Sunday Inspiration

To Get To The Other Side

Thank God for the local news. I don't know how I'd get through the day without it. Just when you think you're slipping into a deep funk of despair, along comes a story that makes you slap your forehead and say "WTF!" Not the letters, the actual words. I've been dropping a lot of F-Bombs this week and was trying to keep it clean today.

Today's story involves Donny.

Donny is a tortoise.

Sorry, no link. It's such breaking news they haven't posted it yet online.

As tortoises go, Donny isn't that large. Maybe 40 lbs.

At any rate, Donny's owner lives on a very busy street and the front door had been left open and before you knew it Donny had made a break for it.

Not long later..... actually, probably a very long time later, Donny's a tortoise, he moves maybe a foot an hour.... Police were called to the scene by reports of a tortoise in traffic. And once there, using rational-for-Bako thinking, they did what you'd expect...

They closed the road.

Traffic immediately backed up because of the closure. How long the road was closed, they didn't say. It was long enough for the crack Eyewitless news team to arrive and beam back breathtaking, action-packed footage of a tortoise in the road, not moving. At no point during the whole ordeal did it occur to anyone to PICK. THE TORTOISE. UP.

Donny eventually made it to the curb on his own volition, at which point the police began a door to door search for the owner. And she proved to be a winner once they found her. Judging by the teeth and the glassy stare, I'd guess she was higher than a kite on crack when she did the TV interview.

"Donny is always up to no good" she said. "He's constantly bothering my cat."

Which begs the question, "How stupid is the cat?" Can't even get away from A TORTOISE?

Anyhow, it made my day. I hope they have an update on the 11am news.

Don’t Be Alarmed

I was bored and decided to give the blog a little Mid Century makeover.

Misery Loves Company

Oddly enough, the person I chat with the most on Facebook (which isn't saying much, how little I visit it) is my ex-girlfriend from college.

We dated for three and a half years and it didn't end pretty. The breakup had nothing to do with me being gay; it would be a couple of more years before I faced that reality.

She must know I'm gay, either through the grapevine or just skimming over my page. It's a subject we've both tacitly chosen to ignore, along with her rampant infidelity all those years ago. Bygones.

At any rate, she's become a one-stop clearinghouse for news about all our former classmates and from every corner of the country the news is grim.

Just a few years ago, when we all discovered Facebook, it seemed as if everyone was doing really well. But the Perfect Storm of the Great Recession and the sudden lurch to all things digital has left all of us on the ropes. Only one person from our group is doing well these days, a guy who jumped early into the video game world. By all accounts he's quite the muckety muck in that business. But the rest of us? Not so much.

Those of us with agency jobs found ourselves at that age when we were considered both expensive and expendable. Every last one of us was downsized and no one has recovered. The people who were doing well with commercial art and design and photography are all scrambling to find anything. The venues for that work are all dead and dying. Magazines and books and newspapers are all going digital and fancy schmancy illustrations and photos just slow download time. If they must go with an image, most people just pick up a stock image online for $10.

She ran through the litany of woes, people who haven't worked at all in the past two or three years, people who've lost their homes, one guy who took a job as a checker at the supermarket just so he could get insurance for his family.

And strangely, I took a lot of comfort from that. It's really easy to start down the slippery slope of depression and regret, to get swallowed up in the belief that you've failed, and failed big time. Knowing it isn't just me is probably enough to get me through another day.

Going Postal

Yesterday I found myself in bumper to bumper traffic.

In the drive-through lane at the post office.

I had a bill that had to go out yesterday and I'd already missed our regular mail carrier. She's what you would politely call "erratic". Some days the mail's here by 10am, other days not until 4. Some days the mail doesn't come at all. I think she drinks.

I had some other errands to run and figured I'd just swing by the local post office and drop it in the drive-through. As I pulled in, I thought it seemed awfully busy. There were three other cars already in line. Then I noticed the car at the front of the line wasn't moving at all. In fact, it almost looked like it was parked.

After a minute or so, the driver's window rolled down and a woman's hand came out clutching a manilla envelope near one of the mailboxes.

And then it retracted.

A couple of long moments later, out came the hand and envelope again.

And then back in.

We were playing "Postal Hokey Pokey".

Now the driver was creeping ever so slightly to the next mailbox. I know from experience that all the mailboxes have the same pick-up time, but this wouldn't be the first time I was stuck behind someone checking them all out hoping for an earlier flight. But now she appeared stalled again, wracked by indecision.

I've long ago reconciled myself to the morons in the check-out lines. It's the cost of doing business here. But this was fucking ridiculous.

Again the hand and envelope stretched out the window. I thought we just might have success as the envelope hovered just inches from the box. But once again, it snapped back into the car. What is the fucking problem? IT'S A SLOT! YOU JUST DROP SOMETHING INTO IT!

Again we waited and by then I had enough and I did the unthinkable.

I honked my horn.

That just isn't done here.

It evidently startled the driver, so much so that I saw the window go up and she quickly pulled up and out onto the street. She must be quite the delicate flower to get so flustered. Maybe she circled around the block to try it again. Perhaps she drove to another post office hoping their drive-through line wasn't so complicated. Maybe I scared her off the post office for good. I suppose we'll never know.

Well, That's A Relief...

It appears the crack squad of detectives down at the BPD has definitively determined that the body found last week dumped in a field south of town, the one riddled with bullet holes, was a homicide. Not a suicide, as absolutely no one suspected. Glad we put that to rest.

Now they can get to work on the garage full of human remains...

"It was interesting. I've never seen someone's head cut off before," said a neighbor who asked to only be identified as Joseph.

The Sheriff's Office is treating the case as a suspicious death.

"It could be completely innocent. We don't know," said Pruitt."

All Aboard The Crazy Train

"I spoke to your sister and she said she's coming up to visit you."

It was last Thursday and I was on the phone with my mother. I feared this was the first sign of dementia.

My sister? Visiting me? In Bakersfield?

That was fucking unlikely.

We used to be close, but now we're not. The boyfriend and I see her and her family at Thanksgiving or Christmas. And we usually have some sort of family gangbang in April to cover Easter, my mother's birthday and Mother's Day. But that's it. We never speak on the phone. In fact, she doesn't even have a phone number for me.

But wouldn't you know it, later that night I received a phone call from her. She had gotten my number from my mom.

"Hey! It looks like we'll be passing through Bakersfield tomorrow and we thought we'd stop by and say hi."

Passing through. That's the best way to see Bakersfield. But passing through to where?

The answer was Fresno.

For Mona Vie.

It was a huge gathering of the Mona Vie clans, or covens, for a massive conclave and some big announcement.

How big an announcement could it be if they're announcing it in Fresno? I mean, Fresno is definitely a step up from Bako, but it's a small step, trust me.

She said they were getting on the road early and would be here around 10am Friday. I gave her our address and told her to call from the base of the Grapevine and I'd put on a fresh pot of coffee. And sure enough, right before 10, they arrived.

