April 27, 2005 - 6:01 PM

Does This Elevator Go Uptown?

Look, I'm a slow writer, ok? And if I can't get "inspiration" to sit up and beg for me, I don't like to force it out. Plus, I'm just bored. I'm trying to figure out how to sauce up my recollections of the trip back from Florida, and the few things that happened that week, and then LDBL and Mer's wedding the next week, plus a handful of concerts that I went to. But ennui is lazily gripping me, saying "try to get away from me, i don't care."

The only time anything of interest happens to me is when I'm drinking (which means I'm out of my apartment), and that happens really infrequent-like, right? Now that I think about it, every single one of my entry ideas for the past 3 weeks HAS involved alcohol. Which should be alarming for my mom if she's still reading this (hi mom, I'm not an alcoholic). Out to a concert, have a beer. Out to a party, have some wine and beer. At a wedding, have some scotch and wine. At an Amherst thing, have some beer and scotch. Have dinner with Tony, Margaret, and Eddie, have beer and wine forced on me (you can't say no to Tony and Eddie...you just can't). Blargh. Mer found out about me driving home after a night at a bar with some Amherst alum last week (I called nick while I was driving so that he could keep me focused on driving....which sounds really stupid now that I'm sober...but at the time, I just needed a familiar voice to prevent my mind from wandering away from the task at hand), and she gave me a good talking to. Scared me straight, as it was.

Know what else kinda scares me? The sign in our elevator at work. Above the button panel, below the Certificate that says that This Elevator has passed all federal and city laws about how well it can work, is a placard that says "Should this elevator's doors fail to open, do not become alarmed. There is little chance of running out of air or of this elevator falling uncontrollably." That's verbatim. Seriously, i just went over to it and checked. It goes on to tell you what to do in case of an emergency. Now, I don't know how bad a 3-story plunge in an elevator would be (and the phenomenon of free-falling in an elevator has fascinated me since 6th grade. In fact, I asked my 8th grade science teacher, Mrs. Hastings, what would happen if one was falling in an elevator...would you float up to the ceiling, or would you hover in the air, or would your feet stay on the floor? She didn't know), but I imagine you could walk away from such a plummet not too terribly injured. And I haven't even thought about running out of air in an elevator, especially this one, because you can see light and floors go by in the crack between the doors, so it's not a sealed environment to say the least.

The oddly histrionic wording of the warning is funny and yet also scary, because it DOES put images of someone suffocating in the elevator car as it falls uncontrollably (as opposed to controllably?). Who was the genius that put that in there? Or the button in the elevator at one of the talent agencies that I deliver our writers' paychecks to each week. The button at the verry bottom of the panel, below the P1 and P2 buttons, below the alarm bell switch. The one around crotch level that isn't really a button at all, in that it can't be pushed, but still looks like a button, and says "Help Is On the Way". I guess it lights up in case the elevator does get stuck, and you start running out of air, and the car starts falling uncontrollably, perhaps even so uncontrollably that it falls upwards, and security and builiding managment figure out how to get you out of there, but they can't reach you in the car, so they press a button that lights up that crotch-level button to let you know that "Help Is On the Way". Or, it lights up when, you know, maybe you spill some coffee on your shirt, and you don't have any stain remover, so security lets you know that a guy will be there on the next floor to give you some club soda and a towel. Or, maybe, a leopard with no legs falls out of the ceiling onto you, and you need an animal trainer to get it off of you.

And yes, I did push it to see if it was a button, hoping that my enabling it would whisk ME to some problem where I was supposed to be the Help that was On The Way. No dice.

I'm just saying, I'm bored, and I'll get back to telling you what's happened in the past couple weeks. Lay off. I'm hoping to get an uncontrollable ride in the elevator. Beats going to Magic Mountain, I think.

Now Listening To : Angel Correa- Correatown (I'm heading over to her place tonight to see if we can work out some cello stuff for me to do)
Random Thought : My car is mine! Money paid, title transferred...now gotta get it right with the DMV.

What I Just Wrote Before - What I'm About to Write

The Five Most Recent Entries

Here's a hand-picked playlist of 40-plus songs for you to listen to: