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Don’t go to Jared. Goob, this is my response to you.

About two years ago around this time, my father-in-law was helping me shop for his daughter’s engagement ring. Well, it was actually in June of 2005, give or take, but even still, that’s beside the point. At this point, Sarah and I had looked around at numerous shops in the mall, which is the worst idea that I could tell you.

So, let’s start at the basics when it comes to buying a diamond. Men, this is a key thing. Do NOT go out on your own and say “That looks pretty, I’m going to get it.” No. No sirree bob. What you need to do, is you need to find out what your woman wants. While you might have that friend who’s ever so right and tells you “Well man, you’re broke. You can’t afford to get her the best thing out there.” Yeah, that’s true, but gentlemen, this is the woman we love. We can afford to do anything we possibly can for her, so why not try to push ourselves that extra limit? When you find out what she wants, don’t take your eyes off of it. And with this, I mean the 4 C’s.

I’m no gemologist, so I won’t go into them, but you can find good articles online. Noteably, I’d recommend this one for information on the cut and this one for the color, carat, and clarity. There used to be a really good one that I was reading a while back that had all of them and was nicely presented, but I removed all of my linkage.

So, when you’re at the mall and you’re looking at all of these shops, they’ll push you these diamonds that are lower down. You’ll be getting somethign that’s an H or I, SI1, .6 carat, excellent cut, for about 2 grand. If you’re the uninformed consumer, a lot of that might sound pretty good. I mean, you only hear about the carats of the diamond when you hear about the celebrity rings, and to have over half a carat, you think that’s great! Fact of the matter is, its far from it.

See, the trick to buying a diamond ring is to get the diamond and the ring parts separately. Find a jeweler friend of your family that you trust, or you can shop around for the separate diamond, and there are actually plenty of internet websites that you can find your diamond on.

This is what leads me to Jared.

One of the many places that my father-in-law and I stopped at in looking for individual diamonds and settings was Jared’s. And the salesman was just that.

When we were looking for a diamond for my wife’s engagement ring, I was glad I had my father-in-law along for the help. He had done this before–obviously, if he’s my wife’s dad, you know?–and also he had done a bit of work with jewelers and custom jewelry in the past. So he knew what to look for. And me? I kept quiet and listened a lot. And at Jared’s, that was useful.

We were looking for a princess cut diamond, perfectly square table (top of the diamond), and at a high quality and colorless, roughly around half a carat. This is the woman I chose to marry, so I didn’t mess around with what I got her. I got her what she wanted. And when we were looking at Jared’s, the employee who was helping us out, he was helping us find these perfect square ones. And he turned to me and he said “In the twenty some-odd years that I’ve been working in the jewelry business, I’ve seen maybe seven perfect square ones. The one you have is beautiful.” Of course, this is a diamond that alone costs about $4,000 that we’re looking at, which was one of the more expensive ones in the case we were in front of. Makes sense that he’d try to make it “special” for us. Then, I looked down in the case, and I started counting. You see, there were some perfect square ones in the case. Five of them, to be exact. I guess he’s only seen two others over the past twenty years? When we were looking online to find diamonds as well, we probably found a good twenty or thirty in various ranges of color and such.

Hmmmm…. Yeah, I don’t think so.

Needless to say, whenever I see any Jared’s commercial or I hear someone talking about them? I immediately end up talking about the one and only time I went there. If the guy went to Jared’s? He wasn’t smart. He wasted his money.

Nowadays, we seem to have to have a flavor for everything: Coke, coffee, tea, and even water. Just drinking something plain doesn’t work–you have to flavor your coffee with syrup, drink your tea with honey or other additives, or have a Cherry Coke Zero. And add water to the equation, and you could have even more flavors and additives.

This brings me to what I’ve been thinking about recently. When I’m on campus, I’ve been drinking a lot of the Vitamin Waters. Why? Because they’re in the vending machines. And if I don’t have those, I’ve been drinking energy drinks.

But why the Vitamin Waters? Seriously. I could very easily just have regular water. Matter of fact, I carry a 1L bottle on me at all times when I’m on campus. I could very easily just drink and replenish at a water fountain. Why I don’t? Its beyond me.

Water is great, I like drinking a lot of it. I usually do drink a lot of it. But sometimes, I sit here thinking “Why am I drinking more water? I could be eating ice cream or having a pizza now.” Well, not the ice cream or the pizza part, but you get the drift.

