James Joyce Hates You

On the Arch, heroin, milkshakes, and intimidating an NFL badass

2010-01-30T13:07:00.008-05:00

The last time I updated this neglected site was to report on a trip to Indianapolis….there must be something about the Midwest that inspires me to write (the corn? the flat? the mullets?) because I find I have some more to share with you.

On average, St. Louis is less averagey than Indianapolis. Indy has a feeling of bottomless banality, a suburb that just kept growing and growing until it achieved city status. St. Louis is a hardscrabble place that feels real….it clearly had a soul once. Unfortunately where the soul used to be is now mostly heroin.

But first....my trip started with a short train ride to BWI airport. Amtrak has “quiet cars” where all loud conversations are discouraged. I unknowingly ended up in the “cliché car”….nine Japanese tourists spent the entire trip taking photos of each other, no lie. Also, a Hispanic woman birthed three children during the 30-minute ride.*

While in line to board my plane I heard a conversation behind me, from two 50-ish woman with red-dyed, pillowy hair and soft southern accents. After expounding on how new and avant-garde cranberry juice is (?) they provided evidence that science education and gender-selection abortions are not carried out effectively in this country.

Woman 1 – I’m finally taking that Italy trip next year
Woman 2 – Neat. Aren’t they like, a day ahead or behind us or something?
Me – (groan)
Woman 1 – Something like that. Maybe even two days.

Two days!! Two days! Under our current one-sun solar system how on our earth is this even possible? Think of potential ramifications of this. Just one example - Alaska is our western-most state AND our eastern-most state (the Aleutian islands are across the international date line). That means one state could be two days ahead of itself! Think of how much you could get done, just jumping back and forth over that line. You could even plant things to surprise yourself when future you got it two days later. “Hey, where did this delicious seal pie come from (you’re an Aleut, remember)?? Must have been me again!” You could conversely go back two days to attempt to prevent disaster (“Hello, McCain campaign office….DO NOT let him select our governor as your running mate! I know it sounds crazy, but trust me…he’s thinking about it!”).**

Here is your first St. Louis tip – cab service is unpredictable, as is the violence. I’m pretty sure my cabbie took the long way to my destination from the airport (which perhaps was simply the standard tourist drive-around fare-run-up they do). I spent some time at the St. Louis Art Museum (motto: “Really…what else are you going to do here? Drink Budweiser?”). I spoke for awhile here with a pleasant security guard whose first name was “Celebrity.” She moved recently from Los Angeles (nach) and was telling me that the gangs in LA have nothing on the thugs of St. Louis and that St. Louis gangs have fewer border confinements than their LA counterparts. That was reassuring. After spending a few hours looking at corn-, Mississippi river-, and mullet-themed art, I was ready to leave. I called for a cab and waited 50 MINUTES for the thing. Then, later that night after dinner (corn chowder, refinery-tinged bisque, corn-fed beef and jello [corn]), my colleagues and I waited a good 30 minutes for a cab. So….you’ve been warned.

Now…allow me to let you in on a secret…it’s one of the biggest scams propagated in our country since a dead Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected president in 1944. All those pictures you see of the St. Louis Arch, making it look so grand? All the people you’ve talked to who have traveled here and claimed how fascinating it is? All lies! The thing is 24, maybe 25 feet tall, tops….all the photos are a result of camera tricks and forced perspective! When you enter the city you are coerced (under penalty of forced St. Louis residency) to sign a document stating that you “will hold true and constant to the widely-held belief that the Arch is 630 feet tall. If you lead fellow Americans to believe otherwise, the terrorists have won.” So yes, your family and friends have lied to you. But I don’t care…I’m ignoring the threats and the monitoring of electronic communications. The truth must be known! By the way, in spite of its smallness, there is a Starbucks at the top. And a guy selling heroin.

Several years ago in an effort to appear “green,” hotels began to allow you to decline having your linens cleaned every night. This saved them money, and honestly seemed like a good idea. I don’t wash my sheets at home every night, after all. I discovered that Sheratons, or at least the St. Louis Sheraton – again, couched as being “green” – allow you now to even entirely decline maid service. I’m not sure how not making my bed, not wiping my bathroom counter, or not collecting my bloody towels (don’t ask) is somehow reducing carbon emissions, but “green” is in, of course. Putting immigrants out of work is also in, I guess, and I don’t need my room cleaned every day AND they offered a $5 voucher at any in-house merchant if I declined maid service, so I said yes. I mean, no. I declined maid service is what I’m trying to say. Note – this $5 will get you an 8-oz coffee at the in-house Starbucks. Surprised at the cost? Well, how about this fact, which I swear I am not making up – a bowl of cold cereal and glass of juice from room service cost $16. Plus an 18 percent “service charge,” PLUS a $3 delivery fee, neither of which, the menu reminded me, went toward the tip. The guy who delivers it may well try to sell you heroin, depending on who is on that shift.

On a tip from a friend (thanks, Joel) I went to Crown Candy Kitchen, a place that’s known for having kept its charm over the years as an old-fashioned malt-shop and looks like it’s straight out of the 1950s, except now black people can eat there. Crown has a food “challenge,” recently attempted by Adam on the show “Man v. Food” on the Food Network. Drink five 24-ounce milkshakes/malts in 30 minutes and win fame and acclaim and your name on the wall. Only a few have accomplished it...I had one and was very full but think I could probably do three. My waitress told me one guy, after seeing the show, flew in from Las Vegas with the sole purpose of taking on the challenge and drank all 120 ounces in just over 11 minutes. Wow. I can only guess he must have been drinking the heroin shakes.

Left: Me, pretending to have beaten the challenge. Note that each glass in front of me holds about 10 ounces, so one would have to drink about 12 of those.

Lastly, on the flight on the way home I had to rough up a former NFL player. As I boarded the plane the guy in the very front row decided to stand up and take his sweet time taking off his coat. He was holding up not just me, but about 40 people behind me and ultimately, the entire plane from taking off. I just sort of stared at him with an “are you kidding me” kinda look on my face. After he was done with his coat he was STILL taking his time and as he meandered into his seat I brushed by him, putting a shoulder into him a little bit…sending him a “message.” After I sat down a few rows behind him I heard a male flight attendant asking him about his playing days, in that stereotypical way that gays get sports wrong (“Were you on one of those teams that killed the Cowboys in the Super Bowl?” A. the Cowboys have never been “killed” in the Super Bowl and B. the person in question played for the Redskins, who cannot play the Cowboys in the Super Bowl.). This piqued my interest and I started to crane my neck to see if I could recognize the thick-headed, square-jawed, slow-coat remover. I did not recognize him but as I got off the plane (he stayed put, as he must have been continuing on) I saw that his very nice Redskins coat had “Dave Butz” embroidered on the sleeve. Butz was a former first-round draft choice, pro-bowler, member of the NFL all-80s team and a recent recipient of a Nathan shoulder bitch slap. Take that, Dave Butz.

* Obviously, an exaggeration. It was two.

** I recently read in Smithsonian Magazine that the Aleutian Islands are across the international dateline. I was fact checking this after writing the above and found out this was NOT the case. But I had already written that paragraph, and I thought it was funny, so I didn’t change it.

"I will haunt your penis."

2009-11-01T13:15:00.006-05:00

A chilling Halloween tale.

The title there...that's what my wife told me this weekend. See, she has a bit of a unique request for me to carry out after she dies. I can't get into details, but I will just say that it is something that has me slightly uncomfortable in terms of certain repercussions it could have for me. This request came up again recently and I reiterated my hesitancy to address it, in the unlikely and unfortunate event she die soon.

So she put it very bluntly for me: "Well, if you don't do it, and if it's in any way possible, I won't just haunt you, but I will haunt your penis." And she went further...it would not just be any normal haunting, during the work day or while I was minding my own business, with the casual poltergeist or succubussing (to which I would not be opposed, by the way)...no, she said she would wait for the opportune time, just before my buddy was ready to report for work. Then, "I'll sneak up to it and say 'Boo,'" with the understanding that such a shock would scare my buddy into, well....retreat mode.

This has sufficiently frightened me into determining that I will without a doubt follow her request. Again, without going into details, just let me say that you should probably avoid Thanksgiving dinner at our house the year that Tina passes.

EDIT - wife just read this and asked that I clarify that what she wants me to do is neither illegal nor creepy.

When lesbians attack and sign language with Marlee Matlin

2009-10-15T14:46:00.002-04:00

This just in – I looked Indy up on Wikipedia last night (hoping to find negative information to support my attacks against it) and guess what – it’s the 14th largest city in the US and the second biggest capital (after Helena, MT). 14th? What?? I know the way they calculate metropolitan areas can take in huge swaths of land, and I can only assume that the suburbs stretch waaaaaayyy far out, because I’m not lying when I say there sure ain’t much downtown. If it weren’t on Wikipedia – that faultless, perfect source of information – I wouldn’t believe it.

Last night we went to a performance of the Second City comedy troupe (the proving grounds for SNL and many other TV and movie comics). This was held at the Murat Centre, the city’s primary performing arts center. Or “centre,” I guess…this is the way this word is always spelled in this city, no joke. The Murat is known in Indy, according to the tourism council brochure that I picked up, as “that there fancy place where they have them plays and such after the monster truck shows.” This is a very lovely structure…but then I went to the restroom (is it odd that multiple stories here center around restrooms?) in the basement and was startled to see that very little had been carved out of the design budget to make a bathroom fitting the opulence of the rest of the place. It looked like a dungeon. Then I looked up the Murat and I see that it was originally a temple and it was built by those weird “Shriners,” or more specifically, the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, associates of the Masons. Sigh…what a bunch of freaks we have in this country. And if you’ve ever read anything ever by Dan Brown, you probably know the Shriners love to sacrifice virgins in their temples, and their “book” says it must be done in dingy basement restrooms. So that explains that. (The Shriners of course are best known for their hospitals…but what a Trojan Horse that is. Take the medical care…at the risk of brainswashing!!)

After Second City was a performance of the musical group They Might be Giants. I decided to skip this, however, due to my concern about likely overcrowding in the venue, based on the cautionary advertisement of the band members’ potential stature.

I checked out of my hotel this morning and got yelled at by the angry Asian lady for the last time. It was a great value, this hotel, and I’d recommend it, but there is one bizarre thing about it – the lobby is small and not far from the small restaurant. I’m not sure what the primary fare is there, but the entire lobby is filled with this smell of being at the county fair. If I had to describe the smell in one word I would say, “fried.” It’s like if you stuck your face right over a fryer that’s been used for French fries, chicken fingers, wings, etc. etc. It’s the first thing that hits you get when you walk in. It wasn’t unpleasant, just…weird.

Marlee Matlin closed the conference, for no appropriately apparent reason other than because when they threw a dart at their second-tier celebrity dartboard while looking for a closer, it landed on her. You may know her as “that deaf actress” or the girl from the Seinfeld lip-reading episode or the only actress to win an Oscar in her debut film. Though her talk was filled with a bunch of feel-good cornpone (No lie…she actually said “courage plus belief equals success”) she is just a complete sweetheart and great presenter. You’d be hard pressed to walk away from interacting with her and not feeling nice, I’m sure. After her talk I was sitting outside the ballroom on my laptop and looked up and her and her interpreter (or “handler” of sorts) came walking by. “She’s cute,” was my first thought…“I know sign for ‘thank you’ and can impress her” was my second, so as she walked by we made eye contact and I gave a big smile, said “thank you very much,” and did the sign thing for “thank you.” She gave a big, pleasant smile back ``and said, “Dab a brittle tayma runnnggggerad.” The smile said it all, though, and honestly, brightened my day (I should add that perhaps my crankiness towards this city has to do with the fact that I HAVE NOT SEEN THE SUN since my plane descended below the clouds on Monday afternoon). It was not quite as nice though as when MILF extraordinaire Sela Ward told me that I was “so sweet,” that time at the St. Thomas airport. Or when I had sex with (don’t get confused, now) Mary Matalin which was really just taking one for the team to get at her husband.

This has gotten long so I’ll greatly abbreviate another story from BWI – there was some big gay thing on the mall over the weekend so a lot of the gays were flying home on Monday, when I was leaving. There was a John Goodmanesque lesbian behind me as we waited to check in, and she decided that people should just walk up to an empty kiosk, regardless of if a Southwest staff person waved you up or not (and despite a posted sign asking you to wait.) And she’d holler gruffly up to the person at the front of the line, “Hey…just go on up. Don’t wait.” And sometimes that person – afraid…very afraid - would go up and get sent away by a Southwest person. But John Goodman continued to encourage people to go up, noting that some ball-less fear of authority kept as rooted in place when we should be more assertive. There was a Danny Davitoesque lesbian in front of me and her and her partner (think Ray Ramano) were uncomfortable with this and I’m sure were thinking, “This is why people only like the sexy ones of us.” So when it was their turn to go they got the same abuse from the woman behind me and got into a bit of a cat fig….errr….bulldog fight. It was ugly. On many levels.

Off to the aiport….I’m about to get out of this sphincter of the Midwest…hope I’ve enlightened you all!

More (yes, more!) on Indy

2009-10-14T22:34:00.002-04:00

A few of you have questioned if Indianapolis could be quite as bad as I've made it seem and the Indy natives of you out there have demanded I point out some of the city's good points. So in fairness, here goes:

The unending flatness is good for your car mileage.

The lack of buildings and trees, combined with the flatness, gives that "big sky" feel.

You won't frivolously waste money on dining at fine restaurants.

It was recently named as host city for the 2016 Olympic games.

One day a year, you're allowed to drive like, 400 miles per hour (applies to professional racecar drivers, only)

It has never been the site of a terrorist attack (unless you consider the theft of the Colts from Baltimore a terrorist attack...which many in Baltimore do).

Peyton Manning will probably play for another six, seven years.

It's closer to Chicago than you probably are now.

There have been virtually no recorded shark attacks.

Today the city actually gave me a whiff of home (pun intended). When I first came to the convention center on Tuesday I was in a section of the building that was quiet and unoccupied, and I followed signs to a restroom that was pretty isolated. Upon entering the restroom I smelled something that I’m unfortunately familiar with from my Starbucks days….crack smoke. I glanced at the stall and saw a couple feet there and did my business and left. The libertarian in me doesn’t really care if this goes on if it’s not hurting me. I figured some facilities staff person was enjoying a break in his day.

Wednesday afternoon I entered the same restroom, which is still out of the way but more heavily trafficked now, with our sessions being not too far from it. Again, the tell-tale smell. This time no one else was in there but I looked in the stalls and saw the signs – ashes on the ground, used matches, etc. And the smell immediately gave me a headache, as it has every other time I’ve smelled it. I left the restroom and saw a guy wandering around…a guy that prior to then I had assumed was on staff but then I realized that I hadn’t seen him do anything over the previous couple days but wander around in his shabby clothes. With several points of entry it would not be hard for a homeless person to slip into the building, and I figured that he was the crack culprit. Only because of the public health issue presented by the smoke, the potential theft by someone driven to get cash to by drugs, and because I almost immediately saw a security guy, I stopped the security dude and told him about the issue....now, the odd thing is, he gave me a knowing look and seemed to know the guy I was talking about, as though he knew he hung out there and the security guy didn't seem to care, though he did thank me and told me he'd go look into it.

Come on Indianapolis...this is one of your major points of entry for outsiders (the convention center, that is) and you let homeless guys smoke CRACK in the bathrooms....?

The Manning rule, among little-known Indy facts

2009-10-14T15:12:00.003-04:00

Little-known facts about Indianapolis:

It has one of the lowest suicide rates of any city over 100,000 people – experts attribute this to the lack of buildings over three stories from which people can jump.

The city used to be called “Gary,” but then The Music Man was released and residents got so tired of that song, they changed the name. Littler known fact - first they changed the name to “Indiana,” resulting in a great deal of confusion (the postal union in particular was upset, as postal employees were forced to think for the first time in...ever) so they added the “polis” to straighten things out. Adding the particular suffix “polis” was a tribute to the region’s most popular culinary invention – The Polis Sandwich, consisting of plain turkey on white bread.

Under city code 3.6, section iv, passed in 2002, any female asked by Peyton Manning for a sexual favor must immediately and completely consent, or else face a penalty of three years imprisonment and/or forced lifetime residency inside the city.

Following 83 percent of all novelty signs anywhere in the world that have an arrow pointing you in the direction of “Middle of Nowhere” will lead you here.

Every president save James Garfield has managed to avoid visiting here, and his two-day visit only occurred due to a lost drunken bet made with vice-president Chester Arthur. (Had Arthur lost, he was to have visited malaria-infested Panama, where he was to work on the canal for a year.)

The most notable family from Indianapolis is the Lilly’s, of Eli Lilly, the drug manufacturer. Lilly actually started a timber company in the 1800s but also dabbled in chemistry. He found that the concoction of drugs he formulated - called anti-depressants now, but at the time referred to as “the Gary blues pick-me-ups” - were so popular and needed among virtually all residents, he decided to switch industries.

