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Red Light Special

January 18, 2010

I swung around with my elbow high and nearly hit the guy in the face.

He was a youngish guy, maybe thirty or so, with a nice tan. His hair was cut very short and his tee shirt said, “Yankees Suck.”

“You okay?” he said, following me to the locker.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Your American.”

“I’m American,” he said. “True story.”

American military, actually. Stationed somewhere in Italy. Came to Amsterdam for leave, he told me later.

I came to locker 205. I had left the key in there, but I had also closed it, so to anybody with a thievery on the mind would have thought it was just another vacant locker. I opened it. Inside was a small black cell phone. I couldn’t wait to get someplace quiet and go through the phone’s memory. Call logs, message logs, stored phone numbers and addresses.

“Did you get everything back?” he said, eyeballing my phone.

“From that troll? Yeah, he only took my bag.” The phone was setup in English, but I quickly discovered its contents were empty. It was either a brand new phone or one that had been wiped clean. I supposed I was meant to wait for it to ring. I made sure the ring was on and the phone was set to vibrate as well, and I put in my front pocket.

“You might want to double-check your stuff,” the American said. “Sometimes they steal from what they’ve stolen in case people actually give them a run.”

I knelt down and zipped the bag open. “Shit,” I said. “My sneakers. I bought a pair of Nike’s, which I never do because I’m not exactly a marathon man. Shit.”

“If you want I’ll take you to your hotel. Make sure you get there all right.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m fine.” I said. “I’ll just get a cab. It’s not like he took the sneakers off my feet. You don’t need to be wasting your time or anything.”

“I have nothing better to do,” he said. “I mean, right this second I don’t.”

“Well, I could use some directions,” I said. “I’m still acclimating to the sights and sounds of the city.”

Specialist Gryph offered to take me through the famed Red Light District before we caught the bus to my hotel. I said my interest was very low, but he assured me it was on our way. I was surprised how busy and bustling Amsterdam was – considering it was January. Not exactly the high season. But there were certainly plenty of people – both residents and tourists. So I presumed. It was nice to have a guide, but Gryph was a speed walker. I wanted to soak it all in but my mind couldn’t keep up. Every sign stole more attention than they had any right to. Something about the combinations of familiar corporate logos with a smattering of English words and non-familiar logos with completely familiar English phrases made me feel like I had been transported to some alternate reality. Coca Cola verfrist U het best. Sapphr – Dress to Impress. The connection between my eyes and my brain seemed horribly outdated.

At one point Gryph had to grab me by the waist and pull me onto the sidewalk to avoid getting run over by a bus with an interesting advertisement for American Express – I don’t remember the words but the photograph was of a funeral and the coffin was shaped like an owl.

When we crossed into the Red Light District Gryph was busy pointing out some landmarks I should’ve been paying closer attention to, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off the infamous windows with women for rent. Think of the streets in Amsterdam like stacks of letter Hs. The parallel sides of the H are the sidewalks, the empty space between is the canal, and the horizontal bar is the bridge. The further we walked down the sidewalk and the further refined and well kept were the buildings, the windows, and even the women.

I had to take a picture.

I didn’t know this was such a faux pas. Gryph certainly didn’t mention it. And I felt a hint that snapping a photo was a bad idea, and I would’ve done it quickly and covertly had this not been the first time I used my new camera. My new digital camera – the one that emptied my savings account – the only savings account I really ever had. Gryph was pointing out a building that looked like it was a reflection of a building in water (I’ll have to go back later to see for myself, as a matter of fact) when he saw Seamus.

Just as I pressed the shutter button, he yelled, “There’s the bastard!”

And he took off running. Seamus had been talking to some kids and holding the pair of Nike’s, and he bolted when he saw Gryph sprinting towards him.

I took the camera down from my face, but couldn’t see where they went so I looked back in the viewfinder.

“Pardon,” somebody said.

I turned and my viewfinder went dark. A big Dutch man with peroxide blonde spikes and orange skin ripped the camera out of my hands and threw it in the canal.

“Shit,” I said. “I would’ve deleted the stupid picture if you wanted.”

“No photos,” he said, receding back against the building.

“Believe me,” I said, “I have no interest in that.” I pointed to the window. The girl scrunched up her face and whacked on the window. The big man crossed his arms. Nobody seemed to think this was a big deal but me. A few tourists looked their noses down at me from behind their maps and guidebooks, as if to say, “You should really have known better.” As their own cameras dangled from their wrists and necks, of course.

I completely lost Gryph and Seamus. The last I saw them in the view finder they turned onto a bridge and disappeared down a side street, but they all looked the same. At least to me, they did. The side streets and the corners. I heard the sound of a small bell and I turned just in time to spot something moving at me to sidestep out of the way. A tall woman on a pink ten-speed bike smiled at me and rolled her eyes back toward tall, blonde, and orange.

Okay, I thought, so I’m not the only one who thinks that man is ridiculous.

I walked in the direction I thought Gryph ran, but I kept a slow pace in case he came back to look for me. Which was far-fetched. He had no obligation to me. What did he care, really? I tried enjoying the sights and sounds and smells but I hadn’t been on the ground for two hours and my sneakers had been stolen, my camera had been tossed into the canal, and I had already made and lost a friend. I wasn’t in the mood somehow.

I wondered, how many cameras were at the bottom of this one canal?

And just as I was at the bottom of the self-pity barrel, my luck began to change.

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Coffee, a croissant, and a shiner.

January 17, 2010

This isn’t what I signed up for. I think I want to come home. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what was supposed to happen.

Before I left the states I received a key in the mail. One of those stumpy keys with a bright blue cylinder on the end. A locker key, I figured. When I arrived the other night at Schiphol the first thing I did was check the airport for any lockers. I couldn’t find any that fit the key type.