Water is water is water. And its just another flavor. Its like the lemonade stand growing up. You’re just selling sugar, lemons, and water. You pay maybe $2 for a bag of sugar and maybe $2 for the lemon juice, and all in all, charging $.50 a glass, you can break even fairly fast. 8 glasses. Or, if you’re an entrepreneur, charge more a glass. Inflation does that.

Speaking of inflation, I shouldn’t be getting any more Vitamin Waters: they’re $1.75 each. But… flavor is so good…

The other day, I picked up another nickname. And interestingly enough, its only the second one that I’ve ever been given other than some variation of my name. And its not even like I’ve been called anything other than Adam or Cohen. Yup, with the middle name of Jacob, I was never called A.J. growing up, if you could believe that one.

That came from a letter left in my family. When I was born, a dear family friend of my grandparents whom we called Aunt Bertha, wrote me a letter. In the letter, it described how my name was important, the meaning of it, and what it stood for and meant, and because of that, I should never go by A.J. I should never have that type of shortening done to what was already a great name. My parents still have that letter.

So growing up in classes, I was always the “Adam C.” when there was more than one adam in a class. Seeing there was an “Adam D.” and an “Adam F.” that I went to school with, quite often I was well used to being the “Adam C.” And I guess it was alright. Sometimes I was just called “Cohen” by my friends. It helped distinguish me there too.

Then in middle school, that all changed.

Around 5th or 6th grade, I met my friend, Dave Hall. The first time I went over to his house, I met his father, James Hall. I was never to call him Mr. Hall, that was his dad’s name, he said. So I called him Jim. And he? He called me Zeke. Where did he get Zeke from? I couldn’t tell you really. In his own words when he first met me? “You look like a Zeke to me!”

Dave would call me Zeke around our friends, around my parents, around anyone and everyone. So whenever I’d introduce myself, I always said “Hi, my name is Adam, but you can call me Zeke. Just don’t call me late to dinner!” It helped me stick in folk’s minds. I wasn’t just another Adam, no, now I was also Zeke.

Zeke is what I used in a lot of my old screennames and e-mail addresses. I would use it as an icebreaker in meeting new people. It just became me, and I guess it was because not only did I look like a Zeke, but I guess I acted enough like a Zeke to be a Zeke. For my 21st birthday, some of my friends got me a shirt that mimiced the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity on campus. It was green with the giant yellow greek letters Zeta Kappa Epsilon. Not only was I Zeke, but now I could wear it in pride.

And with that, it comes to my last nickname. Kotter. I’ve been affectionately called that on the 7M3 message boards the past few weeks before the show and it was sealed in place on Feb 23rd when the band came out to the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme song. I wish I had more on that joke, but I’ve got nothin’. Love the nickname, though. Works well for me. But if I was only as funny as Gabe Kaplan.

Anyways, for a kid who never grew up with a nickname? I think I’m doin’ pretty good right about now…

Ever since first installing WordPress on my site, I’ve had a lovely little bar that said that my version was out of date. It was something that I sort of got used to seeing and I just ignored it. And then, as I started adding plugins to my site, I started to get frustrated and feel like I fully wasn’t in control and that I was just letting my WordPress run me. That I couldn’t do something as simple as just upgrade WordPress.

As simple as. I didn’t know it was a simple upload and overwrite operation after backing up your files. Really I didn’t. Every time that I had thought about it or mentioned it to someone, it seemed like it was a grumbling gruesome effort. Like you’d be reformatting your computer, then installing Dos, then Win3.1, then Win95, then WinXP, just to have everything back to normal. A sort of “all day affair,” if you will.

Nope, a simple copy and paste. Overwrite all old files? Yes please. You know, I’m slowly getting the hang of things around here. And I think that scares me…

In other news, I’m going to probably have the other upgrades I want to do on my site done within the next few days… Not that I know of what I want to upgrade, but its just a few plugins here and there.

And I’m slowly queueing up my weekend drafts so I’ll be posting those before you know it… And probably on the run from my cell phone. Man, I’m way way too connected with this sucker…

There’s a very funny thing about marriage that I’d like to share as my post for the day. Its something that the more and more I look around me and the portrayal of it in pop culture that I really have to sadly shake my head at.

See, growing up and all throughout our lives, the institution of marriage is something that’s instilled as a bit of a “final goal” for successfulness in our lives. We’re set up with dreams of the marriage and a “happily ever after.” Disney has done a great job of placating this in our heads, as the rest of the media does as well. Seriously. Cinderella gets her Prince Charming, the Beast is really a prince, and Snow White only goes to sleep but doesn’t die from the poison apple. And the one true love and its kiss. All of that stuff.

