20030630 
Doktor Update
Friday night I was out and about with some folks from work, drinkin' some PBR from a can and generally enjoying the beautiful weather and thinking to myself: well gee, life ain't really _that_ bad..
I met up with some more friends, a pleasant surprise, and then even more. Everyone was out and about and the beer was flowing freely.
Then I met Teddy Ruxpin.
Teddy Ruxpin, a friend of a friend .. of a friend, as it turns out, knows the Doktor. Teddy is a drug representative. Teddy lifts weights and wears gold chains and drives a Honda S2000... despite all of this he actually seems like a nice enough guy and friendly enough.
When I was asked about my "current interest" by my friend I mentioned the doktor, and that she was a resident.. My friend immediately exclaimed that Teddy knew _all_ the residents as he is always at the hospital. If I read between the lines well enough, I'd say Teddy knows most of the residents pretty well, if yah know what I mean. "What's her name? What's her name?" my friend asked..
Well.. uhh... the Doktor.
"Teddy, do you know the Doktor?" she asked.
Teddy, with a chuckle, replied in the affirmative.
Teddy, with a chuckle, replied with some friendly advice.
Teddy said, if I was going to bring that doktor home, I should make sure to Triple-Bag It
Good 'ol Teddy.
Thanks.
Earlier, when I said:
But I won't play with as much enthusiasm as a lotta people out there do. You know, the people with the Star Trek trilogy on a shelf next to their tv who also played football in high school? Yah.. those people try a lot harder than me.
I was referring to those people that are football players, are cool (or trying to be) but you can tell the real them cause they have the star trek movies on their shelf. nothing wrong with star trek, i'm just saying it says something about your character and it says that, if you were playing high school ball then you were probably doing it to impress the ladies, and that's just trying a bit harder than I ever did... will?
I meant the star trek movies.. didn't mean to say trilogy.. didn't mean to confuse.
20030627
Monkey's, touching themselves, bouncing around in the trees with the 'nanas and the 'boons with their nary-a-hair-on-me-bum smirks.. They're the ones having fun. And if - IF you ask - if they are having fun but are, in their crippled little minds, unawares of how joyous an occasion their life is then is it a crime? Is it a sin, a punishment, a forlorn state of the union of our planet?
Let me, with little fanfare, point you to our national motto:
Ignorance Is Bliss
And that should about sum things up for you and you and you and why the Monkey's are, in all likelyhood, having a much better time of it than I.
Speaking of Monkeys.. In my infinite wisdom - knowing that man must know his boundaries, limits, and possibilities in order to be a content man - I rushed home on Thursday evening hoping to arrive there before one of my many (2) friends might venture to call. I slipped and lost the opportunity on Wednesday evening to dial our favourite doll down at ma bell, *69, and find out who in fact called my humble abode not once, but perhaps twice, on Wednesday evening following the wonderful rambling messages of one aschwa at isla vista. I did not, however, want to make the same mistake twice so knowing how unpopular of a phone I have I rushed home Thursday evening to dial my doll and see what she had to tell me.
It wasn't what I expected.
To recap, for those just joining our hero, he is awaiting a phone call that will never arrive - much like charlie on the MTA. I don't know why Charlie's wife, having brought him lunch and passed it through the train every day for a long long time, didn't just bring him some change so he could get the hell off the train.. but I digress.. Our hero is awaiting contact from a gal, referenced first in this post, then this one, then this one, following up with this one.. and maybe a few inbetween.
Continuing..
I listened intently as the numbers came spilling forth from Victoria, or Samantha, or whatever ridiculus name the programmer had given to this particular computerized vixen, and as they came it only got weirder.
2 0 7
Yeah.. well I recognize *that*.. at least I know an area code when I see one. Of course, here in the bustling metropolis of Maine we have but one area code, so the first three digits did little to ease my mind - except to ensure that alex, in *his* infinite wisdom, did not call a third time.
7 7 3
What? 773? What kind of an exchange is that?! Certainly not one coming from the hospital. Certainly not one coming from a doctor's office or from a cell phone or even, in this case, the apartment of one particular doctor - the doktor. This exchange, this prefix, was familiar but yet strange. Only one number in my large menagerie is, in fact, a 773 number and it certainly was not *this* 773 number.
6 ..
Well, I'll stop now to spare whomever it is that has called me. I will say, though, that this a strange and unexpected turn of events. Some hemming, hawing, and a few quick searches on the innernector delivered me a map of Portland, with a red star right ... near .. my house.
Strange.
A subsequent lookup resulted in a name attached to the number, and the number having been attached to the map, gave me a full picture... but I can't for the life of me figure out who painted it. The number is foreign. The street, though just a hop skip and a jump from my stoop, is foreign as well. Even more foreign (even in a literal sense here) is the name itself.
Having the only land line in the apartment means that someone *could* have called for a roommate but this seems unlikely. One roommate has been gone for a week and the other, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't even know the land line number.
There were not one, but *two* hang up messages.
Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser.
or more curious and more curious. whatever.
We've all been over this before but I'm too goddamn cheap to pay for a webhost so is it my fault that my comments don't work well and don't let me know when I have a new comment and don't refresh right so I have a comment number under each post?
A resounding yes, folks, yes it is my fault.
My fault too that, after a week of no comments, I gave up doing the 'ol click through.. like looking for fans in the dark, you're bound to get your fingy's cut to smithens.
But enough of that.. I appreciate nonetheless. It's almost better if I don't know they aren't there because then I don't respond and if I don't respond I'm just me, an action, not a reaction... and who really likes a REaction anyway? It's always the action itself that really counts.
Take, for example, the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand. Fascinating stuff, to be sure. The reaction? That whole WWI thing.. whatever *that* was about. Does anyone really care? No.
Take, for example, Sosa.. it was the cork in the bat that did it for me, not what the league did to him. Do I *really* want to put much weight on what a bunch of bureaucratic dillholes decide to do after the fact? No.
Take, for example, the naming of the Student Union building of McGill University. Do you think I care whether or not the University refused to recognize the student's vote for "The Shatner Building"? No.. it's named the Shatner Building, that's alls I'z care.
So action, my fellow Americans! Run to the nearest corner store, the nearest dep, the closest package store. Buy yourself some beer. Get yourself some drunk. No one, and I mean no one, is gonna remember or care or even pay attention to your moaning and groaning the next morning - least of all you - so get out there and enjoy yourself!
Bad English's When I See You Smile is _not_ the preferred song for pumping one up for a Friday afternoon full of baseball, burgers, and beer.
Especially when you can't eat cheese.
So the butler, having been promoted to Shucker at the oyster bar, is juggling a bit of a conundrum. He secured himself a new room with one of the chefs at his establishment in a slightly sketchy, slightly run down building on the back side of the tourist facade. You know the kind. It seems it has historically, at least in the last few years, supported tenants of the transient and/or resturantuer type - odd people with odd schedules doing.. well.. odd things.
Day one in the new joint, with his futon crammed up above the hallway in a small 3 foot high loft, he woke up to a strange fellow offering him some drink concoction of cocaine and other sundrys. He declined.. he did have to work, afterall. Before he does run off to work he does drop $150 off in Sue's hand for the follow month's rent.
Day three, maybe, and his roommate Sue disappeared. She's a narly character with big thick dreads and wide pants high up on her ankles and a nasty gash above her left eye - the result of a recent mugging (of course she knew the fellow).
Day four, and Sue didn't show for work. Someone came in and covered for her and no one took much notice.
Day five or six, still no Sue, but her ex showed up and dropped off Sue's dog - a nice boxer/pit bull mix named Lily.
Day six or seven the landlandy showed up. The butler was asked who he was and what he was doing in the apartment. He relayed that he was just staying for a week or so and that he thought it had been okayed by Sue. Sue? She asked.. Sue isn't even on the lease. huh? A quick run down of the facts shows the apartment is actually leased to her ex, who hasn't lived there in some time. They also show that Sue has failed to pay anything close to a full month's rent in some time. The landlady is none-too-pleased and insists she will have to start the eviction process.
