You're All Gonna Die!

Today is the day I do get poked and prodded by the doctor. I only go to the doctor every year because my wife makes me. Were it up to me, the only doctor I would see is the forensic pathologist. People accuse me of not wanting to go to the doctor because I am afraid of hearing I am going to die... That is patently false. I am afraid of learning I have to live for a long time with an illness and then I will die. Death itself is not terrifying to me, but I admit I occasionally get preoccupied with how I am going to die.

Will it be the dreaded 'C' word? I mean, not only is cancer always bad, but you can also get it in some pretty embarrassing areas. Remember the lovely Farrah Fawcett? She died of Anal cancer. I can't look at that classic Farrah poster that everyone 30 and over knows without thinking of Anal cancer. I am certain that when that photo became an icon anal cancer were the last two words that anyone was thinking of. Is there a more dreadful pairing of words in the English language? We redid our house in Jersey and I rarely wore a mask. I decided that lead paint dust wasn't too much of a danger to a fully grown person like me and masks make me feel claustrophobic. I didn't know until much later that the plaster on the walls probably used asbestos fibers in it. Shit.

Cancer is bad, but say you avoid it or survive it and live into ripe old age. Your reward is often dementia. Hooray! You can't take care of yourself, you don't understand what's going on around you, you crap your pants and are a general burden to everyone around you. Is this what they mean by feeling like a kid again? Speaking of kids, I won't have any to take care of me. I admit, that's a crappy reason to have kids, but it's comforting to know that people who ostensibly love you, or at least feel indebted to you are in charge of your care. Being childless, I will be a ward of the state whereupon Nurse Ratched will be entrusted to my care. I think I would explore a new radical brain therapy developed by Drs. Smith and Wesson if I were to be diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease. I think a .45 would do just splendidly, thank you. The real scary thing about dementia is that they don't really know what causes it, as such. I do crossword puzzles and play games like Scrabble and read and such just to keep my mind exercised to minimize my chances, because "they" say that helps. Of course "they" may be the publishers of puzzle books and the makers of games, in which case I would start to doubt the veracity of their claims.

Basically, we don't really know how to avoid dementia, but the myriad things they say could cause it grows exponentially day on day. A few years ago they said anyone who had even smelled a cup of coffee was doomed to brain failure and we should stick to decaf. Then not 18 months later, a study came out that said people who drank two cups of coffee a day lived longer, stayed healthier and had more friends. The latter no doubt because they weren't cranky from having skipped their cup of coffee. Drink red wine... it's good for your brain. If you don't have enough, it does nothing, but don't drink too much! That will melt your brain and liquefy your organs. By they way, we have no idea what is the right amount and what is too much, so use your best judgment.

When I studied neuropsychology, (which oddly the 'blog spot' dictionary doesn't recognize as a valid word, which is ok, because I have come to find out that most people don't consider it a valid degree, either), in college, we learned that people who ate food from aluminum cans had a markedly increased risk for developing Alzheimer's. Great. My parents graduated from the Boyardee Academy of Cheffery (which is also apparently not a word, but entirely apropos for the situation so I am keeping it in). I could build a jumbo jet from the recycled aluminum cans that have provided my food birth to present.

At 35, I may as well get under my binky, (another non-word that means blanket), and never leave the house. Then I can watch T.v. and see the commercials warning me that indoor air pollution will kill you dead just as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. What? Indoor air pollution? Farts and stuff? No! Smells emanating from your walls and carpets and the very chemicals you clean with are conspiring to kill you! See the soot on the wall behind that candle? That's what you're breathing. They don't even know why it smells like pumpkin, but it sure isn't pumpkin and it can't be healthy! But those commercials are produced by people hawking air cleaners... surely they can't be believed. Oh, I see you have multiple pets, did you know that takes 25 years off your life?

I heard having pets makes you happier and therefore less stressed and you'll live longer! It all depends on who (whom?) you listen to. Doomsdayers, naysayers, pill purveyors and undertakers all have their own opinions and there is only one constant among them... You gonna die. Have a nice day.

The Books on My Shelf, The Books on Myself?

Here in my office, I have a couple bookshelves. They are crammed rather haphazardly with books representing a lot of divergent interests my wife and I have. They are but a fraction of the books I own which is best expressed not in numbers, but in tonnes. I have so many, they couldn't all be displayed in my house because even if I had a whole Saturday devoted to building Ikea shelves, I wouldn't have enough wall space for them. I have heard it said that you can tell a lot from a person just by looking at their music and book collections. I'm not so sure.

I spy my management section with the requisite Patrick Lencioni, (Five Dysfuntions of a Team/Three Signs of a Miserable Job), and Spencer Johnson,(One Minute Manager, Who Moved My Cheese, The Present) titles. Robert Fulghum's Maybe, Maybe Not is in there, too. While the last one is not strictly a title on management as such, it is a book on how to act in life to be a successful person... a lot of golden rule type stuff and very humorous. It's there right along side How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie's master work which should be read by all people, everywhere. If you were here, in my office, you would question my use of the term "management section" as there is no rhyme or reason with my books other than the ones I read most recently are at the top, the ones I haven't looked at have sunken to the bottom. Each and every one of those books says I should be well organized. I think it is clear I am not. If I followed any of the ideals in any of these books, I would probably actually be good at what I do. Hell, I'm writing this blentry while on a conference call, stopping only when I hear my name to take my phone off mute and give my input. I don't even know if I am giving feedback on the topic they are discussing now, or the topic they finished with five minutes ago.

Most of these books are pretty formulaic and told in parable, featuring a well-meaning manager who is struggling with a subordinate or group of subordinates. There is one savior who has all the answers and will deliver the manager the goods so he or she can deal with the unruly subordinates who are all too eager to suckle at the teat of knowledge and drink the kool-aid. It's like an episode of Brady Bunch. no matter what, everything always ends up in a happy little package in the end.

Also there are a number of general business titles from Microtrends to The Next Big Thing, among them, The Tipping Point which if I recall is not about how to most efficiently upend a cow. Bummer.

There is a fair bit of humor on the shelves as well. Bill Bryson, Tim Allen, Paul Riser and Stephen Colbert are represented next to titles like The Friar's Club Book of Roasts, How to Live With a Neurotic Cat, and a book called Husbandry which according to the blurb offered by the publisher is a hilarious look at being a good husband. I never read it. It is a publisher's advance copy from my days at Barnes and Noble. I don't even know if that one made it to print. Along with these are myriad cartoon collections as well, The Far Side, Forxtrot, The Simpsons, Life in Hell, Calvin and Hobbes. Several of these are actually my wife's, but this is my blog, so for our purposes, they're mine.

So what do we know so far about the person who owns these books? Well, he is someone who is very interested in people and how to manage interactions with them. He also values humor in a variety of different forms and likes to apply the latter while executing the former.

So far, so good, but now is where it gets weird.

There are a dozen, maybe more, books about various serial killers, mass murderers, unsolved cases involving violence and other unsavory things. This is but a small smattering of the number of books on these topics I have actually read. Mixed in with these are all the books regarding war and conflict. there must be 50 of these. Mister happy-go-lucky manager man is starting to look a little creepy. My fiction titles don't make me look any better. A few choices in the fiction section include, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Mr. Murder, Shutter Island, the 'Dexter' series, Rosemary's Baby and a metric ton of Stephen King Titles.

Who is this guy?

Well I think it's clear, he's an affable management type who loves a laugh while performing exorcisms and ordering the murders of his enemies while plotting to kill other serial killers all while ensuring the health of a prenatal spawn of Satan. You got a problem with that? For your sake I hope not, because if we can't work it out in a couple brief lighthearted interactions some bad shit is gonna go down.

So the old adage states that you can't judge a book by its cover, but can you judge the person by their books? My wife has a hundred books or more about architecture and art, which is very reflective of her education and general interests. She also has a bunch of lady fiction referencing deep embraces, dark secrets and throbbing body parts. But she also has a ton of books about the Bible and religion. What are we to understand of my wife? She's a deeply religious sex maniac who lives in a fabulous house filled with priceless art. I can't even begin to tell you what's wrong with that description.

As for music, don't get me started because I literally have a selection ranging from Abba to Zevon stopping at every genre in between. Yes, this includes Gregorian Chants, Chilean throat singing, the Kodo drummers, and just to make sure you understand how highly I think of myself, a CD of my college choir featuring some of the craziest wacko shit ever performed live or otherwise. I defy you to glean any usable information about me from my music collection other than I am eclectic which is so obvious even a T.V. psychic could see it.

Each year, one of my endeavors is to read a book a week, plus or minus with the overall goal being 40-50 books in the year. I typically end up with 20 or in a good year, 25. This topic came up because I got the Facebook thing about the BBC's top 100 books everyone should read. I did not do well. In my defense, there was a lot of chicktion (another new word!) that I will never read outside an academic setting. Come to think of it, I can't imagine the setting that would move me to read Jane Eyre or Sense and Sensibility. My wife is reading Vanity Fair and 2,800 pages into it can only tell me it's about some society type people. What kind of list doesn't include one book by Ayn Rand? In the end it is clear that you can't judge a book by it's cover, or the person by the books he or she keeps, but it sure is fun to try.

