Welcome one and all to the Bill's Club Roast of 2010! Thank you for coming. It really has been a great year... if you're an insult comic. Jeez, 2010 had more negativity than an al Queda family reunion. Kurt Cobain sent a letter from Hell that said "See, I told you so..." 2010 is the only year where people sent post cards with pictures of the 2012 apocalypse that said "Wish you were here..."
Speaking of 2012, what an attention whore. We get it we're all gonna die because some ancient calendar stops and there was a prophecy of doom, but did there really need to be a movie? What if the special effects in the movie make the real end of days seem all fake and sucky? Way to ruin it for us, Hollywood.
Hollywood did us no favors this year. Have you seen The Tourist? Neither has anyone else. And Been Stiller snuck in just in time with another 'Fokkers' movie, proving you can take a bad joke and make a movie out of it. And then another and then wait a little while everyone forgets how bad those were and then put out a third. Jerry and Anne should have flushed him when they were trampin' on Vaudeville.
Lots of celebrities died in 2010. Lucky bastards. Corey Haim started if off by doing his best impression of Heath Ledger and it all went up hill from there. We lost many talented people, too. Leslie Neilsen, Barbara Billingsly, and Peter Graves all kicked it, blocking any hope for an Airplane sequel. Art Linkletter, Dino DiLaurentiis, Eddie Fisher, Tony Curtis, (who I once flipped off), Dennis Hopper, Dixie Carter, Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, John Foresythe, Tom Bosley, Merlin Olsen, Lena Horne, Fess Parker! TV Land just cut it's royalty payments in half! Wilfred Brimley did not die in 2010... He actually died in 1987 it's just that no one told him.
Comedians Greg Giraldo and Robert Schimmel who I loved, died. Schimmel after a brave battle with cancer, Giraldo after a brave night with vodka and pills. All of these people were lucky enough to check out this year...
But, first among equals was the tragic and sudden death of the greatest actor of all time, Gary Coleman. His talent was ripped from us too soon. Tragic the quality work we will never see. Tragic the insight and brilliance he brought to life. Tragic in so many ways. He never did find out what Willis was talkin' 'bout.
The Dif'rent Strokes reunion party gets smaller every year. Do you suppose Conrad Bane and Tood Bridges even bother anymore? That would be awkward, Conrad roaming the streets and alleys looking for Todd... "Todd, it's me, Conr... Mr. Drummond! Time to go to Waffle House!"
We finally got a handle on H1N1 in 2010, but there is no known vaccine for Bieber Fever. When does this finally get too creepy? This kid is 17, he looks and acts 4 and even moms are going all cougar over this kid. The whole thing reeks of mass market pedophilia to me.
Oprah and Larry King retired which was good, but both of them have been on TV more since they quit, which is bad. Larry King got his annual divorce as well. This one was free as his punch card already had 9 punches! He is free to pursue the 11th Mrs. King. What lucky lady wants to step up? Maybe Nancy Reagan is ready to move on? Hoooooo... That's a visual, huh?
TV gave us some pretty good shows this year and some not so good shows. Detroit 187 was a failure... The actors kept getting mistaken for real cops and shot dead at the craft service table. And talk about bad dialogue! Why would they ask some California keyboard jockey to write dialogue for mid western cops? It doesn't make sense! It is cool seeing some of the places we are all familiar with on TV. Like the crack house you pass every day going to work, or the bombed out train station. Feels like home.
Oh 2010, we are not going to miss you. We are broker, have less freedom, less opportunity, pay more for less, have lost our preeminence in the world and we will never get it back. Now I know what it was like to live in Rome during the time of Nero. It may not be the end of the world, but it is the end of the world as we know it.
So, let's all have some wine, pick up our fiddles and party like it's 1999, because 2011 brings us one year closer to the end. Rack up your Visa card, live like you were dying, covet your neighbor, drive too fast, buy that Justin Bieber album! Strap yourself in, 2011... it's gonna be a bumpy ride!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
I'm Bringing Funny Back
Amends
I feel badly about how we left things earlier. I mean, it really was sorta negative. I even left my mind long enough to make the mistake of publishing that in my opinion, in a year, my Mom would be officially old. Jesus, who makes that mistake?
To correct the record publicly I would like to say, Mom, you are not ageless, but you are timeless. I love you no matter how decrepit you may become, or what sort of burdens you will visit upon me and my life in your declining years.
I feel better now that I got that off my chest.
Moving on. Along with Euchre, I have been playing Scrabble with Em a lot lately. I have also been playing RISK online, since no one in real life will play RISK with me. Most people when you say you like RISK, say "Oh, me too!", followed by "but I haven't played in years," and then stony silence when you ask them if they would like to play. That silence says... "I don't think I would enjoy playing a game about conquering the world with someone who actually wants to conquer the world."
I can be a might competitive. It can be a turnoff. I admit this about myself. Admitting a shortcoming is the next best thing to actually doing something to fix it. They say admitting a problem is the hardest thing to do. Not for me! I admit all my foibles. I just have no intention of fixing them. I like me. You don't have to.
I also admit my dreams are prosaic. Mostly they are conflations of things that have happened to me in a day. If I do one thing repetitively, I dream about it repetitively. You can imagine the vanilla powered boredom that constitutes my dreams when I have, say, spent the day driving, or painting the house. Not only do I live the tedium in real time, I get to go over it again. all night. Like a record caught in one groove. So I like me, I don't like everything about me.
I can hear the collective sigh of you, dear reader. Get to the point. Fine. I will. Don't push me.
My dream last night was of a RISK shaped Scrabble board, where instead of the grid we all know, the playing surfaces were in the shape of the continents and instead of merely spelling words with letter tiles, the tiles were doing battle for position to spell better and more powerful words. It was like a game where spelling helped you conquer the world. In that game, I would be screwed. Good thing RISK requires no spelling.
I guess if you are not familiar with either game, the description of these two games being crossed up and synergized is lost on you. To which I ask... Would you like to play RISK with me? I conquered the world today. Twice.
What a Kroc
I watched the CNBC biography of Ray Kroc again today. How I admire his grit and his determination and his sheer moxie. He was not the smartest, most charming, best looking guy. All he did was keep trying and keep moving until he got what he wanted. Woe be to you if you stood in his way.
I don't admire his three marriages, or the way he comported himself in private sometimes. But nobody in the business world is perfect, except maybe Sam Walton and his invention has grown up to ruin the whole world one town at a time.
I bring this up because even though I know the whole history of the McDonald's corporation from rote memory (nerd alert!), I failed until tonight to recognize an easy but awesome joke. Really it's low hanging fruit, but I have been having problems finding my funny lately, so I'll take it.
The McDonald's brothers names were Richard and Maurice, or Dick and Mack as they were widely known. I am guessing it wasn't a simple coin toss that determined which one would have a burger named after him.
Too easy, I know. Like I said, I need the charity right about now. It struck me as funny. Inside every man is a 12 year-old boy who can't give up his addiction to penis jokes. It isn't even historically accurate since the Big Mac wasn't put on the menu until years after the brothers McDonald were out of the business, vanquished by a vengeful Kroc. There was quite a bit of vitriol involved with the split, so it is unlikely that Ray would name his flagship item after Mack McDonald.
One thing is certain... the world would be a funnier place if people all across the country could look up at the menu board of their local McDonald's, step to the counter, look the Mcworker in the eye and earnestly say, "I'd like a Big Dick, please."
With all apologies to Mr. Paul Harvey... Now you know the rest of the story..... Good day!
I feel badly about how we left things earlier. I mean, it really was sorta negative. I even left my mind long enough to make the mistake of publishing that in my opinion, in a year, my Mom would be officially old. Jesus, who makes that mistake?
To correct the record publicly I would like to say, Mom, you are not ageless, but you are timeless. I love you no matter how decrepit you may become, or what sort of burdens you will visit upon me and my life in your declining years.
I feel better now that I got that off my chest.
Moving on. Along with Euchre, I have been playing Scrabble with Em a lot lately. I have also been playing RISK online, since no one in real life will play RISK with me. Most people when you say you like RISK, say "Oh, me too!", followed by "but I haven't played in years," and then stony silence when you ask them if they would like to play. That silence says... "I don't think I would enjoy playing a game about conquering the world with someone who actually wants to conquer the world."
I can be a might competitive. It can be a turnoff. I admit this about myself. Admitting a shortcoming is the next best thing to actually doing something to fix it. They say admitting a problem is the hardest thing to do. Not for me! I admit all my foibles. I just have no intention of fixing them. I like me. You don't have to.
I also admit my dreams are prosaic. Mostly they are conflations of things that have happened to me in a day. If I do one thing repetitively, I dream about it repetitively. You can imagine the vanilla powered boredom that constitutes my dreams when I have, say, spent the day driving, or painting the house. Not only do I live the tedium in real time, I get to go over it again. all night. Like a record caught in one groove. So I like me, I don't like everything about me.
I can hear the collective sigh of you, dear reader. Get to the point. Fine. I will. Don't push me.
My dream last night was of a RISK shaped Scrabble board, where instead of the grid we all know, the playing surfaces were in the shape of the continents and instead of merely spelling words with letter tiles, the tiles were doing battle for position to spell better and more powerful words. It was like a game where spelling helped you conquer the world. In that game, I would be screwed. Good thing RISK requires no spelling.
I guess if you are not familiar with either game, the description of these two games being crossed up and synergized is lost on you. To which I ask... Would you like to play RISK with me? I conquered the world today. Twice.
What a Kroc
I watched the CNBC biography of Ray Kroc again today. How I admire his grit and his determination and his sheer moxie. He was not the smartest, most charming, best looking guy. All he did was keep trying and keep moving until he got what he wanted. Woe be to you if you stood in his way.
I don't admire his three marriages, or the way he comported himself in private sometimes. But nobody in the business world is perfect, except maybe Sam Walton and his invention has grown up to ruin the whole world one town at a time.
I bring this up because even though I know the whole history of the McDonald's corporation from rote memory (nerd alert!), I failed until tonight to recognize an easy but awesome joke. Really it's low hanging fruit, but I have been having problems finding my funny lately, so I'll take it.
The McDonald's brothers names were Richard and Maurice, or Dick and Mack as they were widely known. I am guessing it wasn't a simple coin toss that determined which one would have a burger named after him.
Too easy, I know. Like I said, I need the charity right about now. It struck me as funny. Inside every man is a 12 year-old boy who can't give up his addiction to penis jokes. It isn't even historically accurate since the Big Mac wasn't put on the menu until years after the brothers McDonald were out of the business, vanquished by a vengeful Kroc. There was quite a bit of vitriol involved with the split, so it is unlikely that Ray would name his flagship item after Mack McDonald.
One thing is certain... the world would be a funnier place if people all across the country could look up at the menu board of their local McDonald's, step to the counter, look the Mcworker in the eye and earnestly say, "I'd like a Big Dick, please."
With all apologies to Mr. Paul Harvey... Now you know the rest of the story..... Good day!
These Boots Were Made for (Mall) Walkin'
Forced Indoors
It is a poor facsimile to walking outdoors, but to my mind a vast improvement over a treadmill. Our mall walking season began last week. We go to a virtually deserted mall not far from the house and mostly have the run (or the walk as it were) of the place. Today's session started fine, but by the end started resembling a scene from Night of the Living Dead, with slow, mangled people in advanced stages of decay doing their zombie walking which resembles a sort of slow motion shuffle drag... shuffle drag. I shouldn't be so quick to get pissy. If I live that long, I will surely be one of them. I always thought losing my mind would be the worst fate of aging. A number of recent occurrences have lead me to believe otherwise.
35 and Falling Apart
My MRI results came back. Arthritis in C 1-6. My body is decaying at a young age. There are a lot of reasons this would be so, not the least among them my mistreatment of my body throughout my young adulthood. I am sure genetics plays a major role, too. The end result is I am always stiff and sore and feel way older than I am. Furthermore, most of the drugs on the market that treat the symptoms are expensive and are contraindicated with my other medicines and conditions, namely blood pressure and kidney disease.
So I paid (or will pay when the bill comes) a lot of money for a test that made me mess my pants from fear only to find out what in my heart I already knew. On top of which, there is not much I can do about it but to keep exercising, keep stretching and keep losing weight.
Being Old in Public
Ok, I am just going to come out and say it. It's rude to be old in public. It's rude to drive so slowly you impede traffic. It's rude to take 30 minutes to park your Lincoln and still be crooked and buck-toothed. It is rude, as I saw today, to 'walk' two abreast, three feet apart when there are 50 people trying to walk the same mall, forcing them to go around you.
I feel awful, but I believe this with all my heart that it is rude to be old in public, the same way I believe most Asians can't drive, (sorry, Asian friends... being good at math is cool, too!), and most men don't wash their hands after they pee, (this I unfortunately know to be true). My own dear mother is reading this right now and on the next browser tab is booking a flight to my home for the sole purpose of knocking me upside the head. She, after all, is coming on to her last year of her 60's. I am sorry to say I define 70 as officially old.
Not used up, not worthless, not in God's waiting room, but you have to admit at 70, things change a bit. If someone dies of a heart attack in their 60's, the eulogy will almost certainly contain the phrase "...was taken too soon from us..." Take the same person in their 70's and the phrase becomes "...lived a long, rich life..." Put that person in their 80's and it changes again "...was blessed to have spent so many healthy years on this Earth..." If someone dies in their 90's nobody comes to the funeral because everyone they knew is dead, or has forgotten them. Most likely you'll hear "...I thought she died in '78!"
What of Me
So, what of me? It does not bode well that I am only in my 30s and the ill effects of aging are already hitting me. It has actually got me down. Very down. How bad will it get? will I be able to cope? Can I live a happy life if my mobility is impaired? Will I still have the ability to offer myself physically in the service of my faith as I do now with things like Habitat and REACH?
I don't know the answers. I guess I will just have to stay positive and keep working and keep pretending and keep moving and shaking my ass in order to stave off the surgeon's knife for one more year. Right now, I'm not feeling positive or hopeful or optimistic. I'm just feeling old.
Need a Mental Mint
I just went back an reread what I have written so far. What a downer. So, I'll leave you with a mental mint. Maybe dinner was so so, but at least you get a mint at the end.
