The Yenemy

Fresh

2006-09-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

2006-08-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is just me, or common to many... but it is strange to me that in the wake of the loss of a loved one, everything about them takes on an almost sacred significance. Their possessions, their voice, likeness, even the stores they frequented or the brand of apple juice they preferred.

I recently lost someone I'd just managed to find again. Now, it's all I can do to try and follow those bits and pieces of her, and hope that somehow I'll end up somewhere worth being.

Lunch?

2006-05-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

While driving around various neighborhoods in search of lunch today, I noticed an interesting trend. It seems that culinary terms change in accordance with their status. The most noticeable change is that as menu prices rise into the territories where "meal combos" are suddenly known as "prixe fixe," solid matter that you ingest by way of your mouth abruptly ceases to be known as food.

Suddenly, instead of merely "eating food," you are now "experiencing cuisine." Also in that price range, there seem to be an awful lot of "cafes" that completely fail to serve coffee, and "bistros" that serve egg rolls in place of French rolls.

After thinking on this for a while, it seems like it's a progressive exoticism of food. The farther up the price scale you go, these days people seem to demand more of their food, in regards to experiencing another culture. Whether this culture differential is ethnic or societal in nature seems fairly immaterial, but at least in San Diego, it seems like ethnicities are linked to class levels in certain ways.

At the top of the heap, these days, are fusion restaurants. It seems it really doesn't matter what you fuse together. If you're mixing some kind of cuisine with another, that bumps your menu prices up by at least 15-20%. The most popular thing to fuse other kinds of food to seems to be Japanese. I suppose you can pretty much stick anything into a sushi mold and call it fusion. Hot dogs and seaweed? $30 a roll. Boo ya, I'm a genius.

Right after the fusion joints, are the restaurants that serve ethnic foods that come from farther afield than usual, often tending to Asian flavors. Thai and Japanese seem to be the big flavors of the day, while Chinese appears to have fallen out of favor in a big way.

Given that eye (or tongue) for exoticism that seems to heavily influence an eatery's value, I have to wonder if Thai or Japanese people have similar ongoing trends.

I know restaurants that we view here as junk food -- McDonald's, KFC, and the like -- have tried to portray themselves as gourmet restaurants in Japan.

I wonder if there are TGI Friday's (tried to figure out how to pluralize that, gave up in disgust) in Japan that serve Dom Perignon, and if you order a steak, your jalapeno poppers have to be ordered separately at $8 each.

Or maybe Taco Bell has cloth napkins, a waiter who brings you your nachos on a covered silver platter, and a 64-ounce Diet Coke quietly beading with condensation alongside your Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

Mmmm.

Coffee talk

2006-05-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

To my bewilderment, I have abruptly found myself to be at that age where it is fun to meet new people and discuss vaguely business-related topics while drinking tea and coffee.

In one of those coincidences that test my commitment to the staunch belief that I am entirely luckless, I ran into an ex-potential roommate. The first words we exchanged involved me pulling a face and saying,

"Do I know you? You look really familiar."

Which, I said afterwards, made me feel like some sleazy dude pitching a pickup line. I should have worn a leisure suit and a chest wig.

At any rate, I suppose my mug is just ugly enough to be vaguely memorable, since she kind of recognized me too. We mulled it over for a while until the realization dawned that we'd nearly ended up living together.

A Twilight Zone moment if there ever was one.

I'd like to take a moment to note that, although I can instantly name some obscure character actor under twenty-five layers of makeup, it takes me five minutes of intense concentration to recognize someone with whom I nearly shared a bathroom.

Truly, my mind is hopelessly broken.

So I ended up spending about two hours in the company of my new friend, along with a fairly sizable gathering of loosely affiliated people who all happened to be working in industries very similar to my own. Coincidentally, they were all very friendly, eager to trade advice and connections, and fun to be around.

See what I mean about that luck thing?

Funnily enough, until this point in my life, an evening entirely devoid of (in reverse chronological order) scotch on the rocks, Jaegermeister, Long Island iced teas, Quake, foosball, Doom, Transformers, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Fraggle Rock, Speed Racer, or a shiny object would have held few attractions for me.

I suppose we must all grow up eventually.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get hammered on single malt and watch Cartoon Network.

Legal Shmegal... my precious

2006-05-02T23:16:00.001-07:00

So, the saga mentioned in a previous post is pretty much over. A side benefit is, of course, that I now have no qualms about publicly discussing it.

Essentially, my ex-roommates cheated me out of a month's rent. The money doesn't really bother me that much -- in truth, while the amount was substantial, I was more or less prepared to pay that much. Details:

I made the mistake, as you might recall, of moving into a new apartment with two complete strangers, with the intention that if one of us had to leave, the flexibility afforded by such an arrangement would be much greater with regard to modifying the lease. So we all agreed that if one of us had to leave, then the only responsibility of the person departing would be to find someone to replace them on the lease (legally, with the consent and authorization of the leasing office and the other two residents).

Done. Hands were shaken, a lease was signed. All was well, save for the occasional generous dusting of female pubic hair clippings I would have to clean off of my toilet, and the time I had to plunge that selfsame toilet free of more feces than I thought a girl was capable of producing.

Obviously, I was mistaken. These were women.

Or at least, some kind of hybrid over which taxonomists would undoubtedly lose sleep.

And they complained about my leaving the occasional dish to soak overnight.

Anyhow.

Fast forward seven months into a 9-month lease. I find a new job, and I have to leave. I let them know, and start drafting a roommate ad to go up on Craigslist.

Next morning, a note, to the effect of "I'm not comfortable with a new person moving in, and I'm also a deceptive, petulant child" is left for me. It goes on to say that I will need to pay out the rest of the lease in full, and that she enjoys the delusion that she is a clever monkey.

I like to read between the lines.

I reply, saying "Um, no."

So I gather the other two for a meeting, and we talk it out. I tell them that I will pay one remaining month of rent, if they agree to pay the last month.

They agree.

I ask again, to confirm:

They agree.

One more time, to be absolutely sure:

They agree.

Hands are shaken, a deal is struck. I retire for the night, comforted by the warming presence of the spirits of compromise and human decency.

Perhaps you would like to take a moment to venture a guess as to what happened next.

I'll give you a few lines to contemplate.

Okay, then:

Next morning, a note:

"I still don't feel comfortable. Also I don't have enough money, even though I am working, pay for a personalized diet and weight-loss plan, have just replaced half of my wardrobe, and have enough money to buy a refrigerator for my boyfriend. You have to pay all of the lease. In addition, I would like to take this opportunity to make it publicly known that I consider infanticide with accompanying cannibalism a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon."

You might well imagine the scope of my disappointment. I am, as you might imagine, staunchly anti-baby eating. That, and the other thing. What was it... oh right, the horrible, horrible lies.

After another e-mail exchange, I am frustrated beyond belief. It takes my good friend frylok to talk me down. It's not often that I get really mad. I often rant and rave for fun and to vent, probably more than is strictly necessary, but I almost never get truly upset. When it comes to overt betrayals like this, it's hard to stay calm.

So, I wrote a rebuttal. I present a "director's cut" version here, courtesy of my id:

"Dearest Dirty Lying Skeezy Munghole,

Okay. I'll pay the leasing office, since I tend to keep my promises. And then I'm going to sue. Care to rethink? Let me know. Otherwise, see you in court."

I knew from the get-go that it was a weak case. Even considering small claims court is informal, I had no hard, written evidence. It boiled down to, in legal terms, a "bitchfest," where essentially people disagree, and neither side has any evidence. As the person filing the complaint, this made my case weaker than G.W. Bush's gamme wave.

Their case was further strengthened in that it was unhindered by such considerations as might be mandated by using "facts" and "the truth."

Like I said, though, I wasn't really interested in the money. My goal was to force those two -- mostly Ms. Munghole, the other one is basically just weak-willed and spineless -- to consider the ramifications of their dishonesty. In that, I suppose I was successful.

Unfortunately, they strike me as the type that tend not to learn the lessons that life so generously provides. Were they otherwise, I imagine they would have learned, on their parents' knees (or over them), to cherish and protect the value of their word.

I suppose you could say that I pursued my claim out of spite. I couldn't in all truthfulness say you were wrong.

But I'll be damned if I didn't have fun doing it.

They both hate me, an unsurprising state of affairs of which, given the context, I am rather proud. While I bear them no specific ill will, I hope at least that the experience and hassle of all this will make them rub their three collective neurons together for a little longer, the next time they want to swindle someone.

As it is, I still have yet to hear the judge's decision -- could be a week or two before I get it in the mail -- but I am not expecting a decision in my favour. Even considering the laughable that there is, Skeezy McStinkhole has assured me that she will not be paying me any money.

I would, in that case, take an indecent and possibly damning amount of pleasure in putting a lien on her possessions, garnishing her wages, or having a big barfy face sticker placed on her credit report.

That last one probably isn't possible, but by god, it should be.

Bust a cap(saicin)

2006-04-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

I had an uber-geek moment today. I'd eaten some veeeery spicy hot sauce, and wondered why it was that drinking milk never helped me soothe the burning sensation of spicy food -- at least during "Phase I."

We must never speak of "Phase II."

Ever.

Anyway, it's widely believed that milk does help, but it's never worked for me. So, I started wondering why. I had three thoughts, in rapid succession.

The first:
"I wonder if capsaicin is lipid-soluble."

The second:
"If it is, that would explain why milk never helps me, since I only buy non-fat milk."

The third:
"God, I am such a nerd."

Well, after further cementing my geek status by doing some research on the Internet, it turns out that I was right, on all three counts. Seriously, a search of my name on Dictionary.com gave me this definition:

n. Nerd.
See Blackwolf the DragonMaster.

Capsaicin is itself an oil, which makes it fat- and alcohol-soluble, but not water-soluble. Which is why milk (with fat) helps, or ice cream, or whatever. I guess theoretically, the best cure for eating something super-spicy would be sucking on a stick of butter.

Luckily for me, I also buy soy milk.

Mmmm.... bean fat.
(FDA warning: olestra, derived from soybean oil, causes anal leakage in all but the most waterproofed of rectal sphincters)

The phrase "anal leakage" makes me laugh. Is that so wrong?

As for the "veeeery spicy hot sauce" I ate that caused me to think the thoughts that tipped me over the edge into a long, dark future of snorting while I laugh, losing my retainers, and staying up late polishing my collector's edition Internet, Animation, and Technology Enthusiast Pocket Protectors, I thought it'd be a good idea to experiment with a hot sauce I make.

Now, I usually hate explaining my jokes, but:
"Wow, is that the new I-ATE-PP? That's wicked awesome!"

Snort, snort.

So, this sauce is usually made with Serrano chilis, which have a Scoville rating -- according to a wide variety of conflicting sources -- ranging from 5,000 to 22,000 Scoville heat units. I realize this is a useless statistic, so I'll just say they average around 14,000 Scovilles. Compare that with Jalapenos, which supposedly average around 3,500.

Today, just for kicks, and since I had a bunch of old ones in my fridge, I thought I'd try making it with Thai chilis. I had a mixed bag of green and red ones, and I've been cooking with them, so I know they're hot as all get-out.

For a numerical comparison, one source puts Thai chilis at a Scoville range of between 50,000 and 80,000 Scovilles. So that's an average of about 65,000, which puts them in the category of foods that cause, as it is known in the scientific community, "screaming, face-melting diarrhea."

Only to those untrained in the arts of culinary pain management, that is. I eat them on a fairly regular basis, and my face hasn't melted yet.

What I failed to realize, of course, was that when I cook with these things, I use one or two in a big pot of homemade ramen, or a whole dinners' worth of stir fry. Concentrated together in a sauce, they're quite a lot hotter than my palate is used to.

Ouch.

Still... it was damn good. I just might have to change my recipe.

Hut.... hut...

2006-04-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I had the good fortune to go on a spur-of-the-moment hike in Poway, just north of San Diego. Partly to help recondition my long-injured ankle, partly because it was a gorgeous day, but mostly because it was something to do that involved fresh air, while simultaneously failing to include any kind of computer interface whatsoever.

There is something about hiking, for me, that seems to lift the ceiling of the world. It is an unreasonably dramatic endorsement, perhaps. This is, after all, an activity that is essentially the end result of the astonishing realization that walking can be done on unpaved surfaces.

Surprisingly, I found that while I generally hike alone, what I remembered most about this hike were the people I saw along the way. This wasn't a terribly difficult hike, and the area was well populated with a refreshing variety of would-be trailblazers.

There were dogs wearing little knit sweaters, and humans carrying bags of warm, fresh shit. I couldn't help but wonder which was more embarrassed.

An 8-year-old boy led me halfway up the mountain. He would linger until I had almost caught him up, then hurl himself up the slope, crazed arms and legs flying about him like runaway moons. His father, glazed and gasping, reached us at the summit and promptly collapsed in a dignified heap on the nearest flat surface.

I loitered at the summit for a while, and was well rewarded. The clouds parted for a while, and the sun shone down on a vista of much of San Diego county. The cross on Palomar mountain was the second most recognizable feature, after the Pacific ocean. A few lakes, all of North county, and much of San Diego proper could be seen. I am probably spoiled by the trip I took to Yosemite last year, but I was kind of hoping for something more. Half of the view was dominated by tract housing, punctuated by ribbons of shining freeway. The other half was rolling hills with desert scrub, well recovered but still bearing the scars from the wildfires a few years ago.

My trip down the mountain was highlighted by the sight of two separate families making their way in the opposite direction.

The first brought back memories of my youth; it was a middle-aged couple with a pre-teen son. The couple made their way in that absently familiar way of people who have long since exhausted all interesting topics of conversation. In amiable silence, they kept pace with each other in a steady, unwavering way which I assumed characterizes much of their life together.

The son, meanwhile, slouched along several yards back. Sullen and scowling, he trailed a stick along the ground behind him, as if it could somehow anchor his parents to the spot, forcing them to turn back. I remember many forced marches with my parents when I was growing up, but living in a desert, none of them involved a mountain hike. Ah, well... better him than me.

The second had me laughing all the way back to my car. It was a woman, probably in her mid-30s, with a young boy. Her son was just at the age where they begin to cast off the childishness of running around in aimless circles, and begin to expend their boundless energy in determined straight lines, cheerfully disregarding any and all obstacles. This one acted as though he were tied by a bungee cord to his mother, dashing ahead in sudden bursts of speed, then bounding back breathlessly to chivvy his mother up the mountain, like a working dog with a particularly reluctant sheep.

Red-faced and panting, she stopped to ask me how far it was to the summit, and groaned aloud at my answer. She took a couple of hitching breaths and pushed on after her son, who had long since disappeared in a swirl of dust. As I rounded the next bend, I could hear her calling after her son, trying to tempt him back to the car with promises of a specially prepared dinner.

From the despair in her voice, I figured her son wasn't having any of it.

All that, and I got to eat trail mix by the handful. Life doesn't get much better.

Housekeeping

2006-04-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

Now that I have voluntarily saddled myself with a place of my own, I am discovering all kinds of things about myself.

Being able to vent gases as loudly as I want, whenever I want, has a certain cathartic appeal; but in all honesty, if no-one is around to be impressed or repulsed, there isn't much point to it.

Cleaning also has a new twist to it. It's easier to do it, since I know for sure that if I don't, nobody else will. By the same token, when I do clean, I'm not scrubbing someone else's food from the stovetop, or wiping someone else's pubic trimmings from the rim of the toilet seat (there are aspects to my time in Sacramento that I would glady forget). So while my apartment still tends to adopt a certain atmosphere of disarray, I've been much better about it than I have in my last few apartments (sorry, John).

On the other end of the spectrum, paying bills has developed an entirely new and horrible significance. Now that I'm not splitting the rent and utilities two or three ways, I have realized that paying $50 every month for 80 channels of screeching bullshit is a luxury that I can afford to pass up.

Fin.

Update

2006-03-30T12:26:00.000-08:00

Bam!

2006-03-29T21:38:00.000-08:00

If I had any suspicions that my arrival at my new job would go unnoticed, they have been thoroughly dispelled. This story could easily lead to a discussion about the relative merits of infamy and obscurity, but I will leave that for another time. As for which is better, I'll let you decide.

-----------------------------

In my defense, I blame today's corporate predilection for closed windows and recirculated air. The building's ventilation system (which is either a) woefully inadequate, or b) too damn good at its job) also did its part. Plus, I had no idea it would smell that bad.

This morning, I decide to take a healthy lunch to work, in contrast with yesterday's meal -- specks of chicken, floating in a pool of oil like stunned waders. So I pour some mixed vegetables -- broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower -- into a tupperware thingy. Off I go, hi-ho, hi-ho, etc.

An uneventful morning passes, and all of a sudden it's lunchtime. It's cloudy and rainy outside, so I figure a hot meal is better than a cold one. What's this? A microwave! I add some water to the veggies, punch a few buttons, and get back to my desk to stare down at the complete lack of work to occupy me.

After a while, I hear faint beeps from the lunch room, so I go and get my food. It's overcooked, but whatever. It's going to be mushy cauliflower for lunch, or nothing at all. Mmmm.

About halfway through my meal, I hear a murmuring. Not from my stomach (I know what you were thinking, Ned) but from the offices nearby. I hear the occasional "mumble... mumble... cauliflower? ..." and one or two "what the crap is that stink?"

Let me take this opportunity to provide you with this rather dense bit of information, from "The World's Healthiest Foods" :

Cauliflower contains phytochemicals that release odorous sulfur compounds when heated. These odors become stronger with increased cooking time.

Yes, in one of those unappreciated miracles of chemistry, the knowledge of which I would have very much appreciated when planning today's lunch, cauliflower starts to smell like a wet fart after prolonged cooking. I've cooked cauliflower before, but never really noticed the smell. This could be a telling indictment of my cooking ability.

Once it dawns on me that the cauliflower in my food is stinking up the whole building, I'm at a loss. What I want to do is bust up laughing, and I give it a couple of false starts, but it's hard to work up a hearty guffaw when people are going, "Man, what's that smell?" and others are responding, "Someone made cauliflower," and still others are going, "Hey, it's good for you!" So I just end up sitting there with a stupid grin on my face.

A director comes by my cubicle, asking, "What the hell is that?"

I lean over apologetically. "Is it really that bad? I had no idea."

"Oh, it's you?" He peers thoughtfully at my bowl of vegetables, then shakes his head.

"No, no, it can't be. It's all the way at the front door now, it smells like a dead body or something!" He disappears past me, looking for the oozing corpse that must be ripening, like a fine cheese, in the next room.

After that, an interlude of absolute quiet. I cringe inwardly, imagining that the entire office has migrated en masse to the lobby, and are now pressing their mouths against the front door, sucking at the fresh air outside. I imagine the view this might present someone approaching from the street, and I am cheered slightly. I start to get back into my research, busily typing away on the keyboard.

Click-click.

Pause.

Click-click-click.

Psssht.

Oh, dear god.

Psssssssssssssssssssssht.

An administrator goes by with a can of air freshener held high, responding to the occasional query.

"It's food, folks. No, it's not the bathrooms. It's food."

On the plus side, I bet everyone knows who I am now.

But yeah. No more cauliflower at work.

Veni, vidi, abii

2006-03-20T18:56:00.000-08:00

As I prepare for a hasty return to Southern California -- with an irony that is not lost on me, by the way -- I come to realize that, almost more than I missed San Diego when I left, I will miss Davis and Sacramento. My time here has been marked by a languid, aimless energy (or lack thereof) that I will likely never find again, except for brief periods of pilfered leisure.