And so when we head away to college or we move out of our parent’s houses, we see marriage as one of those things on a “to-do” list. Not everyone, I know, but a good number of folks. And because its so culturally infused, we have it subconsciously whether we’re really thinking about it or not… For me, I thought that. I’ve always gone into every relationship I’ve been in as if it was my last one for the sole reason that there was no reason for me to “line up” replacements–it meant that I wasn’t giving the person I was with my all and I would be setting us up for sabotage.

With marriage, we’re always shown it as a final beautiful snapshot. Everything in white and black and floral and colored and beautiful…

And the truth is, a shot like that is a moment in time. I look at that picture and I’m only 24. Sarah’s only 25 there. It’s almost been a year and now I’m 25 and Sarah’s 26. What about next year? And the year after that? And after that?

We look at these pictures and we forget that a marriage is work. Its a relationship. Its people working together to make what they have between them work. And its two people who have a shared love for each other, for life, and for sharing everything that comes between them, as one.

We overlook all of those things when we talk about marriage. It’s the final scene in a movie, it’s the coup de grace, the big cheese.

No, its not. Its only barely the beginning… There are always pictures we take after it, and there’s things that need to be worked on from time to time. Keep it as a well oiled machine, just keep on keeping it on… We can’t let life get in the way of a marriage or things like this. Not at all. Life is meant to be shared with those we take into it.

And that, is what a marriage is.

As a whole, I’ve been thinking a lot about a guest on last Thursday night’s The Daily Show. My friend Goob mentioned this recently on his blog and took the article to one angle, but I’ve been thinking in another means.

Folks who know me know that I remain glued to my cell phone quite a bit. I love my little Samsung M510 and I love my Sprint service. I’m glued to it. And when the iPhone came out, friends turned their heads my way and asked me if I was going to get one. I was already that addicted to my phone and its abilities and connectivities, what was the real difference to adding one more thing, right? Touch screen, full internet in the palm of my hand, what more could I want or need?

The thing is, do we really need all of that? Do we really need to be able to surf to all of that porn or news or video all at the flick of a finger across a touch screen? Do we need to be able to have a completely interactive fully integrated phone with our mp3s and calls?

I know that I can do a lot with my phone, and I know as a whole there’s a lot more I could do that I don’t, or a lot that I do that I can’t, but in this era of times where a text message has replaced a simple phone call, or if someone shoots me a MySpace or Facebook message and my phone flashes with a new text? Or I can read my Gmail or MSNBC.com or any of those other sites on my phone. I read Orlando’s Craigslist on my phone, and I even have a spare AIM screenname that forwards messages as text messages. I get so many alerts and other bleeps and blurbles that its a wonder that my phone hasn’t committed seppuku.

What I’m trying to get at, is in this modern world where we could drop a simple phone call to someone to say “hi” or make plans to meet at any one of the three Starbucks you find at any intersection (the fourth corner is either a bank or a Walgreens, seriously), we rely on these messages and this connectivity.

AT&T keeps claiming “more bars in every places” and the other carriers say they’re connecting families. The truth is, we’re so distant because we focus on just another screen when we’re away from the one here at home to deliver us anything that we can’t just let it be.

And we wonder why we call Blackberry devices “Crackberries“? We have no restraint.

I’m just as guilty as anyone else. Heck, I always watch out of the corner of my eye to see if my phone starts flashing… I mean, it is easier than obsessively refreshing my e-mail…

Yes folks, its true. If you’ve heard me rant about this one in years past, you’re going to hear it again.

I hate Valentines Day. I truely honestly do. See, I’ve also got a thing against the commercialization of most holidays, but Valentine’s Day especially gets me going.

There are many possible origins of where it comes as a holiday from the roots of St. Valentine. Being Jewish, I never really got into the whole Saints and Priest things, I sort of just make the vicar and the little boy jokes and snicker as much as I can at the confessional booths. The idea of saying a few prayers and being absolved of whatever wrong-doings you did is amusing, but this is coming from a guy who doesn’t eat for a day and begs to G-D to be put into the Book of Life each year, so I have no room to judge. Of course, there is that whole “asking around for forgiveness for humanly transgressions” before that part…

Needless to say, there are a lot of great ideas about today as a whole. The main idea is this great concept of loving each other. My friend Kevin Allen has invited me to “James Taylor Day” on Facebook these past few years, and I really like that idea. But the generic “Valentines” idea where we add in Hallmark and Russell Stovers to the mix? I don’t think so.

