what's missing?

housewife's brain

2006-03-09T09:24:00.000-05:00

and by "the tunnel of fudge", i mean feeling
like you're alone and helpless in a dark scary
place, immobilized with fear and mediocrity.

when the novelty of not working weekdays wears off, the distance between what you've always really wanted to do and what you're doing now becomes pronounced. cavernous, really. it's basically you, alone with some disorganized ideas about what you want to do, and the fear of not doing those things, and the fear of doing those things but having them be patently unsatisfying, all the while the mer-man of mediocrity just hissing and shaking his webby fist at you, getting kelp and pond scum all over your living room sofa, eating all the snack food that you bought for the dinner parties that you never actually have.

a surpisingly instinctual defense to this predicament is to try and sleep it off. you quickly realize that this will only vault you to a whole other level of constant sleepiness. i'm talking about sleeping at a competitive level. the kind of sleeping that bestows international sleep symbol status, and puts one in strong contention for "sleepiest man alive 2006".

so you fight the good fight, staying awake, listening to NPR, drinking tea, trying to eke out one little measly new blog entry, thinking that at least this will be something you did today. then a piece comes on NPR about a former housewife who, after reading the at-the-time recently published book "the feminine mystique", decided to take all the creative energy that she was putting into her kids halloween costumes and birthday cakes and channel it into writing novels after her kids moved out of the house.

you try to find encouragement in her story, hope that you too will someday be able to imagine your way into the fullness of your own potential. but mostly, you begin to think that everything that you've been doing up to this point is about as important and meaningful as decorating a birthday cake or organizing a closet. you keep thinking about that pathetic commerical from the early 80s where the woman is frosting a cake with a paper knife as if this is some kind of accomplishment on par with conducting a national symphony.

i wish someone would hurry up and write "the ted mystique" already. or i wish at least my kids would go ahead and move out.

one more cup of coughy

2006-02-28T13:20:00.000-05:00

get well soon

the last time i remember getting sick was being slammed with a sinus infection on my girlfriend's sofa, lying there in an open-eyed catatonic sleep for days, vegetatively propped up in front of the television (until i was wrenched out of my stuper, with marty mcfly astonishment, after discovering on "access hollywood" that saddam hussein had been in captivity for four days now, while brad pitt was going to baghdad to lend his support to the troops).

aside from that episode, i usally don't remember getting sick. i remember almost getting sick, but somehow fighting it off at the last minute. this is probably because i remember very clearly the one time that i actually mastered the common cold overnite, through a combination of extreme blanketing, total stillness and the meditative practice of falling head-long into the feeling of discomfort rather than expending energy trying to avoid it. the idea was basically to free up any bit of energy i had and donate it to the just cause of the microscopic battle that my immune system was trying to wage.

and hand to god, it worked like a champ. i went bed with a sore throat and aching bones and chills and fever, pre-approved for a week of more of the same, and i woke up the next morning feeling tip-top a-ok number one. it was a pretty startling revelation, the idea that i could stop myself from getting sick simply by unleashing my awesome mental powers, and sweating a lot. what did my doctors know? with their "childhood asthma bla bla bla" and their "your tiny nostils make you more prone to infections"? i had found the second opinion i'd been looking for my whole life!

now in my third bout of the coughing head cold since january, it would seem that my wellness method, while tried and true, is not as easy to pull off as i was hoping. and as the sniffles once again go cat toy on my sinuses, i can also now clearly remember having watched "unbreakable" a couple of days before my little epiphany, which proabably gave me an inflated sense of super-poweredness.

it's not that i don't believe in the abilities of self healing, mind you. but clearly, with great power comes great disappointment.

me vs. the mailman

2006-02-12T23:12:00.000-05:00

WWKD?

my life is divided into two halves:

one half pulls the curtains closed whenever he is not home, because he lives in a small single-floor bungalow in a charming, tree-lined but ultimately crimey city filled with what he imagines to be peeping thieves. he also generally closes the curtains in the evening, since the warm glow of open lighted window panes at night doesn't translate well when one's house is a mere gym-class-shoulder's-width-apart from his neighbors' homes. he understands the importance of this kind of squirrelly separation, and even relishes it at times.

the other half is a sucker for the metaphoric openness of allowing the sun and the green and the outside world into his home, and he leaves his curtains open during his weekday afternoons at the house. he even moves his home office out into the living room just so that he can have a little mini yoga/meditation studio to honor the idea of this openness and receptivity. almost every day, he can be found there practicing his kooky little "quiet calm and unobstructed beauty" exercises, usually dressed in his boxer briefs, because they're the closest thing he has to the "yoga shorts" the guy on the "yoga for athletes" tape wears. it's not his best look, as even at his most athletic physique, the whole thing plateaus somewhere around the level of a shirtless captain kirk kind of thing. but this half doesn't care about that because yoga and meditation and open receptivity is about getting the mind to let go of that which truly does not matter.

recently, the two halves collided when, just as one half finished some afternoon yoga, the other half began to panick about whether or not he had sent his mortgage payment this month. so he walks into his living room/office capatin kirk style and kinda sweaty, and sits down in his mesh office chair to quickly check his on-line bank account for the payment. just as he logs in, the mailman shows up at one of the living room windws with some letters and a small box.

with his sweaty naked back to the mailman, bare legs perched on the feet of the chair, hunched in front of his monitor in frozen terror, his eyes shift back as he tries to assess what his next step will be. any movement might attract the mailman's attention, whereas sitting still will afford the cover of the chair and possibly allow his presence to go unnoticed. "stay put" he thinks.

