A letter...and a request

I got a letter last week. Like, a real one.

For those of you who can't recall what that is, a letter is one of those antiquated means of communication where people use a writing utensil to scribble words on a piece of paper to convey a series of thoughts or feelings. It's much like a Myspace comment, just slower, handwritten, more personal, and not immediate. And a letter is more likely to make people actually think about what they write. You have no delete key on a writing tablet, which forces people to formulate coherent thoughts before committing them to unerasable tangibility. You wouldn't see "yo dawg call me we cann grab sum brews at da club lata" in a letter, mostly because someone that would type that, well, probably wouldn't write.

So, the letter. It was from a great-uncle I haven't seen in thirteen years. I was ten at the time and it was for my great-grandmother's funeral. That was the last time I talked to him before I saw him two weeks ago for another funeral, this time for his sister. We talked briefly and I gave him my business card. Three days later I got a written letter from Uncle George delivered to my office. I was almost confused. I didn't know how to handle a mail-delivered letter; that kind of thing doesn't really happen anymore. I've received cards and gifts in the mail, but I can't accurately remember the last time I got a hand-written letter delivered courtesy of the United States Postal Service. I think it was from Brooke, my short-lived third grade pen pal from another Catholic elementary school in Fresno. Even when I was nine I thought the name Brooke was hot, but was disappointed when she sent me a picture and I thought she looked like a squirrel.

The letter naturally came as a surprise. It was reassuring in a non-technological kind of way, in the respect that it is nice to know that not everybody relies on the internet as the sole method of communication with others. Phone calls, while a step up from e-mail and hundreds of steps up from Myspace, still isn't as genuine a form of contact as a hand-written letter. Forethought is a prerequisite. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes a level of dedication to the recipient that you don't necessarily need with an e-mail. With a letter you have to set aside the time to mull over the right words you put on paper because once it's written, it's there. You have to consider handwriting, legibility, and signature. Do you scratch out a wrong word or do you start over? You use white-out? Do you write in uppercase, printing, cursive, or some crazy mix between all three? Do you write on front and back, or just front? Pen or pencil? What color? Lined paper of freeform? How dark do you write? You don't want to write too heavily because if you're writing front and back both sides become illegible from pressing too hard. All these things simply don't exist in e-mails, which all lead to the absence of a very distinct sense of personality and tone. In a hand-wriiten letter you just get a more accurate feel of the person writing.

Effective communication is now synonymously (and erroneously) linked with immediate communication, and anything that is less than immediate is deemed absolutely useless. If you cannot reach someone the second you attempt to, communication as a whole in considered a complete failure, and because of this, letter writing is now lying dead in a pile with VHS tapes and year-old computers. The chief unspoken "rule" of Myspace has perverted the concept of communication, and the rule is as follows: you leave a "comment" on someone's page, and regardless of how insanely insignificant the comment is, you are obliged to return the comment with an equally insignificant response within a reasonable time period (i.e., 0-12 hours). Content is absolutely irrelevant here in Myspaceland, and it's killing how we even think about the way we communicate with others; we talk to people on here just because we can. We don't have anything to say, but since there's a picture of you associated with our social networking website, we will force unnecessary banter and demand instantaneous response. With our Blackberrys, text messages, IMs, and Myspace we are being conditioned to expect immediacy, and as a society we are evolving into genetically impatient people. We have 20 minute photo labs, 24-7 customer service call centers for entertainment consumer products, and computers that can perform trillions of operations per second. Efficiency of communication does not necessarily depend on speed of communication, but rather the ability to properly convey and interpret something meaningful.

So I wrote Uncle George a letter in response. It was one page, front-side only, written in moderately-pressed black ink with all caps. I signed-off with "Love, your nephew Ryan" near the bottom right part of the lined yellow page and scribbled my rock-star signature to finish it off. I then folded it neatly into an envelope I stole from work, addressed it, went to the post office to buy a stamp, and mailed it off. Now I'm waiting with anxious anticipation to receive the next letter. The whole process was strangely exciting. Sure, it takes more time, but it feels more rewarding in the end, which brings me here.