Commercialization, red hearts, candy, roses, cards, stuffed animals, everything just has swamped out the meaning behind this. I’ve seen advertisements for today as Singles Awareness Day or even more advertisements for the Vagina Monologues. Everyone wants to assign some meaning to it or assign something to their life. Its all endless sinks of money. Why do we need to do these special things on this particular day out of the year? Why can’t we just do it when we spontaneously see fit? I already spent the damn money on the engagement ring, and the wedding rings, and I already make my wife dinner and do the dishes and laundry on a regular basis, so why do I need to conform to these consumer standards?

For me in my life, the only time I’ve been in a relationship on Valentine’s Day? Since 2003 when I was with Sarah. I never had a casual dating partner or was in a relationship with the exception of my wife. Oh sure, I had a good friend or a close friend from time to time, but I always hated the day and wanted to have someone to shower with all of the monetary anchors that we see as staples of this event. The flowers, the chocolates, the cards, the huge stuffed teddy bears.

Just. Stop.

Now that I’ve had a Valentine for the past few years, I don’t care about the holiday. I really don’t like the fact that I’m expected to perform to these conformist standards of keeping this revelry in consumer extortion going. And even though my wife knows how much I hate this “holiday,” I know I’d be deep up shit creek if I didn’t do anything for it.

So as you’re reading this, friendly reader, I can tell you that my wife will probably soon find the small stuffed dog keychain and the card that I left in her lunch box. Sure, its not much, but its what I needed to do to show her that I do love her, and I do recognize today is special.

But the true fact of the matter is, why should we care about it because its today? I’d like for everyone who’s reading this to know plain and simple: I appreciate you and I care for you each and every day out of this year. So thank you for caring for me, and let’s remind each other of that daily. That’s to my single friends and my relationship-bound friends. I make no distinguishment. As long as you have a friend, you’re never alone.

Let’s do this not with a cardboard cartoon valentine, or a lacy heart, or a box of chocolates and a teddy bear, but with a sincere call or text message to those you care about. Because that’s the true meaning of today: telling those you care about that you really do care about them. If we can remember that, I’d say we’re doing a pretty good job.

I’m the world’s worst English major without a doubt. Uncontested.

From time and time again, I try to find words to express all of these thoughts that I have, and I get a bit pretentious in how I think about things. I can acknowledge that and I well know it, and if that’s my downfall, then so be it. But as a whole, I wish I wrote more.

My problem with writing is that I have a severe perfectionist complex and with that, comes the hatred of editing. Like many folks who toil over what comes from their fingers and keys or pen and paper, I don’t want to go back over it and rewrite it, so I take extra care in the time that I put into writing it in the first place so that I don’t have to revise and edit it. This is why working for a newspaper would never work for me–if an editor gave me back a piece and told me to revise it? I’d tell them to do something that I believe is anatomically impossible. Or if it is, I haven’t tried and have no desire to.

With this comes a problem with picking up the thoughts in my mind from the beginning. I try to start off with various prompts and I have books upon books of them that I keep buying because when I read them in the store, something about them really inspires me and makes me feel “Hmmm, I could write about that.” Then, I get home and they sit on my shelf. I just don’t feel a connection to pick them up and read them, which I should, but I don’t. I’ll flip through them and I’ll like a few of them and others I’ll think “Man, that’s a lame prompt.” I think mainly my issue is that there are things that I want to write about, but I don’t want to write about. Stories that I want to tell, but I don’t want to be known. And because you interject so much of your own life into what you’re writing, I don’t want someone to read one of my stories and go “So is that really what’s in his life?” Yes, I know, Stephen King’s real life isn’t filled with rabid dogs, demonic clowns, and possessed cars, so that means that if I write about cheating, lieing, divorce, and murder it’s not necessarily in my life. But sometimes we unintentionally write characters that might show something we’re not trying to show. I don’t think I’m hiding any secrets from myself, but I think I stifle these voices so I don’t write something and then hurt myself with it later. If that makes sense?

I’ve been trying to be good about writing as a whole, though. I had read an article a while back called “10 Reasons to Write and Publish Every Day,” which I really liked as a whole, but whenever I re-read it at times like now, I feel like it’s a cheerleader for a game that I’m sitting and watching from the sidelines and waiting for the pretty girls to leave the field because they’re just inane and pointless to the overall game. But, then again, the crowd does help folks get in to it.

