1. Can you believe the SomBlock’s been going strong for more than 4 months now? Yes, my hard work’s been rewarded with thousands of followers.

2. Since I started doing the SomBlock, the economy has begun to rebound. You now see the healing powers of negativity and sarcasm. So… ha!

3. Of course, all good things come to an end sooner or later. The SomBlock’s days are numbered, probably somewhere in-between tweet 2000-2500.

4. In the meantime, let me tell you about the medicinal benefits of organic bullshit. It can be found in most corporate offices in vast supply!

5. With enough organic corporate bullshit, you can numb your life so much that you don’t even feel pain anymore. You hear me people, no pain!

6. Fall is redeeming because all of the annoying things of summer go away: excessive heat and humidity, shore traffic, and fat men in Speedos.

7. Why is olive oil the only thing in the world to get the adjective Extra Virgin? Couldn’t we all use an Extra Virgin Beer or an Extra Virgin Steak?

8. Somewhere in the worst part of town on the bottom shelf of a dark convenience store, you’ll find a bottle of Dirty Old Prostitute Olive Oil.

9. Do you think everyone age 30-50 can identify the start game jingle of Pac-Man by just the first 2 notes? Yes, I miss my lost youth as well.

10. In the future, I’ll be riding on a spacious and new Metro North train. Note though that I didn’t say “in the NEAR future”.

11. There is no such thing as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or a spacious comfortable seat on a Metro North train.

12. Do you remember who it was that told you there was no Santa Claus? I do, and I hope that person is forever stuck photographing cute kids.

13. This AM’s SomBlock is sponsored by my bosses all being out the rest of the week. Golly gee, I’ll sure miss them so much. *wipes tear away*

14. Damn, I didn’t realize I was so close to a SomBlock Galore. Further proving that man’s ability to count before caffeine is greatly reduced.

15. Unless of course, I break my own rules and allow post sponsor tweets to count. Hmmm… Well… Okay… SomBlock Galore! (I love saying that)

*** Every weekday from 8-9am while traveling from Stamford to Manhattan, Mark Sahm writes a block of thoughts on his Twitter account (@Somrod) via his iPhone.***

* A literary passage *

There were days for us all where the lust of addicts made perfect sense. Where a man could indulge without a shred of restraint and love every succulent second, knowing full well that morality and conscience had been thrown to the roadside.

Those were the days when a man could walk outside with the ambition to screw any female that gives him the time of day. Where the man followed the same pattern each night out, like a rat that perfectly memorized its way through a maze. Just to release the angst of youth drop by drop. To explore the depths. To explode. To unknowingly fuck everything up.
Read more…

Eleven and a half months without a word to save the dream.

Five hundred thousand minutes to remind me of the vinyl groove I lost, of the gloss black symmetry that I allowed to warp in the sun. I was simply too busy making love to the backburner to notice, too bent on having more square feet to websurf in.

To make so many obvious mistakes boggles the mind, yet it made the most sense at the time. How was I to know that the words would fail me? That they would not return at my command. That I would be without a tender morsel of pride, or without a shred of prejudice toward the neon lights that silhouetted my contemporaries.

Yes, without the novel that my shoulder devil kept whispering about in my ear, I smiled wide and foolish as the wrecking ball of regret smacked me in the teeth. It took me eleven and a half months to finally look in the mirror, to see the damage.

I should have known this would happen when The Art of War was directly next to The Elements of Style in my bookcase. When I could feel creativity raining inside my skull, but my brain had been shrink-wrapped in polyethylene.

When the acid trip remix of Gloria Estefan’s ‘Words Got In The Way‘ plays in the elevator of my descent into this present state. When the realization of ‘the dream’ looks less and less like Fantasy Island, and more like something produced in a North Jersey chemical plant.

I was under the notion that it would be constructive to perfect my corporate smile, my pledge to ‘get right on it’, my undying delusion that such actions really get one anywhere in the kiss-ass political hierarchy of a large corporation.

To make so many obvious mistakes boggles the mind, yet there were lessons learned. The dream is not a fantastic flood that fills the desert. It never was. It is a meticulous drip, the gradual build that fate will maintain if you just promise to never give up. It took eleven and a half months to realize that one word at a time will do.

One word at a time to save the dream that I thought was lost. To show me that the words never really failed me. It was the other way around.

- – - – -

If it wasn’t 100% clear, this passage was about how I’ve had writer’s block for the past year. My only feasible explanation is that sometimes you just go through times in your life where your mind is not in tune with your heart. But I’m pretty close to getting back to where I left off…

And away we go. Cheers.

Stephen King wrote in his book ‘On Writing’ that he has a daily 2,000 word quota. Which is nice if you’re home every day! 14,000 words a week sounds stellar, but in reality such an amount would be exhausting if not totally improbable for me to do.

My quota for my first novel was 4000 words per week. It worked out well for the most part, with some bad weeks mixed in with a 10,000 week of vacation and a 7500 final week.

Since I have more experience under my belt, I decided to raise it to 5000 wpw for my second novel. On top of a full time job, I felt that was an entirely feasible amount. Sure, I could probably do more if I was really desperate to finish. But (a) I’m a medium paced writer and (b) that would most likely lead to burnout.

