Slapshot fatlip

Dear Kristie,

Man it has been years. I keep meaning to get out to one of your fights or atleast touch base with you but I think I am suffering from acute social retardation. I know you are a freakishly busy lady as well so that doesn’t help. I am sure it will happen at some point, just a matter of when.

I can’t remember exactly when I first met you, but I am willing to bet it was shooting hockey pucks on the street. The first thing I though was “is that a girl out there shooting?!” the second thought was “holy shit, that broad can skate!”. I was always a fairly terrible skater and puck handler, like Frankenstein on wheels. But I remember playing around with you pretty much forced me to be better. I also recall living vicariously through your hockey play exploits as there was no way I could play given my lack of experience in the game. I remember us working on your wrist and slap shot, not to mention shooting hoops, chopping wood, tossing a baseball around, pretty much any kind of sport like activity. It was a pretty good time from what I can recall.

I think I pretty much lost track of you in highschool. We moved, and then I started to go to central a lot. Then I graduated and ran from Parchment like it was on fire. BUT, I did follow you from afar. Even though the internet was just really getting wide acceptance I remember one of my first searches in google (after I gave up on altavista) was for “Kristie Tafil + Hockey”. I think you were playing in Minnesota, and I remember being surprise that you weren’t playing for the men’s team. The way you used to make those kids fall over at the Annex made me fairly certain there was no way you weren’t going to do the same to them at the higher levels. But well, sexism being what it is, I kinda knew that it was unlikely. Frankly, I think it was kind of unfair to the other ladies you were playing with. If you could push a guy my size on his ass that easily, one shutters to think what would happen to a 5’ 120lb lady. I talked a lot about hockey and sports because I cannot think of them without you being part of that thought.

I know it probably all sounds corny, but after talking to you recently I had a pretty big sense of pride in you. After all the shit you have been through, and all the millions of hurdles in your way, you have become quite an admirable person, though I think I never doubted that would happen. It seemed very fitting to me that you now work for KPS, and I remember when I was heading through parchment one day, and I was certain I saw you in a squad car, my first though was that it probably wasn’t you. But then, I though OFCOURSE it was you!

We have chatted a little on here, but I assume unlike me, your live is busy doing more meaningful things than hanging out on fb. In either case I am going to send you my email address, and badger you for yours. One way or another we will get together and play the remember when game, and you can fill me in on all the cool shit you have done over the years.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

MiniMonkey HO!

Hey Zach,

My ol’ minimonkey assistant. You are probably the youngest friend I have on here, and a guy that is rather savvy on the interwebs, so that means a few things. One: even when I unfriend you if you wanted to track me down I could not escape even if I were so inclined. Two: You are constantly meeting oodles of people so one friend off your facebook profile will have very little effect. And finally 3: I met you earlier on in your life, so I may have done just enough damage to your brain to give you a hankering for it for the rest of your days.

You being young also makes it difficult to tell how smart you are. I mean you pick things up like you have been doing it for years, and you talk and carry yourself in much the same manner as friends of mine who are twice your age. At this point I just assume that is how they are making kids, well one half of them anyways. That is the other thing, so many kids I meet lately are morons. I mean the level of brazen stupidity amongst the kids I encounter makes me want to move into the woods and build a bunker to avoid the inevitable apocalypse that will happen when one of them gets elected to higher office. On the bright side it makes you look like Einstien/Dalai Lama. Which may be accurate, I guess we will just have to see.

I know you are like in the jungles of Thailand right now, doing your thing so you may not get this, but I will probably see you on gchat and give you the link anywho. I am already following your blog and keeping up with stuff there, and obviously you are ever-present in my gchat, so yeah. You get the boot, but well you know where I be.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

It's a Jersey thing

Dear Ann Marie,

You and Matt are gittin’ hitched! Now I have to admit when I first heard about this my reaction was “aren’t they already?” this is not because I haven’t been paying attention, but more that I just assumed marriage had happened while you guys were sleeping or something, like by osmosis or some such.

When I first met you I was uber apprehensive. Matt means a whole hell of a lot to me, and I have a tendency to be disliked universally by my friends girlfriends. I guess it is mostly due to me being an asshat, so I just had to kind of cross my fingers and hope.