One of the current large employers is a spin-off of Lilly, called Lilly Latex. They specialize in a chemical called “indianacite,” used by most paint manufacturers to speed the drying process. Nearly all residents aspire to be a visual tester of the effects of this chemical, as it is one of the more stimulating professions here.

Now, moving on….
I think people secretly laugh at my phone. If you’ve seen American Psycho there is an amusing storyline about these high-powered men and their fetishizing of business cards….they show them off to each other, are openly envious of the nicer ones, etc. Some people are like this with tech toys, but I am certainly not, and I certainly don’t care about having the latest and greatest stuff. This is more than obvious when you look at my phone, for example, which I think maybe came off the production line in 1997 and weighs about four pounds. And I can see people look at me as I hold it to my ear, as I text, as I lug the external battery, strapped to my back - these sad looks, sometimes condescending, sometimes scornful, but often just empathetic, wanting to help me. I ignore them, I look away, I adjust my phone at just the right 86 degree angle and stand stock still so I can hear the person on the other end and pretend I don’t see their stares. One of my good friends scorned cell phones up until just a few years ago and now has the latest and greatest…he has zoomed past me, and I admit I’m envious at the thought of having access to the internet on me at all times (“Are those Scarlett Johansson Google images in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”) but I refuse to advance and will keep this phone until they pry it off of the Walkman attachment in my fanny pack.

This was exacerbated at one point by this douchebag who talked in one of my sessions today. He started his talk by asking everyone to get out their phone and hold it up. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m assuming roomfuls of adult don’t like to be told to do dumb things like this. I abstained – and kept my phone hidden. Why do people do this? Is it some weird control thing about having the attention of a room of a couple hundred people? He also then commanded us at one point to send a text to a certain number, something I also refused to do. (Confession – when someone says “Text ‘coupon’ to 7456” I really have no idea what this means. I mean, I could guess, but I’d ask someone before I did it.) I’m a bit of an anomaly here, I think, in that I have great facility with Twitter, for example, which for some reason seems to confound even smart people, but find Facebook and texting aggravating and difficult.

In general, I’ve accepted that I’m usually the dumbest person in any room. Sometimes hubris gets the better of me and there are occasions when I think that maybe this isn’t the case…but then I’m typically brought down to earth quickly. But I must say...this conference is attended primarily by a lot of marketing professionals and I’m feeling kind of brainy. Maybe it’s just because I work with a lot of really smart people and interact with a lot of really smart people all the time, but I definitely have gotten the impression these last few days that this isn’t the strongest IQ group you’ll ever see. But taking them out of their hometowns and putting them in Indianapolis no doubt raised the average IQ of both cities.

Indy, part 2

2009-10-13T22:47:00.002-04:00

More from the heartland!

I'm staying at a very pleasant Comfort Suites, but I must mention one odd aspect of this hotel. Like many elevators, the elevator here announces the floor as it comes to a stop. But instead of the smooth, pleasant corporate voice often used, this hotel has apparently recorded the voice of a slightly irritated woman with a hint of an Asian accent, and she fairly yells the name of the floor at you. It's like the scolding I get when I take too long to order at the dim sum place.

There was a bit of a mix up at check-in in that they have me in a handicapped accessible room. I told the woman that I really didn't care and aside from the faint "handicap smell" it's perfectly fine. It even provided a laugh-out-loud moment when I went to hang my shirts up and saw that the clothes rack is at about belly button level. Plus, the bathtub is so huge that I could fit three escorts in there (everything is cheaper here, I'm telling you!)

So tonight I made it to White Castle, this iconic institution. I think maybe part of the appeal of this place is its self-imposed scarcity. Not wanting to franchise or take on debt, the restaurant keeps itself small purposefully, with fewer than 400 restaurants. The Castle does not fail to innovate, in spite of its smallness - it has introduced a new way of presenting chicken - in ring form, which is surely how God always intended these animals to be consumed. I asked the woman working there what the best thing to order was and she referred me to the chicken rings. I went with the sliders instead.

Oh, and I almost forgot, not long after seeing the White Castle the first time Tuesday morning, I saw a Steak and Shake, right in downtown. Another restaurant I've heard a lot about but never seen....I guess the midwest is where they're hiding all of them. Tomorrow, I search for Stuckeys!

And lastly, there is an interesting part of the driving culture I've noticed - cars don't like people in the intersection when those cars are trying to turn right, despite the fact that the peds have a walk sign. Even in NY and DC this is perfectly fine! People here get very annoyed by this, however. Maybe it has to do with their impatience to get to...um, whatever there is to get to around here.

Observations from Indianapolis

2009-10-13T17:28:00.002-04:00

I figured I'd give this a boring title since it's such a boring place! What could be more boring about attending a conference in Indianapolis…how about if that conference was for a software used for sending out email newsletters/marketing? Yeah, you’re already asleep, huh? Anyway, I’m doing such a thing right now, and here are a few observations, which I’ll try to make as interesting as possible. And I’ll finish bit, with my great story about something that happened at BWI.

The Indianapolis airport has something hanging from the ceiling (at least in the terminal that I was in) that looks like art inspired by jellyfish, perhaps. I find this odd given that Indianapolis is pretty much NOWHERE near the ocean. Okay, you say, perhaps they want to inspire thoughts of the ocean, but….to who? People visiting, who may be coming from the coast? That would be odd. People coming home, who likely just got home from someplace nicer than Indianapolis – perhaps the ocean! Again, doesn’t make sense, unless you want to remind them of how much better life could be elsewhere. But regardless…no one wants to think of nasty, awful jellyfish when thinking of the ocean anyway. It is just really out of place. Imagine flying to the Bahamas and they have cows hanging from the ceiling at the airport. (Ah, yes they are jellyfish….just confirmed online. Here’s a pic.)

Entering White Castle is nowhere near the magical and enlightening experience I was sure it would be. Wandering around town, lost as usual, I had decided I needed to ask someone where the convention center is and began to search for a nice-looking establishment where I could do so. Then….it appeared before me, an oasis of wonderment in an urban environment lacking in aesthetics…the mythical burger place, even the topic of epic movies! I entered happily, knowing the royal subjects of the burger kingdom at this castle would help me find my way to my destination!….only to realize that it was just like any other urban fast food establishment: three steps above complete anarchy both among customers and employees, dark, dingy, and probably moderately dangerous. I left, dispirited.

I’m sitting in a big ballroom (there are 1,300 registrants) and we’re waiting for the CEO to kick things off. They try to turn this into a high-energy, exciting thing, with multiple large screens up, all flashing “hip” images and words, with loud rock music playing and lights flashing. Did I mention this is an email newsletter software? Lipstick on a pig, right? It’s just silly. The CEO gives his talk and starts with major excitement about how the conference is SOLD OUT! And the entire room starts clapping. ??? I was puzzled by this. You’re applauding yourselves for forking over $1200? Do you really care if it’s sold out, or do you feel somehow vindicated that you were not alone in your decision to attend the conference? What if you were sitting in a McDonalds…you know what, let’s say White Castle. You’re sitting in a White Castle and the manager comes out and says, “Folks, we’re completely out of sliders because you’ve purchased them all.” Would you applaud and participate in some bizarre self-back-slapping? I’m suspicious about the whole “sold out” thing anyway….they said last year’s conference was sold out. I’m guessing, given that we’re filling up about 1/10th of the convention center/Westin Hotel, that they could have accepted as many attendees as they wanted, and were going to say it was “sold out” pretty much regardless, to generate some sense of urgency for next year or some sense of accomplishment.

As people filed into this room, the floor shook – a natural response to that many people walking around in one place. But it shook excessively…so much that it made me – someone who has always had an irrational fear of structural collapse – slightly unnerved. Apparently it had the same effect one of the guys behind me who would not stop talking about it to his buddy. This guy, however, to judge by his hacking, had bigger things to worry about, like maybe some hybrid H1N1-tuberculosis thing. He just coughed and coughed and coughed… I wonder if such a hybrid disease did exist if the media would hype it as “swine consumption.” Catchy disease name, if you ask me, and you heard it hear first.

I’m having a pretty dry lunch and am trying to make conversation with two women sitting on either side of me who work together…the conversation is about as dry as the food but they work for an insurance company in Cincinnati and perfectly fit my stereotypical image of people in that industry and people from Ohio. But one of my failings (maybe not the right word) is that during painful pauses and silences in conversation, I get anxious and try to fill them. So I keep asking questions, even when perhaps it’s best we sit in silence. Here’s an example of the dialogue today:
Me: And where are you from originally?
Joan: Columbus.
SILENCE
Me: (tells funny story about what the cop who pulled me over for speeding near Columbus said to me as I pulled away)
Joan: (a lip quiver that might have been a smile)
SILENCE
Me: So you’re a lifelong Ohioan
Joan: No, I live across the river now.
SILENCE
Now, I’m blessed with enough geography knowledge to know this means she lives in Kentucky, and about four jokes one could make about Kentucky all pop into my head, screaming to be said, but I resist, knowing they’ll be lost on Joan. Her statement – which shows her worldview ends somewhere just beyond the Ohio River - confirms the provincial mindset and dullness of people both in the insurance industry and in Ohio.

Malcolm Gladwell unfortunately no longer looks like this, which is quite an entertaining look, I’m sure you’ll agree. He’s tamed the jewfro quite a bit. Also unfortunately, he has mastered the art of collecting a big speaking fee ($10,000, perhaps?) for just showing up and basically giving a summary of his book! Already read the book? Too bad, here it is in audio form. I imagine if you listened to the audio book version you’d REALLY feel cheated by his speech. At the end he gave barely a passing thought of relating his talk to the conference topic, with a scant, half-hearted couple of sentences of, “So…you can all do this too…” I liked the talk overall, but that makes sense...since I liked the book. Sheesh. Good work, if you can get it.

The water here sucks! It’s very, very soft – I’m glad I don’t have much hair to wash. It also tastes awful. “It’s like that all over the Midwest,” Joan’s colleague says, one of their few contributions to the conversation.

Okay – BWI story. I approach the security queue at BWI and there is a woman standing at its entrance, looking behind me, as though looking for someone. She is about 45, moderately attractive, slightly haggard looking. As I’m about to enter she also does, ahead of me, all the while looking back. We catch up to the end of the line and she says that I can go around her and then says she’s there to pick up a child and that she is supposed to meet him as he gets off the plane but she’s not sure how to get back there. I can tell during this brief interaction that she is LOADED. Not real tipsy on her feet, but one of those don’t-strike-a-match-near-her situations with alcohol coming off her breath in heavy waves. I tell her I’m not real sure what she should do. She starts to walk away and then comes back and says, “Will you remember me?” I kinda know what she means…she wants to leave the line and get back in her spot and I really don’t want to have anything to do with this situation, especially given her state. So I say, “Well, you would have to do something memorable,” which would usually confound a drunk. She, however, after a muddled-thought pause, leans forward and kisses me on the lips. I’m somewhat surprised by this and don’t know how to react and she says, “So when I come back,” and she slips her arm into mine, “I can say that I’m with you.” I say that that’s fine, hoping she doesn’t come back, and she trots off. The girl in front of me had a look on her face that must have matched mine and I said, “Could you smell the booze on her???” I then added that I hoped SHE is not driving the child she is picking up. The girl in front of me said it best by adding, “There just so much wrong with that whole situation.” And no, in case you’re wondering, she never did make it back to the line, much to the chagrin, I think, of the girl in front of me, who seemingly wanted to observe the next odd thing this woman would do and kept looking for her and giving me these "you better watch out" looks. I can just imagine what would have happened if she had gotten back by the time I had to take off my shoes and belt!

Great food at the Museum of the American Indian

2009-07-28T08:50:00.010-04:00

Recently I had lunch with a colleague at the National Museum of the American Indian. One of the great things about the cafeteria here is that it has fare that is quite unique and can’t be compared with typical museum food. The food is traditional and is prepared and served in “traditional” ways, meaning that you can trade a few beads for it. Further, the variety is great….in this cafeteria you can choose to buy food from one of four different regions, each of significance to American Indians – “the southeast,” “the plains,” “firewater,” and “casino.”

Although “traditional” food may be a stretch for some items...specifically I think of fry bread so prominently featured on the menu. A little background on this culinary cardioenemy. See, Americans have been efficient at being bad to certain people in the past, yet pretty inefficient about making reparat….er, uh, amends for our wrongdoing. As part of our very meager effort to assuage our guilt over mistreatment of the Indians, we “gave” them reservations and also sent them huge quantities of food, namely two staples of that healthy European diet: flour and lard. And when life deals you flour and lard, you make fry bread, which the Indians do quite well. So it’s an Indian “tradition” in about the same sense that Harry Connick Jr.’s annual Big, Gay Christmas Show is an American “tradition.” It was foisted upon them and they made do with it because they had to.

On this particular day I passed up the fry bread but felt very culturally in place by trying the most unique offerings I saw: frogs’ legs, a cold salad that had smoked duck, currants, and beans, and some yucca fries in a lime-chili sauce. My friend had, among other things, turtle soup. So there we stood in line to check out, as white as the Osmonds, but feeling ethnically appropriate about our choices, knowing that Jay Silverheels himself would approve of our lunch. As we approached the cashier something – perhaps a warning tingling in my scalp? – made me turn around and I saw that behind me stood an Indian. I smiled and positioned myself a bit so that he could see – and approve of – my food choices. He looked past me, however, with the steely stare of Sitting Bull and I glanced down at his plate and saw…. a cheeseburger. And chicken strips. Sad irony, no? I felt like shedding a single tear.

My colleague has a much better understanding of all this, though, having an anthropology degree of sorts from a good school, Bryn Mawr (which is Welsh for bryn – “you will never” and mawr – “be able to pronounce this without sounding like a moron.” Seriously, don’t wrestle with that “w.” Just say “mar,” as in, “to have a negative effect on.” Used in context here:

Mom of college-bound student – Well, I’m afraid if our daughter goes to a Seven Sisters school….
Dad of same student – Yes?
Mom – I’m afraid she’ll come home marred.
Dad – Meaning?
Mom – You know…a lesbian.
Dad – Good grief, it’s Bryn Mwwwaaarrrwarr, not Smith!
Mom - I think you mean 'Bryn Mawr.')

But now I’ve gotten off topic.
If I have one complaint about the Indian museum it’s the “gimmicky” food offerings. I suppose that in addition to serving good food they have to be good marketers, but I think they may have crossed the line of good taste with some of their items. A sampling:

The Death of Custer Custard – a cup of blood pudding on top of which an action figure of Crazy Horse holds the severed head of the famous colonel.

Manifeast Destiny – a not-advertised option that allows the biggest, most aggressive, and meanest customer to take as much as he wants without having to pay a cent.

Trail Mix of Tears – Small bag of goodies advertised as a high-carb, high-energy mix of nuts, dried fruits, chocolate, and more that will give you enough energy to walk almost 600 miles nonstop at gunpoint. Almost.

Pigs in a Smallpox Blanket – a bizarre an unappetizing twist on the wiener-in-croissant dish.

White Man’s Bird‘n Mashed Potatoes – replicates a typical Thanksgiving dinner. They bring the turkey and potatoes and most everything else; you bring the rest of your tour bus and completely overrun the place.

So there's your review...hope you enjoy if you ever visit, and don't forget to try the fry bread!

2009-07-17T13:32:00.001-04:00

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Netflix lies

2009-05-25T12:51:00.005-04:00

If you remember the old model of renting movies, we wandered around a big store and picked up cases containing DVDs/tapes on which was printed a description of the flick inside. This description was often written to get the movie to appeal to the least-common-denominator shopper, giving all movies a bland, pablum, generic tone. This supposedly insured no one was "scared away" by a heavy, serious film. Oftentimes they would even change the genre of the movie, making everything either a comedy or a horror...because we're just too dumb for the serious dramas, you see.

I find it odd that the sleeves on Netflix movies follow this old strategy. First of all, I think that movie renters have become more sophisticated. Secondly, if I have the Netflix movie in my house, I've already made the commitment to rent it and odds are I know something about it.

We recently got The Wrestler, which was phenomenal. Here is the description on the Netflix sleeve: "Mickey Rourke stars as retired professional wrestler Randy Robinson, who returns to the ring and tries to work his way up the circuit for a final shot at defeating his longtime rival." This is not what this movie is about! Let me see...."wrestler" is right, but that's about it. This movie was nominated for a bunch of Oscars....why try to glaze over everything good about it?

Here is my call to you, faithful readers. Let's see if WE can write a bunch of bad Netflix-sleeve descriptions. Below is my crack at a few. Submit your own in the comments field below. Winner gets something awesome!

The Godfather - Enjoy the antics of this crazy ethnic family that's Italian through and through. Patriarch Vito "Don" Corleone tries to keep his boisterous brood in check as they partake in madcap missions straight from Milan! There's everything from weddings to horses to adventures at the market to crazy brothers-in-law. Don't miss son Michael's awkwardly hilarious encounter with Captain McCluskey...and of course then there's eldest son Sonny - no one knows what this hothead will be up to next! Paisano, if you miss this for-all-ages laughfest you'll miss out on being one of the 'family!'