As it turns out, I’m at 25,000 words right now, but am 8,000 words behind the pace (because of a few bad weeks). So it looks like sometime in the next two months, I’m going to have to pull that 14,000 word week out of my ass, if I am to finish by my goal date of June 6.

Reality is without a sense of irony, eh?

You wonder if anyone is listening, don’t you? That when your words reach the page, when the pixels of monitors all over the world display your name below a post title— are they listening? Will they respond? Or is this all just another devil of illusion, slowly milking the lie that you so desperately want to believe is the truth.

So what if it does give you a momentary high? Is it worth pining for? Maybe it’s not a Stephen King high, or a J.K. Rowling high— but when you’re a young writer who just wants to sculpt out a creative life for themselves, then a blog presents you with a nice moment of hope. But in truth, for the majority of such youth, it is empty. I remember reading last February of how you could get a job from your blog. That must be a fractional percentage at best. But again, it was hope. A minor shred to cling to.

I’ve spent over nine months making periodic contributions to a mass-blogger site. Thirty-seven posts worth in that time, a number that others do in a month. This passage you’re reading right now was my six-hundredth comment there, again achieved in a month by some. But comparisons and statistics prove nothing. It really comes down to motivations. The why.

For me, I never wanted to be a reporter. Or a reviewer. Or a debater. Oddly enough, I never really wanted to be a critic either, but it looks like my name will always be linked there for as long as they’re around and decide to keep archives. So be it. While my original goals in joining the site have been achieved. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t learn a lot from the experience from the types of writing I’d never done before: satire, pop culture, sci-tech, a sports article, and a book review. I even tried my hand at analyzing some political issues going on in NYC.

While I never garnered more than forty comments on any post, the reasons for writing them were always about branching out. That if you’ve been writing in a certain style for most of your life, you need to switch gears. Surprise yourself. Create a self-induced LOL. Sure, very little is guaranteed success once it reaches the real world. But who cares? It is really about the extension of self.

That site offers many ways to lose yourself in writing, commenting, praising, attacking, whatever. But the truth is that most people could give two shits about you and your life, outside of humoring you. Right now, there are twenty thousand people just like every last one of us living the same life within the same parameters. We think that we’re being original, but we’re just another copycat. Sure it’s inadvertent and innocent, but nevertheless completely true. If you weren’t dishing on the new alt-rock album or stating why a celebrity or sports star is a weasel, someone or some dozen people would be. We are all disposable.

So the biggest lesson I learned there was that before we can truly be critical of the world, we must learn to be self-critical. Instead of dissecting the world and its infinite faults, focus on why all of it bothers you. I’m writing all this now because outside of my original motivations, I’ve come to the conclusion that I too am guilty of being a copycat. It’s high time that the person I needed to have listening was myself.

I do not know what the future holds for my writing. I do not know if the 2nd novel outline I’m working on right now will ever see the light of day, or if I’ll stay stuck on an anonymous plateau like most writers do. But I have accepted my current state and am prepared to move on. Are you?

Don’t be afraid to help. In fact, be a person that Smokey the Bear’s literature loving cousin Scripty would give a merit badge to.

Help stop The Art of Getting Bent, a novel by M. Sahm, from burning in the fiery doldrums of Amazon.com obscurity. Currently, as of August 26, Amazon is ranking TAGB at #248,909 in Books… but this is simply cruel of them. Help show the online industry giant that there is still hope left in the literary dreams of a small publishing house and a first time novelist. Your support is invaluable to us.

Remember, only you can prevent novel fires. Or the acidic dusts and airborne chemicals of time. Only you can keep the Unsung Fu warehouse storage facility from being used to house someone’s old furniture. Nobody wants that. Because old couches are smelly.

This message has been brought to you by the Foundation for Shameless Self-Promotion. We appreciate your gracious acceptance for our self-depreciating humor. Thank you.

Alternate Designation: She Put The Octane In My Engine And I Rode Her All Day

- – - – - – - – - –
It’s before 7am and even the sun has not bothered to get its lazy ass up. I lean on my kitchen counter to prepare the morning’s cup of “322″ elixir. Three shots espresso, two shots Kahlua, two shots dark rum, a fist full of granola and the other ice cubes. Blend? No, liquefy. I love how the ice crunches in my blender like numbers in an accountant’s wet dream. Fifteen seconds and I spell relief, but I’m not awake yet, so I just sound it out phonetically.

Now the ingestion. Pound it like not only is there no tomorrow, but like today is ending right now unless this concoction is dancing with the enzymes in the next five seconds. I suppose I could sip, but I think the violent motion wakes me up just as much as the drink itself.

It’s a virus that spreads through the host, and there’s nothing like the caffeine jitters to shake up a random thought for creative use. So good I get a ringing in my ears, as if a smoke alarm is playing Earth Wind & Fire underwater. This routine is the beginning of my daily psychosis, my creative chainsaw to hack through everyday life.

