The Early Program Coordinator Catches the Elbow to the Ribs

There are two breeds of morning commuters in New York City: the early-birdies and the later-losers.  I'm not talking about the commuters chosen at birth - the type-A personalities down on Wallstreet who get to work around 5:30 in the morning - I'm talking about the 9:00 a.m. crowd and the 9:30 a.m. crowd.  A few years or decades ago, New York decided that some offices would open at 9:00 a.m. and others would open at 9:30 to ease the transit congestion.  Generally, the 9ers go home at 5 and the 9:30 peeps bounce at 5:30.

Although genetics doesn't guide the 9/9:30 distinction, something else certainly does although I'm not sure what it is.  When I come in to work at 9:30 (yup, I'm a later-loser), the people on the subway next to me are relaxed even when we're packed in so tight that someone else is holding the newspaper I'm reading.  We roll towards Manhattan, reading books, sipping a latte and listening to Coheed & Cambria.  Yes, all of us on the subway listen to Coheed, didn't you know that?  But on a morning like today, when I come in to work early... holy shit.

It's as if someone put just a pinch, a smidge, a dash of crack cocaine in everyone's coffee.  And it's not what you're picturing - no no, it's not a twenty-something throwing elbows and cross checking people in his way.  No, it's a seventy-year-old woman with an umbrella, a granny cart and a serious case of gout ready to throw down and whip the ass of anyone and everyone for the hell of it.  When we lined up to get out of the train, I swear I caught the glint of brass knuckles or a rusty chain on the other side of the door.  Picture the Giants and the Patriots facing off at the line of scrimmage: steam jetting out of our noses, sweat dripping off our chin, ready to pull the head off the animals on the other side.

Sitting here at my desk, safely typing away, I thank God for delivering me safely.  My bruises will heal, cuts will dry up and I'll never come in to work early ever again.

Deja Vu

I'm completely caught up at work.  I went in yesterday (Saturday) morning from nine to noon and decimated the pile of papers that's been sitting on my desk since August.  Destroyed 'em.  And I knew I would.  I knew I would do exactly that because on Friday afternoon, as I was telling my boss I'd be coming in over the weekend, I was overcome with a feeling of Deja Vu so strong that I could've sworn we were reading off a script.

There are a lot of instances in my life where I act on my instincts twice as fast as it would've taken me to stop and figure something out.  There are a lot of instances in my life where I'm blown away by the feeling that I've had the exact conversation a year before.  Same room, same people, same clothes.  What if this wasn't a neuro-glitch?  Supposedly, Deja Vu is your brain making too many associations releasing chemicals of familiarity.  What if those feelings were based on memories?  Meaning you did do exactly what you remembered a year before.  And for some reason, someone hit rewind on the world and made you live it all again?

It would certainly explain why the answers come so easily sometimes.  If you'd already solved the problem twelve months ago, it would take you no time at all to solve it again.  But this is really just a fantasy, right? It's not possible to hit rewind on time, is it?

Inside Out

Angelina Jolie is ugly.  Angelina Jolie is beautiful.  Angelina Jolie rides the line between insanely irresistible and mannishly robotic like a pro surfer turning on the crest of a tsunami.  She's like the stinky cheese of women.  The smellier the cheese, the better it tastes.  In fact, I've definitely smelled food and thought it was shit and the other way around.  The Wagon wheel effect.  You know, where the spokes are moving in such a way that it looks like the wheel is turning in the opposite direction of it's true motion.  (You know why that is?  It's because essentially, your eyes are taking twenty-four pictures of the wheel every second.  When the wheel is slowly turning forward, you see the spokes moving in the appropriate direction.  But you can move the wheel so fast that by the time your eyes "take another picture of it," the spokes are slightly behind where they were a 24th of a second ago.  Prego! Wheel turning backwards.)

So Angelina Jolie smells.  Wait, I mean, she's moving so fast that she's ugly.  No, she's a wheel.  Shit.

You've got the hot water so hot that it feels cold.  Your senses are all fucked up.

Glass is a liquid - old stained glass windows are thicker at the bottom then they are at the top.  Go look if you don't believe me.

Try to play too fast without practicing and you'll end up playing slower than if you relax and try not to play fast.

Oh fuck it, you're not even listening anymore.

Why I Hate Facebook & Why I Hate Celebrities... I don’t.

Two for one, you lucky lucky people.

Okay, I don’t hate Facebook. Actually I don’t hate celebrities either but that’s in the second half so just be patient.

What I get upset about is how busy everyone is all the time and how plugged in we all are. I love technology – I love cars that go fast and speakers that play loud and my retina-display iPhone. But when everyone is linked in sending notes to each other about what they’re doing, they’re absent from the physical reality around them. It takes too much of their time and no one can come play in the sandbox with me! And it’s a balance, no doubt. On the one side, you want to send a quick note, a picture, or say hello to someone far away (temporally or geographically). On the other, updating your status as you walk is fucking dangerous. Find a balance, people.