I will say first off that it wasn’t a true test of my abilities as your accent immediately disarmed me. It’s funny when they do Jersey accents on tv they are grating and annoying for the most part. But yours was just pure charm. I know that is a rather shallow thing for me to say, but I am willing to admit I have a weakness for accents, and I assume most people do.

That being set aside, the way you reflected in Matt. I have known the guy for a spell, and with the time he had been gone I had kind of crystallized his memory in my head, so when I saw him again with you there was a noticeable tint to his personality. I was already pretty sold on Matt, but the softening in his character wears well on him.

You are incredibly funny, and also in possession of a great character…not to say you are a character, but I am fairly sure you played off some of that character for the little spell I got to hang around you. You and I never connected on here really, but since you are getting all hitched to my buddy, you are irreparably linked to me for the foreseeable so, unfriending is no biggie. All that said, I loath me some weddings, but I am going to try my damnedest to get out there to see you guys get it done. Even if I do miss the chance I will definitely be visiting you all sometime in the near future, I need to try me some more NY soonish, after all, you guys are there, and there is pizza everywhere.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Swashbuckled

Dear Sarah,

I am pretty sure you are the only member of the Lee’s Honor College to speak to me, ever. Not that the rest of my friends are stupid, far from it, but one would expect a person of you education to have better sense when it comes to choosing who you talk to. I have to admit being in class together was a pretty big bright spot for me. It was kind of like talking to someone from another country. I know that sounds weird, but your personality, diligence, intelligence and candor coupled with your freakish interest in honest-to-goodness nerdy stuff blew my mind.

Girls claiming to be nerdy has become so pervasive that memes have sprouted up mocking the trend. But you my dear, you are a nerd in the best possible sense. You are smart and dedicated to your studies and potential career. Your interests include; dressing up in fancy garments, helping out illin’ varmints, and climbing faux summits. You like sci-fi, you wear functional clothing, you laugh and smile with abandon. These things to me put you in the highest order of nerd, which is a distinction worth respect.

I was pretty damn nerdy myself growing up, sadly I have become far too traditional these days to still lay claim to the title. But its meeting people like you that give me wonderful flashes of what it was like, and make the posers with their ironic shirts, huge glasses, skinny jeans and sissy hair seem all that more ridiculous. I will greatly miss following your news feed as I have enjoyed many of the items you have posted, but hopefully we can find another way for me to steal some of your awesomeness.

In anycase I assume someday your maker movement personality will take over and you will be building and curating some massive collection of the worlds coolest shit. This is obviously not to mention the skills you possess as an artist, which as always are rather stunning.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Rawrrawr...er hem.

Dear Sarah,

Whup Dude! SO, way back in the school days, I remember distinctly seeing your drawing of a spider, and one of a Marlboro pack. They were dark, and aggressive, and pretty awesome. Much like your cohorts of the Coven, you are fairly impossible to nail down for any significant amount of time. You out in public life seems such a strange contrast from what I remember in school. You almost always seemed about half asleep, and barely present. Now knowing a little about your social life, it all becomes clear. But back then I just assumed you were the typical, apathetic, gloomy art student. Your work seemed to back this up, at least the gloomy part.

You have this kind of dynamic energy to you. Obviously these are just my impressions, which are admittedly limited, but here we go. I think first of all most of the magnetism your personality displays has something to do with that aggression in your art work. When you talk and interact you are fast and sleek, quick with laughter, but it always has a kind of hidden meaning to it. One never quite knows if you are laughing with them or at them. That kind of uncertainty tends to draw me in. I like a challenge in conversation, and more often than not you seem more than fit for the task of verbal combat.

I have probably spend more time seeing you float around a room than actually talking to you. You tend to sprinkle the room with conversation, like a permanent hostess to a party that is everywhere. I know I will be around this again and again, but it never really stops being entertaining, if not occasionally frightening.

Our Facebook interactions have been fairly tame as can be expected in contrast to the IRL talking. I like seeing what the coven is up to and as you are the last on my list of the group I will no longer be privy to all your various escapades. I guess this means I will have to go out more to witness them in the first person, and I am pretty ok with that. I fully expect the entire Coven to show up at the Unfriending Party in October, since given the rather pedestrian nature of most of my friends we will need a little spice to the mix.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Flutterby

Dear Caitlin,

While immediately I am not too worried about removing you from my Facebook because I see you fairly frequently, I know it is probably only a matter of time before you quit this town and disappear. This gives me pause, but all the same, everyone has a time, and yours is today.