Of course, I’ve never actually done this little routine. But I like to pretend I do. That my morning cup of coffee will taste celestial if I honestly believe it will bring me to a higher level, to make my brain Hulk out. Cue the metamorphic music, and Lou Ferrigno steps into my skull and growls and pushes running tractors backward and produces me some righteous art and writing. Dig it, sucka.

- – - – - – - – - –
If only it were that easy. We all know what our optimal creative state is, and yet we acknowledge that it’s hard to get into that zone. Sure, things like a good breakfast or some strong coffee or good herbs (I mean the vitamin form, my ganja toking friends out there) will get us into the groove, but it means nothing without the mental mindset.

The ability to concentrate when you’re not worrying about getting laid off, about where your kids are, about where your loved one is, or if you’ll ever even find a loved one. I see so much distraction in the world that I could become a professional distracter. Get a yellow page ad, 800 number, monogrammed pens. Just hire me and I will help you miss the rest of your life in glorious obfuscation. But I’m not having that shit. And neither should you.

Knowing that you’re wasting your creative talent is like walking a block downwind of a slow moving garbage truck. You could stop smelling the stench if only you’d just take off in a sprint to get ahead of it.

Additionally, you could read all of the self-help books in the world and it won’t mean a stir-fried cat’s ass if you don’t have the will to apply theories to life. You might be wondering: am I trying to motivate you? Nope, I leave that to the people trying to make money off of others’ desperation. I’m merely putting the writing in the sky. You can sit on your beach chair and get back to working on a nice tan. Have a fruity mixed drink with a little umbrella.

Because if you’re happy with the way you roll your creative style out, then by all means, share your methods of preparation here. But if you’re not, then take a couple moments to think what you need to do to kick-start your creative chainsaw— be it a cup of coffee, magic elixir, gamma rays, or ultimately the basic conscious decision to do what you want without distraction.

Alternate Designation: Failure Gonna Put Mo Hair On Ya Chest, Boy

- – - – - – - – - -
Of the three fluorescent lights in my work cubicle, one buzzes noisily. When an Info-Tech guy sits at my computer to install new software, they usually ask, “Doesn’t that buzzing drive you crazy, man?”

I start to laugh inside. Well, maybe it’s more like the chuckle of a sinister villain waiting for his plans to come to fruition. You see, I already know I’m crazy. But not like your Uncle Nick who sawed his car in half because his team missed the playoffs. No, my crazy is self-inflicted, a detachment from reality that most creative folks know all too well. Because reality says: the odds are stacked against you succeeding on a creative level. No matter what the field is—music, writing, painting, illustrating—we will most likely fail to live up to our expectations. I am presently part of that statistic, but I have come to accept this as unavoidable. To which I laugh again.

People throw around the cliché ‘glutton for punishment’ when it comes to those who try many creative endeavors without success. But this is only said because of our endless quest for fame and money. The two determinants of success convolute our collective arts, our whole creative process. They cause the natural inclination in people to try and market everything, so we can buy luxury cars, mansions, platinum toasters, have our face whored out on Spin and People. Because who the hell wants to dwell behind a desk plugged into a computer all day, working for a company that could replace us tomorrow?

While our culture caters only the creative success stories, that’s no reason to see it as defeating. It is the process and the production which should be the focus. We should be just detached enough from reality to keep being imaginative in our daily routines. No matter how many times it burns us. That is creative psychosis. That is why I ride into the cardboard sunset backdrop that’s staple-gunned to the wall. Because I can always get up and search for that real sunset.

- – - – - – - – - -
All things aside, I might sit in this cubicle until I retire. Or have a heart attack. Or get abducted by aliens. Whatever comes first. It’s just commute, work, commute, repent and repeat. But that’s the system. We gotta pay the bills and try to live comfortably. Realizing creative psychosis is not an overnight decision. It might take years in the work world to truly know that fulfillment won’t come through wishes, dreams, adherence to a self-help system, or even through hard work. While we know it’s always coming, opportunity has no set schedule.

The imagination that we fall in love with as children is the same one that has lets us down. I know I’m not afraid to admit it. People try to sugarcoat, to deny their failures, when there’s more knowledge in such than any record contract or book advance you could ever get. If my creative life continues like it has for another thirty years, then I’ll have an ego that looks like an old country screen door. Just a wiry spring keeping me from falling off the damn hinges. But as long as it holds on, then it’s fine.

In the end, nothing is conclusive enough to pledge full allegiance to, but I’d like to continue to expand this hypothesis. After all, I may just get lucky one day. Meanwhile, I know all of our failures will never kill us… unless it was a fission experiment that transmogrified you into extra-tasty-crispy chicken, but I digress. If you’re reading this, then you’re still alive to try something new, succeed, fail, whatever.

In truth, the process is never anything worst than annoying. Just like that buzzing fluorescent light. To which I answer the IT Guy’s question, “Nah, I deal with it.”

NOTE: This is a sequel to my previous post: Identifying the Train People.

Ever think you could execute your morning routine blindfolded? That the repetition is engrained into your cerebral cortex like the mark of a library stamp? That you could fight off ninjas and still get everything done in time to catch the ever glorious AM train? Yes, it’s time to commute in again.

