To Do, or Not To Do

7:25 of a Saturday morning in January. Incredible sunrise, muted blues and reds over the hills, gold hitting the church. Temperature is 10, wind chill -2, and I’m disappointed that it’s not much colder. This is real deal winter; deeply a part of my essence. I’m embracing it and loving it.

Once again, time to sort the piles of mental detritus that have been building over the week. Cleaning the house: not too bad, mostly sweeping, dusting and straightening. Lots of laundry, but there always is. Plenty of food in the house, so no worries there. I’ll need to spend some more time figuring out the discrepancy between my Year to Date wages and my W2, but I’ll probably need to track down someone in payroll on Monday (oh, and payroll has been relocated out of my building in Maine to Salisbury – very convenient business, that).

And then there’s the hoarder room…

I suppose every homeowner has one, to some level. That room where you just kind of throw the pile of bills on the counter when company comes over and swear that you’ll get to the bills right after company leaves. Well, ours has become a slightly larger deal than one pile of bills. And it needs to be cleaned out, as we now need an actual study room for the newly minted MBA girl. The question is figuring out how much I can tackle today vs. tomorrow.

Because as part of cleaning out the hoarder room, I also have three bookshelves to assemble, and books to pack up from the hoarder room and arrange in the newly assembled bookshelves. From there, it’s cleaning out and weeding out the basement. Then starting the packing process. Then getting a storage space and moving six years worth of life over to the storage space piecemeal. Then while all this is happening, dedicating time to my writing business, my new creative writing venture(s), getting to that pile of bills that (re)started the hoarder room..

7:45 of a Saturday morning in January. Better get to. Maybe after another French press…

Moonlight Feels Dynamite

Okay, I love this song. Being a child of the AM ‘70s, Moonlight Feels Right is practically DNA for me. Of course now we live in a much more enlightened, progressive age, in terms of record production, instrumentation and, yes, wardrobe. Thus, the Starbuck experience feels just a wee bit dated.

By which I mean what a bewildering nightmare the ‘70s were! Let’s analyze, shall we? (Okay, we shall!)

Band Name

Huh? Starbucks world infestation…er, domination was at least fifteen years away in 1975. Where did the name Starbuck come from? Perhaps somebody in the band was slurring “Sears and Roebuck” after one too many Seven and Sevens?

“We can get the band pichsures done at Starbuck!”
“Hey, that would be a dynamite band name!”

Singer

That ridiculous golf-caddy cap is too easy. Start with the delivery. Have you ever seen a more disinterested front-man? Like ever? Sure, you can’t get up and throw your keyboard around, but there is no sign of life save for the frantic leg scissors underneath and the occasional head nod, eyebrow uplift and bewildering chuckle before each chorus. I suspect Quaaludes. With the occasional twitch when the bumps kick in.

Okay, and if Sears and Roebuck had a Scarface ensemble, that would be it.

Marimba

Well, the 70s were rough all over, but it must have been an especially dire time for marimba players. Tito Puente’s career was dead, and it would be twenty years before his revival thanks to The Simpson’s. Judging by that full-on beard, I’m guessing Mr. Marimba was turned down by Molly Hatchet.

And sorry, Sir: you will no doubt be hearing from Gene Simmons demanding that cat suit back. Good luck with that.

Bass
The Dutch Boy jumps off the paint can and goes to the prom.

Drummer
Settle down, white boy.

And so the rise of Starbuck: the age of the Moog synth, the dead drum sound, the heinous inhumanly colored bell-bottoms, the chest hair… We’ve come a long way. Feels Right.

Characters

Thoughts jagging, hurtling, running down myriad dead ends. Non-linear ADD once again. I think half the problem - and it's a huge problem for a supposedly aspiring writer - is that I've unwittingly conditioned myself to think in minute bursts of trivial ephemera. 140 characters for a Tweet, 420 for a Facebook status. I'm always all for condensing my writing, but too much thought condensing isn't good. Must get into mental longhand mode if I'm ever going to scribe my way into literary self-sufficiency.

The above is 422 characters without spaces, 505 characters with spaces. It's a start....

Starbucks is Creeping my Ass Out

Actual blog posts on Starbucks.com in honor of their newly tweaked logo:

"Let’s go all the way back to 1971, to when Starbucks was first coming to be. In a search for a way to capture the seafaring history of coffee and Seattle’s strong seaport roots, there was a lot of poring over old marine books going on.


yaarrr, maytey!


"Suddenly, there she was: a 16th century Norse woodcut of a twin-tailed mermaid, or Siren. There was something about her – a seductive mystery mixed with a nautical theme that was exactly what the founders were looking for.

Really?


"But the Siren has always been there. She is at the heart of Starbucks.


Oh, I thought it was upcharging...


"As a writer, though, I can tell you that there is a lot more to her than just the design and how she looks. This is what she means to me, and to us.

"She is a storyteller, carrying the lore of Starbucks ahead, and remembering our past. In a lot of ways, she’s a muse –always there, inspiring us and pushing us ahead.

"And she’s a promise too, inviting all of us to find what we’re looking for, even if it’s something we haven’t even imagined yet.

WHO'S WRITING THIS CRAP, JOAN COLLINS?!?!?


"She means something different to every one who sees her, who knows her. For me she’s kind of the final say on the spirit of everything I write and everything we do. Even as I’m writing this, I wonder what she thinks. (She likes it, by the way.)

NOW we've crossed over into a whole new dimension of disturbing...


"Here we are today. Our new evolution liberates the Siren from the outer ring, making her the true, welcoming face of Starbucks.

Steve M., senior writer


I need a shower...

Evolution to Revolution...or something like that

New Year, clean slate, turn the page. Blahbity blahbity. I’m not one for making grand proclamations about how I’m going to revolutionize my life on a dime and completely transform from the wayward wretch I was at 11:59:59 on 12/31/10. I’ve spent enough of my life setting myself up for failure, thank you. But I do want to evolve for the better. That much I can say, and there are areas I will be addressing. Revolution (Evolution?) starts at home.

Hope you’re all heading for positive evolution as well. Keep me posted…