MaroonXLR8R update 1

I Drove my car today, the faded maroon one with the corvette engine. Its been sitting for awhile. I expected the battery to be dead, that I would have to buy a new one, but that wasn't the case. I gave it a jump and it fired right up.

It has been sitting for probably a month. I haven't touched it. I walk by it twice everyday and both times it makes me sad. To see the dented hood and fender where an oak tree fell, and the water trapped inside the car condensing on the windshield (meaning it is no longer sealed off from the elements) and the cobwebs around the tires and headlights, it reminds me why it hasn't moved in so long.

Problems.

Some of the gauges don't work. Last time I drove it there was an error code. It doesn't start or run well. I need to take it to anexhaust shop and extend the exhaust pipe. And connect the lock up torque converter so it is legal to drive, and take it to the referee station and get it check off.

So much to do it overwhelmed me, so I didn't do anything to it at all. The idea of selling it crept up. As well as junking it. It just makes me sad, why keep it around?

I decided to get my MFA in writing.

I researched a lot of schools and narrowed the list down to the best 10 in the country. Number two, or tied with number one is the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for good reasons: If you teach undergrads tuition is waived and they give you a stipend of several thousand dollars a year which is the same as I make working at the tire store. The program excites me, the faculty impresses me and my girlfriend is close by. Currently we are 2600 miles apart, not that I am keeping track or anything.

I decided after much thought that I would move to Michigan to be with my girlfriend (hereto referred to as Loo) at the end of March. I would also become a resident of Michigan and not pay out of state fees to attend U of Mi, meaning graduate school could have a positive effect on my bank account, rather than a negative one.

I told my parents, and they didn't like the idea mainly because they love me and my brother is moving out as well. They think we wont come back, or forget them, or something.

Mom told me yesterday I need to do something with my car, the maroon one with the corvette engine. And then she said, "Or sell it."

I must have needed to hear somebody else say it because I instantly hated the idea of someone else having it, after all the time and work and money and memory I have put into it. So the very next day, today, I jumped it, cleared the cobwebs, filled the gas tank, and drove it around.

After it warmed up the oil burning problem went away and the idle problem went away and it ran flawlessly. Minus the temperature gauge, speedometer, and gas gauge. It also did not trip any trouble codes.

And it was a good thing I drove it too. Because in driving it I pressed the gas pedal down 3/4 of the way. The car down shifted, roared forward, and pressed me into the seat as it accelerated out of first gear (around 45 mph; the speedometer doesn't work).

It made me smile. It renewed my excitement. It cured my pessimism and my apathy. My mind sharpened and my resolve increased. My priorities aligned themselves and life made more sense.

I must fix this car. It makes me happy when it works. It makes me more productive, and I like that.

Editing software shutdown.

At work I can't say what I want because it would scare people away. I think because I am so patient is the reason why I can stand it. You develop this other you for work you know? This other me, he smiles for no reason and apologizes often for things he has no control over to make people happy. When people yell at him for things beyond his control he has to listen to them rant.

But sometimes, especially at the end of the day, my editing software shuts down, having been used all day at work, and the real me is released upon the general public--the unedited, unadulterated 100% pure me; I have no editing software left.

I walked into Kragen and was looking for an oil filter for my car. This other customer up front starts huffing and sighing until finally he walks up to me.

"Hey, I been waiting up there for 5 minutes."

"Bummer," I said returning to my wall of oil filters. I had no idea what he wanted with me.

"Bummer? Get up there and do your thing, you little shit," he said while holding a chrome exhaust tip in one hand and a gallon of Dodge transmission fluid in the other.

"I don't know what your problem is man, but you are invading my space. Back off," I said firmly. I turned to face him.

"What the hell? Wait until your manager hears abut this--Brian. I been coming here for years. I am a customer!" he said raising his voice.

"So am I!" I said raising my voice higher than I expected. He immediately looked at me anew, looking down his glasses and wiry mustache to see me. I pointed to the company name on the shirt which was not Kragen.