The AM Train. Chugga chugga chugga screech. Five minutes late everyday, but 93% On Time according to the surveys. The AM Train. A twenty five year old sardine can with bad ventilation, that hasn’t been replaced because my suburban line does not generate enough revenue. I step on anyway, iPodded and sunglassed, and look for a slab of vinyl to become a napping corpse on.

Of course, like the PM Train, there is an ever-present cast of fellow travelers that I’ve come to assign an artificial identity to. I must do this. There is no choice. I’m exceedingly weary of engaging in any boring conversation that perfect strangers could possibly have, and worse yet— I so enjoy making up names. It makes seeing these people as entertaining as a city droner can be.

Each morning starts by standing on the platform next to a couple I’ve coined the American Gothic duo. Like the famous painting by Grant Wood that they resemble, the two both stand very rigid, and never talk. For some reason, they also sit apart at times. The man often dabs his upper lip with a handkerchief, and I get the feeling his pitchfork is not far away.

Upon getting on the train, I often cross paths with a woman I call Ozzy Chick. She’s in her early 30’s, wears tinted round glasses, and parts her reddish-black hair down the center. While I’ve yet to see her bite any heads off of birds, she does have this weird fashion sense… it’s like every style of bad wallpaper you could imagine in an 70’s kitchen, I’ve coined it ‘corporate nauseous’.

Once everyone has sat down, a man in his late 40’s will walk up and down the aisle as if he’s looking for a seat. But even if there are open ones, he won’t sit. He has a kind of lurch as he walks, and he wears these awful looking striped polos that make the Izod gator bite its own tail. Yet he reminds me of a flaky doctor I’ve met once, and so I’ve coined him Dr. Strange. While he bears no resemblance to the Marvel Comics character, the name fits.

While I usually point out the peculiar people on my train, one thing I’ve taken note of is the evolution of pregnant women. Most are regulars who one day appear to be slightly heavier (hey, it happens to the best of us). A month or two later, it becomes evident why. Then after a few more months of full tilt belly, they just disappear. A few months go by, and the women return as if nothing ever happened. While the maternity leave is obvious, it is amusing to watch strangers evolve while I’ve been hovering in my isolated Dantonian limbo.

As we near the metropolis, it is then that I consider role reversal. That if I have a tag for these people I see every morning, then therefore they probably have a tag for me. What could it be? Angry Looking Young Man? iPod Guy? The Gent with the Mirror Shades and Swiss Messenger Bag? I certainly don’t look like an artist or a writer (if such a stereotype exists, although I’ve been told I don’t look like those anyway.) But then, I think I got it— the Fast Walker. Yes I confess, I am compelled to get the hell out of Grand Central the second I arrive.

Why you ask? Surely you know if you’ve ever walked into Grand Central at 8:45 in the morning. It’s like that scene from The Empire Strikes Back when Han Solo pilots the Millennium Falcon into an asteroid field— giant rocks flying everywhere, Chewbacca growling, C-3PO screaming like a big wussy, and damn I need a cup of coffee.

And when the doors open, I spin a list of songs and find the hardest beat, and swerve through the human asteroids like a drunk driver with a lead foot. Although it works like magic, since people seem to avoid your path when they see that you’re moving like a madman on a mission. If I walk slow like strolling to Sunday jazz, then I will inevitably get stuck behind a couple walking side by side, pacing like its not rush hour. But no, they want to be snails that are not in need of coffee. I digress, and speed by the bomb sniffing dog towards Madison Avenue.

You could melt all this data together and conclude I hate commuting, but I don’t. Really. I swear on my pipe dream of success. Commuting’s like a big sociological lab experiment, and I get to be the Watcher. I’ve seen actual fist fights, soap opera-esque arguments, you name it. I find it’s part of the urban experience, and for that, I enjoy it. Maybe one day, I’ll live in the city and walk to work, but that’s a post for another day.

How do you get to work? Let me know what you think the ‘ideal’ commute is.

I have a naked ring finger right now, and it shudders for the future. It has been free all of its short life, and it knows. Yes, it knows that a shackle is waiting. The white gold shackle that will haunt much of the rest of its fingerprint worthy life. Alas, it’s a good thing I’m not left handed, or my ring finger might pull an Addams Family ‘Thing’ move and run away.

I could join my ring finger with that sense of impending doom, except I will reap many more benefits from getting married than it will. Or at least, that’s the rosy colored letter I have pinned to my chest. Truth be told, I’ve never had a problem with being married, it was always getting married that bugged me. The whole dramatic production value of the ceremony and reception, and how most weddings are the same. Tack on how all of the different vendors involved make a killing off of 5 to 6 hours of real work, and you can suddenly give great bearing to my normally disregarded skepticism. So what’s a groom to do?

Most men take the co-pilot role when it comes to weddings, like your buddy on a road trip in your college days— either leaning back and sleeping, or putting their feet out the window while the tunes blare. It could be easy to not drive and just cruise along for the ride, while the bride and her posse shape the Old West.