I have fond memories of my time spent in various coffee houses, developing what may now be an irreversible and lifelong addiction to caffeine. There is a rhythm to a crowded coffee shop that is hard to describe, but it is one that has shaped many of my days here.

Academics and laptop users hover over those packing up to leave, with a nervous, sidling energy that can edge into near-hysteria when a prime table is at stake. The occasional bitter glance or pursed set of lips is directed at the laptop user playing online games, or the blissfully ignorant newcomer who is -- gravest of all sins -- idly leafing through a newspaper while sitting at a prized corner table. Those corner tables are the jealously guarded realm of the elite, those that can spin out a single cup of coffee for hours upon hours, day after day.

I will miss the smaller rituals, too. The brief, intricate dance around the cream and sugar, steaming cups floating dangerously on currents of sparking, caffeinated nerves. The moment's hesitation when the sugar is found to be empty, weighing my distaste for the flavor of unsweetened coffee against the press of impatient eyes on the back of my neck. The battle between half-and-half and nonfat milk, inevitably resulting in a cup of coffee that could pass as a warmed-over milkshake.

I'll miss lots of other things too, but I'm too damn tired to write about them right now... I'll do it later.

In Bad Faith

2006-03-14T11:04:00.000-08:00

There are a few quotations that I have recently learned, or decided, to take to heart.

One of them:

In failing circumstances, no-one can be relied on to keep their integrity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's a long story, and probably not one I should relate in a public space, considering there is a lawsuit pending. Suffice it to say, some people were dishonest with me, and now I have found no recourse but to take them to court over the matter.

There is money at stake, but in truth the money is not my primary concern. I dealt with these people in good faith, relying on the honor system to keep everything going smoothly. I suppose that's something of a laughable sentiment these days, but I didn't want to be one of those people that demand written affidavits for every agreement they make. I feel like it needs to be shown to these people that there are consequences for their actions, and that responsibilities should be dealt with honestly and fairly. A lesson, perhaps, that they should have learned in elementary school.

I have decided to go to court even though there is no definitive proof for my case, on the basis of the sentiment described by Sophocles: "Better to fail with honor than succeed by fraud."

I feel like even if I lose the case in court, I will at least have tried to right the situation. Additionally, if the expense and inconvenience of having to go to court makes these people think twice the next time they feel like reneging on a promise or contract, then it will have restored some small measure of the karmic balance.

I am, perversely, gaining no small amount of entertainment from the situation. These people feel they have been wronged by me, possibly by the simple expedient of recognising their duplicity for what it was. I find it not unamusing to observe them raging and storming against the perceived injustices I have done them. It brings to mind another quotation:

People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.
-Richard J Needham

Copland

2006-02-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be an entertaining story about how I had to go to traffic court, but it quickly degenerated into one of the disjointed discussions which figure largely on this page. Sandalia!

I recently had the great pleasure of appearing at traffic court in a small (to the point of nearly not existing) town in Kern County, California. Mojave is a town whose twin purposes for being appear to be to supply truck drivers with food and fuel, and to garner traffic enforcement revenue.

The town is little more than two intersections of gas stations and fast food. However, as I cruised down what -- for lack of a better term -- must be called their main drag, I was passed on both sides of the street by no less than 8 CHP cruisers. I spotted a couple others parked along the road and down side streets. Notwithstanding the strategic location of this town along the route between Las Vegas and much of California, this seemed an extraordinarily significant police presence. I theorized for a moment that possibly our benevolent government had located all manner of emergency services in Mojave, to better serve the people travelling to and from Las Vegas.

No hospitals, fire departments, or even towing garages were immediately evident. This perforce leads me to two possible conclusions, not necessarily mutually exclusive:

1) All the cops were just changing shifts, which is not unlikely -- I was there at about 8 in the morning.

2) An unusually high proportion of highway patrol is located in that part of the state, to catch what is likely a higher proportion of speeders along that barren stretch of highway.

*** RANT WARNING!! ***

This led me to reflect on the surprisingly adversarial and revenue-driven character of our traffic enforcement system. Arrest quotas are technically illegal, but everyone knows (or at least, has a deep suspicion) that the CHP and other enforcement offices have them. Police officers spend a surprising amount of time enforcing and prosecuting speeding tickets and the like, when there has been no conclusive evidence that lower speed limits save lives. That said, this is apparently a highly polarized issue, and I can find essentially no unbiased sources of information on the subject. I spent about a half hour reading a report that I thought was fairly interesting and sensible, and then I saw that it had been funded by an insurance group. Indeed, it is in the enforcement community's -- as well as the insurance corporations' -- interests to keep this state of affairs going. For both parties, the benefit is clear.

Insurance companies can charge vastly inflated rates for people with speeding convictions on record. I recalculated my insurance premium with one speeding violation, and it was 150% of the original. Extend that over a minimum three years, the length of a violation's life on your record, and the benefit to the insurance company's bottom line becomes very significant.

Governmental authorities operate with similar interests in mind, although they are less driven by greed. Law enforcement is chronically underfunded, and so they are encouraged to engage in tactics -- illegal arrest/ticket quotas, speed traps (technically illegal in non-freeway areas), and saturation arrest tactics which draw officers away from other, one would argue more important, tasks. There is even one example -- that I know of -- of authorities lowering speed limits on certain roads for no other reason than to increase enforcement revenue.

If we make the reasonable assumption that a government's job is to protect the safety and freedoms of its citizens, then it follows from the preceding that our law enforcement policy, at least as far as traffic enforcement is concerned, is badly broken. Traffic enforcement has largely become another method of taxation, as opposed to ensuring the safety of American motorists. That this alternative method of taxation is endorsed and sometimes underwritten by the insurance industry makes it even more deplorable.

Additionally, one must consider the point -- I believe valid -- that if a law immediately and habitually makes criminals out of the majority of the people under its domain, then it is perforce an unreasonable law.

Take Prohibition, for example. For a period in the early 20th century, the vast majority of urban populations in the United States were guilty of violating legislation banning alcoholic beverages that, in the words of then-president Hoover, was an "experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose." While Hoover was praising the motives behind Prohibition, the key word here is "experiment."

On top of all this, the penalties for minor traffic infractions seem severe. For myself, I think the penalty was reasonable, since I was assessed the maximum fine possible. However, most of the people I saw go up for a speeding violation were assessed the maximum (some leniency was given to those with multiple violations), and the vast majority opted for the installment plan method of payment, implying that they hadn't the means to pay the assessed fines. This suggests a system intent on punitive and financial aims, rather than rehabilitative -- a suggestion borne out by the practices of the corrections system at large. However, that is a discussion for another time.

Predictably, I can suggest few alternatives that aren't already well known. Penalties proportional to income, for one, is a measure already enacted in some countries.

Upon reflection, the issue of traffic penalties is of trivial importance, and only truly important to those unfortunates who can ill afford to pay the fines, are forced by way of penury to drive without insurance, or are otherwise barred by any number of means from fulfilling all of the legal and economic requirements of car ownership.

If you believe, however, that "the true test of any government is how it provides for its least fortunate,"* then perhaps a few aspects of our government are in need of review.

*As far as I can tell, this is a popular misquote of British author Samuel Johnson, who wrote, "A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization."

It's... Alive!

2006-02-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

I am not dead, nor too crippled or sick to type updates, just lazy and preoccupied.

As those of you who read this journal (hi, Han) may know, a while ago I took the step of resigning my full-time job and moving 500 miles away in order to eke out an existence on my savings, while trying to find a niche into which I could lever my ambitions and energies for the rest of my life.

Translation: I wanted to find a new career.

This didn't work out too well.

My most long-running -- and second most lucrative -- commitment thus far has been a volunteer (read: non-paying) job as a tutor for adults. While I've enjoyed it immensely, my material needs (i.e., food and shelter) mandate an actual wage or salary. Living in California, living expenses are rather higher than in other parts of the country. Being a volunteer teacher is not exactly an affordable undertaking, and being an actual salaried teacher is only marginally less so.

One of my other vague aspirations was to become a nurse, with the eventual aim of picking up a nurse practitioner's degree. I gave it a halfhearted go, shadowing at a local hospital, and there it kind of withered away. I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I would be unable to deal with the particular wealth of fluids that sick people generate and excrete in often startlingly enthusiastic ways.

I have a desire to be of help to people, as many others do, but I suspect that these latest attempts are ironic and somewhat self-defeating. For example, I put in a few hours a week tutoring at the local community learning center, but I very much believe that, given the choice between a check for the amount of my net worth and my continued services, their response would be something along the lines of "Bye, Jeff."

Also, since I am an organ donor, I am at the moment probably worth more to society dead than alive.

Indicative of low self-esteem that they are, if considered from a certain perspective, these thoughts are also motivational. I have a certain measure of undirected energy, that currently largely goes into thinking of ways to spend the as-yet unrealized dividends from my Lotto-heavy investment portfolio. Given a direction in which to... uh... direct them, I suppose I could probably make a decent go of something worthwhile.

Despite my altruistic hopes when I embarked on this latest whim, I now have a sneaking suspicion that the despair I felt in my old job was caused by something other than an unfulfilled "do-gooder" impulse.

My general plan now is to try something entrepreneurial. Sadly, such a venture requires capital with which to start a business, and I am the personality type that shies away from taking large risks, so I need a solid business plan before I throw myself wholeheartedly into something like that. Happily, one out of two ain't bad. I have a decent business idea, now I just need to find investors.

In the meantime, anybody care to lend me a few hundred thousand dollars? I'll pay you back next week, honest.

The Ironing is Delicious

2006-01-31T18:24:00.000-08:00

Even surplus to the fact that the State of the Union address is going on as I write this, I seem to be beset on all sides lately by unsurpassed examples of irony.

Consider the following, a post on Craigslist. The person was offering his or her services for writing academic papers. The title of choice, issued from the pen of this literary giant?

"can type for u any papers"

The body of the post, in its entirety:

"hi, please email me at [e-mail address] with number price can be negioble"

Staggering.

I suppose technically, he only offered to "type" the papers, so it is possible that those people who still write their papers out longhand might want to avail themselves of his services.

Another example, this one from the inexhaustible low-key entertainment offered by my "office," being a cosy neighborhood yupster cafe:

I am working away at trying to drum up some contracts with which to pay my rent, when through the front door walks the very picture of anti-establishmentarianism.

He is in his late teens or early twenties, a dark ball of angst wrapped in an army surplus jacket. A generously pierced face is framed by a stringy goatee and halfhearted dreadlocks. His jacket, along with the skateboard under his arm, is plastered with an impressive array of stickers and buttons such as one might find at Hot Topic... pieces of flair for today's goth/grunge youth on the go. In short, this is a man going to great lengths to demonstrate his lupine individuality to the rest of us sheep.

With a jaundiced eye for we of the contemptible conformity, he stoops his way to the counter. I fervently hope he will pump a fist and belt out a string of nihilist slogans, and then retreat in triumph, having thus enriched my day. Sadly, such entertainment is not in the offing. Instead, he disappoints me by ordering a $4.00 mocha.

After I was done making fun of him to some Korean guy, I started thinking about the various ways people assert their individuality. Being such a treasured value in American society, I find it is somewhat at odds with the human tendency -- being pack animals in large part -- to glom together in definable groups. Likewise, this aspect of our nature leads us to separate the rest of humanity into easily distinguished categories.

I heard somewhere that humans naturally are attuned to communities much smaller than those in which most of us now live. We evolved to operate in tightly knit groups of a few hundred or less, which explains why we are so fixated on celebrities. They are those few individuals with whom everyone is acquainted; thus, they comprise that small community that serves to unite the rest of us.

Interestingly, this sub-compartmentalization of the human race, if it is indeed an inevitability of our nature, might simply mean that we are doomed to constant conflict. Coupled (ahem) with our unceasing biological drive to breed, this produces two opposing instincts: The first, to procreate as often and successfully as possible; the second, to abhor the existence of other, distinct human groups, as that might threaten the success of "our" future generations.

Seeing as we are granted -- I hope -- with intelligence and reason enough to govern our latent instincts, we might yet manage to pull through. For my part, I enjoy mocking what I don't understand, so count me among the doomed.

As history has shown, nothing unites people better than a common enemy -- even if that enemy is us.

Wow... that took a weird turn.

Interesting tidbit:

There is scientific evidence showing that the contours specific to a baby's smiling face trigger the release of endorphins in the female brain. I think everyone knew this already, given the cooing insensibility to which every woman within range of a gurgling child is reduced.

Less well-known, perhaps, is the scientific evidence suggesting that the emotions associated with righteous anger and condemnation produce the same effect in men.

Summary for Creationists: Happy babies and pissed-off men pleaseth Him.

Haha!

2006-01-18T01:01:00.000-08:00

And the art world strikes again:

http://www.artworksmontana.com/pages/Dean%20Adams%20Web/pages/DA-61.htm

Ghonie, finally a gubernatorial candidate you can endorse:

http://www.jonathonforgovernor.us/Home_page.html

Carma

2006-01-07T16:39:00.000-08:00

It's not often that I reflect on something I write here, and for two good reasons. First, nobody reads the damn thing, so I am hardly tempting fate by writing on it. Second, I barely (if ever) write about anything of consequence. The various tales I pen here of being farted upon by my fellow man will never qualify as news flashes or groundbreaking literature.

So it was something of a surprise when I found myself musing about the post preceding this one, about how everyone drives too slow and should get the hell out of my way. The matter was brought home to me a few days ago by a California state employee, who happened to be engaged in writing me a speeding ticket.

For the record, I'm not upset about the ticket.

More precisely, I am not upset at the fact that I got a ticket.

When it comes time to actually pay the fine and go to traffic school (if I'm allowed to... yeah, I was going pretty fast), I will probably be singing a different tune, likely the kind that would make N.W.A. proud. I am reasonable enough, though, to recognize that I did break the law, and I'm more than willing to pay the fine. Anyway, I passed about three other CHP cars before I got home, so I would have been ticketed eventually.

One thing I'm sure of, my cruise control is going to be locked at 65 for a while.

Poop.

Out of the way, I'm a motorist!

2005-12-31T14:01:00.000-08:00

I've done a lot of driving in the last few days, and I am bound to do a lot more in the next few. From the experiences I've had on the road lately, and keeping in mind the mobile hours yet to come, I have compiled a few helpful tips for my fellow travellers of this great nation's freeways.

The car in the lane next to you on the freeway is not your soul mate. Have you ever been walking down the street, and in front of you are three or four people abreast, taking their sweet time getting nowhere at all, while blocking the entire sidewalk so no-one can get by? It's no less annoying when you do it in a car. Unless you are passing or being passed, you're either driving too slow or you are in the wrong lane.
You are driving too slow if any of the following apply to you.

I am behind you.
You are driving within 10 mph of the posted speed limit.
You are in the far left lane.
Anyone is passing you on the right.
There is a three-mile-long train of cars behind you.
More than one of the following fairly describe you:

Old
Chinese
Female
Driving any vehicle that could be justifiably characterized as a "shitbox."

You have just been passed by an 18-wheeler, RV, horse trailer, or Lil' Rascal.
There is still space between your accelerator and the floor mat.

(That's the go-faster pedal)

(The one on the right)

(No, you press it DOWN)

The highway patrol can catch you.

Accidents, offramps, and roadside checks are not tourist attractions. Every time someone rubbernecks, an angel gets its wings... caught in a meat grinder.
If the front of my car is visible in your rear view mirror, you need to merge right.
If the back of my car is visible through your windshield, TURN OFF YOUR FUCKING HIGH BEAMS.

Alternatively, if you are driving an SUV, industrial-sized pickup truck, or any other ludicrous vehicular indulgence of people with tiny brains and penile insecurities, choose any three of the following and perform them with all haste:

Go F yourself.
Go F yourself in the A.
Get a reasonable car.
Adjust your headlights so they point at the road, and not directly into my rear view mirror.

Any 1996 Nissan Sentras should be treated as if they are emergency response vehicles with lights and sirens going full blast.

Or an M-1 Abrams tank with an extremely reliable habit of blowing the crap out of your car if you don't get out of the way.

If you drive an Excursion, Escalade, or Expedition, and I have to change lanes to pass you because I can't see anything because of the fat ass on your car, pull over to the side of the road immediately.

Exit your vehicle.
Remove your pants. They will come in handy later.
Lie down in front of said vehicle.
Recruit any individuals available to repeatedly drive over your genitals.
Use aforementioned pants to staunch the flow of blood from your shattered reproductive organs. See? I'm not completely heartless.
Remind any children you may have that this is what happens to people who drive unnecessarily gigantic cars to appease their own egos.
Slap them around if they fail to get the point.
Repeat every three miles until you purchase a car that isn't a hazard to your fellow motorists and a symbol of your wasteful decadence.

People that I know and/or like are exempt from this rule. Still, get out of the way.

Oh yeah... and buckle up.

Day tripper

2005-12-20T23:01:00.000-08:00

This all happened in early November, and I managed to forget about the post until now.

Rather than spend another Saturday dissolving into a gelatinous puddle of goo in front of the TV, absorbing such delights as "Made" marathons, I decided to take a trip to San Francisco. I imagined myself a younger, yellower, and immeasurably less eloquent Bill Bryson, whose books I've been enjoying lately (my favorite so far has been "In a Sunburned Country").

True to form, I missed the train I meant to take, so I wound up waiting around for an hour at the local Amtrak station for the next one. I took the opportunity to observe my fellow travellers.

There was a young Asian couple, deliriously taking pictures of each other in front of everything that moved. When they shot me a speculative glance, they didn't even have to speak; I stood up and held out my hand, taking the camera from them and immortalized the image of the giddy pair in front of some particularly lively piece of lint blowing past on the breeze.

There was an African-American man with the most stunning set of upper incisors, which were capped with shining gold. He was carrying on a more-than-lively conversation on his cell phone at full volume, the kind that happily includes the words "I," "will," "fucking," "kill," and "you," not necessarily in that order. Every other person at the station was pointedly pretending he didn't exist, which was possibly the kind of thing that was upsetting him in the first place.

There was a middle-aged white couple off in one corner, the wife clutching a department store shopping bag, and the husband with several strewn about his feet. The small explosion of bags, along with his full, white beard and a vaguely stunned expression, made it look as if the Air Force had finally tired of Santa gallivanting about in their air space.

After a few gleeful minutes imagining what might have become of the reindeer, I stood as the train pulled up to the platform. We all hustled aboard, and I found my way to a choice seat on the upper level. The afromentioned (har har) guy came up to me and gave me a questioning look, and I waved him into the seat opposite me.

Turns out, he'd missed his stop on the way in, and had had to buy a ticket to go one stop west. I didn't ask about certain things -- impending homicides, for example -- but his mood seemed to have lightened considerably. We chatted happily for a few minutes until I nodded off, and when I awoke, he was gone. I even forgot to compliment him on his teeth.

The scenery was largely monotonous, being mostly observed on my part through closed eyelids. When, on a few occasions, I managed to lever open one bloodshot eye and press it to the window, I was treated to a lovely and wide-ranging set of views.