Day nine, after walking and feeding the dog since it was dropped off, the butler returns to the apartment to find the dog missing. No Sue either.
Day ten, The building manager makes his appearance, declares the situation a lost cause, announces the police will arrive in three days and that the butler, if he wished to save anything at all, should get it the heck out of the apartment as quick as was humanly possible.
Day eleven, after a long night of shucking the butler returns to find the door kicked in, Sue's bedroom light on, and gives up all hope. Looting begins.
Friday Five
How are you planning to spend the summer?
This summer, 2003, has the potential to be the Summer of Michael. This, of course, is pending the write-off of one doktor. It is saddening to me that this doktor is continuing to muck up my plans but such is life. When things do get resolved a rampage will ensue. I hope.
What was your first summer job?
Besides haying - which I don't really count because I was barely old enough to know what the hell a job was in the first place and I just arranged bails up on top of the truck as they threw them in at me - the first job was a bank job. Not your typical 9 to 5, though, as I was proofing in the back office and balancing big numbers and printing reports. It was more of a 2pm-8pm job, and it served it's purpose well. I made more than minimum wage, and that was all I cared about. With the money (what little of it I spent) I purchased my first sound card and a blazingly fast 9600 baud modem. Prometheus.. or something like that.
If you could go anywhere this summer, where would you go?
Camp. To sit and relax and sail and swim and not have to think about the time or the date or who is ringing the telly or who isn't.
The last two questions, best and worst vacations.. meh.. what's the point?
So 'ol Baldacci, Gov'nah of Maine finally kicked the bill, and signed smokers out of bars.
You'd think www.portland.com would have that as a prominent article/headline on their site, them being the online portal for Maine Today, the Portland Press Herald, and a few other newspapers, pretty much making up the majority of news print in Maine.. yet it is strangely absent. I had to go all the way to the Bangor Daily News to get my fix, and even then it was a google cache cause no way I'm login in!
I got tricked into eating cheese.. and on the first goddamn day of my anticheeseestablishment run, too. First things first, it was Wendy's so I had a hard time saying no in the first place. I put in my order like a Zombie, of course, cause I don't even need to think anymore to know what I'm gonnna get there. In fact I make change in my sleep, in the dark, for my eventual trips to Wendy's. I put in an order on this particular day for lunch variation #2. I only have 2. #2, the antifood variation, substitutes evil little pieces of chicken for what Wendy and me like to call a side salad... course, if you've ever hung out with Wendy and had one of her side salads you know it really _is_ a side salad cause the main course is the dressing. I swear to god if anyone out there pours that whole package of dressing on their side salad bring them down, step them right up because I have a hammer that I need to hit them in the face with.
NOTE to you dumbass people out there: DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT put that entire package of dressing on your side salad.
Sheesh. Like putting your newborn in a woman's tall mink coat. Overkill, honey, Overkill.
So I had the side salad as usual, pushing the giant bag of oil and spices off to the side of my tray, and I had a Jr. Bcn Cheeseburger, too. Now, this is where my problem arouse - cheeseburger no longer means cheese in my head. I have been tricked for so long by Wendy and Mr. King and that McDonald guy down the street - tricked into thinking that if the word cheese appears in the name of the product and if maybe they put a little orange square of chemicalness somewhere within the product than that means all is good, and that despite the fact that there is in fact NO cheese whatsoever, I should be happy, nay, pleased even, that they even got my order right in the first place. Yeah.. right. So I didn't think twice in my zombie state when I said Jr. Bcn Cheeseburger and a Medium Fry, please. Every time I order a medium fry they just give me a box with a bunch of tiny ones in it. What the fuck is up with that?
So I ate cheese. So kill me. It was at noon yesterday and I'll make it up to you, okay? Fine. So what did I say? No cheese for two weeks? Alright.. alright.. I'll give you three weeks now. Are you happy?!? No cheese in Montreal. No cheese at the Jazz Fest. No cheese at the Bball game. No cheese.
20030626
It's a Cruel, Cruel Summer, Bananarama would tell us and boy are they right this year. It's hot, hot, and more hot and they're reporting 58% humidity and if they think I believe that for one goddamn second then they are wrong wrong wrong.
It's not the heat, it's the humidity.
Yah? Well fuck you and your humidity, I just feel like shit. That's the bottom line. Me. Shit.
I have a big goopy situation downstairs and my neck is slick with wet and I'm even in an air conditioned office.
Damn air conditioning. That doesn't fix anything. Air Conditioning is evil just like Chicken.
Don't trust the chicken.
Or the AC
AC is for whiners and has-beens and couldn't-cut-it's and californians. I'm none of the three.
Oh, I'm sorry? Did you say something? Fuck you too.
--------
So.. that having been said, onto bigger and brighter things. Like how completely and utterly psychotic a seemingly normal human being (aka: me) can get.
I called the doktor again, it being a week after the last call and it being that I wasn't around all weekend and I didn't run into her at trivia night and why the hell not, right? I don't like playing games. Don't get me wrong, I'll play.. I'll show up. I'll lace up. I'll get up. But I won't play with as much enthusiasm as a lotta people out there do. You know, the people with the Star Trek trilogy on a shelf next to their tv who also played football in high school? Yah.. those people try a lot harder than me. Okay, I digress. I called her. Left a message and told her to call my ass back cause I wasn't playing games like that and if she wanted to get anywhere with this one she better sit up, pay attention, and take notes. Okay, I just told her to call me. Whatever. The point is what her machine said to me.
See, I'm intimately familiar with this machine by this point. This was call number three, in fact, so when things weren't quite what I was used to I perked up and payed attention. At first listen it really was pretty much the same message, but my spidey senses picked up a slight change in tone, a bit lighter color, a smidgen more energy. She went through the same old rigamaroll:
Hey, I'm not around so if you leave your name, a short message, and your number, I'll get back to you
But what caught my ear, what pricked my brain, was the little chuckle after and your number. It hadn't been there before, I'm sure of it. Before it was just a tired repetitive and your number like she'd said it a million times before (which I'm sure she had) but now, today, there is the slightest chuckle. It's not even a chuckle in it's own right but sort of fell out of the backside of the word number like the it got jumpy in her mouth. Ever so slight, yah see?
So, "The significance?" you might ask. And right you are to ask because the significant difference in the two previous messages that I had left were just that: my number.
In message number one I was polite, to the point, and told her to give me a call.. left my number clear as a whistle.. and I did, indeed, get a call back the very next day.
In message number two I forewent the number as I thought she would, of course, have recorded it down in ink for all of time to see and have if and when it was needed. Maybe I was wrong. I never did get a call back from that one.
And now this. A slight chuckle. A chortle. A hiccup in what was otherwise a normal and complete answering machine message.
Yes yes. I am psychotic. I prefaced this with that very statement, so don't come complaining to me. I know.
I was thinking I would call him after I got off of work tonight to confirm and figure out a time, but he is a good guy, and called me instead
I should be so lucky.
It's hot and it's really hot and it's Thursday but it really feels a heck of a lot like Friday. It feels like Friday because it has that air of expectation hanging around it, just like the humidity that seems to cling to you as you push through the heat. It feels like Friday because it's the first week of summer and it's the first truly truly hot day of summer and I am going to a baseball game Friday.. tomorrow.. sorta makes more sense that it should be today, you know? It feels like Friday because Thursdays weren't meant to be hot.. they weren't meant to be humid and drippy-sweat hot. Thursdays are chill-on-the-patio cool days. Thursdays are just-warm-enough-for-shorts days. Thursdays, I have been told, even sometimes have rain.
No rain here in the fair state of Maine.. not for some time now. It's been a hot humid mid-week and we're pushing into a hot humid weekend which will probably end up in rain somewhere down the line but for now it's just fun in the sun.
Or in the air conditioned office, as the case may be.
Air conditioning. In Maine. If that doesn't sound ludicrous I don't know what does.