I'm making a request to all people reading this, even if it's only the same three people who even read my stuff: write a letter to someone you know. It will feel weird. It'll feel a little uncomfortable just because you'll have to think about it in a completely different way than if you were writing an e-mail. It will give you a greater appreciation (or at least it should) for genuine communication. It'll make Myspace look more ludicrous than it already is. Just give it a shot.

But of course, you'll probably have to Myspace the person to get their address first.

Stuff + Cats = Awesome

I enjoy my weekends. I do stuff like, sit down, watch stuff, eat things, drink liquids, and waste time. I read Calvin and Hobbes and watch movies I've seen hundreds of times before. I play guitar and annoy my neighbors in doing so. I spend my weekdays working for the man and getting little to no appreciation for it, so I figure my weekends should be the complete opposite of anything closely related to my professional life. So today, for example, I had two corn dogs, a PB&J, a bowl of strawberry oatmeal, a Newcastle and a Sprite for breakfast, all while sitting in my boxer-briefs, playing with my new computer and watching the edited version of Tomcats on FX. Between bouts of photo editing sessions and absolute mindlessness I went browsing. I stopped by the Hot Librarian, laughed, and then somehow stumbled onto one of the most insanely hilarious things I've ever come across, period . <---- (there's the period)

The site is www.stuffonmycat.com and the premise is very simple:

1. People have cats
2. They put stuff on those cats
3. They take pictures of stuff on their cats
4. They send the pictures of stuff on their cats to www.stuffonmycat.com

I know you're thinking: "Why the hell didn't I come up that? I've always liked putting stuff on my cat and laughing at it. It's funny. It's stuff on a cat; of course it's funny. Granted, I've never considered taking a picture of my cat with stuff on it, but I should've thought of that first. It's ingenius. Brilliant. Prodigious, even." So I almost barfed from laughing so hard. I fell on the floor and couldn't breathe, which made me choke on the spit in the back of my throat (if you know me, you know exactly what I'm talking about). I had to cough forcefully to regain control of myself, which then made me dry heave, when then almost made me wet heave.

It may just be because I'm an idiot, or that I have no friends in LA and I'm borderline autistic, but the whole concept of the website almost made me shat myself out of pure, unadultered hilarity. There are thirteen categories of stuffonmycat.com, ranging from "food on my cat" to "naughty stuff on my cat", which includes bras on cats, cigarettes on cats, and tiny-sombrero-wearing cats with Jack Daniels and guns (cool stuff on cats). And the slogan is equally ingenious and correspondingly amusing: "stuff + cats = awesome".

It's funny 'cause it's true.

The Littlest Shit

It was time for the Jones family to upgrade our antiquated kitchen set. The wheeled chairs were light brown pleather and squeaked when my sister and I had spinning contests before dinner. Naturally I'd win because I weighed more but that never stopped her in a spin duel. The chairs reclined slightly and had a brassy gold base that matched the legs of the peculiarly large table. And it was a beast of a table. Because the oval tabletop was so wide, the base had to be extended so that it wouldn't be top-heavy. It fit four, maybe five people, but because of the golden spider-like legs and King Arthur tabletop, it should've fit closer to ten. Either way, it was hogging up the dining room and was an embarrassing eyesore we needed to get rid of.

So my Dad put an ad in the paper, and we got two phone calls. The first person ended up flaking on us, but the second one was more promising. In the midst of initial phone discussion my Mom heard the high-pitched yaps of puppies in the background and asked the potential table owner about them. They were Chihuahua breeders and just had a batch. Herd. Litter. Whatever. This was coincidentally the same time my parents were considering a dog, preferably a smaller one that wouldn't be too big for us kids. I was eight and Jenna was six. My mom put the woman on hold and we congregated around the table like generals in the war room, and after a brief family talk we decided to offer a deal with the second caller. The deal was: you give us our Chihuahua of choice and $100, and you get yourself a massive table courtesy of the Jones family dining room. Within the hour the woman came over to view the table with her husband, the deal was offered and accepted, and we were quickly on our way to owning a tiny dog.

The next day we went to the family's small apartment a few miles from us and I wondered how the gargantuan table would even fit in there. But the thought fled as quickly as it came, for I didn't care because I was going to get a dog. My own dog! But this small dog wouldn't be my first pet. In kindergarten I won two goldfish at a school carnival and named them Bert and Ernie. Bert and Ernie were everything you could ever ask for in a pair of goldfish: quiet, cramped, and gold. They enjoyed the confines of their small tank with fake coral and fluorescent colors that would serve as their home, and it was understood that I would be responsible for feeding and taking care of the new Joneses. Unfortunately my parents must not have been aware of the fact that I was five years old. I once forgot to put on my underwear before school and was terrified when I went to the bathroom to discover I was freeballin' it. I'm pretty sure I started crying because I didn't know what was going on, but after a few moments of confusing silence I collected myself and went back to my place on the floor to play the kazoo with the rest of the class. I was obviously not suited for this type of responsibility, and one morning before leaving for school I checked my buddies' tank and found both of them floating atop the unnaturally blue water. I called my Mom over and, once again, started crying because seeing her face made me realize they were more than sleeping. Of course I forgot to feed them the night before, and in doing so forced my two aquatic friends into an eternal dirt nap, or water nap. I'm not really sure if that phrase applies to water. But whatever the phrasing, Kindergarten was a bitch that day. After returning home from a long day of gruesome mental imagery we waited for my Dad where my Mom gave him the bad news. We then had a funeral for the dearly beloved and the Jones family huddled around our guest bathroom toilet, said some heartfelt words about Bert and Ernie, and gave them their proper burial.

So this whole new dog thing was big for me. Thankfully I was a couple years older and knew what it felt like to lose a friend--nay, two friends. When we walked inside the under-lit apartment the dogs were yapping loudly because of the doorbell. We walked over to the dogs feeding from their mother and our Chihuahua of choice was obvious. There were three to choose from and two of them just looked stupid. Like, retarded stupid. The one we chose had light, golden brown hair, a fat, dark snout, a snow white belly, and didn't look nearly as retarded as the other ones. By default Chihuahuas will always look dumb but this pudgy one was just cuter than your run-of-the-mill, long faced, shaky little rodent. They got their table and we got our dog; it was the perfect barter.

We had to wait an eternal two weeks before finally getting him, but once he brought him home he was an immediate member of the Jones family. For about a month we didn't have a name for him and called him everything from "Max" to "Little Shit" (well, my Dad called him "Little Shit". I didn't start to experiment with cussing until the seventh grade). One morning while rummaging through my sister's closet for some reason I came across an old Ziggy calendar my parents had from the late 70s. Ziggy was a greeting card character created by comic artist Tom Wilson in 1971 that developed into a full-blown comic syndication. It still appears in hundreds of newspapers around the world, and the Ziggy character is the spokesperson for The National Foster Parent Association. The name seemed like a good fit for our chubby, affable dog, so from then on the first canine member of our family was forever known as Ziggy.

But throughout the years he was called many things. "Little Shit" often turned into "That Goddamn Little Piece of Shit" when he ran away, "Stupid Ass Dog" when he'd shit on the carpet once a year just to keep us on our feet, and "Stinky Shit Dog" when he ran through the sprinklers then immediately came to sit next to us on the couch. A friend of mine called him "Chris" because he reminded him of the late Chris Farley's happy-go-lucky fatness, and a slightly less intelligent friend called him "Pico" for reasons unknown to anyone. But regardless of what you called him, Ziggy was always the kicked-back fatty who was eager to hump your forearm if you riled him up. Sometimes he just wouldn't care and would attack your arm if you were picking up a quarter off the ground. Other times he'd snuggle his way under you while watching TV and then slowly make his move. All of a sudden you'd look down and he was making love to your elbow. We decided that we had to do one of two things with his burgeoning hormones: breed him, or neuter him. We decided both.

