the garrison show

the future is cloudy.

at the beginning of the year i applied to a few law schools, all in california. i’ve been waitlisted at UC-Hastings, but accepted to U San Deigo and Loyola in Los Angeles (and still waiting to hear from USC and Santa Clara). between the beginning of the year and now, though, my conviction that law school is what i want has slipped. especially considering the average annual tuition is around $35K and with other costs balloons up to almost $60K a year. to go to school. i actually pretty strongly believe i would enjoy the law school experience but at what cost…

i’ve also been meaning to apply here for a month or so (as staff, not as a student). i’m not afraid of being the IT guy as long as i’m on a cruise ship. the september itinerary leaves from amsterdam and ends up in hong kong. sign me up. i would love to do this for a year or two, but i’m not sure it’s something i could turn into a career.

i also think about going back to teaching, though i don’t think i’d want to be in a math classroom. i’ve thought about completing a bachelor’s in english (and considered getting a master’s) to be able to teach that, but i worry about being motivated enough to complete the courses. i also, of course, still don’t want to pay for it.

so, here i am at 30 with 2 mini-careers behind me and no idea where to go next. the real problem, i think, is that the things that i’m good at are all things i’m not super-interested in and all of fantasies require skills i don’t have. if i really could have my dream job, i think i’d play piano and sing in a bar. and travel. with a laptop and a camera. and see what happens.

we’ll see what happens.

i’ve got a lot of free time on my hands, with potentially a lot more to come so let’s set some goals, right? i do firmly believe that the chance of accomplishing something increases exponentially when you write it down. so what do i want to do? in no particular order:

• as a celebration of my 30th birthday, i’d like to write my autobiography to this point.
• i need to learn to play one fucking song on the piano, start to finish, that sounds good.
• as the weather gets warmer, i need to get in a workout pattern. cycling, tennis, basketball. weights. bathing suit season is coming.

those are the plans. stay tuned…

okay, i haven’t written a post in a solid month. at least. let’s not belabor the point. what have i been up to? as if you care…although, if you’re looking at this page you are obviously one of the faithful so maybe i should tell you what’s up. and what gets the job done better than a numbered list? so without further ado and in no particular order…

1. zigler got married. it was a stupendous affair that occurred in fairfax, va. peep the photos here. it’s difficult to imagine being happier for a newlywed couple…good people doing good things.

2. i’m working. it’s been busy and not too much fun. blech.

3. i’m dating a girl from chile and it’s been pretty wonderful.

4. due to numbers 2 and 3, i have not had time to do anything else.

questions?

and now, at the end of my three weeks, i find myself back in HK. i’ve got four days before my flight skips town and honestly, i wish it were two.

i’m stumped at how to really entertain or educate myself in hong kong. the city seems really inaccessible for doing anything above a simple tourist level. so i’ll do the same thing i did for the first three days i was here: make new hostel friends and walk around and take pictures.

i was happily surprised by randomly meeting a couple of englishmen whom i’d met in beijing that were staying at the same hostel here in HK. we eventually talked ourselves into buying a basketball and visiting a local court since it had been the better part of a month since any of us had any physical activity.

we found a court and long story short, i ruled it. we played 2-on-2 with another brit and i can vouch for the fact that basketball is sorely overlooked on the UK diet of education. i had to remind them to actually stop running before they shot the ball. they wanted to throw it up in the middle of a string - from about half court. it was silly.

then we actually ended up playing soccer with a bunch of local kids. they were quite amused to be playing with some tall white people from other countries. i was quite amused at how much i sucked. i went from king of the court to trying to hide on the field. my own soccer education was not insignificant, but it seems to have been largely ineffective.

in other news, i got 13 tailored shirts and 4 tailored pants. it’s always been difficult finding my size in just about anything and i’m happy to be newly outfitted for my new job. hong kong is not quite the bargain that thailand or vietnam is, but it’s close. and it’s certainly cheaper than the US. thankfully, now i have no need of banana republic.

