you really don't want to know

My brother is in the emergency room, apparently because he had a seizure this afternoon. He’s still in Oswego, and I’m in California and can’t just go to the hospital to see him.

This scares the living bejesus out of me. For those of you who didn’t see my Livejournal, here’s why:

In 2005, my stepmother got really sick, and it ultimately turned out to be cancer. Having been through this before, my dad stepped right up and offered his best rallying cry, “we’re gonna beat this!” But my stepmother, being the sort of person she was, pretty much resigned herself to “go with jesus.” This, more than the sickness itself, took a huge toll on my dad. He was ready to fight, and he didn’t have the only important person he needed on his side. She would lose, and he would lose with her. For most of the year, he took great care of her as he watched her go rapidly downhill.

In October of 2005, I got in a motorcycle accident which scared the hell out of everyone, including me. Thankfully, I came out ok. No broken bones, just a little lapse in memory. Serious. But lucky.

Then, in November, while my father was taking care of my stepmother on her deathbed, my dad was knocked down just a little further when his dog Indy got sick enough that he had to euthanize her. This was the dog we got as a puppy when I was a junior in high school, just as my dad and stepmom’s relationship was new…they’d gotten married just a year or so after my mom died in 1992. When we got Indy, my brother also adopted her sister and named her Lotus, so it was a big happy family, and we were all heartbroken when Indy died.

On December 1, 2005, my dad was going into my stepmom’s room to take care of her, and collapsed in the doorway with his first and last heart attack. Much more can be said about the events that followed from it, but that’s not the purpose of this post. Suffice it to say, he was laid to rest next to my mother, under the headstone that bore his name since 1992. A close family friend, Kevin, was chosen as a pallbearer (as he was at my mother’s funeral). He’s known my dad for most of his life, and he’s a big burly dude with a soft side and a great sense of humor. At the church, he turned to my brother and said “I think I got the heavy corner…the one where his heart is.”

Several months later, in March, my stepmother’s pain and suffering ended, and I took a long bus trip back to Oswego to spend some time with my stepfamily. I also spent time with my brother, aunt and uncle…but I was the only Thorpe to go to my stepmother’s wake. Long story.

At the end of April, my brother’s second dog, Ludwig, became terminally ill and had to be put to sleep. One month later, he also had to put Lotus to sleep. These two dogs, it’s very safe to say, were family members. He wrote about them, if you’d like to read it.

During this time, my brother and I talked a fair bit, and he was very distraught from the year’s events. He mentioned a few times that he wanted to go for a motorcycle ride to clear his head, and I demanded that he do no such thing. Riding a bike while you’re distraught or even remotely preoccupied is seriously the most dangerous thing you can do. He obliged for a while, but he quickly found his way back onto his motorcycle, which he crashed in an admittedly-stupid low-speed accident within a month. He was fine, but the bike required extensive repair.

At some point this year (I can’t even remember WHEN, because there’s just been so much SHIT to keep track of), I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in my back and abdomen. Familiar pain. I went to Johns Hopkins emergency with kidney stones for the second time in my life. If I never get them again, it’ll be too soon.

My girlfriend has had her own health problems within the past year and a half that have also been scary, but at the moment she seems to be doing ok.

My sister, bless her heart, is apparently in excellent health. If I recall correctly, she’s been getting regular breast exams and other smart tests done since 1992 (one thorpe that learns from wake-up calls). Anyway, Kathy, stay fucking healthy or I’ll PUNCH you.

So please, everyone, if you’re reading this, send some good vibes out to my brother. I’m not religious, but if you pray, that’s cool too. I just only have two immediate family members left, and I’d like them to stick around for a long time.

…SoooOOOOoooper GEE-NIUS.

So I dropped into the Apple Store the other day with Mash-U and Liz, and while we were there I asked someone if they only accept job applications online, or if I could apply in person. The salesman asked his manager, came back with a business card with the appropriate URLs on it, and said there would be a “hiring event” going on that night at 7pm. So we left, I quickly tailored my resume into something they’d want to see, I looked up the job positions available, and lo and behold, they’re looking for a Mac Genius (for their in-store Genius Bar, where folks bring their broken macs, or their questions about broken macs). Went with Liz to her lab to print my resume, and went off running.

7pm came around, and there was a group of 7-8 applicants, which grew to 12 over the course of 20 minutes (late = no-hire, I’d imagine). Anyway, we all kinda introduced ourselves, said a few things about ourselves, and then the managers quickly paired us off to work on a little project. We had 15 minutes to interview our partner, learn a little about why he/she’s a good candidate, and then come up before the group and “sell” the other person. Awesome idea! And nearly everyone had the personality of a short, bent stick!

