An Elevator Story of a Jumper, Piranhas and a Salute to Labor Day

I work on the 24^th floor of a high-rise in downtown Minneapolis.

My lunch breaks consist of me, my journal or a book, a couple cigarettes and a bench. Ironically the stench from the sewer grates downtown, even make this Fartimous Rex gag. So each day I sit and stare up at the tall buildings. Sometimes, the wind whistles through the skyscraper canyons. On hot days, it’s very pleasant – outside of the sewer reek.

Today, I took notes in my journal about what I want to say in this blog. As you can probably tell, I’ve been a bit incoherent these last few weeks. So anyway, I’m riding the elevator up with a few building co-workers I didn’t know. The topic of conversation: a security guard who worked in the building about two or three years ago, who had just come back from maternity leave after having twins, took the service elevator to the roof and flung herself over the edge, splattering herself on the 5^th street light-rail lines.

That disturbed me.

It wasn’t disturbing that my building had a jumper in its past (what tall high-rise doesn’t), but that a woman who just gave birth to twins, felt that was the only answer.

But later on a break, I sat down in my spot – not before eerily checking out the light-rail area on 5^th street – and thought about how a person comes to that decision. I imagine there had to be tremendous emotional pain to cause someone to make that decision, pain that I have never experienced thankfully.

I started thinking about others, mostly the jobless and the middle America struggling to pay their bills with shoulders full of debt. You see Labor Day is coming up – the holiday that celebrates the common worker, the unions, power to the people and all that. But in today’s America, do we the people really have any more power? With our lives tied to our mortgages and the banks, with the loans we get to put our kids through college blindly thinking that it will make a damn bit of difference, will we ever have “power?”

I’m going to steal a stat from a documentary: the top 1% of money-making Americans make more than 95% of the rest of Americans combined.

Interesting, huh?

From where I come from, we call that “out of whack.”

Now you see where I’m coming from. Even if us 95% banded together, we wouldn’t have the money or resources to even make a dent in the top 1%. Kind of makes you want to jump off a building, right?

You see the way I look at it; the top businessmen of the world have played a pretty good strategy. You see they’ve convinced us that our primary concern is to consume. Not to produce, but to consume. They have turned Americans into locusts. Look at the obesity rates. Look at the debt us 95% have racked up buying stuff that we have been convinced we need: iPods, plasma tvs, SUVs, massive houses, jet-skis, home theater systems. And it doesn’t stop at tangible objects. Look at our phones now. We have to have music, games, apps and MY GOD we check our phones every three seconds to see if someone texted us! They’ve even convince us to consumer our own time, our own lives by wasting time on all these things!

And the problem with consumption, of any kind really, is it becomes addicting. And I’ll admit, I’m consuming too much too. I look for those texts, I check email and I have an Xbox 360, which I haven’t played in a month (honest truth). The point is, the big businesses are playing us. It’s all a con. See all these consumables are the distraction. While our minds are busy consuming, their hand is lifting the wallet from our pocket. Sure we don’t feel their hand, because we’re too busy trying to beat Level 30 in Halo 3 to realize we just spent $60 on a video game that will consume 60 hours of time from our lives. And besides the fact that you can’t get that 60 hours back, that’s 60 more hours that we’re not doing what we should be doing – thinking for ourselves, asking the questions that need answers, figuring out just how far we’ve let other people change our lives while we sit in a Thanksgiving-like consuming binge.

I read an article recently, where a computer programmer was writing a program that would essentially glean content from the Internet and actually systematically write news articles (shout out to James Anderson for that link).

Is this how we should really be spending our time? Thinking of new ways to NOT have to do anything?

Thank god the program totally botched the article with inaccuracies – go figure that the information on the Internet was false.

My point to the 95% out there – wake up! We’re the only ones that can actually get ourselves out of this quicksand. As of now, the only power we have is our sheer numbers. Imagine if 95% of America went off the grid: Taco Bells across the nation sitting empty, Best Buy sales people sitting on their asses with nothing to do, cell phone companies with no cell phone calls, gas stations with tumbleweeds rolling between the pumps, malls filled with senior walkers rather than shoppers.

But it’s a vicious cycle isn’t it? If we don’t consume, businesses have no jobs. If businesses have no jobs, we can’t make any money. If we don’t have any money, we 95% can’t consume. Where does it end?

Eventually something will break.

Eventually, the 95% will realize that like piranhas, even though one would find it very hard to take down an elephant, 94 helpers would help make short work out of the task.

So on this Labor Day, I’m going to sit out by the lake and think about when this time will come, and I’ll be glad I’m with the fine folks of the 95%.

Jon Stewart vs. The Jurassic Corn Dog

Sunday.

The State Fair.

Me and my girls stalked about the fairgrounds in search of the elusive Jurassic Corn Dog. At first, we had trouble finding it, only managing to find newborn versions of the Jurassic Corn Dog. Tasty and tender, they went down easily, often in under four bites.

Perhaps it was the Hawaiian Shaved Ice, or the gyro, or the French fries, or the snow cones, or the bomb pomps and the quarts and quarts if ice-cold Pepsi, but when we finally wrangled the Jurassic Corn Dog and stood in awe at its wonder, between me and my girls we could only finish two-thirds of its massive carcass.

The Jurassic Corn Dog won.

Now, I may be getting older but a scant seven years ago, I was able to defeat the Jurassic Corn Dog…all by myself.

For the entire afternoon I was depressed.

You see I’m a big fella. I should be able to take the Jurassic Corn Dog. But I couldn’t. Perhaps in the aging process, your ability to digest deep fried corn batter and hot dogs slips, like your memory.

It’s probably for the best.

I shouldn’t be eating a lot of corn dogs.

