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Got No Truck

When I’m Dead and Gone

January 14, 2021 by Rob

I can blame it on my late Dad, but my very seasonal gloom between Thanksgiving and St. Ronnie’s Birthday has been with me for a decade; the Fun Sized version of a deep sadness and lonlieness I’ve lived with since I was 13.  I’ve worked very hard – over a very long time and with a load of help that would be snug on a Panamax vessel — to convince this guy that it’s all okay and that fine. 

It is work.  Like taking 40mg of omeprazole every day to keep your stomach from growing new holes or eating spinach, caring for your mental health is something you get to remember every morning .  I watch out for things that might turn the buzz in my head up to 11, but I know what to do to keep the train rolling when life keeps the knob stuck at 7.  It is not easy.  Keeping the right balance is tricky; push it too hard either way and blood is going to come out of unexpected places.

I am also very lucky to have people – sitting right here — who want me to be well and give me the space and help to get there, with no other agenda. 

Still, these months are hard, even in years that weren’t total dumpster fires like 2020/2021. I long for 2019. And a Scorpion Bowl.

In 2018, 48,344 American’s took their lives by suicide, out of 1.4 million attempts.  70% of “successful” suicides were white men, Most, like me, were over the age of 45. Over half were done with a firearm.

Naturally, these numbers don’t include those people who’ve died from opioids or drink while trying to keep their black dogs’ bark to a whimper. These numbers are for intentional suicides.

Suicides have skyrocketed since 2008.  Tentative details for 2020 indicate those numbers will hit the moon. 

“It’s easy to bash white middled-aged men in America. As a member of that privileged group, I’ll admit that much of the bashing has been warranted: No group in the history of the world has been given and squandered more than the white man. Yet the American white man is responsible for enough suicides annually that Madison Square Garden could not hold all the victims. And no matter how privileged, that’s somebody’s dad, someone’s friend, someone’s brother and someone’s husband.” 

From Rolling Stone

Each of these deaths is a tragedy.   

Still, even in their unbearable grief, none of their family members is going to write a rose-colored eulogy for these men.  No review of their herculean work or study ethic, lament for their now-silent piano.  No one is going to start a charity to continue the Biblical sacrifices they’ve made to lift up the poor.  No one is going to read their bio in primetime on MSNBC.  Complete strangers will not dot their RIPs with a single-tear emoji, a big hug emoji.  The President-elect is not going to call their wives, children, or parents.1

The death of each of these men is a tragedy.  We are living through an an epidemic of despair.   

When I do go, it will be worn by age and crippled by extreme hugs from my small family. Still, I’m certainly aware there are other ways to get to the end of the street. No matter how I make it there, I hope that the people who love me get a chance to tell their story about me.  And I hope that it is true and uncluttered with hyperbole and honest about the struggles I faced.  I hope that they can show the world Rob the man, makeup free and with a lens clean of Vaseline, and not Rob the Demigod. I hope that they can be honest about how I left.

Something like: 

“Rob was so handsome that it was impossible to look directly at him; his reflection was tolerable, but just barely.  His writing was clear and accurate and brought joy to the heart and tears to the eyes to those few who read it.  He was kind to dogs and babies.   

“As so many you know first-hand clarity Rob was nothing if not a gigantic, unrepentant asshole. A genuine prick.

“You wouldn’t know he was dead for his ice cold toes. He was in bed at 9, paperback on his face and headphones turned up to 11, two wool sweaters and a quilt around his shoulders, when his wife of 60 years found him. She kicked over his last cup of tea, thoughtlessly placed at the foot of his nightstand.

“We’ll miss him, but he could be a bitch to live with.”

This is right and true. 

  1. I can’t imagine their pain, but as I read their eulogy for their son, I don’t see depression. The talking cure and a prozac would not fix what ailed him. I see a young man of exceptional talent trying to fill a hole within himself. Not a saint, not a machine, not a prodigy but someone who could never fill that hole and that’s the disease. To identify it as anything else neither honest nor helpful to those who struggle.