And celebrities.

Do something really well and get famous. I’m for it. Do nothing and get famous. I hate you. Honestly, I don’t think I have to explain it any more than that but if I don’t write at least two more full paragraphs, Microsoft Grammar Check tells me my Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level is negative forty and I should take up another hobby. If someone is famous for their craft, I think, "Gosh, I gotta work a little harder and quit watching movies all the time. Look at how big that guy is!" Apparently, he spent all day, everyday finding the best note for the song. (See: Beatles in Hamburg, Mozart’s father dragging his four-year-old son around Europe to play piano, and Tyler Perry living in a car before he broke out).

But I don’t know what the Kardashians have done to merit their attention. The idea behind reality television is that people are acting like themselves. So the Kardashians are famous for acting like themselves… in front of a camera? Son of a bitch! I act like myself twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and I’m not famous. What gives?!? It’s the camera! Shit, I gotta get a camera crew on my ass, stat.

So yeah, find a balance between tech-connecting and real-connecting. And work hard if you’re gonna get famous. Then I won’t hate you. Cause I know you were worried about it.

Flashing Lights

In their simplest form, video games are flashing lights that you control. Obviously, Modern Warfare XVII (including real human blood spraying out from the TV when you shoot someone) is a little beyond basic. There's a great Neil Gaiman story about video games. Basically, people spend all of their time staring at the screen, making different colors do different things to the point that they are over-steamed vegetables. Society collapses and everyone dies.

As it happens, I like simple video games... a lot. Move the flashing lights from A to B. Or shoot a few pixels at lights of another color. Magnificent. I let my mind wander as I play Doodle Jump, Tetris and Snood. The next thing you know, I'm Confucius sitting on the can at work, tapping away at my iPhone.

Take DoodleJump, for example. If you have an iPhone and you don't have DoodleJump, kill yourself. The game is beautifully designed. If you play it enough you'll start to see that the game layout is a series of elements and patterns that mix in different ways to present you with familiar-yet-new obstacles. Once you know all the elements, the trick is not to worry about the score. Stay calm. After a certain point, things don't move any faster, so all you really have to do is keep your focus. How is that not a metaphor for everyday existence? Your brain stores the visual information about your surroundings so as not to distract you every time a picture frame moves a millimeter. This is a survival thing. One blade of grass is the same as lots of blades of grass = good. Tiger in the grass about to each you = bad. And voila, Darwin! See that, video games are responsible for the theory of evolution.

Lessons from games: 1, stay focused. If you can do it playing a game, can't you do it practicing the drums? Or sitting at your desk? I wonder these things as my little Doodler jumps from platform to platform. 2, stay calm. The score is an illusion - you focus on it and it makes you think the stakes have been raised. Adrenaline pumps and the platforms are moving too fast and the bad guys come out of nowhere and AHHHHH! Nothing was moving faster except maybe your heart-rate. 3, make sure you take a break. Every few minutes, I pause to take a breath, stretch my hands and relax my brain. Same way I make sure I take an hour for lunch each day at work - I'll perform better in the afternoon if I've rested and recovered after the morning.

Other analytical folks will find the same truths as they jog or work in the garden. For me it's in between the flashing lights.

Snooze Addicts

Addiction is when you keep doing something even though it makes you feel like shit. Yeah, that's Websters, wanna fight about it?

So how is the snooze button a good thing? I bet the same guy who invented 'snooze' invented light beer, light cigarettes and diet Coke. And he invented it for addictive personalities like mine who wanted to do something without doing it because it feels so good even though it is so bad for you. He probably justified it by saying, "Look at my new invention! It will give you a few extra minutes of time to relax before getting out of bed!" This is a little like saying Joe Camel commercials were directed at adults. Seriously, what marginally sentient adult human being would think a fat cartoon camel is cool and more to the point, what child wouldn't? So the counterargument, that snooze is a pleasant relaxing cycle, is ridiculous. If I am asleep, get woken up by a buzzer and then lay back down, I won't relax... I'll sleep. For nine minutes until my ears, nay, my soul is raped awake again! Snooze = evil invention for addictive people.

Friends! Brothers! Nappers! We don't need the snooze button! It's not real sleep! If you're going to sleep until 7:48, then set your alarm for 7:48!

Goal: for the rest of the alarm-puked week, I will get up as soon as my alarm goes off. I will walk around my apartment naked (boner, optional) until I feel it's safe to stop moving. Safe meaning I won't fall back asleep leaning on the kitchen counter (done that), tying my shoes (done that) or sitting on the toilet (definitely done that).

You know, there's a huge whole in this rant. If the snooze-inventor didn't invent the feature for our benefit, then why did he invent it? Send guesses to jamesguimaraes@me.com. Most creative answer will win an alarm clock. And if you think I'm kidding, why not submit an answer to try me out? Remember: the snooze button is not our friend. It is our enemy. And your task is to come up with the purpose behind its inception.

