In May 2016 this cover appealed to me for several reasons. I like the artist I like the art I like the subject summed up so well in a clean attractive package.
In February 2019 I can add a few more reasons this image appeals to me as I slowly roll around an amazing 700 acre campus on an electric assist bathtub making my way from place to place picking a line through thousands of college kids staring and their fucking phones. I have a carabiner full of keys clipped near my right front belt loop and unique perspective on the ivory tower as well as a behind the scenes pass to visit the not so scenic underbelly and daily nitty gritty of a very large university.
30 years ago I was a clueless college kid with some half baked ideas of what a college education would mean to people out in the real world. I now know what it means to me and I don’t give a shit what it means to other people and I know what I want to be when I grow up
I wanna be free
I wanna be free to do what I wanna do
I wanna be free to ride
I wanna be free to ride my machine without being hassled by the man
And I wanna get loaded
fucking forks in the road (ffitr)
1990 Unpaid Internship
One semester at the Gallagher-Widmeyer Group in Washington DC. they offered me a job as soon as I graduated and I said "no thank you. DC is not for me"
1991 Unpaid Internship Offer
full-time unpaid internship at a PR firm in Bellevue. I turned it down so I could continue my grocery store deli job and continue to pay the rent
1992 Interview for Internship
I slept through it, as in, I woke up hours after I my interview was scheduled
1993 Application for Internship
I was in contact with a bigwig Anthropology professor at WSU about archaeology research blah blah blah. He called me and got my machine, as in, answering machine with the cute little cassette tapes and the message on the tape was Mudhoney's sample of the Wild Angels speech. Professor said "the first thing you need to do is change that message" and I never returned his call
1997 Graduate School
I got accepted to a Masters in Teaching program and got a job as a bike messenger in the spring to work through the summer and start school full-time in the fall. When I received my financial aid statement and saw the bottom line on the loan I blew off grad school and worked as a bike messenger on and off and on and off until 2010.
Wow. This sequence of events isn't too far away from my own series of forks in the road. Thanks for keeping it real Mark. For real, really.
Good to run into you the other day. Hope the Thai food was tasty.
