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.

At last, we’re back on the blogosphere, with a newfound sense of administration.

As it turns out, Blogger was not the mecca of blogdom that it was made out to be. Sure, just about anybody with half a sense of the web can use it. But their customer support is not too great when it comes to anyone who hosts their blog via FTP, instead of on Blogspot.com.

I tried for over a month to work out the broken pipe issue with Blogger, but I have given up. Today, I created a new blog using WordPress. I have to say, while you have to have a host and setting it up took some know how, I finally have a version of Blogimus Prime that is close to how I originally envisioned. Which rocks.

It can only get better from here. Adios Blogger. Thanks WordPress, and welcome.

I’ve only been to Las Vegas twice (in July 2004 and this past week). But it’s enough to make some factualizations about it. In a year’s time, it’s evident that the whole ‘adult playground’ concept has been homogenized enough that every casino is doing just about the same thing to get people to stay there and, of course, gamble there. The extravagance of some of the architecture, interior decoration, and signage is almost disgusting from the standpoint of usefulness.

While I did not find it obtrusive to be in Vegas by any means, it still amazes me that people get so caught up in all of the bullshit. When you break all of the events and special features down, everything there is so artificial, and most of the people who work there are paid to push this artificiality down anyone’s throat who should walk in the door. Vegas is nothing more than a lavish collection of stores and casinos, all only caring about you if you plunk all your money into their bank accounts.

I was hypothesizing that if all of the money that was invested in the construction and maintenance of Las Vegas over the past 20 years was converted into aid for all of our collective American problems, our country might be in a little better shape. But the reality of it is that if you plugged most people into a lie detector and asked if all of the unnecessary extravagance of Las Vegas was more important to have than aid for our countries’ problems, Vegas would win easily. “What cares about the national debt or social security, but did you see the glass sculpture at the Bellagio, or the new stores at Caesars?”

But I digress. People need their artificial escape, it’s just ingrained as a vital part of our culture. They need places like Vegas or a beach on a tropical island to go to when their lives have reached a boiling point of routine and monotony. It’s sad really that we choose to live this way… that so many people’s primary escapes are where real substance takes a backseat to neon and crystal and giant vaulted ceilings.

Nevertheless, this is the way it is. I won’t directly complain since I spent my recent Vegas excursion with family, but I’m aware of the inherent truth of Vegas… and I’ll try my best to resist it in the future in the hope for something else with more substance.

You could call it an utter distortion of the money saving process. But I have my reasoning.

Last night, my fiance and I took all of the spare change we could find to one of those Coinstar machines in the grocery store. While I’m no big fan the whole eight and nine-tenths processing fee, it had to be dealt with since the bank we wanted to go to had already closed its lobby after work.

Anyway, the primary reason I was cashing in my coins was for gambling money on my trip this weekend to Las Vegas. Yes, I know, my chances are one in several million of bringing home anything substantial. But I mean, I’m already going to be out there… I may as well take my chances with Lady Luck.

The point is this: if I win a progressive jackpot of 300 grand, which I plan on playing for, then it will have happened because of spare change. What can be better than that? To sit on the porch of my new house with my girl, feet up, sipping an ice cold lager— and to know that I have this house because I saved up my pennies.

Sure, it’s a little bit extreme to smoke on such a pipe dream… but I always say, if you plan on living well, then you have to find every way possible. At least legally. However, that way of life is not going to come to me while I’m sitting here in this cubicle wasting away in obscurity. So place your bet, people.

I happened to look at my high school yearbook (from 1994) this past weekend. I found it humorous that at the back of the book, there was a color section highlighting the important events from that past year. One such invention that was noted was about the Apple Newton being a revolutionary new device.

I did a double take. The Apple what? Newton? Was that a fad I missed? Apparently, it was. As it turns out, the Newton was actually one of the first “personal digital assistants” or PDA’s as we’ve come to know the acronym so well. Yet, I knew Apple definitely hadn’t made such a device in at least the last 8 years or so, and this time I was right. Well, 7 is close enough.

As you can read here, the Newton was a heavily hyped launch, produced from 1993 to 1998, although some faulty handwriting recognition features gave it a bad rap, and it met an untimely demise as many pieces of hardware have before it. I guess the thing that surprised me about the Newton was not that Palm and their subsequent release of the Pilot developed a smaller and more user-friendly device, but that the Palm Pilot was not the ultimate groundbreaker I thought it to be.

I think many gadgeteers of today never even realized that Apple had a hand in the PDA game. But this all goes to show that one of the companies that starts the ball rolling is not always the one who ends up getting the credit in the public eye.

I bought a blue Apple clamshell-style G3 laptop back in February 2000, and despite the fact that it served me well for 3 years, I had basically decided to retire it about a year and a half ago. It had gone the way of a million obsolete computers before it… processor became antique, RAM was simply not enough to run Photoshop or Quark, and the battery had about 90 minutes of juice before it crapped out. Besides, I had written my first novel entirely on it, and for that, I wanted to hold onto it for the sake of nostalgia… if I should ever make it as a writer, then this machine could be bronzed and hung on the wall. Far fetched perhaps, but hey man— you gotta dream.