There Will Be Blood - Jokester impresario Daniel Day-Lewis leads this romp through the oil-soaked American west. It's the Beverly Hillbillies like you've never seen them before, as oilman Daniel Plainview is a "gas" as he takes on the big monopolies with tricks, slicks, and slapstick. Watch as he and preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, Littls Miss Sunshine) banter playfully back and forth as they struggle to get oil rights from each other. Bowling, anyone?? After seeing this guffaw "gusher," you'll be singing "I drink your milkshake!" for weeks!

Million Dollar Baby - The heroics of Rocky meets the zany girl-power of Charlie's Angels. You'll thrill to the laugh-a-minute hilarity that develops between the grizzled old trainer (Clint Eastwood, Every Which Way but Loose) and the young, determined, female boxer (Hilary Swank, The Next Karate Kid). Watch as she takes on a palette of preposterous pugilists and as Morgan Freeman (Evan Almighty) plays the wise-cracking gym rat who keeps her in stitches. Speaking of stitches, stay tuned for the crazy final scene in the hospital!

Saving Private Ryan - you'll think the cast of MASH has been sent back to WWII in this camouflaged caper! Tom Hanks brings the chops that earned laughs in Big and Joe Versus the Volcano and will have audiences rolling in the aisles as he leads a band of misfits on a search for Private Ryan (Matt Damon, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Watch them hilariously plod through the wet sand at their landing on the French coast, then crack wise the rest of the way inland. And all the while krazy Krauts seem to have them surrounded at every turn! Mein Fuhrer!

Schindler's List - (funny entry here removed at the request of my spouse, who will never again review material before it's online)

How do you get people interested in science?

2009-05-07T15:13:00.031-04:00

(Wired magazine has described this web log as "high-brow humor about low-brow topics." Now I'm taking on "the cheerleader," a difficult topic for high-brow! So we'll see how this goes....)

How to get them interested in science? How about sex? Yeah, crazy idea, huh? Who would think sex could ever be used to sell anything, right?

But there is a great website called Science Cheerleader that I encourage you all to look at. And here's the great punny thing about this site....you go because you want to see a cute girl in a short skirt, and you get that...but also, the blog is produced by a woman who is encouraging people to be cheerleaders for science. Citizen scientists, see. You get the eye candy, but also something of substance. Essentially you go to the site and you get your sex and can eat it too. Err...wait...strike that. Poor choice of words. Well, you know what I mean.

The woman who wrties this blog (who btw, doesn't have a very cheeleadery name at all like Tiffany or Serenity or Amber, but a very sciencey name - Darlene) is smart when it comes to marketing, no? I just ran a test in Google Analytics and compared potential web traffic for blogs like hers differentiated only by name. I used "Citizen Scientists," and "Science Cheerleader." "Citizen scientists" hypothetically would get 12 visits a day, most from "the kind of person who aspires to speak Klingon." Harsh, yes, but hey...Google's words. "Science Cheerleader," however, gets 100,000 a day (a lot from prisons), 90 percent of whom leave after four seconds. BUT, the important thing is they've been exposed to the content matter and some are bound to stick around for awhile. Or at least until they've realized they've found all the photos and videos the site has to offer. (This took me 3.5 minutes. I mean...not that I did that.) But you know, "cheerleader" kind of makes everything better, more appealing. Try it: Penicillin....penicillin cheerleader. Nice change, huh? Miasma....miasma cheerleader. You get the picture. Just listen to the wonderful way they say "discrete units." I should add that it's a nice coincidence that Darlene actually WAS a cheerleader.

Now, I didn't really associate cheerleaders with science when I was in school, and it had nothing to do with a lack of faith in their innate abilities (right, Larry Summers?). I think it was because "cheerleader" was taking up many other associations in my mind at the time, most of which also involved rainbows and cupcakes and cuddly kittens and all that was good and wonderful in the world. Not that science isn't wonderful, but ya know...when it came to "science," I would think of a teacher, Mr. Beichner, whose primary contribution to my education was to demonstrate how NOT to look lasciviously at young women. Because it was so obvious and gross that the whole school knew he did it...yet he still kept his job. Hmm.

In America, and perhaps in the rest of the world where this creature, "the cheerleader," exists, there is a very idealized and romanticized version of her. I suppose it's because man's initial encounter with her is at a very...let's say "charged" time of life. And we don't know what to make of them at that time except that they get to wear skirts to school that are actually shorter than what is allowed in the dress code, they jump around a lot, and they are shrouded in mystique. They're kind of like unicorns... An organization that studies adolescent males, the Homeland Office of Research on Needy Youth, claims that while the average 14-year-old boy thinks about cheerleaders once every three seconds, when confronted with one, he usually runs the other way. Their power overwhelms.

But back to the Science Cheerleader and the impact she's trying to make. She's really made some in-roads and has attracted some attention so far, so good for her. And watch her bitch slap the status quo in the video in the video on her site! Speaking of the video, note Penn and Teller there...good PR for the site, despite the fact that Penn is skeevy, big time. True story: After his appearance on Dancing With the Stars, his partner, Kym Johnson, had a breakdown, contracted eczema, and quit ballroom dancing. She is now a dispatcher for DHS.* So you just know that the entire time the Science Cheerleader and him were shooting this he kept trying to talk her into a trick he called "putting the rabbit into the hat." Eww...he's gross. Word on the street is that Teller's silence isn't an act...he witnessed Penn doing so many graphic and horrible things during their nascent days as a magic team he is actually in a perpetual state of shock, allowing for Penn's schlock. (Almost used schtick here but I liked the rhyming...either way, Yiddish shout out to my Jewish readers!)

Keeping with the magician theme, the Science Cheerleader has stated that one of her next projects is to use science to determine the true sexual orientation of David Copperfield. Cause Claudia Schiffer ain't talking. (Aside - Wouldn't it be funny if David Copperfield named his kid Oliver Twist? Ha! These are the little things that I stay up thinking about that I just know would make the world a more fun place.)

Anyway, keep up the good work Darlene. There are many of us who appreciate your effort!

Oh, and if you want to see the naughty pictures of Science Cheerleader in her outfit, go to this pay site.

* Not a true story.

My six theses: A new reformation

2009-04-26T18:53:00.012-04:00

So even though I have a fairly long history of church attendance and I'm married to a woman who grew up Catholic, for the first time on Sunday I attended an actual Sunday-morning Catholic service. I've done Catholic weddings and funerals but this was just plain-old normal "church." (Or "mass," like "mas" and of course mas is "more" in Spanish, and the only thing keeping the US Catholic church afloat right now is mas personas esponalas en los estados unidos, which is why the church stands where it does in the immigration debate.)

While recognizing its shortcomings over the years, I have a fair amount of respect for the Catholic church and for the work it has done worldwide to fight poverty, hunger, and injustice. Also, there's all that spooky cloak-and-dagger stuff that lead to great pieces of literature like The Da Vinci Code. But I have a few suggestions for the church, just based on what I saw today, to help with its services. Take this web log posting as me virtually nailing these suggestions to the church door!

1. Lose the communal cup.
The church hasn't noticed we're a very bacteria-conscious society - we have wipes, liquids, etc. to kill all kinds of bad stuff and we are convinced that these things will kill us if we're not proactive. We obsess about this stuff at all levels - normal-thinking people for example actually tell us not to eat raw cookie dough anymore! So the communal cup has to go. Yeah, they kinda wipe the lip of the cup sometimes between parishoners, but still, we're drinking all that backwash from everyone else. Gross. I saw one woman lift the glass up high and finish off the contents and I literally almost gagged.

2. Lose/change the altar boy.
These little boys walking around in their dresses...gotta get rid of this. At least let them wear normal clothes. This would save them a whole lot of trouble with those gay priests they keep taking in. Cause look...I'm just gonna say what everyone else is thinking: put little dresses on those young boys and it makes them look hot. I'm right, right? (Insert your own joke here using "priests" and "Diet of Worms." I would, but it's almost too easy.)

3. Redesign your churches.
Some of these churches of yours look like museums or showpieces. The feel of these places is so reverential and serious that anything other than Latin being spoken from the pulpit seems out of place. I sat there today and listened to some guy talk about birthdays and pancake breakfasts and make other mundande announcements from the platform in a room so ornate that it felt like the pope might come popping in at any second. It doesn't fit. Most people today are used to sitting in a sanctuary that is quite generic and could be confused with a large conference room in an office building but with a few crosses thrown in. So here is my suggestion: tear these things down, sell off all the nice stuff to pay for your lawsuits, and build something more suitable to the general public, that is, a church that looks more like the all-purpose room at your local community center.

Plus, all too often these things sit empty. Your attendance is in decline, unfortunately, particularly in Europe, where some of the most beautiful churches in the world exist, only to be unused most of the time. Take France for example, where they take their virulent anti-semitism served without a side of church attendance (unless you're counting all the Muslims in France, who score high in both categories). But then again, I can understand why few people choose to take up the collar in a country with a strong history of separating heads from that collar.

4. Let non-Catholics in on the code words.
If you've ever been to a Catholic service you probably noticed these code words and movements that have the priest and everyone else looking like a third-base coach in baseball giving signs to the runner on first. I think the priest must email these out to everyone on Saturday evening or something. But you're sitting there, listening in, and then he says the word "windswept," for example, and everyone stands up suddenly. Then a few seconds later he says "jambalaya," and each person in the room touches his thumb to his forehead and then his lips. ??? As soon as you've processed this, people are kneeling...you start to try to figure out how to flip over the kneeling-thingy-pad on the pew in front of you and the priest clears his throat twice and says "snowshoe" and eveyrone starts chanting! It's very confusing, and it feels quite exclusionary when they don't let you know ahead of time. They could at least put them in the bulletin.

And they also recite something called the Nicene Crede, which is very long (it's a summary of all the things that compose the basis of christianity). I don't mind standing there silent during the chanting because it's only for a sentence or two, but the Nicene Crede is like the Moby Dick of memorized recitations. So how about this, church: print out the Nicene Crede on chocolate bars, that way everyone can read along off of his chocolate. It doesn't have to be chocolate and for many reasons it doesn't even make sense for it to be on chocolate, but hey...then everyone gets a chocolate bar and who doesn't get happy when given a chocolate bar? Maybe you can start this thing where you say the chocolate literally turns into the body of Milton Hershey in your digestive system! Mmm....great chaser for communion. Hope they get along in there. They should - they're both Jews!

5. Impart some standards for dress.
(This only applies if you don't do #3.) With the casualization of society this may seem backward - institutions aren't supposed to care about dress anymore, as you'll notice if you go the symphony or a nice restaurant. But look....Catholic church, you've been known to bust some heads in the past when needed...it's time to do it again on this issue. It's very hard for me to sit in one of your beautfiul churches, listening to ancient recitations, beside some doofus in khaki shorts and a Washington Redskins t-shirt. METHODISTS dress nicer than your people...come on.

6. Be nice to the crazyhomeless person who wants a candle.
A crazyhomeless person sat down a few pews in front of me and she began to rant to the woman sitting near her. She was upset about something and this is more or less what I heard her say: "What's the deal with the guy selling the candles? I asked him to explain the meaning of the candles to me and he said I'd have to ask the priest. And I said that I thought the person selling candles should be qualified to tell me their meaning and he told me that it wasn't my business. And I think that's a very bad way for him to talk to me in a church. I think he should be reported to the priest." Later, she danced during the hymns so I guess she wasn't feeling too bad. But she did leave just as communion started. I heard her muttering something about how gross the communal cup is on her way out.

Just (let go of) the fax, ma'am

2009-04-20T17:32:00.008-04:00

I'm old, by many standards. I'm not going to euphemistically say "I'm getting old," or "I'm older than I used to be." No, I'm just old. (To baby boomers, I'm not of course, and if you recall our discussion about them recently, you'll understand that they've forcibly redefined things for the past 40 years. Now they're telling us that 60 is the new "middle age." If enough of them say it they'll all start to believe it and if it makes them feel better, fine.) As age takes over our bodies, breaking us down, it seemingly also paralyzes the part of our brain that has a willingness - not to mention a facility - to adapt to new things. For instance while I openly admit that during my youth Walkmans were fine with me, I don't like mpg-pods or whatever they're called - I'd rather be reading, primarily, and also my ear insides are shaped funny and don't take well to those bacteria-carrying ear-drum destroying ear thingies.

So it's not that I've resisted this technology solely because it's newfangled, but I will admit that when I pick up my wife's mpg-pod I look at it with the same confusion that I imagine overtakes Madonna when looking at one of the young children running through her home, disturbing her meditation, escaped from the safe confines of its au pair's arms, and I think of the scene in Zoolander when the two characters who are told the files are "in" the computer start to smack it around and take on an affect of apes, a nod to the scene in Kubrick's "2001" with the monkeys confronting the obelisk in the "dawn of man" sequence. Yeah, this looks like me.

But I do think I take advantage in the workplace of modern technology to save a lot of hassle and sometimes money. Of course the bureaucratic types sometimes resist, but when I get pushback I always play the what-I'm-proposing-is-better-for-the-environment card, which stunningly stifles scrutiny. In the capturing-the-moral-highground list of reasons for doing something, "for the environment" has enjoyed a stratospheric rise up the charts. In fact, let's take a look at the top five and some of those that have recently fallen far down the chart, compared to their positions 10 years ago. All data comes from moralhighground.com (a site off of DailyKos):

I'm doing (given action) for....

1. the children (unchanged)
2. some racial minority group (unchanged)
3. the environment (+32)
4. the Obama campaign/administration (unrated)
5. Lupus victims (+43....surprised us all. Was there a TV movie about this or a famous celebrity who caught it?)

Biggest losers:

31. the right for the president to get blow jobs from interns in the oval office (-25....seems odd to think of now, but this was a cause celebre way back when)
35. the homosexuals (-26.... Barney Frank's boorishness and Catholic priests' molestingness have sucked this one down)
42. Breast cancer survivors (-34....officials think the public has developed "race and/or pink fatigue")

TIP: Using this list you can create a good "get out of jail free" card in the workplace. Always have a sentence composing the top few of these ready and on hand! Example:

Boss: What the hell are you doing?
Me/you: Taking to heart President Obama's request that all Americans teach black children with Lupus how to recycle.
Boss: And that's why you're masturbating on my desk?
Me/you: Uhhh....well, you see....
Boss: Forget it....I find your argument impregnable. Here's a raise. And a tissue.

(Remember...you may have to adapt this and be creative)

Where the heck was I? Oh yeah, so at work I do things like conducting transactions and transferring documents electronically and say I'm saving money, paper, and the earth...that kind of thing. I try to suggest web meetings as opposed to face-to-face meetings. I mean, some of these things just make sense!

But here is the one that it's been hard to break people of - the fax machine. When I'm interacting with someone and encouraging that person to send documents over email and they resist and want to use the fax machine, you can almost guarantee that person is over 50. It's like 20 years ago in the office they said, "Okay, I've got this fax thing down and I'll learn email, and then I'm done!" And the "learn/adapt" switch in their brain got flipped to "off" and that was it.

Change can come slowly, but we must press forward. I imagine people carried buggy whips in their new "horseless carriages" for some time after the advent of the car. They couldn't tell you why, but it was probably "just in case." The founder of Twitter, on Colbert recently and defending his new form of unnecessary communication and pointing out previous resistance to change in this area said, "When they invented the telegraph people (resisted and) said 'if its good enough to send, its worth sending on a horse'" and not the newer technology. And old people hold on dearly to the fax, thinking it's the most whiz-bang thing.

(Don't even get me started on that most archaic slayer of forests, the phonebook. Why does whoever the group is who puts this thing out drop it on my doorstep every year? I carry this thing, reeking of carbon and screaming with the pain of countless murdered trees, straight to the dumpster...er, recycling bin.)

These old faxers will die off, of course, but the 50-year-olds are still "in their prime" and not quite middle aged, as they will tell you, so it's going to take awhile. So we all have to do our part. Mock people who want to use the fax. Call them "gramps." Ask them to borrow their rotary phone and if their VCR is still hooked up.

Who I'm loving today
My pastor's wife. She is unlike any other pastor's wife I've ever met...this is both good and bad. I think she no doubt takes a measure of how she can speak to a particular person or family and feels she can be less formal with us than with others in the church. With that said, so far I've heard her use the following words...in the church building: "teabagging," "blow job," and "shit," the latter two in front of my daughter. (And this is a Methodist church, not United Church of Christ, which is what many of you must be thinking.) Again, it didn't really bother me, but it was surprising to say the least. But that's just kinda the cloth from which she's cut (born and bred in Ballmer, for one thing). But love her, I do.