"Oh. Uh, sorry, I though you were an employee."

"Yeah, I get it, now piss off."

"I'm really sorry," he said backing away before turning around to wait at the register.

I found my oil filter the same time the Kragen employee returned from the back room and followed him to the register, where I stood next to the other customer. His face had lost some color, and even though it was darkish outside his sunglasses were on. He had his credit card out and it was trembling in his fingers. He was very uncomfortable, I know because I read people for a living. I know when they are comfortable and likely to buy or when they are not. This guy was completely uncomfortable. And as the employee, the real employee mind you, unlocked the register the man gestured to me.

"I'll buy that for you, go ahead and put it on the conveyor belt," he said with a warm smile. I disliked him a lot more here because the smile was completely fake, and well faked at that. His sunglasses couldn't hide the guilt in his voice. I could have taken his money here, all $4.78 of it. But I wanted him to feel guilty. I wanted him to go home and tell his wife how bad he felt he screwed up, to get some acid indigestion, impotence, cold sores and diarrhea, lose sleep over it and perhaps look at people in the future before being such a prick.

"No thanks. I got this," I said. I watched his smile fade, enjoyed it in fact. He surprised us all by simply walking out without his stuff.

"Sir?" The employee said/called/asked.

"He is leaving. He thought I worked here and he yelled at me to ring him up."

"Oh shit, sorry."

"It's not your fault man, the dude's a deutch."

"Was that a negative customer experience?" He asked. I knew this tone too, used it myself in fact, he was probing.

"It might have been," I said, offering him the needed words.

"Well if it was, we'd be happy to give that oil filter and a case of oil to you to in some way make up for the negative experience."

"Oh, well, if you insist," I said.

"I do. Now have a good night," he said. And I did not, I had to take a stop to applebee's.

I was walking in to get a gift card for my Uncle who loves the place and this frumpy lady and her husband and their friends call out to me as I walk by.

"Hey! Aren't you going to take our orders?"

"Psh. No. Why would I do that?"

"Cause we are starving? How about that? Good enough reason for you? Geez." She said looking to her friends in disbelief and encouragement.

"I dont care that you are starving," I said.

"Wha--? What is your name?" The tone of this question made me hate her instantly. What follows is usually "I want o talk to your manager." No matter how customers say it the tone is identical, knowing no racial or linguistic barriers.

"My name?" Why would they want my name, I wondered?

"It's written on his shirt Becca," said one of her friends. They all started to look for my name on my shirt.

"I don't work here you idiots," I said when I figured out what they were carrying on about.

"What? You expect us to believe that?"

"I don't care what you believe. Jesus. Wait your turn like everybody else. And stop being so damn annoying." And I started to walk passed them. When one of them saw that it was true, that I didn't work there, she told the rest of them. And they quickly said, "Oh. Oops," and then very nasally they added, "Sorry." Then they asked if anybody knew and started murmuring about it until finally they got up and left.

Fucking people, what can you do?

END

Playing wrestling games with Laura.

"Oh you bitch!" she yelled at me. All I could do was laugh. I had learned so many new things about the girl I thought I knew, and this was one of them: Playing WWE vs Raw on XBOX 360. I learned she watched wrestling on TV often enough to be familiar with the Wrestlers and their moves. I learned she had favorites and knew the jargon of the ring, the heels, where the folding chairs were kept. I, by contrast, stopped watching WWF et al. wrestling in seventh grade.

We designed characters together, hers and mine which could have been reflections of how we see ourselves, or how we wish we looked--I was totally ripped and she was totally lithe. Than I selected a Diva on the character select screen and she selected the char she made of herself and told me I was dead. Bravado.

Then the match started and I Immediately ran to her and close-lined her, knocking her to the ground where I started pinning her.