"knock-knock", he hears.

"the small box. he wants to give me the package. he sees me. just stay still and look like you're reading the screen."

(knock-knock-knock)

"oh my god he's still here. and he probably thinks he's busted me masturbating to my on-line bank statement. which is neither true nor plausibly deniable given my current situation. oh please just leave the package on the porch."

(shuffle-shuffle. knock. shuffle. fading foot steps...)

"stand up and walk away slowly at first, then quickly. don't look back...i wonder what's in the box..."

have you seen this man?

2006-02-05T02:20:00.000-05:00

suspect, aug 2005; computer simulated image of suspect, aged 6 months and more accurately depicted

the suspect was last seen on this site in august of 2005, fleeing the scene with 100's in unwritten blog posts. he has been known to use the alias of "terd", although he will respond to "ted", "edward", "hey mister, you dropped something", or "miss jackson" if you're nasty. suspect is considered well-intentioned, somewhat lazy and full of excuses. approach with low expectations.

if you have any tips leading to the suspect's happiness, please post them here.

it's time to...

2005-08-06T03:25:00.000-04:00

having recently started a weekend nights job, you suddenly find yourself with more free time during the week than you know what to do with. do you:

a) investigate different career paths, possibly by discussing some of the relevant issues with a career counselor of some kind?

b) try your hand at writing songs like you promised yourself you would do?

c) try doing something completely unexpected in the hopes of shaking things up a little?

the midnight struggler

2005-07-21T14:08:00.000-04:00

as it turns out, the money IS in the toilet

when i was a kid, i used to have these dreams about getting things that i wanted, but that never ended up being quite what i wanted. i often dreamt about owning a pool table just like one that my neighborhood friend had owned. except, without fail, my "dream" pool table came with hollow wooden balls that never bounced or rolled right. and they never made that satisfying noise that pool balls can make upon impact with one another. they just made these tinkly underwhelming lincoln log type sounds instead. the other regularly recurring dream/disappointment that i had was getting a ferrari just like the one in magnum p.i., excpet mine was this awful ford probe tan color. i think the idea i was trying to convey to myself was either, "careful what you wish for", or "sometimes the things you want aren't what you expect them to be", or possibly "you can't have nice things".

all of which is to say that, in a lot of ways, i've been preparing for my recent job change for most of my life.

in the months of worrying about my impending layoff, i spent a lot of time wondering about what my dream job would be. still without a clearly articulated passion after 32 years, i came to realize that what i really wanted out of a job at this point in my life was the most amount of money i could get for the least amount of hours worked, the least amount of responsibility shouldered, and the greatest amount of stability offered. the idea was something that meets my fiscal goals and engenders a modicum of financial independence, that doesn't require too much effort or worry, and that frees up a bunch of time to explore other interests and lines of work.

i suppose it's the average dreamjob for people who don't really know what they want to do when they grow up. but could such a beast exist? if it did exist, what would it look like? and perhaps more importantly, what would it eat?

as it turns out, it does exist. what it looks like is a three-day-a-week job doing more data network bla bla bla stuff, offering relative stability, comparatively low stress levels, and slightly more money than i made at my last job. here's the kicker: what it eats is my friday, saturday and sunday nights, between 7pm and 7am.

after having one weekend under my belt/down my throat, i can honestly say that this schedule is not as bad as one might think. there are definitely some side effects. for instance, i generally no longer have a solid idea of what day it is or what time it is. also, while i don't find myself particulalrly tired all the time, i do find that my general internal clock being suddenly imbalanced makes me think that everyone else around me is tired all the time.

by far the hardest part is being at work twice in the same day. that saturday morning/saturday night and sunday morning/sunday night thing can feel a little strange. i imagine it's something like filming a scene where someone was going to menacingly dunk your head into a toilet a few times, bringing you up for air every so often to see if you're now willing to cooperate. but it's not like it's actually happening to you. it's just like pretending that it's actually happening to you because that's the scene you're shooting, and you have to do multiple takes.

i'm pretty sure today is thursday.

put me in, coach

2005-06-04T22:23:00.000-04:00

my god, man, put some clothes on

there are a lot of things one can learn from therapy, but at the end of the day the whole enterprise seems limited by two rather unpleasant axioms:

1. if you torture the details of your life for a long enough period of time, they will eventually tell you anything that you want to hear.

and

2. regret makes the world go 'round. (you'd think it was love, or maybe human connection in general, right? nope. as it turns out, it's the failed attempts to get those things that's the stuff of life.)

which is why i spent a couple of hours on saturday at my local coffee shop filling out the first homework assignment/questionaire from my new "life coach".

now, what is a life coach? well, webster's dictionary defines a life coach as "a trained professional similar to a pet psychiatrist for humans, often encouraging people to have better habits and to do things other than stew in their own head juices; see also 'american liesure class' ". so far, the main difference between a therapist and a life coach seems to be that a life coach is more forward-looking and optimistic about the future of your emotional diet, whereas a therapist tends to be more backward-looking, sifting through the stool samples of your lived experience with you, trying to identiy the things you shouldn't have been eating in the first place.

