Wearing A Suit

What is the power of wearing a suit?

What is the power in looking extraordinarily dapper?

Why do the chieftans put feathers in their headdress? The most magnificent feathers?

It just works. That’s it.

There is a power in being grungy and dingy. There is a power in not giving a damn. And conversely, there is a power in being immaculate and clean. A different kind of power, in being prim and proper.

It’s really an amazing thing.

We can’t shed these expectations. We can’t shed the affects of our dress. We cannot extract ourselves from our society, from our company. There’s simply no way, unless you live completely alone.

Even in the company of one single other person, your personal appearance will lead to perceptions and inferences on their part, however slightly.

Cats groom themselves. So, you may say that it is unique what we do, but it isn’t. Birds preen. Monkeys groom. It is a natural instinct.

Prior to me busting out the suit for a job interview, I hadn’t touched it for over a year. I remember the last time I put it on, I felt great then, too. And yesterday, wearing my suit downtown, going about business, I felt great again. I felt like the man, although I was sweating and uncomfortable at times, I could handle it. Nothing I couldn’t, a small price to pay for the power of the suit.

My suit is bespoke, 日本製. Made in Japan. I had one custom made only because I did not want to buy a suit made with any synthetic fibers. I also wanted to buy something that was not Made In China. These conditions ultimately led to me having a suit tailor-made, at the mall in Kumamoto City. I still remember the whole ordeal.

It was awesome.

The suit cost about $1000, USD. This suit is not cheap. I thought quite a lot about it. And occasionally, when my bank account has fallen low enough, I’ve thought — I really wish I had a thousand dollars instead of this damned suit that I never wear. How ironic that I have one of the finest suits in the world, and I am this poor! If anyone knew that about me, they would surely think that I was an enormous fool. My only salvation on that front is that I really didn’t buy the suit to impress anybody. I ended up spending this much money on a suit for ethics.

I could have thrifted, sure. I think I tried. If I had gone on this suit quest now, I may try harder to find something thriftable, and then have it tailored to fit me. I don’t know why I didn’t go that route before, except that I know I had landed on the Kikuchi Takeo store, after many investigations into how I could acquire a non-synthetic, non-Chinese suit, and someone suggested I try Kikuchi Takeo. It was on the fourth floor of the mall.

I know I’m a little all over the place here. I’m now halfway between talking about suits and the power of dressing nicely, and telling you the story of how I came to acquire this wonderful suit. I’m rambling. I’m sorry. I am sleep deprived, and overly caffeinated, to tell you the truth. And I’m wearing a suit.

I had the suit made by Kikuchi Takeo, as I’ve now said a few times, and the process was just as awesome as having the actual suit. I didn’t know exactly what I was in for — I didn’t know at all, to be honest. I simply stumbled upon this wonderful thing, custom suit-building. But I remember, when they told me I could build a suit from scratch, and it cost about the same as buying any of the suits they already had. The man showed me the many fabrics that I could choose from — 100% wool, 99% wool and 1% spandex or whatever (probably not spandex), whatever else… And that %1 spandex did make the suit $100 cheaper, I remember. I think so. I was committed to no synthetics, I had to go all the way.

He showed me all the fabrics, the different colors, textures. I was able to feel all of them. They were stupendous. He showed me the various linings, that I could use for the inside of the suit. Again, varied and incredible. Many patterns, some ostentatious, some simple. I chose something simple but with a little pizzaz, I’m looking at it now. Slate gray, with tiny diamond flower-like emblems forming a pattern. For the color, I went with a dark charcoal gray. It was either that or navy. I wanted something really versatile, that could work in all situations, and I already had a baby-blue suit (very synthetic)… I think that’s why I chose gray, as opposed to navy. It was just something different.

I got to choose the buttons. How many, the material, what color. I got to choose everything, people. I’m telling you I had no idea what I was in for. It gave me a great appreciation for suits, now. There are many details. I also chose the lapel-style, I was able to have my name embroidered on the inside of the jacket, and I chose to have a small mark added on the front left of my lapel, for style. I chose the embroidering color and style for that mark, and the final button hole on my sleeves. I think I chose how many buttons were on the sleeves, as well. There are four. Three that are embroidered with the same color as the suit, the dark charcoal grey, and then the final that has the light grey embroidering, that gives it some pop.

I remember that I was quite overwhelmed at the time, as I had not prepared or thought about at all all of these choices that I would have to make, about something that was going to cost me $1000 dollars, and that I would be wearing for the rest of my life (hopefully). There was a lot on the line, in that moment. I ended up having to just totally trust my judgment and hope it was right. In this case, the Takeo Kikuchi guy helping me, and I finally remembered him, my brain had been trying to ressurect his memory this entire time — he was a dapper young man. He had impeccable taste and swag, and he was in his early to mid-twenties. I remember that, because I remember that I trusted his judgment because of this. And I remember that he was very helpful in helping me make this many aesthetic decisions.

I wanted the suit to have formality, but just enough flair. That was the balance we were trying to strike. For that reason, I did choose to have the mark on the front lapel, which was eye-catching, and I also chose to have lapels that flared up at the top. Kind of like Dracula, my brain is saying to me for some reason. I think that this was something I deliberated over enormously, because it was a big decision. This was a mold-breaker, to have lapels like this. I know that. I think after the fact I was reading about suit lapels and they were saying, do not choose the upturned lapels for your suit, they’re over the top, not suited for formality, whatever. Well, I have no regrets.

They took my measurements, I chose out a pair of matching socks, and a dress shirt. White, with some very subtle stripe pattern running vertically. Totally non-synthetic.

I waited a few weeks to get the suit, I went to pick it up, make sure it fit right, and it fit perfectly. And what I have to tell you all is that, in my investigations I had tried on many suits. Many, many suits. In my life, I have worn a few suits. And this suit that I put on, my bespoke, 100% wool suit, I have never worn a suit like that in my life, nothing even close.

Even right now, I wear it, and it feels the same. It feels like I’m wearing a track suit. It’s like wearing pajamas.

That was the #1 thing about all of this suit business that really stood out to me, and still does. I had always thought a suit was just going to be somewhat uncomfortable. I thought that’s how they were. Until this suit, I thought that’s how it had to be. But this suit I wear now, it really is like wearing pajamas. Perfectly fitting pajamas.

How awesome is that? You look great, and you feel comfortable. That’s worth a lot of money right there.

I had wanted the suit in the first place because it was now winter, and all the other senseis at school were wearing suits, and looking professional. I was an ALT, I had my own rules, and I wasn’t required to wear a suit — none of the senseis really were except the top dogs, it seemed. And I had my baby-blue suit, but that was a standout in a school full of black and brown. I wanted something that was on par with the other senseis. I don’t think I ended up getting it, though. By going with this fabulous, bespoke, $1000 suit, that was obviously really nice, I think I ended up going over the top. It was a little too much for a high school teacher, but I paid for it, and dammit, I was going to wear it.

I knew it was going to be a big deal the first time I wore it to school. It was always a big deal when I dressed up. Sometimes I would put on the blue suit for fun, but generally I had stopped wearing it, and opted for muter dress. Well, I wore that suit to school, and it was all any of the classes wanted to talk about. They were shocked and awed. They had never seen Steven-sensei looking so nice and fancy before. And it confirmed that I had probably gone over the top.

The other senseis were amazed by it too. I was very proud to tell everyone that it was 日本製、nihonsei, made in Japan. I’m still very proud of that.

Digging up the old Japanese suit, yesterday, and wearing it for that interview made me remember the power of the suit. I kept it on when I went to the coffee shop afterwards, to do some work. I was feeling like getting work done, as being in a suit lends you to feel, and I had work to do, so I kept it on. But I did feel a little silly, ordering my coffee, wearing full formal dress, suit and tie, and then sitting down and typing away on my laptop. I felt overly dressed. But, who cares?

Today, I decided to wear the suit again. I have business to do. I have a great suit. Why not? But I opted for a black t-shirt instead of the shirt and tie. A little dressed down, like a tech CEO. That’s better.

I’m also wearing Doc Martins because I don’t actually have any formal dress shoes. I thought I had a pair, I know I had a pair. What happened to them? This was giving me a good laugh, when I realized that I would have to wear my Martins to the interview, and that I had gone the whole nine yards, suit and tie, and couldn’t finish the look. But I’m sure that they didn’t even notice. And the boots actually work great with the suit.

Well… that’s what I wanted to say about that…

The psychological power of the suit. Of clothes. It’s a real thing.

I think that for me, a big part of wearing the suit is the element of power that comes with it.

A nice suit is an embodiment of some kind of power. It suggests wealth and status. Con men know that – they’ll wear a nice suit even if they don’t have a dollar in the bank. Grifters know that. The image is important.

It’s interesting that I feel changed when I’m in the suit. That it has that effect on my personal psychology, too. I think that I am very aware of impressions and perceptions, and so part of the putting on of the suit is that I know it is going to impact people’s perceptions and impressions of me. People are going to change how they treat me, for better or for worse. And I think that I almost feel… false, in the suit. I feel like it is almost manipulative. Is that true? No…

What is it, then? You know what it could be?

It’s perhaps that I feel people are expecting something of me, when I’m in the suit.

People are expecting me to be well put together. They are expecting me to have decorum, and confidence. They are expecting me to be smooth and successful. To be professional. Don’t you think?

I think so. And that means that that’s what I have to be.

But then, isn’t this a matter of rising to the occasion?

Or, I don’t have to be that at all. Really, I should be myself, and I should be the same, whatever I’m wearing.

That’s the key.

I wonder how much of this is truth, and how much are my own thoughts and feelings about wearing the suit. What I did want to tell you is that yesterday, trying to find my target parking lot amongst fifteen different parking lots in downtown Nashville, I ended up in the wrong one. I couldn’t get out of the lot without having to pay, even though I didn’t park there, and I pushed the Call For Help button many times, to no avail, and I was pissed off, etc. etc. I went in and talked to the hotel staff about it, asking if they could please let me out, and not have me pay $11. Well, this saga ended up being rather convoluted, and I could not leave the lot, as they were having issues with the machine, and I was then going to be late… I ended up having to resolve it later.

As I approached the counter to handle this issue, I had the thought “They are more inclined to treat me kindly and take me seriously because I am wearing a nice suit.” And it was true that they did both of those things. They were nice people, and I would bet that they would have treated me the same, whatever I was wearing. But, isn’t it interesting that I had that thought?

There is quite a lot of psychology going on here.

I look at myself in the mirror wearing this suit, and I see a totally different guy.

Who is that guy?

People see that too. Parker said this morning, seeing me walk out of my room wearing the suit, “Woah. What’s going on?”