Fishermen were casting lines into a wide lake, the sunlight gleaming off its surface in a blinding flare. A bare-chested, white-haired paraplegic leaned back in his wheelchair, one hand holding a can of beer, the other raised in a cheerfully lazy wave as we hammered past his al fresco tanning salon. Grey industrial towns, farmland lying fallow, rocky beaches, and soaring bridges over water all populated the trek west -- with which, now that I think about it, I should have been more impressed. There's no helping some people, I guess.

After a transfer to a bus and an hour or so slumped in a seat that smelled vaguely of old sweat and puke, I stepped off the train into a brisk, sunny day in what I was told was Union Square. In all honesty, I was disappointed.

Looking around, the place was largely populated by department stores and brand-name retailers; in short, this was a glorified shopping mall. The only local color that I could see were some street performers dressed up as tin men, doing "The Robot" to some spastic tune coming from their boombox.

I looked in on the tram turntable, which seemed to be a big deal for the kind of people who walk around with fanny packs, prescription sunglasses, and twenty-pound cameras strapped to their necks. It must have been mating season or something, because they were fucking everywhere.

I got into line for the tram, but gave up when an empty car pulled in, was immediately jam-packed with people, bellied out of the station with the groan of steel at breaking point... and the line hadn't budged an inch.

I decided I'd just walk down to Fisherman's Wharf, a straight shot down the street for about 4 miles or so. It was a pleasant stroll, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone. It'll take you through what I can only assume was Chinatown, which I cleverly deduced from all the Chinese people walking around, and the most fantastic store names in existence anywhere, like "Long Wang Drugs," "Fu King Chinese Restaurant," and so on.

After being treated to a few glares by passing Chinese as they spotted me for the race traitor I am, I spotted a cool-looking tower in the distance, obviously part of a church. It was just a little north of where I was heading, so I took a little detour and ended up at Sts. Peter and Paul Church, which I assume is very nice. I didn't actually get to see much of the inside of the place, since there was a wedding going on. That didn't stop a determined pair of tourists, who bulled through the front doors unabashed, but I decided not to crash the party and poked around a side door, in true ninja fashion. The interior was dim but warm, with the sense of slight pressure against your eardrums. The kind of feeling you get in old buildings with lots of stained glass and untold years' worth of people talking in whispers and padding around in soft-soled shoes.

Feeling a little like I was going to be attacked by a flock of cherubim at any minute, I found a flight of stairs and started climbing, with the vague hope that they ended at the top of one of the towers I'd seen. Alas, I would never know. After three flights, the stairs ended in a locked plexiglass door, which apparently led into a school on the church grounds.

"Ah, shi- uh... shingles," I thought, proving that even an optimistic agnostic like myself can be guilted into proper behavior through the Catholic tendency towards gold leaf and colored glass.

The odd thing about walking out of a church, I've found, is that all the sounds on the street suddenly seem magnified slightly, and lights and colors seem a little brighter. It's like your senses all twisted the knob left a notch as you stepped in the door, and now they're turning it all the way up to 11.

From the church, I made my way down to the wharf. I had a chance to spend far too much time poking around Pier 39 on a previous visit to San Francisco, and I had found out that in all honesty, there is little to do there but walk around in constant bewilderment that a cup of clam chowder can actually cost six dollars.

So I took a look around at the other piers, and was fortunate enough to find a place called Musee Mecanique at Pier 45. This place is, in the parlance of haute couture, totally tits.

Let me give you an idea.

Stepping through the entrance, I am greeted by a display detailing the history of San Francisco, or some other crap. It was very nice, and also not terribly interesting.

Already developing a mild case of tetchiness, I wander past the display and into the rows of wood and metal cabinets that populate the rest of the museum. Stopping in front of an unmarked machine at random, I notice that below a glass window, it has a coin slot. I dig in my pocket for a quarter, and drop it into the slot. There is a whirring, clicking sound, and a curtain behind the window rises.

Behind it is a scene from late 18th century France in miniature, little plaster and metal figurines arrayed around a stage. On the stage, there are a few more little figurines, standing around a device that largely characterizes that period in France's history -- a guillotine. Strapped to the guillotine is... yes, that's right... another little figurine. Keeping pace with my jaw, the blade of the guillotine drops, and the little plaster head falls into a basket.

Vive le France!

And the curtain rolls back down.

Perhaps you can imagine the situation: I'm expecting a dancing Howdy Doody, maybe, or a kid rolling a hoop down a dusty road. Instead, I'm treated to an intricate reconstruction of a gory public killing, presented with the same warm fondness with which your grandma might give you a cookie. I'm sure you can guess my reaction.

I burst out, "Holy crap!" and ran to find a change machine.

For the next hour or two, I browsed through a collection of antique mechanical amusements that boggled the mind.

The public-execution-peep-show theme was surprisingly prominent; I recommend the museum to any of the lawyers foaming at the mouth to sue the video game industry for promoting violence. They might just learn that violence has been around for a while, and it's been entertaining people almost as long.

Almost as common were peep shows of a less bloody kind. Seeing as these machines generally came from an era where the sight of an exposed ankle was likely to send any well-respected man into conniptions, I expect the teenagers lined up at them with fistfuls of quarters probably went home disappointed.

There were mechanical baseball games, rock 'em sock 'em robots, love testers, and a couple of machines where the object seemed to be to drop money into them and watch nothing happen. I cheerfully watched a few people use these, then replaced the "Out of Order" signs and went on my merry way. Not really. But that would have been fun.

They even had a few machines that were the spitting image of Zoltar from the movie "Big."

Yeah... they didn't work.

Internet Explorer is a hot, steaming piece of shit

2005-12-18T16:54:00.000-08:00

The fact stated in the title of this post is brought home to me in all its shining glory every time I try to create a website.

I have just spent an hour and a half trying to prevent IE from shifting a colored blue line to the right by three pixels for no reason at all, while Firefox... blessed, sweet, good Mozilla Firefox... put the line exactly where it should have, without any fuss. While it was doing that, it folded my laundry and made me a cup of tea while giving me a back rub.

If this was a project for myself, I wouldn't have bothered. I would've just thrown up a note on my site saying:

This site best viewed with Mozilla Firefox. If you're using IE and refuse to switch to a better (read: any other) browser, feel free to come to my house and gouge out my nuts with a rusty grapefruit spoon, because it would be less painful than coding IE compatibility.

Sadly, this is a project for a client. So, I spent an hour and a half persuading Microsoft's pile of monkey turds to put a 270-pixel high blue line where I told it to. This has translated into an additional cost for my client, a situation which I am sure is being replicated in web development houses all over the world right this minute.

I feel like Microsoft's QA department owes the web dev world an apology, and at least an hour and a half of its time back.

I'm rich!

2005-12-13T00:24:00.000-08:00

There is a very real possibility that by this time next week, I will be a multimillionaire.

While my chances may be dogged somewhat by the fact that I seem terminally unable to motivate myself to go and buy a lottery ticket, I consider this a minor setback.

I also grant you that even if I did manage to shuffle down to the gas station (I actually do need to fill up the tank... take that, odds-makers!) and buy a ticket or two, my odds of winning the jackpot would come in somewhere between that of my spontaneously sprouting a donkey dong from my left nostril and being savaged by a group of swimsuit models after trying on a new brand of body spray. Since I take great pains to trim any nascent equestrian genitalia from my nose, this is essentially nil.

Notice my use of big words, it makes me sound smart! I are a genus.

Given all that, the chance -- however infinitesimal -- remains that I might suddenly be catapulted into the social stratum of people who, having stripped to the buff in a public restaurant and beaten a startled dinner companion senseless with their pendulous scrotum, would be referred to as "charmingly eccentric" rather than "batshit crazy."

I think many people -- namely, those I see at the gas station buying a stack of lottery tickets three feet high -- fail to put this particular enterprise in proper perspective. I have heard the lottery fairly characterized as a "stupid tax," but I still buy a ticket once in a while.

Given, I am pretty stupid. However, I also fully understand that the true value of a lottery ticket is not the possibility of winning an obscene amount of stripper candy, but the entertainment value. That is, for the few days between your purchase of a ticket and your discovering you didn't win anything, you get to imagine what you might do with the money you won't win. I have a lot of fun with this every time I buy a ticket, and now that I am closing in on finishing a glass of rather sketchy cabernet, I am uninhibited enough to be willing to share a few of my ideas with you.

I) This is probably my most oft-recounted financial daydream. I'd like to take my Japanese economy car, and put in a gigantic engine. I wouldn't do anything like add a spoiler, bigger exhaust pipe, nice rims, or leather seats. I'd just make my ugly, slow car into an ugly, very fast car. That way, I could do things like drive very slowly in the left hand lane with my turn signal on, with the full knowledge that I could be going very fast. And in truth, isn't that the essence of privilege?

II) I would spend a few million buying votes in the Senate and House, in order to pass a bill dictating the following:

Christmas music on the radio and in retail locations will be forbidden, on pain of extreme pain, any time of the year before December 10th. 2 weeks of "Jingle Bells" is ample, and anyone who disagrees is free to lodge a formal protest with the Director of Internal Christmas Music Affairs, whose badge of office will be a very large baseball bat with a rusty nail in it.
Anyone who causes my telephone or e-mail notifier to ring with the intention of selling me something I haven't personally and specifically requested will be strapped to a gurney and will have their genitals Tasered repeatedly until they can sing the national anthem of Botswana backwards.
Anyone who can sing the national anthem of Botswana backwards will be shot.
Anyone appearing on the dating show "Next" will be forcibly sterilized.

Ditto Elimidate.

The people responsible for cancelling Arrested Development will be gently educated as to their mild lapse in judgement with the judicious use of sandpaper and concentrated habanero extract.
Anyone who shrieks and cries tears of joy at the sight of a celebrity will be slapped around until they get a clue, preferably by the celebrity in question.

III) Daylight savings would be adjusted so that we always get an extra hour to sleep, and it never gets dark by four o'fucking clock in the afternoon.

Eh? What?

2005-12-04T23:57:00.000-08:00

I am apprehensive, on some vague, almost-not-there-at-all level, that I am losing my mind. Not, happily, in the sense of foaming at the mouth and dry-humping cookware (after all, there are only so many ways to occupy a free afternoon). Rather, I have noticed that I am steadily losing focus. If I had to use a commonly understood name, I would probably call it ADD, but I despise the idea of using the shield of a label to hide what is, to me, a symptom of my apathy.

In truth, that might be an overly pessimistic view of things. It might not be a hard-wired facet of my own personality that makes my attention and memory falter. It could be that particular vapidity of MTV's programming, which simultaneously commands one's attention and shuts off all higher brain function. It could be the long periods of trance-like mental states, attained during marathon video gaming sessions when I was supposed to be reading up on the neurological bases of cognitive function (ironic, no?).

Whatever the cause, I have found that time seems to pass particularly quickly. More accurately, I constantly find that time has always passed by me with astonishing speed.

This is not uncommon; you always hear people talking about how the week just flew by, or my goodness, is it December already, I have to get the shopping done, and so on and so forth.

Now, I am not by any means trying to say that I am unique in this respect, but for most people, I imagine that the above sentiments are accompanied by some kind of explanation; i.e., they were busy at work or with the family, and while they were thus occupied, time marched on. I, on the other hand, am a particularly idle soul. You can ask anyone in a certain local cafe who their least profitable customer is, and you probably won't have to wait long until they point at me, walking in the door, just in time for my appointment to drink 50-cent refills of coffee all afternoon.

I don't even particularly like coffee.

Back to the point, perhaps it's just that I am unusually talented at wasting time. Given the considerable exercise this talent has gotten recently, maybe I'm simply out of practice at thinking. I haven't really had much of an occasion to turn my brain back on recently, so I suspect it has started to atrophy. Now that I'm trying to wake the damned thing, I can almost see it crack one bloodshot eye at me, before rolling over and pulling the pillow over its head.

It has gotten bad enough that I recently took to the practice of carrying around a memo pad and a pen, just to jot down things I might like to remember or think about later. This little brainstorm ran afoul of a small snag when I kept forgetting the memo pad at home.

I had similar sneaking suspicions a couple years ago, when I thought I was losing whatever laughably rusted, pitted remnant of an edge I might have retained from my more lucid days. I laid those suspicions to rest by taking a bunch of standardized tests, and resolving to never let myself get apathetic and forgetful again.

What was I talking about again? Whatever, it doesn't matter anyway.

New York, New York

2005-11-29T16:10:00.000-08:00

I spent my Thanksgiving in New York, visiting my sister. My parents were there too. It was extraordinarily stressful, and let's just leave it at that.

The travelling was fun, though.

I had an extended conversation with a woman at the gate for my flight to New York. It started like this:

Her: [Pointing across the way to a block of phone booths] "Say... what do you think that guy is doing?"

[I look over and notice a guy dressed all in black, curly hair with long curly sideburns, and a hat, with a small book held in both hands before him. He's mumbling to himself and rocking back and forth slightly.]

Me: Er... I think he's praying.

Her: Oh, is that what it is? I was afraid he was having a seizure or something.

Me: No, I'm pretty sure that's just religion.

And so on and so forth. She speculated that he was perhaps Amish, and we both thought about that for a while, then decided he was probably a Hasidic Jew. On reflection, I can think of very few reasons an Amish person would be in an airport, even if he managed to make it through the automatic doors to the terminal without commiting a few cardinal sins. All in all, it was one of the more interesting conversations I've ever had with a stranger, and fortunately so, since I had nothing else to do since I'd forgotten my MP3 player in my car. We parted ways in that peculiar manner of strangers who are briefly thrown together by fate, with hearty well wishes and phrases pitched high with exaggerated bonhomie.

The flight itself was largely uneventful. I was seated next to an empty seat, which was nice... especially since in the next seat over, was a man who, while very agreeable and friendly, had the most awful breath. He seemed blissfully unaware of it too, and I tried to refrain from asking him any questions that might have many "h" sounds in the answer. In some circumstances, such a reek might be appreciated, or even savored; for example, ripe durian, a fine Roquefort, or this chinese dish. Coming from the mouth of a man seated next to me in what was essentially an airtight tin can with wings was not one of them.

We only exchanged a handful of words during the entire flight, but on one memorable occasion, when he turned to me and inquired, "HHHHey, do you HHHHHappen to HAHHHave a pair of HHHHeadphones?" I had to battle the urge to wrestle open the window for some fresh air.
Of New York itself, let me just say that it was, for me, a peculiar experience. It is one of those places with some features that are so patently awful that it makes you appreciate the small blessings that much more. For example, it was bitterly cold when I was there; 30 degrees Fahrenheit, with wind chill taking it down to 14. While that was -- for a Californian -- awful, it made every restaurant, store, or cafe I stopped at all the better just by virtue of being warm and out of the wind.

With all of the family there, I didn't have much time to go sightseeing. However, I did take a little walk with my sister, and we passed by a few landmarks -- Battery park, Trinity church, Wall street, and a few other spots. I had a chance to go back and step into Trinity Church by myself before I left, and the experience was fantastic. The interior of the chapel is done up in a mind-bending pink and blue color scheme, which is somewhat at odds with the soaring Gothic majesty of the exterior, and the cemetery next door. Imagine if one of those Extreme Home Makeover shows had gotten Vlad the Impaler to do the exterior, and Liberace the interior.

Festive colors aside, the chapel was a humbling experience. The place was full of September 11th displays and tributes, with various kiosks recounting tales of the days after the attack. It was deeply touching to see how people pulled together to help each other in the face of that crisis. The only thing marring the displays was one bit of shameless commercial promotion; a giant banner from a community in Hawaii, proclaiming "We will never forget you," with countless signatures and handprints... and a giant Kinko's logo. I think that little bit of advertising could have been set aside, if only in the interest of dignity.

We also had some great food; Fuleen's Seafod restaurant and Adrienne's Pizza Cafe, both in Manhattan, are highly recommended.

The flight home was also uneventful. I spent four hours crushing the puny Romans with my hordes of Persian cavalry (Civilization rules), and the rest of the time was spent trying to figure out how, though we can produce a vehicle that travels safely at 500 miles per hour at 34,000 feet, we can't make a security check line move faster than... well, just about anything at all.

On the shuttle ride home from the airport, I had the good fortune to meet a girl who can only be described by the phrase "cute as a button." If I were 40 years older, white, a grandmother, and prone to making lots of apple pie, I would have been obligated by federal law to pinch her cheek and go "Awww."

While it was an unabashed pleasure talking with her, I was a little disheartened by the fact that she made me feel so old, and so directionless. She was returning from her home in New Orleans, and she told me about all the things that went on during the hurricanes, her goals and aspirations, and so on and so forth. She was, to use another cliche, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to the point where I almost wanted to offer her a walnut, just to see if she would scamper up the nearest tree to nibble on it.

And that, apart from family stuff and some more memorable moments that I'll detail later, was what I did on my Thanksgiving vacation.

Mishka's: The Reckoning

2005-11-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

Usually I let my thoughts ripen a bit, as it were, before I write a post. However, I thought I should try to capture this one while it was still fresh.

I am currently sitting in a pleasant little cafe in a pleasant little college town in a pleasant part of California. This is one of those places that is packed full of grad and undergrad students working on papers, professors and TAs grading papers, and self-satisfied business types all rubbing shoulders and jockeying for the good tables. Notebooks, of both the spiral-bound and electronic variety, are everywhere.

I'm just sitting here, innocently working on my contract project. I come here to work probably 3 or 4 days a week, mostly because I can't seem to get any work done without background noise, and there's a much more energetic, convivial atmosphere here than in my largely empty apartment. Plus, $0.50 refills on iced coffee or tea and free wireless internet. Even though it is slower and less reliable, free wireless internet is somehow better than the wireless internet I pay for at home. It's just one of those things.

The place is jumping today, and I am lucky enough to be able to slip into a recently vacated table between two slump-shouldered, bleary-eyed academics. I fire up a few programs, a list of which will serve to indicate my single-minded dedication to the job at hand:

1) Trillian (a combination of ICQ, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo chat programs)
2) Winamp (MP3 player)
3) Firefox (web browser), pointed to Fark.com

My mouse cursor hovers uncertainly over the Macromedia Flash icon, as I wonder whether starting my work day at 11:45am would be a symptom of unrecoverable workaholism.

The decision is soon taken out of my hands.

A cloud passes over the sun, turning a sunny day into crimson twilight. The earth and sky are suddenly split by a clamor of screams, as if the hosts of heaven and hell were being torn limb from limb. In the terrified eyes of the people on the street, one can see reflected the very fires of damnation as a warm, red rain begins to fall.

Now condense the horror of that scene into a few microscopic particles, and stick them in your nose.

That should give you a good idea of what wafted past my face not long ago. This was no mere by-product of a malfunctioning gastrointestinal tract. This was almost solid; a shimmering, iridescent vapor only a couple of volts away from self awareness.

I wondered, through a rapidly narrowing field of vision, at the fact that no-one in my immediate area was reacting to the demonic incarnation rampaging through my sinuses.

Just as points of light were invading my vision and the opening strains of "Agnus Dei" were starting to echo in my ears, I staggered upright and pushed my way out the door to the street. There I stood, hands on knees, gulping sweet lungfuls of blessedly clean air.

After a few minutes, I felt sufficiently composed to cautiously edge back to my table, where I was relieved to discover that my computer hadn't been dissolved by the toxic cloud. Everyone around me was still heads-down, beavering away at their papers or what not. I was amazed.

I was also ashamed. Not at my weakness, but at the realization that in the great Game of Life, I had just lost spectacularly at a round of "You Smelt it, You Dealt it." I am sure every person here will be telling their loved ones about how I dropped a heinous bomb and left the room, abandoning them to their fate.