being that no one likes to touch their own poop (with the popssible exception of some german and japanese porn actors whom i've accidentally seen on the internet), my life coach homework assignment was a refreshing alternative to the therapy approach. mostly, it was about listing the things i'd like to change about myself and my current situation. i wrote a lot about being happy with what i have been doing so far with my life, and about how much potential i think i've got for more and better versions of that happiness. but i also wrote about my desire to have more follow-through with my own interests, and my own plans for cultivating them, rather than leaving them partially completed, in large part, because i so easily lose sight of how beneficial the results are going to be. i got pretty excited, actually, as i began to remind myself of how rewarding it could be to focus on seriously developing a career path in line with something other than simply money and stability, or putting my nose to the grindstone on hatching sustainable, feasible, long-term creative projects like writing short stories, or being a good enough musician to start a band.

of course, when i got home, all i did was think about this stuff some more. and then i got bored and took pictures of my middle finger dressed up in paper doll outfits that had my name on them.

the irony is lost neither on myself, nor my middle finger.

brotherly love

2005-05-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

the other man in my life

what's strange about this picture of me and my brother lance (left) is the spooky ethereal light glowing from the tree tops. i swear you can make out a set of eyes positioned on what appears to be the head of a fluffy white lion with stumpy legs and a nubby tail. my brother, being of a more reasonable nature, would agree with amusement about the fluffy lion shape, but would also insist that i drew the eyes in, and then ask me about "the deal" with what appear to be my budding teenage breasts.

sadly, one of us is telling the truth.

beautiful music

2005-04-26T00:09:00.000-04:00

including the hit single "gloryhole"

if you haven't heard these guys yet, you should give them a listen. i guess the best way to describe them would be tentative anxiety-rock, maybe. i saw them recently in new york city, opening for a band called "optimus pretentia", or something like that. "fatmuscle" is their first full length album, but they put out an ep like two years ago called "we're gonna kill the proclaimers". which was just as good.

key tracks:
gloryhole
brotherhead
a-one-anna-two
me by the window
retarted

hello uncertainty

2005-04-10T14:32:00.000-04:00

we meet again.

i guess the question i've been asked most often in recent weeks is "what are you gonna do if you get laid off?". at a distant second place is the question, "what do you mean you're worried about your porn habit?"

i'm not quite sure what i mean by "worrying about my porn habit". i definitely don't think there's any weird post-catholic stress disorder guilt about it or anything, although i suppose having been raised catholic is reason enough to give oneself pause in considering sexual impulses. maybe it's just being single for the first time in while that makes me a little more mindful of the crazy search strings i find myself typing, and the likelihood that these things will ever be anything other than downloadable results. maybe it's just anxiety about 30 day trials turning into recurring charges on my credit card. i don't know what it is. help me, porn worry hotline:

call now!

as far as the question about getting laid off goes, i find myself becoming more and more excited and nauseaus about the possibilities. having been born in northern ireland has its advantages, including being able to obtain a european union passport that would allow me to work anywhere in the e.u. without needing a visa. it also means that i could theoretically live in the british virgin islands, or one of england's other crazy colonial holdings. there's also the possibility of living kato kaelin style with one of my brothers in los angeles, finally writing that terrible "three irish-american brothers" oscar-winning screenplay that i've had recurring dreams about lately. (i think in my acceptance speech it's called either "impossible love" or "lucky charms". i can't remember which.) there's also the possibility of moving back to new york city and living with my other brother, where i could either write my terrible screenplay, or maybe work on those powerpoint art slides that i invented. and then, of course, there's always staying here in durham and opening that fleet of breakfast/afterhours bacon-egg-n-cheese-on-a-roll vending carts that i've dreamed about. if i call it 'bacon hut', they will come.

either way, i need to put the worrying aside, and grab this uncertainty by the horns and see where it takes me. man, i hope it has horns.

the gift of rejection

2005-03-26T15:14:00.000-05:00

remember this terrible idea?

the first mistake was making this bumper sticker for my ex-girlfriend's sister's boyfriend, as a christmas gift. the second mistake was sending it to the wrong address, where it no doubt elicited disgust and confusion before being sent back to the printing company from whence it came. the third mistake was giving the printing company the correct address after finding this out.

click the lovebirds for the miserably perfect ending...

you think you've got problems

2005-03-19T21:28:00.000-05:00

tell me about it, dude.

there are serious things worth worrying about. and then there are what i imagine to be uniquely american problems. my brother calls them felicity problems. i've been up to my eyeballs in the latter these days, and for some reason, i can't shake them.

it's not that i'm at the end of my rope or anything. but it would be nice if there was a hotline for people who would rather be dead than in their current situation but who aren't really willing to kill themselves over anything. i mean, i know i'd call it every once in a while.

no holes barred

2005-03-05T10:32:00.000-05:00

employee slam 2005!

if the north american ceo were a professional wrestler, that wrestler's name would be "the executive". his signature final deathblow move would be called "the layoff". and all oponents who entered into the ring with the executive would be powerless against it.

if the north american worker were a professional wrestler, that wrestler would be called "the worker bee". while not particularly smart, the worker bee's one special move would be knowing more useful things than middle management (a.k.a "the middle mangler"):

worker bees: a fighting chance

if i were a professional wrestler, i'd be known as "the struggler". i would probably show up in the ring wearing something like this:

no chance

a nose for trouble

2005-02-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

do you smell that?

i don't have any pets, but lately i've been smelling dog shit and cat piss in my car and house, respectively. not all the time. but about twice a week. and the dog shit smell is always in the truck. and the cat piss smell is always in the house.

i didn't think much about it the first time i smelled dog shit in the truck. virginia and i both smelled it, and assumed that someone must have stepped in some. my shoes were clean, so i figured after dropping her off at home, the smell would clear up. and it did. until the next day. but then after that, i didn't smell it again until the day after i first noticed the cat piss smell in my house.

i came home from a run to discover the cat urine smell. i immediately began thinking that a cat must have snuck through one of the crawl space doors and was now living and pissing under my house. which means i'd have to go down there again. which means dealing with you-know-who again. for a while, i had the same worried-why-me face that i wore as my doctor counseled me concerning my recent bout of athlete's head. but then, hours later, the smell was gone. until this morning.

i'm pretty sure the smells are real. i sort of hope they are. i mean, what does it say it about someone who would imagine these kinds of smells? i just wish that at least they'd be a little more consistent.