    In other words: while hitting the ground @ 120 miles per hour is what killed you, it was the aircraft – held together with duct tape and good vibes – falling apart over Newark that caused of your death. Blaming the ground serves no one. ↩

Filed Under: Got No Truck Tagged With: black dog, depression, middle age, suicide, sunny side of life, white men

Let All the Children Boogie; or, An Old Man’s Lament

January 4, 2021 by Rob

I’m sitting here at my desk, writing this post while ripping a copy Andrew Bird’s recent collection of Christmas and holiday-inspired songs, Hark!, at 320kbs.  It’s January 4, 2021.  I received the disc in the mail on Saturday.1 

Bird had previously released some of these songs on an EP of the same name.  I didn’t buy the EP, so I was excited to get the long player.  Initially, he released the LP only on Vinyl and Digital Download.  I don’t have or want a record player.  I listen to MP3s on my phone only because Apple no longer makes iPods.  Rather than buy low-rez files from SoundCloud, I prefer to rip a compact disk myself.  I buy CDs. I like CDs.  I am, after all, a middle aged white man.  I’m saddened that another middle-aged white men, like Andrew Bird, no longer see me in the market and didn’t initially released the album on CD. 

So it goes. 

Rather than get it Amazon Prime-d, I preordered the CD right from the record label.  The CD was issued on December 11.  It was put in the mail December 11, at a post office just outside of Chicago.  It didn’t move from that post office until the 22nd.  It didn’t even arrive in the the great state of Maryland until the 28th.   

I’m sure it’ll play just as well in 2021. 

Speaking of CDs…What seems like decades ago, SHE and I watched the third season of The Crown, following a revisit with the second, as prelude to the fourth.  We had abandoned the show after one episode of the second season and only came back to it because either we watched literally everything else or it was the only thing we could agree on.   

Needs must. 

There’s a scene with Princess Anne, played by actress Erin Doherty. She’s driving in the rain and singing along to David Bowie on the radio.  The song is Starman. 

Starman waiting in the sky
He’d like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’s told us not to blow it
‘Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

David Bowie’s Starman

You see the power is out out all over London, and Buckingham is in total darkness.  Anne arrives at the palace and is lead through gets to the palace and Anne is lead through hallways lit by 10000 candles, while humming the la, la, la, la-la, la part over and over 

Wait, you can just watch for yourself: 

To keep myself from freaking the fuck out every twenty minutes, I let me brain go on walkabouts.  During one brief trip, that melody snuck and stuck for days.  Sometimes, in quiet moments, I will shout out “Let all the children boo-gay.” 

And then I thought: why can’t all the children boo-gay?  Right: Pandemic.  I guess my kid’s only DJ Krew is on temporary hold:  streaming music over the Internet to a room full of dancing 6 year old ravers is still something that record companies and publishers frown upon, even during a global health crisis. 

The Google machine brought me to the website for a compilation CD, Let All the Children Boogie.  It’s a collection of all-ages-approved David Bowie covers, with proceeds going to the It Gets Better Project.  Of course, I bought a physical CD.  From Amazon, unfortunately. 

They Will All Boogie.

And it’s a good comp, and, thankfully the covers aren’t faithful recreations of Bowie songs.  Folk-y and/or countrified “alternative,” as it might be programmed on the satellite radio, they’re a good introduction to his songwriting for kids (and their parents) who aren’t quite ready for the real thing. Unlike so much during 2020, the disc was a good surprise. 

  1. Since my days as a secretary I’ve loved the U.S. Post Office.  It’s rules and exceptional basic competence.  Performing a largely thankless (and often maligned) task well and inexpensively.  I hate the damage that Trump and his cult have done to it – explicitly and with purpose – over the last four hears.  I hate the Democrats and Republicans who, since the Clinton administration,  have taken concrete steps to weaken the Post Office enough that it has shattered under the stress of COVID. ↩

Filed Under: Got No Truck, Listen Here, Poof, You're a Sandwich Tagged With: andrew bird, bowie, cd, old man, post office, records, the crown

Candy Candy Candy

October 29, 2020 by Rob

I love candy. It’s a toss up between your classic Peanut M&Ms, Butterfingers, and Sour Patch Kids. Really, any sour gummy type candy will do in a pinch.