Bonus point:
I got an aftershock whiff as the woman next to me got up to leave.

Double word score:
It wasn't me, I swear.

Riposte!

2005-11-05T23:46:00.000-08:00

While looking in my archives for the link to that Star Wars mistranslation thing, I stumbled upon a comment by some Korean. Here's the body of his comment:

Riddle me this:

What has two legs,
two arms,
two eyes,
one head,
10 fingers,
10 toes,
and is Chinese?

And I just now came up with a response:

Friday night super fun takeout special!

Bahahahahahahahahaha!!

Kids, let me remind you that ethnic jokes are unacceptable and unfunny.

Actually, that's a lie. Racial jokes are funny, mostly because many people deem them to be so unacceptable. Humour is all about defying or satirizing socially acceptable norms. Part of why these things are funny is because you know that somewhere, there are people who will get all huffy and upset over some comment about "Two Wongs Making it White" in reference to a Chinese laundromat.

Often, these people are in urgent need of medical care, to remove the various objects lodged in their lower intestines. This procedure is occasionally known as a Humorectomy. See? That's funny, because you just said "rectum." I could have said "stick-in-the-assectomy," but that would have been like me beating you over the head with a sack full of goopy turds: no fun for anyone.

The problem with racial humour is that so often the basic sentiment, that of poking harmless fun, is perverted by something more sinister -- namely: ignorance, thinly disguised hostility, or scorn. Note that all these things are characteristic of the phenomenon of racism itself.

Additionally, you get racist humour which is so artless and clumsy that it is offensive not necessarily on the basis of its subject matter, but because it is so patently unfunny. Take, for example, any Loony Tunes feature where someone gets blown up. The smoke clears, the character is covered in soot and has big swollen lips, then mugs desperately for the camera before waddling offscreen. Frankly, it would have been funnier if Elmer Fudd had been split in two by the blast, and lay screaming in agony in a pool of his own viscera, weeping for his lost future. See? It really didn't take much.

Doubtless, such scenes were at the pinnacle of wit and satire in the first half of the 20th century. Thankfully, tastes have changed, and we are now privileged to bear witness to such masterpieces of subtle comedy as "Stacked" on Fox.

Anyway, the point.

Humor is at its heart a little vicious, and a little mean. That doesn't mean that it can't be delivered and accepted in a spirit of goodwill, and through incendiary subject matter. Instead of hiding behind political correctness and trying to erase the things that make people different, all you pole-holes should be trying to understand why people might think these things are funny. Consider the possibility that not everyone is as small-minded or close-hearted as you assume they are.

And for god's sake,
LEARN TO READ
(Nedim and Han)
BETWEEN
(didn't quite get it on)
THE
(but they sure didn't get off my mom!)
LINES.

Wait... what?

Post 46

2005-11-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

So, I am starting to fill my days with activities that don't involve sitting on my ass and wondering what to do.

I still do some of that, but at least now those are billable hours. Ha! Ha! How droll. Oh Mr. Wuthering-Smythe-Doghumperson, I do declare!

I am now tutoring/teaching two afternoons a week at the local community learning center, which has turned out to be surprisingly great. In my three sessions so far, I have taught pre-GED level math, reading, and writing to a mother of two in her 40s, basic literacy to a young lady of indeterminate age (younger than me, older than 12, which is an age range I find hellishly difficult to pinpoint), and GED-level math to an expectant mother, probably in her early 20s. Next week, I am going to start teaching a computer skills class to adults one day a week, which should be a nice little adventure. I've been using computers for so long, it will be an interesting challenge to see if I can explain them to people who have no knowledge of them.

Potentially, I could raise an army of super-genius hackers and take over the Internet. Imagine the riots and mayhem that would follow the complete and utter cessation of free online porn. Legions of pasty, oily ghouls shambling up cobwebbed stairs from their parents' basements, uttering the spine-curdling nasal bleat of the horny adolescent. Adult book and film stores denuded (hehe) of goods, the shop owners smothered by greased-up, hairy palms and left for dead. I would control the flow of raunch, and be invincible!

...
...

Upon reflection, Supreme Overlord of Chronic Masturbators might be a job title I could do without.

Alternatively, I could conceivably help some people acquire skills they could use to get a decent-paying job, which would be almost as rewarding.

I was most surprised, actually, by how quickly I cottoned to the experience. Similar to the way I use the phrase "cottoned to" so casually without knowing what it really means, I was astonishingly comfortable teaching stuff to total strangers.

I don't pretend to know if I was any good, but none of my 'clients' seemed to actively hate me. I have no specific endorsements, since "Was it good for you?" seemed an inappropriate question to pose. However, one of them had a serious "Aha!" moment, and said the way I explained it made much more sense than her regular tutor. The director of the center also seems to think I'm doing a pretty good job.

Feed my ego! Yes, breathe, my friend, breathe! Have a refreshing beverage.

If you don't get that, you need to watch Transporter 2.

It remains to be seen whether I am getting so much satisfaction out of this simply because it's new and I frankly have little else to do, or because it's something that genuinely interests me. For the time being, it is enough for me to know that I am contributing in some small way to the community. Doing it for free somehow makes it better.

Unaccountably, this feels more rewarding (but less delicious) than getting a bag of blood drained out of me every 8 weeks, then gorging on donuts and nachos. That, along with occasionally paying the bus fare for a down-and-out somebody desperately trying to get home to their sick mama, used to be the complete roster of my extensive volunteer work.

Sighting o' the day:
A middle-aged Hispanic woman driving an old, rusty Ford Aerostar type of family van pulls up next to me at a red light. Everything on the car looks worn down and tired, except for the rims, which are mirror-bright and spinning gently on ball bearings. Now that's awesome. Awesome to the max.

Sighting o' the other day:
A car full of college girls starts pacing me on the freeway. I glance over, and they're all staring at me. I return my attention to the road, and speed up a little, slightly creeped out. They keep pace. The next time I look over, they're ready for me, and they all start seat-dancing like crazy. I almost hit the guard rail, I'm laughing so hard. The driver gives a cheery wave, and they speed off, I imagine to brighten up someone else's drive and possibly cause a 30-car pileup.

Reading:
"Jarhead" by Anthony Swofford. This is one of those books that, while not a masterpiece of literature by any stretch of the imagination, is strangely compelling and an addicting read. Much as "Chickenhawk" educated me from ground level about the Vietnam war, so has "Jarhead" done for the first Gulf War.

Odd, since I was there at the time. I think I still have my gas mask somewhere.

I win

2005-10-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

It is, once in a great while, necessary for one to simply stand back and marvel at the result of an act of sublime human ingenuity. Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The moon landing. Zippers, Velcro, duct tape, and the way they can ensure there are exactly two scoops in every box.

Into this hallowed company would I like to place myself, for I, a humble man of limited intelligence and only passing familiarity with the various laws of the universe (i.e.: I trip, therefore I fall down), have accomplished a feat that many might have previously deemed laughably impossible -- or, at the very least, laughable.

I have managed, albeit superficially, to wound myself with floss, an item that occupies a space on the Human Lethality Scale somewhere between belly-button lint and a penchant for sitting alone in climate-controlled rooms with padded walls.

There are a few scenarios in which I can imagine someone causing injury to himself or another by way of a length of waxed string, but nearly all of them involve some kind of Goldbergian device terminating in a loaded shotgun. One notable exception consists of a hungry pirhana with floss knotted around its tail, swung about and applied at high speed to one's own face or that of some nearby unfortunate. I suppose it doesn't matter much what kind of fish it is... or whether it is a fish at all. Point being, none of the scenarios involve just one person, one short length of floss, and an apparently masochistic desire for passable dental hygiene.

I'm not entirely sure how I managed it myself, but manage it I did. I am the proud owner of one floss-inflicted gash on my right index finger, which twinges every time I type the letters U, J, H, N, or Y. You can imagine the pain that list just cost me, and I hope you duly appreciate the suffering I've endured thus far for your benefit.

Notify the authorities. I'll be here, awaiting my medal and giant check.

City slickers!

2005-10-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

I love watching the "reality" show Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive. The one and only reason I enjoy that show is the (alleged) person, Fabian Basabe. Other than sounding like an Iron Chef ingredient, he is, bar none, the most unabashed caricature of a spoiled rich kid that I have ever witnessed.

Even my former favorite, Chet Williams-Smythe (not his real name, it's a long story), is a pale imitation of this guy. I've made a game of counting how many seconds he can be on-screen before I get the nearly uncontrollable urge to make a nasty remark; unfortunately, I'm usually too busy thinking of nasty remarks to make to remember to keep track of the time. I think the highest I've got is... uh... zero seconds. Watch a few episodes, it's worth it. If a proletariat uprising comes to the States, it'll be because of people like this guy.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

2005-10-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

I think I'm in the H-1 sector.

Update

2005-09-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

One of my roommates works at a receiving home in the city, and she mentioned that they were badly in need of assistance in the form of male staffers. I called them up to see what the deal was, but nobody picked up and I haven't had a response to my message yet. The work sounds interesting, so I figured I'd give it a shot, just to see what it's like. I imagine I'd be working mostly with inner-city, disadvantaged kids... and since I've mostly lived a fairly sheltered, white-washed existence, the culture gap will be interesting to experience.

I wonder if it will be any tougher to deal with than the summers I worked as a day camp counselor for Arabic kids.

On one hand, the culture gap was probably wider, but on the other hand, I had a 350-pound Jordanian with a drill sergeant's attitude as my colleague, so I was pretty much able to just sit back and watch him intimidate the kids into submision.

My hard work and steady uncovering of Arabic cultural nuances during those summers is demonstrated by my command of the Arabic language. I learned how to say:

"What's that?"
"Come here"
"Go away"
"Shut up"
"Sit down"
"Thank God" (literally, "Praise be to Allah")

Occasionally, I was able to combine these phrases (or parts thereof) to open up new, exciting dimensions of cross-cultural understanding. For example:

"Shut up and sit down"
"What is that... a Pepsi?"
"Come here... WITH a Pepsi"
"Praise be to Allah for this Pepsi. Now go away, shut up, and sit down."

The kids loved me. "Jihad" is an expression of mutual respect and friendship, right?

I am also concerned about the state of reality television. With the advent of MTV's new show, "The Reality Show," it seems that producers think reality television is now too real for us to enjoy it. Thus, "The Reality Show," being a reality show about a series of reality show hopefuls, becomes the first true meta-reality show. I think that this could lead to even more layers of complexity in reality TV.

I predict that eventually, we'll be watching a show where former reality stars use sock puppets to impersonate A-list stars performing dramatic re-enactments of highlights from behind-the-scenes documentaries of old reality shows.

Hot damn, I would totally watch that.

Target practice & more

2005-09-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/u/urinal.htm

http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/photo/images/photo130.jpg#caption

The wonders of perversion

2005-09-02T22:08:00.000-07:00

I recently called up a local hospital and asked them if I could shadow some nurses around, to see how a typical day for them went, and hopefully get a clue as to whether I might like a career in the field.

The (very nice) lady I spoke with told me I had a couple options:

1) I could go through the whole shebang of a background check, TB testing, etc, and then I could do some intensive shadowing across multiple departments.

2) She could try and set me up for a 2-hour session in one specific unit/department.

I asked if maybe I could get a couple experiences in a few different units, perhaps, and she told me a bunch of reasons why that couldn't happen... basically because I'd be a pain in the real nurses' asses, and then she said this, which nearly made me crack up:

"And, we couldn't, for example, just let you loose in the pediatrics unit, because we don't know whether you're into kids or something, you know?"

With a lovely little stress on the word "into."

It was just fun for me, knowing that -- for a moment, at least -- it was someone's actual job to worry about whether or not I was a pedophile.

For the record, I'm not.

Ah-hoo hoo! Jam on! Oh don't be ignorant, it's not secksyool!

Cinemasochism

2005-08-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

I had a movie night with a friend not long ago. We decided... at least, I decided, and my friend reluctantly agreed, to rent the worst movie we could possibly find, in the hope that it would be so bad that it would somehow turn the corner and end up being good.

This is a well-known phenomenon, and there are plenty of "Movies so bad they're good" lists out there on the web to prove it. Such movies on my list include:

- Mission to Mars
- Swimfan
- Anything with Jean-Claude Van Damme
- Anything with Steven Seagal (except that one I got for John, that one was terrible)
- Anything with Chuck Norris
- Any of Arnie's older schlock
- etc, etc. You get the idea.

So after spending way too much time at Blockbuster (whose selection, frankly, is about as well-rounded as a triangle), we had a four-way tie between the following titles:

- Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
- Returner
- Senorita Justice
- Vampiyaz: Brothaz in Blood

My friend vetoed Senorita Justice, on the basis of its hot pink color scheme, and I voiced a favorable opinion of "Vampiyaz," because I nearly blacked out from laughing when I first saw the title. Jish kind of wanted to see Returner, more because he thought it would actually be good. I thought this was contrary to the spirit of the occasion, so I kicked him in the beanbag.

Not really, but I won.

Or lost, depending on your perspective.

We watched the whole movie, and it was every bit as good as I expected it to be. The problem was, it wasn't quite as bad as I was hoping, so it didn't manage to quite turn the corner into "awesome" status. However, we did learn a few things.

1) In the absence of a special-effects budget, one can immerse the viewers in the scene by having the evil vampire head honcho yell "My skin's bubbling... my skin's bubbling..." as he writhes in agony on the floor, bathed in sunlight.

2) By the same token, having the evil guys repeatedly groan "Owwww... Owwww...." really serves to let the viewer know that the baddies in question are in pain.

3) The best death curse ever in any movie ever made is in this movie. When the hero manages to eventually kill the vampire boss, he screams:

"Ouch, nigga, damn!"

Classic. I think I'm going to try to do something like this every month. With luck, I won't even lose that many friends in the process.

Rümates

2005-08-21T16:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a guy on the line to take the third room in a 3-bedroom apartment I'm trying to fill by this Saturday, but he dropped out. His most stand-out characteristic would be his last name: Butscheck. Apparently this isn't an entirely uncommon name for Germanic people. I told my friend that a potential roommate of mine probably had a lot of Butschecks in his past.

That was probably the most clever, urbane thing I've said in about 3 weeks. I can almost feel my wit shriveling up into a little dry brown nugget, like a Tater Tot forgotten in the fryer.

Mmm... tater tots.

Also, a piece of advice: Do NOT buy Jack-in-the-Box's root beer float. It looked good in the promo poster, and I was craving a root beer float, so I walked in. $1.99 + tax later, I was the proud owner of a plastic cup full of runny ass juice.

When I asked if I could have a root beer float instead of a glass of diarrhea, they threw me to the ground and injected me with e. coli.

Not really. But yeah... stick to the chicken sandwiches.

Thank god for...

2005-08-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

my people.

(Star wars Ep 3 spoilers)

Also, this.

Deja Vu

2005-08-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

All right, this is getting weird.

I'm looking for an apartment to move into at the end of the month, since I don't want to be one of those guys who just leeches off other people (I'm currently living in a friend's spare room). After doing some room hunting on my own, I discovered something.

It's a royal pain in the ass finding affordable housing just by yourself. Housing costs are astronomical for a single person; I figure the average 1-bedroom apartment costs about $800 per month. Add utilities, startup costs, and miscellaneous crap, and you're looking at around $900-1000/month, easy. Just for one person. A 2-bedroom apartment averages maybe $900. That means that, just as far as rent is concerned, 2 people can rent an apartment for about 56% (each) of what a single person can.

So I started contacting people with spare rooms for rent. The costs that way are much more reasonable; say, $450 per month, often including utilities. But there was still something that bugged me about it. It took me a little while to realize what exactly it was, but I finally did. It was the feeling of moving into someone else's space, on someone else's sufferance. I felt like a character out of Dickens, hand outstretched, begging some nebulous third party for shelter. I hate the feeling of being judged and evaluated by someone who holds power over me, and this goes for apartment hunting as much as it does for anything else. This made me unable to work up any real enthusiasm for the process.

Then, I realized that through the power of Craigslist, many things are possible. I found a great rate on a 3-bedroom, 2-bath apartment, and tossed up a post looking for roommates to fill the other two rooms. First, the numbers:

Rent on the 3-BR apartment: ~$1110/mo.
Per room: $370
With adjustments for the bathrooms: $390/360/360

This, in a modern apartment complex complete with all the modern amenities; i.e., good appliances, a gym, and a pool.

The beauty of this arrangement, too, is if this particular complex closes out, 3 people have a much easier time finding reasonable rental rates together than 1 person going it alone. Ah, the power of cooperation.

Now comes the deja vu.

There must be something about my Craigslist postings that attracts women. I swear, if I could bottle the stuff, I'd be a billionaire. Note I don't specify females specifically or anything, and I lay out all the relevant details about me up front (meaning, no "Billionaire Sensitive and Caring Abercrombie Model, Looks Just Like [insert random Hollywood beefcake], Seeking Soul- and/or Room-mates" posting). Here are some statistics about the respondents to my post, which went online 14 hours ago:

- 100% female
- 50% cat owners
- 100% my age or younger
- 25% too young to legally drink alcohol

I mean, honestly. I guess compared to some of the roommate wanted ads on Craigslist, a post from someone not trawling for a live-in prostitute must seem like manna from heaven. Take, for example, the following excerpts from this little treasure from some random dude:

"$1 - Seeking Female Roomate 4 Large Room & Private Bath"

That’s right! Rent is Notta, Zip, Zero, Zilch
[1...]What's the catch you say? :) Here it comes :)

I'm recently divorced and it's just to damn quiet :)

[2...]You’re a nudist! (Just kidding) But if you decide to skinny dip in the pool, I won't argue, in fact I'll bring you a cocktail with a little umbrella in it, like a pool side waiter ;)

[3...]Lastly, if you’re open minded, I could use the occasional recreational late night fling :) Again...I won't argue if you loose your way in the dark and accidentally stumble into my room ;) I DONT want any attachment, another girlfriend or wife, but obviously I miss some of the perks :)

[4...]If you’re cool, layed back, smile more than you frown :) Then please send pictures and tell me why you’re saying "Pick Me!..Pick Me!..Pick Me!" :)

On the one hand, you almost have to feel for the guy. He's lonely, and anyone can sympathize with that. On the other hands (and oh, there are SO many other hands)...

1) Never, ever, ever trust anyone who smiles this much, even via emoticons.

2) If you want a live-in nudist/exhibitionist, get a cat or a dog, and I dunno... shave it, or something. On second thought, I guess that could involve breaking a bunch of laws. I can't be sure, I haven't thoroughly researched the local statutes concerning creepy things people do. As for the drinks... can you say "roofie"? Come on kids, all together now. STRANGER DANGER!!

3) AIEEEEEEE!!! If I did any nocturnal wandering and/or stumbling in this guy's house, it would only be while armed with a 2x4 and a SWAT team.

4) "Pick Me! Pick Me! Pick Me!" -- Given the context, does this remind anyone else of the sound a small, innocent woodland creature might make, as it is nabbed by something with lots of teeth and claws?

