Art Imitating Life

I run the social media program for a nonprofit in St. Paul. This has been a rewarding experience and I have learned much. But there is one thing I am struggling with and would like some advice on.

My nonprofit deals with some technical and political issues. And because I have been engaging our followers on Twitter, this means I have recently had to provide answers to some questions that are over my head for both technical and political reasons. I’m not going to leave questions unanswered (that’s horrible practice), but I’m not going to BS someone. So I go to the appropriate expert staff member for the answer. I’ve been able to get appropriate responses within about 24 hours, which, when at-replying someone, is fine.

But now that it’s the holidays, and now that we are taking some stances on some sensitive issues, I find myself frustrated. Hard questions are being asked (which is exciting!), but I have no expert staff around to help me answer them, because they are taking some much deserved paid time off. Meanwhile, hard questions go unanswered. What is a social media practitioner to do?

My instinct has been to email the appropriate staff with the question (as per usual) and to make a note to myself to follow up later. But I imagine a time will come when the person asking the question simply doesn’t care any more.

When you order many small samples of beers or scotches or wines with the intention of sampling a wide variety, that is called a “flight.” Scotch flight, beer flight, etc. Usually there will be a theme, like a Highlands flight for scotch, or an import flight for beer.

Well, evidently at Jake’s Sports Cafe in Plymouth, you can have all the white people move out of your neighborhood:

This post is the fourth in a series about why I am moving. You can read part 1, part 2, and part 3.

When I moved into this house, part of the excitement was that I would be living with artists. I graduated from the Arts High School and I missed having artists around. The fact that I would have six roommates was actually counted as a plus in favor of moving into this house. Surely at least some of the six people will be interesting, fun artists to hang around with on a Friday night.

That excitement lasted for about a week.

When I first had Emily over to my place, the first thing she heard, shouted angrily from another room, was “You don’t know shit about Burning Man!” Hilarious. Truly.

The first week or so I lived there, the girl in the room next to me had a dog. That dog had puppies. Four puppies.

Now, imagine if you took two yard sticks and made an L with them, and then made two imaginary lines that went from each end of the L to the area directly across from the corner of the L. You have a square yard! That is the space all four puppies were living in. By “living” I mean eating, crapping, and pissing. Fully half of the “living” space was covered by pee pads.

It began to reek a foul stench throughout the upstairs hallway. It was nasty. Eventually (and just before I was about to), someone posted a note on the puppy haver’s door saying if the puppies weren’t gone within 24 hours, Animal Control would be called.

The puppies were gone within 24 hours.

And then there were the passive aggressive notes, including one on the top of the mirror in the bathroom saying “If you’re splattering toothpaste up here you’re doing something wrong” and another in the kitchen, in February, saying “I’ve been noticing a lot of people coughing and sneezing in the house. My health insurance runs out next week. Please try to keep the coughing and sneezing to a minimum and be sure to wipe off all surfaces you use. Also, please don’t piss or shit on the toilet seat.” I assure you, there were plenty of others for this to be–not an annoyance so much, more of a hybrid of amusement and bemusement.

This post is the third in a series about why I am moving. You can read part 1 and part 2.

It has come to my attention that I have forgotten some pretty glaring aspects of the common space in this house. This is beyond the fact that none of the front doors are ever locked (or even closed), and that there isn’t a kitchen table to eat at, and that the living room is not for TV.

First, there’s the issue of the refrigerator: there’s no room in it. At all. Six other people trying to store their perishables makes for about six cubic inches for me to store my food. This does not leave room for me to bring home leftovers from a restaurant (I’ve been keeping those at Emily’s), nor does it allow me to buy actual fresh food at the grocery store and keep it.

Next, there’s the issue of the laundry. Now, I’m loathe to complain, because there is free laundry in the house. However, the laundry is in the basement, where two of my roommates live. Together. This means I must announce myself when I want to do my laundry, and then I must walk through their living space, which has never once been uncluttered or remotely safe-feeling. For example: scissors on the floor, glass on the floor, other sharp, blunt, otherwise potentially painful (to start with) objects for my foot to be bashed, pierced, or scraped by. I ended up doing laundry at Emily’s more than once in the past months.

This post is the second in a series about why I am moving. Part 1 is here.

When I first moved into the house, I was told there were a few simple rules. One of them was no parties, which, while it disappointed me slightly (it would be a great party house), I definitely understood. But I was less clear when I was told, “Yeah, the dining room is really more of an artist space… so precedence is given to our various projects.”

Yes, that is correct: “No, Art, you cannot eat dinner at a table like a human being. That is for welding glass together to make a double-vase or something else ‘modern.’” And by “modern” they mean pretentious/useless/totally unfunctional and unattractive.

So, I can’t use the dining room table. Fine. At least I can have my nice TV in the living room, right?

Nope.

Half of the six other people of the house wanted the TV, half of them didn’t. So I decide, instead of causing a fuss, I’d just put my 30 inch flat screen in my room. Problem solved.