I Am Serious, and Don't Call Me Shirley.

Leslie Nielsen died this weekend. Everyone should know who he is, or was and if they aren't familiar with his work, I suppose they aren't fans of my blog. Leslie Nielsen was completely unique in his craft. So much more than the straight man, he was the setup and punchline all at once while being seemingly aloof to the joke all at the same time. He was, it was said, funny without being funny.

Look at the picture of Leslie Nielsen from back in the day when he was still vying for straight rolls and you can see a little glimmer of irony in his eye, even while he was trying to be sultry. He was never handsome, but he was striking, which he would use to his advantage throughout his career. Few faces could say so much while moving so little.

His voice, deep and mellifluous could have been used to calm crowds or to instill menace. This vocal presence was rendered completely ironic given the level of sheer idiocy most of his characters conveyed.

This was a simple device that he employed time and time again for 30 years in various comedic roles and it worked more often than not. The times it did not work, there was typically a failure of writing. You could not write funny lines for Leslie Nielsen, they would not come out funny. It is hard enough to write comedy, even harder to intentionally write unfunny lines trying to conceive of how they will sound coming out of Leslie Nielsen.

When it worked it worked very well and regardless of individual successes or failures, he was a singularity. There will never be one like him and woe be tied to anyone who tries. Leslie Nielsen was like a wire hanger, an implement built and intended to perform a single function, which of course is to hang garments, but over the years came to be appreciated for being able to do so many things for which it was never intended, like a car antenna... it works surprisingly well, but sure does look funny doing it.

Goodbye, Shirley. Thanks for the good times.

Black Friday Miscellany

Black Friday With Ella

It seems ironically appropriate to be listening to Ella Fitzgerald crooning out Summertime from Porgy and Bess on this very cold and snowy morning after Thanksgiving. Ella is amazing. Her ability to be loose and jazzy and yet so completely precise makes her interpretations of the classics the ones we have come to accept as gospel. I also subscribe to the general tenet that Ella must be listened to on vinyl as the nuance and timbre afforded by that medium is the only way to truly experience the vocal and instrumental depth and color that approaches the excitement of her live performance.

Thursdays with Peggy

My sister and I talked for an hour last night. It was the second time this week we have spoken which is some sort of recent record. We used to talk a lot, but not as much in the last few years for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is our mutually busy but conflicting work schedules. It is great during the holidays to spend a little time catching up. Sometimes, regrettably that means you spend time sort of bitching about the tougher parts of life rather than having a good time. I have always been a sounding board for my sister, a role I play happily and freely, but it is really nice when we just relax and talk like we did last night.

Our discussion of our Thanksgiving feasts led us down the road of our favorite culinary stories from our childhood, from our mutual hatred for Miracle Whip, the revelation that we both almost always threw away the lunches that mom made us and bought lunch at school, how neither one us us can look at a pack of bologna and not gag and one particularly fetid casserole that we were made to eat (look for this story in a future blog post which I wrote in 1998 if I can find it on one of my external hard drives). Growing up in our house was sort of like a food roulette. You never knew what you were gonna get. My mother was an R.N. and worked various shifts. She was an otherwise involved and busy person as well. My dad occasionally cooked but it was usually things my mom refused to eat. So when mom worked late, it was a lot of Hormel corned beef hash and Spam brand... whatever the hell Spam is.

One night, Dad was cooking and asked me, his 7 year old son, how much of the box of noodles mom used to make spaghetti. "All of it!" "All of it?" "Yes, all of it." My father of that era was a lot of things, but patient wasn't one of them. Of course it became apparent that there was enough spaghetti to feed an army and my dad was incensed. Another thing dad wasn't, was wasteful. He made me eat my share, and all that was left after he and my sister had their fill. Apparently he was unaware of the drawer full of Tupperware in the ubiquitous colors of the '70s rainbow from burnt orange to avocado green.

When my mom came home, she said I didn't look too good. I didn't feel to good either. In the process of saying "My stomach hurts", I hurled 3 pounds of largely intact spaghetti noodles all over the couch, the ottoman and the carpet. I remember my mom's reaction, a simple "Oh, my!" She was after all a nurse who dealt with patients just out of surgery. I imagine she saw a lot of puke in her life. She jumped into action and took care of me and the mess. to her credit, I remember she took care of me first which must have taken a lot because there was one helluva mess.

My sister spilled the beans so to speak, about the felonious amounts of food I was made to eat. I wish I could have heard the dressing down she gave my dad, but they never exchanged words in front of us. They were a unified front at all times without exception. I can only imagine behind closed doors what was said. Maybe after all these years, the statute of limitations has expired and mom will fill me in.

My sister and I laughed about our shared memories and told stories that have been told a million times, each time more ostentatious and bombastic that the last. We did not talk about troubles, stresses, work or the state of the world. We just had a blast. It may not be customary to give and receive gifts on Thanksgiving, but I feel like that was a great gift I received.

I have a million of these stories that make me laugh so hard it hurts. My sister says I can't blog about them because it will hurt my parents' feelings. I disagree. If I can get a laugh and hurt someone's feelings, I have done good work. I kid. I don't intend to hurt anyone's feelings, it is just undeniable the impact these stories have had on my. Why not share?

Of Things Left Unsaid and Books Left Unwritten

As many of you who read this may know I endeavored to start a blovelette some time back. I haven't forgotten it, it is maturating and marinating in my head. I admit it is more daunting than I initially thought. Also, I am a great starter, but a mediocre finisher. I often think of my characters as though they are real while I plot my next points. I want them feel genuine to the reader. Suffice it to say, I am working on it, even if I am not working on it. The long form is entirely experimental to me as the last long form thing I wrote was a thesis paper of 36 pages... not exactly War and Peace. Not to mention, I am a mostly non-fiction reader, which isn't to say I don't read fiction, I just don't read it as much as non-fiction. My frame of reference is therefore a little skewed. Besides, it's a hobby so why force it, right? And for now I really enjoy blogging. Coming up with things to write multiple times per week, even if they are 9 paragraph ditties is a challenge unto itself, especially when I don't type and there is always a cat on my lap causing my computer to be at an odd angle to me making it even harder than it should be.

The Clever Mr. Brooks

It has been too long since I have seen Blazing Saddles. I am hoping to watch it again today. It is a guilty pleasure. Guilty because so much of its humor is derived from racist themes. It is clear, though that it doesn't take itself in any way seriously and in its painfully funny way makes the racist people the joke, not the racism. In the end of course, it is the coming together to the people of Rock Ridge and the largely black railroad workers that seals the fate of the dastardly Heddy ("that's Hedley!") Lamar.

In my humble opinion, Mel Brooks reached his comic apogee in 1977, the year Saddles and another of my favorites, Young Frankenstein came out. To be that brilliant, even if for a brief moment in time is a great gift. I personally don't think any of his work since has been nearly as good, (yes, even The Producers which I think is so-so). Whatever, these two movies are gifts to the world, all at once diametrically different and practically perfect.

Hunkering Down

If you get the impression that I am in for the day, you got it right. It is cold outside and being a misanthrope, I avoid leaving the house on the big shopping days as much as possible. After Em is done working, we will bundle up and take our walk. It am not looking forward to that as it really is nasty cold and windy. But, we need to do it. Then I think a fire in the fireplace (a good spot, me thinks) and some red wine to finish the evening. This is my kind of holiday. In fact, this is my kind of life, fleeting though it may be.

Benne Fortuna!

It is a Sham. Wow! (Or- Sir, You're Gonna Have to Bend Over if You Expect This to Fit.)

I admit I am piling on here, but it is the season for a lot of things and travel is certainly one of them. Even though Americans don't have the money (by their own admission), the AAA says more people will travel this season than any other holiday season on record. It seems like every year they say that. I suppose that statistic could be supported by just looking at the increase in general population... more people means more people traveling.

As such, there are a number of constants that can be counted on during the holidays especially in a post 9/11 world and they all have to do with delays, inconvenience and making you, the traveler feel weary, weak and small all in the name of security. Sadly, each of these obstacles to fun and adventure that are placed before us have very little net effect on our safety. Here is why. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing short of physical restraint that will stop a person determined to re-create 9/11 or something of the like. Again, there is no scan invasive enough, no penetrating dildo like aperture, no pat down, no nothing that can read the mind of a crazy person who is determined to try to break into the cockpit and take the plane down. It is more likely that enough people get fed up with the intrusiveness and inequality of the security process that people will simply stop flying and that's not bloody likely. Yet, despite well reasoned arguments showing evidence to the contrary, the company line is to solemnly put faith behind the methods and even continue to add more. Get used to it, pass the peanuts.