Fast forward to now, and life has maintained a financial plateau of sorts. While I designated a little bit of cash for an early summer computer purchase, I had to make a decision. Would I get a new laptop to replace the old one (now that I was starting my second novel), or would I get a new monitor for my desktop machine? I had the monitor since 1998, and you want to talk about antique— the damn thing weighs 80 pounds. Plus, after my last move, it had started to flicker. And if you read my blog from the other day, you know I opted for the cinema display, which happily ships out today for delivery next week. Most clutch.

So where does that leave me for the writing situation? The only place it could— I had to resurrect the old clamshell. In looking at it again, I recall how my mom had likened it to a toilet seat, which wasn’t far from the truth. The battery was completely wiped, so I had to dig through the studio for the charger. It took me forty minutes to find it, but eventually I found it hiding in a peach box of my fiance’s memorabilia. By today’s standards, the laptop didn’t have the speed or memory to run the current OS, so I had to search on Apple’s website to find one that would work. By some stroke of luck, I found one that loaded up.

Now the plan will be to install the current version of Word on it, and that’s it. Other than Firefox and Norton Utilities, there will be no other programs on it. I guess that’s good for the sake of being less distracted. Funny how efficiency works sometimes.

Although nothing is certain. It could still crap out on me in the next couple of weeks, but I’ve got to give it a try. Worse comes to worse, I buy another laptop, maybe a used one. And the irony would be that five years from now, I might have to resurrect that one too.

Magic Junk is happy to announce the arrival of our newest product…

As the big brother to the Bite-Size, Acryliture: Deluxe expands on the concept of housing alternative literature inside a hand painted canvas cover. Composed from a wide range of fine art paper (including silver linen, blue vellum, and khaki cover stock), each Acryliture: Deluxe contains color photos, a centerfold drawing, and saddle-stitch binding. The current content is:

Volume 1: Fill Me In: I Am An American Blank

Every piece was designed, printed, and hand assembled by the artists Rodriguez and Sahm. Created in a limited edition group of 12, each sample comes in a silver static-free bag. This offer is exclusively sold on Magic Junk. Get yours while supplies last.

Check it out here.

This past Sunday, I purchased an Apple Cinema 20″ Flat-Panel Display which cost me the low low price of $759 including tax and shipping. It was the best deal I could find for it, and although it set me back some cash flow, it was necessary to replace my current monitor which clocks in on the scales at 80 pounds. It’s huge! Not only that, the old monitor is like a blast furnace during the summertime… so without central air in the Unsung Fu studio, it makes for difficult creative directing. And don’t forget that it flickers too.

Alas, the point of this all is that yesterday I found a Sears receipt from October 1998, when I had purchased a Kenmore washer and dryer set for my previous living arrangement (which I had to leave behind when I moved). The total cost for the washing duo (with tax) was… you guessed it… $759. Insert Twilight Zone theme here.

I found this coincidental factoid very interesting, even if my fiance did not agree with me when I announced it with glee. I guess I look at it as a personal growth of the non-epidermal kind, a glowing sign of advancement in my spending ways… that seven years later, I would make an equal purchase for something much less utilitarian to living, but far superior in terms of my creative uses on the computer. I would not have made this purchase then because I had no hope for being entrepreneureur or an artist. But now, I do. Which works for me.

I might consider it a sign from a higher power that I was unable to blog for the past three weeks. But of course, that all depends on if such a power is restricted to blogging or if it applies to other things. But let’s not get ridiculous now.

Starting around May 23rd, none of my Blogger posts would upload to my server’s FTP. No matter what I did or changed in the specs, the same result occurred (Error: Broken pipe.) There was a conflict between the blog protocol and the server protocol. So as I made an attempt to attack why this was happening…

On the evening of May 25th, after the finales of Lost and Alias, I was greeted to some rather potent food poisoning, which beyond keeping me in and out of the bathroom all night long, caused me to miss 2 days of work, and disabled me for the greater part of the next 4 days.

Being a New Yorker, I have come to expect such things while eating in the city… but alas, it is of no surprise that I usually try to avoid anything that looks suspicious from a street vendor or a bodega. Really, it’s just common sense.

However, I guess my Chicken Tendercrisp sandwich and large fries from Burger King did not look guilty of harboring any deadly poison, since I ate them for lunch that day. But it’s the only reasonable explanation I have for why I got sidelined.

The following week, the protocol conflict went on, so I continued the blogging absence. Then on June 1, I took a three day business excursion to Tampa. Which leads me to here… trying to explain why I have been long gone from this endeavor I began only a few months ago.

Alas, it was inevitable to have such an absence. I have noticed even if the best of bloggers have a lapse in their religious adherence to their writing or reviewing. But if you can get back into it as soon as you can, then it’s all good. Which I’m doing. So away I go.