this just about concludes my china posts. i’ve got one page of notes in my small notebook that i will do my final post from. it probably won’t go up for a few days, though, so don’t hold your breath. i hope you’ve found something to enjoy reading this. i wonder sometimes as i’m writing, whether i’m doing it for you or for me. i still don’t really know…in my best moments, i think both and in my worst, i think it’s not really doing any of us any good. if you’ve learned anything from something i wrote, let me know. though i’m not holding my breath…

okay, here’s a fun card game. i learned it in australia, forgot about it, learned it again in china. good times…

you can have 2-8 players, maybe more if you get a couple decks. you deal each player 3 separate cards face down, 3 cards face up on top of them, and then a 3-card hand face down. so each player has 3 cards in their hand, and 3 piles in front of them, each pile with a face-up card on top of one face-down. the deck goes in the middle. each player is allowed to swap cards between his hand and the 3 cards face up. then the game begins.

the objective is to get rid of your cards. you can only play an equal or higher rank. if you cannot play a card from your hand, you pick up the pile of face-up cards (not the deck). if there are cards remaining in the deck, you must have at least 3 cards in your hand so pick one up for every one you play. if you’ve got more than 3 cards (from picking up the pile), you don’t need to pick from the deck. when the cards in your hand are gone, you may begin the play the face up cards. when you’ve played all three of those, you may play the face down cards (one at a time) without looking before choosing which one to play.

there are a number of wild cards:

2 - resets the count, can be played anytime
3 - invisible, plays as the card underneath it, can be played anytime
7 - player must go lower than 7, must be played in order
8 - reverse, must be played in order
10 - clear the pile, play another card, may be played anytime
and that’s it! anyone wanna play?

so i’m driving out of biloxi and my “battery charging” light comes on. now, it’s a red light so i’m thinking maybe that’s important. i check the owner’s manual and it tells me it signifies that the alternator is no long charging the battery. if i turn off cruise control, the radio, and every other electrical device, i should be able to drive a few miles to the nearest service station.

umm, where’s the service station?

i am seriously in the middle of nowhere. i drive for 15 minutes - nothing. i turn and drive for another 15 minutes - nothing. it’s just rural houses and rundown, vacant buildings. and poor people. and we’re not talking about poor people with handy honda toolboxes, either.

so i eventually run into a gas station and ask where the nearest garage/mechanic is. the old guy behind the counter mutters (seriously, mutters) something about “old mason” knowing something about cars, but he hasn’t seen him “since the hurricane.” jeez. i leave with directions to the nearest “big” town with a new appreciation for my full set of teeth.

following the instructions i got puts me down the main strip of gulfport, mississippi. a bustling metropolis it is not. it’s becoming clear very quickly i’m not going to find a neighborhood goodyear. i’m close to giving up hope when i spy the small white shack on the side of the road. i see lawnmowers–lots of lawnmowers–in the back and the hand-painted sign above the door says “fred’s fix it.” well, shit. i’m pretty desperate so we’re going to find out what fred has to say.

i knock and the oldest, grizzledest, cantankerous old black guy shuffles out. i ask where i can find a mechanic but fred, because it is fred himself, sidesteps the question and askes what the problem is. i explain my little light and he tells me to pop the hood. what can i lose? i pop the hood and watch skeptically as he peers inside. he stammers something about the japanese and shuffles back inside his shop without a word of explanation to me. he comes back out a minute later with a hammer and a pipe.

well, now. i am confident that fred is trying to do the right thing here, but the image of him with the hammer and the pipe combined with my engine doesn’t quite inspire confidence in me. i have visions of black smoke, my dead, black car and dead, black fred lying on top of it. i’m mentally running through ways i can politely tell him to back the fuck off my ride when he puts the pipe in the engine and pounds it with the hammer. the engine shudders for a second and fred asks me if the red light is still on.

country folk may not be able to talk about shakespeare. they may not be able to design their own web page. hell, some of them may get confused using an ATM but country folk know some shit about some shit. the damn red light was off. fred be praised. he explained something about brushes and rotors and assured me i’d make it to houston to be able to get it replaced. i’m still flabbergasted and staring at the dash in amazement. by the time i’d collected my wits enough to get my wallet out, he was inside the door. i yelled, asking him how much i owed him and he yelled back through the door that he was closed.