And my man at the coffee shop, the grunge-lover said, “You’re looking good today!!”

This is another element to the suit-wearing. When you’re this dressed up, you stand out. And when you stand out, you inevitably invite and draw attention, like it or not. As these comments show, people will notice, and they might even say something.

This attention-drawing element is another interesting one, for me. I generally like to fly under the radar. It even makes me uncomfortable, to have eyes on me. God forbid anybody thinks I’m cocky or smug! God forbid anybody thinks I’m a jerk!

Well, why shouldn’t I strut my stuff every once in awhile? Why shouldn’t I stand out, sometimes?

I wonder if this is something extraordinarily beautiful people have to deal with. Famous people, too.

Well, enough about that.

Now I have to write more Bob Schmingus.

A Nice Bit Of Diary Writing From Starbucks

*This is some old writing I was just rereading, I wrote on the day of December 15th, 2025.*

Context: I’m sitting at the Starbucks I work at (now worked at) 4pm on a Monday.

It’s time.

To do some writing.

I planned to type but this wifi is terrible. This Starbucks wifi. That is, my Starbucks wifi.

I’m sitting here at my Starbucks writing and hanging out. I’ve already been here and done my duty, and I’m back because I got home, threw my feet up on the bed, got comfy, and discovered that I had brought the magic building keys home with me. My first time doing this. And it’s funny because when I had been given the key, I looked at it and intentionally said, “I have to give this back.” And still that didn’t work. It was fated.

There are Japanese people sitting next to me speaking Japanese. That’s kind of rare.. The wacky guy has shown up again, this time telling KB all about his identity being stolen. He went through the line and is now going back to ask for his receipt. What a pain. I’m looking down so that he doesn’t notice me. I really don’t want him to talk to me. Not looking for new friends right now, no thank you.

He probably won’t recognize me because I’m in civilian garb. I’m not taking chances.

Katarina just coughed. That deep, double cough she’s had for three weeks now. Andrew was here ranting and raving about it last weekend, as we were all trapped behind the bar together. Now this weekend, he’s out sick. “He thinks he has covid.” Look at that. I probably already had it. Rachel has it now. Stacy has something now, again, because she already had something about a month ago that made her so sick she had to leave work early. That tells you it was something serious. She is a tank. Not much can stop her.

As you can probably imagine, Starbucks is a fountain of content. A deluge. I have probably 50 notes from the first weeks when I had started and everything was particularly new and exciting. But even now, 4 months in, as the novelty has faded, the developments don’t cease. Nothing is static, here. Always new faces, new characters, new situations. I was told today that my promotion date was now going to be after Christmas. I had already heard this yesterday from Queen, and now heard it from the big boss today. This is the fourth time –

Cori just scared me. I smelled her. Then I looked up and she was sitting right across from me.

Money just asked me, “What are you writing about?”

Apparently I’m colorblind because my hat is “green” and my pants are “grey”. I thought my hat was brown and my pants were blue. Money said, “Yeah if you were trying to color coordinate today it ain’t working.” I totally thought I was color coordinating.

It’s like being told you’re seeing ghosts. You can’t trust your eyes anymore.

Cori said I have a mental illness. I can’t remember why she felt the need to say that, maybe about the color blindness. I said, “But what is it? Many people have said that but no one can diagnose me.”

That’s right, she said it because I was writing. Money asked me why I was writing. Cori said, “He has a mental illness.”

Oh no. Crazy guy is talking to the customers and making them uncomfortable.

I’m uncomfortable.

He’s still talking to them.

Just plunged the toilet.

Cori tried to give me $20. Not necessary. Took me 30 seconds to plunge. 30 seconds to plunge. Like 30 Seconds To Mars.

My pen is dying!!!!

Went and grabbed a new one. (The color of the ink has now changed from blue to black, as proof.)

My phone. Left in the car? Definitely left in the car. Called sis.

Nice time talking with Money. She showed me photos of her family. I was wondering why she wanted to do that. I tried to show her a photo of somebody on my flip phone, and then discovered the no phone. Just like the old days.

It’s a gloomy winter day. We are approaching the longest day of the year. Then it’s only uphill.

Witches and Warlocks

February 18th, 2025

I can do some brain dumping for you. Let’s see what comes out.

This is for your entertainment. So it better be entertaining.

Jaz told me today that her family is full of witches and warlocks. Her exact words were, “My family is full of witches and warlocks.” That was absolutely an incredible thing and I immediately had to go and write it down. Jaz has Jamacian ancestry, or perhaps Haitian, I must confirm this, but Carribbean at least, we can say, and so she was not joking. She said, “I’m not joking.” She knows about voodoo, and she said she used to practice, and knows about the techniques, for hexing and cursing and etc.. That she comes from a line of practitioners. And she told me a story of putting a dead trout in her roommate’s air vents, to get her worthless roommate to understand what it was like to have a stinky house, because she would never take out the trash or do the dishes. She served her roommate up with a problem so unbearable that she would be forced to actually deal with it. If I had been consulting with Jaz this whole time, or if Jaz had lived in 805B, I don’t think Wisdom would have lasted two months. Jaz knows about being petty. But the main thing, that was so incredible, was that she said this statement, after mentioning some things about voodoo, in full seriousness, in the year 2025, and that was what was so incredible. To say, “My family is full of witches and warlocks.” In seriousness, and mean it, and I know that you mean it, and are serious about it. What an incredible thing to say.

I’ll tell you about the mug. I just went and took a sip out of it, and was reminded about my mug, and I need to tell you this because I need to give you some good things, to compensate for you reading my rant.

I bought a mug from the store, a cute lime-green mug, in the classic coffee mug shape, with an interesting series of purple and pinkish-brown lines across the middle of the mug, and also in the middle of the handle. When I rang it up, it was listed in our system as the “gradient mug”, to which I told Juanito, and who said, being a smart boy that he is, “What! That’s no gradient! You call that a gradient?” I actually think, from my web dev days, that it is a gradient, and that Juanito is just plain wrong, but I’m not going to do any Googling to confirm this. I’m just going to assume that I’m right, and that it has something of a gradient on it. This mug caught my eye from the moment I saw it, I was immediately charmed by it, and it is an unusual item to be in our merchandise roster. We have many more interesting items, things way more exotic, but something about this simple yet unique mug stood out to me. In the color scheme and the gradient. My brain did not really attach words to use to describe the mug, or why I should like it, as it goes with things that strike you in a visual way, you just like them because you like how they look, but when I was considering buying it, because it was now 50% off, having survived about a month and still, sat there on the shelf, I admiring it from behind the counter every once in a while, I was considering buying it now, only $8.65, and I of course first consulted with every single other employee, my trusted advisors, to gauge their reactions and also because I was curious what they thought about this strange mug, and I asked them to rate it out of 100, to which Juanito replied, something sarcastic, I can’t remember exactly, he said something that was not out of 100, and then someone gave it a 40, I think that was Jessica, and then I think it was Katerina, who said it was ugly, but kind of cute, and that I needed to buy it, and that’s when I knew I needed to buy it, and she was right. Katerina has phenomenal judgment and especially because, when she described the mug as being cute and ugly, I felt that she had a similar understanding of what was special about this mug, she saw it in the same way that I did, and I also felt that it was like that, cute, but ugly. Because the colors, as someone said, green and purple, they didn’t really go together well in this way, they could not have been the most obvious choice, and yet somehow, it worked. It was actually working. It was wonky enough to be interesting, and ugly, and yet cute. So, I bought it then, immediately ringing it up, and then drinking coffee out of it, and that was about the first thing that happened that morning. I spent the first thirty minutes of that day in such a jubilant mood, and having purchased the mug, and so happy to be working again with a team who was in good spirits, that I had to ride that out for as long as possible, as it was also very necessary for my mental health and spirit (this was now four days ago, I would say), and I just walked around with my mug, after the successful purchase, and enjoyed my coffee, and chatted with everyone and made many jokes and said stupid things. I went over to Queen sometime later, after having done some work, and was holding my mug again, so charmed and happy to have this wonderful new mug, that I had now been able to buy, and had already said to her soon after I had bought it, that even if somehow my mug disappeared or I broke it, and I was only able to use it for this single day, it had already brought me so much needed joy and excitement that it was worth the purchase, and then about an hour later or so, I was again sipping coffee from this mug, and she was sitting down at one of the cafe tables taking her break, and I walked over just to talk to her, and was talking, and she said, “Enjoying your new mug?” And I was absolutely enjoying it, should could obviously tell, and then I realized that me holding the mug then, in that moment, and sipping on my coffee, and wearing the Starbucks apron, I felt so absolutely relaxed, like I was in my living room, or a hotel, in my slippers and a robe, which my apron was giving me the feeling of having like a lounge robe on, and I realized that I had felt exactly that way, which I told her. And we had a good laugh about that. Somehow, through this assortment of cues, the new mug, just the act of holding a mug of coffee, and my feeling, and then the apron was truly somehow making me feel that I was in a robe, or some pajamas, made me feel that I was just chillin’ in my living room, enjoying a cup of coffee and reading the paper. It was a great feeling, and Queen asked me if I was going to keep the mug here at the store, and I joked that if I did, and it made me feel this way every day, Stacy Hamilton was going to hate it to the maximum. And, remembering how comfortable Charlie would look, holding his cappucino that he had made first thing after showing up and clocking in, and how much she hated that, and how Charlie lasted only two weeks (RIP Charlie), I decided that I should just take the mug home. And the advantage there is that, I have a little piece of my store at home, a small link to my Starbucks world, that I can enjoy and reflect on.

I think this is a good story too because it makes me feel the positive side to acquiring an item. I feel that we know that we make purchases that we shouldn’t make, but here is an example of a purchase that does good. You really can buy material things and they can bring you happiness, and function as well, because I haven’t really had a good coffee mug, that I loved. I bought a pig mug from Goodwill for $1, that is a large mug in the shape of a pig, that is cute and special, but I realized the problem with it as soon as I first tried to enjoy a cup of coffee out of it, which is that there is no easy way to drink from it, because the shape is weird, and so that completely ruins your drinking experience.

That’s the mug story.

