Tree. Bonus Video!

Typewriter Print

TYPEWRITER. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

Two Things are Wrong About This Photo.

TWO. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

1. Smoking is bad for you

2. Smoking is bad for you, at a gas station.

A Case For Never Getting Off Facebook

NUMERAL FRUSTRATION. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

Going back through my Facebook timeline, I’ve noticed there are holes: swathes filled only by the colorless, drab blue permeating the background of every Facebook page. 2009 is heartbreakingly blank. The highlights of 2008 are a friend asking, “I didn’t know you were back on Facebook?” which is not a question, and “Life Events” telling me what I already know: I graduated college, I moved home, I started work. Why is this? Why such a superficial and untelling history? Those were the years I was off Facebook.

Sure, sure, there’s a chance I got more things done. I graduated school, got a job, wrote a play, wrote a feature, drove from DC to Albany and back numerous times, made Skype calls to my long-distance girlfriend, spent a good fourth of my life writing daily emails to her, another fourth painfully watching Bones episodes with her. No matter whether I was on Facebook or not, most of my time was occupied. I didn’t get more done. I simply did more things in private.

And here’s the problem with privacy: most of the time, you need someone to keep your life in check. Most people have friends for this, some people pay therapists. Some people use Facebook as this barometer. The problem with my life from late 2007-2010 is that I had no barometer. I had gone dark. I had lost friends, I had been telling no one what was happening, I had gotten off all social media besides LinkedIn. I understand why there are people out there not on Facebook because they don’t feel like they have time, or because they feel it takes up too much of their time, but I’d make a case for not risking it. When they look at their timeline, they won’t see huge blank spaces where their life should’ve been. If they stayed smart, they’ll see they had people who cared, places they went, conversations shared. Most place a lot of emphasis on not putting your whole life on the internet, but transparency can be an amazing tool. Looking at those lost years makes me realize that I shouldn’t have ignored it, and how important it is to be living in public.

Twitter: @BenBenCaro

Inflation is a Bitch.

NUMERAL FRUSTRATION. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

$388.85 for a gallon of milk.

POEM: “BODIES”

GOSSIP. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

I’m back in town again, and everyone knows it.
I feel one hundred eyes on me.
I feel signs going up, shutters, doors closing.

I pull the rope knot tight round the wood, horse kicks.
Dogs bark in the distance. The wind picks up.
I’m surrounded. Voices, whispers, old lips.
Eyes I’ve seen before, faces I’ve lit up.

Mud drips black off my coattail like spit from the mouth.
It snakes through the dirt.
I’ve got dead bodies hidden all over this town,
Under floorboards, behind barns, in the walls of homes on First.

Ghosts follow me to the Town Hotel,
follow me up the creaking stairs to my room with no lights.
I get into the bed. They follow me into my sheets.

Twitter: @BenBenCaro

Spill Your Guts!

GOSSIP. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

This is What’s in My Socket.

SOCKET. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

Kashi: Carcinogens and Hormone Disruptors

ARROGANCE. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

Earlier this morning, my friend posted this on my wall:

I don't give credence to any signs like these unless they're written in Comic Sans.

As I bit into some GoLean Crunch! at my desk, I wondered about this picture half-heartedly. I chewed a little, and took another bite, then I let myself wonder whole-heartedly. Eventually, I finished the bowl. Here’s why:

How carcinogenic are those pesticides, really? A known carcinogen is red meat, and I still consume a fair amount of that, even if I’m not buying any red groceries. Cancer is serious, and I really shouldn’t have taken another bite even though at that point I was nearly done with the bowl. It’s certainly a first world problem to not be able to finish your bowl of cereal due to some vague health risks. You know what else is a first world problem? Getting cancer. Why I’d rather finish my bowl of cereal than have a lower risk of cancer is not so much a mystery to me.

Let’s look at the other item on the sign: hormone disruption. Which hormones? All of them? There’s a lot of soy protein in that cereal. Maybe the legions of estrogen being pumped into my body from the soy will instead run into a disruption and I’ll be able to carry on looking like a man, so perhaps this hormone disruption is a good thing. Then again, maybe not. I’m wearing pastel today.

The third reason I finished my cereal is after looking at sentences like “when the USDA tested the grains used there were found to be…” I know it’s probably not a good idea to base decisions about my health based on the quality of sentence syntax, but a guy can’t help himself, am I right guys? Hope I’m not being too passive-voice aggressive, here.

I wrote an article about cereal addiction here before. This is more of article about not being interrupted in the morning until you’ve had your coffee, which increases hypertension.

——————-

Written by @BenBenCaro

How MEN Make Hot Dogs.

ARROGANCE. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

OUT OF EXCUSES.

ACCUSATION. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

Twitter: @BenBenCaro

VIDEO: GIRL ON CELLPHONE FALLS INTO SKINKHOLE IN CHINA

ARROGANCE. [BONUS VIDEO]

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER.

EARNED LEADERSHIP. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

—-

her lips spread wide across her face

as she smiled at my joke,

—-

                 and whispered

     “take me

                  to your leader.”

—-

I followed her out of the bar,

I introduced her to herself.

—-

A Meal Like This Will Earn Respect.

EARNED LEADERSHIP. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

Note the dots of sriracha.

Tonight’s Double-Fisting Happy Hours.

