SO COMPLETELY IN THE DARK ON SO MANY THINGS
Being awake at around noon is not just rare for me, it is an undesireable state of being and I avoid it like I avoid mentioning Jennifer Aniston in polite conversation.
Damn.
That said, I found myself in a very suburban Borders the other day (so suburban that it was neither in CA or NY, but that's a whole other story in a post that is going to have so many tangents in it, there may be a need for a mathematics degree), in the magazine section, when I overheard a cell phone conversation and by "overheard" I mean "was actively listening to and should have taken notes." This was a guy with a generally Land's End sense of style and figured him for being a mid-six figures kind of guy and is probably about to peak his mid-life crisis by year's end. He's probably driving an augmented penis. You know. That guy.
So he's on the phone and he's talking to someone who I thought was named Tom, but it might have been this cell phone guy's name. He's berating the fellow for just getting out of bed. He called to say "You're on the cover of Harper's Bazaar this week, did you know that? You didn't know that? You'd think you'd keep track of that sort of thing."
Well, this got me interested. Because, for one thing, Jennifer Aniston (fuck!) is on that cover, not some guy named Maybe Tom. And she was photographed by Alexi Lubomirski, not Maybe Tom. Alexi, according to his managment's website, is based in New York City. This guy (Maybe Tom), based on my NSA imitation, was in Miami. Not entirely impossible Alexi was in Miami. My read of Ass (as I'm calling cell phone guy) was that he doesn't hang around with high fashion photographers from New York. I suspect he only hangs around with the Vice President of Marketing. The one he can beat at golf. Not the cool one.
It then occured to me that this guy is quite possibly only knowledgable in whatever his chosen profession might be and completely ignorant in everything else (like the vascular surgeon who doesn't know how to pump gas or The Todd). Ass looks like the kind of guy who frequently blanks on the name of his third and current wife. Maybe he meant Harper's Magazine. Hell, it could be anything at this point.
Harper's has got an Art Spiegelman illustration cover. No fucking way this guy knows Art Spiegelman. As I said, Ass is an ignorant ass. The kind that will sit there and read Travel Lesiure for the rest of the time I was in the store after telling his pal "I have to go. I've got to get some food."
Maybe it was Kevin Baker. I dunno.
All that is the stop-over-in-Minneapolis way of getting to this. Ass's buddy is on the cover on a national magazine, and be it Harper's Bazaar or the other Harper's, he got there sleeping until noon. What the fuck magazine are you on the cover of?
It was also here that I noticed that the latest Scrye Magazine, for which I wrote an interview with the designers of the Battlestar Galactica CCG had two covers this month. The one I got had Magic: The Gathering on the cover, but the one in Borders had Jamie Bamber and Katee Sackhoff. That means I had the cover story. Not that it changes the size of my check.
Back to the pack.
"Wasting the day," Ass said. As these...these...circadianists frequently say. Those who can't wrap their minds around the fact that one can never even see the sun except in pictures can be productive. What difference does it make if there's light out or not? It's as arbitrary as saying "hey, eat a peanut butter sandwhich because it's raining." If one needs to conform to banker's hours for a reason, then we'll do it and then get right back to one's own schedule.
You know what else? No traffic at night.
Oh, and then there's the productivists. Maybe I don't want to be productive, and if I have the resources to live as I wish without being productive, then so be it. Hell, if you spend money, then you're productive. You're fueling the economy.
Occasionally someone gets on me (not the fun way) for being a "vampire." What do I need daylight for? I'm a writer. I have worked exclusively as a writer for a little while now (yeah, that's not gonna last). I can do that anytime. I choose to do it from about 11PM to sometime before the big burning baby head comes up.
There's someone I work with on one of the things on which I work who calls me before two. Nothing with that thing happens urgently. Before noon, I don't answer anymore. It goes to voicemail. Before two, it's 50/50. He's not reading this. And that's what people I know get for not reading this.
I don't need the day and the day doesn't need me. And if by some chance I manage to get myself staffed next staffing season (through use of blackmail photographs of Sorkin or Lindelof or Ryan or whomever doing naughty things with a length of Twizzler, a can of Play-Doh and four meth-addicted truckers (because the meth-addicted truckers alone just isn't enough), then keeping office hours is going to be a thing.