Outside I grabbed a coffee and a croissant and a cab.

In the cab on the way to my hotel my driver, Jan (which wasn’t the name on his ID badge, by the way), took one look at the key, held up his forefinger and said, “Ah, Centraal Station.” He banged a U-ie right there on a major road outside the airport, even though we were at a red light, and drove straight to Amsterdam’s transportation hub. The station kind of sits with its back to the water and roads and canals and sidewalks flow out from it like light from a lampshade, so it was a great place to get my bearings. Jan offered to take my bag to my hotel for the price of the trip, but I declined on account that I’m not that naïve.

Anyway, Jan was right about the key. As soon as I walked in I saw small and large banks of lockers, the available lockers with keys like mine stuck in their locks. I found my number, and I wasn’t paying attention, I guess, although when I put my one bag down I did step into the strap so nobody could steal it without a struggle, but as soon as I had the key in the locker I got shoved from behind. A small hairy man with mismatched camouflaged clothes on swiped my bag and made a beeline for the exit. At this point I could have cared less about the ‘adventure’ and the key and I took off running. I mean, I had everything in that one bag. I’m the kind of guy that dreads baggage claim so when I travel I fit it all into my carry-on – my iPod, my e-reader, my clothes, everything. My phone, money and passport were in my front pockets so losing the bag wouldn’t have killed me, but still.

So I chase up to the guy – his legs were pretty short. When I got close I felt like I could be gentle since he was so diminutive. I grabbed the shoulder strap, which sent the fur ball into a tailspin. I caught my bag, he caught his balance, and he took a punch. A pair of his knuckles fit neatly into my right eye socket and it stung like a mother.

I was more surprised that he punched me than anything else. It hadn’t seemed to be going that way after he caught his balance. He looked more scared of me than anything.

“What the fuck did you do that for?”

“You had the key,” he said.

He had a very heavy brogue, so it took me a minute to acclimate to his cadence.

“Why’d you take my bag?”

“You opened the locker,” he said. “You had the key.”

Well, it turned out an Englishman paid Seamus fifty Euros to sit at the station all day waiting for somebody to come and open locker 205. He was only supposed to call a cell phone number the Englishman gave him and report in when the key holder showed up, but he decided he’d be better off taking the bag. Why not, right? What else was there for a fifty year-old street urchin to do? He’d already been paid.

“I didn’t expect you to be an American,” he said. Seamus then said he loved America. Cousins in New York. Bob Dylan, freedom of speech. He went on and on. Believe me, on and on. But that’s neither here nor there.

It started to rain. I left Seamus relating this story to the few passersby that stopped to see what the commotion was all about, while I went in to check out locker 205 – which, by the way, I had left opened. Before I turned the corner down the hall to the locker bank a man grabbed my shoulder.

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Does this theme make me look fat?

January 15, 2010

Do you guys like this layout better?

I think it’s cleaner. And the custom header – although the tree stumps imagery worked nicely, it got old.

The new header is a picture of Amsterdam, which happens to be where I’m working on the puzzle I’m part of. More info to come.

But new look – yea or nay?

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The All-New All-Different Puzzled

January 15, 2010

Knock, knock. Hello? Sorry, hi. Are you dressed? Okay. Well, I’ve come to realize that many of you still check in here occasionally. A surprising amount of you, actually. I haven’t proffered a clue in quite a while, though. Could the interest be in the blog’s soothing palette? Could it be in hopes I’ll spoil another puzzle clue? No, no, I wrote the obit for that aspect of the blog a long time ago. That’s old news. Anyway, you can find those elsewhere, from a much more dependable source. At least the Jumble. I’m not so sure if anybody spoils the Cryptoquip. The Crypto___s usually vary paper to paper so it’s a little bit different anyhow.

So, what is it? Is there a chance you’re concerned for my well-being? Nah, that can’t be it! I’m inside the internet! I’m okay, you’re okay.

Really, I have no clue why anybody stops by. I’m stumped. And that’s not unusual. Long time readers, and anybody else who can read the title at the top of his/her browser, know that I am puzzled daily. Really, I am Puzzled Daily – on a daily basis I am stupefied one way or another. There is no shame in admitting that we live in a complicated world and it’s difficult to understand ourselves, our families, our friends, our governments, etc, etc.

I don’t know if I ever said so, but I hail from the Hub of the Universe (or that’s what my 12th grade Latin teacher called it) – Boston, Massachusetts. I dropped out of college to join the military some years back, and when I returned I went through a very rough patch (patch might be a bit reductive – it was more like a rough quilt than a rough patch, the kind of rough quilt that can tuck Rhode Island in at night).

Now I’m here. On this adventure. I left my Significant Other in the states for the experience of a life time. I can’t really get into it all now, for various reasons, but I have some exciting adventure tales to share and I don’t see why I can’t do that here. I’m on a disposable cell dictating this blog to a friend of mine so nobody can guess what I’m doing. Believe me, they are watching. Confidentiality agreements and all that. Not to mention the spooks.

We all enjoy a good puzzle here, right? Myself and a few others have found ourselves in a kind of real life puzzle and I think you guys will get a kick out of it. Maybe even help me now and then. Give me a leg up in this rat race. All right, I said too much. I got to skedaddle.

Take care,

Puzzled

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Jumble, Saturday October 10 2009

October 10, 2009

HESEP LUTEL VHIALS INLOPP
The shop owner’s donut discount amounted to — “OOOO” OOOO

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SHEEP TULLE LAVISH POPLIN
The shop owner’s donut discount amounted to — “HOLE” SALE