Sirvice sex is fun's blog: "My poor mistaken friend."

I don’t know the first thing about dough and I don’t know shit about Bonsai trees, including how to spell it (I had to look it up).  I also don’t know anything about graphics or design.  I know what tastes good and I know what looks good (sometimes, that’s even in question). And when it comes to what’s graphic, it’s profanity, it’s sex or it’s nothing at all.

My demo CD required a ton of work.  Luckily, I had to do very little of it.  My friends, on the other hand, they were fucked.  I asked for their help, kind of the way a child asks their parents for help on their first book report “please, write this.”  I did something similar when it came to the cover graphic, the inside cartoon, the print job, the lightscribe design and the piece selection for final edit; “Here, help me.”  They obliged.  As a result, I got beautiful stuff from talented people.  I got a far better package than my voice deserves (considering the content is suspect and appearance is reality), and I’m lucky I did.  Very lucky. 

When I lived in Oregon on the Bay (an extended stay, devoted entirely to my desire to be near my Mecca and its beer, Rogue Brewery and Rogue Shakespeare Stout, respectively) I had a roommate.  He was clever guy and he didn’t drink in his own country.  I take after him, I don’t drink on my own planet (we’re all better off).  He smoked a lot of pot but he didn’t drink.  He was an older fellow and he had lived in Belize for a time and had traveled the world before.  He and his cat, Jack, whom he used to call “a little slut and a whore” (Jack, upon meeting new people, would roll onto his back and offer his tummy to be scratched by anyone who would oblige) traveled together and my roommate told stories from these travels, stories which were actually quite entertaining.  My roommate opened his mouth with purpose (usually humor), a good contrast to me opening my mine.  I have no purpose. 

One day while pruning his tiny trees, his Bonsai trees, he told me the secret.  During his travels, he had met a Japanese “Bonsai Master.”  Through an interpreter, my roommate learned the secret to rearing the precocious little trees, “You have be cruel to the tree.  You have to trim it and bind it without mercy or compassion,” the Master said and, apparently, this master knew what he was talking about because, after all, he had become a “Bonsai Master.”  I suspect my roommate was a good study; his trees weren’t much worse.  He had a real knack for working with those suckers.  Amazing stuff. 

That’s the secret to Bonsai trees. 

This secret, my roommate said, was amazingly similar to another secret, the secret to making good dough.  In Belize, my roommate met a bread maker, not the maker of just any bread, but the maker of the best bread any had ever had.  It had crisp, dry crust with a perfectly moist and partitioned interior.  This bread would dissolve in the mouth and tasted like butter.  This baker fellow drew crowds and lines and sold out shortly after opening each morning.  My roommate wanted to know the secret, so he asked.  The bread maker was only too happy to tell, “You have to be cruel to the dough.  You have to beat it the way you have to beat a woman” (HIS words, not mine nor my roommate’s for that matter).  Evidently, the secret to both Bonsai trees and amazing bread is cruelty.  Who knew?

The other day, when I visited the graphic designer doing my print job (an ex who also tackled my business cards some time ago), she invited me to sit down and look over her final designs.  “Amazing” and I told her.  She clicked at the keyboard and danced with the mouse all the while muttering under breath and staring at the screen.  “What’s your secret?  How do you get it to do that?” I asked (as the though the interaction with the computer were a mutual process).  She raised the volume of her muttering and she cursed the computer, “Move you little fuck!  Get there!”  Momentarily disengaging from the computer and turning her head to me only slightly, she said “You have to be cruel to the computer.  You have to curse it and mock it while being careful to caress its keys.”