So I got up there with my notes to sell Ron. Didn’t use my notes, made a few jokes that got people laughing, and generally established a rapport with everyone while showing I can learn things about someone I’ve never met, and use those things from memory to make him sound like a great guy, even though he admitted he doesn’t know shit about computers.

In short, I ruled.

Anyway, they said at the end of the night that they’d be contacting us by phone or email within 5-7 days to set up further interviews where appropriate.

I got called early the next day, and I’ve got an interview at 3pm today. Moof!

It’s still just a job in retail, so I’m not exactly getting right into my web development career as soon as I’d like to, but the honest truth is that I’m not ready yet. And I need a paycheck. I have debts to pay, and I’m an expensive burden on mygirlfriend. I want to repay her in kind for all the support she’s shown me, and once I’m rollin’ in the fat paychecks, I fully intend to pamper her to no end.

And I’ll have “Genius” on my resume, if this interview goes well.

I’ve been wrenching on cars so long, I’ve effectively killed my ability to wrap my brain around the Flash development skills I once had. Not only that, but I’ve never had a great ability to produce stellar-looking designs, and yet still I harbor this notion that I’ll get a great job with a great company that has high standards of excellence. Hard to do that when you never got past “mediocre.”

When you’re a car enthusiast, you can meet other car enthusiasts and maybe even join a car club to gain access to someplace you can work on your car, borrow people’s tools, etc. But when you’re an atrophied Flash developer with attention-span problems, you can’t just walk into a Starbucks and start comparing notes and asking questions of Flash guys. There’s no real workshop to go to, unless you’ve got the money for training or continuing education. I’m trying to use the online workshops (as they’re very generous with the “data” I need), but the human component of this very non-human learning curve is just plain missing. The only reason I learned this stuff back in the day was because I had great people to help me, in person, and it charged me. So I got enthusiastic about it, and found my love for it…with guidance.

I’m proud of a lot of things I’ve accomplished in my life, like learning an object-oriented programming language (or two), building two cars from the ground up, etc, etc, etc…but I’m trying to turn back to something I’ve left behind, and put the spotlight on that one thing again, and it’s proving to be difficult.

My brother hit the nail on the head when he said I attack things with a certain intensity until I’ve conquered them, and then move on to the next challenge. When I was a kid, it was video games for days until I beat my hand-eye coordination into submission. Then I was staying up for days on end to put model cars together with an obsessive attention to detail. Then I moved onto lacrosse. I wasn’t great at the game, and wasn’t given the opportunity to prove otherwise, so I made myself great at designing intricately woven pockets for lacrosse sticks, and made myself really good at tricks with the stick. The I moved into inline skating and pushed myself to the limits and bled a lot. Then it was photography and darkroom. Then I built myself up to a Mac computer guru, learning all the ins and outs of the system and all the applications I could get my hands on, and finally I tackled the whole programming language thing with Flash and Actionscript. And of course, during the gaps between my sometimes-fleeting fascinations, I’d apply myself with the same intensity to love and sexuality and relationship. When I moved on from programming (for my sanity or my fickleness, you be the judge), I decided to do this crazy shit to my car, which gained me a certain strange notoriety among VW peers nationwide.

This last one, I feel, is the only one that’s firmly entrenched itself in the slot of “hobby for life,” though I’m sure I’ll build models again, or pick up a lacrosse stick for possible local leagues. Hell, I’d even love to get back into a video game phase, but who has time for that?

But programming….it wasn’t exactly a hobby for me. And I’m trying to turn my attention around, look back when I’ve always looked ahead. I don’t have this flaw emotionally or mentally, as I seem to have no problems scrutinizing or reminiscing over the past…but when it comes to challenging myself, I seem to have found a rather steadfast limitation in my head, and now I’ve made THAT into my challenge. The question is, can I really fool myself into thinking that this is forward movement? ‘Cause I seem to be biking up an icy hill on this one.

Please send me inspiration. I’ve got precious little of it these days.

It’s been a good long while since I’ve had cable TV of any sort, so I’ve pretty much avoided the TV for a couple of years. But now we’ve got cable, and I flip through the channels blindly, as if I hadn’t been raised on the shit. I feel like a novice, and I gotta get a Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Television (man, if that ain’t a title made in heaven…). Jebus I hate seeing those fucking books…just serves as a sad reminder. Anyway.

I stopped on some random channel I’ve never heard of, to catch the majority of All The President’s Men. For those of you who haven’t seen it…SEE IT. Classic movie. It recounts the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstien of the Washington Post, during the unfolding of the Watergate scandal. Now, being a couch potato who did nothing but watch TV as a kid, and being that our school system didn’t teach us jack about the scandal or eventual impeachment of Nixon, this movie was exactly how I was introduced to Watergate.

