Heat and paint

I noticed that my vinyl shower curtain was limp today, it's plastic slightly warm, a little more pliable in my hands. I intended to take a cool shower, to alleviate the heat of the day, but the water pressure in my building denied me my desired amount of cool water, leaving me with a quite warm shower instead.
I went to the craft store today, so that I could buy materials to paint with. I was recently given three tubes of acrylic paint, and have been itching to use them.
At the store, the woman at the counter where the bags are checked was busy with another customer and told me to check my own bag, pointing towards a free clip with two identical tags locked in it. I felt a small thrill of freedom as I stepped behind the counter with one foot, and attached the clip and one tag to my bag, taking the other tag to put in my pocket.
I shopped for awhile, thinking about the four things I knew I wanted. The first item, they were out of, and the second item, a new pen, they were nearly out of as well. Actually their selection of pens is diverse, but the brand that I like was mostly gone. I settled on blue pen.
Next, I needed a cheap palette and a brush.
Found the palette easily. $.49; I bought two.
The brush took longer. Their brushes cost from $4-$60 and I took awhile finding the cheapest brush that I liked. As the act of painting came tangibly closer to occurring, I decided that I wanted some more color too, and bought two more tubes: ivory black and cobalt violet.
I went back to the counter to pay, and an oriental man was buying a few things. His facial features, hair, and accent seemed Japanese to me, but I've often been wrong before. I watched him pay and thought about asking him. I thought about what I would say to him. Atsui desu ne? (It's hot outside, yes?) Or: Hajimemashite. (Pleased to meet you.) Perhaps he's in a hurry, and I'd put him in a situation where it would be impolite to rush off, but would make him stressed and quick to end any conversation we might have. There's always something to worry about, isn't there?
I felt hungry, and opted to not attempt waylaying him.
He left, nearly forgetting his change, and it was my turn to pay. My bill came to $20, twice what I planned on. Next time, I won't plan.
I accepted my things, declining a bag, as I'd brought my own that was waiting for me behind the counter. I moved to retrieve bag myself, but was disappointed as she beat me to it.
I thanked her, left, and rode the train home.

Hot

It's become hot, here. Very hot, and all at once, coupled with a thick and cloying humidity. I have been dripping sweat for days now. Summer has ensconced Chicago in heat, and I welcome it.
I have a cold beer and a glass of ice water in front of me. At a BBQ last night, I made tequila sunrises for people and napped on a porch after eating a huge meal.
I've been reading Raymond Carver and Stephen Baxter and I just finished an amazing book about pygmies.
Sleeping has become a strange and warm affair since the weather lost the humility that it maintains through the chillier parts of a Chicago spring. My dreams have turned sweaty, and my mornings have been sunny, disconcerting things; my alarm buzzing rhythmically from the direction of creeping sunlight. My dream state has been interrupted too abruptly, two mornings in a row now. The heat slows my mind while the humidity fogs it. I cannot say right now, with exactness, where the dream ends and reality begins. I don't mind it, though. The days and the nights continue. I'll write this and go to sleep. Tomorrow I will wake without an alarm. Good night.

Ragged Things

...into air, back up so high for a moment and then back down again, but to a different place. Perhaps we'll go out to the island and watch the moon for a bit and listen to the monsters dance and sing. The demon lovers rest on a rock beyond the tide and melt like magma upon one another.
We rest and think about the queens out buried in the trees, behind the walls. Workers hurrying in both the light and the night. They are busy and the queens wait. We could wait forever on the shore, watching the signals flare out from the other islands. Not ignoring them, but letting them exist with us. It is a reverent thing, in the glinting lights, the loud and whimsical singing, the lone spot of moon overhead, crying like a virgin, seeping translucence.
Quick, as quick as we can. The light is faster and the shore does not end. The islands do not open until the end when it is already too late. The light fades and I am high again, looking around, waiting.

I'll be honest

I'm a pirate.
Not the kind of pirate that lives on ships and secret fortresses. I don't pillage towns and carry off women with me in my ship. I don't capture ships to steal their gold, and I don't fly a jolly roger from my mast.
I tried living that way for awhile, but I didn't like it. I nearly lost an eye, and I only finished paying the medical bill for it last month.

