Sleep Tight, They’ll Bite You Regardless of Precaution

I am very late to the QR Reader game, mostly because I only just realized one of the ways it can be personally benefitting. But that is not what this is about. I was standing on the subway, barely conscious, as most passengers usually are, when I notice a QR code among the ads above the doors in the car. Immediately, I think of capturing the code and have my iPhone interpret it for me at some future point with 3G service. My brain remembers which pocket my phone is in and a split second later my hand is fishing around for the aforementioned phone. Then I stop. I look around, feeling guilty as hell. I just become aware of why I stopped brandishing my state-of-the-art-keeping-up-with-the-jones’-phone. The QR code in question belongs to a Bed Bug exterminator/prevention advertisement. What would people think if they saw me interacting with such a banner? What would I think if I happen to be alerted to some lad fitting my description being super interested, even super technologically interested, in an advertisement littered with Bed Bug material? I would certainly come to this conclusion: that cute guy has Bed Bugs and is desperate for prevention knowledge; why else would he be so actively interested in that ad? The truth of the matter is that, yes, I did in fact have Bed Bugs almost exactly a year ago, no, I have them no longer; but I am only interested in the QR! How do I convey this to the rest of the passengers? I cannot. Therefore I did not take the picture.

I'll Drink To That, I'm Not Particular.

IF I initially reacted to this picture as I should have, I would have only contributed to the subway's already defiled state.


For the readers who also know me fairly well, they can imagine my thought processes upon seeing this...thing. You can click on the picture to see it larger, but, at first glance, this is an advertisement for a pill that would turn one into the famed and vomitous Kanye West. It can work wonders on any person, even if you are an old-ass balding white man. In actuality, this is an advertisement for Absolut Vodka*. So the pill is the vodka in reality? It's hard to say, none of this makes too much sense. The only way to tell the ad's tie to Absolut is at the top, "Available exclusively in an Absolut world". I must have simply not realized "dystopia" is synonymous with "utopia".

*This is the full advertisement in all of its animated splendor, the link to the above picture is in the lower left: http://www.probablythegayestthingIhaveeverseentherearetoo
manythingstomakefunof.com

Viva Manhattan.

The embodiment of all that is Manhattan has been rearing its ugly head, and I've finally seen it... twice!

These are two separate occasions; however, I will tell them as one. I live by a subway station that is not only underground, but very much so. If that makes sense. So generally when I take the subway I position myself strategically so that the train spits me out exactly in front of the elevator that services the surface. Now, when I say "exactly" I mean exactly that. At times, I do not give the human populace enough credit, too many people have figured out this strategy as well. On this particular day it was not the mad rush to the lift I expected. However, once the subway door opened and I was almost upon the door with some other people, some random "girl" pushes by the person closest to the call button and makes sure she is the first person to press "to street", I had to stifle my guffaw and I seemed to be the only person to truly notice how absurd her action was; which doesn't make any sense. The rest of the elevator ride I spent staring a surgically precise hole in the back of this "girl"'s head.

The other incident, involving the same elevator, occurred some weeks later. Standing in the same position in the back of the elevator, I was minding my own business, which translates to me studying the carbon-based contents of the elevator car, in order to see what freaks came out for air that day*. When the car arrived at its destination (the surface), I noticed some commotion toward the front by the door. Apparently people were vocalizing their intentions to let other people out before them. An old lady that had to be in her seventies, was telling a younger woman, maybe in her late thirties, to go on ahead before her. The middle-aged woman kept refusing, and so the elder put her hand on the former's shoulder and said, "Go right ahead". The thirty-something-year-old proceeds to slap the old woman's hand off of her, flips out, and spits out, "I am not, comfortable, with people, touching me". This time around I could not hold in my scoff, and blurted out, "Are you kidding?" The people around me chuckled and one said a sarcastic "good morning". It was at this point that all of the New Yorker stereotypes came crashing down to this culminating moment. But it is OK, I can take solace in knowing that woman is going to die some day.

*Sometimes I am one of those freaks.

Cancerous Cerebellum.

I think I have brain cancer. That, or an acute sense of smell. I remember reading somewhere that phantom smells have something to do with having cancer of the most important human organ (arguably).

Upon delving into this recent epiphany, I have also realized that perhaps it is not as bad as people say. Granted, I have never heard/read a testimonial from a brain-cancered person, but I'd imagine that it would go something like this: I don't really feel anything for the most part, but there was this one time I thought a cat came away with the silver medal at last year's world's fair (2007).

Olfactory hallucination, has to be somewhat prevalent. And as far as the severity of this situation is concerned, I am about to lose all credibility. This phenomenon I have experienced has mostly occurred on the subway. I'll give you a second to close this page down.


I was riding the 4 train downtown (for those of you familiar with New York City) rather recently and I happened to stop reading my book and take a gander at my fellow Americans (arguably). Besides noticing the older gentleman across the way, who was far too busy wiping his nose and then going back to his pizza, I became aware of my sense of smell. There is absolutely no way my nose was accurate in what it was smelling at that time. I swear on my life that I was smelling my hometown house. You may now think that my home is gross, but this is not my meaning (its scent is quite comforting actually). However improbable, it was right there, slightly above my mustache. The more loony I thought I was becoming, the more lucid my thoughts appeared. I ended up shutting my eyes and attempted to discern each and every smell in the air. The first one to identify itself was the slice of pizza in front of me, for obvious reasons. I also thought I could sense the old man, but this could have been vicariously through the pizza. My nose then went on to distinguish someone's perfume along with hair product. And soon after it became increasingly difficult to detect anything else in the air; not to mention the subway's perpetual metallic smell along with the general collection of people smell, tunnel smell, and overall rank-ness. Since the fist time I stumbled across this subway wonder, I have taken whiffs of things that could not possibly be manifest around me such as: my defunct car, my old Cobra Commander action figure, and my Xbox 360. You might think these last few things are ridiculous, and they are, but anything is possible with the odor of the subway. On occasion I have come across subway cars that have very few people in it, and after further investigation, I realize it is because there is a lone homeless man huddled in the far corner. Isn't it awful that opening into the actual subway platform is a beautiful respite in the form of air in comparison to aforementioned homeless guy?

Maybe it isn't my brain cancer flaring up but I am indeed somehow smelling these things. But how does it make me feel that on any given moment an amalgam of scents on the subway can produce the smell of the house I lived in straight through adolescence? Oops, I almost forgot, there was definitely B.O. lying around somewhere that first fateful day, and that person shall remain nameless, but only because I do not know who it was, otherwise, I'd rat them out in a heartbeat.