Protected: Missed Connections
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All entries written in February, 2008
Protected: A Moment Frozen in Time
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Putting Off My Laundry
“I feel like I can come in here anytime,” said my building’s superintendent today, praising the cleanliness of my apartment for the second time since I’ve been living here. I eyed the small pile of tissues on the floor as he said this, in plain sight and mere feet away from where he was standing. I wondered what the apartments of my neighbors must be like.
I keep having spats of fatigue today, but one of the nice things about weekends is that when you need to, you’re free to lie down. I think it must be the weather–pressure changes have been known to get me down. Also, I woke up at like 8:15 this morning (naturally) and couldn’t get back to sleep. I blame having adult hours (versus my 2:00-10:00 AM sleep schedule in college) for making 8:15 a time my body considers “sleeping in.” Work, by the way, is good–fantastic, in fact. This was a busy (read: tiring) but still great week. And I like to be busy at work. At my last job, I spent hours and hours twiddling my thumbs, waiting not-so-patiently for 5:30 to arrive. These days, I actually feel like my efforts matter. It’s been good for me both professionally and creatively (being bored all day used to de-energize me for the rest of the night, even once my time was my own again).
In any case: Saturday is usually my chores day and Sunday is usually my “rest day.” But since I’m feeling a bit more tired than usual, I see no reason I can’t reverse them for once. Besides, I’m fucking starving. I never realize how little food I have in the house as far as snacks go…I think I’ll have dinner early tonight. As soon as I finish washing my dishes, that is. I doubt my super would have said what he did if he’d chanced a look at my kitchen sink. Which is why I kept crossing my fingers that he wouldn’t.
Rain of Fire
There’s this phenomenon I’ve noticed on the 7 train–it only seems to happen in neighborhoods like mine, where the elevated tracks are made of girders instead of viaducts (I think the latter might be unique to Sunnyside), and only when it rains. But especially when it snows, which is why I’m writing about this today.
The third rail sparks when a train goes by, but that’s nothing new. It’s just where the power comes from. But when the third rail gets wet, then it gets exciting. There are these big, sizzling cracks like a sound effect out of some Megaman game, and showers of hot, red sparks fly outward towards the centrally-located express tracks. To the people down below, it sometimes looks like fire is raining from the sky, or at the very least, it looks like someone is being careless with a welding torch.
I exchanged a glance with a fellow commuter as I stepped onto my home platform this morning on the way in to work–the snow was still coming down hard then, and being that it presents the water to the third rail in a slightly more solid form, we saw some truly spectacular explosions. They had the sound and character of small fireworks. The other guy nodded and gave me a half-smile, eyelids partially lowered, as he whipped out his cell phone and started taking what I can only assume was a video recording of the phenomenon in progress. Too bad he missed most of the best parts of it, from what I could see.
Vacation
Sorry to spring this on you with no prior warning, but a horrible, horrible illness in conjunction with the need to get this site fixed in both IE and Firefox once and for all has prompted me to take two weeks off from updating. I want to start posting A River of Darkness as soon as I can, but I’m not willing to take School Kids SG any farther until this CSS issue is resolved. For God’s sake, I’m embarrassed to advertise for thinking that people might come here using IE!
I know we’re already in an Intermission, but that still kept things on the normal Monday-Friday update schedule, and I really need more of a break than that to recover my health and get the site problems under control. After just about a full year of keeping to some standard schedule without missing a post, I think I’m entitled. Let’s call this an anniversary present to myself.
Check back on Monday, March 3rd; I guarantee, you’ll be much happier with the site then.
(Please note: as usual, I reserve the right to post random updates about whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it. The intention of this announcement is to strip away all guarantees for the next two weeks; you’d better believe that I if I have a random story that needs telling, I’m not going to hold myself back).
IE Compatability Update
God, I can’t stand how Internet Explorer misinterprets CSS. It forces me to spend hours of my valuable time trying to make a website that looks perfect in most other browsers look decent in a browser I don’t use.
Anyway, as of right now, I’ve improved the IE solution for School Kids SG somewhat. It’s not perfect yet, but things should be navigable in most resolutions now (as long as you keep your IE window maximized, otherwise you wind up with two scroll bars, but everything is still easily accessible this way…it just looks weird). The header image will always be centered and the content always seems to want to stay on the left, which looks more and more disjointed as you go up in resolution, but hey, at least it’s neat and it follows a pattern. That’s what I’ll work on next, but for now, no more “widescreen view” scrolling to read the chapters in IE!
Hurray?
Early Bad Company Art
My posts have been pretty text-heavy lately. Have some older, bad-perspective art related to Bad Company while you look forward to the Midlogue, which goes up this Friday!
Towns of the Prattcorn Valley
Note: this list is meant as a companion to the Map of the Prattcorn Valley and is considered something of a permanent work-in-progress. Remember, nothing is officially canon until you can buy it in print! Also, I’m not going to be doing write-ups for all the towns at once…if there’s a town on the map you’re interested in, though, I may be open to requests.
Woodvale – The Hub of the Prattcorn Valley, the cradle of vigilante justice, and the setting of the entire School Kids SG series. Woodvale will obviously be discussed in the stories more than any of the other towns on the map, and thus it requires no further exploration here.
