Baby Oil and Body Glitter

I blame my parents.

When I was growing up, we only had the four television networks available for the advancement of our social education. My parents just wouldn't spring for satellite! As a result, fully one fourth of my childhood normative influences came from FOX. No, it didn't make me a Republican, at least not for long. Instead, I was routinely introduced to capable, intelligent women who danced erotically to put themselves through med/law school. "I needed the money," said these women, and they were summarily redeemed by the end of the two-hour television event.

When I came to Seattle, I anticipated finding a job in chemistry, probably washing the glassware of some socially inept med school dropout/former exotic dancer. Instead, after a depressing two months of finding my business cards used to floss, squash a bug, or contain exhausted chewing gum, I accepted a job pushing furniture around a warehouse. That's the job description I was given, anyway, and I gratefully accepted because, after all, "I needed the money," and I was almost certain to be redeemed by the love of a decent-looking but troubled Richard Gere before the end of the third act.

I quickly discovered that my co-workers were hired to "build a ship," "paint the Q.E. 2," "develop important skills while creating art," or "revitalize the waterfront retail corridor." After 7 months, the frustrated chemist hired to push furniture around a warehouse is installing 30-foot false smokestacks and guywires on the exterior of the building, while the artists and architects were kicked to the curb when their furniture-pushing skills proved inferior.

Like most stories I tell, this isn't a happy story. Truthfully, the person captaining this herculean effort has mismanaged his resources and staff so severely, I ran out of even the most obscure of my impressive battery of coping mechanisms. To get ideas of how to find peace in spite of his irresponsible, short-sighted, unilateral decisions, I asked everyone I knew who lived in the U.S. between 2000 and 2008.

I'm really just working there for a while, because I need the money. Someday, I'll get a real job and hang up these platform shoes and sequined boyshorts.

And when my children are growing up, I'll make certain they have at least basic cable (if not pay-per-view!) so they can see what real people do for money.

The Least Threatening Zombie Ever

Hello again, from Seattle.

Within the first 48 hours of arriving here, I was clustered under the Space Needle with a couple hundred people with pale, blotchy skin, oozing wounds, incoherent muttering, and really bad hair. And, unlike the last time I found myself in this sort of company, I didn't have to buy a corsage for my prom date.

My new friends and I were all dressed and made-up as zombies, for the Seattle Zombie Walk of '09. Fresh off the plane, I was assured that, like the Hawaiian lei or the Minnesotan hot dish, the zombie march is the traditional greeting for visitors to Seattle.

With the help of a Ben Nye color wheel, some Mehron clown white, and a little prosthetic goo, I made a pretty passable attempt at a zombie whose lower jaw had rotted off. As far as I knew, this was a classic zombie archetype....until I got to the parade. The first compliment I received as a Seattlite was "Dude...really nice. Although, when you think about it, a zombie without a lower jaw is the least threatening zombie ever. It can't even bite you." I countered, "That makes me perfect as an undead ambassador." My new friend adjusted the knife impaled through his forehead, "That's cool...politics aren't really my game. More power to you, zombassador." He casually shrugged and loped ahead in search of brains.

Already, as a zombie, my personal values were coming into question. Am I a demagogue even while feasting on the flesh of the living? Can I simultaneously kiss ass and munch brains? Existentially shaken, I adjusted the fleshy polyethylene tongue glued to my adam's apple and resumed my slow march toward...what? Brains? Clout? Acceptance?

...An hour later, I sat in the 5 Points pub, drinking a Sierra Nevada IPA. Beer--that was my goal. How could I have forgotten?

A new start, a new blog

Among the many gifts I've received from my grandmother (including a burial plot in Germanville), perhaps the best has been: Advice.

In between encouraging me to go skydiving with her and cautioning me against the dangers of Creeping Charlie, she pushed me to maintain a journal. In an attempt to get properly settled after college, I pulled up my roots and bought a one-way ticket to Seattle. The job search is unmitigated tedium, the weather is grey and wet, and my social life is that of a sparrow suddenly thrust into a flock of penguins. "That," she says, "is exactly the sort of thing you should write about."

I don't usually keep a blog, for a few reasons. The first, and most obvious, is internet laziness. It's not that I don't have anything better to do than blog, it's just that, if I don't have anything better, I'll make something up. "You know what...I think I'll go weed the neighbors' garden." The second, more realistic reason is a fear that someday, all this will be used as evidence to put me away.

But, that being said, I'll give it a shot. After all, it's what my grandmother wants, and it came down to this or the skydiving.