My friend Mister Ethan Beller of Atlanta, Georgia recently called me and praised my outstanding guitar riff that he had seen me play on Instagram. He had recently seen this video I had posted, of me playing Creeping Death, and was very impressed, and said “100 out of 10 guitar riff, Steven san.” I said, I know, and then I realized that he thought that that was my riff, and I said, do you think that’s my riff, and he was like, yes, and I had to laugh so hard, because he definitely thought that that was all my work, not even one riff but the three main parts of the whole song, and he had no idea that that incredible guitar music was from one of the greatest metal and Metallica songs of all time, that is Metallica’s Creeping Death. But I thought it was also amazing because it goes to show that good music is good music, and he wasn’t swayed by thinking it was special just because it was Metallica or because other people said it was an amazing song. He thought it was mine, and he recognized it as being incredible. And he said, “I guess I should listen to some Metallica.” And I was like, yes, you absolutely should. I’m thinking about this because I’m sitting down to practice this legendary, masterful work on the guitar once again. It is 214 beats per minute, and James Hetfield plays with only downstrokes, which means that the song is played at 214 bpm and only with downstroking, which if you don’t know about BPMs and downstroking, let me tell you that it is not very easy to do. At least, not until you can do it. Then you can do it easily. I was struggling with 160 bpm, then it was easy, then 170 bpm, and now that’s a cakewalk, and now 180 bpm, which is doable. And that’s how it goes. But how long until 214 bpm? Let’s see what I can do tonight.

180 is possible with mostly no mistakes. 185 is not possible, doable with many mistakes and some collapses. So there ya go.

Today a cute girl came into the store, her name was Katie. Katie had mobile ordered, and we knew she was coming to get a Penguin Cookie, which is a sugar cookie with a cute penguin face on it, that we had in the winter, and we didn’t have them any more, and we were going to have to break the news to her. So, I was standing out in the lobby area, not having anything particularly to do, but needed to get farther and farther away from Andrew, in this moment desiring freedom, now needing to get so far away that I have to leave from behind the counter, because even that is too close, and Katie walked in to get her goodies, amongst which is the Penguin Cookie, and as she stepped up to the counter, I approached her and told her that we had good news and bad news, yada yada. At this same time, Andrew approaches, because he cannot ever let anyone do anything by themselves, and must intrude on all affairs, particularly me, and my affairs, because as Jessica would say, he’s in love with me, and so Katie is now somewhat flanked, and Katie is looking at both of us, but mostly looking at me, as I am the lead and initiated this interaction. So, Katie asked if we had cake pops, and went with the birthday cake pop. And when we had gone over to the register, which, I don’t know why we even did, because she didn’t have to make any transaction, and I said, “You like the Penguin Cookie, huh?” And she said she did, and that she had been getting them since high school, and she figured we wouldn’t have it, but she saw that it wasn’t marked out on the app, so she thought she would try and go for it. Andrew of course had followed us over to the register and was now standing very close. The Penguin Cookie was nostalgic for Katie, and I thought that was cute, and also shocking that Starbucks has had the Penguin Cookie for that long, and then she got her birthday cake pop and left, and I was standing there at the register, thinking about how Katie had loved her Penguin Cookie, this little Christmas cookie that she had some attachment to, and then I thought, why could she order the Penguin Cookie? She shouldn’t have been able to order it anymore through the app, because it was seasonal, and it has been phased out, and we don’t have it anymore. So, I went into our POS system, into the seasonal items, and found the Penguin Cookie button, and saw that it was not marked out as being unavailable, and I went to mark it out, and it was then marked unavailable. So at least, if Katie ever looks, or if anyone else looks, they will not have to be disappointed. I then tried to mark out the other seasonal items that were not listed as unavailable, but the system told me I couldn’t do that, because they were unavailable already. These are the small technical glitches that happen in the POS system, of which there are many. But I was able to mark that Penguin Cookie out. I felt that I had done something useful then. For Katie and the Penguin Cookie lovers.

They say that one of the best ways to make friends with people is to see them regularly. Any time you regularly see someone, you will have a higher likelihood of becoming their friend. People who live in apartment complexes make friends with people on their floors, etc. Well, that’s definitely 100% true. I have so many friends now through my job at this Cummins Station Starbucks, only because I see these people every day (most of my coworkers) or every other day, or every week (the regulars). And in almost every case our friendship and closeness and familiarity that we now have, where we know things about each other and have some idea of what is going on in each other’s lives, is only because we’ve seen each other repeatedly. It’s not because we have had any kind of special connection, although there are always going to be people that other people bond with. Everyone has their special friends. It’s interesting to see what baristas, what members of our team have befriended what regulars, and what customers, and who has positive interactions with who, and in what way, and what they bond over. One person I think about in particular right now is a woman named Katharine, who has a small dog, Lambo. Katharine is a regular and is in the store usually at least once a week, and I see her walking all over downtown Nashville with her extremely cute Pomeranian fluffball. This dog is one of the cutest dogs in existence, and is an extremely special dog. Katharine knows this and you know that this dog is living like royalty, or better. It is obvious. You could almost say that Lambo owns Katharine, actually. It really feels that way. Lambo is the king. Well, I remember that Katherine and I had a funny interaction from the very beginning, that we were sharing laughs, I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember that from the beginning, that she was funny. And that was about six months ago, when we first opened. Well, here we are all this time later, and when I come in on my off days, if Katherine comes in she’ll sit by me, and we’ll talk about life, or if we’re slow, I’ll chat with her over the counter while she sits there with her incredible dog, and talk about guitars, or her pilates class, or Starbucks, or the weather. And every time we talk, or every other time we talk, we learn something new about each other. But, the friendship, a friendship like this, is not based on anything but pure social joy. There is nothing transactional about it, it is just pure friendship. Nobody wants anything but to have a laugh and a good conversation. That’s very wholesome.

I have a similar relationship with many of the people from the Gibson Garage. I learn about them, learn a little more each week, acquire a new fact, and add it to the list of facts and stories I’ve learned about them. Just yesterday, Whitney came in, and I knew that she had been wanting to buy a new guitar, we had been talking about this for a few weeks now, and she was excited to tell me that she had bought her new guitar, her first Gibson, and it was a light-blue Gibson Les Paul, and of course she had to show me a picture, and I was like, oh my god that’s a beautiful guitar, outstanding.

This is the joy of working in a coffee shop like this. You can get so many stories and learn so many things about people, and the happenings of the world. For example, about world happenings, two days a lady came in, asking when we had opened, because she came here every year with her husband, because he goes to a yearly conference here in Nashville, and she hadn’t seen us here before. I told her that we had opened in August, and I asked her what the conference was (we get many conference attendees because we are right downtown by the Music City Center, I think that’s what it’s called, that hosts large conferences, with like, 30,000 people, and they all stay at the hotels right in the area) and she said it was a healthcare conference, and she told me that security was really tight this year, because of, you know, the shooting, she looked at me, and I said yes I did know about it, and she said that she knew people in the conference and she was usually allowed to enter and talk to people and mingle and hang out, but that this year they weren’t letting guests in, and they had metal detectors and etc. So she had to find other things to do. And I thought that was a good example of hearing about world affairs and the happenings of the world, and we could say as well an example of how the news is real, and that there are really events happening, and changes resulting from them, and here was an example of someone impacted by an event that had happened recently, that we all knew about. Because Luigi Mangionne killed Brian Thompson, this healthcare guy’s wife couldn’t go to her husband’s conference anymore. That’s what I mean.

You can learn a lot about someone, more than you ever wanted to know about some people, when you have even 15 minutes of free time to talk to them. They can open up, and they can tell you their entire life story, or you can read about them on Wikipedia, if they’re famous, or something like that, you can read about them in the news, or whatever. But when you meet someone over the register, over the counter at the coffee shop, you don’t have a lot of time. You have only thirty seconds, even. If there’s no one in line, or you particularly want to talk, you can manage to have more of a conversation. You could talk for even 3 or 5 minutes. But eventually, something is going to happen, someone is going to walk in, someone is going to ask me a question, or their order is going to be ready and they will be called, and feel the need to go get it, and you will be pulled apart. And then, if you see them again, if they come back, you can talk again, and then if they keep coming back and are a regular, then you can do this, over and over, and then each time, or every few times, you learn something new, in your conversation, they reveal something, and you accumulate facts and knowledge about this person, and you get to know them a little bit better. And in this way, over the course of weeks and months, the person is slowly revealed, and continues to be revealed, and you learn more and more about who they are. But still, it happens slowly, it can be just a trickle of information, and you never see them in their element, really, you only know them from the coffee shop, only know what they’re like and how they act within the confines of the coffee shop, and don’t know anything about their entire life outside of the shop. You only know about it from what they tell you. And similarly, they only know me as being the Starbucks employee. They don’t know about my entire life outside of it, they don’t know what I look like outside of the uniform, they haven’t been there for any moment of my life away from the Starbucks store. They only know me in this role.

Some little information that I learned today about Jared – he is a salaried employee. Jared works for the Gibson Garage as a Sales Pro, and is a younger guy, probably about my age, from Florida, also been in Nashville for a year, and is extremely good at guitar, has played for like 17 years. See, I know about this guy. I have now had many of these small interactions with him, learning something each time. And today, we had another one, and I learned a new thing, that Jared is a salaried employee. That’s a small fact, a small single fact, but I didn’t know that about him, and now I know.

One of the most recent times I was in the Gibson Garage, Jared showed me the fancy, expensive, real Gibson Explorers, and let me rock out. I was really impressed with and loving the Lizy Hale Explorerbird, that just felt and played amazing, and sounded incredible. So heavy. He had asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted to play, and I had been playing the Epiphone Explorers, and liked those, and had been too shy/not bothering to ask anyone to unlock the expensive ones for me, and let me try those out. So he took me over there and let me crack in to ’em. And now that I’m thinking about this, I actually have this story somewhat wrong, because this is what happened. HENRY was the one to ask me what I wanted to play, and took me over to the Gibson Explorers and let me crack in, and he showed me an incredible thing when he took the guitar down for me, which was this: that all the expensive guitars have a “lock” on them, that prevents you from taking them off of the rack without help from a Gibson Garage employee, but he showed me a trick, which is that the lock is actually kind of useless, and only requires you to twist the twisty-part with your fingers, to get it to unlock, and the special key that they have for the lock is basically just for show. But, this whole time that lock had prevented me from taking anything down, because you know, as like most people probably do, you see that something is locked, and you think, well, it must be locked, and I can’t get through a lock, so I’m not even going to try. But this lock was extremely easily foiled, if you just tried. With two fingers, you can defy these locks. I thought that was amazing, and Henry was very happy to show me that. Henry and I are cool, I should say, and I’m sure he’s not just going around and showing everyone how to foil these little guitar locks.

Seeing how easily these locks could be defied, but how effective they actually were at stopping me, just because they were there, made me think about something that I had heard before, that I don’t know if is true or not, but I had heard this once, that elephants kept in captivity were, when young, bound with chains, so they couldn’t actually escape when they tried, but then when they grew up, the elephants would be tied with rope instead, which they could actually escape if they tried, but when they had tried to escape the chains they found that they couldn’t, and so they stopped trying to escape at all. I felt like the same thing had happened with me and these locks. And if I was an elephant, and another elephant came along and showed me how easy it was to break my rope, I would have been just as shocked.