But no, not me. I’m questioning the map, I’m negating the short cut… because I like to drive. Not literally since I take the train every day to work, but I like to have a hand in anything involving me stepping into any kind of attention spotlight. Of course, I knew in my slightly blackened heart that all this wasn’t my style to be part of a Broadway production. After the engagement, I was immediately ready to head for a tropical beach in a silk shirt and tuxedo shorts, and get hitched by a rastafarian priest while bare foot, and then drink pina coladas with my girl until she sees me as a some grand cross pollination of Brad Pitt, Ah-nuld in his prime, and the Vibrating Rabbit. Let the honeymoon begin.

Ah, to fantasize… *insert dream sequence harp followed by champagne cork popping* Sweet fruit tree of elopement, cast me a sampling of your juicy gifts so I can gorge myself on your simplicity, your swift delivery, your freedom from all that reeks of cliche. I wish this wish as fish will swim and iPods will multiply and donkeys & elephants spank each other. The universe shall be perfect with such fruit and I shall have it! Hooooooooo!!! (That’s a Ho like Thundercats, not your brother’s ex-girlfriend, mind you.)

And then the dream I dream remained in the brain, a backburner that the handyman forgot to reconnect the wire to. Because the truth is, the wedding day is really about the bride. All of the bridal dreams and rituals that have been pounded into her head by the silly camaraderie amongst most of womanhood. And she says to me, like Gandalf pounding his magic staff on the stone bridge, “You shall not elope!” Of course, when the bridge collapses under me, I did not have a fiery whip to catch on her feet. Pity.

So I managed to talk the officer down to a no seat belt ticket and… oh wait, I managed to agree with my fiancé on a dual ceremony/reception hall, and the planning got underway and things got booked, and deposited, and quarterly payments and follow-ups, and now I am knee deep in the production with about three and a half months to go.

I look back since the engagement and have to laugh. Not because purple singing monkeys are tangoing on my cubicle desk (which would be funny), but at the sake of my former self. You see, I’ve learned that this whole process either shows why you love the woman you plan on marrying, or it puts a subconscious timebomb in your brain for why you’ll be getting divorced in 3-5 years. But damn the sap, I love my girl and the wedding planning has gone pretty well, and I’m not stressed about it.

So while I still pine to save several grand on production values, I can take heart in knowing that the grand purpose is probably that your wedding is the one time all of your family, friends and acquaintances from many walks of life will be together in one place. Which has a good philosophical value to me. And you can’t have that if you elope. But to each their own choice of union.

In the end, I still have many things to be paranoid about going wrong on the big day. But as long as my ring finger gets its shackle, it should all be laughable.

Yes oh yes, the pop culture crackle, come drop a cartoon anvil on my chest. I want to make the same artificial crunch sound produced by a guy with a slide whistle in a backroom studio. I’d love to cave in just like the cleverly placed leaves over the empty grave trap. That’s the pop culture snap, to make me just like the people plugged into my head from the TV signal. I cancelled my cable and they are still getting through. How full of fate!

The giggling cartoon devil is standing on my monitor, and he gets that signal too. His feet are secured with Velcro so he does not fall over if he laughs too hard. Every time that I put my head in my hands to try and forget my momentary frustration, I rest my elbows on the slab of pulped pseudo-wood that passes for a cubicle desk. Those elbows vibrate the slab, shockwaves rock the boogie, and the devil gets down with a disco dancing head jiggle. Are you getting the fever of the flavor?

That devil, he’s working the giggle just for me… just for this pop culture influenced pipe dream I invested my college tuition in. You know the one— where I believed that I could make a difference, that I could add to American society, that even if I didn’t learn physics or algebra very well in school I might just run along something groundbreaking to help save a dying friend or relative from catastrophe. Just like in the movies! All this noise that I call life keeps reminding me that I must certainly not be insignificant amongst the masses. And yet, the devil continues to giggle. He must know something.

That giggle, it’s therapeutic somedays, so much so that I rest my elbows on purpose just to watch. While the devil never tells me anything amongst his snickers, today he decided to toss me some questions.

He asked, “Do you enjoy standing at the face of a dead end? If you don’t, what obstacle will you have to run through to avoid going backwards to escape? A haunted forest? Someone’s new TLC funded dream backyard? A cliff on the side of a mountain? Tell me young man, are you prepared to fall to your death for what you believe in?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, since I didn’t believe in anything, certainly not him or his equal and opposite reaction on the cosmic scale. Well, maybe I believed once, when I didn’t know any better. But those days are a cancelled Saturday morning cartoon, nothing but colorful memories to sprout roots to. I know that the dead end keeps moving in front of me, no matter which way I turn.

So, I lifted my elbows from the slab, and grabbed the devil’s head by the horns and bent it back. It was then that I saw a finely tuned metal spring underneath his head. There never had been a giggle. It was all a pop culture lie, a juicy cherry pie to dip my metaphoric phallus of hope into. It was truth, if there is such a thing.

As I bent the spring out of shape and the devil’s head swung around his body like a lost tetherball, I knew the questions could only have come from myself. And if that was the case, then know that I’m as close as I’ve ever been to making the jump into the deep blue sea.