I do, however, pirate bandwidth.
When I moved into my apartment, I planned on not having the internet, in order to save money, but when I connected my wireless adapter, I discovered an unencrypted network with a good signal. I was connected to the internet, and for the first time in 8 years, I wasn't paying for it.
Too good to be true?
Sometimes. I had no connection for the last eight days, and just when I was getting excited about blogging every day again. Oh well.

I don't feel at all bad about using this bandwidth. People rarely use their connection to it's full capacity, it's more efficient to share. I'm not greedy in my use of it. When I download or upload, I limit my speeds. I don't want to choke their connection. If I could figure out where the signal was coming from, I would be willing to pay part or half the bill, in exchange for, perhaps, moving their router closer to the window.

For now though, I just mercifully thank the unseen soul that has left their network unencrypted. Thank you thank you thank you for the months of internet connection.

Rabbit

A few days ago, I was walking home at night. In a small patch of greenery to my right I saw a rabbit. It did not move, and it's eyes were wide open.
As I passed, I wondered if I could be quick enough to catch it; I was already very close.
I read a book once (or saw a movie?) which explained how to kill a captured rabbit.
I pictured myself holding the rabbit's head in my hand, and swinging the body around my head like a sling with a stone in it, breaking the rabbits neck. I didn't have any plastic bags with me so I thought that I would just hold it under my jacket; it was dark, and I was only a short distance at home.
Then I thought about what I would do with it. I pictured myself in front of the sink, and thought about which of my knives I would use. I would need to slit the arteries in it's neck, so I would probably use my smaller, serrated steak knife. Then I would tie it's feet and hang it over the sink to let the blood drain out. That done, I would need to gut it next. I thought about a vertical slit on it's belly from it's neck to it's groin, but I would need to not cut into the digestive tract, to keep from contaminating the meat. I would probably have needed to look up the anatomy of a rabbit online.

I remember working at a grocery store in Utah. I'd been feeling a little pointless, and started thinking that I might want to join a big brother program.
The next day, a boy came into the store and started talking to me. And kept talking to me. He stayed for 3 hours that day, just talking to me. I was mystified by how quickly I'd found a little brother.
One day he went fishing and brought me a small cooler packed with ice. Inside, were three tiny bass, and a catfish.
I took them home and put them in the sink. I'd never gutted a fish. He'd told me briefly what to do, and I started by scraping off the scales with a knife. Then I gutted each of the fish, their slimy and tubular entrails slapping down into my metallic sink. It was... strange, and when I finished I had 8 little fillets of fish.

I didn't try to catch the rabbit. I walked past it and went home. The brutality required to catch and kill my own food is not required of me where I live, but the knowledge of what does happen to allow me to eat some of my meals, lingers at the periphery of my thoughts.
I can say, though, that the fillets I separated from the bodies of those fish were extra delicious.

Hail

A large low limb had been cut from a tree at the edge of a park in Salt Lake City, Utah. The pattern of rings in the cut caught the eye of someone. That person told someone else, and soon, a small shrine had sprung up at the base of the tree. A set of wooden stairs with a platform was built to allow easier viewing of the pattern.
Walking up that short staircase, you would pass dozens of prayer candles and bouquets of flowers, all renewed weekly, if not daily. At the top of stairs, you would have a clear and close-up view of the pattern. I don't know what you would see there.
What I saw, was a shape formed by the rings in the wood that could be interpreted as feminine. It could have been a feminine figure with a shaded hint of a cowl over her head. It could have been the Virgin Mary, as all of the candle lighters and bouquet refreshers said it was.

I have heard that the most important word in your language is your own name. When I am in a public place and amidst other people, I often hear my name, and things pertaining to my life, spoken of by people that turn out to be strangers. I hear what I want to hear sometimes.

In an underpass on the north side of Chicago, a stain formed from dripping water, on what looks to be a patched portion of the concrete wall. The stain contained a pattern that somebody recognized, and word of it spread. Now there are prayer candles and fresh bouquets of flowers. A ceramic statue of Jesus rests beneath the stain; the head is broken off, but a drawing of Jesus rests in the hole.
Again, the pattern is reminiscently feminine; the shape of a cowl could be suggested, and one eye seems to have white flecks around the iris.
It could be the Virgin Mary.
It could be a stain on a wall.
I don't really know what it is, but I do know that I'll never be able to see it the same way anyone else does.