When I was a junior in high school I had a friend who lived behind us that had a female full-bred Chihuahua named Lady. We waited until Lady was in heat and let them loose in my friend's backyard. Ziggy did not treat her like a lady and impregnated that little bitch with four puppies. We took one, named him Roscoe, and neutered Ziggy a week after he was born. A couple years later we tried breeding Roscoe but lost hope after he couldn't figure it out. Ziggy's sex drive was not passed down to this particular offspring, and neither was his intelligence. Roscoe is about as smart as a pile of hair, and because of it, is a bit more entertaining than his dad. So after we chopped off Ziggy's nuts (my Dad rarely uses the term "neuter" for some reason) he mellowed out even more and basically just ate and slept. He was a sad Chihuahua with no testicles, but on a couple occasions I walked into a room and he'd be air-humping with a desperate look in his eye, kind of like the soldier that loses a limb during war yet still believes he can utilize the arm after its amputated. But Ziggy didn't have a ghost limb, he had ghost balls, and I think he secretly resented my Dad for it.

But as he got older Ziggy had more important things to worry about than his lack of manhood. A little over a year ago he was diagnosed with the canine equivalent of leukemia. Then his hearing went. Next were cataracts. Finally were prostate problems, which caused him to scream when he peed and fall over when he shit. It hurt him so much to he'd prop himself upwards to relieve the tension, but just end up cramping over and giving up. So he rarely ate and lost a lot of weight, making him go from Chris Farley to David Spade in the matter of a couple months.

Yesterday Ziggy had a stroke. Jenna found him in the morning still alive but paralyzed, so my family finally took him to the vet and put him to sleep around 11:00am. We got Ziggy when I started the third grade, and I'm now a year out of college. I had him when I learned how to multiply and when I learned how to write a corporate memo. He was my dog when I had my first crush and when I experienced my first adult heartbreak. From elementary school through college, that little dog has been a big part of my life. So the next time you're out having a drink, drink a beer in remembrance of Ziggy. That Little Shit will be missed.

A twisted kind of optimism

I've always been a passionate guy.

And I don't mean the sweaty, long-haired, shirt off, Fabio kind of passion, but the kind of passion that drives a person to do what they love regardless of its financial or real world impracticality. It's the kind of passion that won't even consider getting a job that "just pays the bills", even though you hate it. Its the kind of ridiculousness that makes a person want to be poor. It doesn't matter what I love at any given time, whether that be a book, a job, a woman, an entire field of study; if I'm interested in something it's 100%. But 100% for like...a chapter...or a month...or a failed six month relationship...or a semester. My passion is strong but fleeting. If I love you now, be careful. I may not love you next Thursday.

And it scares the shit out of me because up until now my life has been completely driven by those evanescent passions; passions that fulfill me for the minute but vanish twice as quickly as they came. I changed my major four times. I have hundreds of 1/4 finished books. I was really Catholic for a year. I have 20 amazing introductory paragraphs for 20 non-conceptualized novels. I thought I was always going to be an aggressive in-line skater or a baseball player. I'm no longer playing music; something I swore to myself I'd do forever. Theres a natural rush in discovering anything thats new and unknown, but after the unknown moves into the realm of the known it loses its intrigue; it loses its initial ability to captivate and mystify. Thats a normal feeling for most people and is also why the first few months of a relationship are--while exciting and emotional--realistically artificial, pretentious, or even delusional. The heart of a relationship lies in the period after the butterflies have flown. But my problem is that I strive on that feeling. I need the feeling of freshness to satisfy my desire for something new. I get bored with the known and need to find, create, and discover another unknown.

So professionally, I'm now at a job that--while completely unrelated to my ludicrous Philosophy studies--pays me well and for the time I actually enjoy. But I have to compare the situation with my past track record, and the way things have been going my excitement for this job should be taking a turn for the blasé in T minus three to six months. But my job is a close derivative of my most current and most promising future: photography. Of course this hobby should be yet another transitory interest until I start picking up zoology or woodworking or whatever outlandish creative enterprise comes strolling my way next. Thankfully, however, at the heart of photography is exactly what I need; something that must be consistently present in order to keep me interested in just about anything.