We had an informal night of cards and conversation with our neighbors last night. We, being a tight knit neighborhood are not strangers by any means. Living directly across the street from each other gives ample opportunity to visit in the summer evenings, or at least shout friendly missives across the street. They are middle aged, with grown kids but are pretty cool and like-minded. It is interesting the parallels between us... Emily is like Glen, I am like Nancy. We had a good talk and a good laugh and didn't call it a night until 10:30! For those of you who think this is incredibly lame, I understand. I am a morning person... I start turning into a pumpkin as soon as I hear "Wheel! Of! Fortune!" come blasting out of my TV. We are what we are, which makes our hanging out with people 20 years older than us, perfect.
We had a blast. Well, I had a blast anyhow because for once in my life, I had all the cards. It was the best card night I have had. Ever. We were playing Euchre and I had a loner, I was able to set twice and mostly able to take all five tricks when I called trump. We played four rounds and I won all four convincingly. I shall try to remember last night and the unsurpassed card luck I had. It is a rarity indeed.
And Finally
I guess that wasn't much of an ending, or for that matter a mental mint. I admit I am struggling here to be my normal ebullient and effervescent self, like a well spoken Alka Seltzer. So, I won't put on heirs. It is what it is. If you want funny, go back and read some of my previous posts. They're funny. Maybe I'll do the same. I could use a laugh.
It is a poor facsimile to walking outdoors, but to my mind a vast improvement over a treadmill. Our mall walking season began last week. We go to a virtually deserted mall not far from the house and mostly have the run (or the walk as it were) of the place. Today's session started fine, but by the end started resembling a scene from Night of the Living Dead, with slow, mangled people in advanced stages of decay doing their zombie walking which resembles a sort of slow motion shuffle drag... shuffle drag. I shouldn't be so quick to get pissy. If I live that long, I will surely be one of them. I always thought losing my mind would be the worst fate of aging. A number of recent occurrences have lead me to believe otherwise.
35 and Falling Apart
My MRI results came back. Arthritis in C 1-6. My body is decaying at a young age. There are a lot of reasons this would be so, not the least among them my mistreatment of my body throughout my young adulthood. I am sure genetics plays a major role, too. The end result is I am always stiff and sore and feel way older than I am. Furthermore, most of the drugs on the market that treat the symptoms are expensive and are contraindicated with my other medicines and conditions, namely blood pressure and kidney disease.
So I paid (or will pay when the bill comes) a lot of money for a test that made me mess my pants from fear only to find out what in my heart I already knew. On top of which, there is not much I can do about it but to keep exercising, keep stretching and keep losing weight.
Being Old in Public
Ok, I am just going to come out and say it. It's rude to be old in public. It's rude to drive so slowly you impede traffic. It's rude to take 30 minutes to park your Lincoln and still be crooked and buck-toothed. It is rude, as I saw today, to 'walk' two abreast, three feet apart when there are 50 people trying to walk the same mall, forcing them to go around you.
I feel awful, but I believe this with all my heart that it is rude to be old in public, the same way I believe most Asians can't drive, (sorry, Asian friends... being good at math is cool, too!), and most men don't wash their hands after they pee, (this I unfortunately know to be true). My own dear mother is reading this right now and on the next browser tab is booking a flight to my home for the sole purpose of knocking me upside the head. She, after all, is coming on to her last year of her 60's. I am sorry to say I define 70 as officially old.
Not used up, not worthless, not in God's waiting room, but you have to admit at 70, things change a bit. If someone dies of a heart attack in their 60's, the eulogy will almost certainly contain the phrase "...was taken too soon from us..." Take the same person in their 70's and the phrase becomes "...lived a long, rich life..." Put that person in their 80's and it changes again "...was blessed to have spent so many healthy years on this Earth..." If someone dies in their 90's nobody comes to the funeral because everyone they knew is dead, or has forgotten them. Most likely you'll hear "...I thought she died in '78!"
What of Me
So, what of me? It does not bode well that I am only in my 30s and the ill effects of aging are already hitting me. It has actually got me down. Very down. How bad will it get? will I be able to cope? Can I live a happy life if my mobility is impaired? Will I still have the ability to offer myself physically in the service of my faith as I do now with things like Habitat and REACH?
I don't know the answers. I guess I will just have to stay positive and keep working and keep pretending and keep moving and shaking my ass in order to stave off the surgeon's knife for one more year. Right now, I'm not feeling positive or hopeful or optimistic. I'm just feeling old.
Need a Mental Mint
I just went back an reread what I have written so far. What a downer. So, I'll leave you with a mental mint. Maybe dinner was so so, but at least you get a mint at the end.
We had an informal night of cards and conversation with our neighbors last night. We, being a tight knit neighborhood are not strangers by any means. Living directly across the street from each other gives ample opportunity to visit in the summer evenings, or at least shout friendly missives across the street. They are middle aged, with grown kids but are pretty cool and like-minded. It is interesting the parallels between us... Emily is like Glen, I am like Nancy. We had a good talk and a good laugh and didn't call it a night until 10:30! For those of you who think this is incredibly lame, I understand. I am a morning person... I start turning into a pumpkin as soon as I hear "Wheel! Of! Fortune!" come blasting out of my TV. We are what we are, which makes our hanging out with people 20 years older than us, perfect.
We had a blast. Well, I had a blast anyhow because for once in my life, I had all the cards. It was the best card night I have had. Ever. We were playing Euchre and I had a loner, I was able to set twice and mostly able to take all five tricks when I called trump. We played four rounds and I won all four convincingly. I shall try to remember last night and the unsurpassed card luck I had. It is a rarity indeed.
And Finally
I guess that wasn't much of an ending, or for that matter a mental mint. I admit I am struggling here to be my normal ebullient and effervescent self, like a well spoken Alka Seltzer. So, I won't put on heirs. It is what it is. If you want funny, go back and read some of my previous posts. They're funny. Maybe I'll do the same. I could use a laugh.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Lions Win!! What's that smell?
This Blentry begins with a digression Actually, almost the entirety of this essay has nothing to do with anything. That is to say that the first few (all but the last two, actually) paragraphs really have nothing to do with what I intended to talk about. In the newspaper biz, they would call it "burying the lead." I beat it with a hammer, burned it, ground it up and then buried it. But in doing so, perhaps there is some gold to mined within, so, just go with it. For those of you familiar with the T.V. program, The Simpsons, you'll note that the best episodes start with a non sequitur and roll on from there.
And so this begins with the night of Christmas when just near bed time, Emily says... "Tomorrow, we are going to have quiet time. We have spent entirely too much time in front of the TV and we need to pursue other passtimes without the TV on," or words to that effect.
I agreed. Dawn the next morning it occurs to me the Lions are playing Miami and I had a good feeling. I am not one to gloat or brag about my Lions fandom, for it is akin to being a battered spouse. It is something typically endured silently, not celebrated. But, like the city of Detroit itself, my adopted home, I cannot give up on the team. I feel it is important for Detroit to be known as something other than the murder capital of the country, or for its recent and long-standing corruption, or its blatant display of urban erosion and lack of care for its gentry. It is more important than for most cities for Detroit to have its sports and for those sports to be successful. So, Detroit teams are in my heart and they form the basis and very nearly the entirety of my love for sports.
Are we following so far because this has nothing to do with this blog post? Good.
I said, then, to my wife, "Quiet time will have to begin after the game, or at least after the point when the Lions are ahead in the third quarter and then go on some sort of holiday and break my heart in some crushing defeat of less than seven points," or words to that effect.
It was a really good game. We committed fewer penalties, executed good plays on offense, stayed composed on defense and created turnovers that lead to scores. Amazingly, the Detroit Lions played like a cohesive football team in a professional league. Sure, the 'fins were only at 500 coming in to the game, but progress is progress.
I did a little celebratory dance. I kept repeating, "The Lions won! The Lions won!" The Lions won their third game in a row! Not just their third game in a season, which would have been cause enough for excitement. And it was their second road game win in a row, too, the first I hear since 2004. This is a real streak!
Here is more information that is unimportant but necessary. I had passed my freshness date by several hours as on Christmas Eve, I re-caulked the tub. It needed 36 hours to cure, so consequently, it had been a bit since we showered. Unfortunately, the caulk didn't stick, my second issue with DAP products in 6 months in spite of following the directions to the letter. I am not amused. But you didn't need to know that, so we'll keep moving on. After my shower, I came back downstairs. Em is talking on the phone, standing near the TV which is off. She is gesturing toward the TV. I get the impression quiet time has begun. I nod in understanding, yet her gesturing continued which is when I noticed the smell.
She finally broke in on her conversation and told me there was a loud pop, some smoke, bad smells and the TV went bye-bye. I get, it, she wanted quiet time, but did she have to blow up the damn TV? Or was the TV so shocked at the winning Lions that it just gave up the ghost?
I pulled open the access panel and the bulb, which we just replaced a few months ago at considerable expense had not just failed, but failed catastrophically. Glass shards, melted casings, cracked housings... oh yeah, it was toast.
So we bought a new TV. The end.
Just kidding! That's not the end. We did buy a new TV and for once showed restraint in our purchase. We almost bought the super duper 3D smart home nexus point hoody-hoo, but since we couldn't afford even a more modest set, we decided to dial it back a little and got a good set for a good value.
I thought until this morning it was an LED. We looked at so many, I got confused. I usually walk into a store and know exactly what I want having done all the research in advance. Often, I am able to name my price, or at least be comfortable with the price I am paying because I have done my shopping in advance. Given the last minute nature of this purchase, I did not have that luxury so I had to sort of wing-it. Long story short, (too late, I know), it is another LCD, but it has a high refresh rate and great brightness that reduces some of the blurring and artificiality found in some LED TVs. And it was relatively inexpensive which is important because this purchase was deficit spending. It is rated pretty highly with words like "value" being tossed around a lot in the write-ups.
So, overall, I am happy with it. I am not happy that the last TV only lasted 6 years, cost $3,000 and ate up bulbs like a pothead at an all night buffet. Here is hoping this one lasts longer... or like my Facebook status said, until I get cataracts. Merry Christmas, Discover Card. Thanks for the new TV.
And so this begins with the night of Christmas when just near bed time, Emily says... "Tomorrow, we are going to have quiet time. We have spent entirely too much time in front of the TV and we need to pursue other passtimes without the TV on," or words to that effect.
I agreed. Dawn the next morning it occurs to me the Lions are playing Miami and I had a good feeling. I am not one to gloat or brag about my Lions fandom, for it is akin to being a battered spouse. It is something typically endured silently, not celebrated. But, like the city of Detroit itself, my adopted home, I cannot give up on the team. I feel it is important for Detroit to be known as something other than the murder capital of the country, or for its recent and long-standing corruption, or its blatant display of urban erosion and lack of care for its gentry. It is more important than for most cities for Detroit to have its sports and for those sports to be successful. So, Detroit teams are in my heart and they form the basis and very nearly the entirety of my love for sports.
Are we following so far because this has nothing to do with this blog post? Good.
I said, then, to my wife, "Quiet time will have to begin after the game, or at least after the point when the Lions are ahead in the third quarter and then go on some sort of holiday and break my heart in some crushing defeat of less than seven points," or words to that effect.
It was a really good game. We committed fewer penalties, executed good plays on offense, stayed composed on defense and created turnovers that lead to scores. Amazingly, the Detroit Lions played like a cohesive football team in a professional league. Sure, the 'fins were only at 500 coming in to the game, but progress is progress.
I did a little celebratory dance. I kept repeating, "The Lions won! The Lions won!" The Lions won their third game in a row! Not just their third game in a season, which would have been cause enough for excitement. And it was their second road game win in a row, too, the first I hear since 2004. This is a real streak!
Here is more information that is unimportant but necessary. I had passed my freshness date by several hours as on Christmas Eve, I re-caulked the tub. It needed 36 hours to cure, so consequently, it had been a bit since we showered. Unfortunately, the caulk didn't stick, my second issue with DAP products in 6 months in spite of following the directions to the letter. I am not amused. But you didn't need to know that, so we'll keep moving on. After my shower, I came back downstairs. Em is talking on the phone, standing near the TV which is off. She is gesturing toward the TV. I get the impression quiet time has begun. I nod in understanding, yet her gesturing continued which is when I noticed the smell.
She finally broke in on her conversation and told me there was a loud pop, some smoke, bad smells and the TV went bye-bye. I get, it, she wanted quiet time, but did she have to blow up the damn TV? Or was the TV so shocked at the winning Lions that it just gave up the ghost?
I pulled open the access panel and the bulb, which we just replaced a few months ago at considerable expense had not just failed, but failed catastrophically. Glass shards, melted casings, cracked housings... oh yeah, it was toast.
So we bought a new TV. The end.
Just kidding! That's not the end. We did buy a new TV and for once showed restraint in our purchase. We almost bought the super duper 3D smart home nexus point hoody-hoo, but since we couldn't afford even a more modest set, we decided to dial it back a little and got a good set for a good value.
I thought until this morning it was an LED. We looked at so many, I got confused. I usually walk into a store and know exactly what I want having done all the research in advance. Often, I am able to name my price, or at least be comfortable with the price I am paying because I have done my shopping in advance. Given the last minute nature of this purchase, I did not have that luxury so I had to sort of wing-it. Long story short, (too late, I know), it is another LCD, but it has a high refresh rate and great brightness that reduces some of the blurring and artificiality found in some LED TVs. And it was relatively inexpensive which is important because this purchase was deficit spending. It is rated pretty highly with words like "value" being tossed around a lot in the write-ups.
So, overall, I am happy with it. I am not happy that the last TV only lasted 6 years, cost $3,000 and ate up bulbs like a pothead at an all night buffet. Here is hoping this one lasts longer... or like my Facebook status said, until I get cataracts. Merry Christmas, Discover Card. Thanks for the new TV.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Healing Hands
Whatsoever You Do...