Small town life and stupid movies

2005-08-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

So I recently moved from San Diego to a small town in Northern California. I have to say I like the atmosphere, but there are a few things that take some getting used to. For example:

1) This being a fairly quiet little town, the cops have nothing to do. Consequently, I got slapped with a $30 parking fine for parking behind some dude who had taken up 2 parking spaces along a street. That guy had the good fortune to leave before the cops came, so it looked like I had taken up two spaces. I committed this heinous crime ostensibly to protect my shiny, pristine, 1996 Nissan Sentra (86K miles and it looks like a green turd on wheels) from any superficial paint damage. Seeing as my car is worth virtually tens of dollars on the open market these days, you can see how I would want to protect my investment.

2) Four-way stops. What is up with four way stops?? I used to think how great it would be, not to have to wait for traffic lights to give you permission to cross an intersection. Now that I'm confronted with a grid street system plagued by four-way stops, I've come to fear the red octagon. If an intersection isn't deserted by the time I reach a four-way stop, I know I'm in for a white-knuckled minute or two, eyeing motorists and pedestrians alike with a jaundiced eye. I should probably learn how 4-way stops work. Hey look, a penny!

3) Convenience. If I want to find a fantastic lunch spot, I just walk a couple blocks from the front steps of the place I'm staying. If I want to find a hippy bookstore, an asian food mart, a quirky restaurant, an eclectic coffee shop, or a classy Indian restaurant? Same thing. Very convenient. However. If I want to go to Target and pick up some random household item, I need to drive 15 miles on the freeway to get to one. Similarly for Sears, etc. So that's a mixed bag right there.

4) Friendly people. People are so friendly here, it's weird. I've seen so many bared teeth, I'm almost at the point where I'm starting to worry that possibly these people are all just cannibals, and they're in the mood for Chinese.

Anyway. I'm having fun. I'm already looking for some work to occupy my time. I've discovered that free time is vastly overrated, unless you have something or someone to occupy it, at which point I suppose it isn't free anymore. Take that, logic!

One of the things I've done with my free time is think about all the movies based on comic books and video games lately. This really only took up about 3 minutes, but I was amused by the idea of the movie industry becoming so devoid of original thought that they started to make movie versions of all kinds of old video games:

1) Pong : From the creator of "The Ring" and "The Grudge," this is the story of a young Japanese boy who is trapped between two divorced parents who beat him mercilessly with paddles, then send him to the other's house. Eventually, I dunno. He turns grey or blue or something, and sucks the soul out of some teenaged girl. Also, lots of running water. Additionally, to add to the underground, artsy feel, his name is Koji or some shit, not Pong. Just watch those dirty Americans figure that one out! Bahahaha, just like that office calisthenics crap we pulled on them in the 80s!

2) Steve Irwin's Frogger : 97 minutes of Steve being eaten by crocodiles and run over by cars. Predicted to make $2 billion in Australia over its opening weekend.

3) Karateka, starring Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, David Carradine, and uh... Mr. T. What? Best movie ever. You don't even need a plot. All those guys could just stand around scratching their asses on screen, and it would still be awesome.

4) Spy Hunter : Starring, who else? David Hasselhoff and KITT. Second best movie ever.

5) David Lynch's Oregon Trail : A romantic comedy set in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. At one point, a buffalo wanders past in the background, silhouetted against a red sheet. A creepy midget says, "Doesn't she look just like..." before he dies of cholera and is buried next to a pile of buffalo and rabbit corpses. All the Fremen are carried away in the river when their wagon tips over.

Jazz cafe

2005-07-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

I am dropped off to pick up my car from the shop. I was only just able to finagle a ride, so I get there a couple hours early. I manage to kill an hour or so reading "My Sister's Keeper" while breakfasting at Denny's, which is a thunderstorm of shrieking children, clattering dishes, and harried waitresses with gleaming, brittle smiles that never crack the glaze on their eyes.

After dawdling over my pancakes, I can tell that my welcome is quickly wearing out. The place is crowded, standing room only at the doorway. To the hungry patrons and the tip-starved waitresses, even my stool at the counter is prized real estate. I tip in cash and take my receipt to the register to pay by credit card. During a slightly uncomfortable moment when I zero out the tip line on the credit card slip, I try to psychically beam the words "I tipped at the counter" to the cashier, who I imagine is giving me the stink-eye. I make my way out through the huddled masses who yearn to breathe (eat) free (cheap) (breakfast).

Squinting up at the hazy sun, I realize I probably still have an hour or so before my car is ready. I take a walk down to the shop anyway, where my suspicions are confirmed. The shop owner suggests I check out the swap meet nearby, but I already know where I'm going. I double back, and find myself standing outside a small building -- a shack, really -- with the place's name scrawled along its length. I take a step through shutter-style doors into a dim golden room. Time hasn't stopped in this place, exactly... it has just wandered in for a cup of coffee and a few pages of a good book. I decide it has the right idea.

The owner is a white man, a couple inches shorter than I am. A silvery beard complements salt-dusted hair, and his broad smile starts as a spark in the center of his pupils, expanding until his whole face glows. The combined effect is as disconcerting as it is welcoming, like the sun being born between two crescent moons.

"Hi there! What can I do for you, buddy?" He speaks with a faint accent; it sounds vaguely Eastern European.

I grin weakly in the face of his solar smile. "Hey, could I get a small coffee, please?"

"Sure thing, buddy!" He turns and bustles around, then hands me a steaming cup.

As I fork over a fiver from my wallet, I remember a sign beside the door. "Say, when do you guys have live music in here?" I don't plan on ever attending; it just seems indecent to stand there, mute, in the face of such friendliness.

The owner's smile ratchets up a few million candlepower. As he hands me back four bucks, he exclaims, "Right now!"

"What do you mean?"

"You want music? I play for you! Just give me second." He closes the register and flips up the bar counter.

I take a step and half-turn to let him by, and it's only then that I notice a petite Asian woman in jeans sitting behind me. A ring on her hand matches one on the owner's. We exchange smiles, and she swats the owner playfully as he trots past us.

He maneuvers through his tiny cafe to an even tinier back room, where an electronic keyboard is set up, along with a guitar stand, an anemic drum kit, and an empty mike stand. No curiosity about the last; the whole cafe is hardly big enough to contain the sound of a cat clearing its throat.

As he settles onto the keyboard bench, I drop into a chair at a tiny round table. I keep my book closed, and watch as he starts to play. From the first chord, I can tell that even if I did buy the man's record, it would be one of those that slowly warped in the heat of my car, never seeing the inside of a CD player. His music wanders aimlessly, stutters and hiccups, and is delivered in a poorly-rendered synth reproduction of an accordion.

Even so, as my eyes wander around the tiny room, I start to get it. The walls are covered with pictures and posters; the owner and his wife outside a B.B. King show in New Orleans, album covers featuring long-dead jazz musicians. Home-grown posters of Herbie Hancock flaunt their pixels proudly alongside glossy photos of this same cafe, packed with cheering people. That sounds impressive, until you realize that ten people in this place would force the fire marshal into apoplexy.

My fingers are drumming along with the beat, provided by the "Jazz 3" setting on the owner's electric keyboard. The owner's wife saunters over to him and hip-checks him sideways a few inches so she can slide onto the piano bench beside him. The music shifts up a fifth, then back.

I think for a minute that I'll be treated to a synthesized accordion duet, but she just leans against her husband with a small smile. It strikes me that the owner may never play Carnegie Hall, but you can tell that this tiny woman is really the only audience he'll ever need.

After each song, we clap and cheer heartily. Occasionally, people wander in from off the street for some coffee or breakfast, always with a friendly smile and familiar greeting for the owner and his wife. During one of the many breaks in his performance, the owner shows me a huge plastic Eiffel tower glass from the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. He earnestly asks if I think it would make a decent wine carafe, and I can't think of any reason to say no. Everyone laughs when the wife, with a vixen wink, volunteers for the arduous task of going to Vegas to pick up a few more.

The hour passes quickly, and all too soon my phone is ringing, with the mechanic on the other end. The owner and his wife have disappeared somewhere, I suppose to arrange a trip to Vegas. I drop a few dollars on the table and take a last look around the room before I leave, taking in the cheap wood panelling, the chipped and cracking tables, and the rickety chairs. There's a soft caramel glow from the sun coming through the door, and I imagine if I squinted a little bit, the place would suddenly be thick with smoke and guttering candlelight, and laconic men in sunglasses and dark suits would be threading their souls into the air.

I don't usually listen to jazz. I couldn't recognize the difference between Coltrane and Gillespie, other than the ballooning cheeks. I have never wanted to run a jazz shack in a part of town generally reserved for auto-shops and titty bars.

For a few moments today, though, I nearly did.

24-Hour Fitness is run by assholes

2005-07-21T17:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, get this. From start to finish, my experience with 24-hour fitness has been nothing but a story of scam artists and assholes.

First, the beginning. I'd just moved to an apartment complex where there was no gym, so I needed a gym membership. The 24-hour fitness was about half a mile away from the new apartment, so I figured I'd get a membership there. No problem. I walk up to the counter.

Me: "Hi, could I see a price list of your services and membership options?"
24: "Umm.... we don't have one."
Me: "You don't... have... a price list?"
24: "Uh, no. Let me get a counselor over here, he'll give you a tour of the place and get you set up."
Me: "I can see the whole gym from where I'm standing. The one single machine I need is right there in plain sight. I don't need a tour, I just want to know how much a membership will cost me."
24 [to salesman]: "Hey, can you give this customer a hand please? He's going to need a tour."
Me: "Whatever."

[Tour ensues, with a large amount of irrelevant and useless information, combined with several poorly veiled sales pitches. Afterwards, salesman and I sit down at a desk.]

[Salesman pulls out a FUCKING PRICE SHEET.]

[I stare at the price sheet in disbelief.]

[Salesman blathers on about different memberships, etc.]

[I pick the cheapest one that allows 7-day access.]

Salesman: "Okay, that's going to be $39.95 per month."

Me: "That's fine." [I pull out my credit card.]

Salesman: [About to run my credit card through the charge machine] "And then your sign-up fee is going to be $186, and we're going to add two months onto that, so when you cancel your membership, your last month will already be paid for."

He says this like it's a great deal.

Me: [Stops him from swiping the card] "What?"

Salesman: "It's just a standard sign-up fee, you know, for processing."

Me: "So you're saying, you're going to charge me $186 to type my name into a computerized form, and mail me a piece of plastic?"

Salesman: [Pause.] "Oh! This weekend, you lucked out, it's actually ending today, we're running a special for half price on the sign-up fee."

At this point, all I want is to work out and not worry about how much of a bunch of asslickers these people are.

Me: [Scowling severely] "Fine."

So I become a "valued member" of the 24-hour fitness family; i.e., a sucker from whom they will milk as much money as they can. Seeing as I'm getting screwed on membership fees and what not anyway, I decide to make the most of it, and actually start going to the gym on a regular basis. Now I'm moving out of town. There's a much better gym within a mile of where I'm going to be living, so I decide to cancel my membership. I go into the club and up to the counter. I tell the girl there I want to cancel my membership. She tells me they can't do that at the club, I have to call their customer service department.

I briefly wonder why, and now I know. They don't want people getting murdered with blunt objects at the front desk.

The conversation I just had went like this.

24: "Hi, this is [asshole] speaking, how may I help you?"
Me: "Yeah, I'd like to cancel my membership."
24: "I'm sorry to hear that sir, may I ask why?"
Me: "I'm moving out of town."
24: "Oh, is there a 24-hour fitness near where you'll be?"
Me: "There's a gym within a mile of my new place of residence, but it's not a 24-hour."
24: "Well, have you checked to see if there are any 24-hours nearby?"
Me: "Look, [asshole], I'm just not interested in continuing my membership, okay?"
24: "All right. Well, it looks like there's another billing date coming up on the 25th, so you will get another charge on your card."
Me: "What?"
24: "Well, you see, we require 10 business days' advance notice before cancellation, so you will receive another charge on your card."
Me: "I already paid the last month in advance when I signed up."

I'm pinching the bridge of my nose as I say this, because otherwise the pressure inside my skull would cause my sinuses to explode all over my keyboard.

24: "Right, so your membership will be valid until September the 24th."
Me: "I'm going to be living 500 miles away from the only club for which this membership is valid."
24: "I'm sorry sir, but our membership agreement...."
Me: "You're telling me, I'm going to be paying you people 2 extra months for a membership I won't even be able to use?"
24: [asshole covers his boss's asses for them]
Me: [Eyes tightly shut, bridge of nose well pinched] "Fine. Do it."
24: "All right sir, and..."

Click.

For all of those considering joining a gym, know this:

24-Hour Fitness is run by a bunch of assholes, and they will screw you out of every penny they can.

I don't blame [asshole] for what happened, he's just a lowly phone rep bound by corporate policy. That doesn't make him an innocent, it just makes him a little dingleberry in a big sewer. But I like to think I have some empathy for people in his position, so in all fairness, I'll say this: I'm sorry I hung up on him. He probably doesn't feel great about what he does, and he probably hears from pissed-off people all day long because of the sleazy schmucks running the company he works for. He might not really be an asshole, he just works for them.

I had to hang up on *somebody* though. Sorry, man. Kick your bosses in the nuts for me, because they're worthless parasites on society.

Cheap bastards

2005-07-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

So. I'm leaving town, as I've resigned from my job, and I need a place to collect myself for another try at this whole "life" thing. Seeing as I intend to travel light, this means I need to sell a lot of my stuff, and minimize on my possessions. During the painful process of sloughing off the detritus of my existence, I've discovered a tendency for some people to be grasping, cheap bastards. Examples:

- I post an online listing to sell my computer, a machine whose component parts are easily worth over $600, for $300. I receive an e-mail from someone offering $100.

- I post an online listing to sell my computer speakers, which retail for about $300, for $100. I receive an e-mail from someone else, offering $40.

- I post an online listing to sell a bunch of DVDs at an average cost of $4.17 per disc. I receive an e-mail from someone trying to buy them for an average of $2.50 per disc.

These were all offers from entirely separate members of the human race. What these guys don't know, unfortunately for them, is that I'm a particularly intractable bargainer. The reason for this is, frankly, because I don't give a shit about "making the sale." I would rather my DVDs or books go to the local library for the public good, as opposed to some douchebag hoping to turn a 500% profit on eBay.

Don't want to pay the price I ask? Fine, go get a library card.

Try to jerk me around with stalling tactics? Feel free to receive an e-mail in response your latest inquiry, entitled "Sorry, it's already been sold."

Try to lead me off with a ludicrously low bid? Enjoy the soothing sounds of the dial tone.

It seems everyone wants to be a middleman these days.

After this experience, I have the utmost respect for those people who are able to perform in customer service or retail jobs without stabbing the occasional customer with the nearest sharp object.

Courage

2005-07-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;
Remember the wisdom out of the old days:
Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
And the winds that blow through the starry ways,
Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
Cover over and hide, for he has no part
With the lonely, majestical multitude.
- William Butler Yeats, "To His Heart, Bidding It Have No Fear"

I'm a fan of Yeats. There is something about his tortured existence that fascinates me. As I said once to a friend, I pity the man for the passionate, unrequited love that tormented him, but it generated such great verse from him, that I find it difficult to feel too bad about it. Even so, there is something I can identify with in most of his verse. Possibly incriminating to my own character, I suppose, since in much of his poetry he's channeling his "love-damned agonized soul" persona.

I have had a few occasions to reflect on this particular poem, along with a couple of lines (taken out of context) from "Against Unworthy Praise" (Nor knave nor dolt can break / What's not for their applause). Essentially, this is because I'm a worrier. I've plenty of grey hairs to prove it. People take great pains to point this out to me.

Barber: "Wow, you have a lot of grey hairs."
Me: "Mm-hmm."

Or sometimes, if I'm feeling sarcastic:

Acquaintance: "Whoa, you have grey hairs."
Me: "Holy shit! Where?? Nooo, I'm meltinnnggggggg....."

I tend to blame genetics. I know a lot of Asians with premature grey on their noggins. Maybe it's because we all have such neurotic parents. I'll blame it on the fact that about 8% of Asian men are direct patrilineal descendants of Genghis Khan, so we spend a lot of time suppressing our natural urge to ride ponies around while shooting arrows at people.

The secret to success -- political, social, or professional, that is -- is to have unwavering confidence in your abilities, and to never admit to being wrong. If you can pin the blame on someone else, all the better, but the important thing is to simply steamroll over everyone else with your absolute certainty. I mean, you could be a shiftless monkey of moderate intelligence in a business suit who never had to work for anything he ever got, and you too could be President of the United States!

Given this realization, I think I'm going to embrace my potential Mongolian ancestry. From now on, since I'm going to look like a potential Khan, I may as well act the part.

Coworker: Hey, could you make these website revisions for me?
The Khan: Fool! I shall enslave your people, and flay your offspring alive! The steppes shall be stained red with the blood of you and yours for centuries to come!
Coworker: Riiight... so, I'll need those by Thursday, mmkay? That'd be great.
The Khan: ... Fine.

I may need to grow a moustache for this.

Strange days

2005-07-10T23:14:00.000-07:00

So, this is another gym story. Sorry.

I'm chugging through my workout, as always, when a portly middle-aged man sits down at the weight machine directly opposite me. This is not, in and of itself, strange. First, let me give you a physical picture of this guy.

He's about 5 foot 7 inches, possibly 220 pounds. His complexion, hair color, and craggy features suggest a heritage rich with exotic spices and towering mosques, or the clamoring crowds of a desert market. He has crow's feet around his eyes, and his thinning hair is dusted with grey.

He glances at me, and nods. I flash him a smile between breaths, and close my eyes for a few moments to the beat of Feel Good, Inc.

When I open my eyes again, this guy is cupping his tits and looking at me.

You can imagine, I hope, that this is not an everyday occurrence for me. I mean, I see weird things all the time. I went to the local Mexican hole restaurant for lunch, and there was a hair in my burrito. Gross, but not exactly Twilight Zone, you understand? I saw an old white guy in a bar a couple weeks ago with his arm around an early-20s Asian girl. Possibly not the social norm, but who am I to criticize? C'est amour, non?

Some Mediterranean guy presenting his boobs to me? Not something I usually have pencilled into my PDA. Assuming I used a PDA, which I don't, this might have been my schedule for today:

8:30pm: Go to gym.
8:53pm: Have elasticity of man-titty flesh demonstrated to me by middle-aged Egyptian.
2:35am: Wake up screaming.

I blinked once, then very carefully kept my eyes on the television screen until he went away, possibly to show off his assets to some other unsuspecting victim.

I have no explanation for what happened. In fact, nothing happened. I didn't even write this. You don't even exist.

Drama, venti

2005-07-07T23:28:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning. After a couple days of playing soccer and catching rays at the beach, Ned's gone back to the city of angels, where the streets are paved with stars, and people of unswerving integrity flick lit cigarettes out of moving Humvees.

My eyes open against the morning sun, and a mental tally starts, ticking off the number of my close friends that still live nearby. Just as it has for several weeks, the tally zeroes out. I'm left staring up at the ceiling over my futon, shifting with a vague feeling of unease at the long, vacant stretch of daylight ahead of me... and also a pressing need to pee.

Carpe diem? I wouldn't even know where to start.

I remember my anticipatory whining about this very moment to Ned, not long before his departure on Saturday. He said I should I hit up a coffee shop, which seems as reasonable a suggestion as any. I roll out of bed, wash up, and walk over to the bookstore. Straight off, the day starts looking up. A rack full of Nick Hornby's new book, A Long Way Down, greets me at the doorway. I don't even have to browse the shelves after that; the rest of my day's been spoken for. A little swipe of debt switches a few bytes in my bank account, and I walk out the door 333 pages richer.