Writing takes time. It takes lots of time, and for someone that's a little lazy that's not a good thing. So when I feel like writing I will, but may lose the desire to put a sentence together halfway through the first paragraph. And if I don't want to write, sorry, but Im not writing shit. And it's the same idea for music: if I want to write a song I need to feel inspired or some bullshit, so to put something down I have to take the time to create the sound I want in my head, transpose it to guitar, figure out a sexy chord progression, add some cool guitar voicings to avoid sounding boring, find a tempo and the rhythm, and string it all together seamlessly. That takes time too, and lots of it. Dammit. But photography is intrinsically that rush of innovation, over and over again, but in a fraction of a second. I represent the world how I want to see it and it all happens in the same amount of time it takes me to blink my eye. I then reframe and do it again. And again. And again. In 1/125 of a second I express myself in the same manner that I do when it takes me a month to write a song, or a week to write a page. Every picture I shoot is a completed melody. Its that first paragraph. Its a whole semesters worth of Philosophy. Its another girlfriend.

And its not that there's less there substantially. Its just more compact than a piece of music or a book. In one photograph you see a multifaceted arrangement of perspective, composition, saturation, depth of field, color, lack of color, focus, movement. You see a whole story wrapped into a 4x6 frame. Most importantly, it's an ongoing creative process that's much more time efficient but just as rewarding as any other method of creativity I've engaged in so far. And that's why I have a feeling this is actually going to stick. I've been worried--very worried--that this interest will piddle away like everything else in my life that's piddled into nonexistence. This is just more substantial because it's the only passion so far that has paid me. It's creating my way of living right now, and I enjoy my way of living right now. But I will not do something I don't enjoy. Call it selfish, impractical, or downright stupid; I just won't subject myself to the kind of professional monotony that will drive me to insanity before I'm thirty.

So here I am, taking pictures and enjoying it. And I would've never thought that a part time job at Longs a few years ago would lead me to a career that I love more than music, but for now I'm thankful and happy, and I guess that's all I can really ask for...for now.

Forlorn Singles

He shuffled through the sock drawer, eternally rummaging for the missing matching sock. Black, argyle, striped, gold toe, flannel, crew and athletic; they were all forlorn singles with no visible partner. He found the master and dug with fervent aggression into the drawer to find its potential counterpart. It was a crisp, black gold toe -- calf-high and well into the upper echelons of snugness and comfortability -- but its temporary sole mate was a limpy grey dress sock with faint argyle stitching that had once seen its heyday at least three pairs of shoes before. But despite the obvious mismatch, it was still the closest match despite the sea of socks swimming in the madness of his drawer at the time. How we wished he could find a matching sock for once. One day is all that would suffice for him to have the homey comfort of knowing that the strips of cotton covering his feet were were of the same origin. But the daily deception worked, and it was only he and the sock that knew of the shameful little secret. Nobody else could tell it was a complex scheme designed to tricking everyone into believing he could find a sock that simply matched another one.

Something.

The first time I got in trouble was in the first grade. I was a polite five year old with a perpetual part on the right side of my clean cut head, nice shoes, and a healthy lunch packed by a nurturing mother who has and will continue to love me like the five year old she will always see me as. Layered in my baby blue polo and royal blue St. Helen’s sweatshirt, the class of thirty stood anxiously with our hands clasped in front of our stomachs, waiting for the end of day prayer announcement to beam over the school intercom. After a few seconds of first grade silence—which has never been, nor will ever be real silence, but more of a compromise, in which the silence is substituted for the fidgety movements, innocent chuckles, and snot-sleeved sniffles of any normal five year old—a speeding ambulance drove by on the street in front of the school with its sirens and lights blazing. Instantaneously and almost intuitively, the well mannered boy we know as Ryan belted out a “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” that mimicked the tone and timbre of the passing siren. I didn’t even think about it. I just heard the siren and for some strange—and still unknown—reason, I had to react. And it had nothing to do about being compelled or inspired to do it, but as if it were the proper and only action necessary for that situation: a siren screams and a nice Catholic boy mimics it.

