i read snapple caps

irdsnapplecaps @ 2009-03-29T23:31:00

2009-03-30T03:48:23Z

wouldn't it be nice if the american government allotted one year of paid vacation to its hard working citizens? of course we couldn't all take this life nap at the same time, so we'd periodically ask each other: "when are you taking your year?" it might be like a break at work- some would opt to take them together- like a year of chitchatting at life's giant proverbial food court. some would come back fatter. others would waste it, take it for granted. there would always be a "phil" or "bob" in the bunch that comes back with caked spittle crusting his potato chip pale face- the one who spent his year playing video games. but more often, uncle sam might be proud to see his tired children wayfaring the world and becoming the types of people that only time could create.

damn hippie

2009-03-17T05:08:06Z

friendship is a commodity. in this economic downturn we could spend some time getting to know each other.

venting

2008-12-29T01:26:26Z

**disclaimer: i'm not pretentionous, i swear. i'm just tired. this is really intended to be more comical than anything.

top 8 things that drive me crazy at work

1. customers that call gigabytes "jiggabytes" and the ipod touch the "itouch" (ect.) repeatedly, even after i insert the correct names back into the conversation. jay-z is not responsible for the nomenclature of your CPU's capacity, and no, you cannot touch me.

2. the phrase: "do you work here?" some people believe they are asking this question out of courtesy, but i promise you, unless your sales person is walking around in plain clothes it always comes off as condescending when you ask someone in an obvious uniform that question. i fear for the people who actually believe i wear a name tag around my neck in ever day situations.

3. and while i'm on the subject of phrases that annoy, i'll add, "what do you mean i have to wait?" i want to make something very clear, no you will not be helped faster if you throw your cash on the ground (a customer actually said this to me), and yes you do have to wait. we all have to wait at some point or another and we all have places to go. you wait on line at the grocery store, why shouldn't you wait on line at a computer store- because you're dropping a g? computers are a basic consumer item these days. if you were waiting on line for the first one i'd bow, but you're purchasing an item that is now as common in the american household as a television. your money is not special.

4. the phrase: "i just drove all the way out here from the hamptons!" this phrase usually succeeds or coincides with the previous phrase, but whatever way it's delivered, it always disgusts me. rather than stating that he/or she has traveled a substantial distance to arrive at our store, instead these customers must distinguish themselves as a member of what is generally known as an affluent community. harlem or the hamptons, you should have made a simple phone call before you dragged your three bratty kids to our store to see if a. we have a product in stock, or b. we can service your machine.

5. wearing sunglasses inside. this is extremely bothersome because i can't make eye contact with you. also, i'd like to read my opponent's next move if i'm being screamed at. unless you have cataracts, our florescent lights will not harm your eyes, but your tacky sunglasses might.

6. customers who carry around, from store to store, dogs that are clearly too large to bring to a public place. okay, so your dachshund mix has separation anxiety, but that thing is the size of a toddler. consider that maybe you are the one with separation anxiety, self medicate, and call it a day.

7. indecision. yes, it is my job to have knowledge of our store's product. and yes, i may have a bit of information on what girls in your daughters demographic are into because i am, how you say cool or hip, but i cannot not spend thirty minutes helping you pick between the colors pink and purple. if you don't know your daughter's favorite color you should consider forgoing a day of shopping at the mall to spend more time with her.

8. questions unrelated to my job capacity. mainly these questions come over the phone, "how do i get to the mall from here?" "what time is it?" also, i am by no means a genius, but i think the sales tax of your state should be apart of your common knowledge, along with basic algebra. so, if you don't know new york state sales tax and i tell you it's 8.25% take pride in the fact that i didn't automatically give you the price of the product with tax- it means that i somehow thought you were smart enough to do the math.

loosing faith in humanity (the PC version)

2008-12-23T03:17:02Z

On the eve of Hanukkah while ringing up some horribly rushed customer for his thoughtless present I bagged the item and with an out stretched hand wished him happy holidays. He leaned in, his sour breath choked my personal space, and he snidely remarked "you know you CAN say merry christmas." I imagined myself saying "I'm sorry sir, but you really looked like a Jew." Instead, I smiled and sent him on his merry little way. Guy probably still believes in santa.

irdsnapplecaps @ 2008-12-22T12:30:00

2008-12-22T17:35:57Z

maybe the problem is that i do feel like i don't know certain people and if i do then it's not well. but then, unexpectedly i discover that maybe i did know this person all along. it was the part where i tried to convince myself that he or she was someone entirely different that confuses me.

i've written about you before...