I was surprised to see they had my sullen looking niece in tow. She's been home from college for the summer and having a miserable time. This was certainly not going to help. She looked distressed, like she'd been taken hostage, and in a sense, she had been.

I ushered everyone into the living room and got everyone drinks. We dispensed with the small talk in short order because it became obvious this was less of a visit and more of a recruitment drive. I've lost count of the number of times my sister has tried to rope me into this Ponzi scheme. The last time was when she ghoulishly cornered me in the corner of my mother's ICU room after she'd open heart surgery. I thought then I had put this matter to rest, but she came on stronger than ever. I began to think perhaps there was a prize if they showed up in Fresno with fresh scalps. Maybe free drink tickets.

In a sense I had left myself open for attack because during our all too brief chit chat I had mentioned my current career woes. I was now a swimmer with an open wound and she smelled blood.

To hear her tell it, Mona Vie was the "Elixir of Gods", the cure to what ails you, the road to untold riches and happiness.

I wanted to tell her off once and for all, but I was concerned about doing it in front of my niece. Why, I don't know. I see what she writes on her Facebook wall and she's certainly heard worse. Finally I just said "I'm not going to be selling any juice".

Ah, but that's where I had it all wrong. It wasn't juice... it was a lifestyle.

"It's so much more than the juice" my sister explained. "The juice almost doesn't even really matter. There's books and CD's and DVD's and seminars..."

"Books and DVD's about WHAT?" I asked.

"About leadership and teambuilding and communication skills... " she said. All in service of "building your Mona Vie Team". So the whole thing is geared towards suckering another layer of fucktards below you. It's a classic pyramid scheme, and it seems to be just about played out. There is no way this will end well for them.

"How much money have you made off of this thing in the year your've been doing it?" I asked.

My sister answered sheepishly.... "Nothing."

Before I could say anything she quickly added "but it's all tax deductible".

What is?

"The travel and the books and DVD's" she answered.

Oy vey. In the past year, that I know of, they've traveled to Columbus, Grand Rapids, Seattle and San Francisco for these Mona Vie clusterfucks. They've probably spent thousands of dollars on airfare and lodging and I'm sure you can't leave one of these things without dropping a couple of hundred bucks on motivational bullshit. They must be into this thing for over 20 grand at this point. And now they were trying to make some of it back on me.

I tried to change the subject and turned to my niece. "So what will you be doing in Fresno while your folks are being brainwashed?" I asked.

My sister jumped in.... "Oh she's 18 now, we signed her up. She's part of the team now."

That should count as child abuse.

And all too soon, and yet not soon enough, our visit was over. They had to hit the road to make the first seminar at 1pm. I waved good-bye, hoping to never see them again.

Sunday I was apprehensive all day. I knew they were returning home that day and I was living in fear they were going to swing by and take another shot at me. Maybe the boyfriend too. But we heard not a word.

Until last night.

The phone rang, and it was my sister. That's twice in one week, more than in the past ten years. If this keeps up, it may be a problem.

"Hey you!" she said. "I finally got you your belated birthday gift." My birthday was in May and I got bupkis from her, not even a card.

I shuddered to think what the "gift" might be, and I didn't have to wait long to find out.

"For your birthday I signed you up for Mona Vie! We paid all your registration fees for you as a gift. You don't even have to do anything. At least... not yet."

My sister sounded threatening.

"Well be in touch to let you know what you'll need to do going forward."

I got off the phone and I was scared. I had been signed up for a cult without my consent and against my wishes. I didn't know what my options were, if any, at that point. My sister now has my address. She knows where I live.

The Bumpy Road Ahead

I suppose I should elaborate on my nasty post from Friday after receiving a couple of alarmed emails over the weekend.

The gist of the matter is I had two fairly big clients that were basically paying the freight here in Bako and last week I lost both of them. Truth be told, I lost them several weeks ago, I just didn't know it.

Now, I've lost work before because the client just didn't like me or the work. It happens occasionally and it's an occupational hazard and it's something you just deal with and move on. But that wasn't the case here in either instance.

In the first, I had half a dozen ongoing projects with the director of marketing for a large firm here in town. And then in late June, she stopped returning email. When I finally got ahold of her on her personal email account, she informed me she was on vacation and apologized for forgetting to inform me. Fair enough. But then she never seemed to return from vacation. When we finally spoke last week she informed me she had been laid off the last week of June and she had been too embarrassed to tell me. She had also evidently been too embarrassed to inform her former employer that I had been doing all their work for months. When I was finally able to contact someone in authority at the company last week and try and salvage the account, they said all the work had already been reassigned.

The second instance is even more convoluted and not worth the effort to type it out. Suffice it to say that when you find yourself working for husband and wife owners, it's always smart to make sure you're aligned with the spouse who will ultimately take control of the company when the other one suddenly files for divorce. So, even though they were extremely happy with the work, I'm collateral damage in a messy break-up simply because I worked for "her".

Now, I realized all along it was risky having all my eggs in just two baskets and for months I'd been trying to line up more local clients.

And that's when I ran into the Bako brick wall.

First of all, a lot of the larger companies here are branches of corporations or part of a chain or affiliated with regional or national networks. So all their marketing is done out of the area. Most of the rest are wedded to their existing situations through connections in the Rotary, or Chamber of Commerce, or PTA or church or... the list goes on and on. A lot of the work is handled by a nephew/daughter-in-law/fellow church Deacon who has a computer and a copy of PhotoShop.

All that's really left are some mom-and-pop operations and I've discovered that just isn't a viable option. One of the nicer restaurants approached me about completely redoing their look. New logo, new menus, new ads. It sounded like a great job and I estimated it would probably take 20 to 30 hours to give them a selection and produce final art. And then asked what their budget was.

$40.

Yes, it's cheaper to live here, but I'd be hard pressed to make it work on $40 a week.

So, at the end of the day, I'm finding the opportunities here are just nonexistent.

Which is why the hunt for work has moved back to the city. Any city.

The boyfriend supports me because he's miserable here too. What we would do with the house we haven't decided. We bought it below market (which is saying something here) and we've fixed it up enough that we can probably break even. We thought about renting it out, but we've seen what the barbarians have done to some of the other rental homes in the neighborhood and that seems like it's not worth the effort. But the bottom line is we are back to "Plan A" - getting the hell out of Bakersfield.

It's not like I didn't give it a fighting chance here.

From The Annals Of Bad Planning

The weather this past week has been relatively mild, Bako-wise, with the temperature hovering around 100 for days. It finally crossed the century mark today and we were looking forward to a nice afternoon in the roof-top pool. It was only then we discovered a potentially fatal flaw in our summer relaxation plans...

The pool temperature was 95.

We went in anyhow, and it was OK for awhile. But after about 30 minutes it just felt like a bathtub and wasn't particularly refreshing, so we got out.