Want to read more about defecation? Click here for a complete history of the TERD, including recent terd happenings.

a dangerous mind

2005-02-16T12:27:00.000-05:00

careful what you wish for

aside from being a great hockey player and a thoughtful and kind friend, mark hullopeter is also a master of sensible footwear. i have been unconsciously aping his choice in men's casual sport shoes for a couple of buying cycles now, and have since come to realize that there's little point in not conscioulsy doing so. i could spend time and energy trying to find the "right shoe for me", but why bother when mark has already blazed a path to affordable and understated versatilty through the jungle of unncessarily overabundant choices. i will simply become his shoe stalker.

i have also joined his socks-is-socks revolution, a movement predicated on the idea that you don't need to wear matching socks. the minutes you save by not sorting and grouping and looking for a matching pair could be spent doing any number of more important or enjoyable things. sometimes people will stare. sometimes even your friends might ridicule you for being "lazy" or "unkempt" or a "moron". but as mark teaches us, you have to let that which does not matter truly slide.

the itchy and scratchy show

2005-02-09T17:52:00.000-05:00

it could be worse

i went to the doctor's office today, to have a small rash on the side of my neck looked at, as well as some moles and markings that i've had for some time and figured i should get checked out. i was sent away with creams, ointments, and some important lessons. this is what happened.

a cute female doctor enters the exam room (almost all the doctors where i get "seen" are hot women. i believe the correct internet terminology is "DILF"). she is looking at what i presume is my file. without making any eye contact, she chimes in with, "i hear you've got a bunch of different skin problems. what's that all about? sounds kinda scary", and then gives me one of those exaggerated incredulity looks a la jennifer aniston. my smile goes a little crooked at this point. i'm beginning to think that maybe what she has been looking at is a piece of paper handed to her from the pre-exam nurse that says "grody rash boy in exam 3".

before i can get to explaining my symptoms, she begins circling me in a flaw finding mission. she spots the rash on the side of my neck, and within a few seconds declares that it's basically a combination of cold weather and friction causing this thing. it's 60 degrees out today, and i can't think of anything that only rubs the left side of my neck, but ok.

next, we take a look at the moles, which she tells me are not cancerous, just moles that people get as they get "older". we take a look at some cancerous mole pictures, and i'm convinced that she's on the up and up with this one.

she then finds the discoloration patch on my neck, again, without me pointing it out. "jock itch" she says.

jock itch.

"jock itch? on my head? well, uh, how, uh...?"

"sometimes people get this if they sleep a lot. or if they sweat a lot. natural folds in the skin maybe?"

sensing that the words "slothful", "sweaty" and "neck rolls" are beginning to take root in my psyche, she comes up with a half-hearted "or, you know, it's just out there, and if you have a break in the skin..."

she goes on to say something about it being fine, and no serious skin problems bla bla bla, but all i can hear in my mind is "you've had jock itch on the back of your head since last summer". which, i mean, i never imagined that i'd have to string these words together in a thought. it can shake you up.

then, she says, "here, let me go get this book that's got some pictures of the kinds of things you might want to keep an eye out for. it's kinda cool actually. it really makes a great coffee table book. i mean, some people probably won't read it. but eventually, most people get curious..." i can't tell if she's trying to get me to think that everything's ok because skin conditions are cool in a "celebrate diversity" kind of way, or if she's just trying to tell me that it could be much worse. she encourages me to take a look. i take the book from her and she writes me some prescriptions for various creams and ointments. (and there's nothing more dissatisfying than going to the doctor with potentially serious concerns and being sent away with creams and ointments.)

i flip to a random page, which displays a pair of swollen-shut nostrils, a scaley elbow, and a big toe that looks a little like a pus cobbler. there's defintely no way that any of this is cool. so the lesson i'm taking away from it all is, "hey it could be worse". and also, "for god's sake, stop sleeping so much, sausage neck".

Weekend Edition

2005-01-29T23:22:00.000-05:00

LOCAL HEADLINES:

North Carolina Braces for More Winter Weather
Durham, NC
Saturday, January 29 2005

Forecasters are calling for "inches and inches" of possible snow, or sleet, or rain, or weather, for much of Central North Carolina this weekend. It's expected to cause havoc for local residents, who just last week faced self-inflicted traffic jams lasting up to eight hours as a result of what one Cary resident could only describe as "lots of icy patches". Governor Easley is considering declaring martial law throughout the state, and staggering driving priveleges either alphabetically, or, according to one state official, "possibly using the airline 'group seating' system". Stay tuned for more information on your designated driving time slot.

