Why I am not a Utican

Ok, this blog is still hanging out there cause I just can't bring myself to take it down even though we managed to extract ourselves with much painful effort from this stinkhole. We live in a better place now. A beautiful area with natural wonders, a good economy, friendly people and so many cool things to do we couldn't possibly fit them all in. That's right, Colorado. Every morning we wake up and say, 'Look honey, it's yet another beautiful day!' We live in a fairly urban area and it is SO QUIET! It was almost eerie at first. No ambulances and fire trucks wailing past, no screeching tires, no weekly accidents at Optional Stop Sign Corner, no raging urban street theater at all hours of the night and day. It's so much safer too. I can walk around the block night with the dogs AND I don't have to worry about stepping on broken glass or follow the trail of garbage from someone's McDonald's meal. No one has been murdered within a mile of my home for the past four months. That is a personal best. Bonus: no flagrant, round the clock drug deals or gang activity. Best of all, no obvious corrupt jabrone government. All governments are a little corrupt but here, I have not yet seen the incredible immoral, unethical, illegal inbred nepotism and dirty dealings that is a good days work in Utica.

I feel like some of the mental damage the Utica area has done to us is slowly starting to heal. You know how some buildings are called 'sick buildings' because the people who live and work in them are ill all the time. Utica is a sick town but the illness is all mental, (ok and some physical. Want to see webbed toes and gout? Price Chopper on Genesee street. Just sayin.). After I got paroled to the real world, I wanted to tell people how wonderful Colorado is to make them understand what a great place they live in. They listen to my tales of the Mohawk Valley and look at me like I'm crazy. Like I just emigrated from Bosnia or some other war torn hellhole. Most of the time I get the feeling that I am not being believed or I get some kind of shocked pitying response. They say, "well, it all worked out for the best, you're better off now". This is social code for 'Stop telling me these horrible stories'. I tried to tell some of my new coworkers what I thought were funny stories and I saw the looks on their faces and realized that they were not funny at all. They were horrific. There is no possible way to make people here understand how frustrating life is in Utica for the non native, non Italian. I had to stop. But it's still in me. All the anger and the hurt and the confusion. Ten years of trying to to be part of that community, to have a career and own a home. Ten years of being told that good was bad and bad was good. Being told that things I could see with my own eyes were not so. Having an advanced degree: bad, women should be nurses, stay at home moms or work in retail. Selling counterfeit luxury goods: good. Joette Mancuso of Joette's Gifts got busted with fakes by the feds in March of 2007. Result? A wink, a handslap, a small fine and two new stores in Syracuse and Rochester. This is how business is done. Unless you are black. Then you go to jail. (Oneida Square Vender sold Counterfeit Goods, Utica OD March 22, 2011)

Arts and literature and theater and everything I find good in life are only for children or women and that once you reach a certain age (12) and are a man, you shouldn't be interested in those things anymore because you might possibly be a gay. After that, your main concern should be watching children play sports and charity walking events. Also, there was no point in leaving the immediate Utica area as it contained all that was necessary for a complete and full life. I can't even tell you how many people I met who had not been to Syracuse, Albany or Rochester in years, decades even. Not to the huge mall or downtown Armory Square district for shopping, not to the symphony, never been to the really excellent regional farmers market, not to eat in any of the nice restaurants, not to see an independent film, nor to go to any kind of cultural event that did not involve the 'Cuse. All of which, by the way, can not be done in Utica. People thought I was crazy, and a little strange for doing any of these things. When Monday morning rolled around and everyone did the What Did You Do This Weekend dance, I would say I went to a bookstore/Japanese restaurant/place to buy fresh fish and foolishly ask if anyone else had ever been to these places. Ridiculous! Of course not! That is outside the Utica area and not sports or charity related. "Wow you guys are really adventurous." Then some people would never ask again and others would ask me every Monday what kind of wacky thing I had done now. It was a bookstore people. I didn't go to Egypt and excavate the ruins of the Library of Alexandria. Jesus Christ.

When I was little I used to like Green Acres. That poor motherf**ker Eddie Albert. All he wanted was to have a piece of land and create something that was his. He moved to an isolated rural area with ignorant but savvy locals who ran an absurdist community and had many humorous and frustrating experiences. I laughed but also felt sorry for him because everything he tried to do was subverted. Then I was Eddie Albert.

