The Man on the Crane

There’s a man climbing around the top of an 18-story crane in Atlanta right now, threatening to take his life simply by surrendering to the gravity that has been tugging at him for over 25 hours. Apparently he killed his girlfriend earlier this week. It’s a sad situation from whatever angle you look at it. His angle happens to be 150 feet in the skies of Atlanta, ready to spend a second cold and restless night clinging to chilled steel after baking in the hot sun all day, more thirsty than hungry by now, probably a fair bit delirious from the weeks events and subsequent pain of exposure. The police negotiators were kind enough to give him a jacket this afternoon.

For some reason I am empathetic of his situation. I’ve never been a hostile person, but I’ve seen enough bad tempers in otherwise good people to realize that some animal is left in us humans. He obviously lost his temper and saw no other way to release the emotion than to take his girlfriend’s life. Regret is probably all he’s felt since it happened, enough so that he began climbing a construction crane at around 4 PM yesterday to escape the realities that chased him on the ground. It’s inevitable that he’ll return to the ground once again before long, whether it be at a velocity of 33 compounding feet per second, or with pepper-spray in his already dry eyes and an impatient arm tightly around his neck.

I wonder if he’s been looking back at the fluctuating number of faces staring at him from below, presumably roped off from what’s been calculated as his drop zone, with enough of a buffer to keep the potential splatter from staining the clothes and minds of curious onlookers. I wonder if some of those onlookers have unspoken hopes that he does jump so they can have the thrill of witnessing a short-lived historical event. I wonder what the ratio of sympathy versus hate there is in the situation. I wonder if he’ll go through with his presumed plan and retain some personal dignity or if the Atlanta Police have their way and bring another man to justice in a cement cage far away from the public eye for his last few decades.

Visionaries?

CNN recently opened their door to the ramblings of all us "visionaries" out there dressing up our dogs in the rural suburbs of Southern Maine. Their Visionaries" page is a fairly interesting collage of theory on the future. I found that just about every article I read was a rather conventional idea, made tantalizing with a fancy logo and theorized dates of when such change might take place. I decided to throw them one of a number of off-the-wall ideas I use to explore when I owned a 2 foot bong:

The Biological Supercomputers:

Genetic design will inevitably lead to the production (legal or illegal) of massively capable human minds as early as the next decade. Early products will be grown in countries with little regulation on genetic engineering. The obvious alterations to the typical human model: enlarged cranium, stunted extremities of little relevance to thought, and powerful cardiovascular systems built to fund enormous brains with potent cocktails of oxygen-enriched blood, will be at the foundation of the first batch of prototypes.



Frightening in appearance, these early products will soon become icons of new society, and entice pilgrimages to their presence. Like space heaters in a cold room, the souls of these quasi-human creations will radiate tremendous amounts of psychic warmth we have yet to identify in our natural human specimens. Imagine the humbling encounters with a mind hundreds of times more powerful than our current intellectual icons.



Once the cerebral design of these biological supercomputers is finely tuned and appropriately educated, they will become absolute necessities of governments just as the plastic and silicon computers of the late 20th century did, solving issues surrounding energy, economics, and human health, while acting as ambassadors to other nations with their encapsulating knowledge of their homelands. The beings will be designed with varying intents; the logical model with disproportionate emphasis on mathematical regions of the brain might solve energy problems, whereas the entertainment model, with enormous cranial room for personality and visual/audio logic, might produce art of all mediums far outside the scope of its limited predecessors.



Just as China will continue relaxing its firm govern of modern communication, conservative societies of the not so distant future will need to relax their moral philosophies to make room for the great things to come from the new human potential.



Thanks for your time and for providing an outlet to us wacko visionaries.



Sincerely,

Jonathan Braden

Freeport, Maine


It's been nearly 5 minutes since I sent them the email and still no response! Bastards! How the hell do they expect the future to arrive when they drag ass in responding to us super-geniuses!

The day I've been waiting for (Part II - the morning after)

Again I drove past Bill’s Pizza at about 11:32 this morning, past the turn I’d take to get to Subway, and once again to the Hannaford Plaza for a second date with my new Spanish love; Quizno’s. Today there stood just a couple of haphazardly produced and positioned signs on the side of Route 1. The wide-grinning soda cup with the fist full of balloons was nowhere to be seen. The message has been sent. Quizno’s is now a permanent fixture in the lunchtime minds of all those who find themselves working and eating in the town of Yarmouth.