"But Bill," you protest, "What about people who are trying to bomb the plane, like the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber?" Yes, dear reader, what about them... they made it through security now didn't they? And still they failed to make a boom, except in the media. "Yes, but now we have to take off our shoes and go through the new backscatter X-ray machines that will show us if these things are hidden on a body and they'll verify your religion! We finally solved the problem!" Bullshit. You have created one more obstacle which is no more impervious than any of the existing obstacles and therefore will not guarantee anything but longer lines, fewer civil liberties, further breakdown of an already broken and overtaxed system and a big fat government contract for the company that makes these machines. Last I checked, we as a nation were not exactly flush with cash. Probably because we spend on unproven and inadequate crap like these machines that do nothing but assault modesty and right to privacy in a public place.

the above fails to mention that air cargo, not air passengers, do now, and have always posed a larger threat to airline security as evidenced by the most recent incidents centering around small explosive devices that made it on to cargo jets and into the holds of passenger bearing commercial jets that posed a very real potential threat and were found only by exploiting, (are you ready for this?), intelligence. Said another way, these items were not found via sophisticated technology or even tried and true bomb sniffing dogs. Instead good old fashioned police detective work tracked and ultimately identified the packages of nefarious content leading to their removal and containment. It is still unclear whether these were even real devices capable of taking down the planes, or whether they were trial balloons used to test the system designed to find these items. Historically speaking, if your aircraft goes down it is not in any part the fault of your fellow passengers, regardless of creed or level of fundamentalist ideal. Let's explore, shall we?

Pan Am 103, Lockerbie- bomb in the hold of a transatlantic bound 747 takes it down, Libyan dissidents eventually tried and convicted of the massacre. Bomb was secreted in a boom box (how apropos) packed in the suitcase of a traveler who was registered to be on, but never boarded the plane... Red flag, much? 270 dead. Cause-Terrorism.

ValuJet 592, Florida Everglades- Some dumb-ass cargo master with a third grade education put cylinders that were full of pure oxygen in the hold. Um, are you supposed to do that? No. Why did you? The manifest said they were supposed to be empty. After the oxygen burned setting fire to the DC-9, ultimately blowing it up they were indeed empty. 110 dead. Cause-Poor procedures and management/poor government oversight of the airline.

TWA 800, East Moriches (Long Island), New York- 747 bound transatlantic to Rome exploded off the coast of Long Island. Cause? They think (that is to say they are pretty sure), the center belly fuel tank, which was nearly empty (the fuel was not needed to provide the range to get to the destination) exploded as the result of a short in a fuel sender/pump wire that sparked and ignited the fumes, blowing up the plane. Capton insulation on the wiring quietly thought to be the problem as it gets brittle and cracks with age and when exposed to fuel and oil and extreme temperatures (had these people ever been on an airplane?) causing dead shorts and possible sparks. This was not widely published as nearly 100% of the planes flying at the time used Capton insulated wiring in the same manner as flight 800. After the incident, the U.S. military required systematic removal of Capton wiring in all it's aircraft. The FAA did not. 230 dead. Cause- The fundamental design and materials used to operate the aircraft.

Feel better, yet? How about the AeroBrasilia 707 that ran itself out of fuel crashing near the runway killing a bunch of people, or the Northwest flight out of Detroit where the pilots didn't set the airplane to the proper takeoff configuration and all but a baby girl and a few people on the ground were eliminated. Or the engine explosion of a United DC-10 outside of Sioux City, Iowa resulting in the spectacular fiery cartwheel down the runway of the airport. It was a miracle anyone lived, but 175 of 285 did. Then there's the L10-11 in Dallas felled by wind shear, and more than a few 737 (the most popular, numerous and widely flown aircraft in the world) that fell out of the sky due to rudders that suddenly reversed the motion that was sent through the pedals due to an unknown phenomenon of aerodynamics brought out by a flaw in the design. How about the 2 airbus 330s that were lost over the Atlantic ocean in the last 36 months due they think to a poorly designed pitot tube which caused the instruments to stop reading, leaving the plane vulnerable to malfunction and mismanagement?

Waiting in long lines, being cavity searched, vivisected and sprayed with cancer causing X-rays would not have saved your life if you were on any of these flights. My intent with the brief survey of modern commercial aviation accidents is to show in the whole of of aviation history there have been a statistically insignificant number of incidents involving the successful usurping of control of your airplane, or placement of items that were successful in bringing down your aircraft. Those incidents that did happen were sensational and often tragic with high death tolls and lots of fires, is why we all watch the news. But the odds are long that they will be repeated.

So you are being tremendously inconvenienced, had the chances of missing a flight or causing delays increased and effectively raped of your civil liberties each time you fly with the net result being that the clock continues at an unabated pace to tick down to the next tragedy a fact which is as regrettable as it is inevitable. On second thought, keep the peanuts... pass the gin.

Where Have You Gone On Demand Mojo?

Hello, I'm Bill's Writing Mojo. Bill wanted me to offer an explanation to you why his blog posts have been sparse and for the most part sullen as of late. Fact is, I am on vacation. Yes, that's right, even Mojo needs to be rejuvenated once in awhile. Can't inspiration enjoy a week at Sandals? I mean, it's all inclusive! How could I resist?

Back in Michigan, where Bill is, it's freaking cold! It was 60 degrees, now it's 20 degrees and, gulp, snowing! Nuts to that. Some of the other mojos and I needed a little time away, so I'm here with Sex Drive, Id and Work Ethic and we are having a blast! Last night was a luau complete with pig on a spit and the whole walking on coals thing... Nothing like fat Polynesian men and supple, curvy Polynesian women to help you appreciate the whole yin and yang of life. And the drums! Outstanding. They speak right to the core, urging, pushing, dancing in you like a party filled with uninvited guests... You're not sure how they got in, but you're sure glad they're here!

Sex Drive and Id have been hitting the bar pretty hard, indulging their secret desires to drink girl drinks. "All he ever feeds us is bourbon and scotch", they complain. Hell, it was good enough for Fitzgerald and Hemingway, it's good enough for me. I am after all Writing Mojo. Let those party animals go indulge... I like a more hardscrabble existence. Work Ethic is sitting in the corner nursing a Corona and looking very nervous... his leg is shaking and he keeps looking at his watch. Poor guy, sometimes he has a hard time letting loose. Maybe some shuffleboard at the senior center would have been more his speed. That dude needs to lighten up! Of course I have to share a room with him. Up at 5 every morning, fretting over every little thing. He shaves like 3 times a day. Who wears a suit to the pool? Even when he's on the beach he is working. Id and Sex Drive wanted to go boogie boarding and Work Ethic just wanted to build a sand castle. Before we knew it he was on his cell interviewing general contractors and putting the financing in order!

I admit, he got a great rate, but man, does he ever stop? And I guess parquet floors in a sand castle is pretty impressive, but you know what else is nice? Chillin'. My personal favorite is watching other people and musing about the conversations they are having. Like writing the dialogue to a live action play that is happening all around me. I guess maybe I find it a little hard to take some time off, too.

Anyway, back to the original reason I am dropping this line. Bill was really concerned that his readers (that plural is still a huge assumption) would wonder what's going on and be concerned that he was all out of ideas. Far from the truth! I, his Writing Mojo just need a little R&R, you know, some time off to relax a spell. I'll be back in town before anyone knows it! After this vacation, you won't be able to shut me up! I've already got so many good ideas that Bill won't know what hit him when I come back. Of course, I think Sex drive has some ideas of his own, so we'll have to duke it out to see which one of us is going to get priority. Who am I kidding, I haven't won that one, yet!

Well, I have to sign off. Work Ethic is missing. The last time they saw him he had broken in to the business center at the resort and was re-filing things the 'right' way and Id and Sex Drive just got busted for trying to organize co-ed topless limbo down on the promenade. Apparently they had video cameras set up at 6 angles! If we don't get arrested look for us to be back soon! I can't wait to show you the pictures!

TTFN!
W.M.

The Christmas Letter

Every year, I write a Christmas letter because I did it once and my wife called 'tradition' on me. I started this 'tradition' on our second Christmas as man and wife in 2001 because it had been a banner year. It was our first full year of marriage and we hadn't killed each other or gotten a divorce which knocked out almost everyone who took the over/under on betting grid, My sister got married, a close friend's father died suddenly and some terrorists flew perfectly good airplanes into perfectly good buildings to prove America was wasteful and materialistic.

Mostly, I think Christmas letters are the ultimate in douchebaggery. Who cares about Uncle Cy's bunions and Aunt Matilda's failed attempt to reach her dearly departed corgi from the great beyond. But back then, I needed to write that letter to sort things out in my head and take stock of the world I was living in which was changed forever in ways big and small. I needed to convince myself and others that everything would be alright again, soon. Subsequent years have not been so filled with interesting mileposts, which is probably a good thing. And yet, the Christmas letter 'tradition' endures. This year, I admit I am finding it especially hard to find an appropriate voice for the letter and to keep up mighty veneer of humor that is expected.

I have written several drafts, the last of which made it to Em for peer review. she gave me some good feedback on things I missed, which I desperately needed because the whole letter could have been summed up as... 'Um, Tada! Happy New Year!' Even with the additions of the items, I am finding myself joke-less and humorless about this year and the upcoming holiday season.

As I have written before here, I hate the holidays. I have hated them since college. At first it was because my true transition into being my own person began during the holidays of my Freshman year at college. It was a time of great internal and familial conflict which can be summed up briefly as me not wanting to go back to school. The following year, the great pendulum had swung through its arc as I found my place at school, found a girl, and forged a life. The holidays interrupted my bliss and when I came back, the life, the girl and the happiness were gone.