Who I'm trying to love today
Neighbors who make the obligatory joke when they see you washing your car.
For many people when they move to the suburbs a few things get programmed into their heads. They are as follows:

1. The city becomes far, far away and trips to it are a hassle, and it may be dangerous there, and all dining and arts options in the burbs suddenly become "just as good as anything in the city."

2. 8pm becomes "late."

3. The part of your brain that used to control your ability to parallel park and press the gas pedal when a stoplight turns green gets overtaken with synapses that focus on finding deals on flowers at Home Depot.

4. When you see your neighbor washing his car you MUST make a joke about him next washing YOUR car. This happened to me not once but twice on Sunday, with the guy on each side of our garage. The first had the pedestrian, "You can wash these two when you're done harharharhar," and the other was slightly more clever with, "Two coats of wax on mine, okay? harharharhar."

Douchebags.

Homeless Tycoon

2009-04-14T15:43:00.010-04:00

My new nickname for a Mall fixture. Read on....

When I was the manager of a small, indy coffee shop in the District, we gave nicknames to the homeless people who would make our lives so wonderful. Below is a short list of those names, and how they came to be:

Cups – she was harmless and we usually let her hang out, but about every 15 minutes she would ask for a new cup – after getting six or seven she’d stack them up and move them around from table to table. It was fun to watch.
Satar – this one was incredibly nutty and so named because once when I told her it was time to leave she asked me for my name. I said “Nathan,” and she said, “That sounds like ‘Satar’” and scribbled something on a piece of paper. Then she put her finger to her ear and said, “Canadian embassy to satellite…”
Black Magic – so named by one of my (black) employees, I think because she was midnight black…she looked like a pair of eyes hovering over a body. The room would dim around her, as she soaked up all of the light.
Peanut Butter – a particularly bad troublemaker who I once headed off on his way to the restroom. As I stood my ground telling him to leave he increasingly vocalized that he had to evacuate his bowels. I told him he was not using the restroom, repeatedly. In obvious great distress, he then motioned as though to pull his pants down right where he stood and I told him that would be the last mistake he ever made (or some similar awesome movie-type line). He then said, “Come on man…I ate some bad peanut butter!” My employees laughed uproariously at this and I probably even smiled myself. Ultimately he left the store and crossed the street for some bushes.
Madame Curie - a woman who had what we decided was a French accent. She was normally fine but one day she snapped and with her deep, low-key voice started referring to the law-school girl behind her in line as a...well, let's say a "bucking fitch." And she said it over and over and added stuff like, "I hate that (bucking fitch)." And such. My employee Dave could do a great impression of this sultry-yet-deranged-sounding monologue. One day she announced to myself and one of my employees that she was moving to California. My employee wished her well and very earnestly and unthinkingly asked her if she had everything packed, to which I inadvertently laughed out loud and immediately felt bad. But even Madame Curie laughed at that and said something like, "No deah, I don't has many sings to pack."
(I feel obligated to say here that the real Marie Curie was actually POLISH. This is true. And if you ever, EVER let a Pole hear you refer to her as a Frenchwoman, why they'll....why they'll.....well, they'll do something both punishing and culturally relevant, but I am drawing a blank here.)

So that's quite a motley crew, huh? I am currently working on a treatment that I’m going to pitch to the major networks to get this turned into a sitcom!

This brings me to a woman who I have always called – to myself…she never came into my store – Four Kids. She’s been on the Mall for years and years and her spiel is such: “Excuse me, I’m homeless and I got four kids…” I don’t know what comes next because I’m usually past her by then (maybe one day I’ll ask). But today I saw Four Kids sitting and talking on a cell phone. Now, homeless people can have cell phones, certainly…there are even shelters that provide them. But it struck a contrast from what I usually see from her.

And it got me thinking about this fascination that my dad latched onto one time after seeing something on Dateline or some other equally worthless show. It was about all these “homeless” people who beg for money but are actually quite well-heeled. Some of them actually have jobs! Now, I’ve spent enough time around the homeless of the city that I can safely say that this applies to exactly zero of the homeless people I’ve ever seen. But thanks to irresponsible reporting by a tabloid crap show that has to look for sensational stories, I have to hear people like my dad go on about this.

A conversation we had* once went like this:

Dad – See that guy over there…he’s probably rich!
Me – That guy?
Dad – Yep…drives an Acura, I bet, eats at Red Lobster, vacations at Lake Erie (it should be noted that my dad's idea of elegance is a bit constrained, btw).
Me – THAT guy? The one who smells like piss from 30 feet away? The one jabbering to himself?
Dad – He’s probably talking on a hidden phone to his compatriot…they’re setting up the next sucker from out of town.
Me – The one trying to eat the pine cone?
Dad – Crafty. So, so crafty.
Me – And who told you –
Dad – Stone Phillips

So I’ve decided she’s probably rich, based on the cell phone. So her new name is Homeless Tycoon. Ain’t fooling me.

*No, we never had this conversation but it’s a hypothetic reality.

Who I’m loving today – this six-year-oldish tourist kid I saw out on the street. His family was walking down the sidewalk coming my way and I saw him run over the curb and lean way out and wave his hand, as though hailing a cab. Sure enough, a cab slowly rolled down the street and the kid was hailing him like you’d see any adult doing. The cab slowed down and I saw the driver look, to see if this was serious, but as the rest of the family had continued to walk, he drove away. The kid threw his hands up in despair, caught up with his folks and fairly yelled, “I’m tired of walking…you have to help me!” It was really funny.

Who I'm trying to love - phys ed programs. First of all, they're a waste of time that could be spent on actual education. Secondly, PC worries continue to get in the way. A loyal reader sent this, from USA Today, cause he thought I would find it funny: "The latest episode of HBO's Real Sports, debuting Wednesday, includes a look at school physical education programs aiming to reduce competition and physical contact. Among the innovations: Have children jump rope without using ropes and play tag where you just step on others' shadows rather than tagging them." Jump rope....without...using....ropes. Hmm. Kinda like the marathon I always run while standing still, eating Doritos. Or that time I won the Heisman Trophy while really just playing Playstation. I guess we should be glad that we typically only create these field-leveling rules in PE and not in the smarts department. I mean, if you're bad at chemistry, can the grade for your experiments just be based on how well you handle your test tube (snicker)...because I'd get high marks for that!

Tax day semen-throwing contest has been cancelled

2009-04-13T15:12:00.002-04:00

I'll return your registration fees. I'm very sorry.... I had thought about moving it to Washington state, but really, Portland is the only place where it just feels "right"

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/house_passes_bill_too_gross_to.html

Mastersbation!

2009-04-12T15:26:00.007-04:00

This is Masters weekend, when a historic golf tournament is played in Georgia, drawing the best golfers from around the world and a huge viewing audience. One of the reasons the broadcast is so popular is that for golfers it marks the start of spring, with the event being played on a spectacularly beautiful piece of land....which really could be better used for something like housing the homeless, but I won't let my own political views get too involved in my web log here.

It is also the time of year when CBS gladly and vigorously rubs itself raw from what I call Mastersbation. See, CBS has had the rights to this thing for over 50 years and has been the tournament's bitch for most of that time. (The club has very specific and sometimes restrictive guidelines for the broadcast of the tournament, which CBS bends over and squealingly agrees to.) And every year CBS unfailingly feeds us a bunch of soft-focused, sepia-toned sentimental baloney, behind soft piano plinks, over which it gasps and squeezes and clenches in a building of ecstasy before spraying its golf ejaculate everywhere, dribbling down your screen like a Tiger Woods chip shot sliding down the green.

Honest to goodness this is what an announcer said at one point on Sunday: “It’s springtime…the season of renewal. Mother Nature’s annual gift of life.” WTF? This is golf. Again, this is all with the soft piano and images of flowers…my wife said “It sounds like a meditation DVD.”

Here are your drinking game words, should you be
watching on Sunday:
Hallowed
Spring
Magnolias
Nostalgia
Palmer
Legend/s/ary
Monumental
Historic
Memories/Remember
“Amen Corner”
Nicklaus

The broadcast itself is sappy enough, but where they really get you is in the pre-broadcast specials and coming in and out of commercials. See, baby boomers are getting old and soon will be dying. This cohort, which has forced its way through our society, bulging and pushing at the seams with all the elegance of a small pig that's been swallowed by a snake, is getting wistful as it faces its own mortality and just absolutely adores the even older guys from their youth who are credited with putting golf on the map, primarily Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, who are still there in the periphery. So, as they've always done, the networks play to the boomers...and it just so happens that Palmer and Nicklaus made their legends at the Masters, giving CBS a lot of footage and a lot of “memories” to bandy about. The network exploits these guys so much; here is the type of thing you’re likely to see, which they did a few years ago: They sit Palmer in a room and show him highlights from his victories (and force him to reflect on days of being young and virile)…clip after clip after clip….more and more and more and...finally……YES! – Palmer starts to cry and CBS shudders and convulses. They hope it was it good for you because it sure was for them!

This year they got lucky. Seve Ballesteros, a Masters winner who is a second-tier "legend," was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, giving CBS a chance to devote nearly a full hour to him on Sunday, in a program called "Jim Nantz Remembers Augusta." (Drink!)

Interesting programming observation - on Sunday the Masters lead-in on CBS was a Monster Trucks event. Hmmm. What percentage of that audience do you suppose didn't change the channel when the Masters programming started? Is there a big crossover group here?

Who I'm trying to love today, April 11

2009-04-11T12:15:00.002-04:00

I'm changing the name of this feature for a couple of reasons. 1. at the Monday-Thursday service at my church (so called because in the old days it used to be a really long service, from Monday - Thursday...this was a long time ago....before people decided to change our date references from "AD" to "CE" and seal their fates in hell) my pastor touched on the fact that Jesus wants us - nee, commands us - to love one another. 2. One of my loyal readers said to me, "I like the new feature...it should give you a lot of material," and I wondered if she meant that was so because she thinks I'm a hateful person. So, moving along...

Who I'm loving today - this woman who almost hit me with her car. Yes, loving! I'm a bit of of an aggressive walker in the city. If there's a crosswalk - not at a light - I have the right of way and you better believe I'm using it. I am a little more hesitant around the DC courthouse, though, because....well, just because. So I held up a bit yesterday as I approached a crosswalk there because I saw a car coming that wasn't slowing and the driver couldn't see me too well because of another vehicle. She pulled through the crosswalk just as I stepped out and she looked at me, startled, toothless, in this old, beat up Volvo, and as she drove by said, in her most earnest and sincere no-tooth voice, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." It was nice. I told her not to worry about it as she drove away (hitting a baby in a stroller further down the street).

Who I'm loving today - these two guys who play frisbee during lunch not far from my office. I love them for their dorkiness and their complete comfort with their masculinity. Playing frisbee on the beach is one thing. Playing frisbee in work clothes over lunch is waaaaayyy different. In fact, in a recent report released by the International Center for Testosterone Tests (I-C-Testes), "Lunch frisbee" was given a rating of 12. A 12, mind you, on a 100-point Troy Polamalu scale. It narrowly beat out American Idol (10) and soccer (9) and was tied with The Yes Dance. The report further defined lunch frisbee as such: "Often a hacky-sack gateway activity....if being done other than at the beach, participants are probably using the drug 'marijuana'...vaguely Dutch." But God bless them.

Passion!
So I went to my first ever "passion" play Friday, and it was at one of these mega-churches that seats about 2500 people. I'm not used to these plays and I never even saw the Mel Gibson movie, which my wife likes to call "The Jesus Snuff Film." Assuming one believes there is something to this ("this" being the whole Jesus-died-for-your-sins), I'm not sure how one should feel about these. I mean, you could say it's over-the-top "fake emotional religiosity" (as a friend of mine called it) that glorifies in gore. Or one could say that it really brings close-to-home a historical event...and one that has ramifications for all of us (again, assuming you believe in this). When you watch "Roots" it drives home some of the horrificness of slavery, "Schindler's List" does the same for the Holocaust....and one could say watching these films is good for our understanding of that particular terror, so why should we blanch at a depiction of what happened to Jesus?

Okay, I have nothing funny to say here and being mostly dumb I don't do serious well, so let me segue - at Starbucks we had a tea called "passion" that we brewed every morning to make into iced tea. One day one of my employees, Will, who is gay, was making some and while the tea was still hot I moved the container, sloshing some tea onto his face. He was okay, but pretended to make a big deal about the pain and suffering I caused him. When my assistant came in later she asked how the morning was and I said, "Fine, except for when I splashed hot passion onto Will's face." Will thought this was hysterical and made reference to it nearly every day he worked thererafter. Ah Will...God rest his soul (the AIDS).

Who I hate today, April 9

2009-04-09T18:13:00.002-04:00

Who I hate today, April 9 - This woman hosting a webinar I had to waste an hour on this week. Among other brilliant things to come out of her mouth was, when referring to social norms, she said the word "mores" not like "more-ays" as appropriate, but like "moors." Or maybe it was moops? :-)

Who I love: Foreign toddlers who are so cute when they talk! I mean, it's cute enough sometimes listening to a toddler talk with his high voice and neat cadence, and when he's blurting out a foreign language, especially Dutch, it's too cute! And given that since there is a vast amount of research showing that Americans are the master people and thus English is the master language and QED all babies default to speaking English, it's impressive these kids were able to pick up their "native" language!

Love: Good tourist dads. Passed this guy on the Mall today who said to his brood of youngsters: "Isn't this great? A beautiful day...and a family thing." You see so many unhappy people on vacation, largely because parents set improper expectations about a vacation and then react inappropriately to easily-predictable child behavior. But this guy knew what was going on. But to be cynical, my guess is they had just gotten to the Mall. And in about 200 yards they were going to come face-to-face with a line at the Air and Space Museum half a block long. I should have seen how he responded when the going got tough...was he going to keep it together, like someone I know did when his beloved Teva fell apart while in Nova Scotia? (There was supposed to be a link to a picture here of my foot inside a shredded Teva, but I'm too lazy to post that. So just imagine it.)

Bonus love: This guy outside my building in a car who asked me for help...he was looking for the child support office (good start!) and the address he had for it was right where my building stood. He even showed me the piece of paper showing the address and I was trying to help, but couldn't make sense of what was going on. Then I looked at the date on his letter....it was from 2002! I pointed this out to him and he said, "Yeah....maybe it move?" And I said, "Si senor....maybe it move." That's still not as bad/good as the American tourists who asked me once if the Old Executive Office Building (pictured here) was the White House (pictured ON 45 PERCENT OF ALL MOVIES AND TV SHOWS AND MOST MONEY).

You, commuter. You are making me mad.

2009-04-09T18:10:00.001-04:00

You're pissing me off this week, commuter. What's gotten into you? There are fewer of you right now because most of you is on vacation...but it's been like, addition by subtraction. Don't get off your game just because you have to be at work while the rest of you frolicks with drug lords in Cancun. Keep it together, bitch.

You've been slowing down and stopping at the top of escalators, standing on the left, talking loud. One day you had the idiotic balls to bring a bike on the train during rush hour. I was happy to see that the smart part of you called you out on it, but used the moronic "guess you didn't get the memo" to address it. I hope a bus took you right off that bike as soon as you got off the train. Today you whiningly used the emergency button to tell the driver that...the car was hot? Yeah, it was warm in there...an emergency? No. Dick. When you were done, and you expected the entire car to erupt in applause because you came to our rescue and instead we all just ignored you, did you feel small?

Saturday you were great. Saturday you got out of your car at a stop light, went to window of the (asian?) guy in front of you and freaking chewed him out right there very loudly because he almost hit you. That was brilliant. But then it's like you wilted on Monday. Don't play musical chairs with me based on where we're getting off...just sit. If there's a paper on the seat beside me, you should KNOW by now that it's not mine...and no, I'm not touching it. If you want to sit, move it. And do not - unless you clearly understand that you and I have the same feeling toward the rest of you and we have communicated some kinship in that regard - make chit chat. We don't talk, you and I.

There's been some weird stuff going on...trains keep stopping too far past or too short of their marks, messing up our alignment with the escalator. Tourists are all over the place....but come on. You have one more day to redeem yourself for this week.

Who I hate today, April 6

2009-04-06T21:16:00.002-04:00

In order to keep this site hip and "rad," as the kids say, I know I need to keep it fresh. That's why I'm rolling out a new feature. It's called "Who I hate today."

As I thought about this, I realized that it seemed a bit excessively negative and that's not supposed to be the purpose of what goes on here. I look down at the things I've written about and in general I see topics that have to do by and large with love: Mormons, prostitutes, NAMBLA, Canadians, and Nicole Kidman. So though the feature is called "Who I hate today," I will balance it by also listing something/one I love today. And I will have a surprise present for each! So away we go....

Who I hate today: people who, while ordering at a quick-service restaurant where your food is prepared directly in front of you - say, Quiznos - berate the server to give them more product than is supposed to go into a serving. For instance, if you order a tuna salad sandwich and the immigrant guy making $6 an hour has been told he is to only put two scoops of tuna onto that sandwich, don't stand there and yell at him and try to coerce him to give you more tuna. If you want more tuna, you have to pay for it. I imagine these are the people who try to "chew" people around everytime they make a purchase (again, what does this mean????). Here is my present to you, mean person.

