What’s the zip code for Mayberry?

I’m convinced my post office belongs in Mayberry.

The post office is right across the street from where I live, which is convenient for mailing stuff, picking up packages or buying stamps (I’ve done two of the above three things so far in my two weeks of living here). Every time I’ve gone into the post office, the workers are chatting away with some customer who has a stack of envelopes–a local business-owner or something of the sort, no doubt. Every time, without fail.

“Hey, haven’t seen you in a while!”
“Yeah, I was gone for about two months.”

Or, even more like Mayberry, someone running into someone else.

“Hey, it’s good to see you. What have you been up to?”
“Well…I’m getting a divorce. Still working at the airport, and my daughter’s in college now.”
“How old is she again?”
“She’s 20–my son’s doing well too, I guess the last time you saw him was ten years ago.”

Ten years ago! I listened for a good five minutes to this very overt conversation between acquaitances who apparently didn’t know each other well enough to contact each other in a decade, but knew each other well enough to catch up on each other’s lives. Maybe it’s not like Mayberry, but Mayberry if the town were twice as big such that everyone knew each other but only encountered any one person once per decade.

This evening when I was mailing something, I witnessed conversation after conversation take place one after another between different sets of people. Customer 1 to Customer 2, Customer 1 to the postal worker, Customer 3 to the postal worker, Customer 3 to Customer 4, Customer 3 to another postal worker, the postal worker to Customer 4. Insanely chatty–about everything from McCain’s VP pick to the local hospital to Customer 3’s grinning daughter (in everyone’s defense, she was cute, and when she looked at me and did the quintessential toddler-squeal, I had to grin back). Maybe I’m used to the usually unchatty German way of life, where you only talk to your neighbors and friends. Rarely are conversations struck up at the bakery or grocery store.

In Charleston, I had a rapport with the local mail workers since I saw them so often. But it was far from the Mayberry experience this Alexandria post office offers upon every visit. «»

Hands on a Hard Body

Late post tonight on account of college football and a housemate coming home from a work happy-hour type situation very late and rambling in a fun way. I’ve got vanilla coke-caffeine running through my veins.

Hands on a Hard Body: The Documentary is a mid-1990s film chronicling the Longview, Texas Hands on a Hard Body competition in which a couple dozen people attempt to win a truck by keeping their hand on it the longest. Shot in 1995, it’s an amazing glimpse of everyday people in a struggle to make their lives a little easier by winning a truck to keep or to sell.

I lived near Shreveport, Louisiana for most of my childhood, a city about sixty miles from where the events in the film take place. The different types of people ring very familiar bells, from the religious Norma and her friend who speaks of prayer chains to the wisened and somewhat mystical Benny who waxes philosophical about the competition. One of my favorite lines from him is, “You either hunt with the big dogs or you get on the porch with the pups.” Though I can’t think of any example from my childhood in Louisiana, Alabama or South Carolina, this character and his homespun wisdom were eerily familiar in tone.

While the contest is clearly a corporate gimmick which benefits everyone, from the Nissan dealership to the sponsors to the radio station which checks in on the competition on-air throughout the course of the few days, the documentary deals with the people in a way that highlights their humanity and draws out the essence of the experience beyond the simple premise of winning a truck. While the contestants seem to emphasize the significance of the contest more than an average viewer might, there’s something to exploring such a concentrated niche of human experience and examining it from all feasible angles. The conclusion of the competition is unimportant by the end, and the actual winning of the truck is anticlimactic, the experience impinged upon by exhaustion and the intensity of the first day and a half. By the end, delirium has set in and the individuals are uninteresting. The desire to win the truck has waned, the vibrance of the initial stages of the competition gone–a classic example of how the journey is more important than the destination, as an epigraph shown in the opening frames of the film states.

It is equal parts bizarre and banal, and yet it’s part of the fabric of our being in some way, showing a chunk of what makes humans tick through this silly competition which meant so much to this handful of people for such a brief time. «»