After college, I began my retail career. If you haven't worked in a shop during the holidays you need to know that people almost entirely impossible to deal with under normal circumstances become entirely impossible to deal with given the stress and consumer crush of the holidays. And there are more of them than normal. Picture staring down a veritable sea of people who believe you are lying to them about the item that is out of stock and your goal is to ruin their Christmas. I actually had a customer in New Jersey threaten to accuse me of ogling her daughter, who was like maybe 12 because I wouldn't give her a discount on a book that she said was damaged. She literally threatened me with telling my manager that I was inappropriate to her daughter. I had seen this kind of thing in soap operas and movies and always thought it a questionable plot device, yet it was happening right in front of me... to me. Only upon the protestations of the girl did the mother give up the gambit. Poor thing. I am sure she is ruined by now.

Holiday planning in a retail setting begins in earnest in August so by the time everyone else is feeling the warmth of that first holiday toddy going down their throat, retailers are over it. They are tired, overworked, under-appreciated and to top it off, they have our own shopping to do. Yes! After 12 hours working through the crowds in your own store your reward is to go to a different store and deal with it all over again. To top it off, retailers can spot one another from a million aisles away and never give each other the best treatment. Even though I am no longer in the retail business, I still find myself demurring to the needs of other customers. As a result, earlier this year it took 7 hours to get fitted for 3 suits because I kept allowing the salesman to help other customers. He was busy, I took pity. "You are so patient!" he said over and over. If only he knew I was so angry I wanted to eat his face. I suppose I hid it well.

'But, Bill, you aren't in retail anymore! Shake off the PTSD and come join us in our cheer!', you say. You see, dear reader, once you have seen the dark side, you can only see the dark side. Colonel Kurtz said it best at the end of Apocalypse Now- "The horror, the horror, the horror..."
I see Old Navy is open Thanksgiving day this year. It makes me sad. Those poor folks only got 3 days off a year before, now it's down to 2, even less for some. Do we really hate our families so much that we have to shop on Thanksgiving day? Take a day off, people. It is not going to kill you!

Yesterday, I had the unhappy task of informing 33 full-time people that despite their best efforts, the client decided to go another direction and decided to not even give us the courtesy of waiting until after the new year to let us go and their last day was to be December 10. Yep, that's right, I got to tell 33 people, 3 days before Thanksgiving that 2 weeks before Christmas they were going to be unemployed... or at least not employed by me any longer.

Merry fucking Christmas and pass the eggnog.

The thing that bothered me most was just how good I was at telling them. My measured tones, my reassuring words, my warm hugs for those in tears and my high fives and fist bumps for those too tough to cry, my empathetic eye contact and knowing nods at their plight and all the lies automatically spewing forth from my mouth about how I was sure it would all be O.K. It didn't even phase me. Then.

Today, I don't even feel human. I can't break through the malaise brought on by a level 2 hangover and a fitful night's sleep. I can't believe not only that I had to do what I did, but that I did it so resolutely and so dutifully well. So, what should I be thankful for this year? That it was them and not me, at least this time? How exactly do I endeavor to write an uplifting, humorous letter to my friends and family when half of them know it's bullshit and the other half would be shocked to know how I really felt? No one said it would be easy. I get it that sometimes, life just sucks. I know intellectually that it is not me who was turning those people away, I was just the grim reaper, doing for the 200th time what I have become so good at doing, it just keeps getting harder to feel O.K. about it.

I took a break from this blentry went back and rewrote the Christmas letter. I took out some sardonic things and tried to put in a little more love. Maybe from this version I will be able to turn it in to something I can actually be proud of. Here's hoping. I've already ruined too many Christmases this year.

Turn it Up! This is My Favorite Song!

Listen to this. It is the song, Victoria, by The Kinks off their LP Arthur. I dare you to not feel happier and more alive having listened to that for a little more than 3 minutes. Nothing else but music can do this to me. I have been so ho-hum this week and then, listening to Radio Paradise this morning, I heard Victoria, a song I haven't heard in many years. So many years, I had forgotten it was even The Kinks. It has totally changed my outlook on the day.

The words don't matter. I don't much care about British colonial empire or the political maps of the day. The lyrics could talk about the virtues of eating frozen poop and I would still love the song. No drug has such a great euphoric effect for so cheap (free!) and so long (sing it again!) with so little side effects (other than permanent hearing loss if you can't keep the volume at reasonable levels).

Another of my favorite songs is by The Kinks as well. It is "Come Dancin'" and it is one of the songs I will stay in my car to listen to after I have reached my destination. There is a certain sadness to the chord progression that makes the listener really feel the melancholia the Davies brothers are trying to convey. It is a simple and sweet story of the local dance house being torn down to make way for a bowling alley that is an allegory for growing up and losing some of that special magic that surrounds us when we are children which disappears into the firmament as we age, no matter how hard we try to grasp it. Essentially, you can't go home again. It is an upbeat poppy song, but if you listen to the subtext, you will see there is real sadness and depth of emotion behind it.

I could never categorize or rate my favorite songs or even bands because the answer changes every day. I was at lunch a couple months ago in a local pub near my office in Mt. Clemens and I swear the music selection was being picked directly from my brain. It was a satellite station. Maybe all the schizophrenics are right, the satellites are trying to read our thoughts. If the magnificence of that set was any indication, the satellites can read my thoughts any day. On that day, at that lunch it was the perfect set of music. On any other day, maybe I would have changed the channel or tuned out any one or all those songs. The music makes the moment and the moment makes the music.

One of those great conversation starter questions we used to ask each other in college is if you could only have one sense, the other six gone forever, which would you keep. As long as there is music, my sense of hearing is the singular most important sense I have. So many moments in my life are tied to music and that music is the only thing that recalls those memories.

I use a certain decision tree when trying to match the music to the mood and the surrounding. If it is winter, I'm a little down, I want to read something and I am alone- it has to be Counting Crowes, August and Everything After. Raining, dark in the middle of the day, got a headache and just want to chill? Norah Jones will do, but specifically Come Away With Me. Say it's sunny, i've got chores to do or it will be a busy day and I need a pick me up, it has to be Paul Simon, Graceland, on vinyl only. It should be a crime to listen to this album on anything but vinyl. Late night, can't sleep, alone, lots on my mind- The Wall, over the headset not the speakers... This is music designed to get into your head and it helps to place it close to your ears. Also, when I am screaming along to the music, I can hear myself less. meaning I don't get as self conscious. The net effect is I have a sore throat and feel as though my energy has been ripped from my core, but that is the point.

Because I so closely attribute most music to specific moods or memories, I am persnickety about the music I choose to listen to at a given moment. I usually find myself disappointed because my moods and memories tend to be fleeting. for instance, I have all my Beck CDs in my car right now, because I had a hankering for Beck the other week. It turns my stomach to think of listening to Beck today. I'm not in the mood. This type of psychosis must drive normal people crazy... How can 400 CDs, 200 LPs and 8,000 iTunes songs not allow you to listen to precisely the music you want to hear at any given moment? I can't justify it, but it isn't enough. It will never be enough, because as long as there is music I haven't heard I can't rest. If I were a wealthy man, I would blow it all at the record store, just like if I were a kid. This is why I'm not a wealthy man. An odd paradox, this. Given these circumstances, my next car will have satellite radio... I want to tune into the deep cut station and just ride around in perpetual musical discovery and rediscovery.

I am listening to Radio Paradise as I write this and Bowie just came on, Ashes to Ashes. It reminds me of movie "The Life Aquatic" which features only Bowie music. The two are ideally suited, both odd and approachable all at once. Now, a Mark Knopfler song came on that I've never heard, but within the space of a single bar, I know it is unmistakeably a Knopfler song. My parents walked out on a concert of his at The House of Blues in Vegas. I was so angry, because he is truly a rock god! They were there with the parents of one of his backing musicians which means they could have met Mark Knopfler. "It was too lound..." said my dad, the man who will listen to a Celine Dion or Shania Twain song at greater than mid-volume and loves Manheim Steamroller... a lot. Perfection means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I suppose it is what makes the world go around.

The First Three Letters Are F-U-N

I have been to a number of funerals in recent years of people I did not know in life at all or at least very well. My presence there is not some oddly voyeuristic fetish, rather these were people who were close to people I care about very much. My goal in being there is support for the ones left. As an objective outsider, I see things in a less emotional light than many of the attendees and I have made some interesting observations.

For instance, it is plain to see whether the departed was truly loved and will be very missed, or whether the dcecedent had become a burden and in truth the family and friends are all just sort of relieved or even the body in the box was never really thought of highly by most people at all. I have witnessed all these in the past few years and can tell you the only truly sad funerals fall into the latter category.

I won't name names, but I have been to the funeral of a man who I knew was not especially well liked, or highly thought of by me or apparently most of the rest of the people present. To those who knew him, even on a tertiary basis as did I, he never really did much of anything noteworthy or benevolent or kind. To top it off, he suffered a protracted illness and was a burden in the last years if his life. The funeral had no emotion. Zip. Nada. It was awful. It was palpably terrible and very uncomfortable. But, because of his military career, at the cemetery to finish the service, there was the 21 gun solute, and the flag folding and, oh my God... Taps. Not a dry eye could be found. Unfortunately for the guy in the ground it was for love of country, not him that finally brought some emotion to his death. It was in retrospect the very saddest funeral I have ever attended.