DISCLAIMER: There are no hidden messages in this dark comedy/satire. No humans, toys, or religious stereotypes were harmed in the making of this blog.

Without any caffeine yet at 7:45am to transform my decayed form into Mark-Ra the ever-living, I usually find myself drifting into slumberland on my morning train into Manhattan. Throw on some lounge jazz on the iPod and adios muchacos, I’m a Z producing factory. Of course, so often the train exists as an antithesis of a good nap, and many a factor can keep me from that seemingly vital 25 minute burst of unconsciousness. This morning, that factor was a spider.

Had it been a spider on the train seat or floor, then it could have kissed its web spinning ass goodbye. Unless I was feeling a wee bit humanitarian and then I might have just given it a swift sweep kick to the other side of the car. But no. This spider decided to be sitting at the top of a woman’s ponytail sitting directly in front of me. Somehow, the little bugger must have taken a bad leap from a tree, and now it’s stuck here. This is like Arachnophobia, when the country spider makes an accidental trip to the city. Hooray for coincidence. Now, back to me being paranoid.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It was bright green, about 3/4″ with legs, and was light enough that it could crawl all over her ponytail without being noticed yet big enough that I could not just squash it between my fingers with a speedy Karate Kid chopstick pinch. I was confounded what to do.

I wanted to say, “Hey Lady, you got a spider in your hair,” and be done with it. But then, what if she was a serious spiderphobe and went ballistic? Next. So I entertained the light shoulder tap from behind, with the warning of “Stay verrrry verrrry still,” while I tried to get the spider. But this is New York, she might think I have a weapon and mace me. Next. So I thought of just flicking it. But what if it lands on someone else? Aargh.

Then comes the apathy bug. I thought, why should I care? I don’t know this lady. I’m not her guardian angel. I have nothing against spiders, but if I close my eyes, it could be one of those jumping spiders that leaps onto me next. And that would suck. Nothing worse than waking up to a spider crawling on your ear. Bet that made you just itch your ear, eh?

Alas, this is not like those moments when a stranger has a huge booger hanging from their nose, and you do a quick nod, raise your brows in worry and motion to wipe their nose. No, this is way beyond my sleepless capacity for rational thought. This was one of those moments when you look around at a dozen people right around you, and of course, everyone was either sleeping or reading the Times or Wall Street Journal. Damn it, this was my burden it seemed.

So I decide to settle on the pinch route without any warning. Just reach in and squash it. But wait, what if it really is poisonous and bites me before dying? Nah, dude, you’re in New York, not Nicaragua. Wait, it could have tagged along on a freighter, or maybe this bright green spider is a by-product of some toxic spillage deep in the sphincter of Westchester County. (Which, by the way, if Peter Parker really did get bitten by a radioactive spider, he would have broken out in hives, swelled up and died. So I’m not expecting super powers here.)

Just as I wait for a moment to go for it, the spider starts crawling towards her forehead. Oh shit, do I say something? Why won’t it just jump off? I look around. Still no one sees it but me. This is like the Twilight Zone episode where Will Shatner sees the gremlin on the plane wing. I hear the conductor at the end of the car checking tickets. By the time he gets here, he’ll see it on her and shoo the bug off before it gets to her face.

Suddenly, the spider starts coming back. It makes its way down the whole ponytail and is nearly onto the edge of the vinyl seat, which makes it open game. I take out my weapon of choice. Fly swatter? Machete? 12 gauge auto loader with laser sighting? No, no, no. My train pass, and I reckon I can get it to crawl on my pass, then drop it to the floor, and say hello Mr. Rockport Size 10 sole.

The bug touches vinyl and I make my move. I move the pass in, and it jumps back on the pony tail! Shit! I quickly swipe at the tuft of hair the arachnid stands upon, and knock it to the vinyl. A second swipe knocks it to the floor. It jumps once upon landing, but right into the path of the oncoming stomp of the casual dress shoe.

I got it! Ha ha ha! Got it! Victory is mine! (Please note: Celebration dramatized for literary value.) Again, even in all five seconds of this action, no one was watching to take in my glory. Not even the woman noticed that I had done anything. Was it real? Was all this a sleep deprived delusion? I checked the bottom my shoe. Yup. Green smush. Very appetizing.

Nevertheless, I finally get to sleep. Except now, I seem to have this strange itchy feeling. Most ironic, eh?

After using its massive capital to employ the best brain specialists around, Google Inc. has succeeded in using its web crawling technology to search through the brain of a human subject.

The braincrawling took place on July 4, 2005 and took approximately two hours and nine minutes. The subject, Paul Genigeti, received a small incision at the base of his skull for the cranial access. Genigeti received ten stitches afterwards and was cognizant within an hour. No apparent side effects were detected.

Google had been previously unsuccessful acquiring any results from crawling the brains of laboratory rats or monkeys, as all of the results were a series of ’screech’ sounding gibberish. While Google executives were prepared to scrap the project, further studies suggested that the gibberish all followed distinct patterns. Paul, a lab intern from local Cal Tech University, then volunteered to be the first human subject.

