sixfoot6. don't let me get me.

never age bricolage.

all stuff
© 1999-2002
Ryan D. Pants

mostly powered
by blogger®

Transcript of a message left on my answering machine this afternoon by my boss:

Hey, Ryan. Will. Ummm... I was just shaving... and I had a moment of clarity. How you can get rich. [casual chuckle]. Gimme a call...

I don't think I'll ever again have the pleasure to work for a man who thinks about my life while shaving, then leaves me messages like that.

6:26 PM. 7 comments.

9:15 PM. 0 comments.

thirty-two degrees farenheit.

The snow had long since finished falling on Sunday evening when Matt took me away from my computer for the usual relaxing coffee run. Night fell, and we poked around his basement, hunting for the old family toboggan. I was feeling about 53% psyched about the idea of going sledding on the golf course at this hour, in the dark, but I helped him load this ten-foot-prehistoric-wooden-beast-of-a-toboggan into his Pathfinder anyways. It had a cushion, once, that apparently had been lost or tossed sometime during the last 40 years. In my own basement I found a mint example of modern sledding technology, the Sno-Tube. "Good," I thought to myself, "these inflatable things actually work." We strapped on warm clothes and trucked out across the fluffy landscape with Shenny, Matt's big white dog. A german shepard, I think, but I don't know much about dogs. Thanks to the the holes in my old work boots, all my toes numbed right quick. With plenty of snow to magnify the half-moon, we could see everything except Shenny. Again and again we took turns flying down The Big Hill on each of our vehicles. I promise never to talk trash about old-timey toys again. The toboggan would have taken us to-bog-and back if we hadn't fallen into the canal. With two of us onboard, that snow-encrusted sled screamed down the slopes like a runaway stagecoach, our asses wacking against wooden slats ery time we hit a bump. We each flew down the driving range on the inner tube, face-first snowscape skeleton hovercraft time-trials. I clotheslined the dog. The sky seemed much colder, whiter and brighter than it did last night, as

2:30 PM. 1 comment.

I found myself taking the highway home, driving straight toward the large honey moon, its first quarter pointed upwards. I turned with the road, after a mile, and it seemed to set behind a wall of trees. I turned up the shoegazing sounds of the car stereo, and drove slowly. I turned off of the main drag. And as I wound through miles and miles of curving back roads, I never saw the moon again, not once. Just my high beams bouncing off salty-white streets, and me wide-eyed, smiling, barely feeling like the person I was when

2:24 AM. 2 comments.

I stepped out of the house this morning carrying a muffin, some letters to be mailed, and a folder. And I didn't make it four feet out of the front door before I slipped on the icy top step, got tossed up into the air, and landed directly on my ass. The muffin fell, and the mail went flying. From the street, I'd imagine that I looked exactly like Daniel Stern in one of his critically acclaimed Home Alone roles. I shook myself off like a cartoon, and no bones were broken, so

5:04 PM. 9 comments.

I drove the short mile through the frigid morning to the clubhouse, to do a little early-bird office work. I turned into the driveway real slow-like, because I was completely blinded by the sun glaring off of the icy asphalt. I managed to move along down the driveway just in time to see a giant ten-wheeled dump truck sliding sideways across the parking lot at a rather casual-casual place. It had serious momentum, but finally skidded to a hault only a few feet from the practice green. My own car skated into place in front of the clubhouse; I climbed out and immediately grappled for the door handle, losing my balance. The truck had brought a load of sand, and the boys and I slipped and scrambled with shovels and the back-hoe, struggling to spread sand across the driveway and shared parking lot. Any moment, mothers in minivans would begin streaming in to drop their children off at the preschool, and we were terrified than one of them might take the old free ride into a tree or a lamp-post. It's been the usual modern New England winter: fun snow fall, melancholy melting, and frightening refreezing.

11:14 AM. 1 comment.

Xerox on the streets of Boston. Xerox on the streets of Framingham. Taken last winter, downtown crossing.

2:14 AM. 8 comments.

there are four kinds of special moments.

the empty. the fearless. the peaceful. and the absurd.
they're all okay, as long as there's variety.

it's last tuesday, tuesday the 15th. clear sky, i think. i do all these office tasks in the clubhouse. web site work. i answer phones and read faxes. i add names to the mailing list. sip coffee. it's your basic day of work. i drive to staples, and park in the cold lot. i wander up and down flourescent towering aisles. i forget what i'm looking for, then find what i'm looking for. there's a hum in the air. it's the sound of multiple copy machines scanning and printing at once. i carry my address labels and printer cartridges to the counter and wait in line. there's an old man working the register. i've seen him before. i stand for a while, unsure about what time it is. eventually it's my turn. i present my items for purchase. the wrinkled man awkwardly scans their bar codes. i stare at the floor. behind me, a young man struggles to move a large stack of boxes with a two wheeler. i have to pay by check. my elderly cashier squints at his screen, making short gutteral noises. his mouth is open. all i can see out the window from this angle is more of the strip mall. i write my company's phone number on the check. he's trying to enter the routing number into his terminal. he can't get it to work. i start thinking of california, and about alison, but i don't really think anything in particular. they're pumping saccarine pop tunes in through the stereo. my cashier always wears a red shirt. he starts to hunt and pick numbers, speaking as he goes. 2, 1, 1. 3. 0. 7, 2. the kid at the counter is explaining about RAM. my purchases are in a small bag. 8, 3. 0. 3, 5. i've been in this room lots of times.