Games, Beans, and French Cult Groups

So here we are.

I’m going to write something on this here blog o’ mine.

Yes, that’s right. Something will be written here, on this here o’ blog o’ mine.

What should I write?

I just did a bunch of writing in my little notebook, my little Kroger $2 composition notebook that is exactly the kind of notebook you buy for your kids in elementary school. And here I am writing my genius adult thoughts down in the very same kind of book that I would have been so thrilled to buy when buying school supplies in the summer. These have been my go-to notebooks because they’re cheap, last awhile, and have the right proportions for me to write in. Not too much space between the lines, not too little, and they don’t have a metal ring, which are annoying for me. I hate the metal ring that goes through the spine of some notebooks. That has never been for me.

The things I have written just now are what you get when I write in this way, which is totally stream of consciousness. It’s like I’m talking to somebody, but that somebody is myself, and these are the kinds of things I would say to somebody in a conversation, where there is no real particular aim, and we are free to just chit chat. That’s what is happening right now, here on this blog.

I write this because I have spent more time thinking about the differences between typing and writing, and how it impacts writing quality and what I write at all, and this is the first time I’ve written a blog since July, apparently, and so I am particularly paying attention to how I’m writing, right now, as I write it. And the things I’m writing here, and the way I’m writing it, I would never be writing in my little notebook, with my Pilot G-2 0.7 blue ink pen. I wouldn’t be able to write like this because I can’t write fast enough to keep up with my stream of consciousness. But in typing, like in a conversation, I can type about as fast as I can talk, and so I can write down my thoughts to you, in a manner that is more like speech, and more conversational. Isn’t that interesting?

My thoughts are slower and probably of a higher quality when written down. They’re certainly of a more substantial nature. But after just doing a bunch of that, that’s not what I want to write about anymore. So, what should I write for you now?

I did have two main topics I thought I would write about, as I drove home from Starbucks today in the car. Let’s see if I can even remember them. Yes, I can. The first topic was basically an entire overview of my Overwatch gaming journey, and I’ll crack into this and see if anything interesting results from it.

I did write about playing Fortnite, and shared a little story about one of my thrilling Fortnite moments, of almost having a super-epic-heroic game-winning play and completely failing. Fortnite was a fun game for me for a few months, but I had to quit the game. My Fortnite saga ended in dramatic style, with me completely quitting cold turkey, and why? Because they ruined the game. I didn’t quit playing because I got bored, which is usually what happens. I quit playing, rather the game creator wizards behind Fortnite forced me to stop, because they introduced an item that was so destructive to the quality of the game that I couldn’t stand playing with it in the game. There was no way to play around it, and there was no way to enjoy the game while it existed, so I had to simply quit. I was getting too angry. I could not enjoy the game anymore. And this dreaded item, you may be delighted to know, was the Captain America Shield. If you just think about Captain America and his shield in the Marvel Universe, and imagine that you are one of the grunts in the Marvel world that try and shoot Captain America, just for him to deflect all of your bullets and then smash your face in with the shield, you will understand why this item was so horrible for the game of Fortnite, and why I had to quit. The only way to reliably beat someone with the Captain America shield, which required absolutely no effort or skill to use, by the way, so any regular noob and crappy, unskilled gamer with no tactics, can pick up the Captain America Shield and become invincible and smash your face in easily, unless you found War Machine’s Arsenal, which was a rocket gauntlet that fired a relentless stream of rockets that would blow up any pathetic, cowering shield user. Or, you decided to give up your entire strategy of enjoying the game, and picked up a Captain America Shield for yourself, and then you would enjoy freely demolishing any other player stupid, stubborn, or unfortunate enough to have not picked up a Captain America Shield, or if they did have one, you could then enjoy a leisurely and uninteresting, 50/50 shield fight coin toss, where you and your opponent would walk in circles around each other and alternate blocking and throwing your shield, which usually ends when someone just can’t stand how boring it is anymore, and switches to any other weapon, and then they lose. In a game where the final 1v1 would, in the good ol’ pre-Captain America Shield days be an insane, high-stakes battle between two hardened warriors who had clawed their way through the rabble, picking up legendary items, plungers, shotguns, rocket launchers, rifles, flying fists, and putting it all together in a final, epic showdown, to be watching now every 1v1 a yawning Captain America Shield turtle toss-off, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was driving me insane. I had to quit.

I’m triggered even now thinking about it.

So moving on… Fortnite was over, and after awhile, I got bored. I probably shouldn’t be gaming at all, and I have once again had thoughts on this, the perpetual ideological battle for the soul of gaming, whether gaming is really good, or not good, whether I should ever game at all, or whether there are good parts about it, and I have some thoughts this time around that I think are real definitive truth for me on this matter, and unfortunately, but also, it is what it is, that definitive truth is this: That gaming can be fun and good, energizing and enjoyable for me, but there is an everpresent chance that a gaming session can turn into a binge, and a binge is always bad, and so if I don’t game, I can’t binge, and so the best choice is to not risk a binge at all, and not game at all. Even if I am 1 for 5, where 4 gaming sessions are not binging, where I play for an appropriate amount of time, and have fun, and get what I think you are supposed to get out of any session of doing something fun, even if 4 in 5 are successful in that way, if 1 in 5 results in a binge, of me playing for too long, going over what I even want to be doing, tiring myself out, gaming mindlessly and staying up too late, sacrificing sleep for it, then it’s not worth it. The negative effects of a binge are too costly, compared to the benefits of gaming. That is my final conclusion, and my final take on my whole personal struggle with gaming. The other argument that has weight with me, that makes me lean in favor of no gaming at all, is this one: If I am gaming, there is no chance that I will end up doing anything else that can be productive for me. There is no chance that I will have any kind of good thought or idea, that I will end up exercising, calling someone, putting on a record, or anything that is better for me than gaming, and I say better for me because for me personally, I know from experience that all of those things are better for me and my life. If I am not playing a game, then there is a chance that I will end up doing anything that is better than gaming. And I feel that this statement then begs the question – why even game at all?

The whole reason why I do it, I think, after having analyzed my own behavior in recent months, is because 1. I’m bored or 2. I’m lonely. I never have any desire to game or want to play a video game if there are other things for me to do, such as people for me to play with. I say play with like I’m a kid, but guess what? We’re all big kids, and we all need to play, and I have learned that I need to play A LOT. Turns out that I am extremely playful and have a great appetite for play. I would say this about myself, at least, and based on the copious amounts of gaming I have done and my history of being popular with dogs and children, it must be true. That’s one major driver for why I turn to games. And video games are of course, often highly entertaining. Massive dopamine pumps, with learning curves, a social element, teamwork, glory, and uncertainty. And they’re colorful and stimulating and exciting. So, yeah, no surprise I have been sucked into game worlds and have had so much fun with them. But the problem with some of these games, the competitive games and the team-based games in particular, is that they tap into something in me that goes beyond fun, and they hijack something in my brain, that gets me to play when I don’t even really want to, and when the game isn’t fun anymore. That’s the bad part, and that’s something that doesn’t happen with pretty much any other kind of play that I do. There are natural limits on other kinds of play, such as sports, because your body gets tired, or with conversation, because eventually your mouth and brain get tired, or your partner gets tired, or you have to go home, or whatever. But with gaming, there is no end, it is complelely unlimited, and purely mental. You can just keep going and going and going, even when your eyes are burning and you know that you should have gone to bed 6 hours ago. It’s too much power, too much potential in the hands of someone as play-hungry as I am. And there is another element to it, that is part of the games that I get hooked on, and that is the learning curve. There is an element of mastery, and that is so stimulating for your brain. That combination of skill and randomness and excitement and spontaniety. It is hard to find ways in life to achieve this mix of qualities that make gaming so fun, but I would say that is also what you get when you play sports, and ALSO, what I am finding out these days, when you JAM with people in a band, or even by yourself, when you really get into it. The thing about gaming is that it is so low effort to do. You don’t have to schedule anything, you don’t have to find anyone else, and the games are often free. So it’s very easy to do, whereas these other ways of playing and using your brain and unleashing your inner warrior spirit are harder to achieve. I have wanted to have a band and jam with people for months and I still don’t have any real jam partners or band members. But, yesterday I came home and Smosh, my drummer roommate, said THE MAGIC WORDS THAT HE’S ONLY SAID ONCE BEFORE EVER in our almost year of living together. He said, “I’m in the mood to jam.” And sweet baby jesus, we jammed, and it was glorious. I want to do that all the time, for hours and hours and hours. And I am jockeying to get there. But it’s harder to make it happen. I can fire up the Switch and find 1000’s of Overwatch Smoshes battling their hearts out (or not, some of them, who knows what they’re doing) in an instant, and battle for as long as I possibly can humanly stand. That’s unhealthy, though. That’s the problem.

I’m really stream of consciousness writing here, but I feel like it is pretty juicy stuff, and this is interesting for me, personally, at least. This is some real meat and potatoes of my life. And I will share, with that bit out of the way, about gaming vs. not-gaming and also, which I didn’t explicitly state, why I think rock is basically my way out of ever having to game again, and my saving grace, and my ultimate perfect form of play and enjoyment in my life, and that is allowing me to kiss gaming goodbye forever

Oh, my other roommate (she who must not be named) has decided to rap and seems to h…

(Apply Buddhist techniques. Rise above your fleeting and trifling discomforts and emotions..)

I wanted to write about Overwatch, and my journey with Overwatch, and why the saga ended, because it has ended, and it’s interesting to see why, as I reflected upon today in my ride home. I’m getting typed out, but this important. For who? Great question.