Results from Paul’s braincrawl included detailed descriptions of his winning a blueberry pie eating contest, getting pummeled by grade school bullies, and catching his college girlfriend ‘entertaining‘ two fraternity brothers.

The results also included a snapshot of Paul’s subconscious, which ranged from a fetish for fruity mixed drinks and women’s feet, to having one-third of a mystery novel composed, to still being confused how Michael Jackson was able to avoid jail time.

Google plans to market their braincrawling technology to the general public by Fall 2006. The braincrawl plan will be priced around $5,000.00, and include all of your memories on a single DVD, or formatted into text and displayed on their blog service for public consumption. Patents pending.

“That iPod will be the death of you, young man.” Not the words you’d ever expect to hear from your mother, but it could have been for a young man this past weekend in Brooklyn. Read about it in USA Today here.

I’m sure the Apple spin doctors are hard pressing to point out that the kid probably would have met such a fate had he been carrying an iPod or a Nomad Jukebox, but I digress. Does the media really have nothing better to blame? Was the murderous motivation purely derived on that little white box that holds thousands of songs? Would he have lived had he handed it over?

The obvious trend is getting mugged for your iPod— a premise I’ve mentioned before. But you might recall the story of a kid fumbling with his iPod before he skated into a moving car. Although the original newslink went dead, it’s still an example of blaming the iPod when it was the kid’s absent minded behavior that got him killed.

Seeing how far people will go for electronic gadgets is surreal, and something the media loves to cash in on. Things like this recent murder or a story from a couple years ago where a girl dropped her cell phone into the NYC Subway tracks and had the genius-thought to jump in and get it with a train coming— they just defy all logic.

So, in light of all this, I have taken a few moments to compose some hypothetical future scenarios that we might endure involving the media’s obsession with personifying the iPod as a cause for calamity. While these scenarios don’t Nostrodamisize the day when all of the iPods rebel against their masters via the touch wheel transforming into a sawblade to slice off any fingers trying to find that old Pearl Jam b-side— it does invoke some realm of possibility.

Scenario #1: A man cashes in on his AppleCare policy so many times that holding his new iPod causes him to spontaneously combust.

Scenario #2: A baby boomer’s iPod is playing Kenny G’s greatest hits on a merry stroll down the boulevard. However, the annoying frequencies that escape the headphones drive a passing herd of wild dogs insane with bloodlust and the person becomes a chew toy.

Scenario #3: A tourist accidentally drops her iPod off of the observation deck at the Empire State Building. Upon impact, it crushes a man selling double-decker bus tours below.

Scenario #4: After growing a thick black beard during the winter time, a man takes a trip to Miami to catch some rays. However, he forgets to remove his iPod from his pocket liner, and is promptly mistaken by a first week inspector as a terrorist with a bomb and tazered to death.

Scenario #5: A woman listening to her iPod is waiting on a curb to cross a city street. She does not hear the screams of people around her, and the mirror of a speeding bus extending over the sidewalk takes her head off.

Scenario #6: A teen downloads a song to his iPod that illegally samples the Smurfs theme and hundreds of little blue men come out from under his desk and eat the teen alive.

Scenario #7: A man listens to Stairway to Heaven twice in a row on his iPod, and the earth below parts and swallows him.

Scenario #8: Microsoft buys Apple, and all iPods begin running a Windows OS. The iPod then surgically attaches itself to all users. Resistance is futile.

Scenario #9: A grad student learns the actual cost of what it takes Apple to produce an iPod and chokes on his dinner of lukewarm Ramen Noodles.

DISCLAIMER: This is satire. I do hope society learns from the real people who died in some of the news stories at the beginning of this post, but I don’t in any way mock their deaths. The mantra we all should remember is: Love thy iPod. But not to death.

At the beginning of June, a small orange tree was imported from Florida to New York. Thanks to vacuum sealing, the little tree made the airplane trip without injury. It seemed destined to thrive in the humid New York weather of summertime. The tree was given as a gift to a loved one.

The small orange tree was potted in fresh soil, and given water and plant food in the proper amounts and at the specified intermittentcy. The little tree was placed at a double windowed corner of the house, where sunlight comes in one side in the morning at sunrise and through the other at sunset. The temperature over the next three weeks ranged from low 60s to high 90s, with moderate humidity. One would think that there could not be an environment more optimal than this.

However, after three weeks in the New York environment, the small orange tree began to wilt. The other potted plants around it were flourishing, yet the leaves on the little tree were curling up. Within a couple days, one leaf fell off, followed the next day by the other three. All that remained was a green-brown body no thicker than a twig, protruding four inches from the soil.

The receiver of the gift was distraught, that she was somehow responsible despite the fact that she followed the directions that came with the tree. The giver of the tree told the receiver to forget about it, that plants die because the inability to adjust to different climates, and assured that he’d get another one when in Florida again.

But the gift receiver was not ready to give up on the small orange tree yet. She aerated the top two inches of soil and put it back into the double windowed corner. Within a couple days, a tiny green bud had emerged at the very top of the twig body. An utter surprise, or was it?