"Oh you bitch!" she yelled as she mashed buttons furiously. I laughed as much from shock as pleasant surprise. Never had she called me a bitch, and she was referring to the character in the game--her competitive spirit was coming through on a game, another first. Usually she plays the games I am good at like Racing games and shooters where she prefaces before playing, "Ok, but I am really bad at these type of games..." But not this game, she is a champ at wrestling. It was probably the most fun I have had with her, in front of a TV, playing games, with my clothes on.

She went on to call me all sorts of bad things she had never before said to me, which not only made it ok, it made it fun. I learned which buttons made her mad and pressed them and she did it back to me. We tried new modes, new characters and new costumes. It really was a lot of fun. Far more fun than I expected, certainly.

What I remember most was learning about this new part of her that I didn't know existed, in fact hadn't known about it in the 13 odd years I had come to known her. I thought I knew everything about her see, and seeing this interest she had in wrestling--that she must have harbored it for years and not spoken about it--made me happy. Deliriously happy. :-DD

New years resolution

A beautiful girl came to visit me last week and the week before. She told me she loved me.

I love her. And now she is 2600 miles away in a winter wonderland.

Since she left, I stare out the window at the clouds sometimes. For hours. The clouds swirl you know. They don't move forward like in cartoons like someone moving a picture of a cloud across a table top. The clouds twist, bleed off into nothingness and are filled by the same collection of nothingness. I watched an airplane fly through the clouds on purpose. Then he banked and lined up and flew through it again. Than my mom came home and asked what I was doing.

"Nothing."

"How was your day?"

"It was alright." I lied. It wasn't alright. The day sucked. Mostly because while I was at work I knew that when I got home that girl I mentioned earlier wouldn't be there, as she had been the weeks before. And that colored the day rotten mushrooms. If I had told Mom the truth I would have to explain it and I would rather look at clouds. I think she already knew all this because she just squeezed my shoulder and walked away.

I couldn't watch the clouds anymore because it would draw attention to my miserable state. So I left to my room and listened to music, read a book and eventually tried to have fun playing Borderlands. I didn't get very far in any of those activities. They weren't fun. And they could not fill the hole her leaving had left me. So I stared out the window to the sky above. There weren't any clouds. But that is ok. I can wait.

Sunday Mornings at the Henne house

at around 9am you would hear power tools of some sort going off, most likely an air compressor if my brother Kevin is up working on cars or the radial saw if Dad is up making cabinets. Mom will take Nina to agility training and obedience classes around this time....

let me start over.

My alarm wails at 9am to get up. Through the open windows above my bed I can hear Dad's new table saw cutting through oak plywood in long sections to make a book shelf. It makes me want to get up and watch. I say watch but what I really mean is smell. The smell of the oak sawdust makes me feel comfortable and safe. Probably because Dad has been making things out of wood forever and I would watch and play with the dust and smell it. He is a craftsman specializing in Greene and Greene style wood working. As a result he has created beautiful wooden things like lamps, tables, shelves, cabinets and etc. Pretty much all of the wooden things in our house were made by him. I like the smell of ebony and teak especially, an ancient quality to the smell. The smell. It reminds me to crawl out of bed to smell the fresh cut oak. I step out of bed, slide my glasses on. Than I look outside to see the blue sky without a hint of clouds and dress warmly, an orange Hawaiian shirt and thin beige shorts. It will be another hot one today. I walk across the work clothes I dropped on the floor last night and step on my cellphone, which I pull out of my work pants and slip into my shorts pocket.

On my way down the hallway Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner, diligently cleans the carpet under the watchful eyes of our little cat Murrs. Her original name was Jasmine, which was shortened to Jazz, which was shortened to lil miss murrs because of the incomplete meow sound she makes: Mmmmm.....rrr. Lil miss murrs was shorted to Murrs and when called she makes the same sound.

Stepping over Roomba and then Murrs I walk passed the brick hearth where our most unique pictures are gathered, including me as a kid with blue pool-stick chalk all over my face hugging my dad.

Past the hearth the front door is open and I see a row of pvc pipes set up with Mom directing Nina,our Rottweiler, through them and than clearing a hurdle-like jump at the end. After a success Mom says, "Great Job Nina. What a good girl. Good girl," in obvious happiness. Nina reflects this happiness by wagging her whole body and licking Mom's hand.