I came home today to find a condom at the end of my driveway. It was unfortunately too far into my driveway to be considered in the street, but I don’t think I could have left it there anyway, because it never would have been picked up, and I could not stand walking out of my house to see that. On my second trip outside of my home, I used another piece of trash in my yard (they wash up like shells on a beach, coming in at a steady rate of 2-5 pieces of trash a day) to pick it up. I wasn’t sure if it was used or not, as in the condom, but on closer inspection that I had to do when I bent down to pick it up, it was thankfully not used. Extremely thankfully not used. That would have been hard even for a dirty boy like me. It was not used and I threw it away. I write about this because I was in an interesting mood when I found it, feeling tired from my intense shift of serving my duty on the frontlines of Cummins Station Starbucks, but also feeling humorous, and so when I had come home from a hard day’s duty and was walking out to check the mail, which we didn’t have any because it was Sunday, as I remembered immediately after opening the mailbox and finding no mail, I saw the condom and thought, “Man, it must be nice to live somewhere where you wouldn’t find a used condom in your driveway.” And then I thought, “But hey, at least someone is getting laid.” And that thought cheered me up and made me happy, and I thought, if I could tell this to anyone, they would think, you know, this guy (me) has a good disposition. Because that’s exactly what I would think if anyone found a used condom on their property and instead of reacting with disgust and rage, my initial reaction being a little more of disgust and displeasure, they reacted with digust and humor. Humor and the lens you view the world through is a very powerful thing. I do seem to have a good disposition. It has made me popular among the ranks at the Cummins Station Starbucks. My bff (codename Jessica) has said, “Why do I like you so much? Why are you so cool?” My manager again said today that “everybody loves you.” My other manager called me “the popular one.” And my other manager (I have a lot of managers) said, upon reacting to my new promotion, “You have the charisma for it.” It is strange to be so popular, for not being someone who is trying to be popular, or cares about popularity, and it is strange to be constantly reminded of it. I think it would be like being really beautiful, and people are constantly telling you that you’re beautiful. You appreciate it and it is nice to hear, but it’s also weird sometimes, and makes you feel different. This is something that I grapple with often these days, that I am somehow now, at least on my diminishing Starbucks team, so beloved. But I have been loved and popular before, as a sensei in Kumamoto, and I thought that was weird too. My lead sensei at Shoyo would say to me, “You are the best ALT I’ve ever had.” And she had had many, and after a few times that she had said it, I said, “Matsunaga sensei, why? Why am I the best?” I genuinely wanted to know, because it was hard for me to wrap my head around, as I did not think I was anything particularly special. I don’t think I had any extraordinary ideas or organized any extraordinary program, I did not start a club, or anything I could point to as being particularly extraordinary. I did help my students win the Kumamoto English Skit Contest, two years in a row, and I had a major hand in that, although the credit goes all to them, and I am proud of that as being one of my greatest accomplishments as an ALT in Kumamoto, particularly because of how much it meant to the students who won. Otherwise I did not think of myself as being an extraordinary ALT, but Matsunaga sensei seemed to feel strongly that I was, and she told me why. She said I was always pleasant and friendly, I talked with the students, I talked with the other teachers, I stayed late to help out, I never complained. So by way of just being friendly and fun, not causing any problems at all, and lending a helping hand whenever asked, that made me the best ALT. And I see that that is also now bringing me popularity and success at my Cummins Station Starbucks. Despite all of the drama, the unbelievable and unending amounts of drama behind these counters, despite all of the beefs and tiffs, I have been unscathed, and am a friend to all, and have no enemies.

Smosh just came into my room and shredded on the guitar. He commented on my guitar tone after several minutes of solid riffing out and said, “Also this guitar tone is horrible.” I said, “What!” He said, “There’s way too much chorus.” Thanks to my new Small Clone, there is a lot of chorus in the tone. Almost as much as there possibly could be. He is not the first person to comment on my love of chorus. I seem to have an intense love of and hankering for chorus. You really can’t have enough chorus. No shocker then that one of my top Nirvana songs is Come As You Are. That song is the entire reason why I have the thing, and it seems like the entire reason why any new purchaser of a Small Clone has the thing, because on the box was written in small white text, “your nirvana.” Just like that. They know who their audience is. Who their users are. It is just as good as I wanted it to be, this Small Clone pedal. Even better. The thrill that shoots through my spine when I step on that metal button and the chorus activates, my tone suddenly becomes watery and wavery, and sounding just like Nirvana’s Come As You Are. It’s magic.

Something is happening now that has been happening of late, and what I knew would again be happening tonight. This has recently been a major problem for me. I am hungry. The problem with this is that it is 8:47 pm here in CST, and that is two hours and forty-seven minutes exactly past the end of my daily intermittent fasting window. I’m not usually hungry, but my cycle has been thrown off, and so now I am hungry, just as I was starving yesterday at 8 am, when I usually don’t break my fast until 10 am, and I don’t usually have any problem. But I’ve broken the cycle. Things fell apart when I went home for Thanksgiving, and they have been made worse by the fact that I’ve now been closing at the store, so my schedule is all over the place, and then I haven’t been eating enough probably, because I’ve been working when I should be eating, and then I end up in a severe calorie deficit and have had to eat at night because I’ve been so hungry. This might make it sound like I’m starving, but I’m not, although I am about as light as I ever have been. But shockingly on the scale today I measured at 147.7, which is higher than my base, lowest healthy weight that I have been, which is around 144. I would say this is about the lowest I can go while being healthy and having muscle tone, because I have basically no body fat, and my muscles are not as jacked as they’ve been before, but I’m not emaciated. It feels wrong to say that “I’m not emaciated” so I must be doing fine, because we can all agree that there are steps between “fine” and “emaciated”, but I think I am fine. Maybe on some days though, working too hard, and not eating enough, on those particular days, there is some small starvation happening. So, right now, I knew this would happen, that I was going to be starving tonight, because I ate a bunch of bread at about 5 pm, after running and working hard all day, so I burned a ton of calories today, and totalled only about 1500 consumed, but I was stuffed with bread, and come 6 pm, when I had planned to eat some black beans, I was still so full, and I couldn’t eat the beans, and now here we are. That’s how I’ve walked into this again. Life can be so hard sometimes. You may be thinking now, “Steven, why are you doing this to yourself? Eat the beans!” Were it so easy, young one. Were it so easy. It’s never so easy.

If I eat the beans now, I am farther down my road of destroying my intermittent fasting habits. It will only be harder to recover. Except that tomorrow, I will be able to do better, and I can make a plan to eat enough before 6 pm, and ride it out. That’s usually the case. I should probably eat the beans. It is always helpful to imagine that the protein I get from the sustanence will be used to strengthen and repair my muscles. I am a vain man, even if I tell myself I’m not, or pretend not to be. We are all vain. Who is not vain? I am vain, sometimes. I will flatter myself, sometimes. Who doesn’t? Maybe some people really don’t. But I will catch myself in the mirror on some days, and think, “Damn, I look good today.” That’s generally only on days where I shower AND wear my contacts, so quite rare. But the last day, or one of the most recent days that I did this wombo combo, I had also had a beard at just the right length, that made me look manly and older, but not too long to be scruffy and unkempt, and this combo of shining fresh hair, no scratched and cloudy glasses obscuring my beautiful blue eyes, and my perfect beard made me looking sexy, I felt, and it was reciprocated by the reactions of the customers, who were giving me extra special attention that day, and so much that one guy (why only a guy? why can’t it be one of my Cummins Station loves?) at the counter immediately asked if I had a girlfriend, and said he would set me up with some girls. He was very eager to make my acquaintance. I could not match his eagerness and have decided not to pursue this new line of friendship, because I have now had so many similar encounters and have learned that they are generally not worth my time, and I don’t have time or energy for such a one right now, because I am on the Rock Quest. Will it result in meeting a potential band member? Will it result in meeting a potential musical bestie? Unlikely. He was only interested in me for my dashing good looks. He knew nothing of my personality, except he knew something of my charm and wit, that I had demonstrated before him asking me if I had a girlfriend because his name was Stephen and we bonded over that and I told him that I had always thought myself superior, being with a V instead of the inferior Ph, but then my manager, wise old owl ________ hit me with this: “You know the Ph Stephen is the way it’s spelled in the Bible.” I’m probably not supposed to use her real name either. I need a codename. We can call her.. Margeret Underwood. That’s not right. How about… Stacy Hamilton. Fine. Stacy Hamilton hit me with that, and since then I have felt much differenterly about the spelling of Stephen with a Ph. Much more differenterly. And after telling him about this revelation I had had for no particular reason, as I do have a habit of telling stories to any customer who is inclined to listen and I think will appreciate them, as I am not babbling but tactfully sharing anecdotes or information/tales that I believe will be appealing or entertaining or enlightening to the particular customer, he then asked me immediately after, if I had a girlfriend. Very direct, and I thought, now this guy probably gets what he wants. Being so direct like that. I wish I could be that direct, instead of mulling over everything endlessly forever, and plotting and planning to extraordinary lengths and charting a detailed course before taking any action ever. But I decided not to pursue this because such a similar thing has happened so many times before.

My most recent engagement with a stranger that turned into a social event was with a neighbor that I had a pleasant conversation with, that turned into an invite to their house, that turned into me attending one of their semi-weekly gatherings and realizing 30-minutes in that I was basically at a cult party and they wanted to get me to join their cult. Several people took me aside and gave me the same schpiel about a French organization that in English means “the shelter”, or something like that that they were very fond of saying to me, that had taken them in and that they were now devout followers of, and I had also been tipped off early because two separate ladies had asked me, “So do you find yourself searching for answers these days?” And one lady straight up asked if I believed in God, and these are not questions that you are often asked at parties, at least not at the parties I usually go to. I started to see Bibles, and the texts of religious teachings, and I was talking with another lady who was an author and told me she was writing a book about play, which I was very interested in because I think play is a great topic to be explored, and then she started talking about how God plays, and how we can play with God, and I thought, “Dammit!!” I ended up getting so bored by the end of the night, and so overflowing with witty comments and off-color jokes and sarcasm that was generally not appreciated or desired by this serious French cult group that as the night drew to a close, I had to start letting them out, and see what happened, and I made a great joke/line about homeless people in Nashville being pests, which was definitely sarcastic and I feel strongly for homeless poeple and want to help them, and we have many in and around the store and it is sad and I wish it was not the case, but you know there are many people who I think view them only as pests to be gotten rid of, or look at them simply as an eyesore, and anyways that was the joke, but I knew that was 10 times too edgy for this group, but I had to say it, and then the thing that really did me in and put me on the outs and in the bad graces of the dad of the house was that I had made a joke reaction to this woman who was talking about her crazy ex-husband and that he was “homeschooling” their daughters and keeping drugs at the house, and I said, “Homeschooling? Now it all makes sense.” Or something like that, something implying that people who homeschool their kids are wacky, and then out of the side of my eye I saw the dad’s reaction, and he did not seem too pleased by that comment, and then I immediately remembered that the mom had told me that they had been homeschooling their 14 year old daughter, and I thought, “Well, I’m probably not going to be invited back.” Thankfully they did not invite me back, and I did not want to go back, so we were on the same page with that. But the mom did tell me at the end of the night, a terrible story that made me extremely outraged, because someone had asked how we had met. We met because I had stopped to admire her amazing flower garden that was out in front of their house, by the street, and I hadn’t noticed she was sitting out on the patio, and she must have seen that I was so interested in her flower patch, which was absolutely buzzing with butterflies and bees, and this was in October I believe, so it was later in the season. It was swarming and I was amazed to see so many pollinators here, as well as what kinds of flowers she had going on, and she came over and started talking to me, and then we found that we had more common interests, having lived abroad, and her husband working with parasites and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt, so I did know going into this that they would be some interesting people. At the party then, she told me a very sad story that I did not want to hear, which was that they had later had pest control people come by the house (already interesting for someone who is a nature lover to do, but I don’t know if she was really an insect lover as much as a flower lover), and after spraying the house with the chemicals, as the pest control guys left, they decided to spray the flowers in her garden on the way out, and they killed everything in the garden. That to me was the most infuriating story I have ever heard, and I thought that they need to be fined, and that she should have complained, but the really sad part of the story is that, why in God’s good name would you ever spray your poison on a bunch of butterflies and bees? On a batch of beautiful flowers? Why? In what world, in whose mind are those pests? Masochist sadist psychopath idiot. I don’t know. But that should be illegal. That should be criminal. Unwanton and reckless killing of anything should be punishable and illegal. Pesticides should mostly be illegal and banned. Humans are idiots and should not be allowed to have the power to broadly apply toxic poisons to the environment. Does that seem smart to anybody? No, it’s not smart. It’s a bad idea and all the scientists have been saying so for 50+ years.