Wednesdays.. now they were meant for fun in the afternoons, lemonade on the porch, even grilling on the patio. Wednesdays were made for neat little diversions to help you through the week. We were lucky enough, on this Wednesday, to have a neat little diversion in the way of a free Guster concert downtown and some awfully nice weather and, in my case, a pretty damn good natural pizza (no nitrate!). Guster sang all of the 5 or so mp3s I have of theres and they sounded just like 'em. How original. They sang all the old stuff and the leetle girls in front screamed and everyone else just stood around and shot the shit. It was hot. Almost too hot.
Learned an awfully good trick for you folks this weekend. Trying to cut back on the fats and the salts? Trying to eat healthy?
Next time you cook up some corn on the cob on the grill... don't lunge at the butter.. don't dive for the salt.. just cut yourself a slice of lime and run it up and down that cob until it's all lathered up in juice and let me tell you if that isn't one delicious peice of fruit garnished vegetable.
It's no salt and butter, but it's still damn good.
On the heels of the addictive cheese article I have declared a moratorium on cheese for two weeks. For two weeks I will not eat cheese of any sort and I will like it. I may drink milk, I may even have some butter... but I will not consume cheese in any way shape or form.
If I can not drink for two months surely I can avoid cheese for two weeks?
My roommate doesn't like cheese. She doesn't think it tastes good. She'll eat pizza and lasagna and whatnot, but she doesn't really dig on cheese.
Now if that isn't the most distrustful thing I've ever heard, I certainly don't know what is.
20030623
Outdoor parties are the shit.
Rum spiked watermellon is the shit, as is jello shots and homebrew cerveza.
As are kegs.
and ping pong.
Went to bed around 6 am on a dreary Sunday morning and I didn't get out of bed till around 6 pm on that same dreary Sunday. Sometimes you can't sleep your problems away but you can usually sleep a hangover away. That's the good thing about a hangover - it's the problem you know will go away.
I don't know about you but I feel a little safer knowing there are problems out there that are solvable by simply climbing into the sack and ignoring them.
This woman issue, however, is not one of them.
Apple has gone and introduced the G5
New 64 bit processing. dual processors. PCI-X. Firewire 800. AGP 8X. 8gigs of RAM. As TMBG would say, S-E-X-X-Y.
Via this post over at a site by some courtney character I find an article suggesting that cheese may in fact be addictive (something about morphine from cow's liver). This after I recently learned how cheese is the most difficult food to give up for dieters.
Food. Addictive.
Yeah.. well.. umm.. So?
Next thing they are gonna tell us is water is addictive cause, uh, like.. our bodies crave it.
Okay, I'm being obnoxious, but really.. where is the line in the sand? How do you define an addiction, anyway? Is something only addictive if your body doesn't really need it?
What about routine? We are, afterall, creatures of habit, but does that mean it's an addiction? I chew my nails. Is that an addiction? It is, presumably, a negative act, so is that what makes an addiction? Is there any such thing as a healthy, or positive, addiction?
If I drink 8 glasses of water a day am I positively addicted?
Regardless, if this all results in fat people sueing the fa( s)t food joints cause cheese is addictive then I'm done.. stop the ride. I want to get off. It's getting too weird for me to handle. And if fat people start *winning* these cases, I'm just going to cry.
courtney goes on to mention a proposed british fat tax, which is interesting, especially since they have government health care so the country does have to absorb the health costs that fat food adds to a population, in a round about way.
A lotta folks say this is counter-productive because the poor tend to eat more fast & cheap food, therefore a fat tax would hurt those who need the money the most, the poor.. but I say - if you make healthy food cheaper (or fat food more expensive) then aren't you thereby giving the poor a good reason to eat healthy?
My good pal KC has always said unhealthy food is cheap food and it's a shame that we live in that sort of situation. I know I am a victum to it sometimes as much as I try to avoid it.
learned about pin worms this weekend.
learned that they like to hang out around your arsehole but they only come out during the night. i guess they're party animals, them worms. i presume it's a feeding thing, you know.. pick of the Klingons around Uranus, and all that bad jokeness.
but i'm told (with only a slight smirk) that they aren't so bad that they hurt or anything, they just tickle a little bit so it's nothing to fret too much about. in fact, they are (i am told) sorta fun.
I have no reference so i am forced to take this at face value and reserve judgement till i have chance to party with the pin worms myself, which isn't anything i'm planning in the near future.
I took this all for truth, despite the funny little smirk, because why would someone lie about pin worms? It's not really something to joke about afterall. plus, the person who told me has a way of using her big puppy dog eyes to stare at you in a naive, believing look.. to look at you in such a way to say how could i possibly lie i'm so innocent so I bought it and once she realized i was there to put money down she started loading the options on;
the way they, the parents, find out if their kids have 'em (the pin worms) is to wait till they are sleeping..
i could see where this was going already..
and they wait till they're sleeping and creep into their rooms and [giggle] they roll 'em over and pull their pants down [guffaw] and they take a piece of scotch tape and they stick it on their asshole and [heeheehee] and they look for little hair-line sized worms on the tape to see if they have the pin worm
sorta makes sense, i guess. it's what makes it so believable.
if I was from latin america maybe i'd be buying more scotch tape.
tony is my arch nemesis.
he just posted this link to a website with all the seinfeld episodes for download. Allll of them. That's about 180 episodes, if I figure right.
he is my nemesis because he posted it, so now it will be popular. popular enough to make for slow ass downloads and maybe even popular enough to get the RIAA/MPAA/MOFGA black suits on the poor sites ass and then the poor site will be no more... no more for my downloading and viewing pleasures.
okay, maybe not the mofga black suits. i'm not even sure the mofga's have black suits. just overalls and carhart work suits.
you know a real farm when the coat rack by the door has a few wool-lined carhart work suits hanging there.. that stink... like barnyard animal feces.
you know a real farm when there is a radio in the barn always tuned in to some station, but at such a low volume you gotta strain to hear it.
you know a real farm even better, even more real, if the radio is sorta weird like an alien ship might be flying low overhead cause the electric fence regulator makes the radio waves go funny.
you know a real farm when you learn not to pee on the fence.
ouch.
so maybe the mofga's don't have black suits but the damn RIAA and MPAA do and they think they know your business.. they think they can get in your business.. so guess what? chances are they are going to get in your business.
it's a shame, cause all I want to do is watch some seinfeld episodes.
One time, back a year or two ago, I spent a good 3 or 4 months downloading and cataloging every single episode for myself.. for my sanity. I grabbed what I could when I could and when I had enough from 1 to 15 to burn to disc I burnt 'em to disc and then wiped them clean so I had room for the next batch.. then I'd do 16 through 30..
Half of them were about 40megs and the other half were around 25 so I am convinced that out there, in the world, there were exactly two people recording and encoding seinfeld episodes and those two people are where every single seinfeld episode on this here innernector came from. one or the other.
So when I was downloading, half my copies were 25 meg and half were 40 but I didn't care cause seinfeld was never about the detail, never about the picture quality or the sound even.. it was about the raw human comedy... and what the means, folks, is those two people.. whomever.. wherever.. for whatever reasons they did what they did.. they're my heros.
See? Even you, today, can be a hero. It doesn't take much. It takes a little effort and forethought and desire and maybe a little work..
but even you can be a hero.
I burned every last one of those seinfeld episodes to disc and when I was done I had a stack of 15 or so and I looked lovingly at them and thought, yes, i am done, amen.
and then I promptly misplaced them.
I don't know where they went or who took them or if they are just under the bed.. but I just looked under the bed and I don't know who could/would/want to take them from me, take them like ripping my first born child from my very hands. bastards. but the bottom line is they are gone and i am a hollow man for it. a hollow hollow man.
thank you tony,
curse you tony,
thank you tony.
Curses!
Someday, somewhere, I will come upon my beautiful discs.
Someday, in front of some tv, I will have a marathon.
Someday, sometime, with sticky popcorn butter on my fingers and empty soda cans around me like praying subjects, I reach a higher plane.