Now, the pool has no heater and it's partially in the shade of our trees. And for Bakersfield, it's been a pretty mild summer week in July. That's supposed to change in the coming days as the temperature shoots up to around 110. By next weekend the water temperature will probably be over 100.

Rather than a pool, we may have just installed a 7000 gallon water heater in the backyard.

Something a contractor told me suddenly makes sense. We'd had him out here a couple of months ago to get a quote on pulling out the remains of the old spa. In the end it proved to be too expensive, but he said something that sounded a little kooky at the time and I just let it go. He said he actually spends a lot of his time removing and filling in pools. I asked him why and he said "It's just too hot in the summer for a pool in Bakersfield". I just thought he was insane, kind of my catch-all for the people here. But now I realize he was referring to the water, not the weather.

And it seems to be true. I know a lot of the houses in the neighborhood have pools, but I have never once actually heard anyone using them.

Unless of course, they only use them to cook lobsters.

The Eye Of The Beholder

They have standards here. They're low, but they have them.

A neighbor we'd never met just asked us for the name of the person who build our "lovely fence". And just to spite them, we gave them Rodrigo's number.

Sunday Inspiration

Bleak House

I hate this fucking town.

Oops... did I say that out loud?

*****MUST*****USE*****INSIDE*****HEAD*****VOICE*****

Ah fuck it, I don't even care anymore.

I can't really get into the details of anything for fear of blowing my carefully crafted anonymity but suffice it to say it's become painfully obvious that there is no future here. This place is just too provincial. In a town where residency is measured in generations, not years, I could live here a decade and still be treated like a big city carpetbagger. At the end of the day, it's simply just not worth the effort.

So earlier this week, I dusted off the resumé, shaved off everything prior to year 2000 and stuffed it with a bushel of algorithm snagging buzz words. For the last three days I've been trawling the web for a job. So far I've narrowed my search to "anywhere but here".

Will it work? Who knows. It didn't before; that's how we ended up here in the first place. But I'll never know if I don't try and I can't really think of what else to do.

And as if all that wasn't depressing enough, I've also had to contend with the Zombie Pyramid Scheme That Just Won't Die... "Mona Vie".

More on that next week. I simply don't have the strength to tackle that story today.

Brain Drain

Spotted on the morning walk...

"City of Bakersfield, Storm Drian, Public Works."

Cast in iron. Wonder how many of them they made before someone noticed.

If they ever did.

A Little Nip And Tuck

Well, the boyfriend isn't the only one having "a little work" done.

I just redid my resumé and completely shaved off the 90's.

I feel ten years younger!

Nooz

Another day, another dead body in an orchard. It's a bumper crop this year. Police say it isn't related to the bodies found last week. That would be like comparing apples to oranges, when, in fact, they were both found in orange groves.

In other police news, the sheriff confiscated surveillance video of one of their officers shooting an unarmed man. When the video was released to the local media, the 5 seconds showing the actual shooting had mysteriously been erased. "It's a mystery. These things happen" said the sheriff. "Nothing to see here, move along". He's insulted anyone would think that they had tampered with the video.

He's also insulted anyone would think that his office leaked nude photos of an accident victim and posted them online for kicks. How that ended up happening is a mystery, he said. It would appear the Sheriff's office is "The Winchester Mystery House".

Let's see... what else...

Sinkhole swallows a man.

Another meth lab. At least they found this one before it caught fire.

And in a a bright spot for the local economy, inmate work crews are in such demand it looks like they'll have start arresting more people.

Other than that, not much going on. Slow news day.

The Future’s So Bleak, I Have To Wear Shades

It would appear, in regards to my career, I've come to a fork in the road. A crossroads. Or perhaps, a dead end. Not sure which just yet, but it appears I'll have plenty of time to contemplate that.

After months of being crazy busy, I suddenly find myself with nothing to do. I just emailed off my last job and when I checked the schedule, I saw nothing but blank days ahead.

Normally, I'd just chalk it up to the traditional summer doldrums. Historically, in advertising, the time from the Fourth of July to Labor Day is an absolute dead zone. The clients are on vacation, and their clients too. For two months, at any given time, someone up the food chain is away and nothing moves forward. Knowing that doesn't make it less stressful.

But there have recently been a couple of developments that cast a more ominous pall over everything.

The first came with an absolute dream job. One of my clients in LA was putting together a prospectus for new clients and in a bit of back-to-the-future, out-of-the-box thinking they decided to send out a lavish printed brochure, through the mail and everything, just like in Olden Tymes. Their feeling was that in this day and age, everyone is bombarded with email solicitations and link heavy promotions and most people just end up hitting "delete" without looking at anything. But if they were to receive an actual, physical artifact, something unexpected and rich and textural, well then, that would make them stand completely out of the herd.

It was right up my alley and a pleasure to design. Twenty pages of tasteful photos, lush textures, classic fonts, all in a muted palette of ochres and greys and cool tones. The client loved it.

I didn't hear from them for a couple of days and when I did, there had been a slight change of plans.

After further review, they had decided that, in the end, sending out a printed piece made them look backwards and out of touch. They were still moving forward with it, but with some minor revisions.

It was now going to be an email blast.

First of all, it was now going to be four pages, not twenty. And I was to remove all the photos. It would reduce the file size and make it faster to load, and research has found you only have three seconds to catch someone's attention before they hit the "delete" button. The photos would be replaced with hyperlinks. Also, I was to remove all the textures. At 72dpi, you couldn't make them out anyway. The fonts would have to be changed to something more browser friendly, something easy to read on a smart phone. They helpfully suggested Helvetica. And finally the palette. No two monitors are ever the same, and no one bothers to calibrate them anymore anyway, so my muted color scheme had to go, replaced with red headlines and black text.

The end result was hideous. It was so rudimentary that just about anyone could've done it. Hell, even Rodrigo could've done it, although nothing would be straight, which, I'm not sure anyone would even notice.

The client was happy, why I don't know.

The whole experience was heartbreaking, but I learned an important lesson:

I am backwards and out of touch.

And the final result of the project pointed out a fatal flaw in my future: nobody gives a shit about this stuff anymore. Which leads to the second ominous development.

It came from my biggest Bako client. They had been keeping me busy and paying the bills for months, and then after the Fourth, work started to dry up. I initially chalked it up to the usual summer slowdown. But then I started receiving emails and calls from the intern in their marketing department. Would I mind terribly sending over my original files?

That's never a good sign.

When I finally asked him what all this was about he informed me that the company had bought him all the same Adobe software I use and from now on he'd be doing most of the work. I asked him if he knew the programs and his reply pretty much summed everything up...

"No, but I can probably figure it out. How hard could it be?"

"Well probably still use you for the big stuff" he added, helpfully.

I hate to be the one to break it to them, but they have no "big stuff".

So thats that. I'm backwards and out of touch and anything I can do can be done by an unpaid intern. Doesn't really make for a promising future.

The more I think about it, the more it appears the only really big choice I have for financial sercurity is what color apron I want to wear...