Straight ahead I hear the garage door close as my brother Kevin walks inside. He has his red Hilti drill in his hand. I greet him on my way to the coffe maker in the kitchen. When I walk around the corner to the tiled kitchen I see Scooba, the floor mopping robot, mopping the dining room floor. Kevin has a plastic bowl of unmixed pancake batter in front of him.

"Morning, Kev," I say as I pull a mug I made from the cabinet.

"Morning," he says spinning the Hilti drill to its widest size and sticking a whisk in the chuck before tightening it down.

"What are you doing?" I ask, gesturing with the mug in my hand at his drill with a whisk sticking out of it.

"Mixing," he says as he places the drill-whisk in the batter and pulls the trigger. As I turn on the coffee maker I am surprised by how quick and easy the Hilti mixes the batter. Not only can the red drill bore holes in reinforced concrete and chromoly steel, it can thoroughly mix pancake batter, and better than any mixer I have seen at that.

"You ready to help with breakfast," he says in a nonquestioning way.

"You are asking me BC, Kev. Gimme a second."

"Before Coffee, yeah, you're right, my bad," he says. He laughs.

I open the top of the Keurig coffee maker and remove the old k-cup and throw it away. I look at the coffee carosel and the variety of flavors. Towards the end of the month there are only two: Rainforest Espresso Extra Bold Trés Intense and Doughnut Shop Coffee with a chocolate sprinkle doughnut on the foil seal. I feel like doughnut coffee today so I snap that plastic cup in there, close the lid, check my mug to make sure it is right side up (after poking fun at Loo for making that mistake a couple times I can't make the mistake myself) and push the button. As the coffee stream trickles into the mug I hear Kevin greet Buddy, our chocolate lab, Rhodesian Ridge back, rescue-mutt cross. I bend down and rub Buddy's face and neck while Kevin pounds Buddy's chest like a kettledrum. Buddy wags his whole body in response.

After Coffee, or AC, I started cooking the bacon and sausage for breakfast as well as setting the table for everyone. Once breakfast is ready I round everyone up. I walk out the front door to see Mom walking around the yard looking for something while Nina sits perfectly still. I walk passed Nina, pat her head as I walk by, and walk behind Mom. I place my hand on her shoulder and say, "Breakfast," using my diaphragm and speaking clearly because she lost her hearing suddenly about a year ago. She thanked me and than told Nina she was a good girl. Nina came running towards her and slammed into my leg at half speed. It didn't faze her in the slightest. I limped to the table saw to find dad.

He had his ear muffs on and was ready to cut long sheets of oak into three inch by seventy four inch sections. He turned the saw on before I reached him. When i did I put my hand on his shoulder and he turned to face me with the saw spinning. I pantomimed eating with a fork, more like shoveling food into my mouth. He nodded. I walked back inside the fresh cut sawdust smell following me inside to be greeted by the smell of breakfast. I pulled the milk out of the fridge while everyone showed up around the table. Kevin brought the pancakes, I brought the bacon and sausage and jam and butter and syrup.

Then we all sat down and talked about what we had planned for the day. This lead to a discussion of the preview I saw last night for District 9, which lead to a discussion about apartheid, which lead to a discussion of the similarities between South African apartheid and Palestine, which was compared and contrasted to Darfur by Kevin. Then we talked about how funny the show Firefly was, and how Mal was going to a very special Hell.

Only at the Henne house.

updates

I been in a rut as far as writing goes and things in general I suppose. I just got back from a work training seminar thing all expenses paidfor three days o better serve customers and make more monies and so on. We learned about how important active listening is (everyone thought it was act of listening) when a customer says something like, "I have a 2000 Ford Ranger" and you say, "cool. Can I get the year make and model of the vehicle?" Customers feel like they aren't important and are much less likely to part with their money. It sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? The thing is employees greet and talk to over a hundred customers a day and we get burned out of pretending to be interested in every one of them after years of work. SO we learned how you have to stop pretending and start caring, picking up on the things that customers think are important and using them to sell tires to them.