Conveniently located next door to the bookstore is a Starbucks, simultaneously a symbol of corporate greed and a welcome haven. I remember, in a fit of snobbery, hearing on NPR that their coffee isn't even any good. People go there for three reasons. First, they know what they're going to get. Second, cream. Third, sugar.

Then I remember that I don't know anything about coffee anyway, so I go in and get a small iced coffee, with some cream and sugar. I eagerly head for the tables outside to crack the spine on my book.

On my way out, I notice a couple seated by the counter. They might be about my age, although I find it ridiculously hard to tell ages these days. They have oversized plastic cups, filled with that blend of ice, coffee, cream, and sugar that triggers all my Pavlovian impulses. The man slouches in his seat, sucking on his straw with an elaborate, practiced nonchalance that makes me wonder how long he's been trying to play cool. The woman opposite him is sitting ramrod straight. She's tapping a foot, toying with her straw in one hand and flipping a pack of cigarettes in the other. She's wearing sunglasses, but they've slipped a little, and I can see her eyes floating around the room.

Just another caffeine junkie working off a hangover, I guess. I push through the door and claim a table in the sun, eagerly folding pages and sipping cold coffee.

About fifteen pages later, the door coughs up Rico Suave and his sidekick, Jitterella. They still have their drinks in hand, and promptly flop down at the table next to mine. She lights up, giving me the reason for their migration, and blows an impressive cloud of smoke, giving me a reason for one of my own. I switch to a table upwind. She burns through a cancer stick with impressive speed, and lights up another. Halfway through this one, she starts talking intensely to Rico.

"I don't think this is going to work out."

My fellow Frappuccinistas and I, who were -- up until two seconds ago -- enjoying a peaceful early afternoon tinged with caffeine and sunlight, freeze for a split second. An ice cube shivers its way down our collective spine because, although we are strangers, in this crystallized moment we've become that most uncomfortable of beasts: the Social Audience. Trapped between a sense of propriety and morbid curiosity, the beast can do nothing but sit still and observe, hating itself a little bit more for every moment it exists.

Normal motion resumes, more or less, but I can practically hear popping sounds as ears prick up all around me. I give thanks to the good folks at Oakley, who put the mirror finish on my sunglasses. Due to their hard work and dedication, I can pretty much eyeball any social street theater with impunity.

Rico's mouth is slightly open, a little bit of whipped cream drooling its way down his chin.

"What?" His hand scrubs away the whipped cream suddenly, like a snake striking at a rare treat.

"I don't think this is gonna work out. I'm sorry, I really am." Jitterella ashes her cigarette onto the sidewalk, but there's no grey showing; she just needs a manual full stop.

Some more conversation ensues, of the stunned, circular type that should be familiar to anyone who's gone through an awkward breakup (or seen one on TV). It comes out that she's been dating two guys at once, and Rico just couldn't compete. It never degenerates into open anger or tears, for which I must salute him; I don't know if I could have gone through what he did that day, without a hearty "shit" or "fuck" thrown in for karmic balance. Eventually, a couple cigarettes and zero pages later, Rico stands up from the table.

"Just tell me one thing... what does he have that I don't?"

Jitterella is obviously tired of talking to him. Twin jets of smoke stream past lips pressed to a thin line, and she squints up at him against the sun.

"Me."

Rico's face tightens, then he turns and walks away. He seems limp and empty, a balloon with a slow leak. He crosses his arms as he wanders away from us, but it just looks like he's trying to hug himself.

She sits there for a minute or so before crushing out her cigarette. Geting up smoothly, she strides away with poise, head high and shoulders back. As we watch her disappear around the corner, I hear a single word.

"Bitch."

I'm just surprised it isn't my voice.

Reading list

2005-07-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

Picked up two books today:

What should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson.
This isn't a hokey self-help book, though arguably I should probably get one of those, too. It's a collection of stories about people who went searching for their "destiny," or their destiny found them, or they somehow lost track of it as they were living their lives. I was just walking past one of those center stacks at the bookstore, and the cover jumped out at me. The first few pages really drew me in, and... here's the kicker... it was marked down to $7 from $24! It's well written, and within the first four or five stories, I've cracked a few smiles and gotten a little choked up. Not with emotion, though... I'm way too macho for that. I was choking on, uh... beer. Boo ya!

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.
Sounds like a really interesting concept, and the first few pages had a lively tone to them. If it's any good, you'll probably hear more about it in a little while.

Oh yes, and I recently finished reading A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. Purnima, I gotta thank you again for getting me to read Hornby's books. There are a select few authors whose books I keep an eye out for in the New Releases section every time I hit up the store, and he's now one of them.

Not Donne Yet

2005-07-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the unreasonable amount of introspection that's about to hit you. The kava's wearing off, I guess. Also be forewarned, there's no real point to the following, just some late-night navel gazing, accompanied by a glass that is neither half full nor half empty.

"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main."
John Donne, Meditation XVII

John Donne was wrong, as are all the people who've (mis)quoted him over the years. There are men... and women... who are islands, entire of themselves. More popularly, they are islands unto themselves. The issue is not whether these men and women can be disconnected to others about them. The problem is that such people are, and forever will be, only who they are, and nothing else.

Who they (and therefore, we) are, essentially, are bags of liquids and minerals. Blank slates. Unfulfilled potential. This is not a bad thing. In fact, it's incredible, considering all the various bags of liquids and minerals that can't walk, talk, or quote other, long-dehydrated bags of liquids and minerals in angsty ways on the internet.

However, it's not necessarily a good thing, either. Here comes the raving.

A human being; that is, an individual physical specimen of homo sapien sapiens, by him or herself, cannot be "human" in anything other than a purely scientific sense. Imagine that you are the wisest, most brilliant, and most spiritual human being in the world, and you generate the most mind-blowing artwork/philosophy/invention ever. Now imagine that nothing, and no-one, will ever know or appreciate what you've created, or that you ever were. Note that this is an atheistic hypothetical... there's no omniscient checking out your guitar riff, theory of life, or Atomic Port-a-Potty. So... what are you?

Nothing. This is not a question of credit. It doesn't matter if people know it was you who created this thing. What matters is that nobody will ever see the proof of your existence, or know your story. The question is not whether you existed or not, because in a physical and temporal sense, yes, you did. The question is, whether you mattered.

In the hypothetical above? Not a whit.

In the average person's everyday life? Absolutely. We work, we play, we live and love. We touch lives as easily as sunlight hits our face when we step outside so the dog can scrub his ass on the neighbor's lawn. We are given purpose and meaning by our friends, our family, or that homeless guy who got a couple bucks from us.

The point: we are defined by the lives we move, and how we move them. If there is no-one for me to affect (or, realistically, if I have no meaningful effect on those that I can), then there is, for all practical intents and purposes, no me.

As a corollary, if I am granted the time, ability, and means with which to move lives positively, and I fail to do so... what kind of existence am I leading?

That's the kind of question I ask myself when I get into these moods. I might as well get an eyebrow piercing and black lipstick.

I know this is not exactly original thought. This probably treads pretty close (for or against) to a lot of established philosophy, but I'm not nearly well-read enough to know how closely. One marginally relevant example off the top of my head:

- Cogito, ergo sum.

From Descartes, this is pretty simple. I think, therefore I am. In a pure sense, this is absolutely true. If there is something or someone to think that thought, then by definition they exist. In a larger sense, however, this is patently false, and also incredibly egotistical. "I think, therefore I am" only applies, in the pure sense, to the inside of your own head. While, in an arguably valid sense, the entire universe exists nowhere but inside your head, I prefer to think in less radical terms. The man sitting next to you on the bus doesn't know what you're thinking, if anything at all. For all he knows, it's just white noise (or, worse, this show) in there. Therefore, "I think, therefore I am" becomes useless except in the context of French philosophers, laying in bed alone with the sheets drawn up to their chins.

For the purposes of wider application, I might suggest: I matter, therefore I am. I don't know enough Latin to do a proper translation, so let's say... uh... Coitus, ergo cum laude. It won't get you anywhere in philosophy, but it might get a snicker out of your PHIL1A prof, provided he or she ate a lot of paste in art class. Me, I feel dumber just from having written that down. Der.....

Translations aside, the point remains. As long as you are relevant, as long are you are important in some way to something or someone, then you are. The moment you have no importance or relation to anything or anyone other than yourself, then you have ceased to exist in any meaningful way. I haven't worked out how you can be important to a thing yet, so don't ask to buy my Import-a-Matic (only 3 easy payments of $39.99). People did buy Pet Rocks, though. Hmmm....

There's a similar school of thought pertaining to deities. Basically, the gods of the universe are created through belief, and are sustained by it. Zapping the occasional rival temple with a lightning bolt, or granting some schlub in the countryside a three-headed dong... key, is just a way of keeping the believers in line. As believers stop believing, the gods get progressively weaker, until finally, they're playing metaphysical banjos in the woods while Jon Voigt is giving Burt Reynolds a bikini wax on a rubber raft in the 5th dimension.

Yeah, I never did manage to see all of that movie.

I'm still back, and not as blue.

2005-06-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

This is partly due to the herbal concentrate coursing through my bloodstream. I'm happy to report that "Kava," a long-used herbal remedy for people susceptible to migraines, stomach cramps, and being boring, actually does work.

While I'm a little skeptical of the list of things it's supposed to do (two of which are: "Cause relaxation and sleep" and "Relieve fatigue"), I do feel quite relaxed. My fatigue, incidentally, is still going on all cylinders. Which is probably a bad metaphor to use; however, the beauty of writing a weblog is that I can afford not to give a shit.

At any rate, for those of you who might worry about my well-being, don't. I'm not huddling alone in my apartment, trying out random psychoactive herbs in some kind of self-destructive downward spiral. Ned's here. He's the bad influence.

Him, and the polka-dot rabbit that's inside my nose. It tells me to burn things.

I'm back

2005-06-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

I passed an old lady on the street today, as I was coming home from the gym.

Her back was badly hunched with age, and she walked jerkily, almost like a marionette. No-one was walking beside her. No husband, son, or daughter offered a supporting arm. Strangers cut their eyes to the side as she passed. I met her gaze for a moment, and offered a small smile, but her eyes slipped away from mine without registering a greeting. Still, I caught a kind of tired, sepia optimism that made my chest ache a little bit just seeing it. Was she hoping to catch a glimpse of a relative in the faces of the strangers on the street? Is she a lonely spinster, still hoping to find a true love to brace her as she walks? Or, perhaps, she was simply looking forward to a hot cup of tea and an electric blanket.

Passions and comforts. When do the latter begin to take precedence over the former, and is this a blessing, or a tragedy? When does one stop aching for a true love, a great adventure, or to do great things? When does one begin to hope simply for the small pleasures of a warm bed on a cold night, and a book to whisper stories of the adventurer that you could have been (or used to be)? Is it a tragedy to not have a great, yawning expanse of time and possibility before you, or is it a pleasure to be able to truly treasure the small joys of life?

Passions rule my life right now, even if I may not have the courage to take hold of them. Comforts, to me, are pitiful substitutes. Food and drink sometimes has little flavor, and letters in books simply disappear into a great boiling space behind my eyes. Yet, in quiet times like these, with a glass of water and the soft click of the keyboard... sometimes it's almost like seeing into the future, and my passions are shut away into a little space, to gather strength for a new assault.

I hope the old lady still treasures great passions. I hope, for her sake, that she finds comfort in them, not despite them.

InsaniTwo.

2005-06-15T00:26:00.000-07:00

Still can't talk about it. Oh well.

Insanity.

2005-06-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I nearly have a new roommate. He's a cool guy, who I actually (almost) know. Several years back, seven of my friends rented a house for a year as they went to school. The house was pretty rickety, and had some interesting quirks; namely, one of the "bedrooms" was a poorly converted garage, two others had ceilings about 6 feet off the ground, and there was a totally badass cat named Tank that came with the house. Well, this guy comes over to look at the apartment, and we're just chatting about our mutual renters' histories, when he starts talking about this crazy house he shared a few years back with six of his friends.

"Clearly illegal... seven rooms... I lived in this drafty garage... two rooms had really low ceilings..."

My jaw drops.

"No. Fucking. Way," I interrupt, exhibiting my usual savoir-faire. "Was it on [XXXXX] Street?"

He looks at me with his mouth open.

We gape at each other for a minute, as crickets chirp outside in the darkening twilight.

"Bullshit!" We chorus, and bust up laughing. Turns out, he and his friends moved into that house the year after my friends lived there. This was hilarious, because he had also lived in two of the same apartment complexes as I had, at about the same times as I had. This last coincidence was almost too much to bear.

He said the house was just as full of character (read: sketchy) as I remember it, and the cat was healthy and as badass as ever when he moved out.

After such a seemingly predestined set of discoveries, you would think that this guy would be a lock for the room. And he more or less is, in my mind. But there are some issues that need to be worked out first, all but one of which are enormously boring, and one of which I can't talk about right now with any specificity at all. I should have an update tomorrow. I can tell you this, though: It's nothing good.

On a lighter (and dumber) note, I had another entertaining moment at the gym tonight. You'll probably think it's stupid, and it really is. On the other hand, when you're on an elliptical machine for 45 minutes, and the televisions are all tuned to 10 o'clock network schlock, you tend to manufacture your own entertainment.

I'm starting to hit my stride, right in that meaty middle section of the cardio routine, when a stunning brunette glides past my field of vision. There are hardly any adjectives to describe the way she moves that would not conjure up visions of great cats stalking prey through the jungle, so I won't even try to attempt it.

She stops at a weight machine, one of those twisted, Inquisition-esque devices that you only ever see attractive women using. They grimace slightly as they spread their legs wide against the tension, and we men within visual distance practically screw the heads off our necks in an effort to appear casually aloof.

Most of us, anyway.

I check the clock on the far wall of the room, and since I have no interest in watching the latest screeching refrain of the "Ohmygod, the Michael Jackson verdict...." discussions that pass for local television news these days, my eyes wander across the room on the way back to their usual fixed, glazed position, dead center on the far wall. On their journey home, they manage to intersect the path of a paunchy, pleasant-looking man, probably mid-40s, with salt-and-pepper hair and enormous sweat stains fanning down his torso. He's strolling past the brunette's weight machine on his way to the locker room, just as she's bending over to drop her magazine on the floor.

I see his eyes flicker.

"Don't do it, man."

This is the message I try to force through my eyes, into the air between us, to hammer at his hindbrain. Even as I will it, I know exactly what's going to happen next. Possibly my talents lie in precognition rather than telepathy, but I guess we'll never know.

The tendons on his neck flex, and his head starts to pivot, as if he was a bull with a rope threaded through his nose.

At this point, all I can do is watch and grin.

For every step the man takes, his head arcs smoothly in the opposite direction. This goes on for a good nine or ten steps, until I almost expect him to start vomiting split pea soup all over the nearest priest. After a few more steps, his torso actually starts to twist, until he's turned sideways, a crab scuttling for safety among the waves.

My grin has stretched to show my teeth, now, and I'm choking back a laugh, wheezing with the effort of simultaneously keeping my speed up.

By the time the side of the man's foot catches the corner of a rubber mat, and a hand meets the ground as he stumbles with eyes still riveted on the brunette, I can't help it. I'm laughing and panting at the same time, wondering at the miracle that is my gender.

The punchline: a woman of about his age is watching him too, from across the room, with a decidedly serious set to her lips, and a gold wedding ring on her finger.

I imagine the conversation the man will have with his wife in the car ride home, and I have to grab at the stationary handlebars for balance as I snicker and pant.

The guy on the machine next to me shifts a wary eye over to me a couple of times, but other than that, faithfully observes the Code of Beefcake Gorilla Workout Etiquette which, after a long study of my fellow primates at the gym, I figure include the following:

1) Any activity that might be construed as homoerotic (i.e., anything) must be compensated for with ultra-masculine grunts, grimaces, and unequivocally heterosexual gestures, like slapping each other on the ass or teabagging your buddy's face while he's benching.

2) Look straight ahead whenever possible, preferably into a mirror as you admire yourself while you pump those guns. Attentional wandering is allowed, to follow T&A of reasonable caliber.
2a) Prolonged eye contact with another male is punishable by immediate death.

3) Women must either be studiously ignored, openly gawked at, or totally rocked out of their senses by old T-shirts with the sleeves raggedly cut off.

4) When greeting another male friend, the accepted custom is a curt nod and "Sup." Other acceptable methods include: Firm handshake, slap on the ass provided there is no lingering contact, or an A-frame hug with backslaps of unsurpassed violence.

5) When listening to music, one's brow must be furrowed, and the lips pursed slightly, as if in deep appreciation. Gentle but firm nodding to the beat is encouraged. Singing or humming along is strictly forbidden, lest your peers discover that your iPod has Cher's "This is a Song for the Lonely" set on repeat.

What? I don't make the rules. These are all applicable in their form as written only to the True Beefcake Gorilla archetype of gym guys, but they all apply in varying degrees to most guys I see there regularly.

I'm no special exception, so you know, but I tend not to talk or look at anyone, male or female. Way I see it, I'm there to work out and go home, so that's what I do.

The end of an era

2005-06-12T23:43:00.000-07:00

Well, John's pretty much all moved out. It's weird. After about 6 years of living in the same space as each other, we developed an interesting friendship. We pretty much exhausted all topics of idle conversation a while ago, so there usually existed between us an easy silence. He'd be doing his own thing, I'd be doing mine, and we just happened to do these things in the same apartment. Neither of us are confrontational people, and neither of us have super freaky habits -- unless you count John's rampant turd-eating, and my habit of dying my skin yellow and making my eyes all slanty -- so there wasn't any tension. In fact, I can remember a few weekends where we hardly exchanged more than a handful of words. I don't know about John, but for me, it wasn't anything *bad*... it was just that there was nothing pressing that needed saying, and that was fine.

Like I said, an interesting friendship. With most people, I feel a need to at least try to make idle chatter, which usually leads to me making stupid comments, and annoying everyone around me. With my closest friends and acquaintances, I find that I can comfortably indulge my natural tendency to just lean back and not say anything, unless I feel there's something interesting to be said or talked about. It was a good run; despite the mail addressed to us as if we were a married couple, and all that stuff, it was a fun time. John, you can be my wingman anyday! (salute)

So now, it's weird as shit. Coming back to the apartment, it feels... cavernous. There have been many weekends where John's been gone doing whatever, and I've been here alone, but this is different. It's like every sound is magnified slightly by the empty space that used to be his room. I suppose chaos physics theory would say that they probably, in fact, are, since his furniture is all gone, so the sounds echo around in the room a little, but that would be a hell of a geeky thing to say.

But, yeah. It's just as quiet as it used to be, no more or less, but it's different. It's like trying on an old pair of leather gloves, that have been soaked in the blood of a murdered loved one. They used to fit perfectly, but now the fit is just... off. Who can tell whether it's because the blood shrank the gloves, or it's the latex gloves you're wearing underneath them, or what? Either way, you're going to end up playing golf in Florida for the rest of your life, dodging the Paparazzi.

