Amish

Bill looks a little out of place at the Umbrella Corporation. He has a tattoo of a woman on one arm and a sword on the other. He has more, but I never get a full view of the pictures since they disappear into his sleeves.

Bill in a previous life worked in a humanities field with a complicated name which meant he studied cultures of people. In his case this meant he spent some time living with the Amish in the absolute middle of nowhere.

They had one phone. It was used in the most dire of emergencies, such as once to call a medical helicopter to get a sick child to the hospital so they could do robotic surgery on him. When asked if they had an issue with that, they told Bill he was totally nuts. "It is a kid's life," they said, "Why would we make somebody die for our cultural preferences?"

Amish people probably vary, but Bill's crowd seemed on the whole pretty reasonable about most things. One once accepted a ride in Bill's car when stranded, "It isn't about following the letter of the law," he said, "it is about deciding to live simply and focus on what is really important."

"I locked my keys in my car once," Bill laughed. "They were such dicks about it.

'Oh hey Bill! How's that fantastic new technology improving your life?'

There was quite a crowd and I'm just standing there. We didn't have cell phones then so I had to pop the lock.

'Hey,' they're calling to each other, 'Do you remember that time I locked my keys in my buggy? No? Maybe because it doesn't happen!'"

Meet Pacem

"You want to come over later?" I ask Carne, "we're throwing a party."

"What's the occassion?"

"It's some kid's birthday..."

"Do I know this guy?"

"No, technically I don't either. He's one of the new kids in the program. Actually, I'm not even sure its his birthday. I just want a really good excuse to throw a party."

There's a pause. I can't see her face over the phone but I know exactly what expression she's making.

"So, you coming?"

Hilariously enough, she met her current boyfriend at that party.

***

"So," I ask the blond kid who just walked in the door, "you normally go by Xenu?"

He stares at me, "what? Oh! My facebook! Yeah, I like messing around with that..."

I start cracking up and hand him a drink, "Well, happy birthday stranger."

"Birthday?" he's laughing too now, "oh yeah! Today IS my birthday on facebook isn't it?" He grins and poses with the cake with his name on it for a photograph.

"You know," he says, "according to facebook, I have a birthday about every two weeks...and there are a whole slew of my 'friends' who haven't caught on yet."

"Whatever, I like having parties."

***

"Ya-pach-um"

It was his first phrase, or more, that's how I can best type it an Anglesized version of it. I can gesture vaguely verbally at the myriad of hidden consonants in the actual polish baby-talked version, but I'll never be able to type it.

I'm observing.

His grandfather had found him sitting in the family's garage and asked him what he was doing. I find it a fitting summary of Pacem in general.

I'm observing.

Most people when they want to understand another person "walk a mile in their shoes," or imagine themselves as being in the other person's situation. Pacem instead has the sort of mind which permits him to observe himself from the same third person perspective he sees other people, and to understand them that way. This has many side effects, one of which is his ability to look at himself and have a good laugh from time to time, which is one of my favourite things about him.

I'm observing.

***

"Dona nobis pacem..."

I distinctly remember preforming this piece in fourth grade. The harmony and simplicity mezmorized me, and still does to this day.

Let us have peace.

I remember singing at the very top of my lungs. The world is complicated, and the things which you know are beautiful are true are worth really clinging to.

***

He looked worn out, tired, and depressed. His boss was an asshole and his team's aptitude left much to be desired. Furthermore, two of the team members no more qualified than him had escaped the worst of it, and had a lot of goodies and attention from his boss's boss which would surely let them escape the looming fallout this work team would suffer. One of them wasn't being particularly nice to him either.

He locked himself in his room for hours with his laptop and didn't speak to much of anybody. I would come in to tell him when dinner was ready, but realistically there wasn't a whole lot I could do.

"Ya-pach-um," I grinned and waved to him from the doorway. When all else failed, I guess act like an idiot.

"Ya-pach-um," I repeated, falling into a game of word sounds, "Ya-pach-um, pach-um, pacem, dona nobis pacem."

"What?"

"Peace, you could use some probably."

"Huh?"

"Dinner's ready."

***

"Red four on the five."

"Oh man I didn't see that one."

Nerds do some fairly impressive things when deprived of internet, but the words "communal solitaire" still crack me up. I think it was one of the best things that happened to the house, because with nothing better to do we all got to really know and care for each other. Pacem and I remained close considering the distance my senior year, and we even found time to visit him on the road trip with Ginger and Giraffe. When I found we were both returning for a second year I was overjoyed.

***

"Quesadillas and bud lite," he looks down at himself, "I feel like white trash."