The jungle

As a rule, I don’t like Guns N’ Roses (if given a choice, I’d probably prefer roses over guns), but this story about the inspiration behind “Welcome to the Jungle” makes me like the song a whole lot more, and provides some depth to a band I don’t think twice about. After learning that the title line comes from an old man in Washington Heights circa 1980, I realized I made a couple assumptions about the band and that particular song. The added depth of two Indiana hicks coming to New York at a time when the city was a much rougher and darker place enriches the story, and makes me shove aside my assumption that the band sprung fully formed from the bowels of Los Angeles, a city I’m not especially fond of. I always thought “Welcome to the Jungle” might be about the urban jungle instead of a thick rain forest, but now that I know the line refers to New York City, I have a very discrete image to associate with the line. You’re in the jungle, baby.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been in this sort of jungle. When I’ve been in unfamiliar places, I’ve tried to not stick out so that I could avoid an instance of someone pointing and going “You don’t belong here! This place is not for you, for it is a jungle!” I’ve rarely wandered off the path where something like this could happen, though I’m now somewhat well-traveled. Most folks in their adventures abroad have a story of getting harassed by a local or put in an uncomfortable or even perilous situation. I’m sure I’ve been in an uncomfortable situation at some point, but not one so uncomfortable that backing away wouldn’t be a suitable solution. It seems some people are fit to confront these sort of adventures and come away from them with a good story, a good scare or both–I’m not among those people.

There’s a This American Life episode that chronicles a tornado that hit Hoisington, Kansas on prom night in mid-2001. In recounting the aftermath, a couple promgoers relate that they never thought a tornado would hit Hoisington, though the sirens would go off every once in a while and there’d be tornado warnings. The town was too boring to be struck by disaster, they reckoned. The reaction to the events was more disbelief than anything else, partly because the high school students had no idea that a tornado had struck since they were herded into a basement and there was no information on what was going on outside until after the fact, but more incredulity that anything of any importance would ever happen in Hoisington, Kansas.

So it would seem that either you end up in the jungle, or the jungle comes to you.

The end of the move

Sixteen hours’ worth of driving later and I have two closets filled with boxes, faced with the question “Why did I need this stuff again?” My work is cut out for me. «»

Food and necessary items

Today a friend and I drive eight hours to pick up some of my stuff and drive back tomorrow morning, moving some mostly worthless stuff across the entirety of three states. Of course, it has some value to me in that I won’t have to spend money to replace the stuff that I have in storage now. This trivial errand is simultaneously necessary and annoying.

While the trip is scheduled mostly to bring a chair, my bike and an assortment of other belongings, I’ll get to see two people who mean a great deal to me. So while the trip is designed to save me the money I’d have to spend to replace these necessary items (as Murray would refer to them at least), my excitement about the trip has mostly been about seeing these two people. It makes me think I should attempt visits of this nature more often, and try not to focus on mindless errands–especially long-distance ones.

My alarm just went off (at 4:00 AM), though I’ve been up practically all night. Time to shower and start this long day. «»

Pillaging the Past VI: GSN

Now that I’m Stateside, I have cable again, which is something I’ve feared.

There was an article I read a few months ago about how humanity has so much useful creative time sucked away by passive cultural participation (e.g. television). That time is being slowly regained through the internet and the advent of participatory technological media (e.g. Wikipedia, YouTube, blogging). This made me think about how much of my life has been wasted sitting in front of cable television.

The article (which I’ve been unable to find in the last twenty minutes, much to my frustration) cited the 1950s and the rise of broadcast television as bringing this about. As television has expanded to cable and satellite and digital cable, there’s now more ways to waste time in front of the TV than ever before. Arugably, some of the programming is informative and useful, such as the news, some well-researched documentaries, creative shows that address philosophical issues like Star Trek or House, but the majority of programming is not. Most sports programming, most sitcoms, and almost all reality television fall into this category. The mother of all time-wasters is, perhaps, game shows.

I first had the Game Show Network in college. I started watching Match Game, which I found bizarre at first and then hypnotizing thanks to Brett Somers and Charles Nelson-Reilly. Over my four years in college, I probably saw two or three episodes of Match Game each week on average (GSN broadcast two episodes each day around 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon). I ate it up, devoured it like an eight-year-old eating candy on Halloween night. It was unhealthy, a waste of time, and I reveled in it.

In Germany, my television viewing was limited mostly to Jeopardy!, The Daily Show and the occasional primetime show. I downloaded my favorite series (House, South Park) and that was it. No channel-surfing, no watching GSN for hours on end, no sitting in front of Comedy Central being somewhat entertained by whatever syndicated show they had acquired or stand-up special that was airing at the time. That time was (arguably) better spent, and it was a far better lifestyle.

After having cable here for a couple weeks, I’ve hopefully broken the cycle of sitting and watching nothing. I’ve watched the Olympics and the news, and that’s been it. My viewing has been limited, and it’s been wonderful. GSN has been purged from my life, and I’m happier for it. «»

Where desire meets ambition

There’s a job that was posted today that I really want. It involves writing, is located three blocks away and pays well. It’s pretty much the trifecta of what a good position looks like for me at this point.