Gambling

My gambling strategy for video black jack.
Insert $20 into the machine.
Bet 5¢ on the first hand.
Lose.
Bet 10¢ on the next hand.
Lose.
Bet 20¢.
Lose.
Bet 40¢.
Lose.
Bet 80¢.
Lose.
Bet $1.75. (There was no way to bet $1.60 on that machine.)
Lose.
Bet $3.50.
Lose.
Bet $7.00.
Lose.
Feed another $20 bill into the machine and bet $14.00.
Lose.
Feed another $20 bill into the machine and bet $28.00.
Lose.

Take a deep breath. If you smoke, light a cigarette and take a couple drags.

Feed $60 into the machine in whatever denominations you have and bet $56.00.
Lose.
Laugh and cry loudly and take your Gin & Tonic from the cocktail waitress.
Take your remaining $8.20 and play very conservatively until you have had at least $111.80 worth of free drinks from the waitresses.
Then walk carefully to your room, and go to sleep.

Hare Krishna

Walking on the street, I heard singing from up ahead. I looked and saw a procession of people in robes and heard a familiar sound:

"Hare Krishna hare rama hare krishna hare rama..." Hare Krishna.
The man leading wore a purple robe and carried a drum slung over his shoulder. He was bald and smiling and singing while beating his drum. About 10 people followed behind, walking at a merry(?) pace. Most of them wore the robes common to Hare Krishnas all over the world, including a woman walking slightly behind the drummer, carrying a small amplifier and microphone and singing into it. They all appeared quite friendly and happy. At the end of the procession, a woman dressed in a business suit that looked more appropriate for walking in the Loop than trotting after a group of Hare Krishnas handed me a photocopied pamphlet and a baggy of popcorn. I thanked her and continued on my way.

A while ago, I attended a bible group meeting in their assembly building. It was a small group and they were all very friendly. They mostly seemed happy to be there and wanted others there to share in that happiness. There were grapes and there was pizza and one girl had baked cookies and brought them; all this food was shared among anyone who wished to partake. The cookies were very good.

When I was in elementary school, I stayed the night with a friend and his mother and sister at their apartment in my neighborhood. They were very poor, as poor as my mother and I were. When I awoke in the morning, my friend told me that we were all going to the local Mormon ward for breakfast because they offered donuts to anyone who came. I walked with them, but instead of going to the ward, I walked home.

-

The pamphlet I received from the Hare Krishnas lays on the table next to my door. I ate the popcorn a few days later. It satisfied my hunger while I prepared a larger meal.

reaper collecting, widow weeping, banker counting

Shots were heard.
A window smashed.
I'll never sleep as well as I used to.
The night she died, I'd drunk four cups of coffee and a six pack of beer.
I peed the bed and woke myself.
I laid there for a long time, contemplating my predicament as she lay asleep beside me. Then I noticed the broken glass on the floor, and the blood on the windowpane.
And the blood on the floor. The blood on the blanket.
Only after that, did I notice that she was not sleeping.
She lay on her back, above the blankets, and she was cold when I put my hand on her naked belly; her mouth open and slack, a small worm wriggled in one eye socket.
The blood on the floor was very old.
I noticed the smell, and sat up fast, waking as I did so.
Waking up in my bed,
and my apartment,
and alone.
The worm wriggled in the back of my mind as I got up to pee.

Water

"Want to go jump in the river? " Ethan asked.
"Yes," Jason replied, though a little shiver of hesitancy trembled through him.
"Is it shallow enough for me to touch bottom? Because you know I can't swim. Well, I can sort of swim, but only for a few feet, and only underwater."
"Oh yeah, you'll be fine. You jump in and you can touch bottom right afterward."