There are no guarantees that anything will come from the sprout, or if it will thrive when the weather grows cold by October. But this much was certain—not everything that looks dead is, and the gift receiver knew this. She smiled as she looked out of the double windows, smiled with the hope of seeing an orange of destiny one day.

Same as yesterday, last month, last Christmas, or five years ago. Same same same as I walk through the entrance as Grand Central. Same flow of human traffic around me, although always different faces. I weave and dodge to the pulse of the earbuds pounding something aggressive. Down my shortcut stairs, across the platform looking both ways to not get hit by a passing garbage cart. I arrive just the same as always to my 5:33 train.

The seat I choose is precisely so. Scientifically proven over the years to be the optimal train riding experience. How can this be? Considering that every seat on every train is made of the same pseudo-leather vinyl covering in those familiar shades of maroon and blue, the hues that just make you love the color picking gents of the ’70s.

Alas, it is the optimal seat since it usually allows me to be the last person that someone will sit next to in the car. I could make that an absolute—if I only weighed 350 pounds and my belly-hip-thigh flesh hung over into the seat next to me, or if I was covered with dirt and filth and the Saturn ring of fruitflies occupied the seat next to me—but I cannot. I don’t yap on the cell, I cross my arms to avoid the War of Elbows, and I never make contact. So you could say that the optimal seat cancels out my common courtesies.

Additionally, from the vantage point of the optimal seat, I observe most of the same people every evening. Much like me, they arrive for the 5:33 after jailbreaking from their 9-to-5. I have found that over the years, while I am always curious to know what it is they do, I resist ever making conversation. Besides the fact that I thoroughly enjoy iPodding while travelling, I find a great distaste for the lifeless ‘how-are-the-kids’ conversation that most train acquaintances have. Just watch and listen, it’s true.

More importantly, I find my imagination much more entertaining in that I invent their identity for them. Who needs to know anyone when you can just make up their life stories?

That when the man in the gray pinstripe suit enters the train, it is his unearthly precision that perfectly tosses his briefcase up top, or takes his suit jacket off and neatly folds it over one arm before he sits. I imagine that he runs the acquisitions department of a firm that perfectly dismantles smaller companies into core components. He is the white haired shaman of downsizing, a sonnet of business sense that churns out results until his heart gives up like a marathoner with cramps.

Or how about the Indian couple that occasionally meets in the last car? The man has a large nose, not vulture-like or Streisandian, but disproportioned on his face. His hair is slicked back, his build is portly. Yet the woman is easily model-caliber, standing about 6′ in heels, perfectly toned skin like the color that a million beach worshippers would sell a kidney for. Their communication is always brief. How they are together seems unlikely to me. I imagine it could have been by an arranged marriage, or perhaps he saved her life by sneaking her out of an oppressed country. But he looks like he has a wicked temper. A penchant for punching men who stare too long at his trophy wife. It’s like watching Sleeping With The Enemy unfold in real-time.

Or how about the Goth-style balding man who has let his remaining hair long grow to mid-neck? He walks with a slight hunch, sports a wispy goatee, and usually wears black (even in the summer). I imagine he is a male witch who can cast spells of food poisoning on anyone who beats him in the War of Elbows.

Or how about the stylish young woman with hair down to her waist? She wears sunglasses like Bono from the Zoo TV tour, and has a different purse every day. I imagine that she is a French fashion designer, making anything she wants and getting trendfollowers to plunk down thousands for it.

Or how about the man with the small sunken eyes and bushy mustache? I imagine that if the person in front of him had their head explode, his first reaction would be “Golly gee willikers!” in a Keebler elf voice.

Now you might say it’s wrong of me to think these horrible things about these people. But it makes life seem a little more interesting for my ride. Because the truth is that 95% of these people work in either a cubicle or an office, and spend most of their day in front of a computer, in meetings, or on the phone. The truth is that they are basically the same as me, a drone working for a corporation until I retire or move on to some other corporation.

And what could be more boring than knowing that?

This is the joke. This is the joke. Adjacent to life with nothing but laughing at his own failures. The faulty plug that causes the car to explode on a routine drive to buy beer and cigarettes and lottery tickets. Fixes for the broken machine that is the creative man. Fixes that were meant to fail in time. An utter lack of permanence.

Creative man crash and the world goes on. Creative man crash and the world goes on. The creative man crumbles to chalky dust and the world just keeps going on its way. Without stopping for his feelings. Without slowing for his dreams to catch up. Without brakes. Without.

Update the website with catchy text. The text that mends with the optimized graphics. Attention getters. The inclination not to close the window. Motivated to buy without sneering. Buy buy buy. Saving the creative dream from wasting away with those not bothering to try and escape. Save it from wasting any talent for people who do not care. A corporation from which life is a cog. A hive from which life is a drone. Replaceable. Expendable.

We’ve heard this scream before. Yes. We’ve heard this scream before.

It blends with the static over time. Like the sounds of convoluted nature. The buzz of a fluorescent light, the car engine revving, the slow aching moan of original life being churned into ground beef, the lack of focus. This is the joke, this lack of focus that crushes the creative man. Crushes him with his own laughter. Ha ha ha.