See, the problem I have mostly with writing, is that I’ll read a site like McSweeney’s that has these wonderfully written vignettes that seem so absurd and have such a strong voice or I’ll hear songs like some of the new Seven Mary Three songs from day&nightdriving and I know I can do that. And as much as imitation is the highest form of flattery, and imitation in art helps you understand how to do that, I get stuck in my own little ways. I edit things together in fashions that stifles what I’m trying to accomplish, or I write something so contrived and pretentious that I see right through it.

And I’m my own worst critic, like any writer out there. I had done a freewrite the other day that I posted on my MySpace bulletins like a lot of my other freewrites. If you saw it, it was called “feeling like creation…” You can find it if you’re on my friendslist on the bulletin board, otherwise, I’ve got it saved around here if you want a copy, shoot me an e-mail. Needless to say, I received a few very very nice comments from friends about how they liked it. Nothing about why they liked it. And last night when I was re-reading it and working on a paradigm shift on it. Okay, not as much a paradigm shift, but a format shift from prose poetry to lyrical poetry. I consider my freewrites to be prose poetry often. Even still, I couldn’t pull out certain things from it, and when I did, it just didn’t flow right on the paper. Granted, it was about 3am at the time (and like Rob Thomas says, I was feeling lonely), so maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Maybe I should have come back and edited it later.

I had started writing something just before that this morning (around 2:30am) that I’m calling “Grow” for the time being, and looking at it now, 6 hours later, and putting guitar chords to it? I feel like I did something right for a change. And its because I tried to edit, and I didn’t accept the first draft. Oh sure, it was only a word or two here or there, and I rewrote the verses to make them read better and flow better, but it was enough. Revision is like cooking steak: you can do a little (rare), flip some things around and smoothen it out (done), keep the same ideas and completely redo it (well done), or trash it and start over (throw it to the dog and grab a new one and another cold beer from the fridge).

We’ll see how the day progresses. Sometimes, no matter how much I worry and think about writing as the process? It just turns out right in the end.

So, friends, what’s your brew of choice?

I was thinking about this a bit yesterday. I was talking with a friend about tea and tea parties and in doing so, I mentioned that I have a whole shelf of tea that Sarah and I never really drink. Seriously. We’ll go to Teavanna and get a cup made for us, or we’ll buy a few ounces of loose tea, and then we’ll never really drink it. And especially now that I’m sick, I should be drinking more of it. Its good tasting and good on the throat.

Mostly when I drink tea, I find myself leaning towards something in the black or the red realms when I’m having a hot tea. I like a lot of rooibos blends, as well as the occasional yerba maté based latte. When I’m having a black tea, I’m all about having a good Earl Grey or Chai. Matter of fact, if you were to open my pantry right now, you’d find about 3 different varieties of rooibos, Earl Grey, and chai all in there. Those three I lean towards the most. There’s something that’s smooth and well done about all of them. Occasionally I’ll have a green tea, but only if it’s at a real oriental restaurant or some sort of pre-made infused blend. For cold teas, well, I’ll usually get one of the fruit pre-blended ones from Nestea or Lipton that’s already bottled and good to go. And even though I was born out in Utah and raised in the South to the point that I know and love my sweet tea? Well, I’ve been weaning myself off of that teat. I already eat enough biscuits and gravy to make up for that one…

Coffee is a different story. I used to get the McDonald’s large coffees when I met up with the SHARC–that’s Spring Hill Amateur Radio Club–group when I was 17 years old, and I’d add to that 6 packets of sugar (not sweetener, sugar) and 3 half and halfs. I didn’t like coffee, I liked sweet mud. As I got older and lazier, I stopped adding stuff to my coffee and started drinking it black. I learned slowly that you could tell the difference in brews with black coffees and that there was something etherally beautiful about the wisps that crossed the surface of coffee remaining in my cup as I withdrew it from my lips and swallowed its bitter darkness. I drank it and watched those wisps across my coffee, transfixed by the simplicity and the beauty of it. Try it sometime. You’ll see what I mean.

Though, if I’m not drinking a black regular coffee and I’m at a Starbucks, Natura’s, or Push Play or some other establishment of the sorts? Well, it varies on what I’m in the mood for. On campus, I always get myself a soy chai latte from the library’s Java City, but it can be anything from a hot tea at Natura or Push Play, to a Maté Latte at Natura, to a Green Tea Chai Latte at Push Play, or if I’m at Starbucks, I could always get my regular: Quint Venti Sugar Free Vanilla Latte, Half Whole, Half Soy. It has a bit of a burnt taste to it, but the vanilla flavor and the caffeine shine through and make it beautiful to me. And even when I appear burnt out beyond all anything and I have one of those? You wouldn’t be able to tell. There’s so much caffeine in the drink that my body has no clue what to do with it, so it doesn’t wake me up any more than a can of Surge.