Ethan drove them for awhile through the small town, and, coming to a park, parked the car. They got out and walked along train tracks alongside the river until they came to the spot. There was a short embankment to climb down, and then a short wade through the river to get to a big rock. From this big rock, Jason understood that he was to jump into the river and then swim a very short distance back towards the shore and the shallows.
Wearing swimming trunks, they both waded out to the rock and climbed up on top. Ethan explained to Jason where he should jump into the water. The river ran downstream at a medium speed, but as it hit the large rock, swirling vortexes of water formed, creating a barrier between the shallow area that the rock protected and the rest of the river. Ethan explained that he should jump just to the left of the swirling water, but into a spot that was still deep. From there, it was a short swim into the shallows.
Jason felt that he could do it, and stood for awhile on the edge of the rock, staring down into the swirls and currents. The wind was cold, and the water was colder, but the sun shone hotly down on them.
"You can go first, and then I can jump after you if I need to,” Ethan told him.
"Are you a fast swimmer?” Ethan asked, imagining himself floating down the river and full of water.
"Yeah,” Ethan said.
"Good. If you see me go under, then come in after me."
Jason stood there and took several deep breaths, stood a moment longer, looking from the water to the shore, and jumped.
He hit the water and went under with a splash. As soon as he was in it, he stretched out his body towards where he thought the shore was. He put his hands in front of him and tried a breaststroke, but he flopped around a lot; his body was not moving well in the rhythm of the river. He felt the breath he took up on the rock straining in his lungs. He let his feet down, hoping for solid ground, but felt only water. His mouth opened a little bit, and he felt some water enter; he swallowed, rather than breath it in. He had a sore throat that day, and the cool water was a slight relief.
He suddenly found his head above water, but hadn't fully exhaled his first breath completely. He took in what air he could, and saw that the shore was no closer.
Then he went under again. A little more water entered his mouth, and he swallowed it again. He tried swimming forward more, straining his arms against the water. His head came up again and he yelled, "help!"
He went under again, and strained more, but it was no good.
When he came up again, Ethan was there. Jason got his arm over his shoulders and said, "Help me."
Ethan started paddling for the shallows, his face scrunched up, supporting both their weights.
They made it to the shallows and separated.
"Did you swallow any water,” Ethan asked him.
"Yeah,” Jason said, breathing fast and hard. "But I didn't breathe any in. Only a little bit. "
He coughed and looked back at the water squinting.
He didn't feel cold.
He didn't feel warm.
He just felt not dead.

Wendover, Nevada

I went into the starbucks and ordered a grande caramel machiatto. The girl took my order and turned to the new guy at the coffee machines and started giving him instructions. It took a little while for my drink to be made. As I had placed the order, I had taken out my wallet and my credit card and was still standing with them out in my hand while they made the drink. I had spent the previous evening and night and morning drinking and gambling, and my stomach was a little rotten, my mind slow.
They finished the drink and announced it at the little serving spot at the end of the counter. I walked over and took the drink and said, "thank you." The girl told me to have a nice day. My wallet was still in my hand, but now I'd retracted it a little bit under the coat that I had hanging off of one shoulder.
They both turned away from me to do something else. It was not busy. I walked out to my friends and we left, as I put my wallet away.

Working at Whole foods as a cashier

I began talking to a customer on Sunday as I rang up his order. He looked to be about 36 years old, and seemed happy, though a little tense.He came around the side and started bagging for himself.
"I worked hard for a long time to be able to afford this for myself," he said to me.
The customers that come into my store are commonly upper class and primarily wealthy. I see a lot of young people that have obviously not had to worry about money in their lives so far.
"What do you do?" I asked him, expecting to hear that he was a lawyer or a financial adviser. I often hear people talking on their little ear phones to invisible partners about buying and selling homes and stock while I work. This has become quite standard to me, right along with the women with their Prada and Louis Vuitton and Chanel bags and wallets and belts and glasses.
"I'm a waiter, " he said to me.
I honestly thought he was joking.
I looked up at him, prepared to accept and join in on whatever humor he wanted to share with me.
He was serious.
It was close. I was one slight muscle movement away from joining in on his joke, and making an ass of myself. My robotic self was humbled.
I said nothing for a moment, but continued to ring his order as he bagged.
"Where do you work?" I asked.
He mentioned a restaurant that I've never noticed, but is on my way home in a very affluent stretch of restaurants and boutiques. I told him I probably knew of it, and we didn't say much else. He paid and left, and I continued to work.

