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Saw a full-page poster — signed and sealed by NYC police commissioner William J. Bratton — entitled:

“AUTO THEFT PREVENTION TIP: Don’t Leave the Keys in the Ignition”

It included the following handy list:

“When Leaving your Vehicle Always:

• Close Your Windows
• Turn off the Ignition and REMOVE THE KEYS
• Lock Your Doors!”

I went to the woods to something something

I was walking home from the pharmacy along the underside of the train tracks, battling my crappy umbrella in the semi-storm while also smoking, when a man stopped me. As I took out one earphone, I heard him saying, “please, miss, I have five dollars, I’m only forty cents shorts for a pack of cigarettes.

I stood still and looked at him.

“You know a place that has a pack of cigarettes for $5.40?”

“A half pack,” he said, his hood sliding back a bit.

“Where can you get a half pack?”

“Of loosies. 50 cents each, so.”

I had a thoughtful glance at the middle distance while feeling in my pockets for change with my free hand. “Yeah, that’s not bad. I don’t like menthols, though.” As my pockets came up empty, I halfway un-shouldered my backpack and grabbed at the bottom of the change/tampons/unpleasant-scraps-of-things zone.

“Me either, but I can’t afford the 12 dollars. I wish they’d split up a pack of Marlboro’s,” he said, looking encouraged.

I pulled out a small but healthy-feeling handful of coins, looked down to confirm a couple of quarters among the pennies, and started trying to fish a bit of soft, soiled paper out of the mix with my thumb.

“But you know the bodega over there has packs for $7.50? Camels, everything.”

“Yeah?” We looked at each other — a quiet, purpose-filled fraternity between us — while he quickly thought over my proposition of a longer-term investment. He dipped his hand into his own pocket, opening his fingers to reveal several nickels and dimes, maybe a quarter or two.

“I have… close to six.”

Our eyes turned to my handful.

“I have… this much.” I slid the contents neatly into his other hand, which still had a crumpled five pinned to it by his thumb. I knew my contribution was definitely closer to a dollar than not.

Our eyes moved back to his hands for a moment, then met.

He paused, our stares causing a humble speck of combined ambition, faith, and determination to crystalize in the wet air between us. The reflections of street lamps trembling in pools of rainwater, the aggressively hissing cars, the careening buses stopped, for a quick moment, and waited while he calculated.

He licked his lips.

“I can make that.”

“Yeah?” I said, the supportive, sympathetic hopefulness in my voice almost — but not quite — necessitating an exclamation point.

“Yeah.” He nodded, finding the middle distance with his eyes (a lower m.d. than mine), and stood a bit taller, readied. “I can make that.”

We waited quietly for one last second.

“Cool. Good luck, man.”

He nodded. “Thank you, babe.”

Off we went in our own directions again.

And the seven-year-old said, “you know all the people walking around with good hair?”

And I said, “yeah?”

“Vampires.”

And a few days later, the ten-year-old said, “she’s not a werewolf! That’s scientifically impossible.”

So I explained the concepts of myth and the willing suspension of disbelief. And so he left his sister alone and went back to working on the designs for his zombie apocalypse preparedness kit.

Couldn’t find this song anywhere online. Six straight hours of cursing at and fiddling with my leper-like .mp4a version of the song have produced the following, my first-ever youtube video (I suspect I might just be a big boy now):

Free on-demand movies that I just stumbled over include:

Such Cult favorites as…

“Surf Nazis Must Die!”

“Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song”

And classics as …

“Spy Hard”

“Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”

“Parenthood”

And so on. The cult ones blew me away the most. So maybe I could get used to this “free on-demand” thing…

Just for funsies, I asked the freshmen in my 8am General Studies class what they thought about the Occupy movement. Most of them stirred in their self-satisfied slumber just long enough to convey, via blandly appalled stares and the occasional shaken head, that they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. (a good number of students in my other two sections were equally, which is to say, completely, unprepared to discuss the topic)

After one student offered up his awareness of “something about 99% vs. 1%” (a noble effort), I patiently explained the basic concepts behind the movement, brought the class ‘up to speed’ on recent events, more or less, and looked around the room, encouraging any kind of response.

One girl eyed me suspiciously before blooming ever so slightly with inspiration and then mumbling quietly.

“Sorry, what was that?” I asked. “Go ahead,” I smiled.

She blinked.

“You mean like ‘Goodfellas’?”

I blinked back.

“You mean, the mafia?”

She nodded. Solemnly.

“Well, no,” I responded respectfully, “I mean, it’s actually more about legal possession of wealth than illegal gains, but…”

I glanced around at the enlivened students as they huddled telepathically behind their fearless prophet. I cleared my throat.

“But you bring up a good point.”

Me: “You know who Al Gore is, right?”
Him: “Yeah — the guy who wrote Avatar.”
Me: “… No.”
Him: “Well, he might as well have.”