Someday, I will die a happy man.
20030620
the june teeth are bothering me today. i take a trip to the dentist and they poke around and ask me things like
do you chew?
well, yah lady, i chew. how the fuck yah think I get my food down.
well, can i ask one more thing? 'yah have to use so many cuse words?
'fuck yah mean, lady?
i mean who the hell does she think she is coming in here, in this little cubicle of a fucking dentists office and asking *me* about my goddamn teef and do i fucking chew... then it occurs to me. i get it. oh yeah. she means the 'baccy.
no, man.. i mean lady, no i don't chew tobacco!
well do you want to buy a toof brush?
they're always trying to sell you something... abfc.. always be fucking closing and if you don't believe it git out.. git out my house. right now. you're too young for these ears and these eyes you need to sit down. $500 for lazzzzzer whitening. $500 fucking bucks to have pearlies on both rows and goddamn if people aren't out there paying for it .. 100, 200, 300, 400, there yah go buddy: $500 bucks.
blow my fucking mind.
but can you whiten this? can you whiten my attitude for me? $500 doesn't seem like so much anymore, does it?
1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short?
Straight, thin, always.. short for now. often very much so. Sometimes not.
2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime?
Beyond the three years of un-checked growth in high school when I got it down to as long as mid-shoulder blade or longer, it has generally stayed the same - short and to the point. I never really pulled off the grade-school spike and I can't grow 'burns for the life of me. It was died orange, with halloween as an excuse, for six months once in college and last year I did go shaved, just to say I'd done it.. and I sort of liked it.
3. How do your normally wear your hair?
Unkempt.
I don't believe in hairdryers. After my late morning shower, I usually ride down the highway to work with my head out the window to dry it off.
4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like?
Mohawk.
5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened?
Yeah, ever 3 months.
It's called a mini-mullet.
perhaps you've heard of it...
Alas, I am actually working today. The posts might be far and few between.
But as long as I'm here right now, an interesting tidbit of uselessness:
Last night I sat on my dining room floor with a motorcycle fuel tank betwixt my legs as I tried to monkey the fuel pump out of it. I put my favourite movie, The Burbs, in the VCR so I could listen to it while I worked. The bad guys in the movie, if you will recall, move into the neighbourhood and cause a lot of suspicion because no one ever saw the old residents of the house, the Knapps, move out.
After I was done fiddling, I settled in front of the tv and popped in the first DVD of the new "Homicide: Life on the Street" seasons 1 & 2 box set. I watched the first ever episode, "The Ghost of Goode". If you are familiar with the show you will know that murder cases are chalked up on a big whiteboard in the homicide department. As new cases come in the name of the dead fellow is written under the lead detective's column in red marker. When a case is solved, it is wiped clean and re-written in black.
The first name you see on the whiteboard, in the first episode, (written in black of course, as the murder was just solved in the movie I had watched not 10 min earlier) is..
Knapp.
20030619
And if I haver yeah I know I'm gonna be
Not too sure what havering is, exactly, but if I can contextualize at all I would contextualize this: I'm a haverin' to my doktor.
If you haven't been following this epic story of a man - a man looking so much like ben seaver it sort of crimps his style - then let me sum up for you:
The first mention was probably this post where I outline my first actual real official approach and interaction with the doktor. Long story short I see her at the bar every week and she is cute and outta my league (in a I am a Doctor sort of way) but every once in awhile, so they tell me, a dude gets the call up from the minors and maybe this year is my year to go up and try my luck.
I'll probably throw my arm out.
Then, in a later post, I mentioned my pal Tom's sage advice about tuesday night dates. He was confused, however, as I didn't in fact have a date on tuesday.. I just saw her again at Trivia.
To back up two steps - I called her over the weekend. I left a message on her machine and didn't really expect a call back but before I could dial #2 the next day on Sunday she called me back. Her first order of business was to announce that she doesn't normally call people back. Huh? We had a brief conversation about Father's Day before her phone started to cut out on us and she quickly said she'd be around this week and that she would at least see me on Tuesday, at trivia night.
Needless to say, the trivia has ceased to be the main attraction on Tuesday nights.
This particular Tuesday I played it a bit cool and just hung out at the bar drinking Sam Adams (giving it one final chance) and answering trivia questions with the most cavalier of attitudes (It was, afterall, no longer about the trivia). She was all over the place as usual... I dare say even more energetic than normal and seemingly half the guys in the bar had something to go talk to her about. She entertained all of their advances in a friendly enough manner.
This is where things got complicated. We made eye contact. Her friend beckoned me over. She acted shy.. A strange response from such a seemingly outgoing gal, to be sure.
So I gave her a few minutes and returned to my trivia. I kept checking the situation out of the corner of my eye and at one point she was hanging over the bannister chatting with her friend and another guy pal who happened to come over. He made eye contact with me, pointed sneakily at her, and mouthed "She Wants You" at me.
Wha...whooooaaa there. Who the? What the?
If you've been following this story, please... please.. tell me what I'm missing cause the pieces are not fitting together in this puzzle.
End of the night came and she was alone enough that I got up and had a quick chat with her. "So what are you up to this week?" I asked. She mumbled something about having a patient on the verge and being on call and therefore she could not make definite plans. Huh? "So ... what does that mean?" I continued.. come on here.. throw me a bone! She responded, again, that she couldn't really make plans.
At this point, three beers in, I was feeling a little confused but cheeky enough so I just layed it out for her:
"Look. This is what I'm gonna do. I'll give you a call, leave a message on your machine. You can ignore it and I'll feel shitty for awhile.. but then I will get over it and I'll give you another call. I'll leave another message and you can ignore that one, too, and again I'll feel kind of shitty. But I'll get over it.."
She looked nervously at her friends waiting for her at the door, "Yah, well, you don't have to worry about that," she said.
And then she was gone.
I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you
Two interesting bits in the genetics field today: animal and mineral (well, sort of)
Fellow Ethernauts,
Netizens,
Blogonauts,
[I like that last one.. blogonauts.. cause it's phonetically similar to 'blog or not', which is seemingly what many people do every day: decide to blog, or not.. more often not.. in which case I am left with nothing but archives to read. Have you ever tried to read an old newspaper? borrrring.]
Everyone needs to learn to use the title tag in their blogs.
For those who are unawares a title tag, or more appropriately, a title property, is something you can add to a hyperlink (wow, how old does that word sound) which will, upon a mouse-over of said link, pop up a little box with the title text in it.
Example (with the [ and ] endies replacing the normal HTML endies):
[a href="http://britcoal.blogspot.com/" title="Mike's House of Love - Come Right In!"]britcoal[/a]
reads like this (note - mouse-over the link for tons 'o fun):
britcoal
As long as I'm on the whole nostalgia kick.. I might as well talk a bit about the 'ol wallet itself.
Wallets, in my family, have always been a passing thing. They're sort of like a pair of shoes for your butt - you'd like a comfortable one, and utilitarian too - but it wouldn't hurt if it was a bit fashionable too. But the bottom line, always, was not to get too attached because you're going to get a new one in two years.. maybe sooner if your kids aren't imaginative enough when it comes Father's Day.
My first wallet came when I was in 7th grade. To be somewhat exact about it, I believe it was sometime in August when I first pick her out at Ames (or was it Sears..) and paid $12 dollars. I was at my parents camp for the summer sailing and relaxing in the sun and generally doing nothing at all but reading way too much Tom Clancy. We had taken a spin up the road to Dover-Foxcroft, Piscataquis County Seat, and home of my birthplace - Mayo Hospital. I was lumbering around the store in sullen silence as I waited for my sister and mother to finish their chore of being a woman.
And then I saw it - the wallet rack.
I played with a few of them, folding them open and closed again, fitting them into my back pocket. I was a small kid at the time so I couldn't swing the two-fold. My rear pocket wasn't nearly big enough. My personality is sort of tri-fold, anyway. I picked out a nice dark grey leather tri that had a plastic window in the middle section for the license (which I would not obtain for another three years). It didn't have the flimsy plastic picture-book slip-in that many have and I liked that. Keep it simple, I always say.