11:55 PM. 4 comments.

After we watch the Pats game, last night, and some hilarious television, and a less hilarious movie, and after I stuff myself with most of a black-olive pizza, some Pepsi, and mid-grade champagne, I decide it's time to leave, so I trudge through the accumulation to my car, wearing shoes unseasoned for snow. It's kept piling up during these four hours, so I yank the door open, turn on the engine, fumble for the cheap plastic scraper, and brush off the car as best I can. Nice. I rev the engine a little, slip and slide out of Dave's driveway. There's almost no one out at this hour, and for a damn good reason: the roads are hard to identify, their edges undefined, yellow lines invisible. It's slushy here and powery there. I hop radio stations. Hot 97.7 pumps out the latest Outkast single, and I float and fishtail through Plymouth, tapping along, downshifting without thinking as I pass the occassional truck. Mostly, though, the streets are quiet and mine, and in between the bass notes I think about the road, about the things to be done in the morning and the decisions to be made this week. I don't stop at stoplights. I'm ready for bed.

10:48 AM. 8 comments.

many.micro.memes

let's rock!
+ 13

as the rain tap taps against my windowpane, i discover the hard way that chapstick is no cure for a bloody lip.
+ 1

bryant gumbel gumbel gumbel.
+ 8

my room smells like chewing tobacco, but i do not chew tobacco.
+ 1

Awol formally leaves us.
+ 10

put on your black dress.
+ 3

James Brown is one plastic looking soulful dude. You can see his lips twitching, itching to start screaming out into that old-timey court microphone.
+ 1

a fine lunch: seafood chowder and cornbread, made by mom.
+ 5

The Small World Research Project: a sociological study using the internet to test the "six degrees of separation" theory.
+ 0

new habits for Franciscan monks.
+ 2

freezing gusts of rain
tossing my ride about
like a shopping cart running
from an empty
parking lot
+ 3

the cool hum of wind, blowing.
+ 0

Dr. Zig redesigns in the 25th Century.
+ 0

Is Hollywood really this dumb? A great review by the Bill Simmons (the Boston Sports Guy) of Rollerball, a movie he calls thoroughly "reprehensible". The best review of a horrible film that you could ever hope to read, quirky and critical.
+ 3

chunky peanut butter is way underrated.
+ 13

So I spend St. Valentines Day doing my taxes. Which is fine. Dates never give me a refund.
+ 4

From the WTF? file: "Queens Unversity students spin out of conrtrol while taking part in the Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Saturday Feb. 2, 2002. Engineering students from across Canada raced the toboggans with the undersides made from concrete and weighing 300 lbs." Man. That's safe. Just imaging how much momentum we're talking.
+ 3

Ahhh! Oh. God. That scared me. And... ahhhh! A sabre-toothed mountain lion is eating his giant head!
+ 8

NO, I DO NOT WANT A TINY WIRELESS VIDEO CAMERA.
+ 18

According to the Boston Globe, teen drug use remains the same, but ecstasy use is up 71% since '99. But "use of inhalants, such as glue" is still more common than use of E.
+ 1

portrait.blogger.yonker

February 25th, 1988

I am tired of walking. I wish someone would give me something. I never did like to walk. Maybe someon would give me somthing that can get me from place to place fast. That would be neat.
+ 9

February 24th, 1988

I like school alot. I learn lots of things. I eat lunch and go out for recess. I like to go home too. I like it at home.
+ 0

February 23rd, 1988

Today we had a sub bus driver. We were late getting in. I a hurrying my Journal. I hope I finish in time. I can't belive I did
+ 1

February 22nd, 1988

I went to New Hampshire. My whole family went, except for my sister. We went skiing, and stayed in a hotel. The rest of the week I played outside. Boy did we have fun.
+ 4

inside.outside.sf6

:2002:
       01/13/2002 - 01/19/2002
       01/20/2002 - 01/26/2002
       01/27/2002 - 02/02/2002
       02/03/2002 - 02/09/2002
       02/10/2002 - 02/16/2002
       02/17/2002 - 02/23/2002

:2001:
Dec. 14.
Nov. 26. 18. 11.
Oct. 23. 16. 10. 1.
Sep. 26. 21. 18. 16. 13. 11.
Jun. May. Apr. Mar. Feb. Jan.

:2000:
Dec. Nov. Oct. Sep. Aug. Jul. Jun. May. Apr. Mar. Feb. Jan.

:1999:
Fall. Spring.

encountered.quotes

Whatever floats your boat or finds your lost remote / and this is for the ni**as working at the airport / who got laid off / I take my shades off / if you look straight it my eyes, you still might see a disguise/ 'Cause the whole world loves it when you don't get down.

OutKast,
The Whole World
+ 1

in a town so small, there's no escaping you. in a town so small, there's no escape from view. in a town so small, there's nothing left to do.

belle and sebastien,
dirty dream number two.
+ 1

It is the act of reading itself I miss, the oppurtunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already.... And when I've finished it I will start another one, and that might be even bigger, and then another, and I will be able to keep extending my house until it becomes a mansion, full of rooms where they can't find me.

Nick Hornby,
About a Boy, page 303.
+ 4