Tomorrow morning, Christmas Eve, Em and I will do what is becoming a tradition for us, which is serving at a breakfast for the homeless, at our church. When I was younger, there was a restaurant that was for all intents and purposes a hang out for the large disenfranchised community that congregate down in the "Heartside" district. That restaurant was called Casey's and because little people run big government bureaucracy, it was decided that Casey's was in violation of some codes and needed to come up with what may as well have been a quadrillion dollars to fix them.
Predictably, Casey's shut down. I went there one Christmas Eve with my dad when I was younger and it changed me. Now I am proud to be a member of a church that took up the mantel of the breakfast and even the name. Along with the breakfast come the socks. Casey's socks are big warm comfy socks stuffed to the brim with necessities and niceties, from deodorant to candy. The youth of the church put them together from items purchased and donated. We do hundreds of socks. All are given out. We could make more.
So, it's Casey's breakfast tomorrow, but it's Bill's reality check. I whine quite a lot in life and on this blog about not having all I want and money being tight. I need some not so gentle reminders of how so many people live and how they would give their I teeth, assuming they still had teeth, to live like I do. We all need to be reminded of the blessings upon which we have been bestowed. I'm cool if you don't make God a central part of your life, or carry a health suspicion, or subscribe to ideas of a higher power that differ from my interpretation and belief. I'm cool if you don't believe in anything at all or don't know what to believe and so you try not to think about it. I've been there. But, I think you are living a life of tragedy and emptiness if you do not take occasion to serve those people who are the least among us.
Do it in the name of simple human decency or anthropological curiosity, just please do it. There are people who rely on your kindness, your smile and your warmth to get them through one night. One night that would my my whole year of bad nights look like a trip to the candy store. And since I am such a libertarian, the only way we can get the government's focus back on what it should be is for we private citizens to take care of our own with love and care and efficiency that would overpower the best of what government could do making all our live better.
Wow, one vignette, two soap boxes.
Time to Lighten the Mood
Since this is my blog and since the main portion of feedback I get is from humor, I guess I can't leave on a heavy note, so I will add this little after dinner mint.
My internet access has been going in and out over the last few days. It's comcastic. Anyhow, this morning I was listening to streaming radio while my connection went down and the stream went with it. How ever will I listen to the radio now, I wondered? It took me a full two minutes to realize I could, you know, turn on the radio. ahem. I'm not a smart man.
And Now, Merry Christmas
In the immortal words of the amortal Krusty the Klown:
Have a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a kwazy Kwanza a tip top Tet and a blissful, dignified Ramadan.
I shall see you all on the other side. I hope yours is good, fun and safe! God Bless!
Tomorrow morning, Christmas Eve, Em and I will do what is becoming a tradition for us, which is serving at a breakfast for the homeless, at our church. When I was younger, there was a restaurant that was for all intents and purposes a hang out for the large disenfranchised community that congregate down in the "Heartside" district. That restaurant was called Casey's and because little people run big government bureaucracy, it was decided that Casey's was in violation of some codes and needed to come up with what may as well have been a quadrillion dollars to fix them.
Predictably, Casey's shut down. I went there one Christmas Eve with my dad when I was younger and it changed me. Now I am proud to be a member of a church that took up the mantel of the breakfast and even the name. Along with the breakfast come the socks. Casey's socks are big warm comfy socks stuffed to the brim with necessities and niceties, from deodorant to candy. The youth of the church put them together from items purchased and donated. We do hundreds of socks. All are given out. We could make more.
So, it's Casey's breakfast tomorrow, but it's Bill's reality check. I whine quite a lot in life and on this blog about not having all I want and money being tight. I need some not so gentle reminders of how so many people live and how they would give their I teeth, assuming they still had teeth, to live like I do. We all need to be reminded of the blessings upon which we have been bestowed. I'm cool if you don't make God a central part of your life, or carry a health suspicion, or subscribe to ideas of a higher power that differ from my interpretation and belief. I'm cool if you don't believe in anything at all or don't know what to believe and so you try not to think about it. I've been there. But, I think you are living a life of tragedy and emptiness if you do not take occasion to serve those people who are the least among us.
Do it in the name of simple human decency or anthropological curiosity, just please do it. There are people who rely on your kindness, your smile and your warmth to get them through one night. One night that would my my whole year of bad nights look like a trip to the candy store. And since I am such a libertarian, the only way we can get the government's focus back on what it should be is for we private citizens to take care of our own with love and care and efficiency that would overpower the best of what government could do making all our live better.
Wow, one vignette, two soap boxes.
Time to Lighten the Mood
Since this is my blog and since the main portion of feedback I get is from humor, I guess I can't leave on a heavy note, so I will add this little after dinner mint.
My internet access has been going in and out over the last few days. It's comcastic. Anyhow, this morning I was listening to streaming radio while my connection went down and the stream went with it. How ever will I listen to the radio now, I wondered? It took me a full two minutes to realize I could, you know, turn on the radio. ahem. I'm not a smart man.
And Now, Merry Christmas
In the immortal words of the amortal Krusty the Klown:
Have a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a kwazy Kwanza a tip top Tet and a blissful, dignified Ramadan.
I shall see you all on the other side. I hope yours is good, fun and safe! God Bless!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
If I Had a Fire Extinguisher...
OPA!
Did I tell you the one where I was briefly on fire? Well, it's short. I was standing over a grill with my wife's second cousin, Mark. Now that given the tenuous nature of our familial relationship is not at all sufficient to describe our fondness for each other, we just refer to each other as 'Cousin', or by nothing at all.
Cousin Mark and his awesome family live in New Jersey, north of where Em and I lived for a few years in the go-go aughts to the first decade of the new (last?) millennium. They gladly invited us for Thanksgiving our first year there and we continued that tradition for all our Thanksgivings until we moved from New Jersey, or rather were run out by the failed policies and rampant runaway taxes of too many democratic administrations. But I digress.
Mark and I were standing over the grill. He likes to grill his turkey. Slow, over coals. It's a nice change from the normal, giving a distinct taste without the fat of a deep fried turkey. One would think without the incendiary nature of the former as well, but I was about to learn otherwise.
We needed to shift the turkey, or something. I don't remember what, but I was hunched over the grill with oven mitts on, moving the turkey. Apparently some of the juices got below the foil barrier and were atomized in just such a way to make them powerfully flammable and in a wooooooosh(!) I was on fire.
Just for a second, not a big deal. I was actually laughing. So, my one arm was a totally hairless and a little burnt. My eyebrows were well trimmed... I still had some, but they were quite literally shadows of their former glorious selves. I came inside and was washing my arm and face when Em's MANDAR went off. You know, MANDAR is the thing married women develop that lets them know when something stupid is about to, or just did happen.
"Whatcha doin'?" she asked probing, while somewhere in the near distance there emitted a quiet ping each time her MANDAR made a full revolution. It wasn't my appearance that tipped her off as I sheepishly said "nothing", it was the smell of burning hair, which lingers a bit. Now the entire family is in the kitchen, even people I didn't know or at least didn't know well, and I had to regale them with my story.
That's all. That's the whole story. No attorneys or doctors or emotional distress. I put some burn cream on my arm and sat and ate dinner and drove the 2 hours home in perfect happiness and contentment with the only real victim being my beautiful Andy Rooney eyebrows which have never been the same. Can I sue for that?
Scrabble
I think I am ready to retire for awhile. I was getting tired and instead of tailing off, I added more games. I am speaking of Scrabble on Facebook. It is more than a pass time and has been good to me lo these many months, but I need a break.
So for all you with whom I enjoy a game of Scrabble, after our current game is done, I will be vacationing until after the first of the year. Merry Christmas.
I Had a Dream
I had a dream last night that my dad was in town and riding with me in my squeaky worn out car with the broken door lock and the whacked out electrical system and he said "We're gonna get this taken care of," which in dad parlance meant he was going to buy me a new car. I was so excited until I realized that I am 35 years old, gainfully (or is that painfully?) employed and it would be odd for my daddy to have to buy me a car.
But as it is, if I were to get a new car now, it would only be due to someone's benevolence as I certainly can't afford it. Since I am not booked on Wheel of Fortune or anything like that, I can rule out blind stinking luck. It was just a dream. A simple bout of wishful thinking. My last dream of the night was my old HR person (who no longer works there) warning me the company had been sold and I was not on the 'Bring Forward' list.
Dreams come in many forms. Some entertain, some scare, some make you wonder and some are just wonderful.
Sweet Dreams, dear readers... may all yours come true.
Did I tell you the one where I was briefly on fire? Well, it's short. I was standing over a grill with my wife's second cousin, Mark. Now that given the tenuous nature of our familial relationship is not at all sufficient to describe our fondness for each other, we just refer to each other as 'Cousin', or by nothing at all.
Cousin Mark and his awesome family live in New Jersey, north of where Em and I lived for a few years in the go-go aughts to the first decade of the new (last?) millennium. They gladly invited us for Thanksgiving our first year there and we continued that tradition for all our Thanksgivings until we moved from New Jersey, or rather were run out by the failed policies and rampant runaway taxes of too many democratic administrations. But I digress.
Mark and I were standing over the grill. He likes to grill his turkey. Slow, over coals. It's a nice change from the normal, giving a distinct taste without the fat of a deep fried turkey. One would think without the incendiary nature of the former as well, but I was about to learn otherwise.
We needed to shift the turkey, or something. I don't remember what, but I was hunched over the grill with oven mitts on, moving the turkey. Apparently some of the juices got below the foil barrier and were atomized in just such a way to make them powerfully flammable and in a wooooooosh(!) I was on fire.
Just for a second, not a big deal. I was actually laughing. So, my one arm was a totally hairless and a little burnt. My eyebrows were well trimmed... I still had some, but they were quite literally shadows of their former glorious selves. I came inside and was washing my arm and face when Em's MANDAR went off. You know, MANDAR is the thing married women develop that lets them know when something stupid is about to, or just did happen.
"Whatcha doin'?" she asked probing, while somewhere in the near distance there emitted a quiet ping each time her MANDAR made a full revolution. It wasn't my appearance that tipped her off as I sheepishly said "nothing", it was the smell of burning hair, which lingers a bit. Now the entire family is in the kitchen, even people I didn't know or at least didn't know well, and I had to regale them with my story.
That's all. That's the whole story. No attorneys or doctors or emotional distress. I put some burn cream on my arm and sat and ate dinner and drove the 2 hours home in perfect happiness and contentment with the only real victim being my beautiful Andy Rooney eyebrows which have never been the same. Can I sue for that?
Scrabble
I think I am ready to retire for awhile. I was getting tired and instead of tailing off, I added more games. I am speaking of Scrabble on Facebook. It is more than a pass time and has been good to me lo these many months, but I need a break.
So for all you with whom I enjoy a game of Scrabble, after our current game is done, I will be vacationing until after the first of the year. Merry Christmas.
I Had a Dream
I had a dream last night that my dad was in town and riding with me in my squeaky worn out car with the broken door lock and the whacked out electrical system and he said "We're gonna get this taken care of," which in dad parlance meant he was going to buy me a new car. I was so excited until I realized that I am 35 years old, gainfully (or is that painfully?) employed and it would be odd for my daddy to have to buy me a car.
But as it is, if I were to get a new car now, it would only be due to someone's benevolence as I certainly can't afford it. Since I am not booked on Wheel of Fortune or anything like that, I can rule out blind stinking luck. It was just a dream. A simple bout of wishful thinking. My last dream of the night was my old HR person (who no longer works there) warning me the company had been sold and I was not on the 'Bring Forward' list.
Dreams come in many forms. Some entertain, some scare, some make you wonder and some are just wonderful.
Sweet Dreams, dear readers... may all yours come true.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Total Eclipse of the Moon
I missed it. I didn't even attempt to see it. I hate staying up that late. I didn't even sit in bed and look at the live feed on my laptop. I just let it pass. Maybe I'll be around in 600 years when it happens again. I am referencing, of course, the total lunar eclipse, which coincided with the onset of the winter solstice that happened last night, despite the fact I wasn't a party to seeing it.
We had clouds, so there wasn't a snowball's chance we were going to see it anyhow, so I really didn't feel compelled to watch it online or on T.V. since the magic is more than slightly dimmed by not seeing it for real. If I could have seen it happening, against a dark clear sky I may have brewed a cup of coffee and toughed it out, but under the circumstances, nah.
The last time I stayed up to watch a phenomenon was when we were on our cruise in the Mediterranean. The captain announced we would be passing through the Strait of Messina at around 3:00am local time. I thought, I'd like to see that. Sicily and Italy in one scene, dark and mysterious. We were with another couple and my male counterpart decided he, too would like to see the "Old Country", which truly was his family's old country.
Over a bottle of wine, inside the large warm dining room it seemed like such a wonderful, adventurous idea. It was so perfect as a matter of fact that we could hardly now imagine not doing it. We celebrated our intrepid spirit by toasting to some cocktails in the stern of the ship. We noticed it was just a little rough. When we walked the companionway past the storm doors, we noticed a little whistle like you might hear when a breeze catches a piece of siding on your house and makes a little noise.
Many more cocktails and hours later, it was rough for real. We decided to stumble to bed, set our alarms and meet on the thwart deck to witness the majesty of the moment of passing through the Stait of Messina.
At 2:30, I was still awake, having great difficulty keeping the contents of my stomach from gushing forth as the ship was heaving and lurching. We were in a lower deck room and out our large porthole, we could see the sea, roiling and large waves cresting against the side of our vessel spraying way up past the top of our window. It was, disconcerting.
I passed a coffee stand on the way up and availed myself of a cup. I walked to the storm doors and not seeing my companion, decided to step outside to see if he was there. I stepped to the storm doors and the moment they parted, the lid and all the coffee in my cup was immediately sucked out of cup and disappeared somewhere to stern.
Oh... I see it's a little windy. No sweat, I thought as I plugged my nose and blew to make sure my ear drums hadn't ruptured upon the extreme decompression I just suffered.
And cold. And wet. And miserable. John, my counterpart came out a short time later and immediately his hat was summarily removed in a similarly rude fashion as my coffee. He managed to catch it, though, and we exchanged groggy drunken salutations lost to the wind. We looked ahead when we could until the salt wind dried our eyes and we needed to look away. And we could see?
Nothing. Some lights on each side, some buoys, otherwise not a GD thing.