We go now to our on-time traffic correspondent for more details on the treacherous weather conditions (since it was sooo successful the first time):

WORLD NEWS:

Bush Administration Takes Tough Stand on Nazi Terror
Auschwitz, Poland
Thursday, January 27 2005

The Bush Administration sent a strong message of support and sympathy in marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz from the Nazis. Having already come out in the Presidential debates as being strongly opposed to appointing any judge to the supreme court who would agree with the Dred Scott ruling, the Administration continued to bolster it's reputation as a "risk taker" when it comes to clear-cut issues by sending Vice President Dick Cheney and Second Lady Lynn Cheney to attend a somber memorial service with other world leaders in Poland:

Bush Administration gives it's requisite two shits minimum at Auschwitz.

As one Washington Post staff writer noted:
"Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name...Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one's country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words "Staff 2001"...It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots -- thick, brown, lace-up ones."

When asked for comment, President Bush replied, "I know where Poland is."

ENTERTAINMENT BEAT:

Alien Revisited: Alien Vs. Predator
Durham, NC
Friday, January 28 2005

With the impending inclement weather making a drive to the movie theater next to impossible this weekend, I wanted to take a little time to review some already released films that will likely be available in your local video store after all the good ones have been taken. But which ones? The answer came in an inspiring actual conversation I overheard while sitting at my desk early Friday morning trying to play a little catch-up at the office:

guy 1: "this weekind ahm gonna watch that alien vs. predator."

guy 2: "wus that 'bout?"

guy 1: (after a moment to pause and consider the question)"predator's kahnda lahk a futuristic bug, and alien's almose lahk a bug. should be a good one."

So I rented "Alien Vs. Predator", to see what it's "about", and I'm here to tell you that it's not a "good one". In fact, as a colleague of mine might say, this movie should have been called "Alien Vs. Predator is a Great Big Piece of Shit".

To it's credit, the movie has stronger acting and better special effects than say, "Battlefield Earth", the narcoleptic sci-fi pic based on L Ron Hubbard's "ideas" and starring John Travolta as the definitive end of his own brief career comeback. But to put this achievement in it's proper context, my cousin thought the stage production of L Ron Hubbard's sci-fi-christ-story-bio as performed by 10 year olds was also better than "Battlefield Earth" by roughly the same margin. I'm giving this stinker two thumbs in my own eyes.

Incidentally, when I refer to L Ron Hubbard, I don't mean this guy from "Lord of the Rings":

...but i kinda do mean this guy

Nor should he be confused with this guy:

drive-by sci-fi

While at the bottom of the barrell, I also caught "Executive Decision". It stars Steven Seagal, Kurt Russell, John Leguizamo, Halle Berry, Oliver Platt and Marla Maples. Mr. Seagal plays a tough commando summoned by the President to intercept a Washington, D.C. bound 747 carrying enough explosives to wipe out half the Eastern seabord, along with 400 innocent Americans, six Middle Eastern crazies, and Marla Maples. After getting his team of lil' deputy commandos on board the plane, Mr. Seagal makes an early exit from the film as he is ripped though the sky in an unfortunate loss-of-cabin-pressure accident that he was probably not aware of until the day they shot the scene. After this, Kurt Russell takes over as the leading man. Ouch.

Other than it's possible uses as an instructional video for the Bush Administration's anti-terror tacticians, this movie is mostly crap and should only be watched with commercial breaks. The one ray of light in the film is this guy:

wa-da-ta, my main duaney

Mr. Jones plays the role of "Catman" in the movie. Not sure who this is. Maybe he was edited out of the network television broadcast due to time contraints, or possibly adult content. The important thing here is that his birthday is August 4th (the same as mine), he's from Hyde Park (in Chicago), which is the same name as the town where I grew up, he played a guy named "Teddy" in a TV movie called "Hollywood Confidential", and more importantly, he played the role of Duane "Excess" Wilson from the TV series "USA High". That's awesome.

outtakes and deleted scenes from the previous post

2005-01-23T21:09:00.000-05:00

more unusable footage

america's funniest

america's second funniest

kind of accurate

also kind of accurate

unexpected and a little uncomfortable

the odds of THIS happening

how it all actually went down

america's creepiest

the child who would be ted

2005-01-19T11:01:00.000-05:00

ted-a-ted

have you ever made eye contact with a toddler who looks exactly like you did when you were a toddler? i had the dubious pleasure of experiencing such an encounter last saturday, while standing outside of a diner, lazily sipping coffee with some friends while our table was being readied.

the shared moment was brief, as his parents were hurriedly dragging him up the street, probably to the educational toy store. but in the 10 or so seconds that we could see each other, an eternity of awkward acknowledgement and panic seemed to unfold.

from the look in his eyes, i imagine his thought bubble went something like:

"oh my god, when i grow up my hair is going to be brown and largely missing. and i'm going to be slightly pigeon-toed? and drink coffee? and when does one of my front teeth start to go a little crooked? at least i'll be six feet tall. who are your lady friends?"

my thought bubble read:

"oh, you think you can do better? you think maybe you'll magically have the wisdom in a few years to ask for braces, or corrective shoes? or find some miracle home remedy that will prevent the fifth horseman of genetics from replacing your blonde crown with the prickly thorns of muddy baldness? oh, and by the way, nice bowl cut you've got there, young squire. sorry i can't stay and chat. i have to go spend some of my own money and make some of my own decisions. ever done either of those things? have fun at the learning store..."

he was already out of eye-shot by the time i got to the "...stay and chat" part, but i know i got my message across.

screw that kid.