Pacem is wearing a wife beater and athletic shorts since the rest of his clothes are currently in the drier. The two of us are on our knees loading up gallons of milk and orange juice into the upper shelves of the refrigerator.

"I figure," he says as he hoists the 30 rack into the new space we have created, "Its all about the finer things in life anyway."

I'm on the couch later when Pacem wanders back with a box labled Xerox. It once to contained printer paper but now it carries his clean laundry. He sits down on a couch to begin folding it.

"You want...us to pick up a real laundry basket for you?"

He shrugs, "this works."

He pulls out a hilighter colored shirt with the bright pink AMP logo. Its the most horrendously beautiful shirt I have ever seen in my life, and I always make fun of him for it.

"Directing traffic soon?"

"Fuck, give me direct sunlight and I'll blind you!"

***

We've been fighting a lot recently for no real good reason. Well, I know mine. I have a terrible pressing need to escape and keep finding him in my room when I want to be alone. I guess that's one of those things roommates have been known to do. Pacem probably has his own reasons, but I wish he wouldn't vent them by helping in the efforts to circumvent me that have cropped up.

"We're heading up to the casinos that last weekend," he says.

I glare at him. We have four houses to shut down and clean and a ton of furniture to move and now he's skipping out with how many people?

"We'll clean up a ton on Sunday and Monday to make up for it. We don't really need a whole weekend to clean. I promise, we'll make up the time."

I shrug. There isn't a whole lot of point to arguing with somebody whose mind is made up that firmly. Pacem knew damn well how much work this was going to be: he, the guy I was dating at the time, and I had spent a whole weekend last time cleaning up only one house, and that one had been subjected to a lot less wear.

***

They came home Sunday sunburnt and tired. They slept a few hours and then drank until one threw up on the carpet we had finished cleaning. The next day was Monday. They sat on the couch, still hung over, and announced they were going to the beach. I was carrying a load of food and supplies from Delta to Alpha when Pacem came up to me to say goodbye since they were getting on the plane right from the beach. He wanted a hug. His eyes were dead.

"You're going?"

"Yeah."

"You said you'd help..."

"Well the car's leaving now."

"We'll see you again soon Pika," Tiffany interjected.

"Yeah, whatever," I respond.

"Aww," she continues, "don't be sad, we probably will..."

The truth was that right then I never wanted to see any of them again in my life. Turning back to Pacem I hugged him so I wouldn't be that asshole who leaves somebody with outstretched arms hanging, "You promised," I said.

"Promised what?"

I'm pretty proud of not flat-out decking him right there. It was just the last straw after a whole summer of passive aggressive bullshit from somebody who I had relied on to back me up and help me out.

I walked back into the house and Joker's friend followed me. "Who were those guys?"

"People who lived here."

"Aren't they going to help us out?"

"Apparently not."

"That blond kid, you knew him well?"

I shrugged. What am I suppose to say other than 'I thought I did.'

"He seemed like a real asshole."

"Yeah I guess he is."

***

I left this post for months because I didn't want this story to end like this. Pacem was one of my closest friends in AMP. It wasn't that I was even mad at him, it was that I was disappointed that this was who he turned out to be.

We talked briefly only about business a few times over the next while in the course of wrapping up the house stuff. It was not until six months later when I had had yet another stupid boy-related adventure that I was upset about that we wound up striking up a serious conversation.

"I've been..." he pauses, "working through some stuff. I'm really sorry that I took it out on you."

I use to hear stories like this from my friends and tell them they're crazy to forgive people like this, but I guess if all people were held to those standards I'd be shit out of luck myself.

"I'm sorry too."

Childhood Dreams

"That's a lot of ice cream," one of my coworkers informs me as I come back to the dinner table.

"Yeah, it's fun."

I get a blank look.

"You know, to make a giant cone of ice cream. That was my ambition as a kid. People asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I use to say I wanted to run the ice cream machine at McDonalds and make giant cones for all the kids."

"What?"

I shrugged, "I was like five."

"What did your parents think?"

"They wanted me to pursue something a little more ambitious." I paused to take a bite of the cone, "Some people are really bent out of shape about never achieving their childhood dreams but really I'm not. I was a pretty dumb kid."

There was an awkward silence and I could feel my baffled coworker's eyes on me.

"When I was little," Petar offered, "I wanted to be the garbage man."

"What is with you people? That isn't normal."

"Well, you get to ride around hanging off the back of a garbage truck... and I thought that was pretty cool."

"You didn't play like... astronaut or something?"

"No," Mace added, "although I did run around my house screaming 'reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!' as loudly as I could."

"Why?"