At any rate, now I'm (still) searching for a new roommate. This is a fucking pain in my ass, too. I mean, it's awkward, since I'm meeting people I don't know (though by and large, everyone I've met is cool), and it feels like I'm simultaneously giving a job interview and receiving one. Throw in a little dash of a blind date, and you've got it down. Now include the fact that the other person is just as likely to be a guy as a girl, and there's your final "weird" factor. It's really only the first 10 seconds or so that are awkward, then I give the apartment spiel, and we settle down to a little chat. No sweat. But then, the waiting game. People are always looking at a bunch of places, so I need to give them time to decide; then, they know that I have a bunch of people coming by, so there's weirdness on their end, and... well, it usually ends up like this.

1) E-mail dialogue in response to my "roommate wanted" ad.
2) Face-to-face meeting.
3) Nothing.

I don't know whether I should be e-mailing them a follow-up, or they should be calling me, or what. I've gotten to the point where I just want someone I can get along with to just move in already. I'm tired of stretching my face into a smile when I greet strangers at the door. To be honest, though, I think it'd be entertaining to live with a girl for a change. If nothing else, it would encourage me to continue my new practice of wearing pants.

It's surprising, too, how many of my respondents seem to be female. Something like 80% of the respondents to the newest ad have multiple X chromosomes... possibly more, if I've managed to meet a Kleinfelter's in the past week. Take a look at my ad and tell me whether there are any cues that would attract females specifically; I'm baffled.

Je suis un petite fromage

2005-06-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

Another late-night post. I gotta stop going to the gym at 10pm. Anyway, I am officially getting rid of a bunch of my shizzle. DVDs, books, clothes, you name it. My eventual goal is to whittle down my crap until I can cram my entire life into a single car (sans the big furniture and appliances).

This is proving surprisingly difficult. I'm a packhound by nature, and while I don't really have a whole lot of stuff, I have a lot of useless crap. For example: about 15 empty spiral-bound notebooks, originally slated to be filled up, by me, with painstaking notes in lectures. They never realized their potential, since I never really took notes, other than drawing pictures of buttholes for Ned's benefit, and making lists of different words for poop (I think we eventually got up to 100, with a little "fudging" -- hehehehe). There is also the occasional page of "DIE REDHEADS DIE," which is an homage to some people in our classes that would ask stupid questions and force us all to cram 2 weeks' coursework into the last week of the quarter. Bitches!

As an aside, I think that could be considered a telling indictment of the UC system's ability to instill maturity and ambition into its students. Either that, or my own ability to be serious... but when one of your best professors is widely known among your circle of study mates as Quasimodo, it has a certain effect on your ability to consider the education process seriously.

Other useless crap:

2 old cell phones, which both still work, so I guess they're not completely useless.
1 empty can of compressed air, which is supposed to be used for cleaning debris and dust off of stuff. I like turning the can upside down and freezing things.
Half a prescriptions' worth of 2-year-old Vicodin. I keep them around in case I want to polish them down real small, and fill up someone's Tic-Tac case with them. Just for kicks.
3 of those pink erasers. I haven't used a pencil since I took the LSAT, last year. In fact, I'm not even sure I know how to write anymore.
About a billion computer connectors and cables in a giant duffel bag, left over from my days of uncontrollable techno-lust. Thankfully, I've either outgrown the habit, or I finally realized how much all that crap actually costs, and how little use it actually is. Think of it like a nerdy mid-life crisis. Instead of going out and buying a shiny red sports car, you spend a hellish amount of money on high-end computer parts that become obsolete in 3 months. The most glaring difference, probably, is that the geek method will get you absolutely zero props from the ladies. Me? My computer is roughly analogous to my car, which means it looks like ass, makes funny noises, and is in dire need of a good cleaning, but it gets the job done. I also get no props from women, but at least it's cheap.
A cleaning kit for 9mm handguns. I don't own a gun.
A hefty bag full of old receipts, bank statements, etc. Dating back all the way to freshman year of college. I swear, I could probably dig up a Ralph's receipt from 1997.

Okay, let me ask this question of the only person who reads this anymore.

Han, you know those giant fucking bugs that look like huge mosquitoes? I always thought they were "mosquito hawks," and ate mosquitoes, and were otherwise harmless. Ned said that they were horseflies, though, and bite like total bastards. I just slapped the shit out of one that flew too close to me, and I'm wondering if I should be worried about retribution. Get back to me on that one, buddy.

Roommate hunting, redux

2005-06-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

Well, the search continues. My first choice needed to essentially drop out, so I am back to trawling Craigslist day in and day out, bumping my own post incessantly in an attempt to get people to come and check out the place. I've had a few people come by and look at the place, and none of them have made a negative impression on me, but I can't help but compare them unfavorably with the O.G. During my meeting with her, it seemed like we'd been friends for a while, even though we only met for about a half hour. A rare find in any set of circumstances, much less a potential roommate.

It strikes me that, given a roommate with whom I have no real rapport, this leaves me with little to keep me here, other than the good weather (which has been shitty lately), beaches (which I haven't been to in ages), and good memories (which are, when it comes down to it, just memories). Even so, I'm struck with the most curiously powerful apathy -- kind of like Altoids of the will, only in reverse -- whenever I try to get some friggin' work done, and I just end up going to the gym or playing solitaire.

Anyway. I got hooked on the show Deadwood, which airs on HBO and is currently into its second season. I picked up the first season DVD set for John as a going-away gift, and we've been watching it at the rate of a couple episodes a day. One of the best shows around; nearly every character is a total badass in his or her own way, and the show just keeps getting better.

Non sequitir: You ever have one of those days, where at the end of the day, you look back over the stretch of 16, or 18, or however many hours you've been conscious, and realize that your role in that particular patch of sunlight was of no consequence to any other living, breathing soul?

Yeah.

Bastards!

2005-06-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

First, let me quote a few choice passages from a first-draft reality show pitch created August 9, 2003, by me and a couple friends.

Basic Premise:
The show will force a certain number of geeks and girls to consistently interact in a social setting.

...

In addition, we would have the cast members participate in periodic challenges or tasks in which they need to meet certain goals in order to gain a reward (perhaps spending money). These tasks would necessitate a crossover in cultures between the two groups, which is why casting is again a vital part of the show.

...

The show could be initially presented to potential cast members as a run-of-the-mill reality TV show with a romantic twist, which would make for some good first reaction shots when they meet their fellow cast members.

...

Challenges/Tasks:
The cast members will need to complete certain challenges/tasks in order to gain a reward (possibly spending money). These tasks will occur periodically, potentially once per week, and will alternate in type. There will be two types of tasks, explained below:

...

II: Girl task:
A possible example for this would be the girls teaching the “geeks” to dance at a club. All the “geeks” would need to participate, and at the end of the week they would be obliged to dance at a club, perhaps in a competition of some kind.

This document was forwarded to a friend soon after, who pitched the idea to a suit at Fox. Nothing really came of it, and we figured it for a bust. We thought it'd be a laugh to see the show on the air, but hey, life goes on, right?

Now, let me quote a few choice passages from the website marketing blurb for the hot new WB reality show, "Beauty and the Geek."

It all starts with seven women who are academically impaired. Next, add seven men who are brilliant but socially challenged.

...

Each mismatched pair competes in various activities designed to test intellect, fashion savvy and even dance moves. There's a spelling bee for the girls, massage lessons for the guys, and an introduction to actual rocket science when the girls compete to see who can build a working rocket.

...

During these competitions, the geek must try to pass his brains onto the beauty, while the beauty tries to pull the game out of the geek. They're so far apart on the social spectrum that they're practically different species, but if they make it to the end, they could both walk away gifted and gorgeous.

"BUT YENEMY T3H SHOW IZ MADE BY WB NOT FOX U ST00P1D FACE," you might be thinking. Let me refer you to a quote from this web site.

The news [of the show's creation] coincides with Katalyst's recent signing of a two-year overall development and production deal with 20th Century Fox Television. The pact calls for 20th's spin-off Fox 21 to work with the company to produce several low-cost scripted and reality series, including [Beauty and the Geek].

Let the mini-conspiracy theories abound!

I watched the series premiere tonight. Bastards. It was pretty funny, even though it seemed very scripted and geared to the producer's preferences (that girl with the budding romance got stacked with easy questions at the end).

Don't ask.

2005-05-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

A second heartbeat is echoing through my body when I wake up. Reedy and muffled, it is as if a small frightened dog is curled up tight against my chest. I draw my arms closer around myself slightly. It's cold, the kind of cold that slowly seeps the warmth out of you. It's brisk and refreshing, until all of a sudden you realize you're curled up, shivering, and the chill is gnawing its way up your limbs.

I pull a small pillow over to hug for warmth, and try to take stock of my surroundings. I'm lying on the living room floor, between the couch and the coffee table. My head is resting on my beanbag, my feet neatly tucked under the couch. Through the reluctantly lifting mists of sleep, I blearily wonder why I'm fully dressed. I can feel the jab of keys against my left thigh, and the press of my wallet against the right. I roll over slightly, and am rewarded with the crackle of too much hair gel crumpling against carpet, and the smell of too much deodorant. I wiggle my toes experimentally, and they slide against the hardness of leather shoes.

By now I can feel that my errant heartbeat is coming through the floor. Snatches of music and voices raised in laughter drift through the open window. Earnest voices, much too passionate for the subjects of conversation I can hear, and with a slight lilt that suggests Asian speakers, accents easing out under the influence of alcohol.

I'm awake now, but my head still feels wrapped in goose-down. Through one squinting eye, I glance up and see a tumbler with a thin layer of pale golden liquid in the bottom. Either someone has taken a miniscule piss in one of John's glasses, or I've been drinking Scotch.

A vein throbs powerfully in my temple, a painful surge of blood.

Ah, yes. Now I remember.

Yesterday afternoon, a knock sounds on the door as I'm dozing on the couch, accompanied by the television. I give my customary bellow of "Come in!" which practically nobody ever takes me up on. I hop up from the couch muttering savagely, and the door opens when I'm halfway to it. I am left with a disgruntled, sleepy expression, holding my hand out for the doorknob, in front of two college-age Asian girls that have come up from the downstairs apartment. I do my best to compose myself; I can only imagine the ghastly consequences this has on my expression.

They're having a party, they tell me, and have come up to make sure I'll be okay with a little noise late tomorrow night. It's a birthday party, they say, and the one on the left raises a hand. You should come by, they say, there'll be free alcohol. Eyebrows waggle suggestively.

I thank them, wish Lefty a happy birthday, and tell them I'm fine with the noise, and I might take them up on their offer. The door closes on three polite smiles.

The next day, all my ill-laid plans have fallen through. Luke is sick. Shaun is AWOL. John is stuck in traffic somewhere on the northbound 5. What the hell, I think. I'll stop by this party and see what's going on. The last time I saw any of the ladies downstairs, they were playing board games stone cold sober. Me and two friends barged in on them, blind drunk, put up a good fight in Cranium, and then retired upstairs in defeat to our just rewards (burnt pizza and tequila). This could be a good time to make amends.

I pull on some jeans at 7pm, watch some TV, then poke my head downstairs. Nothing. No problem. I surf the web for a half an hour, then listen at the window. No music, no voices. Shrug. Well, I might as well get started early, no point wasting a healthy head start. I crack open the stubby bottle of Dewar's, and pour it out over some ice. It makes a short single, which I sip in front of the computer as I chat with some equally unoccupied friends. I'm feeling distinctly tingly by the time I reach the bottom of the glass, which is my Asian heritage at work. I amble downstairs again, but the place is still dark.

My god, I think. Maybe they're holding a seance? Perhaps the noise later on will be them opening up an unholy portal to the afterlife in their living room?

Clearly, this possibility merits another drink.

I wander back upstairs and pour myself another single, this time out of John's Glenfidditch, which I butterfinger into a bulging double. I go back to sipping in front of the computer screen. By the halfway point, my ancestors have seen to it that I am raving madly on my keyboard, preaching the merits of Double Dragon 2 on the original Nintendo. By the bottom of the glass, I've realized I haven't had dinner yet. My wavering attention now focused like a laser on the prospect of greasy food, I make an immediate beeline for the McDonald's on the corner, where I summarily dispense with the laughable pretentiousness of "eating right." I return triumphantly to the computer screen, a triple bypass clutched in one victorious fist.

It's now 9 o'clock, and my buzz is fast disappearing. The alcohol and grease is weighing heavily on my eyelids, and I head-bob a couple of times in front of the computer. This won't do, I tell myself, so I pull myself to my feet and peek downstairs again. Dark as a tomb. The girls are probably still painting pentagrams on the floor, or whatever you do at seances. I flop down on the couch and flip on the TV, searching for something lively to watch. Ah, what's this? The history of sponges....

Roommate hunting

2005-05-25T23:09:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, I've never really had to hunt around for someone to share living space with. Well, I did once, but I ended up living with Chi and two strangers. Even though it all turned out quite well, I think we can safely discount that effort as a practical victory, but a technical failure.

So this whole experience is kind of new for me. I'm lucky that John is being very cool and flexible about the whole thing, that makes it a lot easier. One invaluable tool I've found is Craigslist. I posted my "roommate wanted" ad on there, and within 24 hours, I have 3 potential new roommates.

Some statistics on my respondents so far:

66% female
33% male
1% other?
33% parents with children aged 5
0% use substitutions like "u" for "you" or "r" for "are" in their e-mails, which is good. Those drive me absolutely batshit crazy (except for Jish, who I already know is a doofus).
100% fart (according to the statistics laid out in one of my older posts).
?% vegetarian. Either way is fine, considering the fact that I'm... oh, let's say 83.279% vegetarian myself. I just hope the one I end up living with isn't one of those proselytizing vegans who insist on sniffing disgustedly whenever you're settling down to a good meat meal.
100% sound like people I could live with, though the one with the 5-year-old would probably do better in a more stable environment.

Either way, it's going to be weird. I'm going to have to start wearing pants, for starters. And I'll be surprised if my new co-tenant has the same appreciation for vile humor that John and I share, so I may just have to rein in those perverted jokes.

Change!

2005-05-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, something changed.

My roommate got a new job in Ventura, so he'll be moving out really soon. Congrats to him; we've been saying for years now that "this year is going to be crazy, there are going to be lots of changes," but what with one thing or another, not much has really changed. It's been about 6 years since we first started living in the same apartment. Whew... six years.

Anyway, now I have to deal with this housing situation. I don't make enough money to live in the kind of apartment I'm used to and still sock away a little money every month; I figure a really cheap single bedroom apartment in my area would pretty much bump me up into the $900s or so, which would put me just over my rent budget, given my current spending habits.

Some of you (Jish) are going to say, "quit your job and move up here!" And I would, but I am actually starting to formulate some interesting possibilities for myself, and I need a little time to examine them. Plus, despite everything I've said, I'm starting to really like San Diego again; the sun's come out, I'm healthier than I've been for a long time, I'm spending time at the park and the beach, and against all expectations, life is pretty good.

So right now I'm looking for an apartment-mate who's willing to drop a little over $600/mo on a big room (walk-in closet!) in a nice apartment smack dab in the middle of the UTC/La Jolla area. The place is month-to-month, so no huge pressures either way. If anyone you know needs something like this, tell them to drop me a line. With luck, I'll have alternate arrangements by the end of the summer. Without it... who knows? Life will proceed as it will.

I wonder if I should be worried about this budding Zen/fatalistic approach to life.

Fox pass

2005-05-24T00:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, let me ask you something. Is it weird to go to the supermarket to do some grocery shopping right after you've gone to the gym? The local supermarket is right on my way home from the gym, so I often stop in and buy a few things I need.

Every time I go in there, every time I get to the head of the checkout line, the checkout person goes, "Hey, you just come from the gym?"

Hm.

Workout towel, check.
Grody sweat stains all over, check.
Water bottle, check.

I always reply with a grin, and a tell-me-about-it chuckle. "Yep," I say.

"Oh," and a slightly furrowed brow. "Where's the gym around here?"

"Up at U.T.C., the 24-hour over there." Invariably. It's like there's a conversational black hole at the head of lane 7 that keeps sending me back to this bizarro-world.

Slight nod of recognition, and "I should get down to the gym more often."

Smile, swipe, beep, scribble, done.

It's just weird, is all. I've even gone through this same routine with the same person two or three times in one week.

It kind of reminds me of my favorite (and only) joke:

A girl walks up to a supermarket checkout lane, and starts placing items on the conveyer belt. The items are as follows:

1 tube of toothpaste
1 toothbrush
1 bar of soap
1 frozen dinner

The guy manning the checkout counter scans the items through, and gives the girl a friendly smile.

"So, you're single, are you?" He nods at the neat pile of goods.

The girl's face twists in scorn as she slaps a credit card on the counter. She says acidly, "How'd you figure that one out, Sherlock?"

The checkout guy replies without missing a beat. "Because you're fucking ugly."

Online ordinations.

2005-05-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

I've been toying with the idea of becoming an ordained minister via an online service. This is mostly because I think it'd be kind of cool to be one, especially since I have no serious religious convictions. Luckily, my pastoral urges don't extend so far into the ironic/hypocritical/blasphemous spectrum as for me to attempt a Christian ordination; I would no sooner try to be a Christian reverend than I would try to become an imam or a rabbi.

So I turned to these "universal churches" that have sprung up all over the place. After a little surfing and research, one thing kind of turned me off to the whole thing. Most of these places charge an ordination fee (some are free, but offer a "premium package" to receive the actual title of Reverend or Minister), and many of them place suspicious emphases on the potential tax, earnings, and business benefits that could be accorded to an ordained minister. I should interject that the fees don't bother me; I can see how the churches need to cover the costs of the time and resources involved in ordaining every cyber-Joe Blow that comes along. But the touting of the financial benefits of ordination, it kind of tarnishes the spirit of the occasion, like seeing "YahWheaties," or "Pepsi presents: The Bible!"

In the end, though, all I wanted to do was use the crossed-fingers-thing at people and shout Latin phrases at them (Ave Maria! Pro bono post-coital tobaccum!) until they either left me alone or bought me a drink, with the knowledge that I had the full power of the (a) C(c)hurch behind me.

They don't let you do exorcisms though, so that's a no-go anyway.

Faeces erat demonstrandum.

True facts!

2005-05-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

This is awesome, and exactly the kind of thing that makes me a big dork.

http://funny2.com/facts.htm

Stumbling through the night

2005-05-18T01:20:00.000-07:00

Senses quiz: I got 9/20

I, Cynic

Mathematical proof that girls are evil

Ah, Paris.

Jungian personality type test!
I am an iNFj, or "Counselor Idealist." Apparently I can read your emotions. Boo ya!

Pulling a me

2005-05-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

While people who know me will certainly not deny that I'm a social crap-shoot -- since spectacularly embarrassing yourself in front of strangers is known as "pulling a Jeff" -- doing this to someone who actually approaches me is a special event, since it happens so rarely. By this I mean, I can usually muster up enough propriety for the occasion. Usually if you pull a me, it's a stranger in passing overhearing something ridiculous that you've just said, and so you're just left with a funny story that will haunt you for the rest of your life. Anyway, break out the champagne!

This particular celebration of my suave sophistication happened in the park this afternoon, when I was lying in the grass reading "How to be Good" by Nick Hornby (on Purnima's suggestion, and very good so far, thanks P). The park was lively, as it always is on the weekends, with one large group of Asian college kids -- they must be freshmen, nobody else is that enthusiastic about anything -- playing volleyball and generally having fun; and another group of people with a keg of beer, who are having quite a lot more fun. My kind of people. I watch them in snapshots as I read, every time I hear a particularly loud shriek or yell, then I smile a little bit and go back to my book.