Oh internet, my internet

So someone asked me if I was done with my blog. Au contrair, I think about it all the time. But when I think about what I would write I get a little ranty in my head and then I never come here and write it down. Later, I think 'phew' thank goodness I never committed that train(wreck) of thought to the permanence of the internet. However, is that not what the internet was founded on? Seriously, before online commerce and 24 hour news, and family web sites, there was just ranting. And porn. There is not gonna be any porn here so that leaves me with good old fashioned cranky opinions.

Actually, I feel pretty good lately as we have had an amazing three straight days of sunshine. I made the most of one of them by raking all the leaves in the universe. The other days I made sure to sit out on the back deck for a little while to get some vitamin D.

We are back in the globe now though. The cloud ceiling is so low its like living at the bottom of a bowl of cold mashed potatoes. At least it hasn't snowed enough to stick yet. Up north of us I know there has been several inches already. It's the time of year when everyone pulls back into their houses, turtling until spring. At 4pm when full dark hits there is no reason to be out and nowhere to go. I've talked with others about how its an effort to go anywhere at night and life becomes a cycle of work, home, work. I can't let that happen this year.

On the Utica news front, every time I look at the paper I see something stupid. "Utica schools discover food in New Hartford warehouse". You really couldn't make this stuff up. The old director of operations retired and disappeared as per usual around here and some other bureaucrat randomly stumbled across an old cache of frozen foods belonging to the school district at a local cold storage warehouse. When the outgoing guy retired, he took all knowledge of this months old frozen food with him. How long has it been there? Who knows? "a while" They are serving it up to the kids! Don't worry though: "Muller said the food still was fresh because it was frozen." Yum, freezer burn. The school district will also be changing up the foods the kids eat more often because it "gives a flavor to the menu.” Yesssss, a flavor.

On the book front: sucky. Ebay sales are down because I am working through a stack of books that seem to have very little appeal. Amazon is not so great because I am unlisting more books than I am listing. Getting rid of the crap. Books bought this month: 2, both sold. Shockingly, out of the blue, I sold one of my special books off of my ridiculously poorly designed web site. The lady in Switzerland was so nice and not at put out at my broken links, she must have really wanted that book.

hurray for mail

Here is some not so recent mail.
I've been interested in early science fiction and am putting myself through a unfocused and not to thorough crash course in whatever I can get my hands on. My wish list at paperbackswap.com is ninety books long and I particularly enjoy turning the crap books I've culled out of my selling shelves into things I actually want to read. If you haven't heard about paperbackswap I highly recommend it.
The book in the cardboard wrapper is not for reading but was an impulse low bid that went through. Its a copy of Stanfield House by Lucy Ellen Guernsey in absolutely crap shape. The binding is split and multiple pages are loose plus I'd guess there is about zero interest in Ms. Guernseys, religious domestic fictions these days. I bought it for this: See that little sticker? It's a bookseller label from William J. C. Dulaney and Co. in Baltimore, MD. While not as artistically interesting as some others I've seen, it's still an interesting little bit of history

thinking about smut

I found the most awesome cookbook at the thrift yesterday. "Buen Provecho", a bilengual Mexican cookbook compliled by the Junior League of Mexico City. I picked it up for selling but once I started to look through it I got attached. It's an easy to read, spiral bound large format book with the recipes in English and Spanish side by side. I made the spicy shredded chicken for quesadillas already and they were magnificent. Luckily, we have a large population of people from the DR and the PR here so the stores have bigger than average Mexican foods sections. There are several recipes with huitlacoche, other wise known as corn smut. It looks just like it sounds, and it sounds like what it is. A can of black gooey fungal infection. I saw some in a field once and it was actually frightening. I do plan on making the "Delicious Cookies" though because I like delicious cookies.