During the Pandemic, I’ve been known to go through a Family Party Bag of M&Ms in about a week. We’ve decided it’s best not to keep them in the house or I will get even closer to the size of the house.

My dental hygienist does not share my enthusiasm, although 45 years of this habit have brought about only one cavity, filled 20 odd years ago.

Anyway, as we head into prime candy guzzling season, I dug about the youtube a little bit and found some interesting videos on candy making.

Hard Candy

Hammond’s Candy has been around for a 100 years and says they still make candy by hand (although they use some pretty impressive machines to reduce the amount of physical labor involved). They make the ribbon candy in your grandmother’s candy dish, gigantic candy canes, and those swirly lollipops that look good but I’ve never seen anyone eat.

Kammy Stucker, who narrates the first video, says that Hammond’s is the largest hand-made candy manufacturer. Still, they use a number of heavy industrial machines to match their scale.

Kammy Stucker: First Lady of Candy talks about her job at Hammond’s Candy

The next video is a narration-free walk-through of the Hammond’s Candy shop floor. Lots of people and big machines. I find the candy stretcher and the big heated roller that makes candy canes round fun to watch.

Narration-free walk through the Hammond Factory

In thinks video, workers at a small shop called CandyLabs make hard candy completely by hand. They go into much more detail about the chemistry and workflow of actually making candy than the videos above. And they don’t have one of those neat candy pullers … the workers stretch the stiffening sugar by hand from a hook on the wall. The candy designs are fun and very labor intensive.

Completely Hand Made Hard Candy Chunks

Candy No One Buys

A pastry chef in Korea makes chocolate candy I’ve only seen in the refrigerated case at tourist trap diners in New York state. His artistry is fantastic but I wouldn’t eat one.

Garbage Candy

It is the season for Candy Corn. Did you know it was originally called Chicken Feed?

Candy Corn is, essentially, vanilla flavored fondant. The guy below tries to make Candy Corn on his own, using ingredients he produces himself, including sugar from cane, cornstarch from real corn kernels, and real gelatin from a bone he found in a field (!!?!?!?!?!?). All in all, pretty gross.

Too much time in the corn maze; also gross.

The company that originally came up with Candy Corn is now known as Jelly Belly, who also make jelly beans that taste like snot.

Production is incredibly industrial and joyless.

Could be manufacturing anything, really. Lead ingots?
Chicken Feed is a better name.

Filed Under: Got No Truck Tagged With: candy, candy canes, candy corn, factories, halloween, hard candy, industrial, joy, joyless, lollipops, ribbon candy

You Will Make Better Mistakes, Tomorrow

May 29, 2019 by Rob

On any given day, on any team, one member is going to do the heavy lifting. You will do the heavy lifting tomorrow.

Filed Under: Got No Truck

2019: No Resolutions

January 3, 2019 by Rob

I drive down Georgia Avenue towards DC nearly every day and meet one or more of these drivers each journey: 20 in a 35; Ride-a-Tail; Stops for No Discernible Reason; Slows for Turn But Does Not; Slows for Turn With No Signal; Swerves into Adjacent Lane Because a Bus/Pedestrian/Uber has Stopped in Theirs (Obviously); Crosses Three Lanes of Traffic to Get On Beltway; Turning Left from Lane Marked ‘No Left Turns;’ Still Reading Text 10 Seconds After Green.

These drivers make me angry. Furious. I gesture. I shout. I roll down my window to scream toothless threats into the wind until my face is wet with spit.

They’re doing this to me.

They are hurting me.

No, of course they’re not. Like me, they’re just trying to get through the day without falling through an open manhole or slipping on a banana peel. They’re thinking about work. Their sick Aunt. What to make for dinner.