2008-12-08T13:28:58Z

you put people down because:

a.) this is how you show your love, or
b.) you don't know how to love therefore you suppress it by putting people down

both are the same really. both suck equally.

well, i'm glad i moved.

irdsnapplecaps @ 2008-11-28T23:03:00

2008-11-29T04:06:58Z

i am so lucky to know so many great writers.
they are my peers and they are the future.

Emma on the Radio should be a band.

2008-11-19T21:12:14Z

emma.mp3
hover to listen.

kyle

2008-11-18T05:07:15Z

i imagined you on an east side roof top. voices and sounds being swept around you like wind-whipped ghosts. i imagined you crouched on that high place above everything else. you always were. it was the same way i remembered you in that tree in the woods: so high up watching us all fuck up beneath you. now you're just high.

silent, on the phone with me, existing between the honking horns and breaking bottles-- you were probably wearing pointy shoes and skinny jeans. your gaunt face would have your cheek bones obtusely slanted towards your buddy holly hair cut. maybe you had a girl waiting downstairs. you'd have her polaroid in your wallet.

carefully, in a voicemail, i told you i had cancer. it was a plan i devised a week ago. i waited for the quiet and then i called. i knew, after all the calls unreturned, this would be the one you'd hear. it was two minutes after i left the message. you called. it was like the day you left school when you found out i was in that accident. you ran all the way to the hospital.

your voice was stuck somewhere in the phone wires, or maybe the words couldn't fit. i said anything every few moments to make sure you weren't lost, but you are. it reminded me of the way we used to communicate before we had the constant connectivity of voicemail, texts, and social networking. it was paper, notes, drawings and songs. you'd meet me after school. you'd lift me off the ground. i was your ghost, now you are mine.

phone phone phone
you made me realize
we are all alone

but there's something to laugh about

2008-11-18T04:00:08Z

The Stranger

2008-11-18T03:57:29Z

This is my depressed stance. When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this.
-Charlie Brown

what can you do, but write?

2008-11-13T17:43:18Z

The cold has set into our bones. Emma said people are complaining about their spines. They hurt. And it's a hurt that climbs the ladder of all our vertebrae until it finds the warmest room at the top of each of our houses. The cold has broken into our minds. The cruelest of criminals is seasonal depression.

It’s that extra layer of dead, white skin on the faces of my friends. It’s black overcoats and rain boots and days spent inside. People drive faster; work goes slower; school seems harder; lovers feel distant. I used to think fall felt like a John Hughes movie: a pastel set of birthday candles lit against a slightly blurred background, a boom box, a group of friends. Instead, fall has come to smell like old burnt wax and smoke, and fading in the background is some song tangled in my wet headphones as I walk to the bus in the morning- if I make it to the bus.

If I time travel past the 80s and pull myself out of this narcissistic funk, I’ll see that everyone has always felt this way. Perhaps the Greeks knew this feeling the best. The greatest allegory for seasonal depression may be the story of Persephone- four months of lamenting in Hades’ underworld while snow powdered grounds and iced minds. But eventually she was freed and happiness ensued. One day, we all break free of our criminal captors.

Emma said she’s been wearing a thick jacket, one that will protect her from those aches. I wrapped myself up good today. My spine hurts a little less. Yeah, those Greeks are smart.

nothing

2008-10-28T02:52:04Z

nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

some people, part one (Oct. 14, 2008)

2008-10-23T16:52:55Z

Pulling into the parking lot, I saw her: my arch, Apple, nemesis. Framed by the glass of her windshield, her hair fixed like bundled straw- dry and blonde, how fitting. Her face often hangs like a scowling stroke victim; a worn out little rag-doll of a person, that bitch. Her mouth is always loaded with sarcastic bullets that seem to penetrate just below the heart. She doesn't have the kind of depth that could reach a person.

Two buses stood idly by the curb. A two-bus chance that I'd see her again. Sure enough, her face appeared, floating between the mass of shoulders. The shuffle for the last seat sat me by her. Forced to talk, unintelligible words gathered in the space between us- ambiguous little nuggets that would later become comical talking points for myself and others who dislike her.