Then there was the middle aged mother who passed away very suddenly after a fluke accident while traveling abroad. There is nothing so tragic as losing someone so full of vim. This was a Jewish funeral, which from a purely anthropological standpoint was fascinating in and of itself for me, a Christian. The service was amazing first of all because of the attendance and the grandeur of the canter's voice and the very eastern origin of the traditional music. It was astonishing in a gorgeous and grand way but had a very genuine sense of emotion and warmth. And the people who spoke were simply amazing. Truly, God was there as they fought through the pain they must have been feeling and related only their love for the wonderful life that had been taken too soon. Her brother gave a wonderful eulogy, very funny, very celebratory and very relateable. I did not know her in life, I missed the chance, but I knew her well after that service and I realized what a wonderful opportunity to be in her presence I missed.

Last year was Emily's Great Aunt Eva's funeral. It was well attended for a woman in her 90s. The women of Emily's family seems to have longevity in their genes, but their husbands burn out pretty quick. I digress. The very funniest thing that ever happened at a funeral I have attended happened when in front of the church they attendant went about closing the casket. Now, I had never seen this, nor had Emily. Typically, this is done in private, I think with only close family looking on. Well, not in the little Methodist church of Podunk or wherever the hell we were. They put the lid down and insert a long-ish crank rod, like a clock winder into the foot end of the casket which dogs the lid down tight. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. Emily either. She leaned over through minor tears and said, "What, they afraid she's gonna pop out?" At that moment, we had a shared vision, one of the music of a Jack-in-the-box and the picture of a very frail, very dead Aunt Eva popping out of the casket, dangling back and forth a little as if on a spring. It was too much. We shared with Emily's mom who joined in the barely stifled laughter.

Yesterday was Dave's Grandmother's service. It fell into the good category. Dave's words were stunning and clear with the perfect mix of humor and wisdom and, well finality. I found myself again, not having known the departed in life, but feeling privileged to have been a part of the celebration of her life.

The funny thing about life, goes the old joke, is that nobody gets out alive. The funerals are for those of us left behind, a mechanism by which to achieve closure and say goodbye and come to terms with the final truth. But what never ceases to amaze me is the difference in feeling from person to person and life to life and it makes me wonder what my funeral would be like if it was to be held today. I surely hope it would be the kind I saw yesterday, full of love and remembrances of wisdom and joy. I also sincerely hope people remember the first three letters of 'funeral' are F-U-N. Life is short, times are hard and there is no excuse for not having as much fun as you can while you're here and even for a little while after you're gone. Nobody looks at the stained drop ceiling over their deathbed and comes to the realization they wish they had worked harder.

And since I am thinking today of mortality, I have taken the time to write my own obituary.

Bill Uebbing, aged 35 went to that great backyard barbecue in the sky today to be reunited with Jesus, his Grandparents and the original lineup of Lynard Skynard. He had a lust for life, a quick, incisive wit and a foul mouth. He is survived by anyone who is reading this. His last request was to be embalmed with Maker's Mark Bourbon and have a Rocky Patel series V 25th anniversary Churchill placed in his breast pocket.
His wealth was in his ability to make people laugh, even when things were bad and to bring irreverence to things when they got too heavy.
His funeral is being held at First United Methodist Church in Grand Rapids, MI after which his remains will be chauffeured in a Lincoln hearse per his specifications ("Because Cadillacs are bougy") to a great big oven whereupon they will be reduced to ashes, with which he doesn't give a shit what you do because he is playing croquet with Harry Truman, T.S. Elliot and Phil Hartman while discussing philosophy, humor and the science of making decisions and later is sitting in on a set with Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and Mamma Cass Eliot with an appearance by special guest Jerry Garcia. Heaven, he promises is awesome and he will save you a seat!

Gobblin.com

Gobblin.com is the most widely used online community whose sole purpose is finding you the perfect* job. Gobblin is committed to offering you the best online search service available. We do this by purchasing all other job search sites and conveniently making you jump through hoops by way of making you go to multiple sites and post your information over and over again to get the same non-germane results, but with a different font and user interface. All this is designed to frustrate and confound you, all the while distracting you from the ultimate result, which is that we make money by selling your information, placing ads in front of all relevant information every 3.5 seconds and occasionally, finding someone a job.

GOBBLIN.COM USER PROFILE QUESTIONNAIRE

Answer the following questions to the best of your ability to get the most accurate job returns possible:

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good excuse. Use supplementary form as needed)? Yes*___ No___
Excuse_____________________________________________________________
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4. Please list the highest level of security clearance you have obtained

They Won't Even Let Me Fly ___ Secret ___ Top Secret ___ Super Spook ___
License To Kill ___ I Could Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You ___

5. Answer the following statements Yes or No:

5a. I will work any hours you can give me and whore myself out for you all in the name of a modest paycheck and the promise that some day I will be rewarded Yes ___ No* ___
(*Note: A 'No' Answer on this question automatically and permanently places you on a database of unemployable people)

5b. I have already worked late nights in terrible jobs for no pay that have led me nowhere and I now feel I am entitled to ride a desk eight hours a day no weekends Yes* ___ No ___
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5c. You are masturbating right now Yes ___


6. Are you willing to relocate? Yes* ___ No* ___
(*Note: There is no possible correct answer to this question, however you must choose an answer or your submission will not be accepted)

7. Write a 350 word essay on what makes you a better candidate than the next 200 people looking for a job not using the word 'the' or the letter 'A'. Any submissions using the word 'the' or any word with the letter 'A' will be reported to your high school English teacher to be publicly ridiculed in front of his/her current class and held up forever as an example of how not to write.
___________________________________________________________________
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8. I authorize any and all potential employers and random hackers to google the hell out of my name and seek out all embarrassing photos, ex boyfriends/girlfriends, people with whom you dabbled in homosexual activity, status updates, tweets, relationship statuses, medical records, audio recordings of confessions to clergy, the contents of your teen diary/journal and blog posts pertaining to anything that could be construed as job dissatisfaction for the purposes of calling you in for an interview just to view the train wreck you are with no intention of hiring you. No, we do not validate parking. Yes ___ No* ___
(*Note: A 'No' answer will immediately visit a virus upon your computer and all the other computers to which it is connected via a network that will cause it explode violently the next time your mother logs on to her AOL account)

Congratulations, you're done! No, not done with the form, 'done' as in there is no chance in hell you are going to get a job, loser. But thanks for using Gobblin.com a proud subsidiary of Megalogloboindustrocon Industries Inc. We don't make you anything but miserable, but we are the best at it. TM

I'm Checking In

Addictions, once shameful and hidden at all costs are all the rage in the world today. If Hollywood has taught us anything, (and I think we can all agree it has), it's that a good addiction is, to quote Homer Simpson "The cause of and solution to all of life's problems." Charlie Sheen is the poster boy du jour for addictive behavior but even he is a rank amateur next to, say Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones who was once dismayed that doctors found blood in his heroin stream. "I can do better, jus' you wait..." he was hear to mumble as he walked away.

All the best addicts were incredibly talented and people could attribute their inspiration to drugs. Many of them never make it out alive, Belushi, Farley, Cobain, Kinison. but at least they leave a legacy as lasting as the very stars in the sky. I am glad some celebrities get clean and go on to live happy productive lives, but I am infinitely more happy that we have recordings from their pre-sobriety days. Old Fat Elton John is talented but nothing was as stunning as a coked up skinny Elton in full costume wailing at top volume running around the stage like a madman across the water. Robin Williams who is now just annoying was once so incredibly funny I thought I would crap my pants every time he opened his mouth. They may win, but the rest of us undeniably lose. Now though, people are living through their addictions with startling regularity.

So, you're a politician and you cheated on your wife with a male Asian prostitute and the story was picked up by a supermarket rag? Get thee to rehab! You were swimming at the bottom of a glass of Cristal when you were pulled over for killing 30 people when you jumped the sidewalk and hit the gas? Be ye Betty Ford bound! Got picked up snorting slice, slash, snuh or sprong in the room of a Spokane motor lodge with a Korean mafia kingpin? You poor thing, exit stage left, Dr. Drew is waiting.

Can you imagine trying this gambit as a defense out in the trailer park? "JoeBilly, you got to come with us, you hit TracyJean again all up in the mouth and she called you in." "Officer BobbyJohn, I got a problem, I need help, how's about a diversion program? I hear Passages Malibu is nice..." "Get your ass in the car, JoeBilly and bring your vaseline, big Ed is in the tank sleepin' it off... you know how randy he gets when he comes to."

If we keep attributing all this bad behavior to addiction we run the risk of giving an addiction a bad name! Leave addiction alone! Why can't bad behavior just be the result of being an idiot? Bill Cosby had a great line which went something like "Why do you snort cocaine?" "Well, it intensifies my personality." "Yes, but what if you're an asshole?"

I think we should go back to the times when addictions, like out of wedlock pregnancies were swept under the rug and never talked about, at least directly. The family historian can still regale us at holidays with stories of Uncle Edward the dentist as "not being right" or, "being sick" but never really mentioning he used to freebase the ground up teeth of his clients while gratifying himself to an episode of H.R. Puffinstuff. Let's put the intrigue back into addiction. Let's whisper in hushed tones and gossip like the preacher's wife. It turns fun into sad when every addict is rushing to confess their transgressions.