There we were, Frick and Frack, looking like Gilligan and the Skipper in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island, holding ourselves fast against the raging sea, with John's one hand plastered to his hat. And we stood there, in silence and waited the full hour or more until we got through the Strait and just as silently went back to our own staterooms and slept a little more before the morning.
As an epilogue, had we read the cruise log ahead of time, we would have noted that upon our return from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean we would pass the straights at a reasonable hour, in full light which would allow us the ability to actually see something. From the bar. Which is the way God intended it.
But, I have the story. For a guy like me, the story is worth the suffering as I can get miles out of a story featuring suffering as a main character. I won't be able to regale people about freezing off my attachments at 3 am looking at the lunar eclipse, but I sure did sleep well. This one was the one that got away. I'm okay with that.
We had clouds, so there wasn't a snowball's chance we were going to see it anyhow, so I really didn't feel compelled to watch it online or on T.V. since the magic is more than slightly dimmed by not seeing it for real. If I could have seen it happening, against a dark clear sky I may have brewed a cup of coffee and toughed it out, but under the circumstances, nah.
The last time I stayed up to watch a phenomenon was when we were on our cruise in the Mediterranean. The captain announced we would be passing through the Strait of Messina at around 3:00am local time. I thought, I'd like to see that. Sicily and Italy in one scene, dark and mysterious. We were with another couple and my male counterpart decided he, too would like to see the "Old Country", which truly was his family's old country.
Over a bottle of wine, inside the large warm dining room it seemed like such a wonderful, adventurous idea. It was so perfect as a matter of fact that we could hardly now imagine not doing it. We celebrated our intrepid spirit by toasting to some cocktails in the stern of the ship. We noticed it was just a little rough. When we walked the companionway past the storm doors, we noticed a little whistle like you might hear when a breeze catches a piece of siding on your house and makes a little noise.
Many more cocktails and hours later, it was rough for real. We decided to stumble to bed, set our alarms and meet on the thwart deck to witness the majesty of the moment of passing through the Stait of Messina.
At 2:30, I was still awake, having great difficulty keeping the contents of my stomach from gushing forth as the ship was heaving and lurching. We were in a lower deck room and out our large porthole, we could see the sea, roiling and large waves cresting against the side of our vessel spraying way up past the top of our window. It was, disconcerting.
I passed a coffee stand on the way up and availed myself of a cup. I walked to the storm doors and not seeing my companion, decided to step outside to see if he was there. I stepped to the storm doors and the moment they parted, the lid and all the coffee in my cup was immediately sucked out of cup and disappeared somewhere to stern.
Oh... I see it's a little windy. No sweat, I thought as I plugged my nose and blew to make sure my ear drums hadn't ruptured upon the extreme decompression I just suffered.
And cold. And wet. And miserable. John, my counterpart came out a short time later and immediately his hat was summarily removed in a similarly rude fashion as my coffee. He managed to catch it, though, and we exchanged groggy drunken salutations lost to the wind. We looked ahead when we could until the salt wind dried our eyes and we needed to look away. And we could see?
Nothing. Some lights on each side, some buoys, otherwise not a GD thing.
There we were, Frick and Frack, looking like Gilligan and the Skipper in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island, holding ourselves fast against the raging sea, with John's one hand plastered to his hat. And we stood there, in silence and waited the full hour or more until we got through the Strait and just as silently went back to our own staterooms and slept a little more before the morning.
As an epilogue, had we read the cruise log ahead of time, we would have noted that upon our return from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean we would pass the straights at a reasonable hour, in full light which would allow us the ability to actually see something. From the bar. Which is the way God intended it.
But, I have the story. For a guy like me, the story is worth the suffering as I can get miles out of a story featuring suffering as a main character. I won't be able to regale people about freezing off my attachments at 3 am looking at the lunar eclipse, but I sure did sleep well. This one was the one that got away. I'm okay with that.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday Morning Miscellany
The Voices in My Head
Reflect and ponder. This is the two word phrase that was breathing in my ear when I awoke this morning. Reflect and ponder. I don't know what it is supposed to mean, or rather upon what am I to reflect and about that which am I to ponder, but it continues to rattle around inside my brain. I did not put it there myself. I can tell.
In movies, sometimes messages are conveyed by some sort of supernatural means, or a shadowy figure in the most cryptic of ways. "If you build it, they will come" comes to mind from Field of Dreams. I find myself as an audience member saying to myself and usually others... "Why don't they just come out with it? This movie could be 15 minutes long! It would be so much easier if the voice just dropped some blueprints and said, 'dude, some really cool stuff is going to happen, I promise.'"
The older I get the more I realize that many of life's messages are indeed cryptic and a casual observer is likely to run right over the little voices that speak so softly into your ear giving you guidance. So, I don't know what I am to reflect on and ponder about, but one thing is for sure, I'm smart enough to know I had better set aside some time today to do it or I may find myself being sorry later.
Home Field Advantage
I listen to a syndicated radio program many mornings that primarily features comedians and short comedy bits. While I devote much of my day to news talk and other more intellectual pursuits, I do enjoy waking up with a laugh. Among the many running jokes and call back lines is "home field advantage." This can refer to a lot of things, but in most cases it is the preference to use ones own toilet, particularly when you need to poop. In my case, I use it more generally.
We just spent a long weekend in Detroit and stayed, as ever, with our patient and accommodating friends, Dave and Greg. We always have a great time and this weekend was no exception being that it was filled with parties that included all kinds of high quality brown liquor and much good food. But all that said, it is nice to be back home. I quickly found my own ass groove in my own chair, my had was pleased to be reunited with my own remote control, whose buttons I know so intimately just by feel and I slept like a rock in my own bed with my own cat hogging all the covers and snoring in my ear.
The Detroit area is like a second home to me. Often, I feel like I am leaving home and heading home in the same trip. I f guess that's pretty lucky. It isn't too often that someone can claim multiple places as having the feeling of home. But there is really only one, and that is here, in our old creaky house on our pretty street in our cute neighborhood of our nice city.
Jokes About My Spelling and Grammar
I would like to take this time to remind my dear reader that I don't proofread or edit this blog prior to publishing it. If I catch it, I fix it, but I don't spend gobs of time critically analyzing my own work. Most of the time I am writing this prior to or while I am drinking my first cup of coffee. So last week, I clearly meant Satan, not Satin is the ruler of the underworld despite my indication to the contrary. But man did everyone have a good time at my expense about that one. Dave said he didn't know the devil was a stripper and it all went blurry from there. It was pretty funny. Thank you for biding my mistakes and I hope it doesn't reflect negatively on me.
Why I am a Bad Speller
In fifth grade at Brookwood Elementary in Mrs. Hasselbring's classroom, I was in a spelling bee. I was doing well. If I made it into the next round, I would go to the finals and have a chance at the state level. I was next to Andy Haight who was a fun guy, but not a good influence. No, the names have not been changed to protect anyone, he was a little devil and everyone deserves to know.
I liked Andy. Anyway, we were sitting next to each other and we were likely bored. I had to wear a headgear due to my narwhal like mouth of teeth that extended out in all odd directions and an overbite the size of a... well a big overbite. I elected to wear it as close to 24/7 so I could wear it for a shorter period of time which meant wearing it at school and sleepovers and everywhere but for meals.
It was a complicated device that encircled my entire head, had plastic straps that came down my temples which culminated into a metal bar that ran parallel to my mouth and clipped into the world's largest and smelliest retainer. Many years later, while performing monologues in an acting class, I chose Harrison Bergeron because I identified with a character who was so much more powerful and talented than everyone else he had to be shackled and beset with limitations so he could be normal like everyone else. Some people grow up with a God complex, or and Oedipal complex... I grew up with a Howard Roarke complex. For the three of you who get that, you may feel free to chuckle quietly to yourselves in a dignified and understated manner.
Anyway, it got to be that Andy dared me to stick the metal bar of the headgear into the light socket and I did so without even the slightest hesitation.
After the school was dismissed early due to a power failure, I was asked what happened. I came up with what for a ten-year-old was a plausible excuse and the matter quietly dropped. My father refused to pay good money for a new metal bar and salvaged the burnt one and made me wear it. It was my scarlet letter. A constant reminder to myself and others that you shouldn't do stupid things. I never could have imagined that I could look less cool and more like a geek than with that headgear. My dad proved me wrong.
Anyway, upon the bee being reconvened, with me being watched like a hawk for any metal items, it was my turn. I was asked to spell the word, 'Senior.' Which I did, without hesitation saying confidently "C-E-N-I-E-R, senior." After the laughter died down, which was somewhere around my eighth grade year, I realized that I got more than a little jolt from my electrical escapade and it very likely had the greatest effect on the faculty that I was employing at the time... Spelling.
I haven't been able to spell well since. That story is the gospel truth. I don't know if that is what I am supposed to reflect on and ponder, or if I am simply the messenger and you all are supposed to reflect and ponder. If I were you, I'd do it, if only to hedge my bets.
Reflect and ponder. This is the two word phrase that was breathing in my ear when I awoke this morning. Reflect and ponder. I don't know what it is supposed to mean, or rather upon what am I to reflect and about that which am I to ponder, but it continues to rattle around inside my brain. I did not put it there myself. I can tell.
In movies, sometimes messages are conveyed by some sort of supernatural means, or a shadowy figure in the most cryptic of ways. "If you build it, they will come" comes to mind from Field of Dreams. I find myself as an audience member saying to myself and usually others... "Why don't they just come out with it? This movie could be 15 minutes long! It would be so much easier if the voice just dropped some blueprints and said, 'dude, some really cool stuff is going to happen, I promise.'"
The older I get the more I realize that many of life's messages are indeed cryptic and a casual observer is likely to run right over the little voices that speak so softly into your ear giving you guidance. So, I don't know what I am to reflect on and ponder about, but one thing is for sure, I'm smart enough to know I had better set aside some time today to do it or I may find myself being sorry later.
Home Field Advantage
I listen to a syndicated radio program many mornings that primarily features comedians and short comedy bits. While I devote much of my day to news talk and other more intellectual pursuits, I do enjoy waking up with a laugh. Among the many running jokes and call back lines is "home field advantage." This can refer to a lot of things, but in most cases it is the preference to use ones own toilet, particularly when you need to poop. In my case, I use it more generally.
We just spent a long weekend in Detroit and stayed, as ever, with our patient and accommodating friends, Dave and Greg. We always have a great time and this weekend was no exception being that it was filled with parties that included all kinds of high quality brown liquor and much good food. But all that said, it is nice to be back home. I quickly found my own ass groove in my own chair, my had was pleased to be reunited with my own remote control, whose buttons I know so intimately just by feel and I slept like a rock in my own bed with my own cat hogging all the covers and snoring in my ear.
The Detroit area is like a second home to me. Often, I feel like I am leaving home and heading home in the same trip. I f guess that's pretty lucky. It isn't too often that someone can claim multiple places as having the feeling of home. But there is really only one, and that is here, in our old creaky house on our pretty street in our cute neighborhood of our nice city.
Jokes About My Spelling and Grammar
I would like to take this time to remind my dear reader that I don't proofread or edit this blog prior to publishing it. If I catch it, I fix it, but I don't spend gobs of time critically analyzing my own work. Most of the time I am writing this prior to or while I am drinking my first cup of coffee. So last week, I clearly meant Satan, not Satin is the ruler of the underworld despite my indication to the contrary. But man did everyone have a good time at my expense about that one. Dave said he didn't know the devil was a stripper and it all went blurry from there. It was pretty funny. Thank you for biding my mistakes and I hope it doesn't reflect negatively on me.
Why I am a Bad Speller
In fifth grade at Brookwood Elementary in Mrs. Hasselbring's classroom, I was in a spelling bee. I was doing well. If I made it into the next round, I would go to the finals and have a chance at the state level. I was next to Andy Haight who was a fun guy, but not a good influence. No, the names have not been changed to protect anyone, he was a little devil and everyone deserves to know.
I liked Andy. Anyway, we were sitting next to each other and we were likely bored. I had to wear a headgear due to my narwhal like mouth of teeth that extended out in all odd directions and an overbite the size of a... well a big overbite. I elected to wear it as close to 24/7 so I could wear it for a shorter period of time which meant wearing it at school and sleepovers and everywhere but for meals.
It was a complicated device that encircled my entire head, had plastic straps that came down my temples which culminated into a metal bar that ran parallel to my mouth and clipped into the world's largest and smelliest retainer. Many years later, while performing monologues in an acting class, I chose Harrison Bergeron because I identified with a character who was so much more powerful and talented than everyone else he had to be shackled and beset with limitations so he could be normal like everyone else. Some people grow up with a God complex, or and Oedipal complex... I grew up with a Howard Roarke complex. For the three of you who get that, you may feel free to chuckle quietly to yourselves in a dignified and understated manner.
Anyway, it got to be that Andy dared me to stick the metal bar of the headgear into the light socket and I did so without even the slightest hesitation.
After the school was dismissed early due to a power failure, I was asked what happened. I came up with what for a ten-year-old was a plausible excuse and the matter quietly dropped. My father refused to pay good money for a new metal bar and salvaged the burnt one and made me wear it. It was my scarlet letter. A constant reminder to myself and others that you shouldn't do stupid things. I never could have imagined that I could look less cool and more like a geek than with that headgear. My dad proved me wrong.
Anyway, upon the bee being reconvened, with me being watched like a hawk for any metal items, it was my turn. I was asked to spell the word, 'Senior.' Which I did, without hesitation saying confidently "C-E-N-I-E-R, senior." After the laughter died down, which was somewhere around my eighth grade year, I realized that I got more than a little jolt from my electrical escapade and it very likely had the greatest effect on the faculty that I was employing at the time... Spelling.
I haven't been able to spell well since. That story is the gospel truth. I don't know if that is what I am supposed to reflect on and ponder, or if I am simply the messenger and you all are supposed to reflect and ponder. If I were you, I'd do it, if only to hedge my bets.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Wisdom in Gaming
On Mille Bournes
For those of you who don't know what Mille Bornes is, it's a card game where basically you are trying to win by getting to 1000 miles. You do this by having luck, cunning, the ability to cheat and a good sense for the fine balance of offense versus defense. (As an aside, everyone who reads this blog was playing the game with me today, and the one who wasn't, Hi Mom!, definitely knows the game, so this blentry is going to be pretty worthless.)