Blue for WalMart, red for Target or orange for Home Depot.

I was always kind of partial to orange.

Gone With The Wind

A couple of weeks ago my office chair broke. Something in the tilt mechanism snapped and it turned into a bobblehead doll.

Office chairs aren't cheap and it was an unexpected expenditure, so for several days I tried to make the best of it. It required the balance of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat. Shift your weight a little too far forwards and you were doing a header into the keyboard. A little to the back and you'd be doing a somersault. Before long my back was going into spasm, so we bit the bullet and bought a new chair.

The old one was shunted off to a corner, but yesterday we were catching up on our housekeeping before taking our first plunge in the vat out back. The boyfriend had had enough of the chair and wheeled it into the garage.

Just what we needed - more broken down crap taking up space in the garage. But what to do? It was too large to fit in the trash bin and they won't pick up random crap thats just wheeled to the curb. I thought about loading it in the car and finding a dumpster somewhere, but that seemed to be entirely too much work.

And then it dawned on me. I need to think like a local.

So I grabbed a marker and a sheet of paper and wrote "FREE" on it. I taped it to the chair and wheeled it out on the lawn.

"No one is going to take that!" the boyfriend protested. And he had a point. It was obviously broken. It looked like it had had it's neck snapped and was hanging off kilter.

"Let's just give it a chance" I said. "It's Bakersfield."

Ten minutes later I peeked through the front blinds.

The chair was gone.

I swear these people are like locusts.

Adult Swim

Well, the first reviews for the new pool are in and I have to say... outstanding.

I refer to it as "The Rooftop Pool", because when you're floating on a raft, you're at eye level with the edge of our roof.

I was hoping it would prove to be relaxing and it exceeded all my expectations.

The dogs aren't quite sold on it. That may have more to do with the fact they haven't been for a swim in years and the water was a little coolish - 79 degrees.

The view is a little hit and miss. The pool is so big it's snugged under the lower branches of some of our fruit trees. Theoretically, you don't even have to leave the pool for a snack. If you find yourself facing south on a raft, you get the magical view of sun dappled leaves. If you face north, you're staring directly into the gargantuan air conditioning unit on our roof, and if it happens to kick on, it sounds like a freight train.

So all in all, a big win. We picked a particularly nice day to break it in. The weather has been freakishly pleasant, in the 80's. And the air was good and the sky was unnaturally blue, which is unheard of for July.

Days like this make Bakersfield seem almost... livable.

Go Big Or Go Home

What to say about the pool... it's GINORMOUS.

That wasn't the original plan. Originally we were just going to get a small one and place it over the old spa. Maybe 8 feet, a foot or two deep, something to splash around in and cool off.

"But ya know" said the boyfriend, "That isn't really big enough to float on a raft. Shouldn't we get something a little bigger?"

He had a point. Maybe we should go a little bigger. Ten, maybe twelve feet. That would be huge, but then we could at least float around and pretend we were somewhere else. But no bigger.

A few days later I say him out in the backyard with a tape measure. "What's up?" I asked.

"Well.... I was thinking, if we went just a little bigger, there would be room for BOTH of us to be floating on rafts at the same time..."

I looked at the tape measure, which stretched nearly from the house to the back fence. It was at 18 feet.

I tried to be the voice of reason, but you would think I would know by now that that never works. And it was beside the point anyhow, the decision had been made. We were getting an 18 foot round pool.

One thing I didn't anticipate though, was that as the size of the pool keep increasing, so did the depth. It hadn't even really occurred to me. I was helping the boyfriend assemble the pool yesterday morning. We had the external ring put together and I was getting my first look at just how massive this thing was going to be.

"Let's start putting up the sides" he said as he handed me one of the side support poles.

It was 5 feet long.

This wasn't a pool, it was a water tank.

The pool is so deep it requires a ladder to enter. The ladder is tall enough to climb on the roof. The pool is almost as tall as the fence, meaning anyone on the street can watch you enter the pool. In fact, as I float on my raft, the neighbors will probably be able to see me. That should prove to be relaxing. I think we can pretty much rule out skinny dipping.

Ever the optimist, the boyfriend pointed out that the pool is so tall you can't see the crooked fence posts anymore. Well, that's a plus.

It took 12 hours to fully fill it. The boyfriend was true to his word and managed to get the water looking sparkling clean. It's probably a witches brew of pool chemicals, and I can smell the chlorine from here in the office, but it looks refreshing.

We plan on test driving it a little later today.

Sunday Inspiration

Pool Party

Our super deluxe, white trash, above ground pool was delivered yesterday.

From Sears.

The boyfriend made quick work of putting it up. We placed it directly over the old, filled in spa, covering one eyesore with another. Not that I'm complaining. If we have to suffer through a Bakersfield summer, at least we can do it floating on cool, refreshing crystal blue waters.

There may have been one slight miscalculation.

Bakersfield tap water.

Which is white.

Why? Who the fuck knows. Industrial pesticide runoff.... oil company toxins leeching into the groundwater... decomposing bodies up in the reservoir.... really, the possibilities are endless.

Right now it looks like we have a giant vat of skim milk in the backyard.

The boyfriend thinks that, with a ton of additional chemicals, he'll be able to clear it up. It may end up boiling our skin off, but once the temperature climbs over 110, I doubt we'll even mind.

Before you know it, it will be just like old times...



or probably not.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Clichés exist because there's usually more than a little truth behind them. Take, for instance, "You get what you pay for."

I'm talking, of course, about our new fence.

We desperately needed to replace the one we had. Odds were it wouldn't make it through another winter. And with new gaps appearing almost weekly, it wasn't safe to leave the dogs outside unsupervised. We wren't looking for anything extravagant, but living on a corner lot with about 75 feet of exposed fence, we didn't want anything that looked too cheap.

We'd scoped out the neighborhood for examples of what might work, and we found a house around the corner that had a simple plank fence with a trimmed 2 x 6 cap which made it look quite finished. We decided that was what we wanted.

We had several legitimate fence companies come out and give us an estimate, but all of them ran between $3000 and $5000. That was way beyond our means, so the whole fence project was put on the back burner.

And then, out of nowhere, there was Rodrigo.

I'm not sure how the boyfriend found him, maybe a business card stuck in the front door. That seems to be how we find all our help. In hindsight, I think I can safely say that's not the best way to go. At any rate, Rodrigo offered to build us our fence for $1500.

I first met Rodrigo last week. Around 9am last Thursday, the boyfriend called me from work...

"Hey - Rodrigo is going to be there shortly and can you take him around the corner and show him the fence that we like?"

Um... OK. Sure. Who the fuck is Rodrigo?

Before he could answer, there was a knock at the door. Rodrigo.

I introduced myself and said "You must be Rodrigo."

"Jes".

"I'm supposed to show you the fence that we like..."

"Jes".