awesome.

it doesn’t take long in memphis to be propositioned by a hooker. it takes quite a bit longer, in fact, to find a hotel when there are three conventions in town. but the resourceful among you will have no problem using what God puts in front of you to find what you need. i had the hooker, so i used the hooker. are you curious how that might go down (pardon the pun)? a transcript:

hooker: “hey, boy, whatchoo doin walkin all by yoself?”
me: “well, i’m a long way from home and i don’t really know anyone here.”
hooker: “we could fix that problem pretty quick.”
me: “i reckon i’ll fix it just fine once i find a bar, thanks.”
hooker: “so you lookin for some company?”
me: “no, thank you, i’m just looking a cheap hotel.” [pause while the obvious dawns on me] “do you know of any?”
hooker: “king’s cross is the cheapest downtown, no doubt about it. i’ll walk you there.”
me: “why don’t you just tell me where it is? i’m sure you’ve got a busy night ahead of you.”
and that, as they say, was that.

now, king’s cross is not a beautiful place. it’s right by the greyhound station; just close enough, in fact, to catch all the strange and slightly unsettling smells that always seem to go along with bus stations. i was amazed to find a tv in the room, especially after i saw the “bathroom.”

good lord. never have i seen a bathroom in worse condition. the sink, the counter and the mirror were all cracked; the soap, still in its wrapper, looked like it hadn’t been touched in more than a few years and was now supporting a micro-culture of its own. it was with incredible reluctance, and only because i’d spent the last night sleeping on the snow, that i used the shower. i wish i’d had a body condom.

after a quick (!) shower, i needed to get out the hotel and find some dinner. i headed to beale st. here i encountered the first of the convention groups: a posse of country music DJ’s, in town for a st. jude’s fundraiser, was heading to an open bar. without any hesitation, so was i.

it wasn’t too early, but beale was dead when we got there. pretty much the only thing happening was this party. but the alcohol and appetizers were free. bingo. i was there for about half an hour before i realized i was actually starving for some real food. when i was seated upstairs, i ended up joining a couple at another table and passed the time learning about the second conference in town. they had come from asheville, nc, to take part in a free media event. that’s ‘free’ in the sense of ‘independent from the mainstream and actually compelling and interesting.’ by the end of the night we were joined by another solo traveller, this one a fellow just out of stanford. he used big words inside of long sentences. show-off.

the couple ended up giving us some tickets to the media conference opening party. we went. we partied. the people there made me realize where i truly was on the dork-meter. still pretty low. we tried beale st. again late-night, but there just was not a lot of activity. most of the bars were near empty and there was a distinct lack of people playing the blues, which was oddly sad.

in the morning, i drove around downtown and a little bit outside of memphis. it’s a pretty beat-up city. it’s far from pretty and easy to understand why everyone’s got the blues all the time. the weather was fairly nice, but other than that, i wouldn’t want to live here.

off to biloxi!!

the smokies are pretty damn impressive from about 10 miles out. that’s about when everything changes to accommodate their presence. the only things you see are hiking stores, cabins and museums. there are three roads that provide entrances to the park and about as many roads that wind through the park for those who don’t want to leave the safety of their vehicle. obviously, i’m here to get into the thick of things so “roads” aren’t going to do me much good.

i found the information booth where you can buy a map (for a buck). i bought my map and then shuffled my crap around between the car and my backpack. it took me about 45 minutes and should have been the first major signal that, in fact, i had no idea what i was doing. as it was, i wasn’t ready to concede any such thing and, loaded up with about 45 lbs of stuff i thought was vaguely important, i headed off.

i made it about 30 feet before a ranger called over and asked me where i was going. “oh, don’t worry, ranger, i’ve got it all worked out” and i whipped out my map and showed him the ‘trail’ i was taking. hmm. turns out i was a little premature (THAT never happens…); turns out, instead of hiking, i should have been driving along the road that went another 3 miles in. fine with me - i was planning a pretty huge hike and it was already 11:00-nothing wrong with a 3-mile head start.

the hike started off beautifully. i reckon it took about 45 minutes, certainly no more than an hour, before the novelty wore off and i realized that my feet were killing me. upon further inspection, i noticed my boots weren’t even tied. hmm. i also managed to have dress socks on. calvin klein probably didn’t intend those socks for hiking - just a hunch. after i threw on another pair of socks and laced up, i was seriously underway.

welll, i was underway for about 10 minutes before i slowed to address the debilitating pain in my groin. as i reflected (in agony), i realized it had only been about 3 years since my last hike, so i was a little bit confused as to why i should be in any pain. weird.

after some very deep stretching, i felt not at all improved. i had been hoping to average 3 or 4 miles an hour on this hike. i was now moving about 20 feet an hour. old people with walkers could have passed me on the trail and i would have been powerless to stop them.

i’m a fighter, though, and i perservered up the mountain (and i do mean UP) and managed to make it to the closest campsite. i collapsed. i barely managed to get my tent up (first time i’ve had that problem!) before crawling in and falling asleep. at 3:00 in the afternoon.

i slept for an hour or so, which as it turns out, was about the worst thing in the world i could do. not only did i still feel like ass, now i wasn’t tired. this became a much more significant dilemma about 9 hours later, at midnight, when i STILL could not fall asleep.

of course, it’s difficult to say whether the nap was my most significant problem or whether the 10-degree weather had anything to do with it. maybe the snow that i was trying to sleep on contributed, as well. perhaps it could have been easier to rest had i been able to feel any of my extremeties. it’s easy to second-guess.

long story short (right!), i cat-napped until about 8:30 when i “broke camp”–that’s misleading because it makes it sound like i know what i’m doing–and hightailed it back to the car. thankfully it was much easier going downhill than up. and my car requires much less of me than any mountain.

i think it may be a while before i try any cold-weather camping again. next time i’ll be sure to bring some electric socks and a keg.

knoxville is a gritty, hard-working sort of town and it seems like a fine place to begin my journey. knoxville is a long way from richmond, so i didn’t get to the hostel (which may be the only hostel in the state of tennessee) after dark. what i saw of the state from I-40 looked appealing: rolling hills, distant mountains and mysterious forests. i obviously needed a beer.
rolling into knoxville, it looks like a semi-industrial town with some small-town character. there’s some construction going on and it looks like expansion and revitalization. good. i’m still wondering where my beer is.

the gentleman who admitted me and took my $17 talked like he was 60, moved like he was 70 and smelled like he was 80. he was as gracious and kind as he could have been, though, and gave me a map of the ‘old city’ and recommendations on where to go. we discussed food and drink and and managed to quickly agree a beer was in my near future.

i wandered around downtown and, unable to follow his silly, incoherent directions, ended up in a coffee shop. they didn’t have beer, so i enjoyed the hell out of a hot chocolate. i couldn’t find anything else going on so i surrendered and called it a night. the only thing left was to decide whether it was worth it to stick around for much time during the day.

i’m about 30 minutes from grand smokey national forest, one of the most famous national parks in the united states. i wanted to do some camping and hiking on this trip and i can’t imagine i’m going to get a much better site than this (besides the grand canyon). so i’ll be staying another day and doing some hiking, bear-hunting, and camping.

i hope the park has beer.

on this page i will keep track on those i visit and record any writings, photos or videos i make while visiting. if any of these mean anything to you, you’re welcome to enjoy them, as well. from the world heritage list:1. great barrier reef, australia
2. fraser island, australia

i will miss some things about being unemployed. the ability to sleep in till 11:00, to stay up till 4:00, to spend a day watching movies, reading a book, or writing a short story, to visit long-lost friends in faraway places, to dream of vacations i could take (but never actually do), and just generally fart around in my underwear for far too long. well, hopefully i will miss them.

i think i will be coming up on a dilemma that i might as well start thinking about now. i’m hoping that i’ll miss all those above perks because i think i’m getting close to the end of two applications, which if everything goes as planned, will result in two comparable offers. both of which, i cannot accept. thus the choice.

