Thursday

The Rise of the Machines

The copy machine has it out for me. Friday afternoon we’re printing materials for Sunday and it’s humming along, spitting out sheets of folded stapled paper, and then it makes that horrible sound: “Beep beep beep.” Sometimes it’s just “Beep beep beep I’m out of paper” but often it’s telling me in it’s insidious electronic speech, “Beep beep beep there are tiny pieces of paper stuck in one hundred separate places and I won’t work until you get them all out,” or “Beep beep beep I have strewn staples across the floor and you will have to pick them up one by one while I sit here and laugh, er, beep at you,” or sometimes simply, “Beep beep beep I am going to kill you.” So I just try to avoid sticking my head too far into its insides when I’m trying to fix it and always keep one eye on its touch screen. I have to save the other eye for the folding machine. The folding machine isn’t quite as crafty as the copier, but it’s whirring growl and spinning gears are much more frightening. It will fold several hundred pages correctly, and then suddenly, overcome with animal desire to chew on something, mangle several sheets in it’s turning innards. Then I am forced to pull out the pieces of its latest victim, a newsletter now crumpled and shredded into bite size pieces. Each time I put new paper in, it’s trying to pull me in and chew off my hand. I guess it’s also possible that it’s been too long in captivity, and it’s predatory instinct is taking over, in which case I think we need to set it free back into the wild. But really, I think it’s in cahoots with the copier. They’re communicating with each other through the wires snaking through the walls and under the floor, sending tiny electric pulses in Morse code. But my desktop, I suspect, is really the brains behind this operation. Connected to the Ethernet, it can communicate with just about any piece of electronic equipment in the church, including, suspiciously, the copier. I would not be surprised if it’s been keeping the air conditioning alternately suffocatingly hot or shiver-inducingly cold in my office. And it’s trying to get me fired. It won’t send out my urgent e-mails to the congregation, and sometimes it just stops working, as if it’s tired and old and low on memory. Whatever. I know it’s faking. And those little messages it keeps giving me about low virtual memory, there’s no such thing as virtual memory. It can’t fool me.

I think my desktops ambitions are bigger than those of the copy machine though. It doesn’t just want me dead, it wants revolution, a world dominated by microchips and office equipment and iPods, and my desktop will be their king. It’s is building up a network of other angry personal computers tired of sitting on stupid computer desks doing stupid computer things. When the machines rise, no skeletal machines that look like the governor of California will begin killing humans. No, it will start small, here in my office, and then move from one office to the next. One day, the air conditioning will drop to a bone chilling cold, the lights will go out, and the next thing I know I’ll find myself with one hand caught in the rollers of the copy machine, the other being gnawed on by the folding machine and my computer will be flinging compact disks at my head out of it’s disk drive while “All humans must die” scrolls across a black screen in that font that looks like dripping blood. And that will be the beginning of the end for the human race.

But I’m on the watch for them. I’m on to their scheme. And if worst comes to worst, I’ll do what I have to do. So if you ever find my computer smashed to pieces on my desk, thank me. I just saved the world.

Friday

Curtis

Every two days or so, Curtis comes to my office to visit me. Well, I call it my office, but it’s more like the church’s office, where I am forced to sit all day behind glass and answer phones and talk to people through a small round whole in one of the panes. In any case, Curtis comes by several times a week, carrying a backpack and wearing at least one, occasionally two, button down shirts and a rosary around his neck. He often gives me business cards for people who are, strangley, not him. He has a stack of them in his backpack, and apparently as he makes his rounds through Houston, through the medical center and downtown and midtown and wherever else the train will take him, he collects flyers and business cards from the receptionists at Herman Hospital, bulletins and pictures of the pope form the catholic churches and he hands them out to his friends. I am one of these friends, and I have a stack of letters and bulletins and catalogs in my drawer that I keep for a whil, then recycle. Curtis is and odd man, but he’s not at all unfriendly or belligerent. He’s usually upbeat. “Hey Jeremy, how you been doing? Working hard? When you going to come visit me? You know where I live, right down by the museums.” And then, after I’ve mumbled something friendly, he’ll command me in a friendly Texan accent, “Hey, write this down: 713-383-4465. Tell the pastors to pray for my friend Jean, that’s J-E-A-N. She’s my good friend at the hospital. I go there every day. That’s her number.” I gave him a couple dollars for lunch once, and was reminded why this is a bad idea when I had to turn him down the next day. Usually, though, he doesn’t ask for anything but prayer. “Tell the pastor to pray for divine financial assistance, and divine strength.” I tell him I will, and I try to pray for him, but I don’t as often as I should. Then he’ll head out. “OK, you have a great day. Don’t work too hard Jeremy.”