Pay for Your Human Nature

I am twenty-six years old. I grew up in the wealthy suburbs of New York City. I went to a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. From these three sentences, you can safely assume that the first time I was drunk was long before my 21st birthday. You could also assume that I smoked cloves then cigarettes (more than assume for the latter seeing as I smoked for a couple of years before quitting).

I don't find anything wrong with pointing people towards these facts and assumptions because I don't see myself running for any public or political office. Not to mention, only a dozen people dig into this little diary of mine (it's a journal, damn it!) and they all know these things already. Still, in the last ten years, with the Internet in everyone's pocket attached to a camera, linked to a network of other people, we can safely say good bye to any and all forms of privacy.

I was very drunk on Thursday night. Oh, before I go on, I should also point out that whenever you open your mouth, you're bound to piss someone off with even the most harmless statements. So to my under eighteen audience out there, let me remind you that I'm not in high school, college, or fresh-out. I'm an adult with dental bills, a girlfriend who knows my social security number, and a metro card. As I was saying, I was drunk on Thursday night. And I was rowdy. Not violent and hopefully not obnoxious, just rowdy. I had been sleeping a lot lately and upon seeing some friends for the first time in a few months, the laughs fed the tap which filled the glass that coated my stomach with hops and barely.

But I didn't do anything wrong. In fact, I didn't do anything embarrassing. But if you snapped a picture at just the right moment as I was trying to swallow a pretzel and laugh at the same time, you would have seen a James who looked like a red-in-the-face about-to-vomit mess.

You won't find me on Facebook. Sure, I loved it the first year after College. It was fun to stay in touch with people and post random gobble-dee-gook on their walls. And the picture sharing was easy and cool. But then a twelve year old tried to friend me. And my mom. In the same day. So I untagged everything I could and left Facebook.

Did someone take that picture of me on Thursday night? You can't link it to me on Facebook but if you write my name beneath it, will it appear when you search for James Guimaraes?

We gave up our privacy so that we could all know what's going on at exactly the same time. Better, we gave up our privacy so that we could convince ourselves that we were connected to people in a meaningful way while driving a car, eating McDonalds and listening to the latest album Pitchfork Media told us to. When we all get fired in a month because those assumptions you could've made anyway now have documented evidence to back them up (posted on Facebook, tweeted on Twitter and fed to your pocket via AT&T), I'll ask the world a simple question: was it worth it?

I might be a Jerk

Here are just a few examples:

Today, as I sat comfortably on the bench of my train-car, a woman shuffled onto the train, barely squeezing between seventy-three other people all standing next to her. And my first (and only) thought about her was: God, I hope she doesn’t breathe on me. Hahahahahahahaha. I’ve re-read that like six times and it gets funnier and funnier – I’m a really really bad person.

Last night, at a bar, a tight-jeans, clean sneakers, mustache with thick black glasses began to talk in our conversation and for some reason, I said in my best southern accent, “Scuse me sir, we don’t take kindly to freaks and weird-o’s.”

This morning, as I was crossing the street, a van pulled past the white line at the red light. I stared the driver in the eye doing my best to convey: hit me! I’ll sue your ass, make $500k and never work again. Go on, hit me! Learn how to drive, asshole!” I then looked down at his license plate, saw it was from New Jersey and looked back up at him eye-yelling, “Go fuckin figure. Jerk.”

The kid doing gymnastics on the subway car. Or better yet, the parents who are too wrapped up with their cell phones to notice.

The fifteen different girls/women talking on their cell phones on the way to work. And straight up, it’s not men. It’s girls. Like they think they’re still in the bar with the music blaring but the rest of us in the real-world are sitting in a coke-can with wheels begging her to S.T.F.U.

I went into the bathroom last night and thought: wow, a black light bulb and seventeen rolls of toilet paper on the wall. Brooklyn. Bleh. But honestly, why should that bother me? Why does the ugliest-man-alive competition among hipsters irk me? Why do I look at the people around me and instantly hate all of them? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me? And ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at the beginning: I might just be a jerk.

Two months later, I still love coffee

Hey Scottie,

Yesterday, I had like two tablespoons of a medium-roast left in the jar but decided to make two or three cups of it anyway. It was watery, but passable. I go into the fridge to put a little whole milk in it and what do I find? Out of whole milk - all that I have is skim. Shit. So now I'm drinking watery, milk flavored, coffee flavored peepee juice. It was lame.

Last night, I set out to correct the problem. French Roast and Whole Milk. I'm not fucking around.

I make the F.R. this morning with like 8 scoops ground and 8 ounces of H2O. The coffee that came out could be used to re-cauk a bathtub except it's black... and smells like coffee. Grab the whole milk, pour about six cups of that into the cafe-O-blackhole that is my thermos and head out the door. Everytime I take a sip, I feel like I can taste in the back of my eyeballs.

Anyway, I know how much you appreciate the 'joe' so I figured I should let you know.

Love,

Yaps