Who I love today: The station manager at the Judiciary Square metro. What did he do? He came out of his kiosk to greet a metro rider he apparently hasn't seen in a long time but knows. She is blind. She had a walking stick pointer thingy. I think she was headed for an escalator that was out of service (why didn't her super-dee-duper hearing kick in and tell her it wasn't working??) and he came out and kindly redirected her, taking her by the arm. Then he said, without a sense of irony or meanness, just as kind as he oculd be, and I swear I am not making this up (nods to Dave Barry), "Hey, how have you been? Long time, no see." Here is your gift, nice station manager.

About whom I am ambivalent: This caricature of a guy who got on the metro today....he violated so rules of mine that would normally make me mad. I'm sitting on the aisle and at Gallery Place it gets pretty crowded....this man and a woman stand very close to me and you can spot them as tourists from a mile away. They start to talk. They are loud. They are nervous. And this guy's voice....he was so southern. I mean, his voice was almost someone doing a mean-spirited impression it was SO southern. If you went to the remotest part of Georgia - I mean like ass-rapin', pig f'ing, still-slave-owning, no-water-running Georgia and went to some diner and ordered a pulled pork BBQ sandwhich with sweet tea and pecan pie and that meal could talk...the voice of that meal is what this guy's voice sounded like.

They are complaining that there's no place to sit and the woman assures him that it will empty out and it doesn't, really, and he's really complaining. Serves you right for taking the metro and getting on at rush hour, I think. At Dupont Circle the woman to my inside needs to get off and so I step out and no sooner has she gone by me than Billy Bob Tobaccostain slides in behind me and sits down (a BIG metro faux pas, for those who don't know). Well, I know he's with Maribelle Clampett and while I have every right to sit back down and really send his plan out to the woodshed for a hide-tannin' from its pappy, I look at the woman and as unenthusiastically as I can ask her if she wants to sit down. She does. So I'm all ready to hate this guy but then I hear them talking (did I mention they were loud?) and it sounds like he's getting a little nauseated from motion sickness. And then, reflecting on their day, he says, "I'll never go to DC again (tourists love to call it "DC".....how quickly would you get shot if you kept referring to New York as "NY" on the subway there?). That there's more people than I've ever been around in my life." And she said, sounding hurt, "Aw, don't make me feel bad." And then I looked at the guy and he was all shaky, and did not look well (as one won't from years of living around raw sewage and f'ing pigs) and when I actually saw his face I saw that one eye was completely closed and the other was as murky as the gene pool from whatever hell-on-earth county that reared him. And then I started to feel bad for being so mean-spirited. I mean, WWJD?! And I thought about how much more he needed the seat than I did and that I shouldn't direct such negative feelings toward him on his one and only trip to anywhere with buildings with non-dirt floors. (Oh, and I noticed his hat was advertising some restaurant somewhere and made note of the area code.....it was 706. I just looked that up after writing all of this above and ya know where that is? That's right - he actually is from pig f'ing Georgia.) Anyway, here's your gift, sir.

Britney spears word play

2009-03-30T23:29:00.004-04:00

Ha! Do you get it? Word play about word play! With a capital "S" and an apostrophe (you remember those, right? Our parents used them.) this title means word play belonging to the pop star. As it is, I mean to stay that said pop star has "speared" word play, meaning, she's really nailed it.

She has a new song out, titled "If You Seek Amy." Now, these lyrics may seem innocuous enough, but all is not quite what it seems. For instance, the lyrics don't even make sense in some contexts. Here's one line: "All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy." Huh? But look again....yeah, say it slowly: F-U-C-K Me.

Brilliant, huh? What a genius lyricist....not that she writes her lyrics, of course. I would take this opportunity to make fun of her for her rather juvenile efforts at cleverness, but here's the rub: it comes straight from James Joyce, the genius nominally celebrated by this blog! One of the true craftsmen with the Enlgish language and he resorted to these cheap jokes. Here is the excerpt, right out of Ulysses:

If you see kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.

And not only did he give us F-U-C-K, but there in the third line, in case you missed it, is C-U-N-T. Now, the dialogue does come from characters from whom you'd might expect to say this sort of thing, but to draw a verbal line from Spears to Joyce was, well.....a shocker. Goes to show that we all have a bit of bawdy in us, right?

And let's not forget the one and true master of the language (and master of the bawdy), Shakespeare: In Twelfth Night, the character Malvolio reads a letter penned by someone different than the signator. He analayzes the writing by saying, "By my life this is my lady's hand. These be her very C's, her U's and her T's and..." Sounding the "and" as "n"..... well, you get the picture.

Twitter!

2009-03-29T22:58:00.005-04:00

We are entering into a new age of communication and it is a brave, new world, my friends. I suppose we've been continuously making advances in communication and humankind has always quickly taken to them, for obvious reasons. The desire to communicate with others is innate and important to survival...it fulfills an evolutionary desire to build a network of people in our lives. For primitive men, this network was to cast a wide net for women with which to have sex. And this, an adapted search for sex, quickly follows new advancements in communication. Just look at the last 100 years or so. First we had the radio come along and revolutionize communication by using airwaves. And it was barely two weeks after the first practical usage that women started speaking provocatively into a conveniently phallus-shaped device called a microphone, or "dickey," as they called it in the nascent days of the industry. After radio usage became common, what followed was what we can in all practicality call "radio sex," best represented by the the after-hours, 30's era show "Dames with great gams talking fast." Though not often reported today, it's true that FDR's "fireside chats" would often open with a two-minute teaser for this show, creating a titillated audience lead-in for the president (who, of course, could feel no titillation at all. As an side, some have said his polio was faked, used as an excuse to get out of having sex with Eleanor, when after the age of 25 she started to look like a scary dude. Family members have refuted this charge). Next, after the radio came the telephone, which quickly lead to phone sex and men paying several dollars per minute to talk to a silkily-voiced lady who in reality probably looked like this. TV led to graphic images like this, even during the "safe hours." Then email, which quickly lead to cybersex, and now texting, which has led young people apparently to "sexting."

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have Twitter. I don't know to what extent its developers hope or care that it's used to gratify sexual urges, but they sure could have given it a less suggestive name if this was a concern of theirs. "Twitter" has long been used as a euphemism for sex, first found as such in a letter from President James Buchannan to his suspected partner William Rufus King, "And whenst thou were twittering on me last night it was such that I was almost enjoying having you 'override' my 'veto.' Shall we head to Dupont Circle this evening?"

Twitter is the latest and greatest of ways to have one person share stupid and random thoughts with a large group of people. This was preceded by the also dumb "blog" (you suckers!) and has been called "microblogging." In 140 characters or less the twitterer sends out a "tweet" and people who have chosen to follow this person's tweets have this message sent to either their email inbox, or in the case of the ultra cool, to their cell phones. Who are the people participating in this? Why would people want this? Do we want to know those innermost thoughts...these brain spurts? Is this immediacy in communication so important? Even the president's would probably be pretty boring:

5:45am "Just getting up...busy day....looking at Michelle still sleeping in bed. Sigh...I so could have had a white woman."

6:20am "Forcing CEOs of the f'ing Big 3 to resign! I am master of the universe."

6:35am "Feeling bad...kids just asked for help on homework but I don't know what to say with no teleprompter nearby."

9:35am "Joe B has called 12 times and it's not even 10am. WTF was I thinking...would have skated through with Hitler as veep."

10:45am "Mainstream media heads just called...asking how I next want to be glowingly portrayed."

And so forth....

Crazy Grandma's candy dish

2009-03-17T22:00:00.006-04:00

I think it may be safe to say that we go above and beyond with safety when it comes to our children. Not to downplay the importance of safety, but I raised a perfectly healthy and normal child even with several "Darwin award" type entrapments along the way to test her mettle. She chose correctly (and in some cases just got plain lucky) pretty much all of the time, thus resulting in a roboteen-like force ready to take on the world.

But I look around and see that her friends are so coddled they are not allowed to "live." They can't, for instance, go outside without sunblock, travel on the metro by themselves, smoke, or date gang members. And yet they're going to be sent off to college very soon...it will be like sending a butterfly off into the wild without letting its wings get strong through the process of breaking out of a cocoon!

And today parents are very wise to the safety of the products that go into their kids' mouths. When I was a kid it didn't really matter what we consumed. We sat in the back of cigarette smoke-filled cars (with the windows up, of course), unbuckled, eating Beefaroni from the can (it had the four food groups - pasta, sauce, meat, and aroni). Half the time we had a contact high from our parents' enormous bongs and - wait, excuse me for a second....(what? really? not everybody?). Uhhh...apparently that was just me. Anyway, today parents are savvy to these things, and are especially careful about choking and poisoning, to name a couple hazards. My generation's only defense from this was something called a Mr. Yuck sticker - I was always confused about this, however, as the sticker at my friends' homes was kind of green, but the one my parents would use was much different. True story* - one time I drank about 12 ounces of Drano because I was left home alone and was watching a Proctor and Gamble-sponsored cartoon called Mr. Drano and the Tastee Tastes, and the sticker my parents used - on Drano, bleach, kool-aid, bongs, whatever - looked like this.

But in this generation everything is labeled...even over-labeled. Dasani even comes with a "choking hazard" sticker. So in this environment, one really, really has to wonder...how on earth does this fly??? It's air freshener...that looks like candy! Have you seen these ads? WHAT is Renuzit doing? This is a society where entire neighborhoods have their peanut supplies confiscated if they are too close to a kindergarten. Where if one guy coughs while swallowing a bite of his spinach salad the whole produce industry collapses under E. coli fears. Where admitting in polite society that you let your kids eat raw cookie dough earns you the same scorn as if you had said that you had a confederate-flag tattoo on your ass (actually it's Alexander Stephens and on my perineum, but you probably don't know who or what that is).

But they're going to sell something that is likely poisonous, to be put out in the home (around the precious children!), in candy dishes, that looks like candy? Was their legal department on vacation the day this was approved? Doesn't anyone remember Hank Petchow?

* Not a true story

My trip to the inauguration

2009-01-20T22:30:00.009-05:00

Inaugaration blog!

Well, I'm home from my venture downtown...what a historic day (or "an historic day" if you're A. British and don't pronounce the "h" or B. just stupid). It was exciting to see so many enthusiastic and idealogical people all in one place!

4:35 am - I pull into the Shady Grove metro station to meet a nearly-full parking lot. The line to get in the station is backed up by tourists standing at the gates discussing where to put their fare card...some are also watching an abortion. I briefly join in the "Yes, We Can" chant as the woman's rights are so awesomelly realized as a bloody fetus is removed. (Notice that my "Yes, We Can" has an appropriately-placed comma!)

4:50 am - the platform is crowded! Metro was smart and imported some of those Japanese subway pushers with the white gloves. Here's my picture. The index finger on one of the gloves, however, is brown. I don't even want to know.

6:35 am - Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stop - the train runs pretty smoothly until Tenleytown when a group calling itself "Democrats Instigating Crass Kicking and Wanting A Demonstration" (DICK-WAD) smashes some windows on the train and we have to offload. I ask why they are angry and a spokeswoman says they're not really sure, but anytime there is a large event in DC they have this primal urge to rally and protest and they're drawn like moths to a flame. When I explain that moths only go to light because they think it's the moon and then ask if she thinks it is an appropriate metaphor to say that DC (where "DC" is synecdoche for the people in power, running our country) is like the moon in that it doesn't produce any light of its own, but only sends out light that it collects from another source, she thinks for a moment and then asks if there is anyone I know who wants an abortion.

6:40 am - I leave the metro station and walk into Chinatown and notice a big, big mistake. Huge logistics snafu, with an emphasis on the last two letters. Turns out January 20 is also Chinese New Year. So not only are the streets packed with inauguration people, but also Chinese New Year people. The place is a madhouse (but with good dumplings). But wait...it gets better. This upcoming year is "year of the monkey" and there are lots of Chinese people carrying signs with ugly monkeys on them, yelling and marching....and the way a Chinese person says "happy monkey new year" if you were to sound it out is like, "hay -toh - ba - ma." The inauguration crowd is not happy and have threatened to take their laundry and carry-out business elsewhere. DICK-WAD is now crassly kicking in all directions and in addition I have seen several stabbings. The Chinese seem genuinely confused and keep making disjointed Chingresh references to the Olympic opening ceremonies, seemingly as a panacea for a wrong they don't understand they've committed, saying things like, "Sports party open you no rike???".

7:00 am - For the homeless this is a bonanza, with a bunch of bleeding hearts in an upbeat spirit wandering the streets. My guess is that on their own most of these people wouldn't give a crack-whore their spare pocket-change, but the peer pressure in front of fellow patrons-of-hope and change-the-worlders runs deep and strong. Many give, but a lot use their many layers of clothing as an excuse of not being able to reach their money. I cut through an alley as a shortcut where I see a a shaky, skinny lady who tells me that $20 will get me a blow job. I too use my many layers of clothing as an excuse to keep walking. But mostly I just didn't have $20.

11:00 am - I have now stood in a packed line for over three hours and it's moving nowhere. People are cordial but pushing and shoving has happened a little bit, with many people cutting in line. I see a couple of lipstick lesbians wearing "Lesbian Avenger" sweaters. I slide over to them and tell them that I remember being at the Promise Keepers rally on the Mall in 1997, where a bunch of Christian men met to discuss being better husbands and fathers and how a group of Avengers decided this was an awful agenda and to disrupt things they walked through the group topless. I lie and tell them how awesome I thought that was, to earn their trust. Then I tell them that it would really be a show of support to Obama to do the same thing as they stand in line. They call me a pig and excuse themselves, saying they had some abortions to attend. As they walk away I yell out that I'm transgendered, hoping to lure them back as a kindred spirit, but they keep going. I look to my left and see my boss.

11:30 am - News reports flow through the crowd that both Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd have had to be removed from festivities due to seizures or some other sort of ailment. Nothing like sturdy men running this country who have a little trouble with....cold.
Spurred by this and boredom I have an impromptu quiz with some people in line with me.

Me: The game is "Byrd or Kennedy" - I burned over 1,000 crosses as a member of the KKK. While with them, I had the way cool title of "Exalted Cyclops."
Guy: Byrd!
Me: Good. I swam away from a drowning woman, who was drowning because I drunkenly drove her off a bridge.
Different guy: Kennedy!
Me: Right. In 2001 in an interview with Tony Snow I made reference to "white niggers."
Woman: Kenn...wait, Byrd.
Me: Yep. Once in a letter to another Senator I wrote: "I should die a thousand times than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
First guy: Byrd. This is kind of easy.
Me: Don't play then. Next - I was my dad's ninth-favorite child (out of nine), even ranking below the daughter they had labotomized, and I was the only one who was a mistake, as evidenced by the fact that I'm the only one who wasn't part of an Irish-twin set. For the last forty years I've had to live with the following thought in my head: Jack, Bobby...it should have been me!
First guy: Kennedy.
Me: Yep. My gin blossoms are -
First guy: You know, I think those lesbians have taken off their shirts.
Me: Where?

But clearly he is just bored and is trying to divert my attention, as they are nowhere to be seen.

12:15 pm - So, we haven't gotten in and I can barely see any screens...I hear Obama flub the oath and then "Hail to the Chief" starts up. I turn around to head back to the metro, step over some aborted babies and pieces of the broken Starbucks window, courtesy of DICK-WAD, and contemplate this historic event. Like all of us, whether or not I want Barack to be president (and I didn't vote against him), we can only hope that he'll lead us properly. I get to the metro platform and am surprised to be directed to the rear cars, toward the back of the train and I think this is another security measure of some sort. Then I notice that everyone else back there is white also. So it begins. Turnabout is fair play, I guess.

The hyphen: The red headed step child and over the top neglected, worthiness seeking, punctilious minded punctuation mark.

2009-01-15T23:54:00.002-05:00

Bet you had trouble reading that title, huh? Yeah....and why? Because I said F-you to the hyphen in it (not "F you"), just like a lot of people are doing these days.

Let's try again.
The hyphen: The red-headed step-child and over-the-top neglected, worthiness-seeking, punctilious-minded punctuation mark.

Look at what a nice sentence that is and OH BY THE WAY, MY FINGERS DIDN'T FALL OFF TYPING IT.

I'm not going to write for very long about this, as there is a great, short book covering this punctuation rant and much more, but really....why is the hyphen disappearing from our writing? I blame it on marketers. I honestly think that marketers think that the inclusion of hyphens in signage will somehow confuse and bewilder we poor consumers, frightening us away from packages and offerings that seem to "uppity" about punctuation. A "Double Stuffed Burrito" is a kick-ass meal, but a "double-stuffed burrito" takes itself way too seriously and may cause diarrhea and probably has salmonella. A "high definition" TV is clearer than anything you can imagine, but a "high-definition" TV only shows NOVA and C-Span. Look at the cover of the book linked above. The cover reads, "The Zero Tolerance Approach..." I would bet anything, based on the author's tone, that this decision was made by the publisher and she was infuriated when it came out naked of hyphen.

