21 TO 10 and JUST SIGN YOUR NAME!!!
SUPERBOWL SUNDAY!!! And the STEELERS take it 21 to 10!!! Now that’s what I’m talking about!!! I’m from Pittsburgh; well, really close anyway… so I’m happy that the Steelers won. I watched the game and enjoyed it while I was taking care of a number of other things.
Now for the absurd: I have forgotten how to sign my name. Let me be more clear: I know how to sign it, but what I mean is that I’ve lost the style. It doesn’t feel right anymore. It took me no less that 16 times to get it right on this one very important letter I’m sending out tomorrow, and I STILL don’t know if it’s right. What the hell? Strange, normally I don’t have any trouble with things like that. But you want to know how I look at things? Okay, I realize that this is ridiculous and I think too much about things and I should just sign the piece of paper and get on with my life, but I’m looking at all these attempts at signing my name and wondering: Is that one too small and confining… does it mean that I’m rigid and not open to new things? That one, it goes over the “Very truly yours” as well as my name… does that make it look like I’m not willing to follow the rules, that I’m constantly going over schedule, outside the boundaries and can’t color within the lines? Or the one with too many curves that you can’t read… does that look sloppy and unkempt; a flourish with no form or direction? Or the one with all the angular letters leaning to the right… looks cool and fast… like a race-car number. Maybe that’s the one. So I settle on that version and then go about trying to sign it on the final letter which takes me an inordinate number of attempts. REDICULOUS!!! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? Why can’t it just be a signature? Why does it have to represent every little nuance of one’s personality? I’m so insane that I start to think that ones signature is you’re first impression and that by that signature alone, one can judge whether or not they want to meet you or do business with your or whether or not you have a personality that they will get on with, etc.
I sometimes receive letters from strangers through the company PO Box, and if people realized what kind of insanity I view the signature with, I’m sure the frequency of these letters would go from seldom to never. If the letter is hand written, oh man… I don’t even want to go into that. In any event, I have the most recent version of the letters sitting here waiting to go out tomorrow morning, and I’m doing my best to resist printing out 20 more copies and signing each and everyone until the stupid scribble at the bottom of the page is something I feel like I can endorse. And that’s just the signature!!! You should have been with me while I was shopping for the paper to print them on! I ran out of the linen paper I used to use and was looking to get some more, and then I started thinking about the impression paper makes on the reader. Linen is good in my mind because it has a nice texture to it and a watermark; now, to get bright white or cream. Normally I would get cream, but they only had bright white in the 32lb 250 count box. I could have gotten a 500 count in the cream at 24lb, but I like the heavier stuff for letters and resumes, etc. So I bought the white. Now, the company letterhead I use now has its own watermark in the middle of the page. It’s actually not a watermark, but a lightly printed version of the eyes from the “Outside of Winters Bend” poster. It’s sort of become a trademark over the years. Anyway, it does look better on the white, but I just realized that the idea of eyes looking up at you from a page may be disconcerting. I have adopted this sort of logo for the company with the words “eyes on entertainment,” so it makes sense. You know, the truth is, if I don’t stop thinking about this soon, I will send myself into some kind of over-intellectualized coma. Huh, I wonder if this is a result of something I ate.
I didn’t go swimming today or running, so maybe it’s just too much pent up energy. I’ll sleep on it and hope for the best… maybe I’ll be my old self in the morning, or maybe I’ll be more comfortable with this new self I must be in the process of becoming. This week has been great, incidentally. Oh, Friday I tried watching “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” and couldn’t choke down the entire film. Not sure what was going on there, but I didn’t get it. So I shut it off, watched the Ghost Whisperer and went to a birthday party with Tim Prindle. We were out until 6am and had a great time. They had a Karaoke machine and we all sang the night away and drank Merlot. So there’s a haphazard update for you that makes me seem unhinged, random and out of control, none of which is true most of the time, some of which is true some of the time. Yup, this entry is NOT poetry, well, perhaps it’s poetry of the kind brought forth when the mind is teetering on that wonderful edge of wry silliness and disingenuous seriousness that all adds up to non-sense in the end. Oh where are you – you elusive muse that is eloquence? Enjoy your leave of me for I shall need you in my company again soon.
So that’s the news from lake woebegone, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the Steelers fans are happy. CDJ
