TGI ... Not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday ...

I always enjoy it when I get up early -- once I overcome the painful task of getting out of bed. There's the sun on your face, a sense of accomplishment, a feeling that somehow you are connected with a element of humanity (in fact, the whole animal kingdom) that goes on without you as you sleep.

It affords me the opportunity to get into work early. That's rewarding, too ... and peculiar.

There's a particular culture of the morning work crowd: they've endured rush-hour traffic, they're drinking coffee, their eyes are either fresher or duller depending on how much they might have had to drink the night before. The elevator even smells different.

But perhaps the most-intriguing dynamic I experience about once every few months is the perpetual fixed gaze forward to Friday.

They talk about Friday and really not much else, unless it's Monday and all they can think about is how it shouldn't and couldn't possibly be Monday.

You see, by late morning or lunchtime, they've already talked it out. A good portion of the day is behind them, so any looking back on whether they wanted to make a day of it or any looking forward to Friday is lost in the finish line they see to whatever day other than Friday it is.

Over time, I've managed to come into work early on each of the work days. I've observed fixed system to it, one that surely must be universal.

MONDAY:
"What's happening with you, man?"
"Ohhhhhhhh ... Mun Day."
"Did you have a good weekend?"
"YES!"
"Cool."

TUESDAY:
"Hey, how's it going?"
"Oh man, if I can just get to Wednesday."
"Yeah."

WEDNESDAY:
"Hey ... there."
"Wednesday, you know. Hump day. We're almost there."
"Mmm, hmm."

THURSDAY:
"Hi."
"Jesus! I've had a week that won't quit! You know? What the fuck is up with this place? I come into this pit of despair every goddamn day. And why? For what? Just fucking shoot me, all right? In the head, OK, pal? So it's quick. At least tommorow's Friday."
"I hear you."

FRIDAY:
"Hey, how's it going?"
"Oh, it's Friday."
"I know, right? What are you going to do this weekend?
"Nothing."

I need to get up early more often.

Under The Pillow

You wait for the first one to come and lament that it has to.

And then, suddenly, too soon, it's gone again -- that same very first one -- a casualty of classroom fidgety boredom after completing the "maf" assignment.

A generation has passed, and you must scramble before nightfall to do your own "maf" to calculate exactly how susceptible the tooth fairy is to inflationary pressures.

She has a seemingly endless demand for whatever it is she does with them, but, luckily, there is a seemingly endless supply.

A silver dollar, it is.

Haiku # 4,001,057

Nature gives freely
bottled water, tanning beds
Burn precious paper

"It Really Ain't No Love, It's About This Paper, Man"

"See, Man ain't like a dog. Now, when I say 'Man,' I'm talkin' 'bout 'Man' as in 'Mankind, not 'Man' as in 'men.' Men, well we a lot like a dog. You know, we like to piss on things. Sniff a bitch when we can. Even get a little pink hard-on the way they do. We territorial as shit, you know? We gonna protect our own.

But Man. He know about death. Got him a sense a' histry. Got religion. See, a dog, man, a dog don't know shit 'bout no birthdays or Christmas or Easter Bunny or none of that shit. One day God gonna come callin', so, you know, they goin' through life carefree. But people like you and me, man, we always guessin'. Wondering, 'What if?' You know what I mean?

So when you say to me, 'Hey, I don't think we should be doin' this,' I gotta say, baby, I don't think we need to be doing this neither. But we ain't gonna get no move on in this world lyin' around in the sun, lickin' our ass all day. I mean, we Man. I mean, you a woman and all, but we Man.

So with this said, you tell me what it is you wanna do with yo life."

---

I remember those little green receipts. Almost like money. Not quite money, but just as good if you wanted a toaster.

In an effort to attract customers, the grocery store employed this marketing strategy that allowed you to redeem your store receipts for gifts.

Knives. Toasters. Blenders.

The more you spent at the store, the more points you earned -- like earning ski ball tickets to trade in for a plastic whistle at the arcade. The difference was, you didn't actually have to put any money in the machine.

My Mom drove me out to that grocery store on Saturday nights. I'd hit the parking lot -- a little miniature hustler -- asking people for their green receipts, while Mom would sit in the car and smoke a cigarette with a friend and laugh about how easy it all was.

Sometimes, the people would tell me they were going to use them. Most of the time, they would just give them to me. Some looked perplexed as they handed them over; others passed them along with a knowing smirk and what in reflection seemed like a little bit of pity -- not pity as in "oh geez, look at this poor kid," but pity as in "this kid's going to grow up to be the worst kind of used-car salesman."

If the store crew that night was friendly, I'd grab a few receipts from the little trash baskets underneath the check-out counters.

When I was done, we'd head back to the apartment and Mom would add it all up.

"$68.12. $15.07. $100.44. You know, $203.72 more and we've got that blender."

We didn't necessarily need it. How does anyone absolutely have to have a blender? It was more that the opportunity was there to get something at the expense of manipulating a system.

We got that blender. And we got that set of knives (and a couple other sets for everybody else).

We got that toaster, too. We needed that a little more. Or at least I did. I made food with it when there wasn't anything for dinner.

---

You know how there's these movies that you can't necessarily say they're the best movies you've ever seen -- or even in your Top 10 -- but somehow you can recite more lines from them than you can remember how many times you've seen them?

I'm horrible at self-promotion. I couldn't sell a free bottle of drinking water to a thirsty man stranded on a raft for 10 days in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

But the next time I've got a job interview, I'm going to make sure I watch "Hustle & Flow" one more time.

Accelerate Your Life ... But Not If It's In A Minivan

Watching those military propaganda ads during the commercial break between the Suns vs. the Lakers, you get the feeling you're really letting your life get behind you.

The people dangling from ropes hanging from helicopters. Smart-looking technical servicemen and servicewomen of every imaginable race with cool technical thingamajigs training for a future college degree when they're back from the war. The eagles soaring and the rockets red-glaring and the grain amber-waving ...

The Navy is the place for you -- unless, of course, you're a domesticated, presumably neutered shell of a man auctioning his balls away for safety, fuel-efficiency and comfort.

Transposed against the visceral manliness of being all that is Navy, the commercial tells us as we look at an unfortunate soul shopping for a family vehicle: "And just think, some poor guy is buying a minivan. Accelerate Your Life."

The Navy understands our plight.

Why?

Why get married to someone who helps complete you?

Why be the absolute greatest thing through the eyes of a young child the world has ever seen?

Why hear your daughter say "Look at the moon" for the first time?

Why coach T-ball and watch your kids run the bases the wrong way?

Why have personalized drawings with 32 hearts and the inscription, "You are the gratest Daddy You are spshl" hanging above your work desk?

Why, when you have so much to scale and conquer and blow up?

After all, you could be living the nightmare of buying a minivan, you pathetic excuse for a man.

Man, I always wondered if I should have joined the Navy. Now the brutal truth that I'm not making the most out of my life is exposed, and I can only blame myself for pissing away my piece of the American Dream.

But, hey, at least I've got V-6, right? And I can always mount the gun turrets into the sliding doors later.