I’m really rolling here. It didn’t take me long to hit my hot button topic of rage against people killing nature. I don’t ever write about that because I always get angry and write the same thing, and it’s not funny, and what’s the point?

I didn’t really tell you what I wanted to tell you about my Overwatch 2 saga. What I wanted to dissect with you, and explain to you in great detail, for no particular reason, is why exactly I stopped playing Overwatch 2, and what I had gotten out of it. I think that will be interesting for you, to detail this journey for you, and the lessons entailed. I stopped playing it for a different reason than I did Fortnite, which is that I seemed to have understood the game, and figured out how to play it, and with the character I loved, and that was everything I wanted. And once I did that, I didn’t care about playing anymore. This took me about three months of playing on and off, I would say, and many, many hours of playing. I don’t even want to know or say how many, but let’s say, many, many hours of playing. Still not as many as the hours I spent with the guitar, I will have you know, but too many hours for sure. And when I had very first started the game, I had been attracted to a character called Winston, who is a giant monkey scientist, and who has a very unique playstyle. He is classified as a tank, which is one of the three roles in the game – damage, tank, and support. In every match of Overwatch 2, there are 10 players, 5 v 5, just like basketball, and on each team of 5 there is a tank, two damage dealers, and two supports. The tank role is something like the point guard, I would say, in basketball. The game generally revolves around the tanks, and they set up their teammates, and fight for position. They are also something like the quarterback, because again, the game kind of revolves around them, and Overwatch 2 is an objective-based game, so kills do not really matter. The way to win the game is to achieve the objective, which is securing zones, or escorting a payload, as they say, advancing or securing territory until you have reached the endpoint or the total number of points. Well, anyways, the explanation is getting boring for me. The point is that Winston was unusual for a tank because he could make enormous jumps, and no other tank can do that. He has mobility that is unrivaled among the tanks. To compensate, he dies faster, and doesn’t deal as much damage as the other tanks. So, Winston is weird. Mobility is not inherently useful unless you know how to use it, because if you go to die faster, that’s not helpful. That’s actually worse. That is to say that if you are just faster at running into the enemy and dying, it’s not useful for you to be faster. In the wrong hands, Winston is just terrible, and unplayable, and in the beginning of Overwatch 2, that’s how Winston was for me. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and I would jump everywhere, all the time, and my teammates hated me, and I would die, so many deaths, and fall off the map, because I didn’t know the maps, and get completely decimated by the enemy tank, and jump into 5 people on the enemy team and die in a second, or just jump away and leave my whole team behind and vulnerable and they would all die, and just generally, I had no idea what I was doing. I just liked that Winston was a monkey and he could jump, but I was new to the game, and had no idea otherwise, what the hell I was supposed to do. So, I gave up on Winston pretty fast, because eventually you get tired of getting your ass kicked all the time. I then took a long detour of playing almost every character, and had some fun on a robot monk called Zenyatta that was a support but could “one-shot” people (kill them in a second) from across the map, and who had great and wise euphamisms that actually were really great and wise, and a big shoutout to whoever worked on his voice lines and character development, and you could just put a healing orb on people and heal them, and then you just could focus all on your energy on one-shotting and kicking people, and I liked being Roadhog and being unkillable and grabbing people with his hook and then blasting them apart at close range, but every now and again I would come back to Winston, as my game knowledge progressed, and I would think about him, and I would play with a Winston, and I would think, “Man, I want to be good at Winston.” And I would try him out, and still mostly get my ass kicked, and not know at all what I was supposed to do. So, I would watch videos of people who were good at their characters, and they would talk about how to be good at the character, and then I would go and try and do the things that they talked about, but this really isn’t that helpful. They say mostly obvious stuff, and there are a few major tips, but especially with Winston, I never understood still what I was supposed to do, and I was still bad at Winston, even when I had started to understand the game and how it was supposed to work. Then, one fateful night, I had had enough of playing everybody else, and I had at this point figured out how to be good on many of the characters, but the one character I still really wanted to be good with was Winston, and so I searched yet again for advice on how to play Winston, and I found a YouTuber genius Winston called Bogur. That changed my Winston life forever. This man, 24-year old Bulgarian Overwatch 2 genius, particularly a Winston genius, had two videos that were 2 or 3 hour long playthroughs of him destroying everyone in ranked and getting to the highest rank possible with Winston. And in these videos, he did something different from every other video I had watched that told you how to play a character – he just played the character, and gave educational commentary on what he was doing, while he played. He realtime verbalized his thought process, his decision making, strategy, etc., in every game that he played, constantly, throughout the games. That was basically like having a chess master play games of chess and explain in every scenario what they thought was going to happen and why they were playing the way they were playing and what pieces they were going to move and why. And watching these videos, I learned such an incredible number of things, my Overwatch 2 knowledge skyrocketed, and my understand of Winston and what was possible had overnight quintupled. I spent two or three evenings watching these videos, taking it all in, truly studying Winston from this master, and absorbing his teachings. Some characters can kill you, stay away from them. Take the high ground, always take the high ground. Dive anyone who is separated. Never forget about the objective. Almost never die. Someone is always out of position. Dive the backline. Dive the backline. Dive the backline. Now go kill the tank. Don’t overcommit. He showed me when to jump, what things to think about, and all kinds of mechanical techniques, such as jumping straight up in the air simply to buy time, and using your bubble shield to prevent the enemy team from healing their tank. Who to pressure on the enemy team, when to be aggressive, when to dive, when to sit back, how to be extremely annoying, and especially, how to slowly acquire territory. In sum, this man’s Winston knowledge was everything I wanted to hear, and to see it in action, to actually see the results, that his thought and action was correct, because he was winning literally every game, against even the best of players, applying the same principles, was incredible to witness, and my brain’s mirror neurons were firing like fireworks on the fourth of July, and the enormous gaps in my Overwatch 2 gameplay knowledge were now being filled with tomes of strategic and tactical knowledge, and I was ready. The next time I got on to play, I had gotten home from an espresso party with my sister and her boyfriend, who showed me all the wonders of the espresso machine and how to pull the perfect espresso shot, and we tried four different blends and experimented with temperatures and timings, and I probably had had 15 espresso shots between the hours of 2 and 5 pm, and as I sat in my room that night, more caffienated than I had ever been in my life, alone in my room with nothing to do, I decided, I’m going in. Because I had of course been thinking that I was playing too much Overwatch 2, that I had been binging it and I shouldn’t really be playing it, but I still loved it, and I was extremely caffienated, and so I made the call, that tonight, I would become the monkey.

Prior to this now infamous night, I had a losing record with Winston, and in general, a losing record on Overwatch 2. You did not want me on your team, if you were trying to win and climb the ranked ladder. I was a liability. That was mostly because I would get bored of being good and then pick a character that I was horrible with and then get destroyed, but I also still, even when I was good, was not so good that I could alone reliably win a game. Well, guess what happened? On this infamous night, you wanted Adventurer on your team, there was no other tank in Silver that you would have rather have had on your team that night, because I won every single game that I played. Yes, that’s right, a man with a losing record, a Winston loser, was 0 to hero, from watching Bogur videos for 3 nights, and with 15 espresso shots, I logged on, and armed with my newfound Winston knowledge, seeing the game with clear eyes, and having a burning passion for victory with this nerdy scientist monkey, I was unstoppable, and was blowing all competition out of the water. It was a completely different game for me. Suddenly, I could understand everything. All of the mistakes that my enemies were making, I was on them at once. All tactical decisions, all strategy involved, I knew the optimal choice and the correct decision. Take the objective, or go for kills? Make a pick, or stay back? Pressure the tank, or dive the back line? Use my ultimate now? Jump on Ashe or Anna? Of course I made mistakes, but I knew what I did wrong. And now I knew how to play Winston. Completely bypass everybody, and go straight for the objective. Cause chaos by getting the high ground and sitting on top of them. Cut off the supports. I could see the vulnerabilities in the enemy positioning, the weakness in their composition, the soft spots in their armor, the players that needed to be dealt with, and I was relentless and confident, and I won every single game. Winston’s power had now been completely unlocked in my hands, and I was enjoying it to the absolute maximum. The true most glorious moment of the night, was this right here: There was one extremely close match, that had been a slog throughout, and I had fought absolutely tooth and nail to keep my team in this game. We had gotten rolled in the first round, and had battled hard to win the second, with my team rallying and turning around, and in the third match, we were pretty deadlocked. My team had taken the lead initially, and we had exchanged control of the objective with the enemy several times, and we had made it all the way to 99% completion – that is we had held the objective for 99% of the required time, but the enemy had taken it back before we could get it to 100% and win. They had come in and wiped us, and reclaimed it, and they were shaping up to be the ones to get it to 100% and win it all. I had been killed first in that last fight, and the rest of my team then died later, so that I had come back before them, and before I respawned, I thought to myself, in a special moment of clarity, “I am going to try as hard as I possibly can to win this game. I am going to do everything in my power to make the other team earn this win.” I respawned, and had to make it to the objective to put the game into overtime, and I made it there with a second left, and the next thing I had to do was to stall for as long as possible so that my team could respawn and join the battle. I just had to be the most incredible nuisance ever, and not die. I landed on the objective, which was in the center of a pyramid-esque Egyptian sand tomb, that had a small chamber space to the right, high ground surrounding the room, with an open, bottomless pit on one side of the lowered floor where the main objective space was, and then two halls with open sides running along the length of the room. It was a cramped and awkward space. Not ideal for Winston. I landed in the smack dab middle of the room, on the lower floor, contesting the objective, and stopping the enemy team from reaching 100%. As long as I was within bounds of the objective, or if I did step off, made it back within something like 3 seconds, they couldn’t win. As soon as I landed, I had completed my first task, by just making it there in time, and then I took stock of the situation, and it was this – D.Va was in front of me, the enemy tank, and behind her to the right, on the stairs leading up to the high ground were two healers, and directly to the right of me in the small chamber was a little dwarf man called Torbjörn, a damage dealer. He was the one who was separated, and out of position, being in the chamber, and with me between him and the rest of his team, and so I immediately went after him, pushing him back into the chamber, and separating him further from the team. The supports could not reach him there, unless they dropped down into the chamber from above, which they wouldn’t want to do because you don’t want to be stuck in there with a Winston, or with any tank, with no escape. I couldn’t push too far in, because I needed to stay on the objective, and Torbjörn also does a crazy amount of damage, and I had to be careful I didn’t take too much, because I needed to live – but I had a secret weapon, which was my ultimate. My ultimate would reset my health bar and double my total health and let me slap the hell out of people and send them flying, and would let me do my mega monkey jump every two seconds, instead of every 5, so I was just trying to live for as long as possible before I would use my ultimate, and try and get them to think that they could kill me. Torbjörn was pushed back into the chamber, I was using my bubble shield to soak up damage and as no support dropped down to help him, this dwarf man was going down, but I had to stay on the objective, and I wanted to keep D.Va from coming onto to me and being sandwiched between them both, so I danced, using the corner of the wall as cover, soaking up damage with my shield, lasering D.Va after forcing Torbjörn back, just buying time, waiting, then D.Va jumps onto me, my bubble is down, Torbjörn almost dead, I use my ultimate Primal Rage and slap him into the wall, finishing him off, now D.Va has already used her dash to come try and kill me and she’s stuck with me, down in the chamber, now I’m slapping her further into the chamber and cutting her off from the supports, still touching the objective, the supports trying to get to her and kill me, I see my opportunity now, the huge opportunity, to jump behind the Zenyatta (support) and slap him into the bottomless pit, now that he has moved up and closer into the room, so I commit and jump away from the D.Va, right behind Zenyatta and slap him off the stairs and into his doom, now the D.Va is back on me, I have to get back on the objective or we lose, I jump back in, now my health is getting lower, enemy Hanzo has showed up and is firing at me, I drop another bubble shield, just holding on for my team, holding on, and then I see the Pharah rockets flying overhead, slamming into the D.Va, my Junkrat comes sailing in to blow the Hanzo apart, and our Mercy starts healing me, the enemy D.Va goes down, demechs, tiny D.Va jumps out, I lazer her down, the only one left is their Illari, who makes a desperate last move onto the objective, and she’s immediately melted, and the overtime bar goes down, and the enemy team is routed, we flip the objective, and the game is won. Victory.

This was the highlight, the pinnacle of my night of Winston conquest. That was the peak moment because it was the hardest I had to try, and it pushed me to the utmost of my abilities, and we still managed to pull it off. My Winston was unbeatable that night. Bogur’s teachings had left an indelible impact on my Overwatch gaming, and that was the proof. And since then, like magic – I haven’t wanted to play Overwatch anymore. I guess that that was everything that I wanted to do. I didn’t realize it exactly, but I had achieved my peak as an Overwatch gamer, and I could be done. I wanted to learn how to be good, and how to be good on Winston, and that was obviously complete. Then, I didn’t need to be as good as Bogur. I didn’t need to play 1000 more games just so I could have a higher rank. The rank didn’t matter. It was the concept. My hunger for Winston dominance was satiated.

I haven’t felt like playing Overwatch since.

Thoughts From The Cubicle: Honking, Homicidal Urges, Jewish Man Parts the Vehicular Sea

*Bored at my cubicle. Writing from 1700 Broadway, Manhattan. 1/11/24, 3-something pm.*

I’m going a little crazy here. I need a wheel. Like a hamster wheel. I need that thing. I would be running on it right now. I would be running so fast. Then, I would get tired, and I would go over to my water tower drinker thing, and drink some water, and then hop back on the wheel, and run again. What could be more fun than a treadmill? A giant, circular treadmill. I’m so into that. Someone design that right now. Cubicle hamster wheels. For humans. I’m so in. Give me 10% of the profits for the idea. For just one year. You can keep the rest. I don’t need a lot to live on. Just enough. Just enough from my human hamster wheel invention. And people will say, what did you do for your monies? And I’ll say, I proposed the idea of the human hamster wheel, the now world-wide office phenomenon. And they’ll say, that’s great. That was a great idea. Thank you for your great contribution to society.

(I’ve had a lot of coffee.)

I would settle for a treadmill. A standing treadmill desk. I proposed that many times to my senseis in the teacher staff room, when I was teaching in Kumamoto. I once piled up books and actually did stand at my desk, and of course it was awkward and attracted a lot of attention. I was the only teacher standing at their desk in a room of 40, 50 people. And those desks are not cubicles. There are no barriers. You are side-by-side. So there I was, lording over everyone, with my laptop quite precariously placed on a tower of books, typing away. That experiment didn’t last long, I have to say. Too risky, too distracting. I was always doing something to attract attention in that office, not that I was trying to. It just so happened that often I would do things like build a standing desk tower out of books or eat large raw carrots at my desk (like “Bugs Bunny”). It just happened that way. But I enjoyed that brief stint with my standing desk. It would have been even better if I was walking at the same time. Even better, if I was running, on a giant circular wheel. The human hamster wheel.

I have to write comedic material. I have to exercise my imagination. It is very important for my soul and spirit. If I am a very sick man, comedy is the only thing that can save me. I have to laugh. Otherwise, it is great suffering. That must be why New York is famous for comedy. It makes a lot of sense. You have to have some laughs or you’ll lose it. (Your sanity, that is. If you ever had it.) You just can’t take it otherwise.

Last night on my walk to the local grocery store Shoprite, I witnessed another insanity inducing spectacle, as I do on every walk. This absurd spectacle was a thick Jewish man, in full black navy suit, nice shoes, little round hat (kippah), talking on the phone, a man of business, a man who clearly has some sense. This man was across from me at THE most dangerous intersection on my walk to Shoprite, which is fraught with dangerous intersections, because every intersection in NYC is dangerous – but this intersection in particular is dangerous because it’s underneath a train, with pillars that can obscure view of pedestrains, and with many pedestrians, with small lanes separated from big lanes by pillars, and with 5 streets going into it, with one of them coming in diagonally, so the cars have to fork left or right.. There’s a lot happening at this crazy intersection, a lot of ways for it to all go wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, I could spend hours, hours upon hours upon hours reguiling to you the amazing and extraordinary things I have seen these New York city drivers do. There’s almost nothing they won’t do. No action too outrageous, nothing too disgraceful, and nobody to stop them. First, it is horrifying. Then, it is astounding. It is fascinating. But mostly, it is horrifying.

They will honk at the drop of a hat. They will honk not at the drop of a hat. They will honk at you for parking. They will honk at you for turning. They will honk at you for stopping at a stop sign, they will honk at you one single millisecond after the light turns green and you haven’t slammed on the gas, they will honk if they can’t go anywhere for any reason, say, an EMT car that has stopped for a medical emergency and is loading someone in a stretcher onto the ambulance (saw this two nights ago), and they will honk as a form of personal expression. A beautiful, poetic expression, of anger, of joy, of love, of life. On a normal Thursday, last week, over a 24 hour period, I estimated that there were between 200-300 honks happening in the streets around my apartment on Avenue H, south Flatbush, Brooklyn. Between 200-300 honks. With that, you are also guaranteed at least one car alarm a day, and no less than 10 total minutes combined of sirens. I hear every one of these honks, every one of these sirens, and every car alarm. Peppered throughout, there are also random explosions that sound like gunshots or fireworks, but they aren’t – they’re just people’s motors, you know, exploding. That’s fine though, because that makes those people feel special and powerful and cool, and what, am I just going to say someone is an asshole because they make little explosion gunshot noises every day so that they can feel powerful cool and special? No, no. I wouldn’t deny them that, and I wouldn’t deny anyone their little teddy bear that they need to snuggle up with at night to keep the loneliness at bay.

The average length of a honk varies, depending on their purpose, just like with bird calls. Mainly, length of honk corrolates with rage/exasperation level of the driver, and can be used as a guage of the strength of the offense of the offender. (My hypothesis, at least.) Between 0.5-2 seconds is the average, but is not uncommon to hear a honk that is over 5 seconds long. If you get that far with it, that means the offender is really messing up, and/or the honker is really angry. Now, a 5 second honk may not sound that long, guys n’ gals, but let me tell you – it is, and if you don’t think it is, and even if you do, I want you to count to 5 for me right now. Count the Mississippi way, count properly. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi. Ok. Now read that again, and play a honk sound in your mind. Imagine that someone is honking that entire time. Time is a relative thing. When you hear someone honk for 5 seconds, you realize that 5 seconds is a very long time. In honk time, 5 seconds is long. I hear 5 second honks often, probably every other day. And I can truthfully tell you that I’ve heard honks of up to 15 seconds. When it’s that long, anything over 5 seconds, you can only help to marvel at it. How angry can they be? How long will they go for? When will they call it? What a honk, what a fucking honk! There is something marvelous about it.

Now, why do these Brooklyn drivers do this? It’s a good question. If they’re here driving in Brooklyn, chances are that they live here in Brooklyn. They must know that there are potentially hundreds of people around who will hear their honk. They are certainly aware of the great detriment to everyone that is rampant, unchecked noise pollution. They undoubtedly have read all of the many scientific articles that have been written about the effects of noise pollution on human health, on child development, on mental health, on stress and anxiety levels, blood pressure, and such. I am positive that they are well acquainted with the facts. And knowing all of this, still, they honk. This is really an incredible thing. What could explain it?

