelligible.

            Lucky for me, my old friend Bernard popped up.  “I can help YOU down here, sir.”  He said.  I skipped others in line who scoffed, a man on a cellphone looked particularly annoyed (although it could have concerning what his cellphone conversation was about.)

            I looked at the check, which was once again more than I felt like I should be getting.  1,100 dollars was far more than I had ever accrued through gainful employment at the shoe store.  

            Don’t get me wrong, I love shoes.  I love Nikes, I love Siconi’s, I love Adidas, sports shoes in general.  They have that appeal of a nice sports car, except they are much more comfortable. 

            I always got weird looks from cops.  I think maybe they could tell I was nervous around them. 

            “Good evening, officer.”  I said to this particular mustachoed bespectacled gentleman as I stepped out onto the steps adjacent to city hall.  

            “What have you got there, buddy?”  He asked with a smile.

            “Just a little unemployment check.”

            “Are you disabled?”

            “Nope, not that I know of.  Other than maybe my will to live.”

            “Sorry to hear that, friend.  Good luck.”

            He ended it there, it was nice of him.  I was sweating bullets.

            I decided to intern at the new Carnival Style Theme Park for a minute.  It was still a week before the place opened, and everyone looked generally nervous. 

            “Mr. Simon is going to be here in a minute, cover all the sharp edges.”  The owner, Mr. Belvedere, proclaimed.  You could see the sweat poring out in a thick line from his balding mountainous scalp as he typed haphazardly into a dirty wordpress.

            I put everything from on top of my desk into the first drawer, pulling them off like I was attempting to pull a table cloth out from under some dinnerware.

            “My desk looks good, boss.”  I said, with feigned compliance.  “Don’t have to worry about my desk.” 

            He didn’t even look over.  His boss, ostensibly the man who had put together these rides and architechtured the setup, was storming up with two stocky gentlemen wearing hardhats and carrying machines that wouldn’t have been out of place on an episode of Star Trek.

            “The tiltawhirl is running fine, fine enough.”  One of them said.  “We need a test run, would you like to volunteer?”

            They weren’t talking to me, they were referring to Mr. Simon.  I knew this was a pretty good opportunity to jump in and earn my place.

            “Me?  I don’t ride these things.  This is for my sons and daughters, the kids, the greater good.”

            “If you think these rides are safe, you should give them a shot.  A day from now they’re going to go through endless wear-and-tear, obese people and sticky disgusting kids will be sitting in those seats.  Not that I care about those kids, but any sort of accident in the first week is bad publicity all around.  Hole In The World Themepark would do greatly to avoid any conspiracy.”

            So there I was, a guinea pig.  I usually enjoyed themeparks while growing up, mostly because I didn’t have to pay for anything.  This was more of the same.

            They watched as I spun guilelessly, the most basics of blues and reds spinning into my eyes as the ride thrust me against the side of its inner chamber.  I reached out with an arm to attempt to regain balance and pull myself to the middle of the ride, but I was stuck much like the Gravitron would do to me later on.

            I played some of the carnival games, which inevitably proved to be fixed.  I played some baseball all the way through college, and although the reader tracked my fastball at a measly 65 miles an hour I’m sure it was atleast mid 70s.  It struck the pin which was in a state of frozen inertia.  Each ball fell sterilly to the ground.

            They allowed Mr. Randy and Mr. Dove to take me on the rest of the ride-proofing, while Mr. Simon and his Honchos walked off nervously.  Mr. Simon looked very guilty, and his dark blue polo did little to hide his excessive armpit sweat. 

            “Let us know if there are any problems at the end of the night, Charlie.”  Mr. Simon exuded the utmost confidence in me.  I did a stunted double take, stunted in that I really only did a single take before I realized how he was trying to make it sound.

            “Yes sir, only the best from me.  Do you expect anything else?”  I oversold it.

            Mr. Randy turned to Mr. Dove.  He had an oversized pineapple head, and his ponytail looked like a horses tail.  He really could have used a hat.

            Mr. Dove looked completely normal, only his jaw hung open when he talked or was being talked to, the lip disappearing under his lower row of teeth.

            “Ya know, Mr. Dove,”  He started.

            “What’s that, Eugene?”  Mr. Dove added unfelicitously.

            “I think there’s something they ain’t telling us.”

            “What do you mean?  We don’t get paid to think.”

            “Well, they’re aiming to open this place tomorrow, but they’re doing the first test rides today.”

            “Naw, I know what you’re getting at.  Have you seen the serial numbers on this rollercoaster?”

            “I have.”

            “Well, does anything surprise you?”

            They stood over the V-Shaped blue beam that anchored this beast.

            “I ain’t never seen one like it.”

            “Yes, that’s true.  Well, you already know this, but you probably don’t, Charlie.  Get over here.”

            I threw the flavored toothpick I had been chewing on towards the blue aluminum garbage can, and it dinked off the side somewhere.

            “Well, me and my partner here have been working in this business quite a long time.  Really long time.  There are three major rollercoaster builders.  This one wasn’t built by any of them.  What do you make of that?”

            “A private contractor built the coaster?  Or it’s from someone’s personal collection?”

            “Could be from a personal collection could be.  There ain’t no other coaster like this one.  Most such coasters vary minimally in design, usually based on whatever promotional gimmick gives the ride its name.  Superman has upright cars so you feel like you’re flying, Batman is supposed to make you feel like being in his Batwing.  Get a load of this middle part here, by the loopty loop.”

            I looked up at it, there was something peculiar about it, or maybe I jumped to that conclusion based on the fact that he was trying to get me to find it.

            “What’s wrong with it, Charlie?” 

            I bit my lip and rubbed my eyes. 

            “Maybe we can get a closer look?”  I asked.  “I could probably tell from closer.”

            “He could probably tell from closer.”  Mr. Dove laughed.  Mr. Randy shook his head.

           

            “So how’s this one run?”  Mr. Belvedere asked sheepishly, leaning against a load bearing pole.

            “You probably don’t want to lean on that pole.”  Mr. Randy cautioned him.   “It’s bad luck in this business, seeing as no one has ridden the ride yet.”