In my quest to find work over the past month and a half (about a month’s worth of online applications and a couple weeks’ worth of online applications on a more local level), I’ve found that if I’m going to get anywhere, I need to make this happen and not hope that it falls in my lap. When an autoreply email saying, essentially, “We’ll keep you on file” is good news, it becomes apparent that in order for me to acquire an actual job, I need to talk to someone face-to-face and tell them why I want that job. Tomorrow is the first attempt in making that sort of sequence of events happen.

One of my housemates equated it with asking someone on a date–the worst thing that can happen is that they say “no” outright. Any reward (a date, a job offer) outweighs the possible risks in this hypothetical situation.

So I’ll put on a nice shirt, some black slacks and my dress shoes, and hopefully get the chance to explain why I want the position so badly. And hopefully that will be just enough to work. «»

Is this the America I left a year ago?

When I landed a couple weeks ago at JFK, one of the first verbal exchanges (besides with passport control) was with a Delta worker sitting behind a desk that had something to do with baggage. I was trying to figure out where to go.

Me: I’m not sure this is the right place, but I just came from an international flight and I have a connection in the States–
Her, in a New York accent: Go down the hall to the elevator.
Me, very tired after a long flight and sick of pushing my bags around: Down this way? And who do I need to–
Her, more emphatically: Just down to the elevator, to the counter, hon.
Me: Alright, thanks.
Her: It’s this way, hon!
Me: I know, my bags are over here.
Her: Oh, alright.

I chalked it up to being in New York. This was a middle-aged New York working-class blonde woman who was used to getting to the point and probably used to dealing with people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Then I got in line to get the replacement ticket for my connection, which I had missed–a line in which I was the only person with a cartful of one hundred pounds worth of baggage. I was moved over brusquely when a woman came by telling a group of us that “This isn’t the line!” I had just parked my cart in a spot that was simplest behind the person who was last in line. Little did I know that five people had lined up behind me, and were now glaring at me that I had led them astray. These were also people who had had their flights cancelled and needed to talk to someone from the airline, so they weren’t happy campers anyway, nevermind being shoved aside by some woman yelling at them.

Then there was the twenty-something flying back to Florida after spending the summer in NYC. He was extolling the virtues of the fast-paced New York City lifestyle to a couple who looked to be in their forties, saying that “It’s the best place in the world to live.” Besides the fact that odds suggest that this lad had never been out of the country or that he even owned a passport, the couple was tepid in their response, somewhat shrugging an “I don’t know.” He then said something to the effect of, “Well, it’s the best place if you’re young, you want things right then.”

Then there was the TSA official who asked me to unpack a part of my carry-on and started talking about video games with me. I’m trying to escape him and get through security, and he’s talking about how much his kids love the Wii.

Then there was the chaotic terminal where I sat for a few hours as every nationality either sat next to or strode past me.

My first day back in the U.S. in just under a year, I’m exhausted, sleep-deprived, and wanting the day to be over, and my reintroduction to America is tantamount to culture-shock. I was a foreigner in my own country. «»

The cover letter

The search for employment has begun in earnest. Before I left Germany, I had a resume worked out and formatting properly. With a couple tweaks here and there, it can work for any position that I think I’m qualified for and have the chutzpah to apply to. I didn’t have a cover letter until today.

The cover letter seems like a mix of stating the obvious and talking oneself up. You spend a paragraph stating why you’re writing (“I want this job”), a paragraph why you’re qualified (“I’m awesome; here’s why”) and finish it off by begging (“Look at my resume now please”). The resume is at least a practical document: a list of accomplishments, a personal history, an exposition of abilities. The cover letter is a twisted version of that where you address the employer directly and talk about yourself in that business-speak that says nothing while trying to sound official. My cover letter is pretty plain, but I spice up the vocabulary when talking about my abilities. It’s so very unnatural for me to do that.

The search is going better than I thought in some areas, worse in others. The replies I’ve gotten have been mostly impersonal apart from one reply that showed up about two minutes after I emailed the organization (they asked for my phone number and if I had a car in the shortest official email I’ve ever received).

Unemplyoed and loving it? Hardly. But it’s not crunch time yet. «»

Back again

The new desk from IKEA has been built, my desktop computer has been placed upon it, and I’m using some neighbor’s wireless here in Alexandria–time to get back to blogging.

It’s difficult to reflect on a move and actually move at the same time, and I’m nowhere near done getting settled into the new place. Nonetheless, I need to get writing again. Regular updates are back on the agenda. «»