A game like this demostrates just how willing we become to quash, slow, waylay or otherwise stop the progress of our competitors at the merest hint of impending success. It is apropos that this game was invented by the French. First of all, trying to go 1000 miles in a French car is indeed an undertaking of epic proportions, and secondly it is just like the French to launch an attack on an enemy and then sulk when you are retaliated against. Which is exactly how one tends to get when they play this game.
Odd, that this game is only fun if there is effective defense. Vitriolic, mean spirited, aggressive defense meant to degrade, derail and demoralize is the only fun. Imagine everyone going out of their way to be courteous and helpful so that everyone can achieve their goal. BORING! Screw that, I want to watch your face as I blow out your tire with nothing but the power of my whimsy. I am God! Until you come back and put me in a ditch and I feel like I am the victim in some Greek tragedy.
We all know some people in this world, be they friends or coworkers who seem to go out of the way to make yours, or others' lives difficult. We wonder at why. To what end do they benefit by being pernicious? Maybe they are just bored. I have to admit, I've started arguments or played devil's advocate just to chase away the monotony of the day. I just think it would be best if we saved our evil tendencies for the card games.
A Game of a Different Stripe
Dave and I decided to play Call of Duty last night. He got it last year as a gift but was so intimidated by the thought of playing it, that he never even took it out of the plastic. We decided wanted to shoot at stuff, which is not uncommon, and decided to play.
Two words. In Tense! First of all, I couldn't even walk since the controls are so foreign to me. Video games are something I avoid in general, given the fact that I suffer from a plague known as Hyper-Competitive Deuchebag Disorder or HCDD for short. It is also known colloquially as Booya's disease, since people with HCDD tend to yell that exhortation more often that it would be normally appropriate in the lexicon. So the learning curve was high.
It was frustrating to know that I, a licensed gun holder couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in this stupid game, let alone walk. I can walk and shoot in real life. I can even do both at the same time! So, I ask you, 14 year old who has mastered this game... which of us is a better friend to have when you find yourself in a dark dead end alley in Tijuana? Where's your Wii now, Moses?
And yet, I feel like a failure because I am too stupid and uncoordinated to play this game. So, after three hours, we decided to give up. It was clear our unit didn't want us around anyway, since we were ultimately killed by friendly fire, after being invited to a backroom poker game that degraded into a match of Russian Roulette. Oh, wait, that's a movie. Sorry, I have a hard time keeping my pop culture references straight anymore. It's too hard to ascertain real from manufactured these days.
Either way, I feel like I have learned a positive lesson in this weekend's bout of game play. Save it for the court, or the board, or the game console. Be benevolent in life and malevolent on the field of battle. This way you are loved and respected in equal measure as a person and an opponent.
For those of you who don't know what Mille Bornes is, it's a card game where basically you are trying to win by getting to 1000 miles. You do this by having luck, cunning, the ability to cheat and a good sense for the fine balance of offense versus defense. (As an aside, everyone who reads this blog was playing the game with me today, and the one who wasn't, Hi Mom!, definitely knows the game, so this blentry is going to be pretty worthless.)
A game like this demostrates just how willing we become to quash, slow, waylay or otherwise stop the progress of our competitors at the merest hint of impending success. It is apropos that this game was invented by the French. First of all, trying to go 1000 miles in a French car is indeed an undertaking of epic proportions, and secondly it is just like the French to launch an attack on an enemy and then sulk when you are retaliated against. Which is exactly how one tends to get when they play this game.
Odd, that this game is only fun if there is effective defense. Vitriolic, mean spirited, aggressive defense meant to degrade, derail and demoralize is the only fun. Imagine everyone going out of their way to be courteous and helpful so that everyone can achieve their goal. BORING! Screw that, I want to watch your face as I blow out your tire with nothing but the power of my whimsy. I am God! Until you come back and put me in a ditch and I feel like I am the victim in some Greek tragedy.
We all know some people in this world, be they friends or coworkers who seem to go out of the way to make yours, or others' lives difficult. We wonder at why. To what end do they benefit by being pernicious? Maybe they are just bored. I have to admit, I've started arguments or played devil's advocate just to chase away the monotony of the day. I just think it would be best if we saved our evil tendencies for the card games.
A Game of a Different Stripe
Dave and I decided to play Call of Duty last night. He got it last year as a gift but was so intimidated by the thought of playing it, that he never even took it out of the plastic. We decided wanted to shoot at stuff, which is not uncommon, and decided to play.
Two words. In Tense! First of all, I couldn't even walk since the controls are so foreign to me. Video games are something I avoid in general, given the fact that I suffer from a plague known as Hyper-Competitive Deuchebag Disorder or HCDD for short. It is also known colloquially as Booya's disease, since people with HCDD tend to yell that exhortation more often that it would be normally appropriate in the lexicon. So the learning curve was high.
It was frustrating to know that I, a licensed gun holder couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in this stupid game, let alone walk. I can walk and shoot in real life. I can even do both at the same time! So, I ask you, 14 year old who has mastered this game... which of us is a better friend to have when you find yourself in a dark dead end alley in Tijuana? Where's your Wii now, Moses?
And yet, I feel like a failure because I am too stupid and uncoordinated to play this game. So, after three hours, we decided to give up. It was clear our unit didn't want us around anyway, since we were ultimately killed by friendly fire, after being invited to a backroom poker game that degraded into a match of Russian Roulette. Oh, wait, that's a movie. Sorry, I have a hard time keeping my pop culture references straight anymore. It's too hard to ascertain real from manufactured these days.
Either way, I feel like I have learned a positive lesson in this weekend's bout of game play. Save it for the court, or the board, or the game console. Be benevolent in life and malevolent on the field of battle. This way you are loved and respected in equal measure as a person and an opponent.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Traffic and Weather Together
Local Traffic on the Eights
I am listening online to my favorite syndicated morning program, but instead of listening to it on the radio, I am streaming it online from its source station in Indianapolis. I am somewhat familiar with Indy, having been there a lot due to my wife being from the area. This morning's observation however made me laugh, as the traffic reports are clearly geared to the locals.
"We got a pileup on the south salad shooter coming into the west slipknot, avoid the area by taking the yellow submarine bypass or the southern cross northbound to the westbound eastern sun expressway.
"Over on the west side we have a breakdown in the left middle express lane of the loop and traffic is backed up all the way to parkway bridge overpass.
"If you are traveling from the east side northbound, you may as well just turn around and go home. traffic is stopped dead on the blue line due to some police activity at stubby's farm."
Huh? None of those are street names or places that my GPS recognizes. I typed in Yellow Submarine and it suggested the iTunes store! Salad shooter? That's an appliance and an ill begotten one at that. How in the hell am I supposed to know what is where? And they talk so fast that I can't even process the beginning of the report before they are already talking weather... which is similarly nebulous.
"We got a cold front here over the whole region. Today 18 with a chill of 4 coming on to 22 with moderated gales in the mid day settling back down to a cold 3 becoming cloudy with a chance for the white stuff by daybreak."
The white stuff? How much white stuff, an inch, a kilo? I mean the guy is talking so fast I can imagine doing coke is a prerequisite for the job, but can you be a little more clear? You just threw out a bunch of numbers and some general possibilities. This is not a forecast. You may as well have said, "It's cold, and will be for 4 months."
Dateline Vatican City
The Vatican has announced it is adding solar panels to many of its buildings that will provide most of the electricity used by the world's least populated sovereign nation. Proving that even though the Catholic leadership hasn't seen the light, they have no problems harnessing it's power.
The leadership of the church decided on solar power after talks with Beelzebub Energy and Torture (NYSE Symbol HELL) broke down over the costs of running a geothermal line to Hades.
The business community was shocked by the development, since Hell and the Vatican have had so many profitable partnerships over the years.
In spite of the failure, the Vatican is confident it can restore relations with Satin, the CEO of Beelzebub Energy, or at least with his Earthbound emissary, Ryan Secrest, whose busy shooting schedule is apparently slowing down the pace of negotiations.
"The Vatican is interested in tapping renewable resources for its operations," Said Cardinal Olio Pedaphillo, "We are happy to use the light of God's Sun, free of charge." A representative of Beelzebub Energy and Torture and Satan's minion, Groff The Terrible was asked if he thought a deal was possible, he replied, "We are so far apart on money, I think Hell will freeze before we come together on a deal."
I am listening online to my favorite syndicated morning program, but instead of listening to it on the radio, I am streaming it online from its source station in Indianapolis. I am somewhat familiar with Indy, having been there a lot due to my wife being from the area. This morning's observation however made me laugh, as the traffic reports are clearly geared to the locals.
"We got a pileup on the south salad shooter coming into the west slipknot, avoid the area by taking the yellow submarine bypass or the southern cross northbound to the westbound eastern sun expressway.
"Over on the west side we have a breakdown in the left middle express lane of the loop and traffic is backed up all the way to parkway bridge overpass.
"If you are traveling from the east side northbound, you may as well just turn around and go home. traffic is stopped dead on the blue line due to some police activity at stubby's farm."
Huh? None of those are street names or places that my GPS recognizes. I typed in Yellow Submarine and it suggested the iTunes store! Salad shooter? That's an appliance and an ill begotten one at that. How in the hell am I supposed to know what is where? And they talk so fast that I can't even process the beginning of the report before they are already talking weather... which is similarly nebulous.
"We got a cold front here over the whole region. Today 18 with a chill of 4 coming on to 22 with moderated gales in the mid day settling back down to a cold 3 becoming cloudy with a chance for the white stuff by daybreak."
The white stuff? How much white stuff, an inch, a kilo? I mean the guy is talking so fast I can imagine doing coke is a prerequisite for the job, but can you be a little more clear? You just threw out a bunch of numbers and some general possibilities. This is not a forecast. You may as well have said, "It's cold, and will be for 4 months."
Dateline Vatican City
The Vatican has announced it is adding solar panels to many of its buildings that will provide most of the electricity used by the world's least populated sovereign nation. Proving that even though the Catholic leadership hasn't seen the light, they have no problems harnessing it's power.
The leadership of the church decided on solar power after talks with Beelzebub Energy and Torture (NYSE Symbol HELL) broke down over the costs of running a geothermal line to Hades.
The business community was shocked by the development, since Hell and the Vatican have had so many profitable partnerships over the years.
In spite of the failure, the Vatican is confident it can restore relations with Satin, the CEO of Beelzebub Energy, or at least with his Earthbound emissary, Ryan Secrest, whose busy shooting schedule is apparently slowing down the pace of negotiations.
"The Vatican is interested in tapping renewable resources for its operations," Said Cardinal Olio Pedaphillo, "We are happy to use the light of God's Sun, free of charge." A representative of Beelzebub Energy and Torture and Satan's minion, Groff The Terrible was asked if he thought a deal was possible, he replied, "We are so far apart on money, I think Hell will freeze before we come together on a deal."
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Welcome, to the Machine
I had an MRI this morning. I have been near MRI machines before and knew all about them, or so I thought. The concept of Magnetic Resonance Imaging is awfully cool for a techie kind of guy like me. Essentially, the patient is placed in a tunnel like machine whereupon magnets spin about the circumference of the tunnel at fantastic speed, returning small points of data back to the operator upon each revolution, thus providing a medical professional with a detailed 3 dimensional image of the patient's insides, while not exposing the patient to X-rays or other carcinogenic means. In my case, I was having a Cervical/Spinal MRI, meaning I was in the machine for several scans, each presumably targeting the various areas of my C-Spine area.
That's the science. Here's the reality.
After check in, you go to the changing room where you are asked for the third time if you have any metal on or in you... are you sure? Well, I was was sure the first few times they asked, but I do believe I got a metal shard in my left eye once. I'm sure it's gone... right? I mean what's the worst that could happen? After explaining the gruesome possibility that any metal below your skin, including even the iron in your blood, could and will be ripped forth at unbelievable speed from the bleeding carcass that used to contain your soul, you are led down a public hallway with that gown that hangs open in the back. I can't tie it, as reaching behind me to operate my hands is one of the many things I cannot do, which is part of the reason I am here today.
The technician throws you gently down onto a board that they call 'the table'. For a guy of 230 pounds, it was more like balancing on the fine edge of a popsicle stick at which point the tech asks you, while trying not to laugh, if you are comfortable. Then after a little pep talk consisting of more questions about metal, (Did you eat any metal this morning for breakfast? Is your soul made of metal?), the tech places a device over you meant to immobilize your neck. It also obscures your vision and places a weight very strategically on your chest, making breathing impossible. Asked again if you are comfortable, just on the off chance you believe they give a shit, some headphones are placed in the approximate vicinity of your ears, through which poorly reproduced music from a bygone era is pumped at you so loudly your ears now need their own MRI.
Now is when things get bad. You are in your spot, you can no longer move as the table is being inserted slowly into the tube which is about 1/2 inch smaller in diameter than your body. I kept my eyes closed in a vain attempt to look calm for the tech, who was now snickering openly. I said in measured tones, "wake me up when it's done..."
Now, I am neurotic, (shocking, I know), and all of my neurosis come out to play at once. I am immediately itchy, everywhere, but cannot scratch. Not prone to liking small places, but not afraid of them, I suddenly develop a keen sense of claustrophobia as the weight on my chest and the heat of the room suddenly get to me.
I opened my eyes.
Big mistake! Huge, terrible, awful mistake! It was like staring at the door of an airplane's overhead bin... from inside the bin! I am not sure what I expected beyond the great precipice of the tube, maybe a 2 room apartment, or a Pink Floyd laser light show... something other than grim colorless plastic alarmingly close to the tip of my, ahem, ample nose.
Through the earphones now "The scan will take three and a half minutes. It is exceedingly important you don't move. Are you comfortable?"