I first saw you when you used to come in to the café in the am. I am now assuming this was before class. I never spoke to you because you always seems so immersed in your work. I thought at the time that you were just really diligent in your studies, but as you have now informed me most of the time it was cramming, which endeared you to me a little more.

I didn’t speak to you until I saw you with Sarah, so I had an excuse to be cavalier about meeting someone new. If I remember correctly its was a brief encounter, but the tone was set, and now I was free to nod at you to my heart’s content whenever I saw you around.

You are a hard one to sum up. Everytime I have come into contact with you, you seem like you have somewhere to be, as if you are constantly in high demand elsewhere. Conversely, you always seem eager to converse, and when I am talking to you, you seem 100% engaged in the conversation. For a guy like me it’s a flummoxing experience. I am the type of guy who gets all butt-hurt when someone answers their phone while I am talking to them. As antiquated as that feeling might be these days, I can’t really help myself. The overall effect of this is that I never quite know what to do with my hands when I am talking to you. I fidget, and talk in spurts of babble, and oneliners as the next moment you may have to rush off somewhere else. What this ends up meaning is, when we see one another it is just a download of random information and pleasantries, then it is off to something else.

The impression I get from you is that you are a fiercely caring, and warm person. You clearly put others before yourself time and time again, and your world view is of the “most people are inherently good” vein. When I have managed to corner you for a more dedicated conversation, the feeling I get is that I am the only person in the world, and that you are honestly interested in what I am saying, and what that means. It is sort of intoxicating as conversation goes, kind of makes it tough to walk away from when all is said and done. I have stretched out conversations with you that I should have let die, because you had somewhere else to be, it’s embarrassing for me to be that interested in talking, but I am ok with it.

In either case it has been interesting, and I am sure that I will continue to see you about town for the time being, now I just have to make an effort to actually talk to you in a manner that is more conducive to my method of communicating. Perhaps flash cards?

Our facebook interaction has been more or less the typical “hey whattayadoin” half drunken nonsense I have come to expect from myself, so I assume we can both live without that. I have other means of contacting you, so the loss is not too traumatic.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Crawfish still scare me.

Dear Rachael,

I debated whether or not I should write this as it seems that everyone down there in NOLA has no idea what this whole thing is. But instead I will try to first summarize the idea, then proceed with the unfriending. I have given up on facebook, and I am getting rid of my account. I wanted a way to do so that would encourage friends on my list to find alternative ways to keep in contact, or if nothing show them that I wasn’t unfriending them for anything they did, or hard feelings or what not. Its just a thing, its silly in a lot of ways, but as sincere as I could make it.

That being said, I have the benefit of having Timothy as a connection between you and I. So long as Timothy and I are buddies, so shall we be (I am willing to wager that isn’t terribly comforting, but well, I do what I can:).

When I first heard Timothy was married I kind of took a step back. Not to say I never thought him as the marrying type, it is just that it was kind of an indicator / wake up call for how long it had been since I had spoken to him. In that time he had managed not only to meet a lady he loved, but one that he loved so much as to make it official. No matter who it is, that is a big step in one’s life so I knew I had to meet you.

I assume before we met Timothy did his best to prepare you for what I am like. It is always a crap shoot with me whether or not I will be liked. I have a personality that tends to rub some people the wrong way, and a lot of those traits are amplified when I am around Timothy because I feel more comfortable with myself. First and foremost I have to say you are leaps and bounds the nicest person I have met south of the Mason-Dixon line. I have heard so much about southern hospitality, but more often than not it was a sarcastic reference to the backwards nature of exchanges between Yankees and southerners.

The first visit I came down there I was a fucking bitchy, whiney mess. You by all means should have just told me to go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut, but instead you did your best to make sure I was comfortable. Dispite what I assume must have been a trying experience of having some dude all moaning and miserable on your couch for a few days, you made it look effortless.