And on that note, I think its time to check my mail because I’ve heard rumors of the pre-release order of Day & Night Driving being mailed already, and it’d be nice to have a clean new 7M3 shirt to wear to campus today.

That, and my chai is done steeping…

Life really is in all of the small things, and we forget it all too often.

Yesterday, I had a completely random IM when I got back to my computer from someone who had listened to my music over on myspace and their message was simple: “You shouldn’t say that you’re not a vocalist. I like your singing and songs. Keep it up.”

It was a complete random act of kindness from a complete stranger. How often do we encounter that? How many times in the course of a day can we sit down and really truely honestly thank someone for being so selfless in their nature?

The person who held the door for us as we entered that building. The person who said “bless you” when you last sneezed. The person who waved to you to go ahead and turn and let you pull your car ahead of them and get into traffic.

Do we think about these moments after they happened? Usually, we just let them slide.

I believe that everything that happens in this world comes back around to us. If we’re nice, nice things happen to us in return. Not the commercialized “My Name Is Earl” karma crap–althought I do like the show–but in true honest good nature of human-kind a la Anne Frank and things working out for the better part in the end when you believe they will. Don’t believe me?

I used to work for UCF Housing. Two years ago, one night around 3 in the morning, I found a sleeve for someone’s student ID, with no form of identification in it, and inside there was a $100 bill. Just sitting there, on the ground, in the middle of the community. The only person who knew it was there was me, and I could have very easily pocketed it. Instead, I picked it up, brought it back into the office, e-mailed my supervisor, placed it in a sealed envelope, and slid it under his door. The only people who knew how much was in that envelope were me, my co-worker, and my boss. Noone came to claim it, so it was donated to Hurricane Katrina victims.

And what did I get out of it? A few weeks later I had gotten off the bus by Sarah’s old apartment and was walking down the road in the middle of Orlando. On the side of the road, I saw a familiar looking color of paper. It was a $50 bill, folded in the same fashion as the $100 bill I had found a few weeks prior.

It wasn’t a one-for-one payback, but that’s not how it works. Because knowing that I did what I felt was right was all I needed. And that’s all we need to do. Sometimes, if its not too far out of your way, it doesn’t hurt at all to pay that little extra compliment.

Kindness… Its what builds up just another average day of saving the universe…

Each and every year I’ve found
words in something someone else said
Then I just
“Copy and Paste”

This time I’m being accountable
not resting on the shoulders of
Stevens
Merwin
O’Hara
or
Frost

It’s about time I take my voice
and speak with it in my tongue
rather than someone elses
for my own means

Twenty-five times around this sun
and I’m finally learning:
That everything you give
comes back
The only person who controls you
is you when you roll out of bed
And in the end
it doesn’t matter who’s your friend and who isn’t
but how you really truly loved those who were
and loved even more those who weren’t

I’ve wasted too much time
on someone else’s words
It’s been damn well long enough

But that’s learning.

-Adam J. Cohen; 30 January 2008

Today, I had an interesting experience. Something which I’m going to backtrack a little and talk about from a different sort of light than what one might expect.

First off, as folks know, I go to UCF and there’s a wonderful fountain that I’ve been going to in the middle of campus since August 2001. I’ve met many friends around the fountain and even formed my first band, Mindflux there. Yes, we italicized just the “M” whenever we wrote it. And yes, that’s me with all of that crazy hair, and I never took down that old webpage. Insane. Even still, I like going to the fountain because its relaxing and I meet a lot of interesting folks there. Be it rain or shine or even 40 degrees out, if I have an hour to kill, I’ll do it.

On Monday, it was one of those days. I had parked myself out there and nearing the end of my second hour playing, a gentleman came up to me. I’ll call him “Michael” because it’s close enough to his real name without being his real name. Well, the first letter is close enough. Even still, I never had met “Michael” before, and I saw him walking by once. He looked Hispanic/Indian–the country, not Native American–and was dressed very 80’s-esque with the jean jacket and everything. He tells me that he likes what he’s hearing, and that he runs a business. That’s where the conversation gets fuzzy. See, I thought he was telling me he’d sit down and talk to me about his business and this consulting group some other time, and I said sure why not, but apparently he saw it as setting up an appointment to meet for a meeting.

