Black Clover

In some twisted sense, I think the common cold is someone or somethings way of telling me to slow down.

Man. Was I going that fast?

Sick twice now in three weeks, I have decided to down shift to 5th. And rest.

Yeah. So I love wine. And I love wind. And I love the smell of fresh baked bread, and travelling abroad with no plans. And I love a new pair of jeans. Oh and I love football. And I love learning. And I love cooking. And I love pears. Oh, and I love scarfs, no really I do.

I love a lot. And I’m thankful for a crap ton.

But at the end of the day, it’s all about Health and People. All that I’m thankful for, year round, and all that matters.

My first week with a mac since third grade, Miss Simpkins class, and I’m impressed. With little in the way of complaints I have to say Apple is killing it for me. I dig it.

But I got to thinking. Does it matter? The platform and the method to content creation and publication is so irrelevant these days. Mac, Pc, the dirty penguin, a mobile device – who cares? It’s just a platform. It’s all about what you do with it. What you say. How you say it. Pick what works for you and kill it.

Say something beautiful. No one cares about your mac or pc.

Waking up to a dead laptop is not my idea of a good breakfast. So my day begun by looking online for a replacement machine. I’ve been fairly happy with my choice picks of Dell laptops so I began there. I built up my fabulous 17″ Vostro, jacked the ram, jacked the hard drive, and carted the beauty. Score. Or not.

Because that’s when things got bizarre. As I got online and started my shopping, I went looking for a laptop. Nothing more and nothing less. Dell on the other hand thought to entertain me by adding a non-removable optical mouse to my cart. A nice gesture, sure, but my shopping list didn’t include a mouse. And charging me $28 for something I didn’t want was, and still remains, bullshit.

After repeated attempts in different browsers using different laptop configs, it was clear that if I wanted my new Dell laptop I was going to have to buy their silly bundled mouse at $28. Clearly I must be doing something wrong, there must be a sane rational conclusion to this.

So I get online with the friendly little online dell chat specialist who runs me through the typical friendly little online dell chat specialist spiel.

“Hi drew, Thanks for choosing dell today, yadda yadda insert bull crap, how can I help you today?”

“Yeah, hi, I’m trying to purchase a new vostro laptop online but there appears to be some kind of browser bug or error as I’m encountering an issue with dell adding a $28 mouse to my cart. I don’t want this mouse and I’m not able to remove it from my cart. any help would be appreciated.”

We exchange a bunch of information at this point, model numbers, links, config settings, etc. This does not resolve the problem, primarily because the problem isn’t a problem in their eyes. Come to find out it’s all a part of the dell bundle. Buy a vostro and get a mouse included. A great deal on a great optical mouse! Translation, listen up consumer asshole, you’re going to bend over and grab your ankles while we service this account and tag on an additional $28 charge for this non-negotiable mouse.

We continue a few mindless banters until she pips in and says

“Yes I understand sir, but this is a very nice mouse, it’s over an $80 value for only $28.”

“Ah. Ok. Wonderful. So you’re giving me a great deal on something I don’t want. How kind. Look I appreciate your kindness and I know you’re just doing your job but isn’t there something you can do for me, like let me buy my new computer and give you a bunch of my money without having to buy a mouse that I don’t need and don’t want?”

“No sir, I’m sorry. That’s included in the bundle. There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

And all is well that ends well. Because dell got none of my money, drew got no bloody damn mouse he didn’t want, and my blog gets a much needed post. Drew with a triple word score. Suck it dell.

I will never quite understand the mindless obsession with bacon. Not that bacon worship is mindless, it’s not. But mindless bacon worship, being worship of all bacons regardless of flavor, texture, and quality, is simply nothing more than worship of mediocrity. Worship the good stuff, not the genre. The genre is over rated.

And zombies, what is up with all the zombies? Zombies zombies everywhere. Imps, goblins, and demons demand some respect. Why? Because zombies are over rated.

When it comes to perspective, I don’t know. Maybe I’m fortunate or enlightened or hell, even jaded. But what gives with all this drama and depression in the first world? People thinking life is so difficult and oppressive. Everything is such a gigantic drag. Fuck. I am just happy to have been born human. And not a cow or a tree or a panda bear. Nothing against panda bears. Life is rad. Imperfect, partly unplanned, but rad.

As someone far more eloquent than I once said, “life is not difficult, it’s just not easy.” Amen.

While I might have once held my home country in loose contempt, with enough maturity and travel we’re on speaking terms again. But there are still some facets to this place that absolutely astound me. One thing that seems uniquely american is what I call theme life. Why go to Italy when you can go to Vegas and the Venice out door shopping mall? Why go to Australia when you can go to the Outback steak house? Why do anything legit when you can theme your way out of it? Everyone wants their living room to look like page seven Pottery Barn and every condominium complex has austere European naming conventions. The Bordeaux Highlands. Terra Verde. Chapel Provencal. Yeah. Because nothing is more Provencal than identical human chicken coops built three feet apart.

And I know. So what. And you’re right. But I don’t have to like it.

Try as I might, but I never blame the pendulum. Every now and then I swing to the side of photography or sketch and away from creativesque writing. Spending just enough time at the apex of the swing to get a little bit better at both, inevitably returning back the other way to the creative writing process. And despite what might seem a sophisticated excuse on my part, entirely possible, I like to think that I just might be onto something. But here goes.

In the most overused cliche of my life, things are different now. Perhaps more telling is how absurdly rad that now is. More on this later.

If anything worries me it’s the inescapable quandary of now coming up with an encore to setting foot on every continent, having every imaginable hardship and flavor of enlightenment, and doing so in regular civilian life. That is, if I ever decide to join it. Regular and I just don’t get along.

So we’ll see where this goes. What kind of slag I can come up with as my pendulum swings back this way.

So last week I got the phone call I was waiting for, my request to photograph up at the Fire Academy in Washington state was granted. My camera gear, slightly neglected since landing home from Argentina, was elated.

Several “controlled” burns were performed with the aim of certifying each successive test with the state. The day consisted mostly of propane tank fires, massive I might add.

As I learned, fires themselves are simultaneously quite easy yet insanely difficult to capture. But oh so beautiful.

Tap. Tap. Crap. Look at the spider webs and dusty rubbish. This place needs some love.