EVENING. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

1. The Dancing Crab: 2 for 1 domestic beers; 4:30 – 7:30 PM

2. Meeting Place:  Buy 1 get 1 free drinks; 4:00PM – 7:00PM

4. Black’s Bar & Kitchen: Buy 1 get 1 free oysters, $2.75 Miller Lite; 4:00PM – 7:00PM

OREGON MAN SELFISHLY PROTESTS NAKED AND SCARS LITTLE GIRL.

REVOLT. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

April 17th, 2012

Dear Diary,

Today we flew back home to Maine, but first I saw a man naked. We were standing in the line at the airport and then I looked up and there was a man there without any clothes on! I repeat: no clothes at all. It was really scary because who goes to the airport without any clothes on? I didn’t know what else he might do. I started crying but I don’t know why.

My parents talked about the man the whole flight back, but maybe that’s because they knew I was crying about it. Like I just told you berfore, I don’t know why I was crying. Maybe it is because he was fat and old and when I think of a naked man I think its going to be Zac Efron, but now I will always think of old fat man. His butt was flabby and moved even when he was standing still, and I don’t really get that. Also but the worst part was his front side. That hair there was everywhere and looked like my grandmother’s head, and his pee pee was sticking out of there too. It was like a little wrinkly nose. When we were in Port Land we went to the Zoo,  and there were these naked mole rats there and it looked like a naked mole rat. Not just because of the name naked though! Because it also was wrinkly and looked like a naked mole rat who couldn’t see anything and was really scary because it had these big teeth and the teeth were the first thing that knocked into each other when the mole rats scurried around in their tubes. The pee pee was like that it was frightening and always seemed like it went first before everything else like a mole rat biting its way into things with its tiny teeth.

Mom and Dad didn’t know I was listening but they said they heard the fat old man say he was “humiliated” when the security people felt him for bombs. I don’t know cause shouldn’t he be even more humiliated after he took his clothes off and was naked? I’m going to go to sleep now, but I can’t stop thinking of the naked mole rat and the teeth.

Love,

Jennifer

The Le Corbusier LC-2, Remix.

[MANUFACTURER. GMT-4 WASH DC]

 Original Le Corbusier LC-2 chair by Pierre Jeanneret & Charlotte Perriand. Retail: $4,160.

Knock Off Baxton Studios Chair by Target. $509.99

Zombie Survival Map Tells Me I Should Move

OCEAN. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

Using Google Maps and some slick design, the digital agency/design collective Doejo has created Map of the Dead, a zombie survival map, and has peered into my soul more poignantly than I have ever been able to, asking me what am I doing with my life. Using the map, one may find out whether he or she is living in a “zombie danger zone,” essentially a death sentence, marked by the color red. Most, if not all of L.A. is an ocean of red: death sentence. I look at the little street view man symbolizing the location of my harrowing descent into madness. He’s holding a rifle, but in real life, I don’t own a rifle. Hollywood magic.

Doomed.

A few blocks to the west lies the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which usually serves as an enchanting recreational area for the park-starved Los Angeles. Sigur Ros will be playing there next month. On the zombie survival map, however, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is nothing but a hazard. Zombie survival map doesn’t believe in forever.

Essentially, I am doomed. The only safe zones seem to be the Hollywood hills, miles away. In Runyon Canyon and Griffith Park exercise minions race up and down the hills as if on a track, mindlessly consuming a steady diet of smoothie brain food: strawberries, whey protein, flesh, They get stronger, faster. Zombie survival map tells me that “if I have the skills,” airports may hold a helicopter or airplane to aid my escape. And then, as if proving something I already knew, as if rubbing it in, it doesn’t list LAX. In any case, how could I get there? The cars crawl along the 10 like undead soldiers. There’s no way I could get there in time on any other Wednesday.

During the zombie apocalypse, at least people will start to walk again. The streets will fill up with people whom I used to see inside cars. No longer will they sing to themselves or conduct business over Blutooth, but at least there will be some commotion out there, some life scuffling across the sidewalk.

Here in Southern California, we are anticipating a catastrophic earthquake. The history books tell us it is time that we slide into the sea. What are we doing here still, then? We are doomed. Only masochism can explain why we haven’t moved. So what about when we no longer feel, when our skin turns green, when the night falls and the moon lets us know it is over? Zombie survival map makes me ponder the existential. Zombie survival map makes me think about my rifle.

—–

Twitter: @BenBenCaro

OCEAN. [GMT-4 WASH DC]

I went to a bar in Los Angeles for a party held in honor of a friend who quit his job and required celebration. Essentially an unemployment party. Despite having no replacement job lined up, we all were aligned on the simple concept supporting the pure unadulterated American freedom of unbarring one’s soul from the putrid shackles of rolling calls and re-stocking copiers. Needless to say, drinks were not on him.

A former colleague of his approaches and proceeds with the following bar-game: What 10 countries only have 4 letters? I sort out seven, missing Mali, Oman, and Togo. In all fairness, Mali and Togo are Republics and Oman is a Sultanate state. Plus, I forgot about them.

Next question. What are the 5 oceans? Easy. Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic… Arctic… Mediterranean is a sea. Great lakes are well, lakes. Southern Ocean? What? Whatever the Indian Ocean should be a sea anyway. No I’m not discouraged. It’s just an antarctic convergence zone for Christ sake.

SPIT. [GMT-7 LOS ANGELES]

Percentage of saliva in the last sip of a 12 oz. drink belonging to a person whose glass is 50% empty:

12.5%

_________________________________________________________

Percentage of cola in the last sip of a 12 oz. drink belonging to a person whose glass is 50% full:

87.5%