Sakura no hana.

The first time I can remember noticing a cherry blossom was a year ago this April, in 2005. Near my 25th birthday. I saw a tree a few blocks from my house covered in the most awesome blossoms (apologies for the fatuous alliteration (I just wanted an excuse to use "fatuous")) that I'd ever noticed in quantity. Orchids impress me more, but they do not give the sheer visual onslaught that a large cherry tree does.
The flowers are fat and beautiful like a voluptuous belly dancer. They are in your face and showering all around.
I had to ask my girlfriend at the time (a floral worker) if they were what I suspected they were, and had my first mental recognition of cherry blossoms confirmed.
So strange that I could live 25 years without noticing such an awesome event.
It's not because I'd never seen them before. I clearly remember picking cherries from a tree in my friend's backyard when I was 10 years old, and seeing all the rotting cherries laying in the grass. It's the blossoms that did not enter my memory.
Strange to wonder to about all the things that I cannot remember, that I've no idea I've forgotten, or never noticed; all of the dark spots that surround my memory like the night sky surrounds the earth.
So many things to forget each day!
I just microwaved a tiny pizza.
I could forget that too,

but I won't. In fact, I'm going to surround it with the emptiness of my stomach.
Forget that!

Flowers blooming like cackling hyenas

From the side walk I heard a sound from the street; that of a small dog barking viciously. Curious, I turned my head to the right and looked around. I saw a man on the sidewalk with his bike, stuffing something into his yellow backpack. The sound ceased. I saw cars stopped in a line, waiting for traffic to start moving again.
The barking started once more as the cars began to crawl forward, and it was coming from a white SUV with it's windows open. I looked inside for the dog, but all I saw was a woman in the passenger seat, her mouth open very wide, her head shaking in violent little jerks with each bark of the dog. She was the dog. I watched her for a moment, just long enough for it to register in her or her friends thoughts that someone was staring. I'm sure I'm not the first. Maybe it kept her laughing.

walking home

The weather was nice and warm on my walk home from work tonight. Many people were out, and I chose to take a more populated route along a busy street; perhaps because I was planning to spend my evening alone in my room, writing. The juxtaposition appealed to me.
I found myself walking behind a couple holding hands. I settled into the rhythm of their footsteps, about 20 feet behind them, rather than keeping my pace and passing them. They held the sidewalk between them, walking widely and then closely, varying their distance. The man had the collar of his polo shirt turned up, a current sign of a cavalier attitude among those that own many polo shirts. They were both young, twenty at the oldest, and they seemed carefree and worriless to me. They appeared perfectly comfortable in the affluent neighborhood, as though it matched them perfectly.
As we walked, I noticed that I passed a home on my right that seemed to house the elderly. A large complex, I often saw old folks watering a garden or lounging on portable chair-frames with wheels on the far side of it, when walking through the adjacent park.
It was dark out, but the long walk leading up to the front entrance of the building was lit from below by lights lining the walkway. At the far end from me, I noticed a figure in shadow, sitting. I saw wheels underneath the sitting figure, but it did not seem to be a wheelchair; likely one of the chair-frames that double as walkers that I've seen before. The figure sat there alone, far from the street, but with a clear view of it. I noticed no movement.
I passed, and the figure passed, and I hastened my gait and passed the couple in front of me, surprising them briefly as I walked around from the street side.
It was strange to me to think that I felt more in common with the lone figure sitting on that walk than I felt with the two young lovers I saw on the street.

Getting Older

"Sunrise Assisted Living of Lincoln Park
with a community for the memory impaired"

These are the words on a sign that I frequently walk beneath when leaving my apartment. I look into the building attached to the sign as I walk past, and see soft yellow lighting and lots of browns and yellows and pastels. Flowers sit in vases, always fresh (or fake) and big thick drapes are held back in the day time to let light into the communal areas that I can see into on the ground floor.
If I walk past at dinnertime, I see many of the elderly gathered around tables in the dining area, silver ware and silver drink containers and silver wheelchairs and the people all moving so slowly, their faces like old weathered stone, mostly immobile. It's a rich neighborhood, and this must be an expensive home to live in. A place where the upper middle class come to die, when they can't remember what to do anymore.
When I walk past at night, there is often an ambulance parked outside. People that I see attending the ambulance and it's activities rarely look very worried. They do not move very quickly. They are not in a place of urgency, but a place to forget things.
A place to finally forget to live, after such a long time of remembering.