"Well, when I was little I wanted to grow up to be a firetruck."

Piano Man

"Pika!"

I blink.

"Do you know who I am?"

I've never been good with names. The boy in front of me is 15 with shaggy brown hair and little round Harry Potter glasses. I couldn't work out if he was partially Asian or not, and he moved in long fluid movements that seemed unusual but still graceful.

"No?" Straightening his arms, he dropped them back and leaned forward. In a few steps he gained the speed to jump up onto a short brick wall where he stood, as if considering what to do next, "Well I'm not too important anyway. You're super cool, you have super cool stuff to worry about."

This is how I met Urza. I did it a few times actually because, in the sea of faces, I wouldn't remember the previous encounter until we were half-way through the next, each a near-perfect replica of the last.

***

I had resisted freshman hazing, and my social standing with my lunch group freshman year was tenuous at best, so I rapidly started looking for other places to spend time time where I was both out of the way and unlikely to become somebody's punching bag. He was locked in a practice room in the music building. The fluidness translated into the way he was playing, and he rocked a little back and forth with the music.

"Sing with me."

I'd never heard Piano Man by Billy Joel before, but soon it became a regular song that I would sing and he would play nearly every day we spent lunch together.

***

The grace was infuriating. I grabbed at the book in his hands, but now he was standing another foot back. I reached to find it was now over my head. I jumped to find he had swung it behind his back. I have met many people who actually do martial arts, but Urza will always stand out as the guy who exuded this feeling of being that sensei who just melts through physical reality while the rest of us stagger after him.

"Music theory," he says, holding the book out in front of me again to open it and begin reading my homework. "Oh, very good. You're much better than me." I grabbed at the book to find him perched upon the same little brick wall of the library where he introduced himself. His eyes never seemed to leave the page. "Crazy skills, you've got," he nods, "crazy awesome."

***

That was how Urza was about everything. Nothing ever seemed hard for him. He always had a girlfriend, he was never stressed out about homework, and he could make a piano sing, but when mentioned he would always put himself down and say he was nothing. It was difficult to be angry at him because his eternal response to an insult was to agree with you and, still sporting a giant grin, begin describing all of the horrendous things he deserved for being such a wretched person. He also had an infuriating knack for understanding how people tick, a thing I prided and thought myself unique for at that age.

It hadn't occurred to me that nobody understood how he ticked. It was difficult to tell when he was toying with me and when he was genuine (not to say he was ever not doing both), but over time his statements became progressively more alarming to paint a picture of him depressed and lonely. He could influence people to try to help them, but he would constantly feel responsible for the consequences. If he didn't protect them he felt responsible too. Furthermore, he could make anybody like a projection of him by acting but it simply left him close to people who weren't close to him because they had no idea who he actually was.

"I'm going to tell your parents and they'll take you to a psychologist to get help," I said.

"Then we won't be friends anymore."

"But he'll make you better."

"Nonsense, I've been taken there tons of times before. The exams are very obvious, just like a person. All you need to do is figure out how to say what they want to hear and they send you home with a clean bill of health."

***

"Do you think of yourself as attractive?" the scantron sheet asked.

I found myself lying on my exams too. I think this is why the song Piano Man appealed so strongly to the both of us: we could feel the weight of the decisions we had made and the paths we had not taken.

"I wish I could play like you," I said.

"You could, if you would put the time in. You could be crazy good."

***

Urza and I rapidly reached a comfortable mental place where we could communicate without a hassle. I think we both found it odd to be heard as well as able to hear. I probably spent more time with him than I did with anybody else during highschool, and he pulled me out of more scrapes than I can name. To some degree he civilized me and taught me how people from normal families lived. My siblings were certainly grateful for the cooking lessons he provided. He also stabilized my mother by threatening to let me live in his house when she threw me out.

When he was a freshman in college and I in my senior year of high school it became difficult. We spent less and less time online at the same time but when I moved to a new timezone for my freshman year we almost totally lost contact.

I visited once in the summer after my freshman year. Sitting with him, cuddled up on the couch or sprawled out on the trampoline in his yard, was strange now. In high school the understanding was too close for complicated implications to have spoiled things, but now we were playing this awkward dance of being sure to respect one-another's personal space because it was difficult to sense comfort levels.

When I came back for Thanksgiving to say goodbye to my grandma we almost missed each other completely, but eventually we both carved out time for the night before my flight back. It is alarming to see one another as adults when I still partly think of him as the kid who nearly lit his house on fire by lighting bottle rockets then throwing them random directions on the fourth of July.