No offense intended, but I saw the lack of English as a possible problem. But it proved I was wrong. Once we got to the other house he turned into Chatty Cathy - "Oh Jes, we can do this fence, it's really quite easy, let me take some notes so we can match it exactly..." And on and on and on.

"Well, OK then" I said. "I'll just leave you to it." I left.

Monday morning the boyfriend was rushing to get ready for work, a little earlier than usual. I asked why and he said "Rodrigo is supposed to be here around 6am". Rodrigo didn't show and the boyfriend had to leave. "Can you just take care of it when he does show up?" the boyfriend asked. I said "sure". I probably should have asked what I was taking care of. I thought perhaps Rodrigo was coming by to get measurements.

By 6:20 the dogs looked like they were ready to burst, nervously pacing back and forth by the front door. And there was still no sign of Rodrigo. I scrawled a note for the door, explaining I was walking the dogs and would be back in 10 minutes. The dogs and I headed out for a quick walk around the block.

We'd only been gone for about 5 minutes when I heard horrible pounding off in the distance, hammering and the snapping of wood. Who were the assholes who had a crew working at 6:30 in the morning?

Turns out, the assholes were us.

As I rounded the corner to our house, there was Rodrigo with a crew of about four, happily taking sledge hammers to our existing fence. I couldn't imagine that was going over well with the neighbors.

I put the dogs in and went out to talk to Rodrigo. He was really quite animated and seemed genuinely excited to be building our fence. Even as the old fence came down, he had surveyor's strings already staked out for the new one, which we were pushing out about three feet. He really seemed to have everything well in hand and I went inside feeling confident about the whole situation.

Occasionally I'd go out to check on the progress. They seemed to be working extremely quickly and before you knew it they had post holes dug and were preparing to pour concrete footers for the 4x4 posts which were neatly stacked nearby.

Around 1pm I noticed all the commotion outside seemed to have stopped. I went outside and saw that everyone was gone. Vanished. Quitting time was apparently one o'clock. All of the fence posts were up and sunk into concrete.

Now, Rodrigo isn't blind, but you could be forgiven for thinking that once you saw his work.

All of the fence posts were crooked. Tower of Pisa crooked. And set in concrete.

That seemed to me to be a problem. It would seem to me that at the bare minimum, when building a fence, you'd want something that was, you know, vertical.

I complained to the boyfriend when he got home and was surprised to discover he was washing his hands of it. I was now project manager and I had to deal with it.

The next morning I was waiting for Rodrigo when he arrived. "Before you do anything we need to talk about the posts" I said. "They're all crooked."

"On no they're not, Dave. They're all perfectly straight" he said.

I'm not sure which pissed me off more - that he was bald faced lying to me, or that he was now calling me "Dave".

I grabbed an extension cord that was laying nearby. I held it against the top of the post with my forefinger and let the plug dangle near the ground, a good three or four inches from the base of the post.

"Oh, no Dave, the post is straight. That cord is just crooked."

This was absurd. One of his crew walked by with a level. Seemed a bit late in the game to be breaking that out. I grabbed it and held it against the side of the post and watched the bubble slowly drift all the way over to the right.

"Oh, THAT" Rodrigo said. "Ok, now I see, I can see how you would think it might be crooked. Don't worry Dave, we'll make it right."

I stormed back inside and got on with my day. I had a couple of deadlines and didn't have time for this shit. About an hour later I went out to see what their magical solution was and discovered they had simply ignored me and had started framing the fence over the crooked posts and were already hammering up planks.

"What about the posts!" I yelled.

"Dave, Dave... those posts were set in concrete. There wasn't anything we could do. You're not going to see them anyhow, they'll be covered with planks."

Well, true. You aren't going to see them from the OUTSIDE. The neighbors won't see them. We, however will be staring at them for the rest our lives.

Rodrigo tried to change the subject, pointed proudly at the wood planks. "But see that? It's going to be beautiful with these redwood planks."

That didn't seem right either. The planks were stained redwood color, but as far as I know, you can no longer get real redwood. It's kind of endangered.

"Redwood?" I asked. "Really?"

"Oh Dave, sorry, did I say redwood? I meant cedar. Stained to look like redwood. I'm sorry you misunderstood me."

I didn't misunderstand anything. You'll a fucking pathological liar.

At this point I was just ready to throw in the towel. The problems just kept piling up. The planks were all trimmed to different lengths and were crooked too. it was starting to look like an upside down picket fence. "Oh Dave, thats how they come from the lumberyard. They're always going to be a little off." I pointed to his workman, who was on the ground behind him with a handsaw, doing all the crooked trimming." "Oh, right Dave, I see what you mean. We'll fix it." To be honest, I didn't give a fuck anymore.

By the end of day two, most of the fence was up. If you could call it that. The most obvious problem, of which there were many, was the final plank on the corner. It was 6 inches wide at the top and then tapered to a point at the bottom, like the shape of a piece of pie. Somewhere around the middle of the fence, they had been placing the planks at an ever so slight angle, each compounding the angle of the last. By the time they had gotten to the end, the only way they could close the final gap was with a triangle. It looked like an optical illusion. Like and Escher drawing.

The next morning I made them take it all down and do it all over again. Rodrigo and I were no longer friends.

The final injustice was the pathetic little gate. They cut it about a foot too short. It looked like capri pants.

"Oh Dave, it's be easier to use that way" Rodrigo said, covering his ass.

I pointed out the chief reason we were getting a fence was to keep the dogs in. Which was no longer really an option since they could now just waltz out under the gate. I made him redo it.

By Wednesday, the job, such as it was, was considered "done". Rodrigo came for his check. Of course the final price tag came in higher - what a shock. All told it cost about $1800. I wrote him out a check for the balance. He looked it over and then looked somewhat perplexed. He pointed to my name on check and said "Who is this?"

It me dickhead. My name isn't "Dave".

The Remains Of The Day

The Central Valley is known as America's Breadbasket. Bakersfield, in particular, is know for it's variety of crops. Corn, oranges, grapes, dead bodies.

Another day, another shallow grave out in the orchards.

It's like our own version of the East River.

I've lost track of haw many that is. Maybe a dozen. And those are just the ones they find. I would think if you timed it right, when the fields we're tilled for planting, a freshly dug grave would probably go unnoticed.

I must make a mental note of that; you never know when such info can come in handy.

Let this be a timely reminder: always wash your produce. You never know where it may have been.

Weather Or Not

I see they finally replaced the local weather man. The last one was unceremoniously fired back in May for being a sanctimonious turd.

He was a Born Again Christian and proud of it. Are there any other kind? He was constantly dropping Jesus references into the weather segment. It was so gratuitous it was even too much for this town. He was constantly reprimanded and finally dialed it back. But things blew up back during the May sweeps. The station was doing an exposé on the numerous local strip clubs and pimping the story with TV spots featuring possibly underage strippers wrapped around a pole.

When the day finally arrived for the big peep show, the weatherman refused to go on. Said the story violated his deeply held Christian beliefs. He offered to call in sick. They told him he couldn't - his contract clearly states he can take no time off during ratings sweeps. So he did it anyway. And they fired him.

