Voices in My Head

“You don’t have to do anything. Just say yes. Come on.”

Martha is so instant that I have a Facebook page that she has signed me up and all I need to do is say yes. She will maintain it. She wants to do this for two reasons. One: she will ‘friend’ me so she can invite me to Lily’s birthday party,and two: so she can put my link on the ‘in a relationship with’ area.

See here is the deal. I really don’t want another web thing. I already have a personal website, a portfolio website, a blog, a flickr page, and a LinkedIn page. All of which I’m pretty up to date and active on.

Yes, just about everyone I fucking know, (which isn’t that many folks) has a Facebook page and I’m not dissing Facebook, nor am I a snot about it all, I just don’t think I’m a Facebooker.

I would like to say that the pressure that I am getting is comparable to the pressure I was under to do drugs when I was 13, but I was way to open to drug usage for it to be considered ‘pressure’. It was more like,

“Man, this will fuck you up. Really good shit.” said random best friend in the me decade of the 70s’.
“Ok, cool!” I replied without hesitation.

No, this Facebook pressure is more like when my best friend Sheila convinced me and my already naturally curly red hair to get a perm and I ended up with an Irish-fro for five months.

Some good news around here. I’m going to be published in a book. The International Analogue Photographic Society.

I sold a print.

The Boat and The Barn

This photo:

Grow

was Gawker Pic of the Day.

And Pinkberry has a Buy 5 and get 1 free card! It’s so good I almost want to open a franchise upstate.

Stamp me

Meanwhile in some seriously unfortunate timing on my part, I was stuck on a train with this:

“Hey, you’re not going to fucking believe this. I just got laid-off. Six months salary plus Cobra, if I want it. We’ll see. I’ve got to read over it. Fuck, I’m on vacation for the next 6 months, I tell ya. You should come on down and hang out at the pool. I’ll cook up some burgers, drink some beer…”

And so started my fifty-minute train ride. This guy was so loud that if I were standing outside of the train, I could probably still hear him. Headphones didn’t even breakthrough. So I listened and took notes. Oh and just so we have a clear picture here, his ringtone is When the Saints Go Marching In. Ringtones can really set the mood.

I listen in on this very loud, very middle-aged man become emotionally unhinged with each passing minute. He proceeded to call everyone he knew and the whole train car went the emotional distance with him.

From laughter and general jackassery: “Hey, fuck you dude. You are the sucker who still has to get up in the morning. I’m just going to go home and see what Mr. Obama is going to do for me.”

Self-reassurance: “Yeah it will be ok, I’ll do consulting. I know people. Maybe I’ll come down to Baltimore and spend some time on your boat.”

Anger: “Dude! So yeah, they laid me off. Can you fucking believe that! No, I’m on the train. They escorted me out of the fucking building. I couldn’t stop by. So you and Bob are fucked. Totally fucked! My team is the only team that knows how to restore the database. What? When? Has it been tested? When did they decide? Who decided to convert… ah man, I always hated that fucker. Well if you haven’t run the new database against the old… oh, right, well I still say you guys are fucked! Ok man, yeah, next week maybe. I might be too busy sleeping.”

Denial: “In all my years, this has never happened to me. I’ve never been fired or laid off or anything. That can’t figure out stuff without the team. Charlie said they have a whole new system in place but that it’s untested. I said ‘well don’t call me when the shit don’t work’.”

Depression: “I was at Bear Stearns for nine years and I jumped ship last year when I saw they were going down. I knew months ahead of time that they were going to fail. So I took this job and now, less than a year later I’ve been let go. I don’t know man, I’m not sure… well, you have all the contacts right? Maybe you could send some leads my way?”

And then fear: “Fuck dude, I guess I’ll figure out about unemployment. Oh man, shit I don’t know. Keep your ears open for me, all right?”

And then, finally the last ten minutes before we pulled into the station the car was quiet.