option #1 involves technical consulting for a pretty large company. i’d be in the government group, most likely stationed in DC (which is exactly where i want to be) but with no guarantees but also the opportunity to travel most places in the world. the work could at times be interesting, but could prove in the long run to be mundane. think officespace, although i have reason to believe it won’t be nearly that bad. i have a good number of friends who work for this company and though i wouldn’t expect to work with them, i’ve gotten a generally very positive review. even though i’ve been teaching high school for the last three years (which is my job-holding record), i feel like this is going back down my real career path. in 3-5 years, i’m doing much the same thing, unless i get bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.
option #2 seems more divergent to me. i would be doing education research and helping write standardized math tests. it seems i would have two primary responsibilities: (1) write and review test items and (2) statistically measure and analyze the validity and reliability of existing tests and test items. this may be more intellectually stimulating and i may be able to get a free graduate degree out of it. if so, this would provide direction for my career. i could see myself getting a degree either in statistics or cognitive psychology. both of those are fascinating to me and could lead down really interesting roads.

the first option will probably do better financially, unless you account for graduate school tuition with option #2. my instinct says option #2 might be more interesting, but i could be wrong about that.

what am i missing? what do you think? what should i do?

and where should i take my last vacation?

i could easily try to blame this on my parents. i could say their habitual fear of pizza delivery men and minorities leaves them no choice but to lock the door compulsively. i could say that, but i know it’s really my fault.

i’ve been traveling around a lot, making my driving tour of virginia and catching up with old friends, and this means i keep a lot of clothes and things in my car. i pull into my parents house last night damn exhausted and leave everything in my car to get the next morning.

so the next morning, it hits me that i should do some laundry. for no particular reason, i put the clothes i’m wearing in the washing machine and go out to my car to get the rest. i realize right as i’ve gotten outside the garage that my car is locked and the keys are inside. no big deal.

except the garage door is locked, too.

so i’m seriously standing outside my parents house in my underwear with no car keys, no house keys, no phone. luckily they live in a quiet neighborhood on a pretty big hill so there wasn’t too much danger of being seen by random passerby’s, but there was a lot of danger of looking like a damn idiot all morning.

i checked for the extra key where it used to be (when i was in high school!) and was not surprised to not find it. so i draped myself in a old sheet that was lying in the garage, and bravely walked over to our neighbor’s. luckily, someone was home.

unfortunately, the whole damn family was home. the husband, the wife, the two kids, and the husbands parents, are all treated to a lengthly showing of me in my skivvies while we have a good old laugh about getting locked out. well, most of us were laughing.

long story short (well, it’s probably too late for that), i talked to my mom and figured out where the key is now and let myself back in. crisis averted.

what’s up, gang?

i sure haven’t written a post in a while, have i? i guess mostly cause i haven’t felt i’ve had too much to say. or maybe i’ve felt like no one really listened anyway. or maybe i just doubted the internet’s ability to contain me, the way a small paper bag wouldn’t be able to contain an adult male cougar.

so what’s new?

i’ve been in richmond thinking about my next “career” move. most recently, i’ve been playing xbox 360. way too much. which is one more reason i may head back up to DC for a while. another is that i miss the city and being surrounded by…noise. i feel way too much surrounded by myself at the moment.

what about you?

if you read this blog and don’t write a comment, i hate you. leave me an inspirational message. believe me, i could use it. you don’t have to use your real name, in fact, it’s probably funnier if you don’t. go for it.