the trouble with english children

2005-01-16T13:38:00.000-05:00

british as a second language

what is a twat? my dictionary defines twat as "a vulva; a woman or women collectively; a term of contempt and hostility." twat is a word british people use when they want to say something mean about people. my mum says i should not say the word twat or the word vulva. misses wensleydale says we shouldn't call people twats because it's not nice and because it's not good grammar. twat is like the word deer because even if there are lots of them you shouldn't put an "s" at the end of the word. deer travel in herds. i don't know what a group of twat is called. nigel says they travel in "smacks" and i told him that was not funny. i am sorry i disturbed the class by passing notes, and that i called agnes and fiona twats. i would also be sorry if i called them twat.

twee is another word in the dictionary on the same page as twat. british children are twee.

choose your own adventure

2005-01-12T01:56:00.000-05:00

choose wisely

missing adventure #1

missing adventure #2

missing adventure #3

enlighten me

2005-01-07T19:34:00.000-05:00

unitard

this year, i decided i was going to make more use out of my wednesdays off, or at least spend them worrying about what the next big thing will be for me. part of this "plan" involves trying to take a yoga class for beginners. you would think this would not be so hard, that somewhere, at some point, on a given wednesday, i could find a beginner yoga class to attend in my own town. but apparently, wednesday is reserved for pre-natal and post-natal yoga classes city-wide. while, broadly speaking, i would classify myself as post-natal, i suspect that this will not cut the normative mustard at my local ymca.

but really, would it kill them to make a little room? i'd be happy to just inconspicuously do my little thing in the corner somewhere, quietly falling behind the rest of the class without any complaining at all. and i'm sure anyone could benefit from a class focused on "internal healing techniques", or "conditioning for your infant's newly-formed rubbery body", or whatever it is that supposedly makes this class so natal.

i guess i'll take my new yoga pants and try a workout tape at home. they might be pajama bottoms, though. i'm not sure.

quality control

2005-01-04T19:18:00.000-05:00

under the right lighting, this is a good idea

let's say you break up with someone. but you both still really care for each other a great deal. would you think it's a good idea to send 25 of these bumper stickers to that person's sister's boyfriend, because you think that he would think it's a funny bumper sticker? apparently, without any regard for the imagined irony it might exude, i approved this idea. the same day i approved this idea, i also greenlighted the purchase of a silver antler coat rack, as well as a package of twelve tiny refrigerator magnets costing $16. this is more or less how my holidays went.

2004-12-23T19:37:00.000-05:00

this is harder than it looks. try to not fuck it up.

games you can play in the car

2004-12-22T10:08:00.000-05:00

the signing of the anal accord, 1775.

long holiday drive planned this year? a friend of mine suggests passing the time by putting the word "anal" in front of every model of car that you see on the road. this idea became very funny to me yesterday as i was driving to work, and realized that the three cars surrounding me on the highway were an avalanche, a sidekick and an accord.

too much of a good thing

2004-12-17T16:31:00.000-05:00

if i lived in brazil, i would still eat this

i love pizza. love it. a disappointingly facile addiction, i know. but the heart wants what it wants.

i was visiting a friend of mine the other night, who had a small get together to celebrate her first brithday in recent memory as a single woman.

two of the women at the party had put together a "single girl survival kit" for my friend, complete with the first issue of her new subscription to playgirl. very "cathy for the new millennium". probably the most compelling item in the kit, if "let me see it" is a measure of anything. plus, you know, it's porn. eventually, the "guy with the biggest dick" picture was located, and then held up and shown to the rest of the class.

i was sitting some 10 feet away on the couch, so i didn't get a real good look. but it wasn't shockingly large. i mean, it was probably the size of a small baby arm i'd say. but it wasn't on the scale of, like, early erotic cave painting big or anything like that. this guy wasn't going to be driving oxen or plowing a field with this thing any time soon. unimpressed with what seemed to be an imaginable set of circumstances, i was just about to start half-listening to the goings on when the girl sitting next to me said the following:

"look at that thing. it's practically out there on it's own, living it's own life, you know, hanging out, callin' friends, ordering pizza..."

and all i could think was, "that would really be something...being able to order pizza while you were ALREADY ordering pizza. that would be sweet. don't say this out loud."

the hustler

2004-12-14T18:29:00.000-05:00

puck me

on monday nights, i play a style of hockey known as "puck wap-o". the rules of puck wap-o are simple. you skate around as hard as you can, try and keep the other team from making good passes, and hit, or "wap-o", the puck toward the other team's goal if your opponent and your composure will afford you the opportunity. this requires what is known as "good hustle", and for lack of any tangible skill, i possess this in spades.

yesterday i was hit by the puck on three different occassions. the one that looks like it hurt the most was the slap shot to the chest that i "took" while trying to block the view of our opponent's goalie, leaving a perfectly puck-shaped bruise right where my dignity used to be, and robbing my teammate of a scoring opportunity. this is what is known as "bad hustle". no one will actually say "bad hustle" to you, as hustle in general is appreciated. but it's quietly understood that this is not the "good" variety.