Unless there's some chance I'll get to see Jennifer Aniston on the lot.
Damn.
That said, I found myself in a very suburban Borders the other day (so suburban that it was neither in CA or NY, but that's a whole other story in a post that is going to have so many tangents in it, there may be a need for a mathematics degree), in the magazine section, when I overheard a cell phone conversation and by "overheard" I mean "was actively listening to and should have taken notes." This was a guy with a generally Land's End sense of style and figured him for being a mid-six figures kind of guy and is probably about to peak his mid-life crisis by year's end. He's probably driving an augmented penis. You know. That guy.
So he's on the phone and he's talking to someone who I thought was named Tom, but it might have been this cell phone guy's name. He's berating the fellow for just getting out of bed. He called to say "You're on the cover of Harper's Bazaar this week, did you know that? You didn't know that? You'd think you'd keep track of that sort of thing."Well, this got me interested. Because, for one thing, Jennifer Aniston (fuck!) is on that cover, not some guy named Maybe Tom. And she was photographed by Alexi Lubomirski, not Maybe Tom. Alexi, according to his managment's website, is based in New York City. This guy (Maybe Tom), based on my NSA imitation, was in Miami. Not entirely impossible Alexi was in Miami. My read of Ass (as I'm calling cell phone guy) was that he doesn't hang around with high fashion photographers from New York. I suspect he only hangs around with the Vice President of Marketing. The one he can beat at golf. Not the cool one.
It then occured to me that this guy is quite possibly only knowledgable in whatever his chosen profession might be and completely ignorant in everything else (like the vascular surgeon who doesn't know how to pump gas or The Todd). Ass looks like the kind of guy who frequently blanks on the name of his third and current wife. Maybe he meant Harper's Magazine. Hell, it could be anything at this point.
Harper's has got an Art Spiegelman illustration cover. No fucking way this guy knows Art Spiegelman. As I said, Ass is an ignorant ass. The kind that will sit there and read Travel Lesiure for the rest of the time I was in the store after telling his pal "I have to go. I've got to get some food."Maybe it was Kevin Baker. I dunno.
All that is the stop-over-in-Minneapolis way of getting to this. Ass's buddy is on the cover on a national magazine, and be it Harper's Bazaar or the other Harper's, he got there sleeping until noon. What the fuck magazine are you on the cover of?
It was also here that I noticed that the latest Scrye Magazine, for which I wrote an interview with the designers of the Battlestar Galactica CCG had two covers this month. The one I got had Magic: The Gathering on the cover, but the one in Borders had Jamie Bamber and Katee Sackhoff. That means I had the cover story. Not that it changes the size of my check.
Back to the pack.
"Wasting the day," Ass said. As these...these...circadianists frequently say. Those who can't wrap their minds around the fact that one can never even see the sun except in pictures can be productive. What difference does it make if there's light out or not? It's as arbitrary as saying "hey, eat a peanut butter sandwhich because it's raining." If one needs to conform to banker's hours for a reason, then we'll do it and then get right back to one's own schedule.
You know what else? No traffic at night.
Oh, and then there's the productivists. Maybe I don't want to be productive, and if I have the resources to live as I wish without being productive, then so be it. Hell, if you spend money, then you're productive. You're fueling the economy.
Occasionally someone gets on me (not the fun way) for being a "vampire." What do I need daylight for? I'm a writer. I have worked exclusively as a writer for a little while now (yeah, that's not gonna last). I can do that anytime. I choose to do it from about 11PM to sometime before the big burning baby head comes up.
There's someone I work with on one of the things on which I work who calls me before two. Nothing with that thing happens urgently. Before noon, I don't answer anymore. It goes to voicemail. Before two, it's 50/50. He's not reading this. And that's what people I know get for not reading this.
I don't need the day and the day doesn't need me. And if by some chance I manage to get myself staffed next staffing season (through use of blackmail photographs of Sorkin or Lindelof or Ryan or whomever doing naughty things with a length of Twizzler, a can of Play-Doh and four meth-addicted truckers (because the meth-addicted truckers alone just isn't enough), then keeping office hours is going to be a thing.
Unless there's some chance I'll get to see Jennifer Aniston on the lot.