Sam

Sam was tired. Sam was bored.
He got home from work and set his suitcase on the floor. It was an old case, and he knew that the other sales reps looked down upon him for having such a beat up old case. He'd patched a hole in it with black electrical tape. He sat down in front of his computer and stared at it for a little while. A picture of a sunset, somewhere tropical, was frozen on the screen. He lit a cigarette.
He'd spent most of that day learning to compile spreadsheets with Excel to conform to the companies database records, typing numbers and staring at grids for hours; it was numbing, and his fingers felt like dull pencils.
"Fuck," he mumbled. He looked down at his suitcase, next to the computer, fallen over onto it's side where he'd set it. The tape over the hole was peeling up at the edges, little gummy bits of stickiness holding onto bits of dirt. It looked grimy.
He turned off the computer monitor and got up, leaving his small apartment to walk to the corner store. Bought a bottle of vodka from the mustachioed man behind the counter.
Went back to his apartment and poured a shot. Drank it and felt it burn down to his stomach. Spreadsheets, sales figures, client names, profit margins.
He poured another shot right after the first and drank that one too.
Neckties, starched shirts, ironed pants, patched up holes.
He drank two more shots and laid down on his old couch. He closed his eyes and watched the redness behind his eyelids fade and dull to a darker color as the sun slowly set beyond his window, beyond his darkened computer screen. The alcohol settled into his stomach and along his spine and into his brain, cuddling up with an unsettled crunch of tension coming closer to view. Things left undone.
He opened his eyes, turned his head and looked out the window. Darkness outside. Street lights on, shining and bouncing light in. He sat up, got up, took off his tie and dropped it on the floor.
He left his apartment again. He walked back to the corner and turned and followed that street up to the next one, a wider one.
Cars raced past, making the green light. He walked down that street, stopping on the sidewalk, halfway between the stoplights at either end of the block.
He watched the headlights coming from both directions for a time, the closer ones zooming by from left to right, and the cars flying past on the far side from right to left, the vodka warming his limbs, his fingers; thinking of dull pencils.
He picked a lone pair of lights coming fast from the far right, bracing himself and tensing his legs. He waited for it to get to the green light and come through the intersection. Breathing deep and fast, he waited for it to come towards where he stood, nearer, nearer, and when he wasn't quite sure about it anymore, he lunged forward, running across the street.
The car came at him as a bright leviathan of swiftness. He ran as hard and as fast as he could strain himself to do, directly into it's path. The car's brakes screeched as it tried to stop and the lights swerved erratically. He felt the heat of it as it came on him and jumped forward; felt it's mass moving under and behind him, just missing.
He landed on the sidewalk and kept running, his blood flushing his face, and his lungs bellowing. The screech of brakes ended in a metal crunching crash and thump. He ran into an alley and kept going to the next block over. He slowed down, and noticed a bar. Went inside, sat at the bar and ordered a shot of vodka. The bartender looked at him strangely, but didn't say anything. Sam's hands were shaking and he was red and sweating. He paid for the shot with cash, drank it, and left the bar. Outside he hailed a cab. Sirens wailed in the distance, coming closer, as he got into the car.
Sam told the cabbie to take him downtown. He'd find a bar down there, further away. He thought that he'd probably call into work the next day.

parking lot

My connection to the internet has been experiencing datum interruptus, which leaves me with a larger hole than I'd really like in my chronicling. So it goes.

-------------------------------------------
A large busy parking lot.
A sunny day in winter, chilly but just a little warmer any place the sun hit, easing zippers and buttons on coats just a bit.
Five security guards monitor the parking lot all day. They drink coffee, chat with people and each other, and watch to make sure noone parks their car and leaves the lot to go somewhere else. It's a free lot, but high volume, so it has to be monitored to protect against abuse. Most of the guards will try to warn someone if they are seen leaving the lot, but sometimes there's no option other than to tow the car away; that is the threat and the occasional reality.