208 cases of the mondays

2004-12-13T13:04:00.000-05:00

there is a dilbert comic strip that was cut out of the local paper and given to me by my boss, almost 4 years ago. as a matter of professional courtesy, it's still hanging in my cube, yellowed and frayed, stained with taco bell "border sauce" that my cube mate shot at me, ostensibly because he hadn't taken his medication that day (seriously). here's how the last two frames of the comic strip go:

(two managers sitting at desk eating donuts and drinking coffee)
"back to reality. i'll fire ted. he creeps me out. who else do we hate?"
(next frame)
"hey, my donut is being eaten by the world's ugliest fly!"
(the fly is shouting the word "bonanza")

that's it. that's how it ends.

next to the comic strip is the bomb threat procedure guide which we are required to post in the "cube area". the bottom of the page discusses identifying a bomb:

"Ask yourself this question:
'does this belong here'
if your answer is:
'no. this object is out of place and i can't explain why it is here.'
you should consider it suspect"

i see these two things everyday. they make my mouth dry.

watching movies by yourself

2004-12-08T13:18:00.000-05:00

the drag of being alone

if you watch "alien" and "hedwig and the angry inch" back to back on the same night by yourself, you'll be amazed at their similarities. aside from the obvious nod to the drag queen idiom that both movies make (it's really more of a sub-text in "alien"), the two films also surprisingly share some important themes:

it's hard to know what's inside of another person.

we're frequently compelled to seek out things that used to be a part of us, as disappointing as this can sometimes end up being.

doing what you have to do often means ending up alone.

something disgusting this way comes

2004-12-03T21:31:00.000-05:00

"c'mon baby (don't fear the leaper)"

there are six words that, when paired just so, will make me feel instantly nauseous. they are:

brown + recluse
out + sourcing
and
camel + cricket

brown sourcing is not so hot either.

not unlike one of my ex-girlfriends, the brown recluse spider is a nasty, tiny, light brown colored hermit that, when feeling threatened, will inject a flesh-necratizing poison into it's otherwise oblivious victim. the lesson i've learned: don't seek it out and you can continue living relatively unscarred without large chunks of you missing.

out-sourcing is a meaningless campaign issue whereby livelihoods are taken away from a higher paying job market and given to a lower paying job market, usually in another country. the segment of the population most affected by these practices would be the unlucky. coming in at a close second would be the over-paid and under-smart. (gulp.)

while not possessing the means to hurt you in any direct physical or financial manner, the camel cricket has other ways of "getting" you. this little time burglar from the ninth circle of cricket hell will creep you out with it's freakish leaping abilities, which it uses to either (1) keep you foolishly swatting at the spot on the floor where it just was less than a second ago, (2) force you to spastically writhe and brush your arms and chest, or, (3) when alone with you in tight quarters, ensure that you know the face of the insect whose life you are trying to take.

camel crickets live almost exclusively in the southeastern part of the united states, under my house. they generally stay in the crawl space, which i imagine sufficiently suits their dark and dank little lifestyle. but with the advent of daylight savings time, you can usually find at least one or two "soldier crickets" that have crawled through the cracks of my 1935 house and found their way into the seasonal darkness of the surface world by 5:30pm or so. which means the first thing i do when i come home from work is spend about 15 minutes trying to end a life.

great. that's just great. thank you, daylight savings time.

how to make a joke

2004-12-01T13:33:00.000-05:00

1. invite parent over to apartment for christmas

2. buy christmas tree

3. take small piece of 2x4 and bore 2-3" hole through center

4. attempt unsuccessfully to use as tree stand

5. repeat steps 3 and 4 until parent is able to stabalize tree with old fashioned ingenuity (bobby pins, string, tape, etc)

6. have parent endlessly mock your failed attempts

7. do not throw away wood pieces

8. years later, have siblings visit

9. if you look carefully, and are high, you can now enjoy the perverse awkwardness of having made what appear to be several portable glory holes. suggest sending parent one as a christmas gift*. good stuff.

*do not actually send. do not tell parent about blog. if confronted, insist that a glory hole is a german pastry similar to a bunt cake, tradtionally made during the christmas season.

joke hole

McWhat?

2004-11-29T18:59:00.000-05:00

some kind of new york mini super bagel project?

holiday traffic report

2004-11-28T20:07:00.000-05:00

your on-time traffic report is being brought to you by the friendly folks at the commonwealth of virginia highway patrol board, who remind you to "buckle up to save lives, or pay the hefty $25 consequence of your blatant disregard for the sanctity of human life, unless it's a failure to secure a child into his or her safety seat, in which case it's $50 because children are twice as precious, unless you claim that you just forgot to carry the written exemption form legally allowing you to not secure the child in his or her seat, in which case it's only $20. this ain't yo' daddy's commonwealth."**

**based on 2003 data. nationally that year, fines ranged from as low as $0 (wyoming), to as high as $95 (oregon). but we're all equal in god's eyes.

pohl pot luck

2004-11-24T14:29:00.000-05:00

the future is now

my job is to sit at a desk and wait for people to call in because their network is broken, or because they mean to break it soon.

contrary to v.'s assertion that my job involves suiting up in a top hat and monocle and doing a liesurely backstroke through a tub of cash all day, i do actually earn a keep. there are, however, some times when work is "slow" or "none", and we get to relax a little. the end-of-year holidays are one such time.

today we focused on making fun of the bass player from van halen, and coming up with off-putting fortune cookie messages. the better ones tended to be interrogation themed. top submissions included, "if pohl pot were here, he'd have your head" and "i'll ask you one more time...where are the plans for the death ray?"

the winner came to us from my friend s., who suggested filling the cookie with a white powdery substance that would burst into a cloud of dust upon breaking the cookie open, and having the solitary word "anthrax" written on the paper inside. it was also discussed that maybe someone else would get one that would say "cocaine?".

c: "mine says 'cocaine?' what does your say?"

a: "(with worried look on his/her face, checking the back of the paper for lucky numbers or how to say something in chinese or any other sign of normalcy) mine just says 'anthrax'."

happy thanksgiving everybody.