Works for me.

His forecasts were always off, which isn't what you'd expect from the divinely inspired.

Anyhow, the new guy started tonight. His name is Collin, and he looks scared. I don't blame him.

I actually felt really sorry for him, being dumped into Bakersfield. But then I found out he just moved down from Fresno. So it's really just a lateral transfer.

The Dim, Dim Lights Of Broadway

Early this morning I opened my email, and there in the in-box was a Golden Ticket.

It was an email from a fancy schmancy New York ad agency. I had been referred to them by one of my occasional LA clients, a client that thinks very highly of me, although not quite highly enough to give me any work. The New York agency specializes in Broadway. They were looking for someone to design the logo and graphics for a new, multimillion dollar Broadway production. The LA agency gave them my name. They said I was perfect.

The job was mine. Did I want it?

Hmmm... let think about that. Million dollar Broadway production... tons of exposure.... gold in my book.

Fuck Yeah!

I dashed off a response. It was 7am, 10am in NY. I hit "send".

And then I heard the soul crushing "DONK" you get when the email isn't connected to the internet.

Sure enough, I pulled up the browser and got the dreaded "YOU ARE NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET AT THIS TIME".

What to do, what to do? I wasn't panicking, not just yet.

I unplugged the modem and the router and gave them a breather. That usually worked.

Nothing.

I re-booted the entire system. Again, nothing.

Then, I realized what the problem was. SOMEONE forgot to pay the cable bill. AGAIN.

I quickly dialed up the cable company. The phone still worked. When you don't pay your bill, they sever your internet knowing that will cripple you, but they leave the phone on so you can call and beg mercy and pay your bill.

I went through the phone tree and was put on hold. Forever. After 20 minutes on hold, I got the bright idea to send NY an email through my phone. I quickly tapped out an email, but I'm not very good at texting and I noticed the message kept auto-correcting. To what I couldn't tell you; I was shaking in rage at that point.

I hit "send" and.... nothing.

I had the hold music blaring at me through the speakerphone and was staring at the little "send" icon blythely spinning around.

Finally it stopped and said something about not being connect to a "stmp path" or... I don't know. I have an art degree, I'm not Steve Jobs.

Then it occurred to me... I also have a Gmail account! I'll use that!

I typed, if that's the word, another email. Couldn't tell you what it said. I was blinded with rage at that point. I hit send again and... nothing.

And it's only then I noticed the highlighted Bluetooth icon on my phone. It turns out both accounts were trying to access the home modem. Which, in case you haven't been following along, was no longer connected to the internet.

Just then, someone answered the phone!

And HUNG UP!

I called back again and got "ALL CIRCUITS ARE BUSY AT THIS TIME..."

Maybe it wasn't a billing thing.... maybe it was an outage?

I call back a third time and actually get a human. It turns out the account is fully paid (thanks, Honey) and there are no outages. I get transferred to Tech Support where we quickly discover the problem is with the modem. After a couple of minutes, the problem is resolved and I'm back online. I immediately hear my initial email reply "zoom" out. And then a second later, I hear my frantic follow up emails "swoosh" out of my phone.

That was seven hours ago. Never heard a word back. It's nearly 7pm in NY.

I'm fairly certain I didn't get the job.

I'm hoping it's because I just didn't reply in time. Time was of the essence and it was given to someone else.

But who are we kidding. The poor guy got slammed with three emails from me, two of which were probably so incomprehensible they looked like they were written in Klingon. I came off looking desperate and a little, whats the word... INSANE.

These are the days I just want to stick my head in the oven.

But it's fucking electric.

Too Cool For School

Yesterday I was startled by a strange sound. It wasn't an unfamiliar sound, just one I hadn't heard in quite a long time. It was... silence.

For the first time in over a month the air conditioning shut off.

It's been running so long I had just grown used to the constant hum, like white noise. It seemed a little eery when it cut off.

Bako is going through a bit of a cold snap these days. It's only supposed to hit the mid 80's today.

Imagine that! 80's! In July! In Bakersfield! It's a Mini Ice Age. Or a sign of the Apocalypse.

It'll be over soon enough; it's supposed to be back over 100 by the weekend and up to 110 next week and for the foreseeable future. Might as well enjoy it while we can.

Random Good Things About Bakersfield #18

Traffic. Or rather, the lack thereof.

Until we were forcibly relocated here I never really appreciated just how much time I had wasted in my car back in LA. In LA, no one thinks anything about an hour commute to work and it's nearly impossible to get anywhere in under 30 minutes.

But things are different here. Aside from the idiotic street lights, which tend to run four minutes if you hit a red, you can pretty much get to wherever you want to go in ten minutes.

A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting scheduled with a prospective new client. We were meeting at Starbucks, near our house.

Yes they have Starbucks here; they aren't complete barbarians.

I got there a bit early and ordered an iced mocha and just as I sat down, my cell rang. It was client and he was apologizing profusely. His previous meeting had run long and he was "clear across town" and would be late. He was there in three minutes.

But don't try telling the locals they have no traffic. Their perspective is different and to them traffic is horrible. When we first moved here I was working for a now defunct agency. The house we rented was about three miles from the office. Most mornings I could get there in a 5 or 6 minutes. I was chatting with the office manager one morning and she asked where we lived. I told her the neighborhood and she replied "Well, that's a really nice neighborhood, but I could never deal with that commute."

Every time I drive back into LA, my tolerance for the traffic grows thinner and thinner and I think that if we still lived there, this weekend would push me over the edge. Because this upcoming weekend is...

"CARMAGEDDON".

They're doing the unthinkable and closing a ten mile stretch of freeway for the entire weekend. And not just any freeway, but the 405, or as it's commonly referred to, "the Fucking 405". It's the only freeway the serves all of West LA. It's the major route to the airport and the beaches and they are taking it completely offline. The reason why is they're in the midst of what seems like a 50 year project to widen it. And to do so they need to demolish the Mulholland bridge.

It is going to be the Mother of all Clusterfucks.

It will bring that city to it's knees.

How bad will it be? Here's a clue: when I had to drive back into LA last week, the digital freeway signs, here, in Kern County, were flashing a simple message - "JULY 16-17: AVOID L.A." And this week, the local radio stations are running ads for several of the coastal cities saying "Since LA will be impassable this weekend, why not come and enjoy a day at the coast?" There are stories out of LA of people leaving town for the weekend to avoid it, businesses closing, people stocking up on supplies since the entire city will be gridlocked.

And if we still lived there, we would be doubly screwed because our house was off of Beverly Glen. It's one of only a handful of canyon roads that connect the city proper to the Valley, and it's the closest alternative to the 405. On a good day, in rush hour traffic, it could take up to an hour to descend out of the hills. This weekend, I'll bet you could probably triple that time. We'd be virtual shut-ins.

