Here’s a bunch of random stuff from my phone from the last couple weeks that I really should delete.

I am sharing it with you so that those things that briefly fascinated me (or seemed to hold enough potential that I was moved to take a picture at that time, but then that was all that ever happened) are not lost to the world.

Bask in the wonderment of it all.

Unlike the dog, it knows to wait until the little green guy appears.

Some days I like to take my vacuum cleaner out for a walk. It enjoys the exercise, and I appreciate the quiet time together.

Just your average day: on a stroll with the wet vac.

I’m just kidding. The dog keeps lifting his leg (indoors) and I had to buy a steam cleaner off Craigslist. I talked the lady into bringing it to me…sort of. She agreed to meet, so long as it was an exit of I-5. Thus, I had to walk up there and then drag it through town and back to the apartment where I commenced an exciting afternoon of wetting down and sucking up urine stains. A$$hole. He’s damn lucky he’s so cute.

He's turning Japanese. I really think so.

See what I mean? He’s so stinking cute. And looking a bit Asian in this photo. And that’s the root of the problem: who can really stay mad at a face like that???

I love Pho, and - clearly - Pho loves me.

I think the waiter at the Vietnamese place was trying to tell me something…

REALLY?

If you had your choice between wearing a Hefty Heavy Duty Trash Bag in public and getting wet…wouldn’t you just get wet? Yeah. Me too.

This is from a book in my office. It makes me laugh AND it's sound advice.

See caption. I pretty much told you all there is to tell you on this one.

Bathroom stall wisdom.

This was from the bathroom stall at El Corazon, taken the night my friend Karen performed there. I was – roughly – three beers along when it seemed like a good idea to photograph this.

Simple pleasures.

Admit it: who doesn’t enjoy tearing the crap out of a cardboard box?

Damn, that's an ugly necktie.

This necktie was discarded in the stairwell, and I briefly thought maybe it was another pineapple in the elevator moment. But then I took a better look at the photo and realized this was not that in the least.

It’s still there, by the way, if you’re interested.

I did not know this.

Sometimes insane people identify themselves by covering their homes in signs preaching excess craziness. I find this not only considerate, but helpful. Cross this guy off the trick or treating list…

This lady chaps my hide.

This is the pigeon and seagull (equal opportunity) feeding lady, because who doesn’t love a swarm of overfed, avian jumbo jets spewing crap from the sky? Plus she always acts like the dog is the Anti-Christ when he goes after the bread chunks and scares off the poop bombers, thus proving that in the battle for his soul, the angels are currently winning. At least at the moment…

Me and the rarely-photographed Fu, partly because he doens't like it and partly because - let's face facts here - his face is really dark and doesn't exactly photograph well.

Me and my monkey cat. No doubt he’s considering how hard he’ll need to claw me before I’ll get the camera out of his face and put him down. “I’ll cut you, lady! I’ll cut you!”

If anyone ever Googles "Carpet cleaner in a crosswalk" and then selects images, I hope at least this one ranks high.

It’s like the Abbey Road album cover, only with superior sound quality: I propose  00:47:26 of the sound of a vacuum cleaner running would be more pleasant.

Oh, wait. I just looked it up and “Here Comes the Sun” is on that album. I take that back: they’d be equally pleasant.

I think I was about ten years old when I learned one of the more important lessons of my young writing career. I’d written my first short story (about the Easter Bunny…and candy) at age six and my first play was penned and performed (by an entire cast: thank you kind nuns of St. Joseph’s School) by age seven, but I had not yet attempted any non-fiction work. In fact, I doubt I realized there was such a thing.

And here I thought I invented "The Glad Game."

In fourth grade, however, all that changed. We had to write a paper on a planet or animal or country or something or other which we had been somehow (randomly? Or perhaps prescribed in accordance with the first letter of our name – that was often a lame-o for me and how I know all about the element Vanadium) assigned. Without further adieu, the whole class was drug to the library and taught about the tome of wisdom known as the encyclopedia. Woe to the kids who were assigned topics contained in the same volume (Peru, penguins and Pluto…)

I have been working on this post for a couple days now and have hence become convinced that I had to write about lemurs.

So anyway, if your parents had properly prepared you, you hauled out a fresh pack of 3×5 cards and started making notes in some order that supposedly would make later sense. You were to track a thought per card and maybe number them and I don’t know what else.  I can tell you that in the end, there were a lot of cards and it was a big old mess. 3×5 cards are a terrible invention: equally sucky for speech-giving. Have you ever dropped an entire pile of 3×5 cards upon which a speech is written? NOT GOOD.

It's true. I'm really not realistic at all. In fact, I'm rather absurdly positive about most things.