We sit and talk and talk and talk. He and his girlfriend have a bird named Jake, and we bring it out of its cage to the adjacent guest bed and sit there for hours to talk. I have to pry everything out of him because he still thinks his life is uninteresting and trivial, but he's found genuine happiness and stability in it. He smiles at my stories and my ambitions. It took me ages in highschool to believe the words were not sarcastic, "You're crazy awesome Pika, you live a crazy awesome life." We're still very close, but somehow we have failed to make time for each other. And I thought I had regrets when I was 14.

***

"What's that?" I asked him. I was 16, and he was 17.

"New piece," he responds, rolling with the chords, "the second of three Argentinian dances."

"You play harder stuff than this."

"No this is hard. It can not be rushed."

***

When they started playing the piano at Prism House I left the library to sit at the foot of it, just like old times. I arrived to realize I had nothing to say and did not know this piano player, so I pretended the whole thing had been an elaborate motion to get another beer and went back to the library.

The pianist was hurrying through a rendition of the song from Charlie Brown's Christmas. He was very technically skilled and hitting all the keys, but you could hear the personality difference in the way he played.

"Man, I hate when people rush a piece," I said to Dreamer, who was sitting beside me.

"Uh-huh."

***

The lights flip on and I blink awake. Urza's over by the light, grinning at me, "You fell asleep in the middle of a sentence about a road trip you're planning in Prague."

"Oh...sorry."

He laughs and hands me my hairbrush, "Nah, it's great to see you excited about things. Come on, we have to get you to the airport. You can finish telling me all about it on the way. I can't wait to hear how it ends."

Lot of 10 knives...

I didn't really understand it until I saw the ebay listing Carlos gave me. They sell them by the pound, or in lots of completely identical knives. Other stores simply have "grab bags."

While the TSA may not be the most vigilant organization, they do confiscate a lot of stuff. Apparently in 2006 over 13 million items were confiscated. Atlanta apparently pulls in about 1000 pounds of contraband a month. These are not items which frantic travelers pitched into the trash cans before security checkpoints, these are items which a guard found and had to remove from the luggage of a traveler. Such items include...

Regional interests

• Agencies who collect near Florida complain of an excess of fake children's plastic swords from the Disney theme parks
• An agency who deals with Kentucky says they have collected 500 mini Louisville Slugger bats bought at the Louisville Slugger Museum

Generally humorous things

• Stolen silverware from restaurants
  
• A chainsaw
• A bowling pin
• "A few circular saws"
• Fuzzy hand cuffs and various other S&M accessories
• An auto transmission
• Sausage grinder
• Large artificial palm tree
• 18-inch mounted fishing hook

These way these items are handled varies state to state, but the general formula is about the same. The TSA doesn't directly make any money off this, as a matter of fact a lot of the material is hauled away by contractor Science Application International, who has a 17 million over five year contract where they are payed to deal with the excess or unwanted material. Most of that consists of liquids and other things which can't be resold or donated. Firearms and weapons considered particularly dangerous are turned over to law enforcement.

"Believe me, just about everyone in Arkansas who wants a scissor has been given one over the last three years,"

James Smith Jr. manages one of the agencies in Arkansas which handles the more valuable items in 60 airports for 20 states. His agency, like most, it is required by law to try to spend a year trying to donate the supplies to governmental agencies and approved charities. Some of it is a touch heartwarming: scissors for school kids, mace for training policemen and the like. The rest is sold on a GSA-run website. The GSA and the state split the profits.

Some of the agencies get rather creative in their salesmanship.

"We've received hundreds of pairs of fuzzy handcuffs and other S&M paraphernalia — I wanted to create funny Valentine's Day kits, but folks here thought taxpayers wouldn't like it."

Other themes have successfully been made into kits. Ebay shows supplies for a "women's fashion emergency" kit and a Pennsylvanian agency sells a one-package solution for deer-hunting.

"I'd love to go to eBay, because we'd make a tremendous amount more... my hands are tied by state law."

Smith and many others are tied to rather bizarre distribution methods. Many are required by law to use a special government only auction system. Maryland centers literally pack boxes of stuff in a warehouse and sell items by the pound to whoever comes by with a truck. The confiscated items wind up on ebay via small resellers who frequently break up the bulk a bit.

The MSNBC article listed a number of ebay sellers from Alabama, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. A current selection of what those sellers are offering can be located here. As more people locate those resellers and email their usernames to me the list should grow. Even at these low prices for lots the ebay sellers are making a tidy profit: 50 bucks for 50 pounds of knives is a usual deal for the Maryland warehouse where many buy the items in bulk. This seems like quite a business to get in to.

Happy hunting!