insert bush joke here

2004-11-20T17:48:00.000-05:00

my brother's pick for the halloween night movie this year was "vampyros lesbos". we didn't get to watch it then, but i rented it a few days ago and saw it last night. originally a french film i think, the movie is not that bad if you watch it dubbed in german. the dubbing gives it a sort of twice-baked porn appeal, where every little mundane setting-the-groceries-on-the-counter kind of event gets voiced over with exagerated sighs and grunts, and occasionally, inexplicable squeals of surpise. it gets especially would-be-hot-n-heavy when someone is alone in a room...all kinds of titillaing noises as someone browses through the newspaper or opens a kitchen drawer or something.

we ended up watching "bush's brain" on halloween instead, which, as it turns out, is actually a more terrifying tale of the unexplained than a movie about blood-thirsty succubi. it also depicts way more scenes with people getting screwed, (and possibly desanguinated). but that's really where the similarities end between the two movies. there's certainly nothing french, german, or openly gay about "bush's brain".

tales of the unexplained

thresholds of acceptability

2004-11-19T21:59:00.000-05:00

mommy cristo

i've been waiting for about six months for a good reason to use either the word "snackcident" or "snackrilege". and then suddenly, bam. two birds. one stone.

the day laura brannigan died

2004-11-08T22:23:00.000-05:00

until the day laura brannigan died, there were only two successful sentences that i had ever said to her since i began going to my local grocery store/cafe almost 4 years ago: "yeh, i like the color too, but unfortunately i had to steal it from my girlfriend" and "i live here in town".

as far as would-be pick-up lines go, the former would have scored more points, i think, had i just said "two simple unrelated ideas that speak volumes about my character and intellect; colors are pretty, and i steal things". ("it", by the way, is a fire engine red travel mug, and i did steal it from my girlfriend.)

now, "i live here in town" is really not such a bad thing to tell someone in almost any context other than as a response to "$3.77". when someone tells you how much money you have to give them for your breakfast and you want so badly for what they said to be a question about you that you blurt out "i live here in town", you may as well have shown up wearing leg warmers and a crooked football helmet and said "my mom says i can be anything i want to be".

it's not that i want to date her. it's just that i want her to pay attention to me because i think she's cute. and i should be able to get her attention, since i see and talk to her almost every morning, exchanging money for coffee and maybe something to eat. true, there are a number of things going against me here. she's still sleepy at 8am or so (which i mistake EVERY TIME for the look of smokey disinterest). she's probably a lesbian (as in "he probably won't have enough electoral votes"). she's a captive participant behind the register, in this cat and mouse game of "make me uncomfortable", and that can't sit well with her either. at least i get to walk away.

but all these obstacles can be refuted systematically and empirically as causes for my failure. and more to the point, you would think that i'd be able to come up with something charming to say that's more inviting than "how's it going?", but less pointy than "you'll live in my basement and drink from this bowl, and eat from this bucket, and no one will know". you know, just something nice and in the middle somewhere.

i tried everything. including bringing my girlfriend by on a regular basis, as a gesture of normalcy and non-aggression. it probably doesn't quite translate that way to her, because what i secretly intend to be my presentation on "the benefits and desirableness of knowing me" somehow slips out of my control and spirals into an effortlessly pleasant conversation between her and my girlfriend.

and she can see me out of the corner of her eye, as i get that silently panicked look about me, and she's likely thinking that she better be careful because the only person with enough expertise to find her body would probably be morgan freeman, and he's only an actor.

but the day that laura brannigan died was the best chance i had to take it all back and start anew. the mug, the stealing, the leg warmers, all of it. i came in to get my coffee and there she was, behind the counter, dancing to music, to the song "gloria".

"this is it", i thought. "this is where we make the connection. i love music. she obviously loves music. she's dancing. wide awake for the first time ever. dancing and singing along to a song that i thought she'd be too young to remember. but she does. she remembers. she knows. she gets it. she gets me."

t: "wow, i've never seen someone groove to this song before"

(first of all, that can't possibly be a true statement. secondly, i've immediately singled her out on something that can only be defended, ignored, or questioned.)

g: "no?"

(the onus is now on me to confirm, [and it's important to consider how ridiculous this is] whether or not i have actually ever seen someone sing along with or dance to the 80's hit song "gloria". which is embarassing and inscrutible enough of a thing to have to confirm or deny. but what makes this worse is that my squirrelly little mind is feverishly searching the stacks for any images of someone i knew singing or dancing to this song, and i can't come up with a single one.)

t: "she's dead, you know."

(swear to god, this was the very next thing that came out of my mouth. "dead". i may as well have thrown my money at her at that point, and run out of the store screaming "she's dead! she's dead! revere the flesh!")

g: "who?"

(oh jesus.)

t: "laura brannigan. the woman who sings this song. she died this morning. no one knows how yet."

(my kingdom for a magician's smoke pellet and a time machine.)

g: "no. i...i didn't know that. $4.21."

i still go back there almost every day. 77 cents for a large cup of gourmet coffee if you bring your own mug. and i'm still trying. today i complimented her on her rainbow pattern knit scarf, and she said "thank you" and smiled. i think a lot of the mystery has dissipated for both of us, and that's what makes this progress possible. i reached an outerlimit of ineptitude the day that laura brannigan died, and it wasn't really that bad. and for her., i think she realizes that i'm a harmless awkward guy whom, at worst, might accidentally crush a puppy in his bare hands. but i think she knows that i mean to do good.

did i mention that i live here in town?