We also learned about positive attitude, and I learned that I dont have that. And I was surprised because I thought I was a positive guy. And I am in certain areas, but deep down I'm not. A great example of that is when my mom showed me an article in the Ojai newsabout a class mate of mine from highschool who published a book. My immediate thoughts were: I bet it's lame, and he published it througha website which will publish anything, even lame stuff. It sounds boring. I bet I could write something better. And then a little voice in my head said, "whoa whoa whoa Brian! What a shitty attitude that was. Look how negative you are. You should be happy a class mate published a book. And it should encourage you, mr fancy pants writer to write your own book and get published instead of whining about it. If all you do is whine and complain about how everybody else's stuff sucks and you could do better, and yet you dont write anything. Don't worry about everyone else. Stop whining and get writing! The only person responsible for not being published is you. So lets go!" That voice had a lot to say.

Than today my Grandma called and asked what I was doing, and I told her about the work training seminar thing and how work was going and she said, "oh great. Now listen here. I want you to read a book called the last lecture by Randy Pausch."
"Ok, I'll check it out."
"No, I want you to read it right now. I am serious."
"Oh. Um. Ok."
"And I want your brother to read it, and your mother and your father."
"I'll tell them."
"You better. You can check it out from the library or even go to the internet and watch the lecture there, but the book is better."
"Alright I will do that now."
"Alright. Have a great day."
"Thanks, you too."

so I checked out the lecture on youtube which had 10million views about this computer science professor at carnegie mellon university who has 1 month to live on account of his pancreatic/liver cancer. He died last year.

Anyway I couldn't finish it today because I have work but I got 10 mins into it and he said something That hit me especially hard. He said: We cannot change the cards we are dealt, only how we play them.

Time for work. Have a great day!

Which is it

I did a lot of reading and research about breasts recently. As a side note did you know that your self exam should include the area around the clavicle, and under it and such? I didn't know that. Anyway, that is not the topic of this post.

And discovered this ...war?...struggle? something over whether breast are for babies or sex. And some people say they are sex organs, sensitive overtly sexual that's why you got to cover up outside or face legal action. The other side says breasts are for feeding children and have only been sexualized by men with mommie issues. In other countries the taboo doesn't exist as much and in 3rd world places they think its funny how we are obsessed with breasts, cause they are for babies only. There is literature and arguments and scientists and sociologists and all these peope going back and forth; breasts are sexual, breasts are for babies, yadda yadda.

So which is it?

Maybe I am missing something here, but can't the breasts be both? It seems to me that any body part can be sexualized because of a fetish or something. It could be ears or feet or fingers or whatever. But that may be a slippery slope, I think, because breasts predominately factor in to advertising and movies and stuff, whereas feet and stuff, not so much.

So what am I trying to say?

It doesn't make any sense to me to argue about the purpose of breasts because whatever the reason that everyone may agree with or not, there they are, and here to stay regardless of what is decided.

Now, I can agree and disagree with both sides of this issue because things are rarely absolute and a middle ground usually exists.

I will never forget something Erin said: "Ok, look, like, ok you see, there is this blade of grass and I can tell you what color I think it is, and you can explain what color you think it is but in between those two ways is what it REALLY is." Which is really intelligent because the grass isn't green, it isn't even a color at all. It reflects all other visible spectrums of light except green, and our brain fills in the rest, which makes us see green. How can we be sure that how one's brain interprets chemical reflection is the same as anothers? What was I saying? ...Breasts, right.

Those people that think breasts are for babies only should work on unsexualizing breasts and the way to do that is reveal breasts in nonsexual situations. So walk around with the girls hanging out and in a few years the breast taboo will fade away. The insistance of this "controversy" fuels the taboo. Those are my two cents and if you collect enough of them you can buy yourself a cheeseburger.