Trying to buy the book itself was the usual exercise in Utica style frustration. The thrift sells its books with sticker prices on the hardcovers and by taking 90% off the cover price of the softcovers. This is a softcover book with no price printed on it which is not unusual for a book of its age. Usually, whoever is running the registrar can suggest a reasonable price but this time a girl I have never seen before refused. We looked at each other for a few minutes and then I (politely) asked if a manager or supervisor could put a price on it. Nope, no such person in the store. It's a shame, says she, because several people have tried to buy this book before me. Huh, that is a shame. Welp, I'd better put it back then. Not in a mood to be thwarted, I walked back in to the employee area, found someone with a pricing gun and had them put a sticker on it. This is the very same thrift that earlier was selling USPS boxes and mailing supplies that you get for free from the post office. And people were buying them! This seems extra wrong to me. Lots of immigrants and non english speakers shop this store heavily. I hate to think of them spending their money on something that should be free. Some of those boxes were marked up to four and five dollars. Poor people really get the shaft.

up down and all around

Oh man, I totally forgot to mention that I am the worlds newest John Cheaver fan and absolutely the last one to the party. The Wapshot Chronicle is my new favorite book and I just got the Wapshot Scandal. They are hilarious and make me cringe at the same time. Sometimes you read a book, and hear a piece of music and think, no one is ever going to be able to do this better. It makes you want to write as well as that but you know that it won't be possible and that every contemporary author/composer of any merit is trying to do it too and now you can see where they get it.

Also, I finished The Crystal World but I think I have to read it again because I was reading it for plot and I don't think that was the point. Also, I never knew there were so many synonyms for crystal.

keepin calm and carryin on

One thing about not working full time besides the no money part, is that I have been able to read a lot, and I had a stack of books ready to go. Since this is supposed to be a blog about books as well as Utica, here is a list of books I have been reading.

Tiger Tiger. Alfred Bester. A classic period sci fi. Supposedly a precursor of cyberpunk. A pre pre pre curser I would say. It's a real stretch. Space age Count of Monte Christo. Teleportation. I'm going to look for the Demolished Man.

The Auctioneer, Joan Samson. Didn't finish, too depressing. Rural farmers get fleeced out of their heirlooms by wicked big city huckster who sets up police state.

Dhalgren, Samuel Delany, long but worth it for the sheer weirdness. Way more guy on guy sex than I expected. Very 70's vibe and many levels of meaning and the ending loops to the beginning. I enjoyed it.

Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan. Humanity has colonized the star by digitizing humans and beaming them in to new bodies (sleeves) in other places. Cyberpunk noir. Surprisingly tepid. I liked the AI Hotels that just want people to stay in them the best, but the story went nowhere with that. I also find it hard to believe that people wouldn't want to live many lives but according to Morgan, people just get tired of getting old and give up after two or three go arounds. I probably won't read the next one in the series.

Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling. In the future, old people rule the world and live nearly forever due to advances to medical science that are only available to old people. Young people get the shaft. No shit.

Blindness, Jose Saramago- I had to put this one side when they started to shoot the blind internees in the camp. I need to be in a better frame of mind.

The Crystal World, J. B. Ballard, just started but am interested. The main character has not made it into the jungle yet.

scene from Utica

Here is my favorite personal story about Utica which I think about sometimes. We walk our dogs every day on city sidewalks past a light pole. One day as we are walking toward this particular pole, we notice a pair of pants wrapped around the base of the pole. There's lots of discarded clothes and shoes and purses on the streets and sidewalks of Utica, why I don't know. The purses are easy as they are clearly the discards of a robbery but the clothing and shoes I just don't get.

Anyway, as we get closer to the pole there is a smell. An awesome, monumental, physical impediment of a smell. We walk faster but it just gets stronger until its clear that the smell is coming from the pants. They are completely covered in shit. Human shit. Encrusting the pants all over. The pants which are wrapped around the pole. This is a part of the sidewalk where there are overgrown trees and bushes on the left of the sidewalk and the shitpants pole on the right so there is no way to give it a wide berth. We hustle the dogs past the shitpants and even they seem grossed out. The next day we forget about the shitpants wrapped around the pole and so are unpleasantly reminded at dog walk time. This goes on for a week. Sometimes we remember to walk a different block and sometimes sheer curiosity demands that we check in on the shitpants. And the pole. One day we walk up the block and we don't see the pole. The entire pole is gone like it was never there, and with it the shitpants. Sometimes I try to picture the scene of the shitpants pole removal. Were there five or six Utica City workers standing around while some poor new hire tonged the shitpants away from the pole, or did the whole pole come out with the shitpants attached. Is there a special procedure for this? Did they get hazard pay? Was the pole due to come out anyway and when they got there there was an unfortunate surprise?

Now that I have written this out it seems less amusing to me and more a sad allegory of Utica but there you go. The shitpants pole story.