Back then $12 - especially for a 7th grader - was a princely sum but somehow I had a feeling about this wallet and I knew it was time. Time to become a man, as it were. I convinced the board (my mom) to approve my business expense and like that, I had a wallet.
At first, there wasn't much in it. Money, mostly - and even then not much. Over time it started collecting various pieces of paper and plastic, as wallets are want to do. Receipts and telephone numbers scrawled on tiny ripped pieces of paper. Loose Subway sandwich stickers and buy-one-get-one-free coupons for Dunkin Donuts. By late high school it had accumulated a driver's licence, a credit card, and even my social security card.
In my senior year I was dating a girl who lived on a lake. I beached my sailboat there for the early summer months and we would go out on the weekends and after school and enjoy the water. The wallet, however, did not like the water so much. Twice it went swimming there - once I even left it, unaware that it was drowning in the shallows. An uncle of hers rescued it a day later, setting it on the bow of the boat and I found it then - never having known it was gone. It was wet and soggy and I layed it out to sunbath. Good as new. Mostly.
Again, this time in the Quebec Laurentians, it went swimming again. This time, after a bout of skinny dipping with the good friends that one aquires in college, I left it floating by the dock. By the time I realized it was gone it was well past midnight and I was well past my 10th beer. I stumbled back down the dirt path, a bit anxious as only a drunk man can be, listening to the whoops and hollers of the drunken revalry back at the camp around the fire. I was in the dark and wadded around by the dock getting my the bottoms of my pants wet, dragging one hand around in the water as a sort of dredger - a beer bottle in the other. Again, I got lucky and found it - mostly in tact - and a few hours by the camp fire quickly returned it to good as new. Mostly.
Somewhere in there they told me it was time to get a new wallet. They said mine was ragged and tired and falling apart and that I needed to upgrade, replace, improve. HA! Little do they know of my loyalty. Little do they know of the power of my nostalgia.
This summer, in August, we reach the twelve year anniversary of the joining of me and my wallet to become one - the Man and his wallet. In honour of this most sacred of occasions and to preserve for all who follow, I present to you here a portrait of my wallet, in all it's glory, here on this day, June 19th, 2003.
20030618
If you ever enjoyed watching dominos fall one after another.. or played mousetrap as a kid..
Check out this crazy little video over at Honda.. those people are great.
Speaking of McGill Telecom...
man were they great.
Where most telephone companies like the idea of charging you more for the first minute of a long distance call (inevitably, the best way to make money) the kind people at McGill Telecom made the first minute of every call FREE.
Most of the lines on my phone statement that year read something like this:
09/27/1998 19:32:47 207-582-5555 Gardiner, ME...................... 1 min $0.00
I remember they would post a huge sheet in the dorm lobby with everyone's total phone charges for the month since it was automatically deducted from our tuition accounts.
Michelle.. $21.75
Joe.. $12.37
Alex.. $8.19
and then there was always me.
Mike.. $1.24
I don't think I ever cracked the $5 barrier.. even in Canadian currency. They dinged us 2.5 cents (CDN) per minute to the states.
There was even a few kids from somewhere in the Carribean who got free calls.. Somehow the island exchange had a local routing number in Montreal and every went through as a local call. Lucky buggers.
By my second year the regular phone companies had crazy flat-rate long distance plans. $20/month for unlimited calling within Canada. It didn't do anything for me but I knew people with three, four, and even five Canadians in a single apartment. At first the bills came with a little reminder of how much you saved. It used to say if you hadn't elected the $20 all you can gab plan, you'd have spent $XXX this month!..
I saw ones as high as $1,500...
Somehow this lovely idea hasn't made it, in it's purest form, down to the good 'ol states. I'm not sure if Americans could deal with it anyway. Their minds would most likely spontaneously explode. Down here in the states we are used, expect, and even encourage the telcos to screw us up the ass whenever they get the chance.
Then the federal government, realizing that it's people were being screwed up the ass, decided to start charging the telcos for the right to screw us up the ass.
The telcos, of course, passed the savings on to us...
Now not only do we have taxes and plan fees and minute by minute charges, we also suffer through universal charges and special starving children in ethopia fees and they don't even let us dial 0 for the time anymore.
I have to dial 411.
The telcos, in fact, are so lovingly run with the consumer in mind that they allow you to call 411 for directory assistance (or even to get the time, as the case may be) as many times in a month as you want...
For Seventy-Five-Fucking-Cents.
I take completely horrible pictures.
As the subject, that is.
Maybe it's a weird manifestation of the "my own voice sounds weird on the answering machine" syndrome, but I don't think I've seen a decent photo of myself in years. In contrast, other people seem to take wonderful pics. Everyone, in fact, seems to have a number of good mugshots lying around the house (or website, as the case may be). I don't.
I avoid the business end of a camera like the plague. I might get preserved in celluloid two or three times a year, max. I once went a year and a half without being caught on camera. Part of the problem might be the situations that are usually involved. The michael hunter has to be patient to catch a snapshot of this man. They have to be sneaky and wait until very late in the evening, often past the midnight hour, when beer has been flowing freely for some time... and it's never pretty.
But I did get a pretty decent pencil sketch done once. My old roommate from college was on a quest to sketch every single person in our dorm by the end of the year. I was #1 or #2. The sketch remains folded, in my wallet, to this day. For your very viewing pleasure, I have carefully scanned this beautiful work of art (the subject, afterall, is irresistable). It makes me look a little more "rough" and "back-woodsy" than perhaps I normally am in my everday incarnation, but a likeable representation nonetheless. You can see that I was wearing my carhart cap at the time. Unfortunately, due to the lack of preservation, there is a ghost image where it was folded onto itself.
And since I'm here playing with the scanner anyway, I'll give you a look at the other little piece of nostalgia in my wallet - my one and only official dentention write-up I ever got, this from 7th grade..
It reads: I had trouble yesterday with Mike's behaviour and I thought we [sic] sorted out the problem . But today he was back at it
The corner is missing but you can get the general idea: I was a mouthy little bastard.
Sometimes I wish I were a journalist. They get to run around all day chasing people, chasing leads, and then when they catch them they get to say things like:
"I'm working a piece for the Times about.."
Ha! I'm working a piece. I'm working a piece, alright.. it just ain't for the times. These journalists.. they get to poke around and ask naughty questions and because they are le presse, people respond.. People feel compelled to tell the truth. Okay, Clinton aside, people tell the truth.
No one feels compelled to tell me the truth.. and they certainly don't put up with my naughty questions to begin with.
Journalists get to use "work" as an excuse to talk to whomever they want, and then, when it doesn't turn out they just print it up as a social interesting story.. Does anyone actually like these things? Does anyone read this tripe??
It's all grand and dandy when you're reading about something you aren't familiar with.. but the unfortunate part comes when you do know something about what the writer is reporting on.. Then you notice the glaring imperfections in the story. You can pick out the mistakes, the mis-quotes, and you can seeth at the overall point the reporter failed to get. Knowing all this, how can you read anything with a straight face? How can you read about something, learn about something, and believe it's true.. knowing what you know about journalists and their penchant for factless publishing?
People believe what they read because they want to believe what the read. They want to think, to know, that if it is written down then it is as good as gold and they can take that to the bank.
Well, I have to tell you something folks.. You're being hoodwinked. It was not so long ago, in fact, that I read an article on journalistic integrity.. and it said that 75% of all journalists stretch the truth or misreport 50% of the time and that 25% of the others only fact-check 20% of the time and 50% of *those* were really monkeys in humansuits.
Really! I read it. It was published. It was printed on thin glossy paper and put between a front cover with a mug of G.W. and a back cover with a nissan ad.
it must have been true.
goddamn christy is what my grandfather would say.