How are we supposed to revel in the shame and imperfection of a celebrity when they are crying out their mea culpas on the cover of People Magazine. The price of celebrity is being subject to the ridicule of your fans. It's why we love you! You may think it's because you are talented and hot, but at the end of the day it is us, the normals dangling the treat over your head shouting dance, monkey, dance! And for all your money, rock bottom isn't too far down so what is there to lose? I propose a two addiction minimum, or at least one addiction which includes a charge of manslaughter or above or no book deal for you!

It's like a tween pop star who writes their autobiography at 16. Admittedly, you have done and seen some cool stuff, but imagine how much better your book will be after you contract Hepatitis C after mainlining Draino with a filthy needle just because you "didn't know how to feel." Celebrities reading my blog, (I am sure there are many), if you are unsure how to act, call Tommy Lee, or the aforementioned Mr. Sheen the Younger. They'll steer you in the right direction.

Easy Seems to be the Hardest Word

Why, being the post agrarian society we are do we need to spring forward and fall back? I think this is simply ridiculous and should cease immediately. We should stay on standard time and not spring forward anymore. Who is going to care? What special interest is possibly being served by this function?

We already made it even more of a pain in the ass to change the time when we extended daylight saving time by a week or two further into the fall, thereby rendering obsolete all the clocks that automatically do it for you on a predetermined date! Now we have to go back and unchange the clocks that changed prematurely and then go back and change them manually on the correct date! Convenient!

O.K., I admit there is a grand total of one clock in my house that automatically changes on the wrong preset date and it is a simple one button affair to change it back. So I am not losing whole chunks of my life in service to my small appliances. The point is producer of products believe we want all this convenience and their efforts to please us are causing our lives to become more complicated and less fulfilling. It could all stop if we wanted it to. Only in America could an innocent convenience feature actually rob us of time and make extra work for us.

Explain, you demand! I shall, I reply! Time was when you could get in a car by turning a key in the door, then use the same key, or a different key on the same key ring in the ignition tumbler, turn it and voila you were in business. Now I have a car with a key fob shaped perfectly so as to get stuck in every pocket I put it into, with small non-distinct buttons ensuring a one in four chance of popping the trunk or setting off the panic alarm rather than unlocking the door. I imagine the point was to hasten entry into the vehicle when your hands were full or in inclement weather. A real time saver. I dare you to use the fob with gloves on like you may have to do occasionally in Michigan or to remember which button is which on a dark night since the thing isn't backlit. Not to mention the social faux pas in certain circles of inviting someone into your Mercury Grand Marquis, (Mafia staff car of choice 25 years running), by popping the trunk. "Hey, Joey, let's you can me go get a beer... No Joey, wait, come back, I hit the wrong button, I promise!" All this fails to mention the actuator for the lock on the inside of the driver's door of my car has literally broken off its mooring and now I have to unlock the driver door in the old timey way by using the key. That means my car is broken even though it's not... I'm confused should I pay the $300 to fix it? If I am taking passengers with me, or need to access the car through any other doors, I have to use the button and the key. Convenient!

My wife's car takes convenience to a whole new level. It doesn't have a key at all! You simply have the bulky oddly shaped fob in for pocket and touch the door handle and four times out of five the door unlocks for you. The fifth time was in the rain with the groceries and you pulled on the handle faster than the car could recognize you which means you now get to wait five minutes while it thinks about letting you in... Or, alternately you can fish out the key fob which you have placed in the nether-est of nether regions since you are never supposed to need it and hit the buttons manually. Convenient!

Once ensconced in the car, you will find a push button start, which is cool, though I fail to understand how it is any easier or faster than turning a key. The large fob, shaped like a 13/5 scale vitamin pill is now in your pocket and feels like a breach baby while you drive, instead of being in the ignition where it is not poking you in your nether regions. So, you say, take the key out and put it in the cup holder so it isn't poking you in your privacy zone! Excellent idea, let's explore. Taking this tack, we get to listen to the fob and all the plastic store rewards cards rattle against each other and make repetitive noises which you should know turns me into the Incredible Hulk. Plus, upon leaving the car and attempting to lock it, you are sternly reminded via a series of beeps which in morse code say "you're an idiot" that the biometric fob is still inside the car, which I now have to reach back in and get, invariably wanging my head on the roof of the car on my way out. Now I am cold, wet, pissed off and have a concussion. Convenient!

The fob is also programmed to my wife's seat and mirror settings which were I to drive with would result in blind spots large enough for the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan to slide into unnoticed, not to mention instantaneous and permanent sciatica. Change the seat you say! Brilliant, let's explore. Each time you leave the car and come back, the seat has surreptitiously returned to it's previously torturous state requiring you to make the changes all over again, manually. This is especially convenient on errand days when you are in and out of the car a dozen times or more in the span of an hour. To compensate for the fact you are forced to drive the car with a building sized blind spot, there is a Blind Spot Information System, or BLIS as it was christened by the acronym happy marketing department of this particular car company. BLIS is one of many systems on newer cars which ostensibly take place of actually having to pay attention while driving. Activated by the turn signal, it lights up a little icon on the side mirrors and bleeps when you have try to change lanes if there is a car within say, six miles of you. It also recognizes guard rails and light posts as cars. the net effect is I simply have stopped signaling like the rest of the western world so I can drive without the goddamn car yelling at me. Convenient!

We have had the car two years and I still haven't programmed the second fob with my setting to work around these issues. Primarily because I had to pay a grad student from M.I.T. to come and do it for me the first time, and the lease is up in eleven months. It is therefore well below the cost/benefit line on my mental Venn Diagram. Another example of the cost of the convenience being too high to pay for the actual convenience. Plus I would either have to carry that fob on my car keys, creating a super bulky mess of electronic fobs and store membership cards, or go have another house key cut so I could maintain a separate but equal set of keys for the other vehicle. Brilliant! then what happens when I am at one of the dozens of stores where I am a member and I don't have my membership card?

Ford and Lexus have a system whereby they can parallel park themselves with the touch of a button. Back in the day, you didn't get a license until you could do this for yourself. I imagine soon that skill, like using a stick shift, will be extinct. Of course, most of the companies that impregnate their products with all this glam never really stop to perfect any of it. Perhaps we as consumers should recommend they create a basically perfect core product before worrying about hanging a bunch of garland and gimcrackery on in.

Emily doesn't know it yet, but her next car is a 1933 Model A Ford. It has such wonderful convenience features like pneumatic tires, electric start, synchromesh transmission and sealed headlights. What else can she ask for?

The Luckiest Man on Earth... Ever

The (Pitch)Man Who Sold the World

Who would you consider to be the luckiest man on Earth living or dead? Would it be a lottery winner or a pop star of questionable talent who makes it big and is set for life? How about a Sheik or a Monarch, born into fortune and a life of ease? Maybe you think it's the high school quarterback who seemed to emerge from perfect genes, drove the perfect car had the perfect girl and threw the perfect ball. That's lucky in part, but it requires skill and practice, so as much as you'd like to, you can't chalk his station in life up to luck alone.

The luckiest person in the world would have to achieve all they have achieved through blind stinking sheer unadulterated luck. We would refer to this person as a "Lucky Son'bitch." I find that a curious title. Why is the moniker 'lucky' often followed by 'son of a bitch?' I for one feel lucky for not being a son of a bitch. I guess it's all relative. Maybe you think I'm lucky for getting pulled over when I was 19 years old going 100 in a 50 on my way to the bar after having a beer or two and getting off with a verbal warning upon the promise of buying my Mother a nice Christmas present. Maybe you'd think I am the luckiest person on Earth.

You'd be wrong. After much research and thought, I have come to the irrefutable conclusion that the luckiest man on Earth, alive or dead is... previously portly perennial popeilian pitchman Jared Fogle of Subway Ad fame.

This guy's only talent was being fat and getting less fat and getting a little more fat and then a little less fat again. He isn't attractive, talented or blessed, as far as I can tell, with anything resembling a personality. He has been a real live mascot for Subway for 12 years and has made millions, wrote and published a bestselling book and has tons (no pun intended) of fans!

Didn't famous people used to have to be attractive? I mean, at some point whatever God didn't give you money can buy. A few examples of this are Julia Roberts (who had many dental surgeries to cure her of horse mouth), Cher (who is more collagen and rayon than human), Ellen DeGeneres (who was never especially pretty when she was 30 but looks awesome at 53) and countless others.

Maybe it's different for men, which I suppose is an entirely different conversation altogether. It doesn't excuse the fact that Jared the penny pinching spendthrift hasn't even bought a new pair of glasses in years. Who still wears Buddy Hollys? Even Drew Carey finally gave that look up. With all that money you couldn't get lasik? Subway's vision plan doesn't include contacts? I'm not an attractive man, but Jared isn't even average. In fact, for a guy who never otherwise could have gotten laid, he actually had a real human wife for awhile. He divorced her and she now sucks at the Jared teat, which makes her likely the second luckiest person on Earth. He is soon to be married to Katie McLaughlin who I discovered after a short internet search, is hot. Actually, I am not sure which Katie McLaughlin is Jared's betrothed as there were many different pictures answering to that name. In this case, it doesn't matter. They were all hot. Must be something about the name. At any rate, this guy got a trade in! He was lucky to not get kicked off the bus in the first place and now he can have whatever kind of ride he wants! Time was when the only ugly people getting hot women were in The Rolling Stones.

