Kinko's
January 28, 2002


Blah. The problem with Kinko's is that I end up staring into space a lot. My brain sort of freezes up when I enter this place. The bleak, grey, flourescent environment might have something to do with it. And the same Radiohead CD playing every evening I come in. No stimulation that I'm at all interested in enjoying makes me curl up inside my head and want to go to sleep.

You see a lot of musicians at the Kinko's, photocopying fliers, making advertisements on the computers, and creating their album art. They stand out against the bland corporate background. To style at Kinko's you wear a grey t-shirt and blue jeans. And don't look happy. Just look at your photocopier or computer and remain quiet. It's like the library, but with the air of learning replaced with the air of doing some repetative action you'd rather not be doing. And no books except the dictionary and thesaurus that used to sit on the table I'm sitting at right now but have dissappeared recently. And the guides to using the computers.

So Kinko's offers free ethernet access to the Internet if you bring your own laptop; that's why I come. I found this out while in California a few months ago, and it proved enormously useful while on the road. Now that I can't get on the net from home anymore, I'm back to frequenting the Kinko's once an evening (at most). My procedure: set some mp3s up for download, grab my mail and respond to what I feel like responding to, mindlessly browse the web for a few minutes, write a Blog or four, maybe tinker with Flogger, stare at my sexy reflection in the window, use the restroom, watch the people at the photocopiers, and get progressively sleepier until I decide I have enough mp3s for the night and have wasted enough of my day in this mostly hideous place.