So I think I can honestly say, for the first time in almost two years, I sure am glad I'm not in LA.

Vanity Fair

As a general rule of thumb I don't write about the boyfriend. Oh sure, I mention him obliquely, as my partner in crime. But I don't write anything specifically about him. Not anymore. Not since the unfortunate post I wrote about his peculiar "Judge Judy" viewing habits. I won't link to it because, really, why open old wounds. He had actually urged me to write that post because he thought it was cute and quirky, but then he was angry once he read it. He said that the way I had written it made him look bad. As if there was a way to write it and make him look good.At any rate, ever since then, the boyfriend has been off limits.

Which is a shame really, because there were potentially dozens of great stories. Especially this one. But I had promised him I wouldn't write about him any more. So imagine my delight when he told me I had permission to share just this one. He's really quite proud of it so I only hope I do him justice.

So here we go...

Our story begins back in May. The boyfriend has a co-worker - let's call her "Bobbie Sue". I've always wanted to use that name. He and Bobbie Sue have a very hot and cold relationship. One week they're friends, the next... not so much. But this happened to be a good week and I received a call from him one evening telling me he was going to be home late and to just go ahead and eat without him. When I asked what he was up to he told me he and Bobbie Sue were going to get...

Botox.

The boyfriend has been wanting to get Botox for, like, ever. He's been a bit obsessed about it. He doesn't need it at all; he easily looks ten years younger than his age and has few if any wrinkles. But try telling him that. At any rate, he'd never gotten it before but I knew it was just a matter of time. All he needed to start down the slippery slope was an enabler. And that proved to be Bobbie Sue.

She had been going through some trying times and someone had given her a gift certificate at one of the numerous plastic surgery outfits here in town. I've never figured out why there are so many plastic surgeons here, but there must be about a gazillion. How they survive in this podunk town is beyond me. Looking around town it would appear that either nobody uses them or they do and the surgeons just aren't any good.

Bobbie Sue had decided she wanted to finally use her gift certificate to get some Botox. Personally, I don't know that I would use a glorified Groupon for plastic surgery, but that's just me. Bobbie Sue didn't want to go alone, so she asked the boyfriend if he wanted to go with and, let's just say she didn't have to twist his arm.

When he finally got home, he was, in a word, ecstatic. He dragged me into the bathroom to check out "the work". The difference was slight, but noticeable. He was, of course, as handsome as ever, but the small creases between his brows had vanished, like they had been airbrushed away. I was relieved to see he still had a complete range of facial motions.

And that appeared to be that. The subject of Botox didn't really come up again.

Until last week.

Once again, he called me to tell me he would be late. Three months had passed and it was time for a "touch up". Again, he came home and the differences were slight. It didn't much matter to me and it seemed to make him happy. Whatever floats your boat, I say.

And then Saturday rolled around and we were planning our day and he informed me that he had a 2pm appointment.

It would appear that Botox is a "Gateway Drug".

"Honey" I said. "You don't need any more Botox. Why are you going back?"

He wasn't going back for Botox... this time it was for collagen. In his lips!

I had visions of Duck Lips and tried to talk him out of it. Remember the cautionary tale of Meg Ryan? She went from being "America's Sweetheart" to "Howard the Duck" with one too many lip procedures. She's washed up now. Or that Cat Lady in New York. I tried to put the brakes on but I knew it was already too late. He disappeared into the bathroom and emerged with white crap all over his lips, like zinc oxide. "What's that?" I asked. It was to anesthetize his lips.

Without even thinking, he kissed me good-bye. I lost feeling in my lips for the next three hours.

He was gone for a very long time. I began to grow concerned. What if there was horrible collagen accident? Should I call and check up on him?

Just then the front door burst open and he rushed in clutching his hand over his mouth yelling "I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!"

Oh dear God. What had he done?!? This shit isn't reversible. I ran to the bathroom where he was checking his face in a mirror. I tried to mentally prepare myself for coming face to face with Joan Rivers. Just then he spun around with a huge grin on his face - he was KIDDING! He LOVED it. They ever so slightly plumped his lower lip and they gave him a little heart shaped bow to his upper one.

So now he's hooked. There's no putting that horse back in the barn. I shudder to think what's coming next.

He's trying to convince me to join him on the Botox wagon train, but I'm just not going for it. The way I figure it, I'm exposed to enough toxins in this town as it is. I'm not about to inject them into my face too.

BFD News Update

Well, the news as far as we're concerned is we're finally getting a new fence!

When we first looked at the house back in the Fall, it looked to be in pretty bad shape because it was a foreclosure and had been sitting vacant for awhile. But on closer inspection, most of the issues appeared to be cosmetic. The one glaring exception was the fence.

It was a wreck.

And because it's a corner lot, there was a LOT of fence.



It was in such bad shape that halfway through escrow, the entire side fence blew down in a storm. I noticed it when I walked the dogs by that morning, and it looked at first as if a car had plowed into the backyard. Which would not be unexpected here in Bako.

Legally, the bank was responsible for making it right before escrow closed and to say they did a piss poor patch job would be an understatement.



It continued to deteriorate after we moved in. Here's our front fence being held in place by an old 80's web belt we found during the move. Nice to see it's still useful long after it fell out of fashion.



We couldn't let the dogs in the backyard unsupervised because there were so many gaps and my little dog found every single one. There wasn't much we could do about it because we were poor.

Until now!

There's a whole crew here building us a new fence as we speak.

We may not eat for the month, but at least we'll have a fence.

But now I'm just being self centered. Let's take a look at what else is happening in Bako this fine morning, shall we?

Cops killed another unarmed man. Seriously, you don't want to fuck with the cops here.

A City Council member, a fireman, was arrested for having sex with an minor. A 16 year old boy. His wife was understandably upset.

A local pastor was discovered bilking the faithful out of thousands of dollars. Can I get a "Hallelujah!"

And the Killer Kern claims another victim. Another drunk dies in the river. Some would call it a tragedy, others "thinning the herd".

Normally the Kern River doesn't have any water in it. The unofficial motto of Bakersfield is "A Riverbed Runs Through It". It's usually just a trash filled gash through the heart of the city. But because of the near record rain and snowpack this year, a few months ago they opened the floodgates at the Lake Isabella dam...

because it might collapse.

So there you are - just a typical Monday in Bako.

Sunday Inspiration

Drop ’Til You Shop

What a cruel, cruel joke to play on someone. It's inhumane, really.

Yesterday I received a Crate & Barrel catalog in the mail. I love Crate & Barrel! I took some time off and kicked back with the dogs, lovingly leafing through page after page of sleek and stylish furniture and housewares. It was torture. Why? Because the nearest Crate & Barrel is 100 miles away in Beverly Hills.

I have no idea why I received it or how I got on the mailing list at this address. What kind of monster would do that to me?

Oh sure, you can shop online. Doesn't that sound like fun? Point, click, point, click. That isn't shopping, it's data entry.