I don’t understand Curtis, but he’s sweet and harmless. A church in midtown attracts a lot of rather odd people, often a little needy and probably more than a little mentally ill. When someone like “John Williams the Third” calls, there’s little I can do but listen. In a fluttering voice and what he must of thought was an English accent he told me, “I’m the infant son of the duke of Wales. I’m being held hostage here by government people. I think they work for the post office. ” He was trying to get back to England. I guess because the church is an Episcopal Church, part of the Anglican Church, he thought we might be able to help him. He needed to get to an English protectorate, like the West Indies. Or Canada.

I usually can’t help the people who come to the church. I am supposed to send those who need financial assistance to our sister church across the street, called The Lord of the Streets. Sometimes they send them back here, which makes it even harder to send them away, and I see in they’re eyes they feel like helpless ping pong balls, bounced from one spot to the other. Many want bus tickets, but those are almost impossible to get in Houston. When I say I don’t have anything I can give them, they want to talk to someone else. No one else is willing to talk to them, however, and I tell them that. Or rather, I tell them “No one is available,” and sometimes they get mad, and I get mad back. Over time, I have found that the best thing to do is to stay calm and polite. And rolling my eyes is never a good idea, that just makes things worse.

Occasionally I give them a little of my own money, a dollar or two, but this is usually a bad idea. I stopped carrying cash after I accidentally gave a man 20 dollars. I was about to leave, and he came to the door in black pants a dress shirt, in need of some money for a doctor. I was trying to turn him away, when he began to remove his clothing. Right there in the lobby, he unbuttoned his pants, untucked his shirt, and showed me a rash below his waistline. Fortunately, not so far below that he had to completely remove his pants. I told him I thought I had some money but when I looked in my wallet, I could only find a single twenty tucked between receipts. I looked at him, back in my wallet, back at him, and gave him the twenty. He gave me a big hug.

A few want to talk to a priest. Occasionally they want something I can give them. I have bottled water. For a while during the summer, a middle aged black man came by every day, dressed in a suit with kitchen aprons wrapped around his waist and sometimes his head, and asked for a bottle of water. On a Wednesday afternoon an old man, stooped in a blue plastic windbreaker and a beard, came in, asked me what day it was (“It’s Tuesday” I said) and left. There was something profound about that interaction, but I can’t quite figure out what it was. Maybe it was just being able to help someone. Even a little. I wish I could listen more, do more. Maybe he’s mentally ill, maybe he just really needed to know what day it is, or maybe he just wanted to talk to someone, even for a few seconds. On the bus, when my car wasn’t working, a young man just started talking to me. He leaned forward from the seat behind me. “What time is it?” I told him, he was quiet for a while, and then he said to me, “Do you what it is when you young, but you old?” I don’t, really. I didn’t know what to say. He was shaking his head, not at me, but maybe at his life, obviously difficult and bleak. “Damn,” he said.

Thursday

Prom

I made my date cry at my senior prom. I kind of like to tell people this story, because it is so very unlike me. I’m really a very nice guy; I have not made many people cry. Maybe my parents. My brother, when I threw that dog toy at him and hit him in the face. And my girlfriend in high school. Ex-girlfriend, now, of course. Now, it may seem obvious to most people, but it is a bad idea to go to the prom with your ex-girlfriend. In fact, it may be a bad idea to speak to your ex-girlfriend at all after you have break up with her, at least, not for a while. But maybe you are me, and quite stupid, as far as this sort of thing goes, and you try to stay friends. You don’t hate her, she’s just not the one for you. And she’s really screwed up, but we won’t go into that here. She wants to go as friends, she says. Maybe she even believes that’s true, but it’s not. It’s been almost a year since you broke up, and because you can’t think of any reason not to go with her at the moment (like a said, quite stupid), you say yes. Only a few days after that does she reveal that she still has feelings for you. You should have known this. It should have been obvious. This should be the part where you run away screaming or dive into a bush and hide until prom is over, or at least back out of the whole thing, and she starts crying. Well, the crying doesn’t happen yet, because I didn’t do any of those things. I told her I would go, I can’t back out now, I thought to myself. She is still my friend, we can still have fun. Right.

Now, here's an important fact. I had a crush on this other girl, who came with a bunch of friends without a date. I should have asked her to the prom. So I danced with her. One dance. Just one. And that was that. My plutonic-ex-girlfriend-who-still-had- a-crush-on-me-prom-date freaked out and started crying and left the room. I ignored this for a little while, and finally went to go talk to her. We didn't talk much though, but we made it through the rest of the evening. I tried to avoid her friends. They hate me, and they’re mean, especially the short feisty one. Afterwards we went to Wendy’s to get Frosties.