It’s a movie about journalistic integrity, accountability, and the search for truth when all you seem to find is secrets and lies.

It reminded me of another movie I’d seen recently, called Good Night and Good Luck. The story of Edward R. Murrow’s plight against McCarthyism, it’s also a great testimonial for journalistic integrity, and it’s quite an emotional movie to see, given the utter LACK of it in the media these days.

Here’s where it gets sticky, ’cause I’m not exactly as eloquent as I once was, and I tend to lose steam before I actually get the point across on huge issues such as this (one might ask, “why blog?”). The media lately is braindead. No real investigative reporting, nobody’s challenging authority, nobody’s manipulating the system in order to get the truth into the light, and it seems everyone in the media is a puppet. So they broadcast fluff and spin. And I don’t know what’s not spin anymore, so assume I never know the whole truth about any one thing.

This is why I find it difficult to maintain steam and get my point across. I’m a simple guy, I try to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, and I try not to get in over my head. But I also want to make a difference, so I registered to vote just as soon as I got to CA (as I’ve always done elsewhere). And now I’m being bombarded by spin advertisements in both directions on the TV, about proposition 87, prop 90, prop this and prop that…and I’m so misled that I don’t have the time nor the energy to find out the TRUTH so I can vote my conscience.

How does a man live his life the way he wants to, when he’s depending on others (read: others who are paid millions of dollars a year) who were supposed to be working hard to bring truth to the people?

I know I’m a baby, and that I’m lazy, and that I’m leaving too much up to others, and it’s my responsibility to solve the problem for myself. But the fact of the matter is, I’m resentful of the complacency that’s allowed corruption to prevail. If Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstien were still hungry young reporters during W. Bush’s presidency, you can bet your sweet bippy they would have done exactly what was necessary to unearth the sordid details of any one of the NUMEROUS scandals-in-the-making that that Texan douchebag has been privy to.

The further downside is, no one seems to care anymore, or they give the impression of caring, but they stop short of actually informing themselves and acting upon it. I’m no exception.

Clinton got a hummer, and he was impeached. Bush started a war by lying to us, and his cabinet has fucked up everything that’s even remotely related to that war…and somehow he’s free and clear.

Yes I know this post is very stream-of-consciousness and negative. Screw you.

Thank fucking god I’m finally in a state, once again, where motorcyclists actually wave to each other. It really got to me in Baltimore, that no one on bikes seemed to wave at all. My dad taught me how to ride, and he always waved to others when he had me on as a passenger, so I picked up the habit.

When I finally got my motorcycle license and started riding on my own (many years later), I somehow reached back in my failing memory and instinctively waved to all the riders I encountered on the road, whether they be on the other side of a divided highway, or just across the yellow lines from me. And they waved back! Such a simple thing, something so ordinary that you wouldn’t think it’d be such a big deal. But when you go someplace where they don’t do it, it has its impact. Like moving from a sunshine state to someplace where it’s constantly overcast (which is exactly the opposite of what I’ve done recently).

One biker encounters another on the road, and waves. It’s like saying, “Hey, cool, you like to ride too, eh? Awesome, good to see you out and about. Have a good ride!” Seriously, the guy who waves might not have those thoughts go through his head, but it’s the message that gets across.

But in Baltimore (and all over Maryland, it seemed), no one waved. Not even the I’m-cool-as-shit wave, all low-slung and shot from the hip. Nada. I’m not sure why, but I guess I’ve got my theories. See, I was in a bike shop once waiting to get info about MD state inspection, and a dude was in line holding his helmet, wearing a brilliantly shiny J.Crew button-down with khaki cargo shorts, and the whitest fucking K-Swiss sneakers I’ve ever seen. Yep, shorts and sneakers with, now get this: an ankle-sock pulled over the sneaker, so his shifter wouldn’t get his kicks dirty. When I went outside, I saw his brand-new, modified-to-the-hilt Hayabusa. His bike was his fashion accessory, how fucking metro can you get. And beyond that, there are the legions of young men in Baltimore who ride bikes as a status symbol, and are constantly trying to display who’s got the bigger dick by seeing who can ride a 100+ mph wheelie for the longest distance on I-95. I dunno, I guess I can understand the need for adrenaline, but I guess that’s just too self-centered for me.

I took a ride on La Honda Road and Skyline Boulevard today, and got waved at by like 300 motorcyclists. When they weren’t leaning into the hundreds of turns, they were at least lifting their fingers off the clutch lever to give a little wave.

I dunno, it just kinda makes me feel welcome around here, and that people aren’t too cool to be friendly.