When we first moved here, on my first trip to the local supermarket, my hopes were raised when I saw a huge display rack of gift cards. Nordstroms, Bloomingdales, Saks, H&M... Bakersfield couldn't be all THAT bad if it had all these stores.

But it doesn't. To use the cards you either have to shop online or hit the road.

In Bakersfield, it's either WalMart, or the highway. Literally.

"Oh yeah, shopping here sucks" one of my Gossip Girl lunch buddies confirmed over chicken tenders yesterday. "Most people drive into LA once a month to get what they need."

I think that would qualify as a humanitarian mission.

And it's true. Every time we've driven back into town from a weekend away, we pass or are passed by mammoth SUVs, packed to the headliners with shopping bags from all the best LA malls.

You would think the big retailers might throw us a bone. How about a Nordstrom Rack for God's sake? Anything. Or how about an outlet mall? How come you can shop at an Armani Exchange or Barney's in Cabazon, in the middle of the freakin' desert, and all we're stuck with is Ed Hardy rejects at what passes for a Macy's here. It's just sad.

The End OF An Era

About quarter past eight I sat down to write a different post. I had NPR on in the background and they cut away to live coverage of the final space shuttle launch. I didn't even realize it was today. I felt the need to witness it, so the dogs I moved to the family room and watched it sail away.

I remember watching the very first launch back in 1981. Even before that, I remember how space crazy this country used to be. I grew up building models of Saturn V rockets and lunar modules. Every other kid in elementary school announced that they were going to be astronauts. My parents made my sister and I watch the first moon landing live, although in all honesty we didn't need any coaxing. "You'll remember this day the rest of your life" my mother said. And she was right.

I also remember that horrible day in January of 1986. I had recently graduated from college and had spent several weeks getting my portfolio in order. After days of cold calling ad agencies in LA, I finally had scheduled my first day of interviews. Everyone had gotten fairly blasé about the shuttle by then. They still showed the launches live but I'm not sure many people paid attention any more. I had the news on in the background and only caught the Challenger launch out of the corner of my eye. And watched it blow up. I was completely stunned and it turns out everyone else was too. We weren't quite so blasé after all.

I wasn't really sure what I should do, so I went ahead with all my planned interviews. Everywhere I went that day, from Downtown to Century City to West LA to Santa Monica, all the offices were deathly silent as everyone gathered around TVs. The people I was meeting with all went ahead and took the meetings, but it was clear no one was really present. Including me. I was never much of a Reagan fan, but I have to admit the speech he gave the nation that night was one of the most moving things I've heard and I cried.

And now today, it's all over. Not just the shuttle, but Americans in space. With nothing even on the drawing boards it will be at least a decade before we ever go back on our own. If we ever do.

If you had suggested back in the time of Challenger, at the height of the Cold War, in the depth of the Reagan Administration, that in the very near future we'd be relying on the kindness of the Russians to let us hitch a ride into space, people would have thought you were insane. But, there 'ya go and here we are. History is funny that way.

Trip Of A Lifetime

Business has been slow the past two weeks. I'm hoping it's just a lull due to the holiday and not something more ominous. All the same, with too much time on my hands I tend to get morose. I needed a diversion and yesterday I hit on the perfect idea...

A Grand European Vacation.

Not a real one, of course. We can't afford that. We'll probably never be able to afford that.

No, I'm talking about a phony vacation.

On Facebook.

Yesterday I went on Flickr and started stealing people's vacation photos. By strategically PhotoShopping the boyfriend and I into the scene, we looked like we taking the Grand Tour. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I would upload them to my Facebook account, starting with out departure, tomorrow. Then it was on to London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Prague and Amsterdam. We may take a little side trip to Vienna. Haven't totally firmed up the itinerary. Every few days we'd jet to a new exotic local, and all of my Facebook friends would drool with envy.

"How lucky you are!" they'd write. "I wish I was there!"

"It's beautiful here" I'd reply. And after checking online for the current weather conditions for wherever we were supposed to be, I'd add a little local flavor. "There were rain showers earlier, but it's lovely now. Not too hot - it's 23C. That's 75 degrees for you back home..."

See, that's the thing about Facebook these days. Everyone lies.

What started initially as an almost magical way of connecting with lost friends and distant family has turned into a marketing tool, a way to promote a life you don't actually live. Everyone has turned their Facebook page into a storefront window on the life the want everyone to believe they actually live. Only the most carefully curated, spit polished version of events gets put on display.

I was slow to pick up on this trend. At the depth of the recession, when we were losing everything, it seemed everyone else was living simply wonderful lives. How could everything be going so wrong for us and so right for everyone else? Well, in a word, it wasn't.

One of my most insufferable friends owns his own business. When everyone else seemd to be losing their jobs and their houses, he appeared to be having a fabulous run of luck.

"It's Tuesday and I've already picked up TWO NEW CLIENTS! Life is good!!!"

"Having lunch with MY NEW CLIENT!"

"Business is GREAT!!!" Just signed up a NEW CLIENT!!!"

What he failed to mention is that for every NEW CLIENT he signed up, if they even existed at all, he was losing two. I just heard he went out of business.

And then there's a former colleague of mine from the entertainment business. We're around the same age and he suffered a similar fate; He was cashiered from his job around the same time I was. We both floated around through the freelance world and occasionally our paths would cross at various agencies. By mid '09, most of my entertainment work had dried up. So many agencies had gone under that there was a glut of younger (and cheaper) designers competing for a dwindling amount of work. I sometimes wondered what became of him, since I assumed he was probably in the same boat.

And then about a year ago he started posting new work to his Facebook account. Every few days there was a new poster design for some of the biggest films of the day. He's a wonderful designer and the work was amazing, but how was he scoring all these major coups? Even as I admired his work, something about the whole thing seemed fishy. How was he getting all these astounding commissions?

Well, easy. He wasn't.

The first clue that something was amiss was the work. It was beautifully designed, clever, tasteful.

The exact opposite of anything a studio would be interested in.

Plus, no studio legal department would let them be posted, especially for films that hadn't yet been released.

There was no way these posters were real.

And... they weren't.

Turns out he hasn't worked in over a year and was creating them on his own to give the impression he was in demand.

I'm assuming it didn't really work since he's still churning out fake posters to this day. It's a shame really because his fake posters are so much better than the real ones.

So that's what Facebook has become: The Liar's Club. My general rule of thumb when scanning Facebook is the sunnier the status update, the more dire the reality behind it. If someone mentions what a beautiful day it is, I just automatically assume they're losing their homes. If they post "interesting" articles, it means they have too much free time and are probably out of work. Or the husband left them. Or their daughter's knocked up. Or the son is in jail.

Facebook is much less depressing to read if you take this approach.

But back to our "trip". Ultimately I decided this morning not to go through with it, at least not just now. I realized most of my clients are Facebook friends and if they think I'm off on a European adventure they'll think I'm unavailable.

Or that they pay me too much.