Irrelevant Cheetah

I’ve been doing a lot of reporting lately, and a lot of interviewing. This is probably good for me, since the fact that I’m a complete misanthrope tends to shut me up in a shell most of the time while I observe people and keep a running narrative in my head about how stupid most of them are. (And isn’t misanthrope such a cool word?)

I have one of those mini-tape recorders that I use during interviews, so I can go back when I’m writing the actual news story and make sure I’ve gotten my quotes right and so forth. The thing’s a lifesaver when you’ve got a half-hour interview which you’ve got to condense into a 600-word story and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.

One thing I’m beginning to realize, though, is how much power a reporter actually has. Without sounding too cliche, a reporter can really make or break an interviewee.

Obviously, people don’t speak the way they write, and vice versa. A thirty-minute interview is filled with hesitations and backpedaling and back-and-forth between the interviewee and me and so forth. My tapes are filled with “Umm…” and “What I meant to say…” and other conversational detritus that may or may not have anything to do with the story.

What’s amazing to me is how, by carefully choosing what quotes I use, I can paint the person in a totally different way, without misquoting them at all. I can choose to print that they said X, Y and Z, and they’ll look like an angel, or I can choose to print that they said A, B and C and they’ll look like a scum-sucking bottom-dweller, and the reality is that they said all six things - A, B, C, X, Y and Z. I’m just a filter.

I’m still ruminating on the implications of this, but it really suggests to me that when I see somebody quoted in a news story, I need to stop and wonder what else that person said that wasn’t reported.

It also suggests to me that there are three people you need to be nice to: your cook, your bartender, and your interviewer. Any of them can make or break your whole day.

I have superpowers.

Yeah, I’m surprised, too. I had no idea, especially considering I was planning on becoming a supervillain and taking over the world.

Apparently, not unlike an episode of Heroes, moving to Portland has brought out a previously-unknown latent superpower. For all I know, the power would have remained dormant were it not for my move here.

And what is this power, you ask? Simply this:

If a bus is scheduled to reach a stop at (for instance) 3:45, 4:01, 4:19 and 4:38, I can guaran-fricking-tee you that I will walk up to that bus stop at either 3:46, 4:03, 4:20 or 4:39.

It’s uncanny. No matter what, events will always transpire so as to make me arrive at a bus stop thirty to sixty seconds after the last bus left. If I need to be somewhere at 2 PM, I make sure I leave the house at about 8:30 AM to make up for all of the buses I’m going to miss.

On the plus side, I guess, all that waiting around at bus stops is giving me plenty of time to learn Klingon.

But now that I might be a superhero (curses!) I have to start thinking about secret identities, and costume coordination, and whether or not I should wear a cape.

And a name, of course. I don’t know what I should call myself. Captain Missthebus? Alwaysrunningafterbuses Boy?

Suggestions?

…should be shared.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that I’m not the only person who has considered wearing an aluminum foil hat to prevent the almighty Ted Koppel from reading my thoughts. With that assumption in mind, I think I should share something I learned last week in my physics class.

The hat won’t work.

Not because the Koppel is all-powerful. Not because aluminum foil won’t block the EM waves he uses.

And not because he’s not trying to peek into your grey matter.

No, it’s because in order to isolate your brain waves, the foil must be in the shape of an unbroken shell.

You see, if you need to isolate something from an electric field, you must encase it in an unbroken shell. If you wrap your cell phone in foil, the phone won’t work, because the foil is in one piece - thus, no EMF gets through.

Your foil hat, though, is wide open at the bottom where it sits on your head, meaning that the EMF can come and go as it pleases. Your thoughts are naked and wide open for the Koppel to sift through at his leisure. That dream you had involving Julie Andrews, two penguins and peach-flavored Jello? He knows all about it. He also knows about that daydream you had in high school where -

Yeah, that one. He’s seen it. And he thinks you should be ashamed.

Anyway, that’s your bit of knowledge for the day. Glad I could help. Now I’m off to Safeway to stock up on Reynolds Wrap so I can build a foil sphere. I envision it as looking kind of like a human-sized hamster ball, only made of out foil.

And yes, it’s nothing but brand-name for my foil sphere.

It’s the sixteenth today, so for those of you keeping track, that means it’s my day to post over at Burt’s Stache. It’s a remarkably insightful and intuitive look into bathroom graffiti. Really worth a look.

And for more of me (and really, who doesn’t need more me?) I’ve uploaded one of my short stories to Scribd. It’s here if you’d like to check it out.

The Fixers

Comments (even negative ones) are welcome.

No, I take that back. If you don’t like it, you obviously have horrible taste, and I don’t want to hear about it. (This includes all of the editors who have so far rejected it.)

It was early. I don’t know how early, exactly. I only know that the sun hadn’t yet risen fully above the horizon and that I had a final exam for which I didn’t feel prepared. Stumbling through the morning wasn’t an option, so I went coffee-hunting.

Though drinking Starbucks is not unlike dipping your tongue in battery acid and setting it on fire, when the synapses and neurons demand caffeine, there’s nothing for it but to soldier into the nearest purveyor. Luckily, in Portland you can’t throw a rock without hitting two Starbucks and a guy on a skateboard juggling poodles.

“And what can I get you?” chirped the impossibly cheery barista. (He might have been the poodle-juggler.)

“Mocha, extra shot,” I mumbled, fishing through the pocket detritus for my last $3. He rang up the drink, and I looked up to hand him the money.

My subsequent double-take was entirely involuntary, yet entirely warranted. The guy had more metal in his head than the Terminator. As I placed my 31 cents change in the tip jar, I wondered if he’d considered a sideline as Iron Man’s stunt double. I made a bold attempt to count the bars and rings and studs extruding randomly from his face, but the glittering reflections from the flourescent lights distracted me, and I couldn’t count past 25.