You have provided me with countless laughs, and ofcourse beverages. You helped me branch out a little in the exploration of the French Quarter (well as far as I could handle anyways) and you were a phenomenal representative for your home. I do hope to make it down there again (perhaps when the heat won’t peel the flesh from my bones) and maybe do a better job of being a visitor. While for the most part I haven’t seen many things on your news feed that are relatable to me, your postings about people you care about in trouble speaks volumes to how much you care for those close to you. I hope that someday I will be able to be part of that circle, even if it is from a distance.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Comms Superiority

Dear Sean,

I wonder if you have taken over the Comms. world yet? The first thing I noticed about you when I started working for STAND was that you were universally liked by everyone. Being myself a somewhat polarizing character I always find this phenomena rather amazing. Most people tend to either really like me, or really dislike me. Though over the years I think I have become more of a “meh” on the feelings scale to most folks since I have toned down my antics. Once I did finally meet you in person I got it though. You are diligent in your work, crass when the situation warrants it, and above all a person that focuses on the needs of others over your own.

While I tend to see people with those traits as having dubious motivations for their behavior, you came off as completely genuine. I did not work with you nearly as much as I did the ladies, but while working with them you were one of the only areas where consensus was as much a given as a period at the end of a sentence. We would argue our way through materials, plans, and opinions, but when all that was finished it was off to Sean, like putting a baby to sleep.

I do miss the good ol’ days of STAND as I have said countless times, but it could be a nightmare somedays, and thankfully you were around to make at least one thing simpler. I have not seen much on your facebook which didn’t pertain to one cause or another and I think that again speaks to your concern for others. Most of us have a news feed clogged with copious amounts of self-centered “me me me” posts and the myriad of ham-fisted attempts at validation for our actions. I am sure you aren’t a superhuman, but you certainly make a good case for Facebook being used appropriately.

I don’t think I have chatted with you on facebook since STAND but, I always have you in my gchat list for whenever I need help with something. Really, if it wasn’t for the slew of you STANDanistas populating my google account, who would I turn too? Either way, I will continue to follow your career, and hopefully someday work with you again someday to give some merit to the little pictures I make for a living.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Yup, whatever dude.

Hey Chunky!

You are by far the most consistently NO BULLSHIT human being I have ever come across. You do not mince words, and are funny as fuck when you want to be. I remember first meeting you when I was working with Dave doing landscaping and catch all construction stuff. He said “Tomorrow you are gonna be working with this guy Chunky that works with us from time to time, just a heads up.” I remember hearing the nickname and picturing in my head some Neanderthal hayseed with a tendency towards violence and sister fucking. So you can understand my surprise when I met you in person. Working with you was pretty awesome. Most guys who work with their hands fall into three categories; Hardass,Slacker, and Grunt. The Hardass is the type of guy who always is always sweating and more often than not pissed off. He will bitch consistently about the efforts of others and frequently is the one who ends up walking off the job due to the “lack of professionalism” of the other members of the crew. The Slacker also bitches about the efforts of others but usually in the “slow down dude, we are getting paid by the hour”. Where the Hardass lives by the motto “do it my way as it is the right way” the slacker constantly experiments with the tried and true methods to try to find the way to do something that is the absolute minimum effort. This often results in more time spent experimenting than actually working. The Hardass spends so much time making sure everything is done his way that he often ends up being a middle management figure, as opposed to being a productive worker. The Grunt is for the most part in the middle and does a bulk of the work. I think you fall into this latter category. You will let the Slacker and the Hardass run their mouths all they want, but at the end of the day you know how to get your shit finished, and their horseshit is basically background noise, like the ever-present 80’s / 90’s rock music. You do this in part I believe because you know full well that this fucking job ain’t your life. It’s a job, when you are done with the days work there is beer and relaxing to be had, so who gives a shit about bitching and splitting hairs. Not to say you never bitched. We all do our fair share of bitching. But from what I noticed the only time you bitched is when one of the other two types started fucking with your workflow. I kind of picture the phrase “Take your bullshit somewhere else, I am trying to work here” coming out of you frequently.

Aside from that you and I have had quite a few good counter chats, and every time I see you I feel like talking to you, which might not sound like much, but trust me it’s kind of a big deal in my world. Our Facebook relations have been more or less nonexistent, which is as it should be. I prefer catching up to you in person, and facebook seems kind of laughable in comparison. All that said, I will certainly see you around town, and hopefully smoke and coffee some more in the years to come.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt