Sue ushered him into the room, “This is Mr. Smith and Mr. Gray”. She turned to him and winked, the hint of a smile forming on her face before she moved out of his field of vision. ‘Grey’ was right. Sitting behind a large steel desk were two gentlemen who, he judged, had not had a sunny day in their entire lifetimes. Grey haired men, in grey suits and the furniture being the colour it was... what was it about this place and monochrome?
“Thank you, Miss Pendleton. Hi, I’m John Smith!” said Mr. Gray. Sudie strikes again! She may not have brought as much efficiency to the table, as one might expect of an executive assistant, but she was beyond reprieve… just one of the perks of being the boss’ niece. Besides, it was always nice to see her pretty face before you knocked at Kellams’ door.
Suddenly he realized he was alone. Sue had left him standing just inside the doorway and was now back at her desk. He stepped forward hesitantly to accept the hand Mr. Smith was still offering to him.
The real Gray motioned him to the solitary chair. Michael sat down slowly, feeling his weight sink into the cushion, not knowing what to expect from the grey men.
Floyd: As cohabitant contributor, I reserve the right to refrain from refraining from expressing myself.
He worked in front of a computer screen in a fairly large office where everyone else also worked in front of the brilliant glow of a computer screen. If asked, he was pretty certain that he would not be able to explain his job to just any layman. But he was no exception; in an organization of this nature, with such ‘highly skilled’ operators tapping away at their keyboards all day, things were never that simple that they could be put forth in everyday terms. And if things were explained as they were, he was pretty certain they would never be understood.
So generally, no one asked.
Floyd: Smart… you obviously ran out of ideas there… dintcha?
The computers were white, the walls were white, the carpet and furniture were all white. Mr. Kellams liked things that way. “Colour does not inspire a sense of security in our clients” he had famously said.
Employees were assigned cubicle workspaces and all cubicles connected to a main aisle that ran straight down to the only thing that stood out in the room: the black door to Mr. Kellams’ office. The same aisle every male employee stared down every time Sudie had to make the long walk to speak with Barry from Finance.
Floyd: Now this is getting interesting.
She might have been romantically involved with him, but no one really knew and it didn’t really matter to them either. The fact that her cute behind had to sway past each row of cubicles every time she made her way down was good enough for them.
Michael could no longer hear the drone of Mr. Gray’s voice. His eyes had glazed over as he flashed back to the three and something years he had already spent at this corporation. The white sandy beaches, pinacoladas by the pool, the wife at a day spa, kids at her mother’s, Sudie’s polka dotted bikini… when he signed on the dotted line, this was the impression he had of the things his job would afford him. But that meeting was at The Hilton… and this was obviously not.
Kellams was definitely good at hooking ‘em.
Floyd: And what about the bikini? That’s it…?? As cohabitant contributor, I reserve the right to express my fathomless disappointment.
Tiffany – I Think We’re Alone Now
U2 – All I Want Is You
A generation gap is an oft-used excuse that has perpetuated across the years. Grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren are all content to be separated from each other by time cocoons that seem to take less time to spin as the generation number increases. The definition of a generation gap is changing now. Time was when a father would see a generation gap as the entire time between his childhood and that of his children… sufficient time for the world to work its magic. Now, even a first-born can find a reasonably well defined generation gap to its sibling.
I suppose every civilization is the cause of its own demise - the evolution of life into a form where it dictates when it starts and when it ends, and with the power to effect both. And so the world incessantly hurtles forward through time even as it hurtles forward through space. Or are they the same?
We are going faster and faster in our rush toward inescapable doom, and ironically, that seems to be our very aim: higher, faster, better, stronger, if I may steal a line. A child born today is incapable of imagining a world without Television, never mind what kind of Television it is, because its parents always had TV in some form. Similarly, the Internet. Although the Internet was not big around here till around the early nineties, since then, it has so deeply embedded itself in public psyche/culture that it may as well have been around forever. And with it came the MP3 and the cold silverage of other new-fangledness. Twenty or thirty years ago, the cut-off would have probably been Radio. A fairly large stride forward from radio to the Internet, I would think. As we go forward, technologies are being obsoleted and disposed of so quickly that it takes increasingly less time for a generation gap to come to be. Those born in the middle of a generation are lucky, relatively speaking, for they will experience both, the old and the new, with the ability to adapt well enough. The ones born at the sharp ends are the real victims of the generation.
The offspring of my generation will likely not know of Records or VHS. Or single screen theatres or potato wafers that did not come with a Lay’s tag. DVD playerss may be helluva lot more advanced than the old tape decks, but the dispensability and sheer inorganicity of NOW technology makes me melancholy so.