And that’s when it struck me: I have become the rebel.

There is no metal anywhere on my person. By choosing to remain entirely non-magnetic, with no more than the original nine holes in my body, I now stand out from the crowd as the local freak.

(Yes, I’ll pause for a moment here while you count. I know you’re going through them in your head: lessee, two eyes, two ears…)

(Back? Good. Now, then…)

I can only imagine that people are pointing at me and snickering as I walk by. At the bus stop, a child tugs on her mother’s pant leg, calling up plaintively, “Mommy? Why doesn’t that man have metal in his face?”

To which the mother replies, as mommies are wont to do, “Hush, Lilith. It’s not polite to stare. Maybe he’s sick.”

I wonder if this will affect my job search. “You know, I like your qualifications, and I think you’d definitely fit in here, but your appearance… well, it’s just not right for us, you know?”

I think it’s a safe bet that a career as a barista is out of the question.

In an odd turn of events, the online editor at the Daily Vanguard (the college paper where they actually pay me to write legitimate news stories) asked me if I’d be willing to blog for the paper.

Since I’m all about overextending myself, not getting enough sleep and popping antacids like candy, I immediately agreed and then went back to having a quiet little aneurysm over my calc homework.

Really, thought I. How hard can it be? I’ve got enough voices in my head telling me what to write - I’ll just have to shift their focus a bit.

After some discussion, my editor and I decided on a theme - namely, a blog written from the perspective of a non-traditional student (geez, I hate that phrase) visiting from Alaska and my perceptions and observations of Portland from a non-native perspective. The result is Outlander in Portland.

If you feel like checking it out, please feel free, though if you’re not a college student or in Portland (or both) there’s an extremely good chance you won’t relate at all. And that’s okay.

Editor’s note: There will be cross-posting. Oh, yes. There will be cross-posting aplenty.

New side project: build time machine, go back in time and kick Orville and Wilbur Wright’s asses.

Not that I don’t like flying, mind you. On the contrary - I would like to get my pilot’s license someday, and I also plan to try skydiving, which requires a perfectly good airplane to jump out of.

No, it’s not the “high-up-in-the-air-nothing-beneath-me” part of flying that I despise. Rather, it’s the “strip-search-no-liquids-costs-an-arm-and-a-leg-crammed-into-a-small-aluminum-tube” part of flying. Continental Airlines charges me an extra $15 just for the honor of transporting my luggage along with me to (hopefully) the same destination, and thus the trip starts.

I’m flying more often these days, going back and forth to school, and I am becoming more and more convinced that air travel passengers are part of a huge social experiment conducted by the airlines. Either that, or they’re just having a huge laugh at our expense. Every time I sit there, two hours out of Portland and nothing to look forward to for the next two hours but more sitting, I wonder if they’e extensively tested just how close they can pack people into a fuselage before somebody cracks. Then I wonder if I might be the one to put a disruptive end to this particular test.

I’m 6 foot 2, and airline seats are not designed for people my height. I have maybe three inches between my knees and the seat in front of me, assuming I sit up straight for the entire ride. I normally get an aisle seat so I can stretch out into the aisle, but this is done with the understanding that I risk having my feet mangled by a passing foodservice cart dispensing $7 beers and $3 packs of snack mix. What this means is that unless it’s a short flight, I’m probably going to be pretty crabby by the time we land.

I figured out that adding and removing rows of seats has a negligible effect when you distribute the savings over the length of the entire plane. Calculations (yes, I’ve got time on my hands) show that if you add one row of seats to a plane with 45 existing rows, each individual row loses less than an inch. Translation? In a plane that seats six across, you can add six suckers passengers, each paying full fare, and all the other suckers lose an inch of leg room. Easy money.  Follow that up with charging $15-$25 for checking one bag and removing one olive from the martinis, and you can just about pull yourself out of bankruptcy.

So, upon reflection, maybe I’ll leave Orville and Wilbur alone. I’ll use my time machine to go forward in time, grab a transporter, and bring it back with me. That way I can just avoid the airlines completely while I still get to travel. Problem solved.

In a ritual as old as blogdom itself, I was challenged to share ten random things about myself to anyone interested enough to read this drivel. Although the person responsible will receive his come-uppance, I feel oddly compelled to comply. So:

1. I have been struck by lightning three times. Honestly. Once in person, once over the phone, and once the plane I was in was struck. However, I have yet to win the lottery.

b. I am trying to form an ABBA tribute band, but am stuck because I have had no luck finding someone to sing backup on “Fernando.”

iii. I didn’t shower this morning.

4. I am beginning to hate Windows Vista with a passion that resembles a white-hot rage. Give me my Mac any day of the week.

e. I once thought Angelina Jolie was hot, until her weight dropped below 100 pounds. Now she simply resembles a bag of antlers.

vi. I have been seriously considering trying to pen a Harlequin romance novel, but I am seriously afraid of what I might come up with, plotwise and characterwise and otherwise.

7. I am still trying to convince my wife to allow me to paint “UFOs land here” on the roof of my house. So far no luck.

h. I am seeking financial backing to fulfill my lifelong dream of breeding and selling Peruvian racing snails.

ix. I used to play oboe for the Anchorage Symphony and the Anchorage Opera. I stopped because I actually made more money as a short-order cook than as an oboist.

10. Coming up with ten random things about myself is harder than I expected.

Although I’m not going to tag anybody here, if you’d like to play along, I’d be interested in reading it. Let me know in the comments.