I’m a person of greater than modest means. Still: Getting out of bed, making coffee, dressing myself & the kid, driving to school and then work, working, doing work that matters, reading a few pages on the can, trolling Twitter and FB for pictures of your beautiful tropical holiday between stories describing of our impending political/environmental doom, buying groceries, feeding myself, the family, bath time, 3 books and a song, paying bills and doing dishes, watching a little TV while locked into work email with a customer just starting her day in Asia, holding my tiny family close, clacking out 200 words… that’s all I can squeeze out most days. That’s success. I don’t owe the universe more than that.

Women who do it solo1, likely with more children and far fewer resources than my family, are the only people who can every rightly claim to be “owning” this life. That they don’t collectively say “Fuck this” and seize the halls of power is a testament to how steep – and exhausting – are the barriers we demand women surmount before the day even begins.

Some of you, though, are ethereal beings – pixies, imps, demi-gods – who can push out a novel or a business or music in the spaces between the events that take up a normal day. Do you have a staff? Shadow henchmen? Office space that sits on the periphery of time-space? Maybe you don’t. Is there an accounting at the end of the day that is suppressed, omitted from the public record? I’d guess yes.

In work and life, I can over promise and under deliver. Sometimes I try to connect with people and I fail. I try again and fail again and that failure carriers a great weight. We’re all just trying to muddle through the day. I’m (mostly) succeeding at my core responsibilities and the core is fucking hard.

You know that.

Driving down Georgia, I know nothing about the souls of those drivers, if they are good or bad people. I can think: “She’s self-involved. He hates his family. Maybe that guy’s a Adolf Hitler and Hugh Hefner chimera wrapped up in a $5000 suit, a JD and an S-Class.” But I don’t know. I do know that I am deeply distrustful of any system that applies a value to a human being. I do know that humans make mistakes and and are exclusively focused on just getting through the day.

You don’t know, either. You think you know the specific quality in people creates conflict, but you don’t know.

I forget anniversaries. I miss conference calls. I say the “right” thing the wrong way. I drift over into your lane while singing along to the Beatles. I am human. I make mistakes and spend 99% of my brain cycles trying not to trip over my own mess.

You might call this privilege. Ok.

Expecting perfection and attributing anything short of it to a trait other than “human” is to set yourself up for unending misery.

Good luck in 2019.

  1. Know it’s exclusively women. Take a good think on why you object, Men, when anyone makes that evident observation. ↩

Filed Under: Got No Truck, Writing Tagged With: 2019, banana peel, georgia ave, human beings, life, living, mistakes, open manhole, perfection, resolutions, roadrage

Be Jolly

November 5, 2018 by Rob

Christmas is coming (in two months), I’m fat, I guess it’s time to celebrate?

The Wee Bairn and I went to a Starbucks this past weekend.  Amy Grant was on the satellite radio singing about Yule Tide Carols.  A barista stacked shiny red and green travel mugs near the register.  Shouldn’t be suprised?  Costco and Home Depot have had animatronic Santas on display since early October1.  Getting this stuff gone and numbers in early makes Good Business Sense, I hear from people who don’t have to pick and pack or stand under a tiny speaker blaring “Santa Baby” folding Gap sweaters.

SWMNBB mentioned that JD McPherson had a new album of Christmas songs out.  A couple of years ago, he released this track, which also appears on the new album:

Of course, after looking for this new music, I spent another several hours and $100 on a stack of additional Christmas CDs2.  They’re coming in now.

Those who know me know I love Christmas songs, novelty and traditional, and enjoy sharing them with others.  I will again this year.

Any suggestions or requests?

 

  1. I’ve seen a lot of seasonal anxiety in my trade, more than usual, during what is normally the busy period of manufacturers and retail.  Looming deadlines for 45’s tariffs on Chinese manufactured goods are for juicing #s in shipping, imports, raw material exports, volume of goods, warehouse space, salaries for stevedores, and low-wage warehouse workers.  When they’re put into action, and with the traditional slowdown in the Western and Lunar New Years, everything is going to come to a screeching halt.  Merry Christmas! ↩
  2. That’s right, CDs.  I buy physical media and rip them at a quality that I can’t download. And I still hold the disks if my PC and her backups going blooey. ↩

Filed Under: Got No Truck

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