What is this world coming to??
goddamn christy
20030617
If I knew better (which I clearly do not) I would write here more, for your reading pleasure. I would get up early and go running and then come here and write about it for you. I would bike to work and blog about it. I would buy a sailboat, sail around the world, complain about it, and then put it right here, on this blog, for you.
Everything is about you, afterall.
If I realized and accepted that some can get away with nothing but their wonderously witty writing on their blogs and that I am not one of them - I would pay for a webhost, take pictures, post them along side my ramblings, and then we might actually have something to work with.
But instead I just sit here and chew on this tack.
warnings to the wise
- check motorcycle tank for excessive rust before purchase.. it's not gonna cost much but it's putting a kink in my riding and i have to deal with it.
I am notorious for ignoring chores.
I haven't been grocery shopping in months.
I barely know what laundry is - and even then it's something _other_ people do.
I haven't changed my oil in over a year.. luckily I had a butler around for awhile so I had him do it.
I didn't even pay my butler for months.
It's shit like that, you know, that'll get you nowhere - and you might even lose your butler!
Ask around.
I speak the truth.
My pal Tom weighs in with advice for how to handle The Doktor, as I will call her:
I like the idea of the Tuesday first date, you can play it like, "I don't really want to waste one of the big three on you (thurs, fri, sat), and I know drinks will be cheaper tonight and that's important to me because I'm really cheap,"
See? Tom knows me like no one else. That's what three years of living in the same apartment will do for you. Now, he looks out for me when things get tight and I need some good thoughts sent my way. He continues:
or you can be like, "I think this could go places, and I want to make sure you keep Saturday afternoon free for a little walk in the park, followed by a romp at my apartment because that will be our third date and you are no longer a slut for doing so, which is important becuase I'm looking out for your feelings."
Sage advice, as always, Tom.. Sage advice. What would I do with out you?
Yeah, Tuesday's a good choice.
Thanks Tom.
20030616
Don't know if I saw you, if I would kiss you or kill you
It probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow
Tony posted the summer tour dates for Dylan and I note that he'll be playing in NH in August.
But I don't know where I'll be in August. That's a long ways away. I also noted OAR's future tour date in NH.. in August.
Dylan's recent album Time out of Mind was a fabulous piece of work and it just goes to show you that when a man knows how to strum a guitar - he knows how to strum a guitar - no matter how old are drugged out or washed up or dead he may appear.
I should go to both shows - and I want to - but I also know I'm lazy and I don't really dig on rock shows. It's an unfortunate situation that is most likely the fault of my parents and a lack of motivation on my part but I just don't get into the scene too much. To clarify, I do dig on live music. I dig on seeing the band rock out and perform and give a great show.
I don't dig on sweaty pre-teens.
I don't dig on drunk frat boys.
I don't dig on booby grabbing.
Okay, I dig on that last one.. but only when she wants it and even then I'd be too shy anyway.
Blows my mind that here, even in this late century of ours with the technology and the awareness and the power that we have - we still get together in big groups and act like animals... Only human animals, not animal animals. Show me an animal that, when in a mob, will gang rape one of it's own.
kill? sure.. that happens.
attack? push down? put in it's place?
sure, that too.
but show me an animal that gets together with it's buddy's and gang rapes one of it's own... show me one that doesn't end in delta or kappa or something like that.
Nature is a cruel mother, for those more sensitive types, to be sure.. but nature is also fair and balanced and unbending - something the supreme court could learn a few lessons from. In fact, I challenge anyone to find a modern social or political problem that couldn't be solved by simply asking Momma Nature what she would do.
That girls got some wisdom.
20030615
Do your kidney's ever just complain at you? Does your spleen whine? Does your liver have a beef with you?
Sometimes I just wake up and they don't seem happy. They generally get along with each other but they're is always some bad words for the boss upstairs. It's like they have a little union down there and they think they can just walk out whenever they want. Luckily I've tied them into a pretty lengthy contract which I feel strengthens my overall business situation but that doesn't stop them from getting cranky and putting out bad work.
And man did they put out some bad work the other day. I won't go into the details but let's just say it wasn't fit for sale.
It's mostly my kidney's I worry about. They are a rowdy bunch and tend to think they have more power than they really do. They're always trying to get my testicles to come up and join them so they'll have a stronger united front by my boys, they play on a different field and generally don't want much to do with those gastro-tract folks. They think it's dirty business. Which it is, don't get me wrong, it's just the way they like to play the game.
If ever there were a mob within it would most definitely be the gastro family running things at the top.
I won't tell you who the Don would be..
20030613
What's one thing you've always wanted to do, but never have?
Sail the intercoastal waterway. Make a million dollars. See the Great Wall. Joust.
When someone asks your opinion about a new haircut/outfit/etc, are you always honest?
Almost completely all the time yes. Of course! Honesty, afterall, is the best policy...
which is probably why no one ever asks my opinion anymore.
If you could live in any fictional world (from a book/movie/game/etc.) which would it be and why?
I'd have to go with Bunnie on this one: The muppet world. There is plenty of fantasy in books, games, etc - but it's just that, fantasy.. To truly live in the world of Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars or any of that - that would be a rough life. The muppets don't seem to have it so rough.
This is interesting that they come up, though, because I have been told by more than one person in the last week or so how great the muppets are. And, yes, there are completely wonderful. Someone asked why the shows were not available on DVD. I don't know. It's a shame. We live in a society that will hand deliver you every episode of the Soprano's on DVD the second the season ends but you can't find the muppets.
What's one talent/skill you don't have but always wanted?
The ability to play a mean game of pool. I'd totally hustle.
somebody put their finger in the president's ears
it wasn't too much later they came out with Johnson's Wax
I have the strangest ear wax in the world. About once or twice a week it rolls out in a perfectly round little ball. When I go to clean my ears with a q-tip I get nothing.
Uneventful. But it's like a curse that is the cure, as popie would say.
Tony thinks he has no confidence. He thinks he is the worst at talking to pretty girls.
He doesn't know the half of it.
Tuesday - trivia night - I was sitting - alone - at the bar. I was watching the sox on the telly and sipping my Boddington's minding my own business. I was trying to avoid - ignore - the cute girl that I knew was in the other room. I knew she was there because I checked - because I don't leave well enough alone. Because I couldn't leave well enough alone I had to get up into my own business and make some motions. So I made a motion and I got myself up out of that bar stool and I wandered over into that other room and I wandered right up to that cute girl, the whole while my inside - my inner monologue - screaming at me
NOooo! What are you doing!? You will screw this up
I said hi and do you work in radiology i think i saw you in the hospital the other day yah maybe you know my friend she used to work there oh just wanted to say hi my name is mike okay gotta go.
She smiled and asked me questions and was nicer than she had to be and I ran back to my bar stool and back to my boddington's. She asked if my team had shown up yet and was I going to join their team if they didn't?
But Mark did show and we cranked out a winning round - first outright win with nary a cheat - and the intercom boomed with our team name
4-NIC-8
We are, forever, mature.
Thursday I says let us get trashed - three sheets and a pillow case to the wind. Sloshed. Pie-Eyed. I had a beer and then another beer and then one more at which point it occurred to me:
my new mantra, my resolution, my answer to life's many questions - it was right there in front of me the whole time. I must simply ask myself
What would the Dude do?
And the answer is, of course, the Dude would most likely pour himself a white russian and draw a bath and relax, man.. relax.
But at this point, many beers in, I was wary of the beer before liquor warning and so I stuck to the beers.
Beers in the Ears.
I got on the bus - the express straight through - and fell fast asleep until it pulled up at it's last stop: Beercity.
I stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around. The city lights were bright and sparkling against the deep darkness of the summer sky. The was music and lots of people. Ahh beercity.
We wandered into a bar and sat down and who should be there, right there, right next to us but the very cute trivia girl? The very one indeed. They pushed and prodded, my friends, and told me to go talk to her and say hi but my lips were sewn with the silence of the drunk and my mind sloshed slowly as if a vat of heavy molasses. In my mind I got up and walked over and said hi, how yah do? and what's happening did you like that song? but it was only in my mind and my feet were still in the same holes in the floor from before.