So the class laughed. Shit, I laughed, and even experienced my first sense of peer acceptance. I was the cool/funny/stupid kid who screamed in class during a time of prayer, so I enjoyed the pride for a couple seconds as I looked around the room and saw the kids smiling, but was petrified when I returned back to prayer time and heard Devecchio grunt out “What was that?” Miss Devecchio was the kind of teacher that, in retrospect, seemed prone to alcoholism and bouts of homicidal tendencies. She had the eerie presence of the wicked witch of the west and even had the grotesque facial exaggerations and stringy strands of brittle hair to complete the comparison. I don’t ever recall her being nice, or even pleasant, and served as the archetypal “bad teacher” for me throughout my 18 years of schooling. She probably had a lot of cats, and loved them all more than she had loved any human.

The silence that proceeded the question was not the first grade kind, but to my knowledge the first and only historical instance of its adult counterpart of true, “oh shit” silence in a first grade setting. “You’re all staying for five minutes after the bell rings” she said with a snarl as the class gasped and whined. “If anyone talks, it’s another five minutes.” I remember thinking she was going to beat me after class. We stood there motionless and scared as convicts awaiting their sentences, but thankfully she didn’t beat me; she didn’t do or say anything to anyone after those eternal five minutes were up and she let us leave with a haunting “okay, bye.” Worried parents came closer to the room during that time since nobody was let out, and after we left no one said a word to me. In the course six minutes I was both the funniest and the most hated first grader at St. Helen’s.

An Update

1. I currently live in an upscale, urban crevice somewhere between the San Bernardino Mountains and the frantic I-10. Golf courses, Beamers, palm trees and newly-designed apartment complexes are staple fixtures in this swanky little town, and sleek glass buildings scaling fifteen floors line bustling industrial streets. Firms and agencies and logistics and headquarters of varying corporate enterprises stand tall while consumers of the greater Los Angeles area flock to outlet malls and trendy restaurants strategically placed throughout the metropolitan. Cars weave from the slow to fast lane and the fast to no lane in a heartbeat; the pace of life down here is bizarre and it’s never more evident than when I drive. But despite the overall chaos that runs unadulterated in this region, there is a calming, natural beauty in the geography.

Around four o’clock every evening the sun starts to head home for the night and the sky begins to fade from a subtle blue into a thick, deep lavender that eventually attaches itself onto the landscape beneath it. The sun grows more intense as it kamikazes the West, and after the sky is saturated with the residue of a setting sun the Santa Ana winds come racing inland and push thin strings of grey clouds into a sultry swagger, making them glide across the sky like an eloquent dancer. Every single night pastel sunsets burn the sky with a colorful gradient that makes any dusk-time drive a potential panoramic masterpiece. The days here are sub-par, but the evenings are so beautiful it makes up for the lack of daytime color. So if I combine the massive mountains to my direct north, the amazingly picturesque sunsets, the incredible dusks, the strands of dancing clouds, and the overall interestingness down here, I really come to realize I’m not in Fresno anymore.

It’s different here for sure, but it’s a well-needed switch from the security of a smaller city. Plus, the sunsets are amazing. I’m sure when the traffic and the egos and the rudeness of LA’s inhabitants starts to sink in I’ll be singing a different tune—but for now, I’ll enjoy it.

2. It’s no surprise that Southern California has an incredible inability to define seasons, which is definitely a major contrast between it and home—rather, my old home—where there were basically two seasons: summer and winter, with a month of a collective fall and spring. Here, however, it’s pretty much spring year-round. So two weeks ago when it was Thanksgiving and most normal people were wearing sweaters and slippers and bundling up with loved ones around a cozy fireplace, I was by myself watching Family Guy in a t-shirt and shorts; it was 87 degrees.

3. Hotels and airplanes are not so exciting anymore.

4. There's more, but I forgot about what. I'll rack my brain and come back tomorrow and give the excuse that it was ultimately unimportant--which is true--but I really just won't remember.