But a month ago, I found a gray hair in the old chest patch. Now granted, I’m as hairy as bear, but seeing that bright white strand among a forest of brown deflated me a bit. I see it around my eyes too. Bags and growing crow’s feet. I find myself dozing on the bus.

When I start playing canasta and shuffleboard with knee-high socks and my pants to my chest, please shoot me.

I know.

Stop bitching about getting old. Everyone does.

Okay. New subject.

Jon Stewart.

I think Barack Obama’s biggest mistake in his run for the presidency was not choosing Jon Stewart as his running mate. His latest bit on the FOX news coverage of the “Terror Mosque” story was nothing short of genius. As a matter of fact, there isn’t one piece of the Daily Show I haven’t adored from moment one. Good work, Jon. The Emmy was well deserved.

And I know he skews liberal. Again, no rocket science needed there. But am I slow to think that what he is talking about makes the most sense in the world? Or is he just pandering to the liberal audience? I suppose everyone is pandering to one side or another.

Which makes you wonder about history? Has there ever been a truly impartial view of the events of humankind? If we go by today’s standards, future generations look to miss out on much of the REAL history of mankind.

It kind of makes you wonder how our generation would be if we were truly fed an impartial view of history.

September and Those Little Coffee Creamers

Hi, blog!

How are you doing?

Me? Yeah, I know I haven’t done anything lately to feel like a kid again.

I know. Bad me.

But guess what? I did something?

Yep.

When I was young, stops at diners and restaurants came pretty infrequently. My folks preferred saving money then wasting it on a breakfast of sunny-side eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and whole wheat toast. We can eat that at home.

And we did.

On the rare occasion that we actually stopped at a diner, usually on the way to the cabin or whatnot, two things happened:

1) We got hashbrowns. Out of all the creations on heaven and earth, I sincerely believe that God created hashbrowns. Those perfectly shredded potatoes, griddle-fried to the perfect consistency of salty-crunch on the outside and warm potatoey goodness on the inside. Can anyone besides short order cooks in roadside diners make perfect diner hashbrowns at home? I don’t think so. I know I have never come close to perfecting home-made hashbrowns to the godliness that the short order cooks in diners can.

2) Us kids drank the coffee creamers. Or maybe it was just me. Regardless, what kid can resist the creamy goodness stored in those handily kid-size little plastic thingies? I’d venture not many. Of course, drinking them all is never a good idea. That usually draws jeers from the folks. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

So today as I was making my Friday getaway from the plaza building in downtown Minneapolis, I happened to stride by the leftover goodies from a meeting. And there sat a moment of my childhood – a little wicker basket chock full of those little coffee creamers. So I stole one as if it were Aztec gold and drank it when I got on the bus.

Creamy.

That last line only works if you say it in the Homer Simpson voice from the episode where he and Bart steal Groundskeeper Willy’s retirement grease.

So today there was no young lady who just got laid off – I never did see her on the bus today. Sad. It was just me, my book and a little plastic thingy of cream.

But this isn’t all about cream. I wanted to say a few things about the coming end of Summer and beginning of Fall. Fall is the best season. Supporting evidence is as follows: football, cooler weather, kids go back to school (yay), leaves (I have a blaze maple tree in back and I shit you not, I could park a lawn chair underneath it and watch the leaves switch over), Labor Day, apple picking, wearing jeans again, wearing sweatshirts again, wearing flannels and my orange hat again, hunting, telling hunting stories, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s lining up like ducks in a row.

Need I say more?

So as the nights get cooler and I break out my orange hat, sit down and watch some football, rake some leaves, pick some apples, and have a lot of fun. Because even if the world is crashing down all around you, at least make the most of it.

I can’t end on a terrible cliché, sorry.

Eat pumpkin pie.

Corn Dogs

I’ve been stuck on some very depressing subjects lately. Self-doubt, the impending doom of America, being unemployed. So today, I went out of my way to witness something humorous and light-hearted. Walking to the bus stop, I watched to see if something stuck out. A rogue banana peel waiting to trip someone up. Bombardier pigeons. A bus puddle splash. Nothing. I got on the bus and took out my book to read – The Book Thief, nice. A very thin, young woman sat in the seat next to me. She had a purse, a large green bag stuffed to the gills and medium sized legal box full of office and desktop knick-knacks.

I know.

Here I’m looking for something to bring me up and I get a downer. I guess lately, since I’ve been contracting and looking towards getting in at the bank FT, I had forgotten how bad it is out there still. On the bus ride home, I couldn’t help but glance at the woman every minute or so as she stared listlessly out the window.

I still can’t shake the image. Imagine having to loss you job, pack up your things and then ride the bus home for 45 minutes so everyone could see. I felt terrible. For the rest of the bus ride, I sat with my book, pretending to read and thinking about different alternatives for the young lady. Perhaps she wasn’t laid off. Maybe she quit because she got a better job. She won the lottery. She got cast in the next J.J. Abrams movie. Her stock portfolio hit it big. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Why is it so hard to think positively in America lately?

Think light-hearted.

Think about better times.

Shit, think about escaping to a different universe

I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World a couple weekends ago. That was fun. A very delightful, hilarious escape.

And this weekend, fantasy football. Yeah, baby! Pack the Excedrin and the cheatsheets and get your wing-eating fingers ready to go.

And on Sunday, we’re going to the State Fair for the first time in seven or so years. There is a gyro and about ten corn dogs with my name on them, waiting for me.

Is it wrong to think about doing something fun? Should we hunker down in our depression and worry, wondering when and if things are going to improve? Do we let all this crap get to us? Isn't that letting them win?

I don't know about you, but I’m going to get a corn dog.