Gap or not, music is one thing, I guess, that will tie generations together with an ease unrivalled. I may not have always been a knowledgeable Beatles fan, or even much of a fan for that matter, but what I will never argue against is that they truly exist across time. It doesn’t matter whether or not you were around when they were, they always sound fresh. I’m pretty confident that I don’t know most of their songs, so I’m always surprised when I can fairly easily sing along to one of their tunes that I would never have thought myself familiar with. Truth be told, more than surprised, I am proud. Proud that what was created years and years before the thought of my conception was ever conceived, has had the longevity to make itself part of my consciousness, even as these days rapidly promote a disposable fashion.
Some years ago, when I fell into the deep end in my exposure to music, what I took to be an introduction, was only me revisiting the sounds that governed the formative years of my musical education in the home of my parents, more than 15 years ago. I’d say ‘a return to myself’, if I wanted to be cheesy; but it’s the truth.
My children, if and when they are, will find these same sounds in the home of their parents… It’s not as if I have any much contempt for music more recently released. Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, Metallica, Marky Mark, Moby and Maroon 5 can all file onto the same stage on any given day. Not to forget, The Funky Bunch…
It’s like culture: those who have it will actually recognize it. I’m glad I can always depend on the musicians who I know made music, rather that having to wait for a contemporary someone to find a spark of genius, or two.
All things considered, this was pretty weak. Blame it on Floyd...
Righteous Brothers – You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling
The Beatles – Hold Me Tight
I’m in a league of my own. At least I would like to think I am. It may be more easily put that I’m not in anyone else’s league, but I guess I don’t necessarily need to have company to have my own league. What is a league, anyway? I’m not about to dictionary it.
Yes, that’s right, I said ‘Dictionary it’, NOT ‘Google it’.
I am about to write without pretense… sure, I prefer to not write unnecessarily personal, potentially defining stuff, unlike the populus, but I’ve just been watching my new fav, so I’ll allow myself a bit of blasphemation (what tha…?).
Just how far behind my contemporaries are I? At this reasonable age, here I am, working in the Hi-Tech industry, with everyone around me speaking the Hi-Tech lingo and playing the Hi-Tech game. But here I am, watching movies late at night and contemplating what the future of cinema might hold because it seems like all the honestly good stories are being taken. In keeping with all universal laws of equilibrium, they must run out of the good stuff at some time. And this comes to mind at the cost of politics, financial whiz and other grown-up discussions that increasingly surround me. Just how far behind my contemporaries are I?
Since as far back as I can remember I have never been able to imagine myself in the stereo 9 to 5 mould: the desk-sitting, the job smarts, the Honey-I’m-Home, the settling down in an urban haven… it’s the sort of picture that has never fit neatly into my thoughts. Of course, my experiences so far have all been contrary to that image as well, so that doesn’t help me any in figuring out how to put it together. As far as I can tell, I am largely living on past glory, without a plan for the future. I haven’t yet even seen enough proof that I belong in this niche of the professional world.
And these darn movies always make me itch. It’s an unjustified, indefinable crazy itch because I have no idea of its significance. Like some innate creative bone stirring; you know it’s there somewhere inside but you just can’t exactly put your finger on it. I’ve always tended towards creative stuff, but I’ve never known what to make of it. Sure, I’ve turned out a few good sketches and put down a few silly rhymes and fancy myself an as yet immature wordsmith, but that’s not enough to go by. If one is of a creative propensity, or thinks that one is, does it mean that by right one ought to pursue a semi- (?) alternative career path? Does it mean that one will discover one’s calling in a non-mainstream profession? I know these creative types are the cool ones who end up as marketing gurus or advertising geniusii or reclusive, classic novelists or acclaimed composers or sculptors or animators or screenplay writers or whatever else comes to mind when one abandons the mundane.
But I’ve always been too much of a pussy to pursue anything unserious seriously. And I’ve also been too much of a pussy to pursue anything serious seriously. That just leaves me with two empty hands and hundreds of shards of what could have been ambition, to pick up off the floor. Ok, maybe that was over-dramatising. And in the meantime, I’m busy allowing myself to surrender to the music and the movies and everything that eventually glosses over everything that’s a-missing. Phuket, Thailand…
Silencio, Old Man!
Mott The Hoople – All The Young Dudes
The Moldy Peaches – Anyone But You
Another Christmas come and gone meaninglessly. I don’t know what ‘meaning’ I expect out of it, but I guess I just think that if you don’t know or have a meaning, you shouldn’t have reason to acknowledge or celebrate the occasion either.