Before I can answer or move or adjust or anything, there is a klaxon. I wonder if we are under attack, as we are apparently being called to general quarters. I was not made aware that this noise was to be expected, and I wondered if a pre-scan had noted some metal in my soul, or worse, my genitals. The machine then begins making a terrifically loud noise. I imagine this is what the sheets feel like when the washer goes out of balance. The Muzak being piped through my headset, once so uncomfortably loud is now all but completely drowned out the the buzzing, vibrating, chuffing and revving of this machine. I'd rather listen to the klaxon, or the muzak, or my Sophomore Anthropology professor... anything save for Glenn Beck would have been an improvement.
I count to 210 (which is three and a half minutes), but I do it about a year before the machine does. I am getting desperate. All my senses tell me to run. I itch. I'm hot. I can't breathe. And my insurance is only covering 25% of this... Fuck.
The machine winds down and I smile inside, (not daring to do so physically), because I beat the soul sucker. That's when the voice comes on and says, "You're doing great, (news to me, lady), the next scan will be three and a half minutes... don't move now!"
Oh my God, how many will there be?
The answer is three more. Each an eternity meted out in three and a half minute doses. The problem was I played it so cool, the tech stopped informing me or admonishing me at all. I was alone. I would have given anything just to hear her lie to me again, just to dull the pain.
Finally, the table began to pull me out and I saw light, bright wonderful artificial light. I felt like I was being born, but like I was being born at the direction of Stanley Kubrick circa 2001, the white room like the world and the hell behind me the womb.
I didn't get a lollypop. I didn't get a high five or a pat on the back. I didn't get a medal (get it, metal? Nevermind, I thought it was funny). I got a walk back down the hall, my backside on display for all the world to see. My life had just been changed, and I didn't even get a hug.
I kept the little booties I wore as a memento of my day in the machine. I feel like a changed man. I don't have any super powers, or unnatural strength, but my cell phone batter is wearing down awfully fast since I took the test. And I smell like steak. I came home and did a little research and found out that MRI technology is not unlike radar and microwave technology so the the steak thing was explained. I also found out MRI doesn't stand for Magnetic Resonance Imaging as I thought it did. The letters MRI are from the Latin Mortide Regularus Impendium which roughly translated means 'You are going to die.' Since I lived through the test, I guess they mean when I get the bill.
That's the science. Here's the reality.
After check in, you go to the changing room where you are asked for the third time if you have any metal on or in you... are you sure? Well, I was was sure the first few times they asked, but I do believe I got a metal shard in my left eye once. I'm sure it's gone... right? I mean what's the worst that could happen? After explaining the gruesome possibility that any metal below your skin, including even the iron in your blood, could and will be ripped forth at unbelievable speed from the bleeding carcass that used to contain your soul, you are led down a public hallway with that gown that hangs open in the back. I can't tie it, as reaching behind me to operate my hands is one of the many things I cannot do, which is part of the reason I am here today.
The technician throws you gently down onto a board that they call 'the table'. For a guy of 230 pounds, it was more like balancing on the fine edge of a popsicle stick at which point the tech asks you, while trying not to laugh, if you are comfortable. Then after a little pep talk consisting of more questions about metal, (Did you eat any metal this morning for breakfast? Is your soul made of metal?), the tech places a device over you meant to immobilize your neck. It also obscures your vision and places a weight very strategically on your chest, making breathing impossible. Asked again if you are comfortable, just on the off chance you believe they give a shit, some headphones are placed in the approximate vicinity of your ears, through which poorly reproduced music from a bygone era is pumped at you so loudly your ears now need their own MRI.
Now is when things get bad. You are in your spot, you can no longer move as the table is being inserted slowly into the tube which is about 1/2 inch smaller in diameter than your body. I kept my eyes closed in a vain attempt to look calm for the tech, who was now snickering openly. I said in measured tones, "wake me up when it's done..."
Now, I am neurotic, (shocking, I know), and all of my neurosis come out to play at once. I am immediately itchy, everywhere, but cannot scratch. Not prone to liking small places, but not afraid of them, I suddenly develop a keen sense of claustrophobia as the weight on my chest and the heat of the room suddenly get to me.
I opened my eyes.
Big mistake! Huge, terrible, awful mistake! It was like staring at the door of an airplane's overhead bin... from inside the bin! I am not sure what I expected beyond the great precipice of the tube, maybe a 2 room apartment, or a Pink Floyd laser light show... something other than grim colorless plastic alarmingly close to the tip of my, ahem, ample nose.
Through the earphones now "The scan will take three and a half minutes. It is exceedingly important you don't move. Are you comfortable?"
Before I can answer or move or adjust or anything, there is a klaxon. I wonder if we are under attack, as we are apparently being called to general quarters. I was not made aware that this noise was to be expected, and I wondered if a pre-scan had noted some metal in my soul, or worse, my genitals. The machine then begins making a terrifically loud noise. I imagine this is what the sheets feel like when the washer goes out of balance. The Muzak being piped through my headset, once so uncomfortably loud is now all but completely drowned out the the buzzing, vibrating, chuffing and revving of this machine. I'd rather listen to the klaxon, or the muzak, or my Sophomore Anthropology professor... anything save for Glenn Beck would have been an improvement.
I count to 210 (which is three and a half minutes), but I do it about a year before the machine does. I am getting desperate. All my senses tell me to run. I itch. I'm hot. I can't breathe. And my insurance is only covering 25% of this... Fuck.
The machine winds down and I smile inside, (not daring to do so physically), because I beat the soul sucker. That's when the voice comes on and says, "You're doing great, (news to me, lady), the next scan will be three and a half minutes... don't move now!"
Oh my God, how many will there be?
The answer is three more. Each an eternity meted out in three and a half minute doses. The problem was I played it so cool, the tech stopped informing me or admonishing me at all. I was alone. I would have given anything just to hear her lie to me again, just to dull the pain.
Finally, the table began to pull me out and I saw light, bright wonderful artificial light. I felt like I was being born, but like I was being born at the direction of Stanley Kubrick circa 2001, the white room like the world and the hell behind me the womb.
I didn't get a lollypop. I didn't get a high five or a pat on the back. I didn't get a medal (get it, metal? Nevermind, I thought it was funny). I got a walk back down the hall, my backside on display for all the world to see. My life had just been changed, and I didn't even get a hug.
I kept the little booties I wore as a memento of my day in the machine. I feel like a changed man. I don't have any super powers, or unnatural strength, but my cell phone batter is wearing down awfully fast since I took the test. And I smell like steak. I came home and did a little research and found out that MRI technology is not unlike radar and microwave technology so the the steak thing was explained. I also found out MRI doesn't stand for Magnetic Resonance Imaging as I thought it did. The letters MRI are from the Latin Mortide Regularus Impendium which roughly translated means 'You are going to die.' Since I lived through the test, I guess they mean when I get the bill.
Monday, December 13, 2010
To Emily on Her Thirty-Something Birthday
They Say It's Your Birthday...
Today is Em's birthday. You are forgiven if it didn't make your calendar, we are still lobbying regional, state and municipal governments for approval to make it a holiday. So far, the festivities have remained in these four walls. I made the bed, I am making breakfast and I am making dinner. I wrapped presents, which for me is almost like I had bought the presents within. It's always one or the other, never both.
Happy Birthday, Em! You're the best. I am glad to have you as my partner and friend and can't imagine life without you. Which is good, because I bet it would be sweet... Never picking up laundry or cleaning, eating whatever I want all the time and having my money all to myself. On second thought, that means I would be living in filth, grotesquely fat, and since I am pathologically unable to balance a checkbook, broke as a North Korean T.V. Life without you would suck. Thank you, Kelly Clarkson for helping me see the light.
I must say in all honesty that I married up. It isn't often that one escapes their caste via marriage. David Arquette was one when he married Courtney Cox, but I think he soon will be demoted. Billy Bob Thornton jumped three tiers when he married Angie. It proved unsustainable. Usually, when you go out in public and see couples together you go, 'yeah, I can see that...' We fall into the category of 'Wow, he must be loaded...'
He is not, unless there is brown liquor anywhere in arm's reach... then maybe he's a little loaded. Maybe all these years they've been saying 'bloated...' That I can see. Unless it's down by my feet, in which case it may as well not be there at all since that whole region of the floor is completely invisible to me. but I digress. Sorry, I was channeling a little Rodney Dangerfield in there. 'Very little!', I can hear Rodney say from the great beyond.
Truth is, we got a good thing that seems to get better with age, just like you do, Em. I hope you love your birthday and people make as big a deal out of it as you hoped. It's your day!
Other Items
My young and talented friend Tyler McRobert, who is a student in the high school youth group to which I devote some time, has created the Uebbing Dictionary. Some time back, I created a blentry on made up words, like, um, blentry. You can read the post here. I welcome your submissions and will endeavor to scour back through some blentries and add some new ones in. I will also do my level best to carry a pen and notepad with me at all times as I make these things up all the time and they are lost to the ages almost as soon as they come out. Thank you, Tyler for all your time and your interest. Please don't let it affect your school work, and whenever you come across a swear word in my blog, please just say the word 'rainbow' instead.
We are in the middle of the best winter storm, ever. It is windy and cold, and has dumped snow all around the city where my office is. It is icy and nasty out, enough that my meetings have been canceled because the bosses who were coming up are stuck. All I have to do now is a bunch of paperwork. I don't have to leave the house, which as I often profess is my favorite thing in the world in any weather. the best part is there is no snow for me to shovel. We are in a pocket of little to no participation so far this winter due to the geography of Western Michigan and the wind coming out of the north, rather than from the West Northwest like it usually does. What this means is the lake effect snow stays closer to where it belongs, the lake.
The downside? It is coooooold. In fact, there is a wind chill warning in effect in my house. I tried to light candles last night, but every time the wind blew, they went out. It's sort of like lightning, first the flash, then the boom... first you feel the wind, then you hear the house rattling. This is a new thing for us as our sturdy old house is heavily framed and usually feels very solid, if a little drafty.
To get an idea of what I mean, sometimes the wind inside the house is enough to make the actors' hair blow on T.V. Sometimes it is so windy the dust bunnies go rolling in the breeze across the floor like so many tumbleweeds. It is so drafty in the house we can smell the neighbor's dinner. You get the point.
Anyway, I'd rather be in the house, near the coffee pot, working placidly at my desk than to be out there doing, whatever it is people do out there when it gets like this. Too bad Em still has to go out. The class of learning impaired students that she volunteers with wants to celebrate her birthday with her. I guess that's the downside to wanting everyone to make a big deal out of your birthday. I just smiled and waved from the front window in my robe with my cup of coffee as she trudged off... Until a stiff wind knocked me over. Damn... I mean, Rainbow.
Today is Em's birthday. You are forgiven if it didn't make your calendar, we are still lobbying regional, state and municipal governments for approval to make it a holiday. So far, the festivities have remained in these four walls. I made the bed, I am making breakfast and I am making dinner. I wrapped presents, which for me is almost like I had bought the presents within. It's always one or the other, never both.
Happy Birthday, Em! You're the best. I am glad to have you as my partner and friend and can't imagine life without you. Which is good, because I bet it would be sweet... Never picking up laundry or cleaning, eating whatever I want all the time and having my money all to myself. On second thought, that means I would be living in filth, grotesquely fat, and since I am pathologically unable to balance a checkbook, broke as a North Korean T.V. Life without you would suck. Thank you, Kelly Clarkson for helping me see the light.
I must say in all honesty that I married up. It isn't often that one escapes their caste via marriage. David Arquette was one when he married Courtney Cox, but I think he soon will be demoted. Billy Bob Thornton jumped three tiers when he married Angie. It proved unsustainable. Usually, when you go out in public and see couples together you go, 'yeah, I can see that...' We fall into the category of 'Wow, he must be loaded...'
He is not, unless there is brown liquor anywhere in arm's reach... then maybe he's a little loaded. Maybe all these years they've been saying 'bloated...' That I can see. Unless it's down by my feet, in which case it may as well not be there at all since that whole region of the floor is completely invisible to me. but I digress. Sorry, I was channeling a little Rodney Dangerfield in there. 'Very little!', I can hear Rodney say from the great beyond.
Truth is, we got a good thing that seems to get better with age, just like you do, Em. I hope you love your birthday and people make as big a deal out of it as you hoped. It's your day!
Other Items
My young and talented friend Tyler McRobert, who is a student in the high school youth group to which I devote some time, has created the Uebbing Dictionary. Some time back, I created a blentry on made up words, like, um, blentry. You can read the post here. I welcome your submissions and will endeavor to scour back through some blentries and add some new ones in. I will also do my level best to carry a pen and notepad with me at all times as I make these things up all the time and they are lost to the ages almost as soon as they come out. Thank you, Tyler for all your time and your interest. Please don't let it affect your school work, and whenever you come across a swear word in my blog, please just say the word 'rainbow' instead.
We are in the middle of the best winter storm, ever. It is windy and cold, and has dumped snow all around the city where my office is. It is icy and nasty out, enough that my meetings have been canceled because the bosses who were coming up are stuck. All I have to do now is a bunch of paperwork. I don't have to leave the house, which as I often profess is my favorite thing in the world in any weather. the best part is there is no snow for me to shovel. We are in a pocket of little to no participation so far this winter due to the geography of Western Michigan and the wind coming out of the north, rather than from the West Northwest like it usually does. What this means is the lake effect snow stays closer to where it belongs, the lake.
The downside? It is coooooold. In fact, there is a wind chill warning in effect in my house. I tried to light candles last night, but every time the wind blew, they went out. It's sort of like lightning, first the flash, then the boom... first you feel the wind, then you hear the house rattling. This is a new thing for us as our sturdy old house is heavily framed and usually feels very solid, if a little drafty.
To get an idea of what I mean, sometimes the wind inside the house is enough to make the actors' hair blow on T.V. Sometimes it is so windy the dust bunnies go rolling in the breeze across the floor like so many tumbleweeds. It is so drafty in the house we can smell the neighbor's dinner. You get the point.