So like I was saying, we were being taught to write research papers, and it was a complex and tedious process. Then, the most important information of all was revealed (and being the eager to please child that I was, words like ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT’ were taken quite seriously): you were not to copy the information word-for-word from the encyclopedia as you would later be unable to tell whether they were your own notes or observations or thoughts or not. If they were, in fact, the exact phraseology contained within the reference book, you were doing this new bad thing – a kind of cheating, only this kind was a crime (!) – called plaigarism.

I’d been to Catholic school and confession and knew about lying and stealing and coveting thy neighbor’s wife. I didn’t realize that quoting someone without paying due reference was on the list too, but clearly my brother was going to Hell.

I will say, those that give me the most crap about my positive outlook are also the first to freak out if I get negative. Their usual cry? "No! Don't talk like that! I need you to encourage me!" Go figure...

On the other hand, I remember the teacher explained that so long as every sixth word was different, it wasn’t plaigarism. I suspect that’s total bullshit, but back then, I followed that rule like gospel. And why not? It was evidently plain that the people writing the encyclopedia had already said whatever there was to say as superlatively and flawlessly as it would ever be said. It seemed a damn shame to try to improve upon perfection…minus altering the sixth word out of necessity, of course.

I even struggled with this occasionaly while writing a graduate thesis, although by then I knew that if push came to shove, I could at least quote and attribute the source…so long as the thing didn’t become page after page of quotes (great as though they might have been). Thesis review committees like to see the occasional evidence of actual gray matter.

Anyway, the long-winded point here is that I have been reading this book by an author I already mentioned a couple months ago – Eric Maisel – and I’ve been so blown away by the precise beauty and exactitude and, again, perfection of what he had to say about the art of writing that I could see no choice but to plaigarize or just go ahead and copiously quote him here, but I wanted to leave you at least a little something from me. Thus, a boring story about my childhood introduction to plagiarism. Maybe next time we can talk about the difficulty I had telling the phrases “I did it by accident” and “I did it on purpose” apart (and the resulting panic attack that confusion caused.)

Until then, enjoy some insight from Eric Maisel, courtesy of DEEP WRITING and slightly paraphrased where it would be confusing not to:

“Deep writing is work meant to mean and not just entertain, garner applause, or demonstate one’s skills. Each deep writer had a dream, a problem to solve, a truth to tell, a moral imperative, a holy quest, all mixed up together.

I haven’t yet called deep writing spiritual work. I’m rather loath to do so now. First of all, I have no idea what ‘spiritual’ means. I see deep writing as supremely human work, maybe the human work, and to call it spiritual adds nothing to its important from my point of view. But there is an important ‘but.’ I do believe that who we are, why we’re here, what the universe is all about are utter mysteries, mysteries that science can’t unravel and theology fears. If ‘spiritual’ means something like living this mystery – living in relation to this mystery and in awareness of this mystery – rather than living ordinarily, then I feel more comfortable calling deep writing spiritual work. In fact, I’m happy to call it that.”

Perfect, no?

Now maybe this won’t impact you as it has me, and in the net this book hasn’t really been that necessary  (as I’m luckily not plagued by writer’s block or self-doubt…anymore. Go back in a time machine any time before three years ago, and we’d be having a different conversation.)

Anyway, I think what resonates with me is that this is so much how I work. Despite a regular barrage of “you should write f*cked up sh@t. That’s what people want.” or “the masses want sex and violence and magic and vampires” or reality TV or Saw IV or a hundred other things that make me cringe, it doesn’t work that way for me. It’s not that I can’t come up with ideas – as a nightmare ridden person (my earliest memories are nightmares) I have lots of scary fodder.

I could write horror or schlock or violence or smut, but I can’t. Some part of me refuses to add more negativity to the world. And, in fact, although I have no real message to preach, there is a underlying message to everything I do. I’m not saying I’m Dosteovsky, but I do have my own little missive flowing through the veins of everything I write. It goes something like “life is short: strive to be happy.”

And so long as that’s there, I’m happy. True, my work may not ever sell millions of copies or be on any bestseller list, but then again, it just may. Nonetheless, what I have to say is my truth and comes from deep within me. And obviously I’m a huge goody-two-shoes Pollyanna.

So be it.

If you ask me, the world has a severe shortage of us anyway.

Okay, so my haircut is in three hours and 25 minutes, and I’m having major doubt and related disquietude. Oh, the pathetic problems of the shrinking middle class…

This hair scares me...and I'm realizing how easily mine could go there.

So it’s hair. It grows back. I know these things.

I like change, that’s not the issue.