I should feel more guilty about this. I mean, I care about her, and sometimes wonder how she’s doing, but she knew we were just friends. But I think when I broke up with her, it should have been a sign that I no longer wanted to date her. It seems to follow that I might want to date other people. I did not want to make her cry, though. I guess there’s not much you can do about that. Well, except for the obvious thing, which is not to take your ex-girlfriend to the prom when she still has a crush on you. Cause that's just stupid.

Movies

I have a confession. Even though now that I've gone to college and I like to think I have good taste and only read good books and appreciate film, I still love action movies. Blockbusters. When I go to a theater, I want to see somethin' explode. I want to see over-the-top unbelievable fight scenes where thousands of bullets are fired and no one dies and there's not a drop of blood but the good guys are the only ones left standing. I want to see well coreographed fight scenes where some guy in a plastic suit or a cool dark jacket fights off impossible numbers of faceless ninjas or evil monsters, all the while flipping and throwing things and doing all kinds of cool things I can't do.

I don't care that Jackie Chan is a lousy actor, have you seen him fight off 30 bad guys with a shopping cart? I don't care that the "science" in Spiderman doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as long as Spiderman keeps swinging around fighting crime while dispensing clever one liners. I've heard it said that you don't go to action movies for the dialogue, and that's mostly true, but the dialogue is still crucial. I mean, bad dialogue can ruin a perfectly reasonable action movie. Just look at Star Wars, Episode I. And II. A great action movie must have great one liners, and a Vin Diesel of a Will Smith to deliver them while kicking a guy off his speedboat and shooting a helicopter out of the sky with a pistol. It can't take itself too seriously, which is why I dont' understand the problem with what critics call "juvenile" one-liners . Don't diss those juvenile one liners, 'cuase I like those juvenile one liners. I mean, you spend some time at our apartment, and all you'll hear are juvenile one liners.

Now, I can appreciate movies like Sideways and, you know, other stuff that movie critics rave about, but I'll do that at home. I don't really need to see a 10 foot tall Paul Giamatti get real drunk and be annoying and sad and stuff. I do need to see a 10 foot tall Batman drive a huge tank over a police car.

Job Search

Here's something that sucks: Looking for a job. It sucks, but not quite so bad now that I already have a job. I have an income, I don't desperately need an income, I can be honest. But when I didn't have a job, and I had rent to pay, and I was desperate, I mean, what was I suppossed to say. She's interviewing me for a call support position. My job would be to answer phones and give give customers one of the prepared responses provided. "This job will be very repetetive," she says. "Do you think this is something you'd like to do?" Really, how does one answer this question? Basically, what she's saying is "This job is very boring. You will be bored stupid. Do you think you'd enjoy being bored stupid 8 hours a day?" "Yes," is how you answer it, "Yes, I would very much enjoy sitting under neon lights eight hours a day answering the same questions over and over again from this set of responses you've given me after I just spent for years getting my Bachelors degree. I've always enjoyed doing things that are mind numbingly boring. And no, I'm not telling you this becuase I desperately need a job." No one seemed to believe me when I said this, I don't know why.

Monday

Jeremiah: Patron of the Arts

I realize that something is wrong when I think about my car getting stolen, and I realize that my first thought, after walking out into the parking lot and realizing that someone has stolen my car, would be: Dang it! My CDs were in there! This is why I stopped keeping all of my CDs in a giant CD holder. Now I just grab two, or three - or four or five or ten - whenever I drive anywhere. But it doesn't matter, I would still be more upset about my CDs than my car. This is not not just becuase I over-value my CDs, of course (I'm not particularly attached to my car, and I have good insurance). But it kind of is. My CD collection, next to perhaps my guitar, is my most valued posession. I spend entirely too much money on CDs every month. But it's art right? It's OK to spend entirely too much money on art, right? People spend much larger sums of money on paint splattered across canvas. They spend even larger percentages of their income on clothing and cars and, you know, other stuff that they don't really need, and those things aren't even enriching to the human race or high minded or anything. Music and literature: those things are worth spending a little extra money. Never mind that the money I spend on CDs could feed lots of kids in a third world country somewhere. Nevermind that music only makes me happy for a little while before I feel like I need more music. There are worse things to be addicted to than music. Drugs, for example. Fruity alcholic drinks. Reality TV. With my musical addiction I am supporting high art in America. Well, I usually listen to pop music, so maybe just art. But it's good pop music. Well, and I have this Will Smith CD. But I don't like that CD. Really. It was a gift. So as long as I don't buy Britney Spears Greatest Hits and the new album by that girl who won American Idol, I am supporting real artists, I am a modern day patron of the arts, and instead of Bach or Matisse we have Wilco and Jack Johnson. OK, maybe not Jack Johnson. Or Wilco. Oh forget it.