Anyway, I'd rather be in the house, near the coffee pot, working placidly at my desk than to be out there doing, whatever it is people do out there when it gets like this. Too bad Em still has to go out. The class of learning impaired students that she volunteers with wants to celebrate her birthday with her. I guess that's the downside to wanting everyone to make a big deal out of your birthday. I just smiled and waved from the front window in my robe with my cup of coffee as she trudged off... Until a stiff wind knocked me over. Damn... I mean, Rainbow.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Friday Miscellany
Daddy, I Have Some Bad News
Atticus has a pattern in the morning. He doesn't sleep with us, so when I open the door in the morning he is sitting there, with a toy, or my glove, or some toilet paper... some kind of gift for me. This is not because he is generous and magnanimous, but because he believes by giving me a gift, he is immediately entitled to food.
The issue is, it is not time to eat food for an hour after we get up, this to ensure that on the rare occasion we get to sleep in, the cats don't wake us up expecting immediate food. It doesn't work, but the theory is solid, so we keep on going.
Anyway, I make an immediate B-line to the coffee maker. Me first are my two favorite words. Then I sit down and wait for the five lovely beeps that mean the coffee is done. Atticus sits on the arm of my chair and wails. Wails! And puts his paw out and sort of tentatively taps at my robe. It is as cute as it is annoying and let's face it, the reason bad habits endure is because they often achieve the desired result. The desired result here being 'attention-leading to food.'
The best part is how he looks when he is reaching his paw out to me. Very earnest, very concerned, like he is delivering bad news. "Daddy, I'm so sorry, but you have cancer. It will only go away if you feed me, now. Help me, help you." Lately he has escalated to climbing my shoulders and mewing loudly, like he was riding bitch on a Harley and howling at the moon. No shortage of personality, this cat.
We've Only Just Begun
Today is going to be a long one. Fridays used to be my light days as I am a contractor and therefore my schedule is subject to the whims of my customers... I don't know if you have observed this, but people don't like to work on Fridays! I was shocked myself.
But, this is not any Friday. It is a Friday before almost all my customers are going on vacation, or their manufacturing is shutting down, or yada yada yada. The old sign 'Poor planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on my part', comes to mind. Unfortunately, it does. This has been an exceptionally busy week and unfortunately, today is not the desired exception.
We are closing down an account tonight and as per normal, almost every manager needs to be present to help decommission the place and make sure the employees are minding their Ps and Qs and not doing anything that would get us sued later on. Up at 6:30 am I am hoping to crawl back into the sack by 1:00 am, 2:00 at the latest.
I wonder if the cat feeding strategy will work Saturday when I would like to sleep until 8... doubt it, but as a great philosopher once said, "There is always one hope."
Partying to Death
It is a shame that I am running myself so ragged for the purposed of celebrating the holidays. I have to travel over the next 2 weeks about 700 miles to go to various parties. I have already been to a couple and there are at the minimum 3 more before it all ends. None of this is helping me get into the spirit.
Our Christmas tree is an allegory of the holiday for me. The lights are stitched together from Frankensteined strings of lights because we didn't remember how many strings were broken at the end of last year and some brilliant person made the fine decision to put all the strings together and pack them back up, perhaps expecting them to magically heal themselves in the attic a la some Disney movie.
We didn't have enough lights for the top 3rd of the tree. Long story short (can I get a chorus of "too late?") no one sells incandescent white lights anymore because they are evil and kill the planet. Em bought the only string of lights she could find which are LED.
If you squint, you can imagine it looks like snow topping the tree because the color of the LEDs are so much different from the traditional lights. So we have a tree that is lit up, but maybe looks a little worse for wear, much like myself at this point. Some count down to Christmas with anticipation and excitement. I count down to Christmas with anticipation and excitement as well, but I think I am excitedly anticipating something different from most people.
Dear Mr. Thackeray
Em finally finished Vanity Fair and gave me a one word review. "Horrible." That's all I need to know. Though she did say it ends better than Harry Potter, I to assume that means Dumbledore is still alive at the end of Vanity Fair.
Atticus has a pattern in the morning. He doesn't sleep with us, so when I open the door in the morning he is sitting there, with a toy, or my glove, or some toilet paper... some kind of gift for me. This is not because he is generous and magnanimous, but because he believes by giving me a gift, he is immediately entitled to food.
The issue is, it is not time to eat food for an hour after we get up, this to ensure that on the rare occasion we get to sleep in, the cats don't wake us up expecting immediate food. It doesn't work, but the theory is solid, so we keep on going.
Anyway, I make an immediate B-line to the coffee maker. Me first are my two favorite words. Then I sit down and wait for the five lovely beeps that mean the coffee is done. Atticus sits on the arm of my chair and wails. Wails! And puts his paw out and sort of tentatively taps at my robe. It is as cute as it is annoying and let's face it, the reason bad habits endure is because they often achieve the desired result. The desired result here being 'attention-leading to food.'
The best part is how he looks when he is reaching his paw out to me. Very earnest, very concerned, like he is delivering bad news. "Daddy, I'm so sorry, but you have cancer. It will only go away if you feed me, now. Help me, help you." Lately he has escalated to climbing my shoulders and mewing loudly, like he was riding bitch on a Harley and howling at the moon. No shortage of personality, this cat.
We've Only Just Begun
Today is going to be a long one. Fridays used to be my light days as I am a contractor and therefore my schedule is subject to the whims of my customers... I don't know if you have observed this, but people don't like to work on Fridays! I was shocked myself.
But, this is not any Friday. It is a Friday before almost all my customers are going on vacation, or their manufacturing is shutting down, or yada yada yada. The old sign 'Poor planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on my part', comes to mind. Unfortunately, it does. This has been an exceptionally busy week and unfortunately, today is not the desired exception.
We are closing down an account tonight and as per normal, almost every manager needs to be present to help decommission the place and make sure the employees are minding their Ps and Qs and not doing anything that would get us sued later on. Up at 6:30 am I am hoping to crawl back into the sack by 1:00 am, 2:00 at the latest.
I wonder if the cat feeding strategy will work Saturday when I would like to sleep until 8... doubt it, but as a great philosopher once said, "There is always one hope."
Partying to Death
It is a shame that I am running myself so ragged for the purposed of celebrating the holidays. I have to travel over the next 2 weeks about 700 miles to go to various parties. I have already been to a couple and there are at the minimum 3 more before it all ends. None of this is helping me get into the spirit.
Our Christmas tree is an allegory of the holiday for me. The lights are stitched together from Frankensteined strings of lights because we didn't remember how many strings were broken at the end of last year and some brilliant person made the fine decision to put all the strings together and pack them back up, perhaps expecting them to magically heal themselves in the attic a la some Disney movie.
We didn't have enough lights for the top 3rd of the tree. Long story short (can I get a chorus of "too late?") no one sells incandescent white lights anymore because they are evil and kill the planet. Em bought the only string of lights she could find which are LED.
If you squint, you can imagine it looks like snow topping the tree because the color of the LEDs are so much different from the traditional lights. So we have a tree that is lit up, but maybe looks a little worse for wear, much like myself at this point. Some count down to Christmas with anticipation and excitement. I count down to Christmas with anticipation and excitement as well, but I think I am excitedly anticipating something different from most people.
Dear Mr. Thackeray
Em finally finished Vanity Fair and gave me a one word review. "Horrible." That's all I need to know. Though she did say it ends better than Harry Potter, I to assume that means Dumbledore is still alive at the end of Vanity Fair.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
A Day in the Trenches
I got to see the sun today on my round trip to Detroit and back home. It was nice. There is never a lot of sun in the western side of Michigan during the winter months. I miss the sun. My over sized shorn pate in the summer months is a giant solar collector, tanning to a deep and unhealthy mahogany color. I need the sun. Without the sun I am just a bald guy with a big head. A big, white, pasty head.
I didn't get to spend a lot of time in the sun, being it is something like only slightly warmer than liquid nitrogen outside and the wind blows angrily through the valleys created by Detroit's tall buildings. But, I got to feel a little of it in the car on my face. Well, mostly it was in my eyes, both ways, requiring me to grudgingly use the sun visor so I could maintain my ability to see other traffic.
I have to admit, I looked killer today. By that I mean, I looked like a killer. Dark gray suit, Black shirt, my favorite red and black tie, freshly shined black shoes, and my coveted full length cashmere trench coat. Black. I look good in this coat. I generally look good in any garment that hides my body, but this coat is cut well and has timeless style. It is the kind of coat one spends a lot of money on. I bought mine for a song.
In 1996 I was dumped in a nasty sort of way and my gay roommate and the helpful co-eds across the parking lot felt a little retail therapy was in order. Being in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, the world's only city in a developed nation with a university and a casino, but no mall, it necessitated a trip to either Lansing or Midland or Saginaw, which is to say it didn't really matter, because all the choices sucked equally. We chose Lansing. I don't know why, but it turned out to be kismet.
While browsing, I walked into Al Queda's Fine Mens Clothing, where there slogan was, 'Everything must go, let's make a deal, o.k.?' The racks were filled with gaudy colored suits that were stylish for about five minutes in 1954, and were only worn in modern times by African American men of a certain age. The greens and pinks and purples of these suits were definitely not naturally occurring shades outside of what the middle of ground zero might look like. The only thing less attractive were the large, roughly body shaped stains on the carpet. It was a classy place.
There were lots of fedora's with feathers and bands that looked like they were left over from Huggy Bear's wardrobe when Starsky and Hutch folded up production. I can only guess how in staid Lansing, Michigan in 1996 that someone thought that store with that inventory was a good idea. My only explanation is the Iranian man who owned the shop had only ever seen blacksploitation theater and 1970's T.V. and said to himself, "One day, I will escape the oppression of the Soviet occupiers and go to America where I can use my skills as a taylor to outfit men of distinction so they look good while smacking about their hos."
What a slap in the face when he got here only to find men's couture in America had degraded into cheap flannel, Bugle Boys and Birkenstocks. Clearly, his business model, while laudable was unsustainable.
Among the amazing neon suits and pimp suitable accessories was this black trench coat, hanging all by itself on the wall. I was drawn to it, like light itself which seemed to not be able to escape its infinite blackness. I fondled it only briefly when Greg said I should try it on. I was skeptical, because it was $350.00 and while that day's therapy session was all deficit spending anyway, I didn't want to commit to that kind of money. I tried it on quickly as the Ayattollah had stepped outside into the mall to try and harangue people into coming in to the store. I didn't want to attract his attention. Too late. His sixth sense kicked in and he was on my like mung on a mental patient.
"You lika de coat, huh?"
"Yes"
"Is good coat, yes?"
"Um, wasn't that sort of implied...?"
"You buy then. I sell you, make good deal one hundred and nine-five. I pay tax."
"No, thank you. It's a nice coat. Come on, Greg, let's go."
"No go! Why you go? Is nice coat, you want coat, I sell you, one hundred and fifty, I pay tax. We go and buy now."
"No, that's more than I wanted to spend, really. Good luck, thanks for you help." I said edging toward the door.
"How much you do pay?"
"I'm sorry?"
"You want coat, I sell coat, tell me how mucha you pay to buy coat."
I stopped to think about it. I pulled out my mental calculator. I played with the guy a little. I really did want the coat, but just how much did he want me to have it?
"Eighty dollars, you pay tax" I said boldly, expecting to end up at one twenty.
"No! I cannot. Is not enough. Is nice coat!"
"O.k., thank you." And I left.
But I didn't go far. I knew Sha Mufdi wasn't going to lose the sale, it was just whether he would come to my price. I walked across the way to the Radio Shack and pretended to be interested in whatever piece of crap they had in their front entry way. I saw him pacing. He lit up a cigarette. In those days, you could light up a cigarette inside without being gang tackled. He paced. His brow was sweaty. I watched out of my peripheral vision, telling Greg to wait, something was about to go down. I just didn't know if it would be good or bad.
"You!" he screamed across the mall. "You come back, I do eighty. Come get coat!"
"You pay tax!", I said back, not budging from the bulk stack of cordless phones I planned on using as a bunker should a dirty bomb come hurling across the mall.
"I pay tax, you buy coat. Is good coat, yeah?"
Greg couldn't believe it. Mahmoud slid my card and it was a done deal. I owned what would prove to be the nicest piece of clothing in my wardrobe to this very day. For eighty bucks out the door. And out the door we went before he changed his mind and we started an international incident. I felt so good, I bought lunch.
It is so warm and wonderful, my trench coat is. It has substance and style, it says, "Don't ask me for change, there is at least one weapon under here." It is heavy, but not burdensome. I love this coat. And everybody loves it on me. Even our pastor this past Sunday commented on my coat, stopping just short of issuing a cat call upon seeing my cashmere enhanced visage.
That was 1996 and the coat still looks new. It has proven to be a high quality piece, which makes the minimal money I spent seem that much more well spent. The only downside is its propensity to attract hair and dust of every sort. I picked a cat hair off it today in the car, stretched my arm all the way into the passenger seat, discarded the hair, which then, with unnatural speed, came right back through mid-air to the same place it had been on the coat when I picked it off. Forget Dyson suction technology, just invite me in in the winter time and ask me to hang out for ten minutes and my coat will rid your house of 99.9% of all airborne pollutants. Lint brushes and rollers have no effect.
Somewhere, I hear the little smoking Iranian man laughing. "Enjoy your dust my friend! Fatwa on your allergies, Allah be praised!" Well, I don't know about Allah, but I appreciate a good deal and this one was bonafide. A few years back, I reached in to the inside pocket in the early winter and found a $20 bill I left in there the previous winter. It was like an early Christmas gift. I got an awesome coat, a great story, a surprise $20 and now, a much needed topic for a blentry. All for eighty bucks... you pay tax. It's the coat that keeps on giving.
I didn't get to spend a lot of time in the sun, being it is something like only slightly warmer than liquid nitrogen outside and the wind blows angrily through the valleys created by Detroit's tall buildings. But, I got to feel a little of it in the car on my face. Well, mostly it was in my eyes, both ways, requiring me to grudgingly use the sun visor so I could maintain my ability to see other traffic.
I have to admit, I looked killer today. By that I mean, I looked like a killer. Dark gray suit, Black shirt, my favorite red and black tie, freshly shined black shoes, and my coveted full length cashmere trench coat. Black. I look good in this coat. I generally look good in any garment that hides my body, but this coat is cut well and has timeless style. It is the kind of coat one spends a lot of money on. I bought mine for a song.