Columbia Township – This small town used to be a part of Woodvale, before politics and the mysterious disaster that preceded the vigilante and gang wars gave some citizens the urge to split. It has a separate chamber of commerce and, for the most part, a separate government and law, but Columbia Township still shares its school system and several other things with Woodvale.
Centralia – This town is just kind of boring. A lot of fires happen there.
Bakersfield – As the name implies, Bakersfield is home to the valley’s oldest and arguably best family-owned bakery. The entire community was carved out of the woods around that one oven. Bakersfield has an atmosphere that could be called “charming,” which lends itself well to older couples with second homes, but you still see roving groups of youths having a good time on Saturday nights, particularly on the tiny main drag.
Farlong – This place feels nestled in the hills, sitting at the very bottom of the eastern valley walls that rise into the Palisades. Its architecture is neo-nostalgic, i.e. recently rebuilt to look like a much older town from the 20th century, with cobblestone crosswalks and wrought-iron street lamps. A lot of Farlong’s roadways are very confusing.
Rockport – This town forces you to drive sideways—it exists between the steepest slope and the crest of the eastern valley walls, and some parts of it actually continue over the top and onto the last ridge before New York, where the Palisades Parkway skirts down the edge of New Jersey. Rockport is one of the richest towns in the valley, and residents show off their affluence with huge and elaborately-constructed homes.
Lakewood – Lakewood is quiet, aging, and increasingly built-up with suburban-style McMansions. It has one of the greatest remaining shares of unspoiled Prattcorn Forest, which encircles a huge reservoir that serves most of the valley. Aside from the best Chinese restaurant for miles, though, there’s not much to Lakewood except houses and water; it has no downtown sector at all.
Shorepoint – Shorepoint has the most laughably inaccurate name in the entire Prattcorn Valley. With its craggy waterline overlooking the very top of Manhattan, it’s miles and miles farther north than even the most dismal of the true New Jersey shore points. The town makes the most of its waterfront, though, and has a small shipping industry as well as a thriving strip of restaurants that take advantage of views from the higher spots on the bluffs.
Augusta – Very flat and tightly-parceled, with most properties having nothing more than postage-stamp backyards and lawns, if they have such things at all. Augusta has a bit of an urban feeling to it–it hosts a larger collection of multifamily dwellings than almost any other Prattcorn town, and some of its parks are graffiti-tagged ruins. Poisoned fields of grass and a wide, polluted river mark the southern edge of the valley, separating Augusta from the nearby county seat, which keeps the town bathed in a constant, purplish light.
Southfield – The commercial center of the valley, Southfield is on the verge of turning into one gigantic shopping mall with a major highway (route 18) in the middle. Its residents love the money but detest the noise, so they’ve kept blue laws on the books that turns the place into a ghost town on Sundays. The Southfield Park and Crossroads malls are popular hangouts for teens from all over the area, as are some of the fast food joints and chain restaurants along the highway.
Easton – Easton can be thought of as a slightly hillier and more commercial-zone-heavy version of Woodvale. Easton High and Woodvale High have a longstanding football rivalry that nobody remembers which side started. Easton’s town center and tiny railroad station rub right up against southern Woodvale, and from there, the valley’s main sub-highway artery, Knickerbocker Road, cuts through suburban office parks as a four-lane commuter route.
Mapleridge – One of the valley’s great flagship towns, Mapleridge is second only to Woodvale in local renown and second to none in upscale shopping. The town center sits on a slope complete with a large park, and its concrete piazzas are packed with both the young and old at nearly all times of the year. Mapleridge’s architecture is aggressively neo-classical (like Woodvale, it’s the type of place that tears up asphalt sidewalks to return to brickwork ones), and one of its richer neighborhoods features local gem Valley View Avenue, a curving lane from which you can see all the way across the valley to New York City.
The Redhends – These upper-northwestern valley towns skirt the border with New York State and seem designed to breed class divisions. Upper Redhend is home to sprawling housing developments nested in the hills, many of which can be seen along the northern reaches of route 18. The more modest lower Redhend, however, is boxed in by narrow streets and the cliffs at its back, and many of its tiny yards are strewn with junk and natural detritus. Both feel isolated from the world–the hill slope they share is covered with so many trees that the towns can barely be seen by passing aircraft, let alone cars.
Shortcliff – Also bordering New York State, but in the northeast, Shortcliff feels like it has a higher elevation than it does, and is one of the valley’s older towns, full of early-1900s architecture and a town center built around an ancient railroad station. Its cornerstone diner has great drawing power–in fact, kids from Woodvale High can often be seen congregating there on Saturday nights, waiting for a table behind all the locals.
Mountainridge – Small, hilly, and twisty, with roads that wrap around the mountains and suddenly challenge your car to punishing ascents after having been level for miles. Mountainridge’s commercial district collides with one end of Shortcliff’s at the train tracks, and just over the town line is the valley’s most venerable bowling alley. Knickerbocker Road in Mountainridge eventually becomes route 305, gateway to upstate New York and the Cliffside Mall.