I'm well into the book and more or less carpeted with dead grass, when a shadow falls over me, and I hear a voice wth an audible smile.

"Are you studying?"

I look up a little, into a pair of shapely legs which the shadier parts of my brain briefly appreciate while my eyes venture further skyward. At this point, I'm hoping it isn't some dude with a really feminine voice, whose legs I have just evaluated and mentally ranked somewhere in the mid to high teens on a 1-10 scale of "Whoa!"

While I'm no homophobe (and yes, I know saying that generally is an indication that you ARE), that is still definitely not the way to start off a friendly conversation with some guy. "Hey, what's up? By the way, nice legs. Whoo!"

Eventually, I'm polite enough to look my attacker in the eyes, and squinting slightly at the sunlit halo framing a lovely face, I manage to frame a response which, to my credit, sounds only a little stunned. The face isn't threatening in and of itself, but looking down at me from above, combined with that glow... well. Let's just say I was glad it wasn't Alanis Morissette.

"Nope, I'm just, uh.... reading," accompanied by a little chuckle and a wide smile which is supposed to say, "I'm not generally this stupid, you've just caught me a little off guard, sorry. I'm not the kind of guy who usually gets accosted by lovely ladies in parks, you see, a) because I don't actually spend much time in parks, b) when I do, I'm usually doing something boring, like reading, and c) I tend to make obnoxious little itemized lists of things."

She must be good at reading sheepish grins, because she chuckles a little at my witty riposte. Possibly she's also drunk, because she then says "Well, do you want to come and have a beer?"

I look at her a little sadly, because on some level, I know that no matter how much my brain says "Hell yes! Let's go hang out," it is wholly disconnected from my mouth at this point. My mouth ignores the frantic S.O.S., and shapes the words: "Hey, thanks... but I'm all right."

In my defense, I suppose my mouth was assuming that this woman, like some kind of goddess of beer, was just hoping to enlist my help in giving good cause to the fruit of her labors by drinking a brew. That's understandable, I suppose. My mouth has no ulterior motives, while my brain, by comparison, is the Marquis de Sade.

Sadly for my morality, my brain normally controls what I do, think, and say. Sadly for my social skills, it has to say these things with the cooperation of my mouth, which has developed the unfortunate habit of severing all diplomatic ties at pivotal moments like these.

Incidentally, this state of affairs usually has the ultimate effect of my spending the weekends doing gripping things like reading Nick Hornby books at the park.

"Well... okay." She shrugs and gives a little pout, and I can't help but note the interesting effect this has on my hindbrain, which is now foaming in some kind of dopaminic jacuzzi. She walks off back to her friends, and I turn back to my book, vaguely wondering what the hell that was all about.

About 15 minutes later, the suspicion sneaks up on me that she might have been doing what any male with a complete set of basic instincts would have figured out long ago. Impossible, I think to myself. There's no way some scruffy dude in an old T-shirt and a pair of ratty shorts, laying down in dogshit-infested grass and reading some random British book would attract the attention of the likes of her. But, the suspicion persists, and I can't help but glance over at the kegger, even when there hasn't been a particularly piercing shriek or peal of laughter. Every now and then, I catch her looking in my direction. Mere coincidence, or my overheated imagination. I go back to my book, and polish off a good 50 pages before the next suspenseful chapter in this social encounter.

Beer Goddess, accompanied by her good friend, Random Girl, casually strolls past me. I think nothing of it, since I'm laying almost in a direct line between their keg and the bathrooms which, as any drinker will know, are a vital addition to any good party involving alcohol. I've flipped a few more pages before they come strolling back. Casually, I look up and flash a little smile at them. Beer Goddess grins, and inquires, "Are you sure you still don't want that beer?"

At this point, I'd like to refer you back to the bureaucratic framework within which my brain and mouth must operate.

Sure, I'd like to have a beer and possibly some interesting conversation. I mean hell, I can read this damn book anytime. It's a gorgeous day, I wouldn't mind the chance to get to know you better, and... wait, did you mention free beer? Sign me up!

"Mmm... naaah... I'm good. But thanks anyway, really."

Mouth 2, Brain 0.

I watch the pair walk off together, and as they leave, Random Girl leans over to Beer Goddess and in a low, teasing voice, says, "Are you suuuuure you still don't want that beer?" A laugh, a little shove, an oh-shut-up.

And a check mark for Saturday.

Mil Millington, and Bleah bleah, I vant to suck your blood

2005-05-12T00:51:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this site, apparently written by Mil Millington, a British author/journalist/etc. Very well written, actually, and full of enough dry humour to wring the last bit of moisture from the dusty veins of our gubernatorial first lady. What? She looks like a mummy. It's quite long, and I've read it all, to the eternal lament of my eyes (bright blue text on a dark blue background is not, possibly, the color palette I would have gone with). There's a novel out by the author which draws on his experiences, and I think I just might see if the local Barnes & Noble has it in stock.

On a separate note, I've given blood a few times now. The last time I went, I decided to visit the donation center instead of trying to hunt down a Bloodmobile while mutants in leather jackets brandishing spears and machine guns chase me around in armored dune buggies. This hasn't happened yet, but a man can dream.

Anyway, so I show up at the donation center, do my paperwork, wait my turn, and eventually get ushered to my Couch of Glory. I swear, the donation couches are so comfortable, the experience of laying down in one more than makes up for getting the very life drained out of you.

As I'm laying there, waiting to get stabbed for the benefit of a stranger (which, in retrospect, seems uncomfortably close in many respects to a brutal mugging), my eyes are roaming over the ceiling. As luck would have it, the workers at the donation center have taped sheets of paper with interesting facts on them to the ceiling directly over the couches. I assume this has the amusing effect of provoking the following monologue several times a day:

"Hey, I never knew that 60% of Americans are eligibAAAAAGGGGHHHHH JESUS CHRIST, IS THAT A FUCKING HARPOON??!"

While I'm reading these facts, easily distracted sucker that I am, the beaming nurse sticks what seems like a ludicrously oversized needle into me. Glancing down at the silver tube sticking out of my arm, it appears, for a tense moment, that the woman has mistakenly punctured me with her ball point pen. I'm on the verge of opening my mouth to point out this regrettable state of affairs when she fiddles with some kind of apparatus, and suddenly the entire right side of my body collapses like a flan with three kids, two mortgages, and no job.

Nothing in the preceding paragraph, I would like to note, happened. The needle was pretty big, though.

However! I did learn an interesting fact from those papers. Every time you donate blood, your body burns 650 Calories replenishing it. This got me thinking about a few things.

1) A new book, "Donate Yourself Thin," which could potentially net me millions, solve any future blood shortages, and remedy the plague of obesity that is sweeping the world.

Problem: I imagine receiving a transfusion from an Atkins diet convert would be the rough equivalent of getting set up with a bacon I.V.
Problem: Vampires could become dangerously obese, thus necessitating the casting of Eddie Murphy in his "Nutty Professor" fat suit in the title role of the next Blade movie. The animated talking bat, voiced by Rob Schneider, will win over the hearts of America... then eat them.
Benefit: Every convert will be too anemic, lethargic, or dead to sue me for misrepresenting the potential risks. Hey, it worked for Phen-Fen, Atkins....

2) 24-Hour Fitness' new deluxe membership benefits package:

1 low-calorie recipe book
1 handy calorie calculator
1 workout towel
1 box of Energy Bars™ made out of Food™ by your friends at No Really, It's Edible, Inc.
1 Drain-U-Dry™ leech-and-baggie kit

3) The practice of "small cutting" recast as a kind of eating disorder. Hemorexia? Possibly not, though that would make a kickass name for a dinosaur, or a band. Hemolimia?

4) I'm stopping here, to go to sleep.

Duty

2005-05-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

Besides being an amusing homophone for a juvenile synonym for poop, and thus leading to hilarity during Ford pickup truck commercials ("Built Ford tough... The Ford F-150 Super Doody"), this is a loaded word. Among mature adults, from which I am proud to distinguish myself, it resonates with a host of concepts, all of them deeply serious and utterly noble.

I prefer to think of it in terms of kaka. Occasionally, however, a situation arises where I must consider the concept of duty in opposition to my natural inclinations towards sloth and apathy. Fortunately, these times are few and far between.

Also fortunately, this is not one of them. Margarita!!

Free association

2005-05-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

Having gone to bed at 3AM the past couple of days, and woken up at the usual hour to go to work, I'm feeling punchy as hell. I thought this would be a good time to write a post about whatever pops into my head in the next.... oh, five or ten minutes.

... hm. Nothing yet... oh wait, there we go. Rabbits. I remember back when I was living in Warren, there were rabbits all over the damn place. I heard some guy shot one, ostensibly for food, and got suspended or kicked off of campus once. I had a gun for a little while, a Walther P99 9mm handgun. This does not, for people who know me, jive with the generally laid back attitude I have towards things. It's not like I carried it around with me and pointed it at people when they cut me off in traffic, though. I sold it a while back, anyway, so all I have now is the safe. Speaking of assholes in traffic, I spent about an hour in rush hour traffic yesterday on the way home, and I work less than 3 miles away from where I live. Why is it that nine out of ten cars on San Diego freeways are gigantic SUVs? I always see some paragon of human reasoning on local news pissing and moaning about the high price of gasoline, as he leans against his Expedition which gets about half an inch to the metric ton of fuel. Some guy in Mississippi, or one of those states that I can never get straight, converted his pickup truck to run on wood. Which I guess would be pretty cool, if he lived in the 1800s. On that note, I saw some thing on the Daily Show where Bush pledged some ridiculous amount of money towards coal research. COAL?? We know what coal does. It's black, it's carbon, and it burns when you light it on fire. How much more can we possibly need to research about fucking coal? It comes in briquettes from Albertson's. Unless your research is going towards making Superman so he can crush coal into diamonds with which to dust my bathroom floor, I think we can probably afford to forgo unraveling the mystique of this magical fuel. Mystique, isn't that a Cirque de Soleil show? That Snickers commercial with the girl doing that freaky shit with her legs scares the bejeezus out of me whenever I see it. I always wince, fearing her spine will just go "Oh, for fuck's sake" and throw in the towel. The one thing I absolutely, positively hate about going to the gym is if I forget my workout towel. Then, I need to fork out money for one of their towels. They cost four dollars, another "fuck you" with a smile provided by the greedy bastards that run the gyms, and besides which, smell like the inside of a guinea pig's well-used cage.

Time!

Epiphanies

2005-05-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

1) Target is the best place to buy boxers. I got a pair of Calvin Kleins from the mall, and it was like wrapping my gonads in goddamn tin foil. That, and it cost me $11. Cal, I know you need to fund your underwear model starvation camps somehow, but Mr. Hanes is my new pimp now. Look who they got their Hanes on now! That's right, it's a totally unmarketable Asian guy.

2) Ladies go nuts over the weirdest things. My friend Purnima is all googly-eyed over a bag that, for all intents and purposes, looks like a muppet's vagina. I'm not even joking. Now, by no means have my off-the-wall consumer purchases all made sense (I own a DVD of Japanese animation that is basically one solid hour of boob jokes), but at least mine have been relatively cheap (1 hour boob puns: $19.99. Shoving a DVD into the back of your video shelf in shame: Priceless).

In truth, though, I understand the feeling of wanting something that might not make much sense to other people. Buy it, baby! It's only money, after all. But you should get Jish to hang it from his rear view mirror, alongside this lovely item... a purse made out of a bull's scrotum. You need it, for, uh.. feng shui. Ancient Chinese wisdom has been rendered; you have to do it now, or else your offspring will be haunted by visions of egg rolls for a thousand generations. Boo ya!

3) I am not normal. It's about 2 hours past my intended bedtime, and I'm writing a weblog post. This can partly be explained by the fact that the fucking washing machine at the laundromat didn't wash my clothes properly, so I had to feed it another $1.25 so I could wait another hour for it to finish. Mostly, though, I was up making 10 quarts of soup. Now why, you might ask, am I, a gainfully employed individual, awake at 1 o'clock in the morning making soup? All right... I'm not going to lie to you.

On the nature of...

2005-04-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling expansive. I figured I would wax on at length about that most cliched and exhaustively discussed topic: Farts.

First, I'd like to direct you to this page, which is possibly the single most exhaustive fart resource I have ever seen. Other than Ned, that is.

Anyway, I'd like to direct your particular attention to the following facts:

1) Human beings release about 1/2 liter of rectal gas per day, distributed over about fourteen farts.

2) Women fart just as much as men, though perhaps not as often. As an aside, I was given an object lesson in this very fact a few weeks ago, when I was treated to a double fudge air brownie by a very nice lady with a perm and a floral print dress while we were in an airport shuttle. Not being afforded the luxury of air conditioning, opening windows, or the personality that would allow me to scream in horror and claw at the door handle until I passed out, I persevered in silence with my MP3 player on full blast. I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's an even chance the song was one of the following: Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary," Jose Carreras and the Vienna Boys' Choir singing Panis Angelicus (purposefully mangled translation: Heavenly Biscuit), or Billy Pilgrim's "Our Lady of the Mist," any of which I think would have been appropriate for the occasion.

3) EVERYONE farts, assuming they are not long-dead.

From these, we can draw a few conclusions.

1) Suzanne Somers, who supposedly once said she has never farted, is probably full of it, if the rumour is true. It being a giant fart, ready to explode and destroy us all.

2) That gorgeous/sexy/cute/hot/etc. person you see strutting around on TV, at the gym, in your dreams... they're all dropping about 14 gas nuggets every single day, and could fill your water bottle with poopourri every two days.

3) If your significant other doesn't fart during the day, he or she is saving it up to vent while they sleep. Corollary: That hot, seductive breath on your thigh in the middle of the night might not be a prelude to the fulfillment of your wildest sexual fantasy, which may or may not involve an albino Belgian dwarf and a hair-dryer. What? I'm not here to judge.

So, what have we learned? Well, probably nothing. But at least we had fun. Okay, at least I had fun.

Matrix ping-pong, kabuki style

2005-04-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

http://crass.on.ru/flash/pingpong.html

2005-04-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

I am practically gnawing on my lower lip with worried thought as I slouch toward my car, but I exchange the customary morning smile, wave, and "have a nice day" with my landlady.

She returns in kind, pausing a second to regard me with her head on one side. "You have such inner peace."

Double take. "Excuse me?"

"I said, you have such inner peace."

I'm a little groggy still, and it takes a few seconds to sink in. The eventual response is typical of my sparkling repartee.

"Wait... no I don't."

"Really? Whenever I see you, you seem to emanate peace."

All this time, I had thought I was a brooding bundle of raw nerve endings.

"Well... thank you." I smile hesitantly, but genuinely. "Have a good day today." I try to inject a little extra warmth into the phrase we've traded every day for the past year.

"You too." She grins and turns back to her work.

Ironically, for the rest of my commute, I am so busy turning this exchange over and over again in my mind, that I actually am at peace. The whole thing had the slow-motion, sunlit feel of getting hit in the back of the head with a bag full of morphine, and I can't kick the feeling that it means something.

Probably it means that I should intensify my diet and exercise routine; I suspect she has me confused with Buddha.

Road Trip

2005-04-24T22:38:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that I really like long-haul drives. I don't know why. Maybe because I can use it as an excuse to eat CheetOs while watching bugs suicide on my windshield at 105mph. Which, as far as I can tell, is just about the pinnacle of the human experience. Here are some other highlights of the trip I made this weekend.

- Watched: The frighteningly transparent entrails of some unidentifiable bug slowly shiver up my windshield in a 95mph gale until it disappeared onto the top of my car. Should have been watching the road, but it was almost exactly like watching those sticky wall-walker toys that you used to get from the 25-cent toy vending machines, only in reverse.

- Saw THE COOLEST THING EVER, which was: A professor at a university I visited has the name "Mack A. Player," conveniently printed in copperplate on his door tag. Likely a Ph.D. in Pimpology.

- Saw: Jish and Purnima's new portable bear. Cute! Also saw it take a dump. Cuteness factor halved. Then it whined and chewed on my fingers a little. Cuteness factor restored!

- Heard: a truck driver have the most heinous BM ever, in a truck stop stall next to mine. Imagine a dozen water balloons, making out really enthusiastically with a jar of month-old mayonnaise. Then the balloons pop, and they're full of dead slugs, which you then eat. That face you made, right there! That was my reaction.

- Smelled: Take a guess.

- Ate: 1 bag Cheet-Os, 1 bag Fritos, 1 ziploc of "Hint of Lime" tortillas (Thanks P), french fries from Jack in the Box, and pizza. Now I am back on rabbit food.

- Drank: 1 canned coffee, 2 arizona iced tea, 3 bottled waters, and a beer. At least one of those was not consumed in the car.

- Listened to: Books on tape! I love Audible.

T-shirts

2005-04-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

1) For Jish

2) For Ned

Making t-shirts is fun!

I'm an idiot

2005-04-18T22:51:00.000-07:00

I thought I was deleting my old drafts (I go through a long fiddly draft/revision process before I actually publish). Instead, I managed to delete all of my posts.

I are smrt.

So I begin the sharing anew:

At the gym, my favorite way to pass the time as I do my cardio workout is listening to music as I watch other people go through their workouts. Usually I'm just struck by how annoyed or angry people look as they're working through their routine, but every now and then something special happens that makes going to the gym all the more worthwhile.

I choose my workout music based on whether it has a fast, strong beat, rather than whether or not I like the songs. Today, I just happen to be listening to some poppy dance tune from Kylie Minogue. As I enter the 30th minute or so of my workout, my brain is steaming in the orange glow of a runner's high, and the nagging pain in my limbs wanders off for a smoke in the back of my head. My eyes slide from the television screen in front of my machine across the rest of the room, and the strangest thing starts to happen.

If you've ever seen that Volkswagen commercial -- the one where the VW is driving down the street, with thumping background music playing, and everything that happens on the sidewalk starts to sync up with the music -- imagine the first time you saw that, and the moment you realized your eyes matched up with your ears.

All the usual suspects are there. A tall, muscular yuppie gasps and strains in the elliptical machine next to mine, pretending that he isn't watching the RPM counter on the machine of the girl on his other side. A pair of Asian guys flex in front of the mirrors for the benefit of a slender girl doing curls at the next bench. Another pair of guys studiously avoid the sight of each others' eyes and crotches as one spots another on the bench press. A bodybuilder swings his arms like an arthritic windmill, trying to maintain flexible shoulders despite the bulging muscles that keep his arms from hanging any closer than a full foot from the side of his chest.

No matter where I look, the motions sync up perfectly with the thudding beat of the music in my headphones. After I get over the initial shock, a smile stretches across my face, and I start to laugh softly between gulps of air. Some might say "giggle," but I'd like to stress that I've never giggled in my life. The yuppie shoots me a few sidelong glances between gasps, and I grin, imagining that he's worried I'm about to turn around and destroy him with a crazed kung fu kick.

I play around with the moment, and suddenly the grey-haired retiree doing lunges in front of the mirror is a backup dancer in an MTV video, and the college girl nodding her head to a beat from her iPod is wearing black wraparound shades and an oversized silver jump suit. All too soon, the song is over, the all-unifying Beat has gone, and the people in the room are suddenly just moving through their own mundane spaces. Moments ago, they were all dancers on a stage; now they're just lifting lumps of iron, teasing tendons to their full length, or working out their love muscles.

What? I meant their hearts. Sheesh, grow up already.