In language, “Snakes on a Plane” falls into many grammatical categories. It can be used as a verb, both transitive (John snaked Mary on a plane) and intransitive (Mary was snaked on a plane by John).
It can be an action verb (John really snakes on a plane), a passive verb (Mary really doesn’t snake on a plane), an adverb (Mary is snaking-on-a-plane interested in John), or as a noun (Mary is a terrific snake on a plane).
It can also be used as an adjective (Mary is snaking-on-a-plane beautiful) or an interjection (Snakes on a Plane! I’m late for my date with Mary).
It can even be used as a conjunction (John is ugly, SNAKES ON A PLANE, he’s also stupid). As you can see, there are very few words with the overall versatility of the phrase “Snakes on a Plane.”
Aside from its R-rated-because-that’s-what-the-fans-demanded connotations, this incredible word can be used to describe many situations:
1) Surprise — “What the snakes on a plane are you doing here?”
2) Fraud — “I got snaked on a plane by the car dealer.”
3) Resignation — “Oh, snakes on a plane!”
4) Trouble — “I guess I’m snakes on a plane now.”
5) Aggression — “GO SNAKE YOURSELF ON A PLANE!”
6) Disgust — “Snake me on a motherfucking plane.”
7) Confusion — “What the…snakes on a plane…?”
8) Difficulty — “I don’t understand these snakes on a plane!”
9) Despair — “Snakes on a plane again….”
10) Pleasure — “I couldn’t be happier if I had snakes on a plane.”
11) Displeasure — “What the motherfuck is going on here, snakes on a plane?”
12) Lost — “Where are we going and why are there snakes on a plane?”
13) Disbelief — “UN-SNAKES-ON-A-PLANE-BELIEVABLE!”
14) Retaliation — “Up your fucking snakes on a plane!”
15) Denial — “I didn’t do it. The snakes did. On a plane.”
16) Perplexity — “I know everything to do with it, if it has anything to do with Snakes On A Plane.”
17) Apathy — “Who really gives a snake on a plane, anyhow?”
18) Greetings — “How the snakes on a plane are ya?”
19) Suspicion — “Who the fuck are you, snakes on a plane?”
20) Panic — “Let’s get the snakes on a plane out of here.”
21) Directions — “Fuck off, snakes on a plane.”
22) Awe — “How the snakes on a plane did you do that?”
It can be used in an anatomical description — “He’s got a motherfucking snake up his motherfucking plane.” It can be used in business — “How did I wind up with this job? It’s snakes on a plane!”

you’ve made it - this is my blog. consider this the red carpet.

below this post you can read just a handful of the inanities that occur in my daily life. they’re not interesting, even to me, and i lived them! they were really just a warm-up to what i’m facing now: solo international travel.

tomorrow night, at 11:00 pm i will board a flight to auckland, new zealand. a week later, i’ll fly to sydney. after a month or so, i’m back to georgia. hopefully in that time, i’ll have lived through a few stories worth telling - this is where they’ll be. it will be a multimedia experience, as well. i’ve got my camera and camcorder and plan to use both. anything i can post, i will.

so thanks for at least clicking this far. check in every week or so; leave comments; tell your friends. maybe one day i’ll be as widely read as my friend zigler. no matter what, i love you all.

now let’s go on a ride…

but i found my ipod. sometimes i just get anxious. don’t worry out there.

now i just have to buy a house, get a loan, get car insurance, move, pack and say all my goodbyes!

i lose $hit like it’s my job. i was going to start a list of the crap that i’ve lost, but i don’t have that kind of time on my hands. the most recent addition to the list, however, appears to be my nano. which makes me a damn moron.

i need some sort of device that remembers where my $hit is. either that, or knows when i’m about to lose something and shocks the hell out of me to remind me to remember where i put it. do you have a device? do you know someone who does?

somebody help me.

to put it briefly, i’ve had 28 years to do something cool and i’m just getting around to figuring out what that might be.

some of my friends (i.e. the only people who read this site) have asked me why i have a blog. they seize upon my indecision and follow it up with “and why would you call it the garrison show? you don’t have a TV show.” i need my friends to remind me of this.

actually, i think i’ve come up with the reason i have this blog and what i’d like to turn it into. while i don’t have a TV show, i think it’s important to be reminded that we can all make life as interesting–or as dull–as we want. having a blog, writing about what happens to me, being accountable to my fans, are my ways of keeping honest to the kind of life i want.

i want a life that could be a TV show. i want a life that could amuse, entertain, enlighten and transform. i want a life that people would randomly think of in the late afternoon after the third cup of coffee, while they’re sitting at their desk playing minesweeper and reading craigslist, and say to themselves, “I wonder what that garrison tool is up to.” i want to be interesting. we’re all allowed to dream, right?

i make no promises about the content, but this is my first step. stay with me and we’ll see if we can’t make something happen. or ditch me–see if i care. i’ll be posting more links and other content to keep you abreast of my whereabouts. abreast. ha.

so that’s what this stupid blog is all about.