{"id":2318,"date":"2012-01-21T00:23:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/?p=2318"},"modified":"2012-01-21T00:24:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:24:55","slug":"the-green-turtle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/the-green-turtle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Green Turtle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
This green turtle is a representative image of something that is the intellectual property of someone else, but which i have appropriated under fair-use as a tool to get you to keep reading. Our response to SOPA and PIPA yesterday may have permitted me to continue to pirate this intellectual property and continue to reap huge illicit profits. Actual IP owner is Halloween Costume Ideas. Sue me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey say creative destruction is a process by which capitalism selectively destroys things,\u201d I said to the enormous green turtle, who was standing in front of the new building across North Glebe Road and gesturing to the oncoming traffic.
\n\u201cWhat?\u201d said the turtle, voice muffled by the green fabric of the costume. I moved a little closer.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike the bar. I am going in there for the first time. How long have you been open?\u201d The Green Turtle is a sports bar that opened on the ground floor of the new building across the street from where I work, and I was sitting looking at mounds of papers on my little circular coffee table when my co-workers marched by at the stroke of five and announced they were headed for the new bar across the street.<\/p>\n

I said I would join them, and began shutting down the office system, which has now become a model of cyber-security, a network so impervious to intrusion that the employees can\u2019t log on. I walked across at mid-block, which I realized at the half-way point was a near sure way to commit suicide in the rush-hour dimness of deep January.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, things prosper and things fail. Like Kodak shutting down after 131 years, and you guys just starting out a new restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am just a bartender,\u201d said the turtle, adjusting its head. \u201cI get to come inside in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is cold,\u201d I said. \u201cI am glad I am not working the pavement. Where are people supposed to park?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the building, I guess,\u201d said the muffled voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you a girl turtle?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I am a cold woman,\u201d said the voice, and raised two green hands to lift the headpiece up. I got a glimpse of tawny blonde hair and bright blue eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cCold hands, warm heart,\u201d I said as the turtle-head dropped down.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know the half of it,\u201d she said, turning her head slightly so her human eyes could see out the black mesh that covered the apertures of the turtle\u2019s frozen face.
\n\u201cSee you inside,\u201d I said, and the turtle gave me a little wave.<\/p>\n

The restaurant is one of those starkly antiseptic places with plenty of little wooden tables and staff in black Green Turtle t-shirts standing in clusters, no customers to serve. The bar is around the back, and has an assortment of those narrow tables with fixed benches filled with some twenty-something early adopters. There were a few stools in front of the bar, not enough, I thought, hard wood ones, and a woman was munching chicken wings from her perch on one of them.<\/p>\n

My co-workers were playing a video card game that accepted dollar bills but gave nothing back.<\/p>\n

I ordered a pedestrian white wine, kicking myself when I discovered that a modest pour cost $7.50, when apparently the happy hour well drinks were only $2.00.
\nI drank it as the sound bounced off the hard surface of the walls and dozens of flat-screen televisions played either a soccer game or ESPN\u2019s sports center.<\/p>\n

The stool was hard, the sound was irritating, and the bar featured colorful beer-taps that made it difficult to see the bartenders. Amanda was one, and the woman with the chicken wings worked for the Smithsonian and could not wait to retire.
\n\u201cMe too,\u201d I said. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t seem to be in the cards.\u201d<\/p>\n

She might have wanted to talk, but I did not want to switch drinks to the loss-leader hard stuff, and decided to walk over to Willow. I put on my coat and hoisted my leather satchel on my shoulder as I bade farewell to my co-workers.<\/p>\n

It was full dark when I got back on the street and traffic was heavy. The Turtle was gone, and I hoped she was warm.<\/p>\n

I contemplated crossing at mid-block, but it might have been fatal. I walked up to the crosswalk at Fairfax Drive and dodged the commuters who were waiting for the light with their cars across the wide white bands of paint where the pedestrians were supposed to walk.<\/p>\n

The breeze was chilly and I shrugged my scarf up around my neck as I trudged along. Willow beckoned two blocks up, a warm orange glow emanating from the window.<\/p>\n

I tugged the door open and saw Old Jim at his usual spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just about to leave,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one here tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked up the bar, which was mostly full. Jerry the Attorney was attacking a salmon kebob, and he was flanked by a pert brunette with an enormous diamond on her ring-finger. \u201cStill a pretty good crowd, even if it isn\u2019t our crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

I took off my coat and hung the satchel on one of the hooks under the bar where the women stash their purses. The chair was comfortable, I realized, with just enough padding to welcome my butt. Liz-S was behind the bar, and Jasper was working and not hanging out on the civilian side of the heavy dark wood. A glass of $5 happy hour white appeared, and I realized how warm and comfortable Tracy O\u2019Grady\u2019s place is.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stopped at that new sports bar on the way over,\u201d I said, a little embarrassed at my infidelity. Jim snorted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you think?\u201d he growled. \u201cI never met a bar I couldn\u2019t like on some level.\u201d
\n\u2018Too new, too young, too loud, and not right,\u201d I said. I sipped the wine with satisfaction. \u201cIt is sort of like the Three Bears porridge. Cute turtle, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t care for them, myself,\u201d he said and took a pull on his Bud long-neck. We bantered with Jerry about legal crap he was doing and discovered the woman with the huge rock was from Omena, Michigan, a hamlet north of Traverse City on the Leelanau Peninsula. She was astonished that anyone in Washington had heard of the place, and a woman on the other side of Jim looked up suddenly from her hand-held device and informed us that she had just been stood up by text for an internet date.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you hear about Kodak declaring bankruptcy?\u201d asked Jim, after we talked Michigan geography with the outstretched palms of our hands, and commiserated about the lack of civility in on-line romance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, the world turned upside down. My Uncle used to work for them. He did some work on the very first digital cameras, the technology they invented but wound up eating their lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you get a picture of the turtle?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

I took another satisfying sip of wine, happy to be in the place I was supposed to be. \u201cNo, I didn\u2019t. I imagine that would have been a Kodak moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jim scowled. \u201cGet \u2018em while you can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThey say creative destruction is a process by which capitalism selectively destroys things,\u201d I said to the enormous green turtle, who was standing in front of the new building across North Glebe Road and gesturing to the oncoming traffic. \u201cWhat?\u201d said the turtle, voice muffled by the green fabric of the costume. I moved a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2318"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}