Besides, keeping the TV in my room with the door closed is probably a good idea, because the front door is never locked. And by never locked, I mean the screen door and porch door are generally unclosed, and the door to the house has only been deadbolted three times and is only closed about 80% of the time. This means that fully 20% of the time, you don’t even have to lift your arm to enter the house where I live.

About four months ago, I moved into a house in Uptown. Or, more accurately, I moved into the master bedroom of a house in Uptown. (Oddly, not this did not make me master of the house. Somehow.) This seemed like a great opportunity for me: the rent was cheaper than most things I was able to find on Craigslist, the house seemed (and pretty much is) clean. Plus, if it didn’t work out, I was only signing a lease for four months.

Actually, that’s what I thought. I will be moving out this weekend, after four months of living in this house, without actually having been given a lease to sign.

That’s right: for the past four months I have been squatting. There is a reason I am moving out of this house.

Last weekend I went to Milwaukee to meet my girlfriend’s parents and to see a Brewer’s game. This meant my cat was by herself in my apartment all weekend–just her and her automatic feeder.

Apparently I had not closed the box of Q-tips tightly enough, because when I returned, there, on my floor, was a small collection of Q-tip middles. Next to the small collection was Triskit, gnawing on the cotton end of a Q-tip. She had eaten the cotton off approximately a dozen Q-tips.

She then crapped out a full cubic inch of cotton.

And that, my friends, is how cotton balls are made.

Star Tribune reader Howard asks: Should Carlos Gomez be sent down to the minors for a while? That would give him time to get his head straight, which, according to Howard, is needed:

Gomez has one single in his last 19 at-bats and a .103 batting average. He looks lost and dispirited and there’s no way (other than the “give him time, he’ll snap out of it” speech) that playing Gomez regularly came be justified right now.

You know what? No. Because if we take Gomez off the roster and send him to the minors, what am I going to do with this?

Dear Cat,

Cat, I love you. I truly adore you. How could I not? You writhe and jump about in bids for affection without equal. You gently prod with face and limb–not for food, but for affection. How could you not be loved? You bathe me, and at times I let you, because I know it comes from the love center of your brain the size of a walnut.

For years, I counted among your most adorable and lovable habits your interest in cellophane. If it was crinkly and clear, it was in your paws. It was killed as if it were a mouse. You would parade around your meager living space, head held high, mewing your triumph through your clinched, plastic-clutching jaw.

But, recently, you have taken on a new, not so adorable, not so lovable habit. Your infatuation with plastic has, shall we say, matured. Like a girl with boys, you have graduated from wanting to experience your object of desire purely with mouth and hands to wanting it inside you. And as your father (of sorts), I entirely disapprove.

This is not because I do not want you to be happy. I was brought no small amount of joy when it was simply a proud strutting and shouting, plastic in mouth. But your new level of interest has become a problem.

For you see, Cat, when you eat plastic, you do not digest it. You swallow large sections of wrapper and they are rejected by your digestive system. They are not, then, deposited in the designated plastic pan, but on my floor, among other stomach contents, which, as a mere animal layman, I am only able to identify as “nasty stuff.”

Dear Cat, I implore you: stop ingesting prophylactic wrappers. Stop eating the wrappers of DVDs and other things in wrappers. If I could take you to an obedience school to teach you that the trash can is not a place to fish for toys, I would. Alas, your brain is large enough to lovingly bathe me, but it’s not large enough for much else. So, dear Cat, I will write you a letter on the Internet, in the (futile) hope that you will stop eating the plastic from my garbage and throwing it up on my floor.

Preface: This scale is meant as a jumping-off point for discussion. Please feel free to critique or make your own list. It is my hope that, one day, there will be a definitive list achieved through collaboration.

“Nerdy” is a term bandied about, willie nillie, affixed to many things. My intent is to establish a definitive list of nerdiness.

Is Spaceballs as nerdy as Firefly? Is Spaceballs as nerdy as Star Wars? No, it is not. So, we will take Spaceballs to be our baseline. All items will be measured in Spaceballs (SB).

The main facet of our measurement is level of divorcedness from Reality. For example:

aliens > (Cylons > androids >) robots > spaceships

So Star Trek is nerdier than Battlestar Galactica which is nerdier than Firefly

0 SB: Sports

0.01 SB: “Hans Solo? Isn’t he that guy from Star Track?” THIS CAUSES NERDS TO DIE.

0.1 SB: Harry Potter

1 SB: Spaceballs

1.1 SB: Ghostbusters

2 SB: Jeopardy.

2.5 SB: Twilight Zone

3 SB: Star Wars

3.5 SB: Futurama.

4 SB: Firefly

4.5 SB: Star Trek VOY,

5 SB: Sar Trek TOS,

6 SB: Battlestar Galactica

7 SB: Star Trek TNG/DS9

8 < SB: Anime

This, sadly, is where my expertise in nerddom ends. I wanted the list to go to ten, but alas, I am uninspired and unknowledgeable past here. FAIL.