The lines were a little less hostile today as I approached my melancholy sandwich artist. That grace and enthusiasm he projected just 24 hours ago, had been severely diminished after that critical grand opening. Like a Paratrooper who had spent his first night in Normandy in a wet ditch, he was today a hardened veteran in the ills of war, or in this case – lunch. I too was in a different frame of mind on this my second trip into the belly of Quizno’s. My eyes were more focused and observant of what was simply a blur of bewilderment just yesterday. I saw past the Turkey/Bacon/Guacamole which had so blinded my attention, opting rather for a Beef Onion Dip sub. I was able to secure two menus to bring back to my fellow cubicle dwellers, and my attention was able to vacation in the less important details.

Although I haven’t studied it to any fine degree, I was able to make some superficial observations on Sandwich Artist #1’s left forearm. In a noble black ink, the tattoo appears to depict a terrible scene of death and mayhem. I think I may have noticed hooks pulled tightly from a tree through the fleshy figure of some demented and whimsical imagination. His ears are also decorated with sharp plastic thorn-like hooks. A little inappropriate for a gentleman serving various slabs of meat to Quizno’s patrons, but in tune with his apparent ‘look’; a 19 or 20 year old sandwich artist with an edgy intellect, driven to extreme bodily decoration in an effort to combat the conformity pushed on him by this ill society of Yarmouth. MTV will save his soul. I can’t say much myself as I happen to wear a permanent fixture or two of my youthful abandon.

On the other side of the toaster, there seemed to be a recurring fumble of tongs on the hot racks that ferry the sandwich from its infancy to later stages of refinement. She must be around 55 or so, and less cognitively malleable than her youthful counterparts. He eyes fill with fear of failure as each rack exits the oven. The heavyset manager looming in the background with helpful hints doesn’t seem to be helping. Perhaps she’ll find herself on a different link of the chain, as the tongs really aren’t working too well for her. Only time will tell.

The day I've been waiting for.

Today was a big day, one that I have been awaiting for many weeks. It was approximately 2 months ago that a rather exciting sign caught my eye on my way back from another bland lunch at a regular pit stop; simple black font on a freshly-white background read QUIZNOS. For the past couple of years, through some absurdly misallocation of marketing dollars, Quizno's has been running their nearly-pornographic commercials in Southern Maine; the only known corner of the world which still has yet to see a Sonic Drive-in. The sexy commercials show gorgeous toasted bread, spread exotically with dripping cheese, luscious meats, tender and juicy tomatoes, and succulent strips of peppered bacon, emerging from a bright toasting apparatus. The sight is enough to make any taste bud junky like myself, think awful thoughts, regardless of what time of the day it appears.

Thoughts of that sexy sandwich I had so fantasized about these many weeks kept my day at a very low level of productivity. The trip to Quizno’s didn’t come without a little remorse and relaxing of my morals. As I drove the short distance to the Hannaford Plaza, I passed Bill’s Pizza (See “Edible Hand Grenades…”). The messy parking lot wasn’t nearly as messy as it typically would be at such an hour. Were those sons a bitch Bill’s patrons on their way to Quizno’s too? Although I couldn’t see through the sun-glared windows, I could imagine the glum faces of my sandwich artist friends, not just at Bill’s but at Subway, even that bastard diner on the hill. Visions of imminent layoffs and “CLOSED” signs filled my mind.

I felt poorly for deserting those establishments that had never once deserted me, but there was no turning back, Quizno’s long arm of marketing dollars was reeling me in. I could practically feel the razor sharp hook piercing my cheek, as I was scoped from the local economy into the fast-track of franchised big-business. I was in the netted into the boat the moment I saw that big fucker of a soda cup, waving eagerly from the side of Route 1 at lunch hour traffic, hands fisted around an absurd lot of Quizno’s balloons. I pulled with dangerous speed into the closest parking spot, eyeing a heavy mom on a similar quest. She was a mere 30 feet ahead of me, but had the handicap of a dirty dinosaur shirted little boy in tow. My lust for that Turkey/Bacon/Guacamole sub knew no morals, and I went into my tall guy stride, easily passing her as we rallied for position in line. I made up for the terrible act by holding the door open for her behind me. We caught a quick glimpse of each other’s eyes. I had obviously prolonged her gratification by at least a hundred seconds or so, but there was no point fighting now, as we were both in the very den of our desires.

At approximately 11:35 AM EST, I set foot into that heavenly eatery for what will certainly not be the last time. Everything was glorious. Freshly stacked trays, tall tables, majestically towering sneeze guards, soda cup lids, napkins holders, glistening from non-use adorned the entire space. Within a few moments I was voicing to a tattooed young sandwich artist, all those wild fantasies that had danced in my mind for weeks. A new manager hovered around behind the scenes, making certain that the entire experience went off without a hitch. The coordination was outstanding for a virgin establishment! My sandwich made the quick voyage through the brand new toaster, and onto a brand new tray. I handed my plastic to the pierced teller and gushed excited praise as the sandwich was handed to me in return. Welcome to Maine my Latino Friend! This is the beginning of a long relationship I’m sure!