I'm not saying this just for the sake of following rules, but the hyphen helps things make sense...it bundles adjectives the way they are supposed to be combined, making it clear what they are saying about the noun being modified. So don't be afraid to stick a hyphen in there where it should be! We can turn the tide back to the way of the proper. I'm not asking you to get arrested like these guys, but just don't neglect it!

Sin is expensive in Sin City

2009-01-15T22:23:00.003-05:00

Recently I had a work trip to Las Vegas and my wife joined me. It was our first time to visit the town and it was quite the sensory experience: the lights, the sounds, the smells. But one of the most interesting thing to me was some of the sidewalk business life. When you walk down the Strip you are accosted by any number of people selling or offering stuff, more aggressive than people you'd see even in New York. But the worst offenders are these little Hispanic dudes wearing shirts that say "Girls Girls" and other info and with a phone number. Some of them also wear these harnesses on their shoulders with a high-def image of two half-naked women making out, sticking up about two feet over their heads. These guys have these little cards - about the size of business cards - advertising escorts. On the card is an erotic photo of a girl (with starbursts over her privatist privates) with her name on it and a phone number and sometimes a website. Here's an assortment (not mine). Here's a good picture of the guys handing them out(they're on the left in the yellow and red shirt) and one with the harness.

These guys have developed this method of taking a handful of cards and slapping or flicking them so that they make this "thwap" sound. You look and they try to hand them to you. You don't look (which you learn)....and they try to hand them to you. In fact, they almost step right in front of you to stick a handful of these cards in your face...and they don't care if you're walking with your wife, girlfriend, etc. If you walk five blocks, you will encounter close to 100 of these guys, no exaggeration (and I think they're all from the same family in El Salvador) and each and every one will try to hand you some cards. At one point during our trip my wife said, for sport, "You should just get as many as you can. See if they'll all hand you some." So I started taking them and had a bunch in my pocket....when we got back to the hotel we looked at a few and noted some of the "marketing." Some of these cards said "$35 special," and others said, "$150 - no hidden fees." That one seemed more likely. I would guess the $35 was the rate you got after hiring an escort at $200 per hour on five different occassions, or something like that.

So curious as to how this works, I called the number from a card that had a girl named "Barit" on it and that advertised a flat $150 fee with no hidden fees. Some woman answers at what I assume is an agency and I said I was calling about a card I got on the Strip and she asked for the girl's name and I told her and she immediately tried to pressure me into an appointment. She asked where I was staying and I told her (as it was immaterial and seemed the next step to get my questions answered) and then she said, "So you want an appointment in the next couple of hours?" And I said that I had a few questions first and asked if the girl on the card was actually the girl who was going to show up. I mean, a lot of these places advertised a girl to your door in 20 minutes. But if Barit is in the middle of....business....at the other end of town, how is she going to get to me in 20 minutes? The response was, "Like every girl on every card in Las Vegas, that girl is just a model. But Barit is a petite, busty blonde with a California look...she is very gorgeous. Can we set up a time?" So who knows what you might be getting. And so I asked about the $150 fee. She said, "The $150 is our agency fee - that gets her to your hotel and gets her naked. She doesn't get any of that money, so what happens after that is negotiated between you and Barit and is considered a tip."

So "no hidden fees" huh?.....except the extra $200+ or whatever to actually get Barit to interact with the client's genitals! Maybe I'm a stickler, but in my book that's a "hidden fee." I thanked her and hung up. I wonder how this works if you're naive about the photo of the girl on the card. If the girl they send has buck teeth, a unibrow, and six fingers on one hand, you've already been charged $150. Are you going to argue with her? Are you going to call the agency? I mean, you're out that money, so I assume you're just going to go ahead and deal with the girl who shows up, right?

Interesting town.

Australia!

2008-11-28T16:44:00.004-05:00

So if you find yourself in a movie theater in the next couple of weeks and upon the screen is a scene where a bunch of aboriginal children are on a boat, singning "Over the Rainbow," and Nicole Kidman is running toward them in slow motion, then you've just wasted the last two and a half hours (yes, 2.5 hours) on the steaming pile of crap titled Australia.

I went into this movie with cautious optimism. I like the director, Baz Luhrmann (his adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is great and I'm not ashamed to say that his Moulin Rouge is one of my favorite movies of the past 10 years). And this was to be his magnum opus to his home country of Australia, populated with two big stars who are easy on the eyes, both from that country, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. I wondered how Luhrmann would bring his unique style of surrealism and quick-cutting direction to an epic that is essentially is his Gone With the Wind (in fact there are many, at least indirect GWTW references in this movie...Kidman's last name is Ashley, there is an auction of the women at a charity ball which she attends as a widow, etc.). And the first 30 minutes or so of the movie didn't disappoint.

But then the movie and his direction took a turn and the whole thing became a big, cliched, Hollywood-style syrup fest, with lingering, perfectly-framed shots on the protagonists, predictable plot events, a whole hatful of feel-goodism (usually centered around racial reconciliation), and so many uses of "crikey" that if you were playing the drinking game using that word, you'd be mercifully trashed long before the sappy ending. The good guys all live, the bad guy gets his due, and everyone lives (spoiler alert!) happily ever after.

It's interesting - I read that his initial ending was poorly received at screen tests and Fox forced him to come up with a different one....in other words, the initial ending was probably interesting! Maybe - gasp - it didn't all get tied up so perfectly! And the use - nee, overuse - of "Over the Rainbow" was awful. Again, this is going to be Australia's definitive movie, what Braveheart is to Scotland, what Bergman films are to Sweden, what Debbie Does Dallas is for...well, Dallas. Why not have some titanic theme that we'll associate with the movie, like "Tara's Theme" from GWTW? Surely he could have fit John Williams' salary into the $130 million budget. But instead he recycles "Over the Rainbow," a song that triggers a nice response in most people but that if you've ever listened to outside of The Wizard of Oz, you realize only really works in the context of munchkins, yellow brick roads, and a pedophile walking, talking man made of metal (those scenes were cut, thankfully, but I've seen them online - apparently a button on his suit makes that oil can vibrate...).

Two of the positives: 1. there is at least a fleeting shot of Kidman's boob (or maybe her body double's, in which case it's less interesting) from the side during a brief romantic scene and 2. Loew's theaters are offering Koala burgers at their concessions as part of the tie-in (a little salty, but quite tender).

Why why why why why why why

2008-11-25T21:39:00.007-05:00

The Guitar Hero commercial with Michael Phelps and crew....what. the. hell?

Michael Phelps, you were like the most famous, most admired, most revered person in America just a few months ago. We forgave seeing too much of your pube area for your amazing prowess in a rigorous athletic discipline. You had celebrity capital. And this is how you chose to spend it??? You could have done just about anything and retained some cache. Anything but this.

Kobe Bryant, you are one of the biggest stars in one of the "hippest" leagues in the world. And you flush it down the toilet?? I guess there were some warning signs when we saw you unabashedly promoting....Nutella? But now this??

ARod, I can remember when you signed a $25 million PER YEAR contract, like, 10 years ago. You don't need the money!! You do look a little queer (meaning "odd") and dating Madonna these days is downright queer (meaning "gay"), but you're a big star in a big city...fire your agent.

Tony Hawk, I only kind of know you, but that is probably even more proof of your coolness. You are a skater - that's like the epitome of anti-establishment rebel youth-gone-wildness and we don't really care if you sell out with your name on a (skating) video game. How does this fit in with your image??? Oh, and when they cut to you for your close up, you look like Stephen Hawking would look if he tried to play the drums.

Four dudes running around in their underwear, lip-syncing. The last guy who did this is now a Scientologist! America was EMBARRASSED for you when this aired. The AP reported that Bob Seger made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide when he first saw it and remains under 24-hour watch. To make matters worse, when the music started I was expecting to see Heidi Klum come strutting out, as she also does these commercials. Talk about getting a bucket of cold water thrown on me.

You are all so much more successful than I'll ever be, but this career choice baffles me.

Readers, if you did just watch that ad again, here is some palate-cleansing.

And please do remember: these guys were cool.

Oh, another commuting haiku:

Your rolley bag is
Unnecessary. I kick
It. Kick it down. Hard.

Canadians up to no good

2008-11-12T18:50:00.000-05:00

My lunchtime walk takes me by the Canadian Embassy most days and today there was a big protest outside. A guy with a loudspeaker shouted, “SHAME ON CANADA,” to which a crowd of 100 or so responded, “NO MORE SEAL KILLS.” They were quite adamant about this. They had signs and everything.

I passed through them and got to an intersection where stood a construction worker-type guy and an older woman with her granddaughter of maybe eight. The guy said, “What’s Canada up to now?” and I wasn’t sure if this was rhetorical or directed at me as I was walking from that direction but I said, “Killing seals, apparently.” And he replied, “Well, they gotta eat.” The little girl at this point said, “Grandma, do they eat seals?” and the older woman said, “No,” scornfully and shot the guy a look. As the light changed and we started across the street the guy said to me, “They got free health care…what more should they be complaining about?” So there you have it….down-home wisdom. Screw you, seals, because they already have free health care.

One observation - there were three men sitting very close to this group of protesters, all suffering from what appeared to be a case of severe homelessness. And the Canadians did not seem to direct any of their social concern in their direction – seals over people in Canada, I guess. I did see one of the homeless guys drinking from what at first I thought was a bottle of maple syrup and I thought I smelled some on the air, so I thought maybe the Canadians had paid them a nod and offered them a gesture of cross-cultural sustenance….but then I noticed the bottle was NOT syrup and that what I was smelling was in fact urine. I suggested to the homeless fellows that they go into the NGA for their free pickle.

Actually, as my wife pointed out to me it probably wouldn't be Canadians protesting themselves, and I imagine that these protesters were mostly Americans...also we must consider Canadians don’t get their thermal underwear in a bunch about this stuff. Ever see Canadians on the news getting all up in arms about something? No, you don’t. For one, it’s too cold up there and they have to conserve energy for personal warmth, and for another their inferiority complex at being our sissy little brother has left their collective spirit crushed. It’s more like this (warning: clichés ahead!):

Jacques: Heard they were killing some seals, eh?
Rusty (passing a Molson): It’s aboot time we protest that, eh?
Jacques: Okay, I’m protesting.
Rusty: Me too, eh? Okay, that was enough. Hey look – a moose.
Jacques: I love moose. Along with hockey, Alex Trebek, salmon, and ice fishing, eh?
Rusty: Yep. Want some bacon?
Jacques: If by bacon you mean ham, yes, eh?

They’re just easy-going that way. In fact, while I was in Nova Scotia a couple of years ago I got an extortion-like speeding ticket of $260. If the government of Nova Scotia really wanted me to pay that, it would have been in the neighborhood of $50. As it is, there is no way they’re getting their money. But bless their heart, every few months they’ll send a letter or leave a voicemail along the lines of, “Golly, we sher do hate to bother ya, but this is aboot the ticket that we’re sorry to say you still owe. We checked a few times but it looks like you just must be forgetting to send it in.”

Maybe I’ll just offer to save a few seals and they’ll let bygones be bygones.

Like either one of them have a chance

2008-11-11T09:06:00.003-05:00

If you really thought only 144,000 people made it into heaven, wouldn't you actually advocate AGAINST the dead, and not for? Do what you gotta do to increase your chances, right?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/11/baptizing.dead.jews.ap/index.html

At least they're in agreement on the divinity of Jesus...

Commuting haiku

2008-11-10T18:14:00.002-05:00

That is, haiku about commuting, not haiku that is on the way to work.

A few that I put out quickly today. These all happened to me today...this is ONE DAY's worth of metroing. Please share yours....I'll post them all!

You merge the highway
Straight to left lane, then thirty
Miles per hour. Why? Why?

On escalator
At top you step off, stop. Stand.
We pile behind. Ouch.

Your backpack is stuffed
Huge. Hits me in face as you
Text. You are a dick.

We share a seat but
Your legs spread wide, infringing
Are you balls that big???

Walk on the left. Please.
Walk on the left. WALK ON LEFT
Your death will be nice.

What happens when a crazyhomeless guy goes into the National Gallery of Art?

2008-11-08T16:55:00.002-05:00

He gets a free pickle.

Probably not as a rule...I don't mean to suggest this is a standing policy. There are no big banners out front, for example, proclaiming, "Homeless people, come in and get your fill of art and pickles." I recognize that what I observed was probably a one-off situation, but here's how it went down:

When the temps are lower I take a lunchtime walk and my route usually takes me by the NGA, sometimes through it. Today as I walked down the street between the east and west buildings, I saw a crazyhomeless dude stumbling along. It's really nothing new, unfortunately, and I didn't pay attention. But then I saw him veer off toward the east-building entrance. I've been in the NGA for scores of hours in my life and I've only ever seen a crazyhomeless guy in there once and he is a well-dressed moderately behaved one. (He just walks around talking gibberish into a "cell phone" that is merely him holding his hand to the side of his head and folding his ear down. If you spend much time near the mall you'll probably see him. He's a "cut above" the rest of his group, almost cerebral. My guess is when the homeless council gets together he's probably like the prime minister or something.)

So I've always thought the NGA must be pretty vigilant about meeting them at the door given that I never see them, and given the value of what is inside. Or perhaps the crazyhomeless don't even try to come in - believe it or not, despite that they're crazy, I've seen them process rational thought at times. Actually, it's probably less thought and more Pavlovian behavior. Here's the "thought" process in their head:

"The president is my uncle and he's having me watched. Need crack. Lady with pretty shoes there. Crack. The president will get me tonight. And he'll bring the crack he sells. Going into this building....wait, this is the building with the the crack outside. I mean, the sculpture outside. In past, see sculpture, walk past sculpture, mean lady push me away. Don't go to sculpture.

Crack."

So here was my chance to see this play out. Crazyhomeless guy (who was also apparently gay, based on mannerisms and the sound of his voice during random outbursts) goes up to the steps and I see a guard, hands in pockets. Guard nods to him and does nothing else. Interesting, I think. Surely the fun will end at the main guard desk inside.

Crazyhomeless guy is a good deal ahead of me yet and the windows are shaded, so by the time I'm inside he has already gone past the guard desk where two guards are sitting. WTF?? I know from experience there are some crazyhomeless people who can pass themselves off as normal, and this guy was NOT one of them. So you're letting this person in, who doesn't have rational thought processes and who may be prone to all sorts of anti-social behavior and you're letting him walk around multi-million dollar, irreplaceable works of art??

So I follow him. And now I'm thinking, what if he does do something weird. I'm the only one paying attention. What if he walks up to Ginevra, the only Leonardo in the western hemisphere, and starts to lick her face or something? I'll be the only one there to peel him away and save the day and then Art Gallery Weekly will interview me and when they ask, "And just how did it happen that you realized he was going to do this?" I'll have to think of something other than, "I was following him," because that's weird. But then they'll look at the cameras from the time the guy entered the museum and there I'll be, right behind him in every shot!

So this worried me.

He made his way directly downstairs to where the food court is. (Another curious thing about the crazyhomeless...I use the word "directly," but the guy often seemed like he could barely put one foot ahead of another and stumbled all over. Yet he went immediately to the food court, as though drawn by a beacon. Like zombies trying to get to our brains. I guess it's like watching the stock market...don't look at the little things, the stumbles and dips here and there, just count on the bigger picture resulting in an upward trend.) He went into the area where there are different stations set up - a salad bar, a pizza area, a pasta area, fried foods, etc. He went up to the guy at the pasta area and I could see them interacting and the employee just kept shaking his head. Crazyhomeless went to the soup and sandwich area and I saw him interacting with a kindly-looking hispanic woman. More back-and-forth and that's when it happened. She stealthily grabbed a pickle from a dish and handed it to him! He turned and immediately left and I was a bit shocked. His brashness was met with success. He had set a goal and accomplished it and I was for a moment somewhat impressed with him. And I'm sure she'll see him again.

At that point he munched on his pickle and went out into the expansive gift shop area. I stood off to the side and watched, expecting a shoplifting attempt or something, but he did nothing more than to continue waving at some phantom person. Finally I realized this was probably stalled for the moment and I really had to get back to work so I left. I halfway considered trying to intervene to tell him that a diet of pickles was very high in sodium and that he would just exacerbate his problems with heart disease, which wouldn't help his current station in life. Then he would be "Crazyhomeless plus" perhaps you could call it. Or more appropriately, I guess, "Crazyhomeless minus." I also then decided to take time out of my day to buy him lunch... hahahaha no, no I didn't.

Anyway, not sure what happened after I left, but if you hear about some important piece of work being damaged at the NGA, you'll have an idea of who it might have been.