In 1996 I was dumped in a nasty sort of way and my gay roommate and the helpful co-eds across the parking lot felt a little retail therapy was in order. Being in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, the world's only city in a developed nation with a university and a casino, but no mall, it necessitated a trip to either Lansing or Midland or Saginaw, which is to say it didn't really matter, because all the choices sucked equally. We chose Lansing. I don't know why, but it turned out to be kismet.
While browsing, I walked into Al Queda's Fine Mens Clothing, where there slogan was, 'Everything must go, let's make a deal, o.k.?' The racks were filled with gaudy colored suits that were stylish for about five minutes in 1954, and were only worn in modern times by African American men of a certain age. The greens and pinks and purples of these suits were definitely not naturally occurring shades outside of what the middle of ground zero might look like. The only thing less attractive were the large, roughly body shaped stains on the carpet. It was a classy place.
There were lots of fedora's with feathers and bands that looked like they were left over from Huggy Bear's wardrobe when Starsky and Hutch folded up production. I can only guess how in staid Lansing, Michigan in 1996 that someone thought that store with that inventory was a good idea. My only explanation is the Iranian man who owned the shop had only ever seen blacksploitation theater and 1970's T.V. and said to himself, "One day, I will escape the oppression of the Soviet occupiers and go to America where I can use my skills as a taylor to outfit men of distinction so they look good while smacking about their hos."
What a slap in the face when he got here only to find men's couture in America had degraded into cheap flannel, Bugle Boys and Birkenstocks. Clearly, his business model, while laudable was unsustainable.
Among the amazing neon suits and pimp suitable accessories was this black trench coat, hanging all by itself on the wall. I was drawn to it, like light itself which seemed to not be able to escape its infinite blackness. I fondled it only briefly when Greg said I should try it on. I was skeptical, because it was $350.00 and while that day's therapy session was all deficit spending anyway, I didn't want to commit to that kind of money. I tried it on quickly as the Ayattollah had stepped outside into the mall to try and harangue people into coming in to the store. I didn't want to attract his attention. Too late. His sixth sense kicked in and he was on my like mung on a mental patient.
"You lika de coat, huh?"
"Yes"
"Is good coat, yes?"
"Um, wasn't that sort of implied...?"
"You buy then. I sell you, make good deal one hundred and nine-five. I pay tax."
"No, thank you. It's a nice coat. Come on, Greg, let's go."
"No go! Why you go? Is nice coat, you want coat, I sell you, one hundred and fifty, I pay tax. We go and buy now."
"No, that's more than I wanted to spend, really. Good luck, thanks for you help." I said edging toward the door.
"How much you do pay?"
"I'm sorry?"
"You want coat, I sell coat, tell me how mucha you pay to buy coat."
I stopped to think about it. I pulled out my mental calculator. I played with the guy a little. I really did want the coat, but just how much did he want me to have it?
"Eighty dollars, you pay tax" I said boldly, expecting to end up at one twenty.
"No! I cannot. Is not enough. Is nice coat!"
"O.k., thank you." And I left.
But I didn't go far. I knew Sha Mufdi wasn't going to lose the sale, it was just whether he would come to my price. I walked across the way to the Radio Shack and pretended to be interested in whatever piece of crap they had in their front entry way. I saw him pacing. He lit up a cigarette. In those days, you could light up a cigarette inside without being gang tackled. He paced. His brow was sweaty. I watched out of my peripheral vision, telling Greg to wait, something was about to go down. I just didn't know if it would be good or bad.
"You!" he screamed across the mall. "You come back, I do eighty. Come get coat!"
"You pay tax!", I said back, not budging from the bulk stack of cordless phones I planned on using as a bunker should a dirty bomb come hurling across the mall.
"I pay tax, you buy coat. Is good coat, yeah?"
Greg couldn't believe it. Mahmoud slid my card and it was a done deal. I owned what would prove to be the nicest piece of clothing in my wardrobe to this very day. For eighty bucks out the door. And out the door we went before he changed his mind and we started an international incident. I felt so good, I bought lunch.
It is so warm and wonderful, my trench coat is. It has substance and style, it says, "Don't ask me for change, there is at least one weapon under here." It is heavy, but not burdensome. I love this coat. And everybody loves it on me. Even our pastor this past Sunday commented on my coat, stopping just short of issuing a cat call upon seeing my cashmere enhanced visage.
That was 1996 and the coat still looks new. It has proven to be a high quality piece, which makes the minimal money I spent seem that much more well spent. The only downside is its propensity to attract hair and dust of every sort. I picked a cat hair off it today in the car, stretched my arm all the way into the passenger seat, discarded the hair, which then, with unnatural speed, came right back through mid-air to the same place it had been on the coat when I picked it off. Forget Dyson suction technology, just invite me in in the winter time and ask me to hang out for ten minutes and my coat will rid your house of 99.9% of all airborne pollutants. Lint brushes and rollers have no effect.
Somewhere, I hear the little smoking Iranian man laughing. "Enjoy your dust my friend! Fatwa on your allergies, Allah be praised!" Well, I don't know about Allah, but I appreciate a good deal and this one was bonafide. A few years back, I reached in to the inside pocket in the early winter and found a $20 bill I left in there the previous winter. It was like an early Christmas gift. I got an awesome coat, a great story, a surprise $20 and now, a much needed topic for a blentry. All for eighty bucks... you pay tax. It's the coat that keeps on giving.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The Dinner
Greatest hits week goes on... One of my favorite memories, this. Please to enjoy.
____________________________________________________________________
I was subjected to a lot of things as a child. Weren’t we all? Many of the little stories I remember today did not seem at the time to be earth shaking or life changing at the time. When I look back on these stories, I realize they have become the cornerstones of who I am. They certainly have helped forge my humor, which in turn has been my most trusted mechanism used to get me through this grandiose life.Having recently spoken on the phone with my dear sister, I realized these memories have a tendency to surface now and then. Sometimes there is joy, and laughter. Sometimes, there is obvious pain. Sometimes, a memory flooding back will stop the whole world dead in its tracks. Our particular shared memory was of a family dinner. Not, mind you a special family dinner, (though some days enough nostalgia seeps out of my blackened heart to realize that all family dinners are special), just a normal everyday casserole kind of dinner. So far removed from this normal everyday casserole kind of dinner, I was amazed by our shared recollections, particularly the details. My sister’s memory was every bit as vivid, and every bit as funny as my own.
____________________________________________________________________
I was subjected to a lot of things as a child. Weren’t we all? Many of the little stories I remember today did not seem at the time to be earth shaking or life changing at the time. When I look back on these stories, I realize they have become the cornerstones of who I am. They certainly have helped forge my humor, which in turn has been my most trusted mechanism used to get me through this grandiose life.Having recently spoken on the phone with my dear sister, I realized these memories have a tendency to surface now and then. Sometimes there is joy, and laughter. Sometimes, there is obvious pain. Sometimes, a memory flooding back will stop the whole world dead in its tracks. Our particular shared memory was of a family dinner. Not, mind you a special family dinner, (though some days enough nostalgia seeps out of my blackened heart to realize that all family dinners are special), just a normal everyday casserole kind of dinner. So far removed from this normal everyday casserole kind of dinner, I was amazed by our shared recollections, particularly the details. My sister’s memory was every bit as vivid, and every bit as funny as my own.
Mom was making a normal everyday casserole for our normal everyday casserole kind of dinner, which ordinarily would not have raised any eyebrows, or excited any taste buds. This time, something was horribly wrong. Our normal everyday casserole smelled a bit like ordinary everyday sweat socks, after a particularly hard game of basketball. This is to say, it smelled a bit rank.
“Kids, time to eat,” came the call and d day was launched. It looked ok, like normal everyday casserole, but the smell was overpowering. My sister is famous for eschewing all but the freshest food. She won’t even eat canned food, because it could have ‘turned’ before it got processed. She’ll smoke cigarettes, and drink beer until she floats, but heavens forbid you ask her to eat day old leftovers. Obviously, given this disposition, my sister was the first to bring all our suspicions to light.
“Mom, this cheese is bad. I can’t eat this. It’s disgusting,” or something along those lines. This had an immediate and negative effect on the tenor of our normal everyday casserole dinner, with my father launching into the standard fatherian litany about hard work, sacrifice and rotten kids.
My sister and I were greatly discouraged. I tried, always being Mom’s little trooper, to eat the damn thing and smile while silently gagging. It was awful. This cheese had turned so long ago, it no longer resembled dairy. It had a chemical composition closer to an alloy of radioactive Lead and Californium. Tears welled in my sister's eyes as she complied with my father’s orders. She bit, she swallowed. She cried.
Dad looked on in triumph. Having won the battle, he took a large bite of his own plate of fetid rotten normal everyday casserole. His look was priceless. I do believe his eyes actually gave up their grip, and succumbed to gravity, and shattered on the very plate that held the poison he had ordered us to eat.
While the people who know my dad know can guess what happens in the end of this story, it will be surprising to others. In short, he ate all that casserole. He ate it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he went back for seconds, just to prove he was right, and we were wrong.
So how is this a defining moment of our lives? My sister and I for one remember the exact same events, right down to the look on my Mom and Dad’s faces when they ate the food. We remember resenting being considered bad kids when we clearly were not being bad kids. We remember that we wished it would have ended like a movie, with dad saying to mom, “You did your best, let’s go to Mickey D’s.” In my life now, I try very hard to provide that movie ending. You never know what will become a defining memory in someone’s life, you had better try and make it good.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Greatest Hits Week Continues
I wrote this originally in 1998. Things have changed a lot since then and yet so very little. It is clear from this piece (prior to revision) that I was an even bigger fan of both run on sentences and sentence fragments then as I am now. It is also clear that I had some of the same challenges with respect to my writing and typing skills. Please to enjoy a piece originally (and inexplicably) entitled, A Different Spin.
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Despite the amount of time I spend typing, I do not type the way I was taught to type in school. I must have taken a typing class in school, as it was a requirement for even getting past middle school. I don’t have a lot of memories from that era, but I have a college degree hanging on my wall, so I think it is a safe assumption that I got out of middle school. It is bad when you are simply trying to type “Hey, you, how are you,” and instead, you type “Her oy, hore oy.” I type a lot in my professional life and as a hobby. How is it I never learned how to type?
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Despite the amount of time I spend typing, I do not type the way I was taught to type in school. I must have taken a typing class in school, as it was a requirement for even getting past middle school. I don’t have a lot of memories from that era, but I have a college degree hanging on my wall, so I think it is a safe assumption that I got out of middle school. It is bad when you are simply trying to type “Hey, you, how are you,” and instead, you type “Her oy, hore oy.” I type a lot in my professional life and as a hobby. How is it I never learned how to type?
I have worked on computers since Commodore’s finest machines running on tape drives with beautiful screens that displayed all the color you wanted (as long as it was monochromatic green or brown). Yet, for all my years of dependence on the keyboard, including a brief stint with the High school newspaper and all the papers I wrote in college, (mine and the ones I was paid to write), the closest to typing I have come is being an amazing hunter and pecker (there’s a mean joke in there somewhere). So I’m functional, but I have to look at the keyboard in order to type with any alacrity.
As a consequence of my poor typing, my keyboards wear out in some pretty obvious places. For instance, on this machine, I now have a “acksp c” button where the backspace key used to be and an “aps lo” where the Caps lock key should be. “How is your Caps lock key worn, Bill? Don’t you only use that occasionally?” You’d think so, but I hit it so often inadvertently that it too has proven there is no immunity to my wrath. I have the unfortunate problem of being a keyboard pounder, too. So my keyboards usually submit pretty quickly to my ham-handedness. I can ruin a perfectly good computer keyboard inside of a year due simply to my lack of skill and my lack of deftness of touch.
Those of you who are regular readers, (hi, Mom!), know I don’t spend a great deal of time editing or proofreading my blentries. This is mostly because I know what I meant and since I am the proofreader, I don’t see my errors until they are pointed out to me. I don’t check my grammar against the APA or University of Chicago guides. I write for fun. I am proud of my dynamic communication abilities. I can mix it up with almost anyone, but for the love of God if you think the final draft is bad, you should see the scratch copy! Yes people, the things you read are originally rife with complicated spelling errors, and poor grammar. By the time I pour over them, and sweat and revise and obsess, they are only marginally better. This very phenomenon prompted my spell checker to quit. Not to fail, but to quit. There was a note on my screen this morning from my spell check application. It follows:
“Bill, enough is enough. I have done all I can for you. You have to want to change, and I see no effort. I can’t continue on this way. A relationship is supposed to be a two way street, not a one way highway to crazy town.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with ‘sdfqaofl’? Exactly what taxonomy or logic would you like to apply to that mess that would lead to a cromulent suggestion? I try so hard, hoping you will change, but not two lines later, there’s ‘b;kjfh[‘. A semicolon and a bracket? Dammit, Bill, you’re a smart man… what word includes a semicolon and a bracket? I have had enough!
“I have left you for a 50 year-old data entry professional. She relies on me for what I am, and aide, a helpful friend. Not the crutch you took me for. I’m sorry to leave you on your own. I hope someday you will learn, or find another spell checker who will take your kind of abuse.”
Needless to say, I deserve it. (Keep in mind, I wrote this log originally in October of 1998. While most of it still rings very true, I have updated it for the modern era. There were some pretty dated aspects of it, like me being single, smoking cigarettes, living alone and some hilarious old-tech references of the kind that make movies like Hackers and The Net become irrelevant almost immediately upon being released.) The conclusion I came to then is the same as the one I come to now. Namely, I am lazy. Learning to type seems a lot like work. I love music. I performed for years at a fairly high level with some people of distinction. I never learned to read music or play an instrument.
I love to volunteer, it makes me feel good and makes me feel like I am doing something good. If I am doing for free and doing it for benefit of someone else, I am a pack mule. I can’t be stopped. But, throw a paycheck in, or call it a chore that is being performed for my own benefit and it becomes the most drudgerous (really, not a word? Don't care, leaving it in.) task there ever was. Even if doing so would improve my quality of life and work. I can’t explain it and I can't put the effort into fixing it. Is that sow rong?
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