She squeezed my arm and said hi and this time it was real so I said hi back and they.. they laughed at me and told me to ask for her number and I scowled i can handle it at them and she laughed and she asked them
"Do yah suppose I have to throw myself at him?!"
I didn't know it was that bad.
She threw herself at me.
No, really. Physically threw herself. She thought it was funny. It didn't work. I still bumbled over the words. But she told me I looked like Ben Seaver and you know how tickled that makes me (groan) and she gave me her number. We all spilled out onto the sidewalk and looked up at the dark summer sky and looked around at eachother and we sent nice-to-meet-yahs all around and then we went our separate ways...
down the cobbled streets.
alone.
Can your security infrastructure protect you when you've left the key under the mat?
Security infrastructure? Security Structure??
What the hell are these people talking about? I don't gots and I don't want none your security. I don't leave the key under the mat because I lost the key a long time ago. I put it in a drawer somewhere and I haven't seen it in a very very long time. I leave my doors open.
Open to the world.
Like a welcome bosom.
Someday someone will come and tweak my bosom's nipples, or slash at them with a knife and that will be a sad sad day.. But in the meantime, most people just want a peek, not a tweak.. and what's so wrong with just a peek?
Let 'em peek, I say. Let them peek.
I leave the car doors unlocked too. I leave the keys in the ignition sometimes when I'm lazy and I leave the windows down too. I open the sunroof as if spreading my arms wide. Come and steal my half quart of oil, my car says to the passers-by. Come and take this ratty old t-shirt in the back seat. If they steal it then perhaps they needed it more than me?
No, that is wrong. That makes me sound a little more benevolent - a little more bleeding heart - than I really am. It's not that I want people to steal from me - people who need those things more than me.. It's just that I don't want to have to care. I don't want to come to work any worry if I locked the apartment in the same way you worry about leaving the gas stove on (I don't have a gas stove, so I guess I'm all set there). I don't want to have to worry that people are evil terrible creatures either. I just don't want to do it.
Living with my parents in Bangor a man broke in the house. Well, he walked in really - we didn't lock our doors there, either. He was a very drunk man and thought he was coming home. When he discovered his mistake (about the time my parents woke up to him standing in their bedroom) he quickly left the premises for greener pastures. No harm.
No foul.
The police report read: Man arrested for breaking and entering.
There was another nasty little bit about a stolen car years later. That's what you get, the police said, when you leave the keys in the ignition.
"What do I get?" my dad asked, confused..
You get your car stolen.. but then they leave it a few blocks away, keys still dangling in the ignition, the car no worse for wear. And life goes on. At least it's a good story to tell.
Okay okay.. naive perhaps. Allll naive. But what the tell me. What they say is
Ignorance is Bliss
And I don't really want to get into a rant on why that is so so so so so just accept it and move on.
Move on to the architect's speech in the Matrix: Reloaded and see if you can twist yourself out of that ball of twine.
20030612
I am rather fond of the quick fix. The patching and reworking of a (sort of) broken thing in the most direct and succicnt, if not perfect, way. I prefer to fix that which is not broken beyond repair and to break that which is acceptably working so that everything ends up just a little off kilter. Or just broken.
It's like having a perfect car that runs when you want it to and starts in the blink of an eye and stops on a dime and doesn't any strange sort of noises you come to expect from an automobile - it's just unnerving.
It's like having a girl who wakes you up in the morning with fresh fruit and coffee and goes to bed early on poker nights and washes your clothes without asking and defends you to her sister - it's just unnerving.
It's like a program thrown together at the last minute that should not, could not, will not work right but does just that: works right - it's just unnerving.
There is a crack in everything Leonard Cohen tells us, that's how the light gets in.
He who seeks perfection finds .. well.. sometimes you eat the bar.. and sometimes the bar eats you.
Responsibility is the burden of success Bunnie tells us.
Ohh how true. How deliciously true indeed. I know a few (many) who could learn something from this very simple and short expression.
And with responsibility comes work.
And I've already blogged about work.
Work is, by my definition, not fun. Work can be satisfying, or rewarding.. but not fun. It's the sort of thing you enjoy right after you've finished it. This is evidenced by the fact that more work is done in the minds of barstoolers than anywhere else in the world:
Man enters bar. Sits down next to his drinking buddy
"Hey george, How was work today?" his buddy asks
"Oh christ.. I'm bushed - we finished off 10 pallets today!" they finished off 5
"Oh yeah? Rough one here too.. I was in at 6 and spent the whole day on that damn divorce case." He was in at 9 and skipped out at 2 for 18 holes
Work gets better with age. Work, after some time away from it, even seems like a good idea. There is a breed of unemployed who, after months with no job, are known to actually crave a deadline or a wake-up call. "I need structure!" they moan.
Woe is them.
Some folks up at McGill did some work and came up with a swimming cockroach robot.
20030611
Tony writes today about how easy it is to ride the bus in the city of angels. He writes about how more people should ride the bus more of the time and that maybe if they knew it wasn't so bad then it wouldn't be so bad.
Maybe a bit flawed logic, but that's Tony for you.
In Montreal I never rode the bus. I never rode in taxis either. Montreal was, sadly, slightly on the inefficient side of things. I once walked the 2 miles through downtown to my friends apartment to watch a March Madness game or two and when I first set my feet on Rue Sherbrooke I could see the bus way down the road to the east - some ten blocks maybe. I rushed to the first bus stop in my direction - I was going west - and I waited for a few seconds. I realized I could probably do better than that so I shuffled along another few blocks to the next stop, looking back at the bus to make sure I wasn't going to miss it. The next stop was empty and I sat down in the little shelter. I looked at the bus. 8 blocks away maybe. I got back up and started walking again. I was walking fast - I learned to walk like a bat out of hell while I lived in Montreal. It's so bitterly cold and windy most of the time there that you always want to get where you are going but you don't want to run because your lungs will fill with the razor blades of the cold, stabbing at your heart. When I got to the University Campus - half way to my destination - the bus was still a good four blocks back. One more dollar pizza joint and I gave up on it all together. I didn't really want to give them my damn twooney anyway. $2CDN for a ride on the bus. Cripes. I've had dates that were cheaper. I've had spare keys made for less. When I finally got to the corner of Cote Des Neige and Sherbrooke - my ultimate destination - I heard a rumbling behind me and I turned around to see the bus pull up to the stop. Fuck you bus, I said. I didn't really care too much but I figured I'd give it a good curse anyway. It stared back indignantly.
Here in the port city we have buses too, but I drive or ride myself. They cruise by the house every day, sadly, forlornly. Usually empty and painted for our consumerist pleasure. Yes, Mr. Bus.. I think I *will* go get that term life I was thinking of getting it - and thanks to you, Mr. Bus, I will get it at MetLife.
No. not really.
Don't get me wrong. The bus is great - the way to go if you can swing it and it's viable in your area... but when you live in a city of 65,000 the public transportation just isn't going to be up to snuff. It's more puppetry for than anything really.. really expensive puppets.. that I pay for.. through my taxes.
But you gotta support the arts. You have to go to the shows and get yourself some culture. You have to be a productive member of society and give to charities... and what better way than an automatic deduction from your pay check to support the newest show in town: viable public transportation in a small city. Gosh it's good, too.. They spin a grea tale.
20030610
I was grouchy, having worked late... I announced this when I sat down, thinking it best to warn people when I am in this sort of mood.
There is nothing better than a grouch who can admit it and take measures to alleve the situation. I much appreciate that. A lot of my friends will just get grumpy and expect the world to fix it for them. They will hurumph around the bar and make snide remarks because - hell, if they're in a bad mood, shouldn't everyone be? Sometimes I get in a dumpy mood and I'll say so. I'll say "watch out folks, I'm pissy". I use that term a lot - pissy but I'm not sure where I got it from. It seems to fit the bill just about right. I'll say "watch out folks, I'm pissy, and I make no promises as to my company" but they usually say come on down anyway. Sometimes people like a grump - it makes them feel better. As the saying goes:
Putting other people down makes me feel better
So goes hanging out with people who are worse off than you. That little fender bender doesn't seem so bad when the guy next to you just caught his wife cheating with his boss, who fired him cause he didn't knock.