Tuesday and Wednesday, he and I played phone tag some, him more than me but we courteously returned each others cards. Now, I guess I should mention that he had my business card and I had his. I Googled his name, his phone numbers, and even the quote on his card and could come up with nothing for him. And we’re not talking some simple Google search, I’m the sort that I’ll put in any/all tags that I can, and if someone’s online and available to find, well, I’ll find them most of the time. Nothing at all for him. Nothing. Finally, Wednesday night when we set a meeting for Thursday (today) at a local Starbucks right up the road from me, I ask him about company name and other information. I’m a business major, and I understand the importance of coming to the table with everything that I can for efficiency in meetings. In a fairly close paraphrase to what he said “This is just for me and you to talk and see if we can work together, I’ll give you more information tomorrow.”

I don’t like being kept in the dark.

So this morning, I met him at Starbucks. A good walk for me, so I ordered my usual: a quint-venti sugar free vanilla latte with half whole milk and half soy milk. Try saying that one five times fast. Not typing, saying. Its good. Tastes a bit like its burnt, but it’s good, to say the least. Or to me it is, and that’s what matters.

We sit down outside, and he pulls out a brochure. On this brochure first of all has the classic 4 ways to make money (employee, own a store, investment, franchising) and then the classic supply chain model. On another part of the trifold, it has some information listing various big name companies. Companies like Sony, Disney, Office Depot, you get the idea. Big names. The “wow factor.” He tells me how there’s the company’s own line too. Starts talking about how mentors have made millions and retired in a few years, and flips to another part of the fold where it talks about two phases of money-earning.

Now, I should interject a few things here…
1) I’m a business major. Anything and everything he’s describing to me is stuff I learned a year or two back. I’m specifically a management major, and even if my focus is Human Resources, I understand this flow as well as the next person.
2) And you’re especially trying to explain to a guy who worked for Wal*Mart and for Walgreens how the big box retailers can buy in bulk and save money? Doesn’t work.
3) The whole while, I’ve asked the business they’re in, and he hasn’t told me at all. He hasn’t answered the key question that I’ve asked, and expects me to stay with him on this one.
4) And he keeps telling me its not a get rich quick scheme because they don’t exist. Matter of fact, I love the way he answered this one that I’m going to make it into its own paragraph…

You see, when he was starting to talk about how everyone makes money so fast, I didn’t blink at all to that. He asked me “Do you believe it?” My reply was very straight forward: “If Rockefeller, Astor, and Trump could make a lot of money from nothing, I’d believe it’s possible. Ways of it are out there, and just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.” Then, his reply was brilliant and I love it:
“I was born in South America, but I was raised in Iowa. I was offered a job in the Barbados and they told me that there were green monkeys there. I could have not believed them, or I could have gone to see them myself, but whether I believed or not, they were there.”
Yeah. Okay. And I shortened his reply, but that was it. Monkey are millionaires. Or something like that. I see the line he’s drawing, but I just had to not laugh.

All the while, though. Still no company name. And this makes me skeptic and wonder what I’m really sitting here for and through. See, I want to know what I’m walking into. Believe me, if I were to see a sign on a wall for a meeting to discuss the political power of the South in the upcoming election with free donuts and coffee, I wouldn’t want to just go to the meeting without seeing the group that was behind it. I mean, that’s a very ambiguous meeting right there. I could be walking into a rally for the Democratic or Republican parties or into a KKK rally. Power has many meanings, just as not being told what this business was had many meetings for me. And something wasn’t sitting right with me, but “Michael” I felt wasn’t a Klan member. He mentioned going to church, and again, from his appearance I’d imagine that he’d be just as outcast as this friendly Jewish writer is.

On the pamplet, though, I did notice what looked like to be a company name: “I-commerce.” I kept telling myself “I need to remember that, I need to remember that” throughout the meeting, hoping that the second I got away, I could hopefully Google an answer.

That second came faster than I thought. As we closed out the “information” part of the meeting and he kept insisting on the connection that he felt between us–something I couldn’t rationalize because he knew more about me than I knew about him and he wouldn’t relinquish the one thing I kept asking of him–he mentioned that the next step would be a meeting across town. Me, being without a car, mentioned immediately that I wouldn’t be able to get out there. He asked if I was between cars, if I would be getting one soon, and when I said no to both of them and answered proudly of myself that I’ve lived this long without one and wouldn’t be getting one anytime soon, he completely shut down and called everything over. In a kind fashion, telling me that if things change, call him up. But even still, he shut down. You know how it is when you’re talking to someone and you can tell they completely shut down and aren’t listening and don’t care anymore? Exactly.

We shake hands, and I’m laughing inside with a slight smile on my face. It was the dealbreaker and I found it without wanting to find it. I pull out my phone and Google it like “icommerce.” I come across a company name: Quixtar.