Two years ago he gained 40 pounds and Subway didn't drop him. They just kept showing him standing behind his fat pants. Well, anyone can look good hiding behind a pair of 60" wasted clown pants. Subway gave Jared another chance and reasserted his 'Fresh Fit' ad campaign. Kirstie Alley, who was summarily dumped by Jenny Craig for having a slip was heard to remark "what the fuck?" or at least that's what they assume she said. It was hard to understand her through a mouthful of cake.

I have been eating Subway sandwiches multiple times per week for years and the only weight I've lost as a result is the cumulative total of the $5.00 bills that have left my wallet. I can't imagine I am not the only one who has tried and failed the Subway diet, but Jared Fogle, the man and the legend continues to endure. He just ran the New York City Marathon and finished. I guess that's cool and perhaps even laudable if you are in to that kind of thing. He probably went home and got a massage by his hot wife-to-be and counted his money.

Hey, Subway, I am unattractive, eat your food all the time, and will work for a fraction of what you are purportedly paying the paunchy pitchman. In fact, you could pay me in Five Dollar Foot-longs. At least that will defray the costs of eating at your restaurants. Of course, that could never happen to me. I used up my lifetime of luck on the S-curve in Grand Rapids Michigan on the day before Christmas Eve, 1994. By the way, Thank you, Officer Bowers, I learned my lesson. Just like I promised, I bought my Mom a nice present. Mom, now you know why you got a Hummel and a sterling silver cake service for Christmas that year instead of the "free hug" coupons you were expecting. I guess you got lucky, too.

And now you know, the rest of the story.

Atticus Flinch

Let's play 20 questions. What is nearly immobile, the size of a grapefruit, all sorts of shades of black and blue, filled with fluid and causes great pain? My right knee, that's what. Atticus the cat, who is by all measures, truly a pain in the Atticus is to blame. Never have I known an animal with such a demonstrable lack of ability to learn. I have tried to reason with him, (by which I mean yell), correct him, (by which I mean swat), and praise him, (by which I mean feed him semi-regularly). For all this fastidious care and rearing, I expect a certain level of decorum and behavior from my pets. Most of them historically have caught on pretty quickly. Atticus is proving to be the exception.

I was putting groceries away after my trip to the store, which if you'll recall I was really looking forward to (read here if you missed it). Trying to make it into the house in one trip, I was heavily laden with plastic bags. Already I was feeling like environmental Hitler for not bringing my eco-weenie renewable bags. I was tired and over it all, after having dealt with great masses of humanity all day.

Atticus is a sheep cat. You've no doubt heard of sheep dogs, animals whose sole intent and purpose is to steer livestock into a corral and/or keep them all together on the open range and safe from predators. These dogs perform a clear and important function in nature being both protector to fellow animals and companion to man.

A sheep cat, alas is a somewhat less useful device. In fact the very idea of the thing is an abomination, (you can't herd cats, let alone allow a cat to herd!). Atticus, God bless him, thinks that by circling my feet and slowly moving me toward his food bowl that I will feed him. He has been warned to not do this. I often give him the stiff shin and send him off in the opposite direction with certain velocity. Yet he does not learn.

Which brings us to my knee. I was unloading groceries, not knowing Atticus was behind me when I heard that sickening "Ow, Daddy, you're hurting me!" sound that only cat owners know. It's kind of like one of those high pitched sirens from an old war movie, it ramps up slowly enough but once it gets going it is a wail of impressive pitch and proportion. Immediately, without thought and with great force I lifted my right foot and leg so as to stop hurting my cat while simultaneously shouting at the top of my lungs, "That's what you get for hanging around my feet!" or words to that effect. In the process, I jammed my knee... hard (!) into the handle of the cabinet door, the design for which must have been adapted from a medieval torture device that was designed to cause great pain to the knees of a monarch's enemies.

I knew, before I even felt the pain that I was about to become very, very unhappy. I actually had the time to flashback to memories of the words that David Banner said during the intro to every episode of The Incredible Hulk- "Don't make me angry, Mr. McGee... you wouldn't like me when I'm angry!"

Pop... the pain steadily and malevolently rose through my spinal column and reached the stem of my hypothalamus where it manifested itself the only way it can in a man. I turned into the Incredible Hulk!

The string of profanity that issued forth came not from my mouth, but from the very core of my being. I did not yell so much as I bellowed. I usually refrain from screaming because my throat closes and my voice gets all reedy and week. I end up sounding more like air escaping from a balloon than anything that resembles a human screaming. I actually surprised myself. Krakatoa had erupted and made Mt. Etna cringe in fear while Atlantis herself took a swim. I could only pound the counter with one fist as the other hand was busy holding me up. I can only imagine what the neighbors thought. I know I sent both cats scattering to their respective hidey holes in a symphony of claws scratching on the wood floors.

It took a full minute for me to collect myself... A long time to be in blinding pain. A few years ago I had two molars drilled without benefit of Novocaine, and up until last night, that had been the worst pain I ever felt. I would rather have every tooth in my mouth drilled without being numbed than go through that again.

Of course the cat was prancing around unharmed within minutes while 12 hours later I am still lame. It is laundry day, too which means up and down the many stairs from bedroom to basement many times over. I have largely ignored the cat since the incident and have only administered the most basic maintenance... food, water, clean litter. I have not gone out of my way to love or dote. I am still mad. He knows it. He sorta runs the other way when he hears me clodding around, like Ishmael listening to Ahab's irregular stumping on the deck above living in abject fear, of what, exactly he does not know.

And this morning, wouldn't you know, he was back to his herding, this time while I was still drowsy on my way down the stairs. I just stopped and looked at him, while contemplating whether to punt him down the stairs or whether to pick him up and carry him down. I picked him up, but not because I took pity on him or showed mercy... he really hates being picked up and as history shows, he doesn't give a wit about being kicked or stepped on.

The Disaffected TARP Injected Mostly Feckless White Man's Burden Blues

This one is going to require a little imagination on your part. For those of you "normals" out there who don't think in song. I was musing this morning while doing the dishes that my little problems are so small compared to literally 90% or more of the people on this planet, but at the same time, there is a small group of people who would look at my life and go for the nearest gun if they ever had to live it.

As I said, life is one big song in my head. Often, I do a stream of consciousness song to a common 12 bar blues riff like the one in this link. Take a moment and listen and you will get the idea. Below is the little song I wrote this morning while doing the dishes. At the end, imagine a James Brown like breakdown where the band stops playing and would repeat everything James said and add a staccato horn pop and he would just go nuts until he ran out of things to slur and the song would end with a simple bluesy flourish.

Like I said, it would take some imagination on your part. Perhaps my friend at Diamonte Records would help me record this and it will make more sense, but for now, this is the best I got.

The Disaffected TARP Injected Mostly Feckless White Man's Burden Blues

I woke up this morning a pounding in my head
Found out my credit score, had really shit the bed
Don't know what to do, can't charge it anymore
No more weekends binging on Cristal Champagne and whores

Now I bought a yacht that I purchased with a loan
I secured it in part, with the equity in my home
Now its value has tanked and I got nowhere to go
I never knew a floating house could even be repo'd

Used to be so rich, I could afford two lives
One with my girl, the other one with my wife
Sweet Marie, she was my paramour
Now she says I can't afford to see her anymore!

Oh Man! What am I to do? I got the disaffected rich white man's burden blues!
Oh, yeah what am I to do? I can't be hitting the street in my Bruno Magli shoes!

I played with your money, I took it into to town
And when I fucked it up, we all went down
I get concerned, I really don't mean to whine
But I hear the Fed will only bail us out two more times!

Joe's got a Bentley, Jim's got a Rolls
Frank's got a Maybach with a driver in fine clothes
I just want a Lambo, or a perhaps a Ferr-ar-i
But times are so damn hard it's just a Porsche for me

It's getting to hard to live on the interest alone.
Had to let the help go, in some of my many homes
I might have to soon live within my salary
Oh No, they cut the limit of my Amex Black on me!

Oh, Man! What else can possibly happen next?! All I need's an audit from the IRS!
No one understands, how hard it is for me because I've got the,
No Account! (No account!)
Kick me when I'm down (When he's down!)
Need a half of Crown! (Half o' Crown!)
Drink until I drown! (Drown!)
Got no good to be found can't keep a bad man down someone take me in to town right down on the ground can't go no lower now corner office executive uncaring hardly human misunderstood and misundertandin' ever frustrated never duplicated money can't be maded no mansion in Barbados never see the South of France again probably die a poor millionaire in a pauper's mausoleum in a non-restricted cemetery where no one will visit me my Mom don't even like my my trust fund far behind me no morals left to guide me gonna die and hell will fry me..... BLUES!


Thanks for your indulgence.

The Temporary Bachelor Blues

It is times like these, when my wife is out of town that I realize just how much she does for me. I am not one of those guys who expects anyone to do anything for me and I put forth a concerted effort to render aid as I can, but when I am faced with the totality of the normal "to-do" list I admit I find it daunting. Much of the reason for this is that my wife takes care of the things I naturally hate, like leaving the house to buy things and interacting with other human beings.