I will tell you, my hypothesis. After careful consideration, and much contemplation, I can say that with high probability… They’re angry. Yes, they are in fact angry. They don’t always have to be, they may just be annoyed, they may even be trying to be helpful, but I would say in most cases, these honks are laden with rage. That is part of it, yes, but there is something else yet, that plays a bigger part. More than rage, I suspect, is that fundamentally, these people are unintelligent. Yes, unfortunately they may just be dumb, downright stupid, plain and simple. It may be general unintelligence, or it may be anger-induced stupidity, as anger does shut down your prefrontal cortex, and prevents you from having any logical, reasoning thought – however, whether they are all the time stupid, or just stupid while the horn is on, at the time of them honking that horn, they are in most cases, dumb. It is a sobering fact, yes, because it means that of course, many of these people that I share this community with, my brothers and sisters of America, don’t have much going on for them in the brain department, but it’s important to know, because then you can understand them somewhat better, and you see that honking isn’t entirely their fault. Like a baby that craps in its own diaper, it just doesn’t know any better. It can’t understand. And the anger, the anger is understandable. There is quite a lot of anger here. Really I have never witnessed so much horrible screaming, shouting, swearing, and fighting in my life. Crushing poverty, abysmal living conditions, and rampant mental illness may have something to do with it, but surprisingly there haven’t been any studies done to link these together, and so we just can’t say for sure. My roommate played for me a recording he took of a couple fighting at his last apartment complex, also in Flatbush, only a few streets over from where I was living. It sounded like they were right outside the door, but he said they were in their room, one floor up. I have never heard such horrible screaming and fighting in my life. And, what would you know, the man murdered someone the next month! Now you know, if that man gets behind the wheel, he’s honking that horn. He’s honking that horn all day and all night.

I was at the apartment one day, it was 10 o’clock sharp on a beautiful, crisp Monday morning, and for thirty solid minutes, there was an extraordinary, unparalleled and unprecedented honk-fiesta happening down in the street outside of my window. I had a wounded leg, or I would have gone down and witnessed up-close what was happening. I had to satisfy myself by watching from the window. I observed this spectacle from my sixth floor window perch, and upon looking out into the street, saw immediately what the problem was. Someone seemed to have either abandoned their car in the middle of the street, or was just sitting in it, parked sideways, completely plugging the street and preventing anyone from getting through. In some other places where there are rules on the road and people know about them, this may be a surprise, but here, that is nothing out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t bat an eye at that. I wouldn’t expect any of the other drivers to be stymied by such a conundrum either, but alas, several cars on either side had been caught in this trap, and were sitting there, throwing up their hands, and honking. Honking frequently, honking aggressively, honking exasperatedly, at this inanimate object that we aren’t even sure if had a human in it or not. I’ll assume there was a human in there, but they were clearly unresponsive. This sideways car was so exasperating, so styming for the drivers of south Flatbush, Brooklyn, that they spent an hour honking at it, honk, honk, honking away at the problem, chipping away at it one honk at a time. I don’t know how the situation was resolved in the end. I couldn’t stand there all day. But I’m sure that with certainty the car was moved only because of the great courage and vigilance of the Brooklyn honking army.

In defense of the drivers of Brooklyn, along with acknowledging their anger, and their low intelligence, I think they don’t actually know that there are any laws, rules, or regulations related to driving at all. Again, like babies crapping themselves, they’re just ignorant. They probably just bought a nice shiny car from the car store that they can’t afford, grabbed the keys, started it up, and drove it right off the lot onto Coney Island Boulevard, and are having a grand ol’ time parking on anything that is pavement, slamming the big button in middle of the wheel that makes a fun loud noise, stopping the car and turning around wherever they are the instant they realize they’ve made a wrong turn, and all of those other fun things you get to do when there are literally no rules on the road at all. But it’s not their fault. They simply don’t know any better, or can’t understand. And who’s going to tell them? Not the gov’ment. The gov’ment has bigger fish to fry. I don’t know what they are frying, exactly. But don’t worry folks, they’re frying something big, don’t you worry about it.

I have never had homicidal rage before. I can tell you that honestly. I am a mild mannered individual. I have never wanted to kill anybody. That is, I had never wanted to kill anybody before I moved to New York City. Oh boy, the fantasies I have now! What I would do to these honkers. What wouldn’t I do to these honkers! Rocket launcher, RPG, car bombs, grenades, AK47, just a straight up katana to the heart, death by shuriken. Climbing onto the hood of the car, smashing through the window, and stabbing them in the chest with a beautiful gleaming katana. I know, it sounds horrible. I don’t like writing this. (Ok, I do.) Drop a grenade from the window, watch it fall with glee, blow them all up. That’s one of my favorite fantasies. Stand in the street, wait a few seconds for the next honking offender, and just unload on them with your AK. I would really love to fire a predator missle at them, you know, from Call Of Duty. You get a 5 kill streak and you get to fire a missle from a Reaper drone, 5000 feet up, a missle guided by thermals, but in this case, it would be guided by sound, and go straight to the worst offender. I know, it’s bad. But you have no idea how much satisfaction it brings me to write this. Well, unless you live in Brooklyn, and then you do. You just don’t understand until you’ve been there. It’ll drive you insane.

It’s not that I want them to die. Well.. I do. But it’s not like I want to kill them. But.. dammit, I do want to kill them. Mostly, I want the honking to stop, immediately, and preferably, violently. To send a message. What I’m trying to say is that, I think, at a certain point you revoke your right to live. Do you know what I mean? Nobody by default deserves to die. They have to do something that is bad enough to warrant their death, like honk for 5 seconds straight, or engage in and perpetuate an infuriating and abominable honking culture. You honk for 5 seconds, 15 seconds, just honk too much, when you really, can’t be honking anymore, and.. ok, yeah, you can die now. You are now eligible for dying. Someone has basically every right to kill you. Honestly, it wouldn’t be unwarranted. What else can they do? If you push people far enough, they simply don’t have another choice. The gov’ment is frying other fish. They aren’t going to stop you. It’s up to me and my sonic predator missle. It’s vigilante justice. Most Brooklyners would have no problem with it, I can tell you that. My roommate told me a story of a lady in the neighborhood dropping her air conditioning unit onto the hood of a maniacal honker’s car from her window. Everybody cheered. Such a heartwarming story. Send that woman a box of grenades.

My homicidal urges always pass, and are replaced with pleading. “Please, stop honking, please. Please, stop, please, I’m begging you. No more honking, please.” I have also tried to mandate a no-honking time. These appeals and mandates are decreed from the window. “Hey, no..! No..! Bad! This is no honking time!” I have also shouted words of encouragement. “Yes, good!!!! Keep honking!!! It’s working!!! Woo!!!!” It’s cathartic for me. Just like honking, you may say. I know it, god dammit. I know. Once upon a time, after a particularly homicidal urge had passed, and I was still fantasizing about vigilante justice, the great idea of Anti-Honk Man entered my mind. Like Spiderman, fighting crime, Anti-Honk Man fights honking. He is the superhero that New York City desperately needs. He would be an enormous viral success. We could have Anti-Honk Woman, gender-neutral, whatever, it could be a dog, Anti-Honk Dog, whoever, whatever is willing to rise to the occasion. Anti-Honk Dog can be the sidekick, and has incredible powers of stopping all honking offenders from ever honking again, by tactfully placing car bombs in serious offenders’ cars, and leaving death notes that say “Death 2 Honkers!!!”, or, less homicidally, slashing tires, paintballing cars, etc. There are many ways that Anti-Honk Dog can carry out vigilante justice to the benefit of all Brooklynites. I had another great idea, (unfortunately, again homicidal) that I believe could immediately reduce honking in NYC by 99.9%, and potentially be a great and subtle form of eugenics, which would be that every car be outfitted with a bomb, that will explode upon the horn being held down for more than 2 seconds at once, and/or more than 3 honks a week. Everyone could have two warnings, like a three-strikes you’re out type deal, where the first time it would say, “Strike one: Your car could have exploded right now!” and then, “Strike two: Next time, you’re dead!” And then the third time, “Say goodbye, motherfucker.” Explosion. Oh my god, it would be great. Except it might kill me, an unoffending pedestrian, so we would need another creative solution. The driver’s chair is blasted with 1000000000 billion volts, instantly vaporizing the driver. Yes, that’s great. Maybe a little too painless for a Brooklyn honker, but yes, it would work.

My god this city has turned me into a sick and twisted individual. I have to get out of here.

I have to finish my story about the Jewish businessman crossing the intersection. I think you will really understand how amazing this is, now that you know about how horrible the honking is, and let me say again, I am a mild-mannered individual, NOT homidical. Brooklyn has made me so. I hear honking when I’m sleeping. I am honked awake, in the middle of the night, in the morning. Honking is my alarm clock. Honking tucks me in at night. Honking while I’m pissing, honking while I’m showering, honking while I’m eating, honking while I’m thinking, honking while I’m strolling about the neighborhood. 200-300 honks a day, remember that number people. 200+ jarring, sonic attacks daily.

Our Jewish businessman was crossing this 5 road dangerous intersection, while on the phone. This guy, as he casually chats, swaggers right up to the intersection. I’m watching him from the get go. He starts to walk out into the street. The cars are coming, full on, but so far he’s only walked on the side street, separated, still where cars could go, but not like it’s the main street, which most cars coming from the diagonal are now barreling through. As he comes to this larger street, he does not glance up, he only somewhat slows his stride, and I’m watching in awe, because it looks like, what this man is about to do, is he’s about to attempt to walk through full traffic, like it’s nobody’s fucking business. And you know what? That’s what he did. This man parted the Red Sea. He waited for a small break in the cars, and he walked out, raising his hand up, casually, keeping it low, like he was saying, “Hey bro, just a heads up, I’m crossing now. Thanks.” And he never dropped his conversation on the phone. This man just halted the world for himself, ground at least seven cars to a stop so that he could cross the intersection on a green light, and that’s a crazy thing. His audacity, his power. I envied him. I watched, jaw agape, watched him walk away, like it was nothing, like he hadn’t just pulled off the most impressive feat in Brooklyn that night. This event alone was amazing to witness, but there was something about it that made it even more so. The truly unbelievable thing was not watching a man simply waltz through a high traffic intersection so casually and confidently as this Jewish businessman did. No, the amazing thing was this. In this situation, of a man halting all traffic, thrusting himself out in front of cars moving through a green light, forcing an unpredictable stop from the drivers, putting his own safety at risk, with at least seven cars involved, witnessing, being inconvenienced – in such a situation where honking is actually, 100% justified, and reasonable, and useful.. There was not a single honk.

This event marked a paradigm shift for me. It’s a different set of rules, out here in New York City. It’s a different world.

On the way back from Shoprite, I was waiting for a truck to stop at and pass through a stop sign. Of course I never expect anyone to actually stop at a stop sign, and never to let me walk through a crosswalk. I understand, this is a different set of rules. But the guy in the truck, he didn’t go through. He had the window rolled down, and he was looking at me, and I looked up at him, and he said, with kindness, “Go ahead.” I was shocked. Like a loser kid who a girl has noticed on the playground, or a beaten-down dog that gets a pet. I could hardly believe it, it was like a dream. “Thanks,” I said. And I crossed, and he didn’t run me over.