The issue is looking like a mess: and not a hot one. Or, more specifically, having something on my head for six months that looks like a dirty mop on a good day. And this morning I turned on the TV and saw Joan Rivers and others tearing apart the new haircut of Keira Knightly, at which point I realized it looked almost exactly like what I was thinking of doing!!!

And this is a gorgeous woman. You could argue that nothing could undermine that, and you’d be right. Well, you’d be right until you saw this hairdo. Then you’d be forced to admit that it’s truly distracting and not in a good way.

And then there are the color dilemmas. Blonder? Browner? Redder? I constantly change my mind. I should probably just give up and start wearing wigs.

I was kind of settled to go back to being lighter, more golden, and then I saw that movie Hereafter yesterday (meh. I had a lot of plot complaints, and if you’ve ever seen a movie with me and I’m unhappy with the character’s consistency or unclear as to what is motivating them, I point these things out over and over in a frustrated whisper. “Why is he acting like such a dick? He needs to get therapy and get over himself.”  ”If you ask me, learning that someone was dumped at the altar is a major red flag. Normal people don’t get dumped at the altar. Something is way wrong with that chick. Mark my words.” I’m sure it’s super annoying which is probably why I was brightly told at the end of the movie, “You could be a film critic!” Did I go too far when I suggested the French lady hadn’t just suffered a concussion during the tsunami incident, but obvious brain damage?)

I do kind of like this fake red hair color.

Anywho, Bryce Howard (or whatever her name is. The daughter of Ron Howard) is in it and she has this nice, really dark red hair that I was eyeballing, but then there’s the whole “that’s a really fake color, even on a natural redhead like the Ron Howard chick” issue. Or is that an issue? But red fades – and fast – and that is an issue.

So there’s the red and the going lighter (or more toward my natural hair color), and then there’s going way darker or doing something super punk rock, like a bizarre color, which also appeals to me…at least in theory.

So I suppose we’ll see what happens in a few hours. Mostly – although she does not yet know this – I’m putting the whole overblown mess in the hands of my stylist, Lee. Along with two dozen photos and a rehash of what’s been written above – and probably some firm instructions in the vein of “please don’t set me up with something that’s so much work that I can’t pull it off and/or end up looking like Phil Spector when I roll out of bed in the morning.” – it’s all about whatever Lee thinks it should be.

But enough about that. It’s hair: it grows.

What else is going on? Well, the McRib is back.

I never really knew it went away, but apparently it did…and now it’s back. And in limited supply. And only some stores, which has in turn created a frenzied hype such that someone has set up a website to track sightings of the elusive sandwich.

Oh Lord, that looks vile.

I’ve never eaten one, but now I’m curious. I can’t imagine it’s that good. I like ribs, but rehydrated and reformed ribs smashed between some cheap bread leaves me cold. That’s kind of the McDonald’s experience in a nutshell: you think “Ooh a Filet O’Fish. That sounds good!” and then you spend $4.00 on it and the fish is a tiny nugget in a sea of bad bread and tartar sauce and you wonder how they fooled you into this.

I imagine the McRib is similarly disappointing, yet still I’m curious.

I’m starting to wonder if my interest is some kind of subliminal advertising with a delayed-release effect that McDonalds implanted in my brain in my youth. Case in point: the Shamrock shake. It’s not very good. In fact, it tastes a little bit like grass and it’s the color of grass and maybe that’s because they discovered it’s cheaper to go with a 50/50 grass/mint mix and went for it. I don’t know. I don’t work there. What I do know is that as a kid, I would have committed crimes to get my hands on a Shamrock Shake.

Here’s the ad from that era, which offers up absolutely no clues as to the hold they had on me then and still wield now.

Vaguely insulting to Irish culture and definitely dumb, it got into my little mind and made me want things I hadn’t even known existed. Until this point, I associated mint with the jelly my mother served with lamb…not exactly a favorite food memory. But some bad dancing and fake Irish accents, and I’m all over the scene.

I’ve watched that ad a couple times now, and checked myself in the mirror for signs of mind control. My eyes are a bit dilated, but I’m not particularly hungry…although I wouldn’t turn down one of those breakfast potato hash brown things if someone showed up at the door with one, yet it would take that level of service to move me.  So maybe it’s not the advertising or the illusion of scarcity, but straight up doping?

My dad always accused them of putting an addictive substance into the Big Mac.

I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten a Big Mac (seriously. Too much lettuce. Too much bread. Not appealing), but there’s definitely something going on with the Filet O’ Fish. Speaking of which, I could kind of go for one right now. Alongside a McRib and some fries and and that thing where the bread is like pancakes and there’s a sausage patty inside. I have no idea what it’s called. Hell, throw in a Shamrock shake while we’re at it. I like to show up for my  equally dreaded and anticipated haircuts nice and full.