I don't mind the laundry or the dishes as I can do these things in between everything else that needs to be done, like blog entries and playing Scrabble on Facebook. It is the shopping part that really gets me. Working in retail for 17 years has engendered in me a deep hatred of being in stores of almost any kind and an unending hatred of all consumers. The simple reason is that all people at all stores at all times are idiots.

I confess, I become an idiot myself as soon as I go shopping. Outside of a store, I never stand in the middle of a through-way and pride myself on being aware of the needs of others withing my proximity. In fact, for a big guy, I move pretty fluidly, often avoiding other people and their careless herky-jerky motions. But when I go shopping, especially grocery shopping, I get sidetracked by the fascinating colors and shapes of the boxes and containers and foods around me. It's Disney for fatties.

Usually I stay out of trouble because Emily is there to scold me like a sheep dog keeping the flock in line. Without her, I fear the destruction that will be wrought by my trip to the grocery. Should I call and warn them in advance of my intentions to shop alone at their store?

Maybe they can have a shopping helper their for me so I can just point and grunt and drool while she does the heavy work. at the end, I can just slide my card and go. If I pay a little more, maybe the kind rent-a-bride will help me find my car, so I don't have to join all the other solo husbands wandering the lot clicking the lock buttons on their key fobs hoping to distinguish the sound of their horn chirps from the rest and trying to correct for the wind to triangulate the position of their cars.

What a wonderful service. I think I should start it. It could be called Wayward Husband Intervention Professionals or WHIP for short. Yes, I think that is a money maker.

I think I used to know how to do these things on my own, but after a decade of having each and every moved directed by outside forces, be they bosses, my wife or the voices in my head, I have sort of checked out. I am no longer able to think for myself. I am a Rainman. Keep my in the home and let me watch my Wapner and we're all good, but take me on a car ride and all hell breaks loose.

Of course, this week of bachelorhood coincides with an unprecedented week of professional projects that are requiring much of my waking time. In fact, I am writing this blentry in between interviews, (so you can forgive me if continuity or conversational flow seems interrupted because it is being interrupted about every other paragraph, and no, astute reader, my interviewees did not heed my advice in my Oct. 20th blentry "Hat in Hand"). I thought that with Em out of town I could at least luxuriate in the center of the bed and get some good hard sleep, if not a lot of it.

Alas my sweet Siamese, Juliette is proving to be an ample substitute for my wife. In fact, her impression is uncanny. I woke up 3 times last night to covers being hogged and incessant snoring in my ear. It was as though my wife was right there with me. No hard sleep for me, just the normal unsettled kind I always get. Literally, like a baby.

Both sinks were full of dishes when I left this morning, odd, since I have only eaten one meal since yesterday and that was leftovers so the dish to food ratio was pretty low. I am sure the dishes will still be there as we had to let the help go in this most recent economic collapse. The yard needs to be raked and the guest bed and bedroom need to be refreshed for a guest coming this Friday night. That room doubles as my office and ironing room, so it is trashed beyond belief at this moment.

Atticus, the other cat, projectile vomited on my shoulder last night while I was committing the sin of sitting down in my chair for a half an hour to wind down after the long day. I cleaned it up, choking back my own wretches, (it was uncharacteristically human-like vomit), and he immediately puked on my foot, bigger and soupier than before. did I mention I had just taken off my socks because I accidentally walked through a piece of the first round of puking? No? Well, I did. I now know what it is like to have vomit on my own bare foot. I made it nearly 36 years without knowing that sensation. I assure you I could have gone 36 more.

To sum it all up, read the following as a blind man hitting a beat up guitar smoking a cigarette with a raspy slow rhythm vamping in the background. I got the temporary, gone too long, baby when you comin' home, I need you in my life, without you I am nothing, I'll never take you for granted again, where is my toothbrush, do these socks match, the house is on fire blues!

And it's only been one day. Pray for me.

Mexican Standoff

My parents and I both worked hard to send me to college and in between late night benders I actually put forth a concerted effort to learn while there. I was a better than average student, managing to make the Dean's List a couple times. I liked learning then as I do now and feel I got a good education both academic and social. The result is 13 years after graduation I am qualified for exactly no jobs that interest me in the least. That is, according to the position descriptions offered on the various online job boards.

I have held management positions since I was 16 years old. I have been in charge of or responsible for money, property, inventory, people, policy, customer service, operations and for a brief time, washing my boss' car. I read and write the English language with some modicum of success. I am gregarious and magnanimous and generally come with a low low price.

6 months ago, I got a "no thank you" letter from a bowling alley where I had applied as General Manager. I applied at a bowling alley because I knew I would get a call and an interview and would be offered the job at which time I would demure and decline because I don't want to run a bowling alley. Imagine the blow to my ego when I got a declination. I guess my average wasn't high enough.

It is like finding out that the girl you knew you could take to the prom because she followed you around like a lost little puppy got asked by someone else 10 minutes before you got around to asking her because no one else would go with you. Except in this scenario, I am not frozen out of some stupid dance, I am frozen out of the job market.

I am forced, therefore, to choose between being happy in my profession (which has mostly eluded me since I started working), or, (barely) making a living. How did this happen? When did a promising young person with talent and wit become an underemployed mid 30's guy who has no prospects?

Shit. I don't even like my options.
1. Back to school
Pros
Learning is fun
I will have an advanced degree

Cons
No guarantees of better prospects
Money/Time

2. Keep working where I am
Pros
A bird in the hand...
Money continues to flow

Cons
Certain early death
The money really trickles more than it flows


3. Starting my own business
Pros
Working for myself
Sense of satisfaction/achievement
Money can be great

Cons
Working for myself
I don't have any money to start anything

I am in a Mexican stand-off with myself. Damned if I do, damned if I do. Where I go from here I simply don't know. I wish there were signs. Not subtle quiet signs, big, bombastic unmistakable signs that pointed the way to go. All I ask for is guaranteed success, lots of money and unbridled happiness. What, too much?

On Being a Fat ass

Emily is leaving for New Jersey tomorrow morning for the work week and I will be alone. With the food. It is time, dear reader (9 people if you include me!) for me to come clean.

My name is Bill and I am a fat ass. I have been since puberty and despite my best attempts, I can't shake it.

Since July, I have lost nearly 30 pounds and what remains is still 25 pounds too much. I am pleased with my progress, but there is still a lot of field ahead of me. People keep telling me I look good which I appreciate but in an odd way that doesn't help. It would be better for people to look down their nose at me and ask "are you o.k. with how you look?" Now that's motivation! Only in America will people laud you for going from morbidly obese to merely obese. Hell, at 25 pounds overweight I am a role model. I kid, of course but the fact remains at any weight, I will be a fat ass just as an alcoholic, whether they are actively drinking or not, will always be an alcoholic.

Back to Emily leaving for the week. My motivation for exercising and eating well is purely external. I fear that my motivation will be out of town with my wife and not right here where it needs to be. I gained a lot of my weight while living on my own for the last 2 years while my job required constant travel. The cupboards in my apartment were not stocked with healthy choices, unless you count the cans of soup which were really there for show. The bad living took its toll. Now being in my middle 30's I can't just absorb those calories and expel them with not consequence. Calories now take permanent residence right around the midsection.

I have started visualizing walking every day as is my goal. The weather is supposed to be nice so there shouldn't be an excuse, unless work thwarts my plans. My problem is that when I walk with Emily, we talk and decompress, make plans, we even occasionally argue a little but the net effect is the time goes by fast. Also, when I am with Emily, I imagine people don't look at me and make fun of my contorted face and fast-walker gait. They look at her, then look at me and go, oh, it's nice for that nice young lady to take her grandfather for a walk. When I am alone I will just be that fat guy who is walking funny.

Then there is the eating part of the equation. As an adolescent, I imagined my life being filled with Porsche control, not portion control. These two things could not be further from each other on the excitement continuum. You can hear the conversation now, "Dude, the way you only ate 3 ounces of that hummus on those low sodium Triscuits was awesome! Way to snack smart, bro!"

Snore. Is this really what life has come to? In a word, yes. Conquering over-eating is harder than it was to quit smoking. Sure, there were any number of purveyors of tobacco that needed to be avoided, but I could pay at the pump, never having to go inside the gas station and be tempted to buy a pack of smokes. Plus, Marlboro couldn't advertise on T.V. Just while writing this post, there have been 235 commercials reminding me the McRib is back in town. Like I needed to be reminded, I can smell the fumes coming from the funnel stack of the McDonald's just down the street. A fatty always knows.

Just as I had started to break myself of my bad Burger King habit, (which I tendered while working there through high school), they brought out the cheesy tots. Are you for real? Cheesy tots? Melted gooey cheese like substance nestled in deep fried potato? That is more addictive than crack! I went in to order some a couple months ago and the lady apologetically indicated they no longer sold that product. After I trashed the place and burnt it down, I felt relieved. If they don't exist, I can't eat them.

It is a beautiful day outside and it is halftime of the football game. I guess the only excuse I have to not go take a walk now is continuing on with this post. I guess 10 paragraphs is enough. Any more typing and I'm gonna need a snack.

Bon appetite!