Santa is not enough of a meaning or reason.
In contemplation, I admitted without meaning to, that I am killing my spirit. I complain uselessly that my world is darkening and entirely too suffocating, but in truth I am probably the cause of it. The black is more within me than it is around me; if my world leeches the life out of me, then I am also leeching the life out of my world.
The Grinch. That’s exactly what I am. Every day of the year.
As much as I would like to hope otherwise, good things cannot be in store.
It is no more the time when I can say “I am becoming…” Whatever it is, I have already become.
Joyful, joyful.
“We're just alike. You think sex is so unimportant you don't do it. I think sex is so unimportant I don't care who I do it with.” – Niki
Air French Band – Sexy Boy
Whigfield – Gimme Gimme
I don’t have a bicycle. I remember when I had so wanted one and when I had one and wished it was better and when I’d stopped using it and wished I had the time to start again. I don’t have a bicycle anymore.
In cities such as this, it doesn’t matter what kind of vehicle you commandeer, you will eventually, knowingly or otherwise, willingly or otherwise, become a pestilence to the general public. Everyone tends to think that they are above average drivers, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter. Even if you did turn out to be above average, it only takes one ignorant dick to put that huge dent in your fender or his. Or hers.
One needn’t leave the city and then return to realize the awful state of our roads. Every day that you spend navigating the traffic gives you fresh instances of plain old moronicity. Pedestrians from hell… ineffective traffic police… and an unholy abundance of vehicles great and small. Tin-box buses that threaten to either explode or just come crashing down as they shake, rattle and rumble their way down the street. Auto-rickshaws that turn on a dime to reverse their direction of momentum; probably the most manoeuvrable machines in the universe, strangely beautiful and at the same time, utterly disgusting. And it’s amazing how many people can get their clunky two wheelers over foot high lane dividers just to beat a traffic signal.
On the whole, we tend to have absolutely NO traffic- (or for that matter, good-) sense at all. I don’t know if it’s something in the water, but it is something alright. After 10:00 am, one can just expect every traffic signal encountered to be completely choked for the remainder of the day. An ever increasing population coupled with a similarly rising economy leads to more and more vehicles vying for space that each believes it truly deserves. You will see construction workers on rickety bicycles with the exact carefree attitude that allows them to swerve across the street without so much as a backward glance at the traffic they are displacing behind them. At the same time, the Lords will take their chauffeured luxury cars down the narrowest of streets, incessantly blowing their horns for the lowly to make room.
Frustrating, disillusioning, blood-boiling affairs, but if one is ruffled by them, or so perturbed that one is afraid to experience it again, then one should understand that one has not the smallest right to live in this city, or indeed, country. For it is our given nature to live and grow in the midst of chaos and, by the looks of it, we are thriving.
Change topic: Celebrities. I often wonder what makes a celebrity… I supposed that you need to be ‘celebrated’ to be a celebrity. Wrong. Today says that if a whole lot of people know your name because/and if your paycheck/inheritance is made public… turns out you’re already a celebrity. Oh, and it also helps if you can entertain in some way. That comes in handy if you’re ever asked to justify why so many people should register your name in the parking lot of their mindspace.
But really, with all the people who are becoming famous overnight, I would imagine it’s sort of unnerving, even despicably unfair, for the already famous folk. They may well have had to work their way up through the layers of their respective industries by way of years of hard work/talent and agents of varying degrees and then suddenly in walks Johnny two-shoes with his unconvincing hairstyle and annoying confidence, rubbing shoulders with them after a stylist and two months of appearing on some sort of talent-search television show. From no-name to first-name basis with Jim Carrey.
And since I’m near the topic, I may as well go on a bit about TV: TV is boring. TV is a synonym for boring. TV equals reruns and reality shows, the instant success quickfix everything pill. The instant celebrity sea-monkey squad, except without the “sea” part…
Once you get used to the barrage of sub-quality offerings, even a moderately different idea seems interesting, effectively glorifying what would have otherwise been relegated to the halls of mediocrity.
Fin.
“You’ve got me...? Who’s got you?!” – Lois
New fav: Ellen Page
Donovan Leitch – Hurdy Gurdy Man
Iron Butterfly – In A Gadda Da Vida
Sue ushered him into the room, “This is Mr. Smith and Mr. Gray”. She turned to him and winked, the hint of a smile forming on her face before she moved out of his field of vision. ‘Grey’ was right. Sitting behind a large steel desk were two gentlemen who, he judged, had not had a sunny day in their entire lifetimes. Grey haired men, in grey suits and the furniture being the colour it was... what was it about this place and monochrome? 