A small of group of people dressed affluently walked out of the lot. A wife and husband, a kid, and a friend, prepared for an afternoon of shopping at the neighboring stores. Their car was parked in the lot that the security guards monitor.
One of the guards stood in the shade of the building at the edge of the lot, watching all the cars. A young woman was jogging away from where he stood, moving towards the family that was then on the sidewalk.
"Hey, " she yelled to the them. "I gave him $10 bucks, so we should be fine!"
The parking guy moved a little further back against the building as the family walked to the corner.

My teeth

During most of my adolescence and early 20's, I hated my teeth. I liked the bottom row, but my top two front teeth, and most notably, the space between, bothered me.
It's taken a long time, but I am comfortable with my teeth now. I like them. They are distinctive and large. When I smile, people notice. My teeth draw attention.

There are some practical aspects to the gap though, that I've had to learn to deal with.

It causes me to have a slight problem with "th" sounds and an occasional whistle with "s"'s. Flecks of spit are more likely to escape through the gap when I speak. Most of the time I can control it well, but I have to be careful when I've been drinking or when I get excited.

One aspect of my toothy separation that I didn't notice till more recently, is the effect it has upon my bite. When I pick up a sandwich and bite into it, a small portion of the sandwich does not get severed, and the sandwich retains a small bridge to the bite that is in my mouth. To fully separate a bite from a sandwich, I need to take several quick bites from side to side, or I need to take one bite and tear away to the left or right with my head.
Bacon is the worst. I seem to never be able to bite all the way through a piece of it. Pepperonis on pizza are almost always eaten whole by me. Strands of fresh onion are also a problem, as they tend to fit nicely into the gap. I'll pull away from the sandwich with my mouthful, and find an onion ring dangling from my lips.

Today, whilst eating a delicious sandwich I made for myself, I discovered a new tactic for sandwich eating which may be a valuable tool in my arsenal of survival techniques.
I pick up the sandwich and squish it pretty flat. Not forcefully, but just enough to compact it a bit.
Then, to bite, I open my jaws, insert the sandwich and bite down, fast! Then pull away just as quickly.
I surprise the sandwich.
It worked!

American money gets uglier

I am jealous of the currency in other countries; not because of the value of it, but because of the color in it.

I started seeing the new $10 bill at my work a week or two ago. The first one I saw, a neurotic woman was about to use to pay for her purchase.
"Is this real?" she asked me.
"That's odd," I said, looking at the bill.
I marked it with the counterfeit-detector pen, and it looked good, then I held it up to the light, and it had a watermark in it.
"It seems real, but I've never seen it before, " I told her. "Maybe it's fake."
"Well then I want to pay with it," she said, appearing anxious about the possibility that her money might be counterfeit.
"I'll take it," I told her. "It's probably a limited edition. Look, it says 2004 on it. It's two years old, but it looks new."
She quickly changed her mind and took the bill back from me. "Good," I thought, "it was probably a fake."

The next day, I saw a few more, and now they're everywhere. I don't like the redesign. I do not appreciate it's aesthetic feel.
The bill looks like a dehydrated person pissed all over it, and then left it in the sun for a week. Then a conservatively prudish and retarded art school graduate was given a red highlighter that was almost out of ink, and told to: "go wild!"; which the graduate did with it's typical lack of gusto.

A Google Image Search for "currency" yields a whole page of links to money that is prettier and more colorful than ours. I'm not including coins in my jealousy; our coins are satisfactory to me. It is our bills that I would like to see really improved.
I believe that Australia has the best example of why our money seems deficient to me.
Their money has depictions of famous Australian artists and prominent members of the culture. Here, you have to be the president to get on a bill. The bills are vibrantly multicolored and shiny and made of plastic. If I were to make space money from the future, I would make it look a little like this.
Our bills are drab and mostly of the same color palette; the few attempts to add color that have been made so far appear to be the work of a printer dying of leukemia; it's soul leaking out with the marrow of it's fading ink.
We are security obsessed, and are ignoring the face we show to the world. The lack of aesthetic appeal of our money is just one more example of the sad state that America is grasping at in it's current decline.