"People" somehow became the subject of our inflated conversation. People, you know: consumers, proprietors, the working man and woman, the hockey moms, the overfed brats, pseudo intellectuals, the business men, the bluetooth drones, the blue collared masses, tight-fisted liberals, the bible thumpers, the freaks, disconnected nerds, Long Island moms, Jersey trash, and all the influenceable assholes! Of course we were above it, and in the process of quietly offending just about everyone else around us, we celebrated our lack of "person-ness." We bonded over the irony of a simple statement. "I hate people." Me too. I hate people, but I've found that talking to them is the only way to learn exactly what I don't want to be.

"the place is undergoing renovations"

2008-09-28T23:38:11Z

i get jealous.
i have fears.
i am irrational.

lately, i feel like i've shown you all of the worst. it's like i've trapped you in a revolving door that is the entrance to a really nice place-- like a hotel in new york city, in an "okay" part. i imagine all the people on the sidewalk watching you spin in that door. they'd drop their bags to cup their hands and whisper, "someone's got to tell management to fix that faulty door. this place used to be so charming."

yeah, i'm irrational.

irdsnapplecaps @ 2008-09-22T16:04:00

2008-09-22T20:06:05Z

I want more than most people can give.

i'm moving

2008-09-18T02:34:25Z

the nights are like a seasonal lager-- cool, but warmed by the smell of burnt wood and pumpkin. yet, if all the navy night skies and fiery autumnal leaves were bottled into one ingestible substance, i wouldn't buy it. i'd get far too drunk off hot tea and long sleeves. i'd miss it too much if the brand was discontinued.

i've sipped on this brew before. it's life, and life is something you fall in love with until it makes you dizzy. it's a round-circle drinking game that i started in the spring.

crickets distract me from sleep, making an open window's breeze a channel for a hundred whispered whistles. i'm awake as the last ash of firewood is swept into the wind with the papery leaves. i'll hear these noises through a different window now; i'll drink them in a different glass. i'm moving.

Watching Scream:

2008-09-16T04:44:09Z

Why does Syd always run upstairs? The problem will always be waiting for her at the bottom. Unless of course she escapes through the window, but seriously, she has to get down either way. We can't live a floor up from a problem for the rest of our lives. Syd: is it better to be on top of the problem, outside of the problem, or face to face with the problem, fighting it-- even if the problem has a knife?

your english is good

2008-09-11T03:14:26Z

"you have the part that people can't learn
now, the rest is just practice."

WE ARE constantly moving towards something great, never deviating. yeah, you're my best friend.

prolific

2008-09-08T16:26:01Z

For the first time ever, I kept a notebook on my lap while I was driving. I have so much to say.

sometimes you need other words

2008-09-02T03:43:09Z

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
-Stanley Kubrick

sensing a strange dynamic

2008-09-01T05:17:27Z

i hate the dreams where you leave first. let me be the one to exit, let me be the one to stay.

i'll tell you how i became the prince of a town called bel air

2008-09-01T05:08:30Z

paper pills
will thrills
killing bills
that keep billing
spilling, spelling out l o n g d a y s
a raise pays but
not the shark's stark
rates. debate with dad
my launch pad
his floatation device
would suffice in this sea
of greed, but instead
he impedes my learning
earning, to swim around him
sharks biting phantom limbs
as i tread in this sea of
red, red, green for free

driving

2008-08-29T13:39:27Z

i thought i saw
tearing towards the ground
ripping through the cool wind, rocking
the first leaf of fall, backflipping into the street
hot amber colored, weather-beaten, like a fractured sun, it was
a food wrapper

my coalescent friend

2008-08-26T02:14:31Z

you are an inconvenience. your clotted, four layered, multi-colored skin belongs to both genders. i miss you when your kiss seems far. i hate our one on one time. your feet are flat, your legs are skinny. your brilliance intimidates me, and denotes my lack of. your hair is a haystack of blonde with thick black needles in between. your calloused hands take all the things they don't own and write about all the things they'll never have. you don't own a mirror; you broke your only friends when you broke your only mirror. i'm afraid you'll go away. you have eyes like rolling marbles: a color on each side. your hip is almost mine. we are the division of a memory; our shooting stars slice separate skies. your presents are but a way for you to present your elegant nature. you lack empathy. i whisper specific words to you-- so quiet-- they evaporate before they reach your ear. one day i'll be happy to still know you. i love you. i can't pretend you're interesting. i could view you with a microscope, but never understand what you're made of. you wear the hat of a jester, but the king will kill you if you don't make him laugh. i want to protect you. i want us to clean our toilet bowls. i wish i had your pen.

i might slip on your layers as they peel.