Now, I should be fair because nothing that was described to me was named Quixtar, but from all that I was shown, it reads like everything I’ve read about Quixtar since my meeting with “Michael.” Similar mentor programs, similar product lines and sales base. And it just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s legit, but you have to do a lot more than what was being implied to me. And its so close to being a pyramid scheme with the way the profits are collected that it’s under investigation still. Even with a clean Better Business Bureau record. And a lot of companies are like that.

So, I call back up “Michael” and thank him for the meeting and express that I’m sorry that my carlessness is “the dealbreaker.” He doesn’t want to use those words and says that if things change, let him know, and was polite, but didn’t really want to talk, I could tell.

And that’s where you have it, folks. You could say that I was stupid from the get-go for meeting up with someone when I had no idea what I was getting into in the first place, but at the same time, I was curious and this cat wasn’t killed for that curiousity. To a degree, you can find out more from some small investigative work like that, and I wanted my own answers.

That, and don’t keep me in the dark. Unless it’s about what you’re getting me for my birthday, because, you know that one’s coming up on January 31st…

And to “Michael” or any member of the I-Commerce or Quixtar whom might come across this:
This is the last line and I bolded it and underlined it for you. I know I was not clearly stated a company name, and I’m not meaning to implicate any company who wasn’t really involved.
This whole post is not an attack against your corporation/company/entity/way of being. You guys do your thing and it works for you, but the way I was handled in the shrouds of mystery didn’t work for me and you left me to my own conclusions because “Michael” couldn’t answer the simple question I kept asking.
“Michael,” I think you’re a nice guy, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t a good recruit for your company, and I wish you the best there.

Last night, I had my first class of the semester, and I’ll talk more about my classes a little later after I’ve had at least one session in each, but there was something that struck me interesting.

This was one of those classes where the teacher hands out the sheet you fill out about yourself. And when I got to the second question, I stared at my paper.

What are your career goals and aspirations?

Oh sure, I’m only 24–I turn 25 on the 31st of this month, so gifts and money and electric guitars are all appreciated, just kidding–and I’m married and I seem to have some path and direction that I’m going. I feel like I’m heading towards something, but I don’t know what that goal is yet.

I hear about my friends who are graduating and getting their jobs, or the kids who say “Well, I always dreamed I’d go into ________.” That’s all fine and dandy. Growing up, I said the same thing about working for the postal service, being an english teacher, and wanting to be a rock star. While the only option of those that I think would be accurate would be the english teacher, I don’t even really want to be or do that right now. I just don’t feel it. I don’t feel like it’s really what’s in my future and what’s lined up for me.

I don’t know. I just don’t know what I “want to be when I grow up.” If I want to own a restaurant, write a novel, have fifteen grandchildren, or even what I want my job to be. And to be here, where I am, it makes me very much a blank slate.

I picked up my pen, and I slowly filled in the blank:

“I honestly don’t have any. I know that when I graduate, I’ll be lucky to get a job in the sales force or a pre-management training style program making 28-32k a year and working over the next few years to get to a basic managerial position in a very basic cubicle, in a 9-5 position with overtime when necessary. I figure I’ll be writing in my off time from that job.”

I’m 24, and to have that as all I could say? I just feel like I’m missing something. I can’t put my finger on it. I honestly can’t.

But there’s got to be something more to life than this… After 7 straight years of classes and schools, I know that much. I’m just waiting for that “magical click” that’ll reveal to me something that seems to fit right. But for now, I guess I’m content. I’m standing, breathing, and just figuring out things as I go along.

That’s all you can do sometimes. You just keep treading forward, knowing that there’s a finish line somewhere, but knowing that the real content is the journey you’re taking to get to that ultimate end-game…

This is the first of what might be a few from my LiveJournal. But, seeing that I consider this my main forum for writing and expressing myself now, I see fit to repost this here. For all of the folks who are reading this on their syndicated feed and it’s posting the full entry, terribly sorry about that. I’ve got it nicely tucked away here on my site, but there’s no “after the jump” that I can do there when the RSS pulls it over. “Ooops” is the best way to put that, I guess…

So, here we go… Right after the jump…

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Thanks for stopping by, folks! My name is Adam J. Cohen, and I'm a guitarist/songwriter in Champaign, IL, recently relocated from Orlando, FL where I'm a UCF grad. Here, you'll find vignettes on my life, setlists from open mics and reviews, and whatever else crosses my mind. Enjoy!

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