Mormon update

2008-10-31T14:41:00.004-04:00

True story: I caught one of them smoking at the Haunted Forest. He didn't know I could see him and he went off into the shadows to light up quickly. This is a hellable offense for them, so it's prett serious.* I went up and said, "Dave, let's talk about how much it will take for me to keep quiet about this." He said, very matter-of-factly, "We know about the blog. And while I don't want to, I've been tasked with giving you a 'Salt Lake special' while you sleep sometime in the next few weeks. Don't help me decide to follow through with this."

I don't know what that means but I dropped it.

* True part ends here.

A note on our sponsor

2008-10-31T14:31:00.006-04:00

A few of you have sent me emails recently questioning my decision to take on NAMBLA as a sponsor of the web log.

I knew very little about NAMBLA before meeting with them in their basement offices in an undeveloped block of Northeast DC. Though dank, not marked by any signage at all, and smelling of baby oil, the offices were set up to be quite comfortable, with lots of big, comfy furniture that you could just fall asleep in.

Their mission, as they explained it to me, is for the “growth, development, and maturity - but not too quickly - of young boys so that they can grow up to be explorative, adventurous, muscled, discreet, and shaven.” I don’t entirely know what all that means, but clearly this group is sort of like the YMCA in that it wants to help young men, and in the words of the Village People, “They have everything that you need to enjoy - you can hang out with all the boys..."

The place was set up to be very encouraging….pictures of successful young men were hanging from every wall space: Antonio Sabato, Lance Bass from N’Sync, and that soccer guy. Further, there were a number of those “encouragement” posters on the wall to put these young boys in the right frame of mind. Whether it was the stress-relieving “lie back and just try to relax,” or, “all boys become a man someday!” or “a little pain usually precedes a lot of pleasure,” an environment of support is obvious. An active, sporty life is also shown in a positive light, without being overly pushy on success. For instance one poster showed a basketball tantalizingly rolling along the rim of the goal with the caption, “Sometimes even when it doesn’t go in, progress has been made!” And judging from a few firemen calendars, it looks like they push young boys to move into worthy careers. (Too often our young men are raised in a misogynistic society where women are glorified only as sexual beings, and even at the YMCA I’m sure you would see some posters of attractive young ladies on the wall…but not a one at NAMBLA!). And no restrictions are placed on any young man…no biases or questions asked if a boy needs attention – they take all comers, they told me (their words).

The point I’m trying to make is, without plunging in real deep to poke around, I would say this is an organization that bends over every which way for young boys and those of you with a problem with the sponsorship need to adjust your priorities.

My only concern to come out of the meeting was their thinking that sponsorship gave them some control over content, something I guard very closely. There were a variety of links they encouraged me to add to the site, which I won't, but I will pass this on. Halloween evening they'll have repeated showings of "Garcon Stupide" for all interested in attending. (Again, not sure what this is about, but probably also an uplifting tail...and it's French so they're supporting some good cultural education!)

Soylent Green (subtitle: Surrounded by Mormons)

2008-10-27T16:12:00.002-04:00

So I recently had one of those moments where I realized something that I had never noticed before, but that in hindsight should have been as plain as the nose on my face....you know, one of those times when something that should have been so obvious to you wasn't, and then all of the sudden there's this flooding realization and understanding....and all those indications you had noticed before come into clear focus. You know what I mean? Like the end of The Usual Suspects. I'm also reminded of that famous line uttered by Charlton Heston's character in Soylent Green.... "Soylent green (spoiler alert!) is people. It's made out of people. You gotta tell 'em...it's people!" (I think the line was actually made more famous by Phil Hartman's rendition on SNL, but I couldn't find that clip anywhere.)

So my wife and daughter and I have been working at a "haunted forest" and it's run by this particular family and they are very, very nice. And their organization and many of the people they bring in to work at the forest (we're talking hundreds of people) are also friendly, but my wife and I noticed that there's bit of a closed, inner-circle mentality among some of them them. Some people, like us, seem to be on the outside, while others are definitely on the inside. Again, we weren't treated poorly, but it's something we noticed.

Then one day while having a one-on-one chat with one of the women, my wife started to pick up on some things...comments about knowing a lot of people from church membership, a lot of references to Utah....and other items that when part of a larger puzzle got my wife thinking. When we were home later she mentioned to me that she thought this group of people might all be Mormons. A large number of them have either lived in Utah or are from Utah, they all have this kind of in-bredy yet not unattractive look, and then we started to think on experiences over the last several weeks....all of those snippets of conversations that I thought were either oddly worded or were me mishearing started to come flooding back:

"...well, gotta get home to the wives..."
"...yes, my five sons are all named Joseph Smith..."
"...I don't care if he didn't get nominated, I'm writing in Mitt Romney..."
"...I'm from Jackson, Missouri, you know, where Jesus visited the Indians after his resurrection..."

And it all became very clear. I wanted to yell, "They're Mormons! The haunted forest is run by Mormons...you gotta tell 'em!"

Now, there's nothing wrong with them, don't get me wrong...I mean, so long as they're not concerned about their souls being in hell for eternity. They're mostly a benevolent cult, unlike Jehovah's Witnesses, who drink the blood of kidnapped virgins and bake feces into the brownies they give to you when they come a-knocking. But they're both as crazy as all get out. I imagine a dialogue between a JW and a Mormon as something like this:

Mormon: Jesus came to Joseph Smith sometime in the late 1800s in a vision and told him about the book of Mormon! He kept visiting him after that!
JW: That's nice, just don't wish me happy birthday! By the way, only 144,000 people ever will go to heaven!
Mormon: Hey, I think I believe that one, too. But I believe in three heavens.
JW: Three...bonus! I can't accept blood transfusions and if I did, I wouldn't make it into any heaven! Can I buy you a cup of coffee?
Mormon: Only decaf...I can't have caffeine! And don't even think about coming into my temple!
(Both laugh)
(In unison): And if you leave my church, you'll be shunned by all who remain a member. Even your family!
(Both laugh again, while having a "you too???" look on their faces)
(A catholic wanders into their midst)
Catholic: Well, I believe when I take communion, the wine I'm drinking literally turns into Jesus' blood in my digestive system.
JW and Mormon: (pondering)
JW: That's a good one, but while your kind started some of the crazy stuff, you haven't kept pace and actually repealed a lot of it at Vatican II.
Catholic: Shucks!
Mormon to JW: He's no Scientologist.
(A muslim enters the scene)
Muslim: Praise be to Allah!
(kaboom)

Mormons make nice commercials and the NFL quarterback with the all-time best passer rating is one of them. But now I'm wondering about the real motivation behind what this haunted forest group does...their primary business is this outdoorsy camp kind of place and they have scores of kids who come and take part in activities there. So you have these young, impressionable kids....out in the distant reaches of the county, alone with these adults, who have a pretty established record of trying to convert people (I have no idea if this is true but it helps the argument) and they get these kids alone and make all nice with them and then the other shoe drops. You're one of these teenagers at camp and the next thing you know you have a Karl Malone poster on your wall, your wardrobe consists of white shirts and thin black ties and you have marriage proposals pending to three women.

I'm sure I shouldn't even be typing this or making fun of them at all because you know they are very powerful...the could be watching what I'm typing right now and I don't think they have much of a sense of humor and one of them could just

Please consider good taste before laughing at this web log

2008-10-24T21:43:00.002-04:00

Have you seen these preachy email footers lately? The other day I got an email from a woman in my institution and at the very bottom, under her name, it said, "Please consider the environment before printing out this email." As someone who cares about so very little I sometimes respect those who care a great deal about something. But what a stupid, empty effort at making any kind of a difference about anything. I could print that email 50 times a day every day until I dropped dead and it's not going to make a bit of a difference about anything.

The email was in regards to me taking her some publications that my office had just produced, for her to take with her on a trip to Los Angeles ("before taking this cross-country, jet-fuel burning flight, please consider the environment"). So I printed out the email, taped it to the box, and sent it right on to her office. I would like the record to show, as you can see in the first paragraph, I did indeed consider the environment before I printed it.

As an aside, someone pointed out to me (me) that most of the readership here is left of center, politically. The range is from just kind of left of center, to past Marxism and out towards Obamaism. But you are all mostly the reasonable liberals so I know this heartless attack on the environment won't offend you.

The gayest thing I've ever purchased

2008-10-22T21:30:00.003-04:00

I show how secure I am in my manliness to make a suggestion to you, my loyal readers.

There was a time when I was a washcloth guy in the shower. About 15 years ago I moved up to body "poof," which in hindsight was the onramp to the gay highway down which I'm now cruising (snicker...I said "cruising"). Now I have evolved into the next big thing in bathing. Maybe some of you have already been exposed to these, but for those who haven't they are wonderful. You wear these gloves and put the soap on them and they are very rough and scratchy and thus "exfoliate" while you use them to clean. I think exfoliation is mostly BS, but they feel really good and they really allow for a great shower. And when you're using them it just feels like some big, strong fireman is giving you this warm hug of a massage and it's just...just....sigh. They really wake me up and want me to get go-going.

Well, maybe it's the fourth gayest thing I've ever bought.

Bathroom interlopers

2008-10-22T21:26:00.004-04:00

I have noticed a disturbing occurrence in my office building recently. I hesitate to call it a "trend" because I don't know if it has reached "trend" status. (The Bureau of Trends at the Dept. of the Interior identifies a trend as something that either 50 percent of the populace does 50 percent of the time, like pretending to care about the environment, or five percent of the populace does 95 percent of the time, like me looking at porn online.) But it's happening in my office...what about yours?

At issue is the one we call the "bathroom interloper." And while I suppose this person stands to harm no one, I think his actions say something about the state of decorum in our society.

What is a bathroom interloper? Someone who leaves his office space, where people will perhaps be aware of him going to the restroom, and comes into YOUR office space to use YOUR restroom. They can be hard to spot, as those who carry the most shame move well in shadows, but I've been seeing them. In my office building we have square-shaped floors with a hollow center where there is an atrium. On the northwest and northeast corners of the building are a set of restrooms, and also a stairwell. One has a long sightline - the length of the building - in view of the restrooms, and while walking the hall I have seen at least three people walk out of the restroom and go straight into the stairwell. The first time you think, "Well, maybe he was on this floor for a meeting and just had to "go" before going back to his floor." But when you see this happening with the same person/people over and over, and never are they carrying anything that would even make you think they were meeting with a colleague, the evidence then becomes more damning.

Here is the important thing to remember....if you see the bathroom interloper leaving your restroom, DO NOT ENTER. This person has just destroyed your restroom. I don't mean in a physical sense, like wrecking fixtures, but he has set off a gastrointestinal bomb, the result of which my very well melt your nose hair should you enter. Because you know if it's so bad that he is leaving his own floor....it's bad.

It's an interesting thing that he does....in his mind, he would rather be discovered as a bathroom interloper by someone he sees occasionally than have someone he sees often know that his waste rivals in stench the Augean stables. Either way, someone is learning that when the interloper visits the bathroom his deposit is unearthly....the people on his floor will just learn this is an unfortunate aspect of him with which they will only have to interact on a very limited basis. The people on the other floor will learn the exact same thing AND they'll learn that he has so much shame about it that he has to hide it.

I am reminded of another, much less vile offender, the "bathroom decorator." I may tell the story wrong, but my brother-in-law to-be noticed in his office building that someone was hanging strips of toilet paper over the narrow cracks in the bathroom stall between the swinging stall door and the wall and such, for "bonus" privacy, I guess, and apparently not removing them when finished. My BIL to-be is a stealth-note-writer extraordinaire and left an imploring note one day to the offeder who he addressed as "Poopy McShypants," asking him to remove his curtains when he was finished. I believe it was successful. Maybe I should start leaving a bottle of Frebreze in the restroom addressed to "Guy from the 11th floor."

The medical profession tries to defend itself

2008-10-20T12:51:00.002-04:00

A good friend of mine is a doctor and I'm sure he doesn't care if I share this bit of BS about the lungs (related to the post below). The med schools really brainwash these people, man. There must be something about the nakedness and the lungs.... I'm putting his text in pink, cause it's a gay response.

I do have to mention a possible explanation for the heart/lung examination and the body evaluation. When I was doing trauma (from a surgical standpoint) we completed what was commonly referred to as the "primary and secondary survey" and not limit the exam to the most obvious source of injury. During this process, we assessed all vital organs that could be immediately life threatening if they were injured, meaning her abdomen and spleen blah blah blah blah blah blah that'll be $300.

So there's their catch-all...anything might be hurt...so get naked, let me check your lungs.
(Just kidding, Steve! :-))

The emergency room

2008-10-18T13:48:00.004-04:00

So my daughter was recently working at a "haunted forest" near where we live and had a bit of an accident...while trying to scare the patrons on a hayide she fell from the outside of it, slipped, fell under the trailer and got her foot run over, which ultimately resulted in a broken ankle.

I have a bit of an aversion to the medical profesison, and see a visit to the doctor as something to be reserved for very special occassions, like a severed carotid artery. As my daughter and I drove from the forest to the emergency room, I did gently suggest that if she wasn't in that much pain we could just go straight home and bandage it up ourselves....at which point she reminded me that such, "old folk" medicinal thinking once resulted in her walking around for two days with a broken wrist before someone (not me!) decided to take her to seek medical professional help (true story, of which I'm oddly proud).

So we had to go to the emergency room. On a Friday night. Have ya been to one lately? Sheesh....going into the emergency room on a Friday night is kind of like finding yourself in Hotel Rwanda - everybody is black, it's very loud, most people are in some sort of distress, and they all just kind of sit there waiting for something to happen...either bad news will be delivered or some white person will come along and help them.

So after you sit forever they call you back...and I just don't understand why the medical profession, from a records standpoint, is stuck in the 1950s. SIX PEOPLE are going to ask you if you have any allergies or are on medications.... the last one being the doctor. Now, as far as I'm concerned, he's the only one who needs to know this. If the first five people who ask you aren't conveying it to him then he's really the only one you need to tell. I think I'm just going to start saving everything up for the doctor. (There's a great scene in the new movie Ghost Town where Ricky Gervais' character does what we'd all like to do on a doctor's visit....to questions such as "Profession?" he replies, "Irellevant!" "Do you drink alcohol?" - "Why do you need to know this?")

So after looking at my daughter's ankle for a bit, the doctor asked to check her lungs. WHAT ON EARTH is the medical profession's obsession with checking lungs? I think the first two years of medical school are spent on two topics and these things are presented as paramount to anything else...if you remember two things when you start your practice you will remember this:

Topic 1 - make your patients get naked. It matters not the reason for his visit, make him take off all of his clothes and put on that paper thing.
Topic 2 - check lungs.

I envision the brilliant young minds paying scores of thousands to learn about curing cancer and advancements in bioengineering and they get two solid years of this. It must be frustrating, but apparently it sticks. Every test they take reads like this:

Your patient says his toe has fallen off and he has it in a jar of ice. You should first:
A. triage, stat
B. cleanse wound, begin reattachment
C. Investigate if his "El Insuranceo de Pedro Loco " insurance card of crayon on construction paper is legit
D. Get him naked; check his lungs

(answer: D)

Patient says he needs a scopolamine patch to prevent sea sickness for an upcoming boat trip. He merely wants this and nothing else. He had a complete physical three days ago and is an olympic decathlete. Two months prior he set a world record for lung capacity and was declared by the International Commission on Breathing as "World's Best Breather" and has been given the Golden Lung Award by the American Lung Association. He has entered your office naked. You should first:
A. Give him his scrip and send him on his way (he will strongly want you to pick this option...do you take the bait?)
B. Get him dressed, check lungs
C. Keep him naked
D. Check lungs
E. Both C and D

(answer: E)

What mysteries of the universe exactly are unlocked by listening to someone's lungs? Why should we think that all key elements of human biology are funneled through the lungs as opposed to, say, the right elbow? It's just a trick! And they try to throw you by saying stuff like, "okay now breathe real deep....okay, now normal....now real deep and hold it...." THIS MAKES NO DIFFERENCE! However, I will say that they must be doing something right...they can charge $500 for 10 minutes of getting you naked, squeezing your balls, sticking something up your ass and sending you on your way, whereas a prostitute gets paid half that for the same stuff and has to do it for a whole hour (and when I do it myself I get no [monetary] compensation at all!).

My contribution to this world and the internet

2008-10-09T10:30:00.001-04:00

When you go into google's blog search and search for "sexual degradation" and "i like big butts,"
this blog is the ONLY thing you get.

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22sexual+degradation%22+%22i+like+big+butts%22

Yes!

Hoarders (if this page doesn't load, your cache is probably full...no surprises, huh?)

2008-10-02T21:48:00.011-04:00

Slate had a column recently about bloggers who make money and the author was bemoaning that when some bloggers "go pro" they feel the need to keep the visits up and thus resort to fodder like "top-10 lists" and links to viral videos...cutesy, low-effort things that are like candy to the stream-of-consciousness, internet clicking so common today. To this I say: what hacks! The internet has given us the great power to publish our thoughts with literally no gatekeepers. Those people who write online thus have a responsibility to enrich people with what they write and not resort to cheap material - stuff like top-10 lists and links to videos - simply to drive traffic, like, say CNN.

So here is my top-10 list of bad blogs. Links not provided as I don't want to corrupt you.

1. All things Pynchon (he's still alive, you know!)
2. Ye olde internette poste-ings
3. I scratch my balls
4. Pictures of our adorable (insert some ugly, annoying kid's name)!
5. On candles and cross-stitch and bald eagles and other American-country style crap.
6. Boo-hoo I have an incurable disease and my new perspective probably won't help you but I'll share crap with you anyway.
7. I like big butts (only for those willing to copiously mix)
8. My teenager hates me and thinks bad things of me
9. I, a teenager, hate my cunt of a mother
10. Ways you can scratch my balls

And look: A cool video from Norway of blondes eating herring. No, it's actually of kids building something (the special effects are pretty good...it's worth a look) and was produced by an engineering company as part of a recruitment effort by the profession.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the point of the post:

There are two kinds of people in this world - people who hoard, and people who shed. Well, I guess some people hoard a lot but still throw some stuff away...and there's the equivalent on the other end....and there are also a near-unlimited number of gradations between the two. So there are millions of kinds of people in the world so forget what I just said.

Anyway, I am a shedder and I'm married to a hoarder, but we work that out. Kind of. And like all polar opposites - extroverts vs. introverts, Beatles people vs. Elvis people, people who like to take abductees to remote cabins for sexual degradation vs. people who hide them in urban basements for mere psychological torture - it's hard for one to fathom how the other thinks or even operates. As a shedder I see value in almost nothing that lasts one second beyond a narrow definition of usefulness. (That bread toasted? Throw the toaster away!) Hoarders can't throw anything away because apparently to them everything may be worth something or needed at some point. Shedders hate clutter, where clutter gives hoarders a sense of warmth and grounding.

Conversations often go like this (not in my household, but in general):

"Honey, I'm throwing away this dot-matrix printer."
"No, that was a gift from my grandma for my third-grade 'graduation.'"
"Uh-huh, and why do we need it?"
"But it's from Nana!"
"You mean the woman for whom we bought a top-of-the-line color printer last Christmas? If she values this so much why didn't we just wrap this up and give it to her?"
"WELL I VALUE BEING RESPECTED AND YOU NEVER GIVE THAT TO ME."

Like I said, this is an example conversation...not from my house at all. Heh heh. But see, the hoarder, with an untenable position, resorts to ad hominem attacks.

or

"Here are some papers I'm throwing away."
"What? Lemme see."
"It's two cable bills from three years ago, a 1998 Eddie Bauer catalog, six Christmas cards from two years ago you wrote out but never mailed, and a post-it with '1994' written on it that just has a series of numbers."
"We must save all of these. Value. Papers. Comfort. Besides, the post-it must be a combination for a lock or something. You never know when we might need that."
"Combination? Are you insane?
"YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT JUST LIKE YOU NEVER CARED ABOUT FIGURING OUT THE COMBINATION TO THE SECRET OF MAKING ME HAPPY!"

Again, the hoarder, in a fragile, bizarre state of mind, will make odd, flamboyant accusations. Is it a prepared strategy, to sound so bizarre as to render the opposition unable to even respond...a shock and awe, if you will, of loaded, emotional words? Or does the hoarding mind sense that losing a tactile item - the post-it from antiquity in this case - will somehow result in a part of its own consciousness being destroyed, and melts down in blabbering hysteria? Let's hope we never know.

LIFE EVENT THAT SPURRED THIS POSTING FINALLY ARRIVED AT: So my wife and I volunteered to work at my daughter's high school "yard sale" where people donated crap that they mostly never should have bought so that other people who don't need this crap anymore than the than the original purchaser can spend part of a nice Saturday browsing through it and spending money on it. So we stood there as people pulled up in car after car and unloaded junk to be sold. You would not believe some of this stuff! It was old, useless, and in some cases completely unusable. Rotting, broken, musty...I talked to the woman overseeing the clothes section and she said that people brought in used underwear for sale. Used! That part is not made up!

One might say that it was nice of people to donate this stuff for sale, as they gained nothing from it. But those saying that forget the mind of the hoarder! The hoarder would rather do anything than throw something away. It had value once, therefore it still has value. Throwing it away is some kind of sin against the universe! They literally can't throw it away without feeling bad about themselves. So what do they do...they bring it and drop it off at a community yard sale...deep down they know it's worthless, and this twisted "paying it forward" assuages their unstable consciences that they have not "wasted."

Here's the frightening thing about the yard sale. Most of the junk contributors were likely people who have donated in the past. So the round of crap we saw this year was what was left over after many of these people had already dropped off items in the previous several years! This was the "good" crap. And I stood there and watched other people come and plunk down money for this stuff and haul it away. Unbelievable. (A photo from the yard sale.) Here's an interesting nugget: The Center for Hoarding (part of the Department of Interior) was signed into creation by President Clinton in 1996 (he misheard John Podesta when Podesta presented him with the bill to sign and reportedly thought the appearance of Monica Lewinski in the oval office a few months letter was the product of the work of the new center). In a 2007 report the Center noted that 74 percent of households in this country do not need at least 80 percent of the stuff they have within the walls of their home.*

My wife and I were responsible for pricing for the sporting goods "department," where we were. Here was my revenge on the hoarders! I had the power to evaluate their junk and price it accordingly. I began to put a $5 sticker on a croquet set as a woman dropped it off. She said, "This was $60 new." My blank stare acknowledged her contribution, and I then firmly put the $5 sticker on it. Ha!

There was this one sleezy looking guy (dirty, pony tail, slovenly-dressed) who kept walking by each "department" of the yard sale and would try to "chew" us down on price. (Note: I really don't know what this expression means and I think it might have to do with the automotive industry...I just remember from childhood that every time my dad would go by a new car he'd talk about how he was planning to "chew the guy down." Maybe it means that like you're "gnawing" someone's fortitude away or something. If anyone has any thoughts on the etymology of this phrase, I'd be curious to know!). He would try to get us to take much less for certain items and tell us we were overpriced. Because he was probably right, we'd usually knock the price down. He carried loads and loads of junk to his car, leading us to think that perhaps he was an ebay seller. Beautiful...our little yard sale would be enabling hoarders all over the world! What a shame. Did you know that the Internet Vendor Tracking Association says that ebay sells $400 trillion (yes, trillion) worth of goods that will end up merely sitting in storage within six months of purchase.* What a waste!

It's so bad in this country that look at the industries and businesses that have popped up and been successful in the last 10 years. The Container Store. Manage and store your crap. A Container Store survey recently revealed that 80 percent of the items purchased from their stores sit unused in big piles in the corner of the purchaser's bedroom.* Delicious irony. Maybe I should start a "Contain Your Containers Store." Bigger boxes to store all the empty boxes you bought where you're not putting your stuff. And look at all those junk-hauling places. 1-800-got-junk and the like...we're so out of control with hoarding and junk in this country people are getting rich just by hauling it away!

So there you have it...my rant against the excesses of hoarding. Please, if you find yourself hoarding, stop! Throw it away. How to know if you are? If you currently have seven internet explorer windows open and each one of those has 12 tabs started and you never restart your computer because you'd "lose" all that stuff (take a second to look), you just might have a problem.

* If you find any of this to actually be true, it is a shocking coincidence.

Juvenile observation of the day

2008-09-28T16:36:00.002-04:00

You know that old juvenile joke where you put someone's first and last name together so that it makes a phonetically funny sound. Like Mike Hunt. Or Seymour Butts. Very juvenile, I know.

However I just had to laugh while watching football today.... Dan Dierdorf while announcing his game said a sentence about one player getting tackled well by another. It came out like this, "Mike Cox was just smothered by Champ Bailey."

Snicker.

Flossing is bad for you

2008-09-27T19:21:00.003-04:00

I know this is hard for you to hear, but it’s true. There are some things in life we just hold to be absolute truths, primarily because some “expert” has told us so. But ever notice how those experts just happen to get rich off of us following their advice? I bet if you just finished a three-year orthodontia treatment and left your doctor’s office, crossed the street and went right into another one’s office, they’d put 12 cents worth of metal and two rubber bands in his mouth and ask for $6000. Wake up, people! My grandpa had a massive heart attack and probably could have pulled through…but medicare (meaning, YOU) decided to listen to a “doctor” and pony up around $100,000 for open-heart surgery and something called “angioplasty.” I mean, come on….if you’re going to make up a procedure at least give it a normal-sounding name. And after that guess what? They told grandpa he couldn’t even go out and work for months. What kind of “heart healthy” advice is that?? They tell us a sedentary life is bad for our hearts, but then after you pay them $100,000 to “fix” you up all of the sudden it’s don’t run, don’t work, don’t climb stairs??

So I went to the dentist recently and one of those “hygienists” went to work on my teeth. (Did you know that “hygienist” comes from Latin? The root, “hyg,” means “one who gets paid a lot for,” and the suffix “ienist” means “flossing your teeth.”) Now, these aren’t the most highly-trained people in the world. In fact, from my understanding, hygienist schools recruit largely from the pool of people who flunk flight attendant school.

Also, these are brutally violent, sadistic people. We tend to think of the dentist that way, but he’s actually not too bad. I mean, at least he uses novocaine. But the hygienist just goes right in there, scraping and prodding places that haven’t been touched in years, or since the last time you saw the hygienist, whichever is more recent (and honestly…come on….it’s years).

I think they have a lot of resentment because they work with a professional (the dentist) who actually does real work and helps you. Whereas the hygienist, as stated, just flosses you and pours you watered-down cups of Listerine. Oh, and the scraping. Lots of the scraping. So basically they’re using the oldest tools in man’s arsenal – a pointy edge and a piece of string – to work on your mouth. You could train an ape to do what they do. Actually, I think an ape would get bored in the job.

So the last time I was there, after making a prodigious amount of blood come pouring out of my mouth, the professional flosser started to berate me about, well, flossing. It is the only thing she knows, after all. So apparently I wasn’t flossing enough. She just went on and on and on about this, like, way over the top.

So after my appointment, not so much because I respected this woman’s opinion, but out of curiosity, I bought some floss and started to floss on a daily basis, every night before bed. Now buckle up for the truth collision folks….FLOSSING MAKES YOU NEED TO FLOSS MORE. It doesn’t help. It’s counter-productive. See, let’s pretend your teeth are like a bunch of sexy, sexy college girls. Okay, that seems a little off topic and I think I was just getting away from myself. Nevermind. Anyway, picture that gap between your teeth – any two teeth – and now picture no floss ever going there. No problem…they stay pretty much wedged together. Start flossing, however, and all of the sudden you're opening up these little nooks and crannies….floss for a few days and suddenly after breakfast one morning you’ve got food stuck everywhere and it’s driving you nuts. What do you have to do? Go floss. And by flossing, you’ve just primed your teeth for lunch…you might get a whole shrimp stuck between your incisors and your canines. Altogether now, kids…”vicious cycle!” It got so bad I had to floss after drinking orange juice! You can’t stop this…there is literally nothing you can do to break free of this Twilight Zone episode of dental “hygiene.”

And here’s the real kicker….my hygienist’s name? The one who got me started on this and even followed the first-time’s-free maxim of all dealers with a gratis mini-roll…the one who knew I would be buying spool after spool of dental floss? Kim Johnson-and-Johnson. That’s right…heir to the biggest flossing fortune in the world.

Don’t be fooled. Down with flossing. Let mine be a lesson to you all. And if you don’t believe me, think of it this way – have you ever, ever seen a dental professional floss (all answers from people who share a bathroom with a dental professional will be excluded)?

I didn’t think so.

Look...a new blog!

2008-09-27T18:10:00.006-04:00

Why does James Joyce hate you? Primarily, I guess, because he can. Also he’s Irish, and have you ever walked away from a conversation with an Irishman and thought, “Gee, that was pleasant?” Actually, I can’t really say whether or not Joyce would hate you - even if he were still alive and hadn’t killed himself from autoerotic asphyxiation...but the long and short of it was that I needed a name for this web log!

So welcome. Welcome to this web log. Just some more noise out there in the universe....begging the question, if someone writes something but no one else finds it interesting, should he eat ice cream? This might seem like a non-sequitir, but sitting at a computer makes me want to eat ice cream. As does most things.

So my web log name.....I had a very good friend recently go into the consulting business for himself. As he read up on starting a limited liability corporation, one piece of advice he saw was “don’t spend a lot of time deciding on a name.” This was a piece of advice which he of course ignored, and he spent a lot of time, in fact, naming his business. But the book from which he got this piece of information was likely assuming that the audience for the book was already billing people ridiculous amounts of money for that nebulous service of “consulting” and shouldn’t be wasting billable hours on thinking of a name, and in reality this friend had lots of free time to kill. He is only soon to be billing people shameful amounts of money for something called consulting but not right now, not at the time of this writing. The point of mentioning this is to say that I spent way too much naming my web log, that is all. And also, if you need water consulting done, let me know. For $150 an hour he can tell you which knob is "hot" and which is "cold" on your faucet. For an extra $10, maybe he'll fill your icecube trays.

So I named my web log. By the way, I have decided that in the age of technology with things changing so quickly, “blog” is already passé, and we have come again to an era when we ache for simpler technology times. And so just as the primarily white populations of the US do things to get back to their "roots," such as making soap and candles and pasta at home instead of just buying them, I long for the simpler life as well…the time of, say, 2004 when we had a relaxed go of things, when we savored things, and more importantly, when we called these things “web logs.” Plus, blog is just a stupid word.

So I spent way too much time on naming my web log, and one could argue that I didn’t even do a good job of it then, as much as one can do a good job at such a thing. But there are so many ways to go with this, as you can tell anytime you see a random web log. There is the very literal and somewhat descriptive. So I could have chosen “Steelers Fan” or “Sexual Underperformer,” but I think they really indicate topics which won’t necessarily be covered here and I’d hate for people to be misled and have wasted their time (as you are doing right now) looking for information on something not discussed.

Then there’s cutesy, but I don’t think that fits. Or I could go with some obscure brainiac reference, like using a character from one of Virgil’s minor works like, oh, I don’t know… “Meliboeus,” for example, and then nonchalantly mentioning him as though everyone knows who he is (and forgive me for this bad example because clearly everyone knows Meliboeus, I mean, really). I could have gone the disparaging route, like when George Carlin chose “Brain Droppings ” for one of his books, but then every time I web logged I would think of him and the thought of his soul being thrashed in hell for all eternity for the mere 40 years of awful, awful things he espoused on earth would make me sad. I think the sentence in hell should be equal to the years of bad things on earth...then simply cast into darkness. Then there’s the very irreverent, like “Mr. Rogers was a Wife Beater” but I think that would simply turn people off (except for those of you who get turned on by that kind of thing). Political didn't appeal, but maybe I could have done some political irony, like state something so crazy you know I can’t believe it, like “The Holocaust is a Lie” or “Slavery was Good for Blacks.” I mean, ha ha ha those are CRAZY. (Seriously, if you’d like to explore these ideas more contact me offline.)

So I went with “James Joyce Hates You” and I did it for a couple reasons. 1. Have you ever read James Joyce? When he wrote Ulysses he was pretty popular, and he knew it would sell well and therefore every English-speaking person he could conceive of, including people in the future and therefore you and I, are his audience…and if you read Ulysses or anything else of his really, you can only walk away with the impression that he hated his audience. QED, or whatever, he hates you. Reason 2. The eventual popularity of this web log is going to shoot it high up the Google search results and when people are out looking for James Joyce, they’re going to be redirected here. Now the people searching for Joyce are in one of two categories. The first are the Joyce fans and they’ll be compelled by the title and maybe a little angry about it, and when they read that first paragraph up there saying that he died of autoerotic asphyxiation they’re going to get mad. (This is not true, for the record, and was only put there in an attempt to be funny. Joyce was actually killed when the nephew that he was molesting shattered a shot glass against his temple in an escape attempt.) And when they get mad they’re going to post comments and I figure they’ll be fun to read….given that they’re Joyce fans their comments will read like this:

I came to your site when the fallopian tubes were wrapped around the oak tree like the dreariness of a rain drop. Ha he said would you ever tell me if it were so. We walked into Dublin singing Jenny Get a Handful and then read on. Peter made a comment on it and the fact that you would mention it is extremely upsetting, like Butch down at 15 Newcastle Street. U suck - Joyce rules!

And I would find that humorous.

The second group of people are high schoolers and college kids who have been tasked with reading Joyce and they’re looking for Spark notes or some other way to cheat. If I can draw them in here then they waste time and don’t get their work done and get a lower grade. And since I have a daughter who will be competing with them for jobs soon, every one of them I can knock out of contention the better, not that my daughter needs much help in that regard.

So there you have it. James Joyce Hates You.

Perverts

2008-05-08T00:07:00.004-04:00

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That's what you all are.

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