It's probably why bars are so popular. No where else can you be assured to find a fellow down-n-outer than in the deep recesses of a dingy little bar. Okay, maybe the soup kitchen, but that isn't everyone's scene.
Other places will surprise you. The grocery store.. A baseball game. People have a tendancy to want to share their woes.. which is sort of strange because it seems it would be a detractor on an evolutionary level. Learn to keep shit to yourself or else, yah know? Who is going to hire the guy who, in the interview, breaks into tears about how he can't hold down a decent job? Not me..
You?
Yeah, well you're a bleeding heart and a sap for it and you're just as bad as the bastards in the white house for it. There has got to be a little moderation but that's the hardest thing of all. People only want to accept the black and the white.. none of this inbetween bullshit because then no one wins. Our whole lives - our society - our very existence - is based upon people winning, and people losing.
If everybody wins - everybody loses.
Evolution gets broken.
It's a cute idea but people can't make it work. It's like communism.. all fair and equal and if you still think that's a good idea.. well cripes - move to Russia.
People need to know their place. They need to know who is in charge and what is expected of them or they tend to malfunction. There is a reason the CEOs of America make 1000 times more than the average worker - and there is a reason the benevolent ones tend to work out the best. Nature is a give and take and sometimes you gotta give a little.. and sometimes you gotta just bend over and take it.
Take it like a champ cause you know your place.. at the bar.. in the back where no one will see you ordering the cheap stuff.
20030609
A veteran said to me today "you know who has more fun than people?...monkeys." and i think he's might be right.
Last week was the week of sleep attempts. I say attempts because I didn't do much actual sleeping.. But I did get myself to bed at reasonable hours and gave myself a reasonably long amount of time to attempt to sleep.
I just didn't sleep.
Somehow I am doomed to lie awake all night if and when I try to get into the sack early. My body squarely rejects such suggests of rest, it seems, as a lame excuse for ignoring life and the wheels and belts in my brain continue to whir and spin into the wee morning hours. The upside to all of this is fairly lucid dreams. I am, by nature, a dreamless wonder but if I manage to remain in a semi-sleep/semi-awake state of daydreaming, I can pump out some beautifully colourful music.
Last night [in my dream] I was back home at the parents house. I had gads of weed - pounds of it even - and for no other reason than the fact that it was worth a lot of money, I felt I needed to protect it. It's blurry now, but I think the neighbours tipped off the fuzz and I headed for the hills; running through the woods in a panic. They sent dogs after me. Dogs! Like I was a criminal or something. I ran willy-nilly into a barn and somehow got back to the house, back up into the attic to recover my stash, and I made it out the back just as the cops were ringing the doorbell. I snuck over to the neighbours and knocked quietly on the door. My neighbour, who has sinced moved, was a grade below me and her dad was some sort of government worker. I don't know why but in my panic-stricken state I just knew he would be sympathetic to my situation so when he came to the door I breathlessly explained the situation and pushed the sack of pot into his hands. He understood fully before I had even finished and he hid away my stash and sent me off to the police, empty handed and un-indictable.
Fuck! 35 years old! How does that happen!?
Yes.. How *does* that happen? 35 years old and still a virgin.
Not 38 years old and never kissed a girl, at least, but prison can do that to a man. Prison can do a lot of things. Prison can help you find religion, lose your faith, write a novel, or just pump a lot of iron.
Most of the time they just pump a lot of iron.
It's too bad too, to think of all the numbasses sitting in jail stairing at their little tv sets and just wasting away when they could be producing..something. Somthing besides license plates anyway.
Shawshank.. that's a good one. Didn't seem like he produced much for years upon years but he tunneled straight through the walls and climbed through the sewer for freedom. A lot of people ewwww at that part but a little sewage seems a small price to pay for your freedom.
For your virginity.
Friend of mine is dating a born-again virgin. A 32 year old Mormon that has declared a moratorium on sex until he is married. She complains but she doesn't seem to do too much about it. They watch a lot of movies.
on their little tvs.
Talked to someone this weekend about the "evil darkness" that is communism. He talked about the prison it is with walls of darkness and the blackening of the heart as it looses it's faith.
Personally, the only faith I ever needed was the shit that George Michael talked about.. I thought maybe I needed more once. Pumped a lot of iron and got me some religion - well, not organized anyway - but a sort of religion. It was based on a bottle of beer and rooted in good times and it worked for me for quite awhile. I worshipped under that god for a a long time.. but place and time changs and like everything has it's time and place so every religion has it's.. and this one, well.. it just didn't work anymore.
Now I'm without the faith. Walled within a prison, perhaps - my prison of metal cages and cages of doubt and remorse and cages of questions - always questions. But not a cage bound by faith. God does not carry the key to my cell - I do.
I am free to walk about, in fact, within the prison. I go from the prison yard to the gym to the library with all it's donated books.. to my cell. I walk where I want and when I want but I'm still within the prison and at the end of the day I'd rather sleep on an old metal cot with a mattress than on the cement floor so I always find myself back in my cell by the end of the day.
Lights out at 10PM and no talking. Sounds harsh, I know but I smuggled a contraband maglite and I read under the covers at night.
Gotta bend the rules just a little bit to stay sane in this place.
20030606
Kate over at the Montreal Blog jokes on about the change Montreal just made to the city logo. Ha. funny.
Went to trivia the other day to wait for my peeps - my team - 4-NIC-8 we go by so just in case we ever win the poor little irish kid who has to announce the winner over the intercom has to say just that - 4-NIC-8. Childish isn't it?
Yes. I know he is.
But anyhow, the peeps didn't show. The posse was, as they say, out. I sat at the bar and powered through a Boddington's and the latest copy of the Phoenix for the port city (but really for the Northeast cause McDonald's ain't serving local fair so why should my free rag, right?). I kept looking up and surveying the crowd and I got a nagging feeling that they were going to show but wouldn't find me up in the corner of the bar.
A Group of girls bumbled up to the brass right as I was starting up the cryptozoologist article. There was one seat open, next to me, so they all crowded around it and began the pub quiz.
Aw'ight the irish dude said over the speakers, Ready for the first round?
I tuned them out. It didn't take much at first because they were fairly quiet and pensive, scrunching their brows up and staring at the ceiling every time another question was flung at them. I continued to read about the Yeti - not too many yetis around, they say.
By the second round I was getting antsy.. It was getting dark out and if I was going to be stood up I might as well go out and take a spin on the bike and enjoy the decent weather for a change. More girls showed up, further crowding the single chair at the bar - and me. I was, by this point, right up against the wall and turned slightly outward like a cat cornered by a pack of dogs. Dogs I say.
I was seriously thinking of fleeing but the escape route was closing quickly. I decided to take a test run so I left my jacket and helmet with my beer and dove through the crowd for the pissoire. I got to the bathroom and I didn't really have to pee so much but I was sweating a bit at this point so I busied myself in the mirror with some cold water on the face. When I returned to the bar the girls had grown again in number, this time to include what looked like a mother and a grandmother. They parted a path for me half-heartedly. I cringed.
It was the last question of the second round now and they were all furrowing their brows as before so I perked my ears up as the irish fellow repeated his question:
Birds have hollow bones to help lighten the load in flight. What kind of bird has solid bones .. for ballast
After much thought one of the girls looked up at the others, Ostrich? she opined.
I figured they were being a little too nice with that last bit - for ballast. I figured - well duh - ballast.. must be a bird that swims.. like, oh.. a penguin? Everyone know what ballast is, right? This apparently did not occur to the girls. At this point I needed out. I couldn't take it any more and it seemed clear my people had left me on my own this night. I glanced back at my escape route but it had disappeared. The girls were all around me, pushing me, suffocating me. I almost screamed.
I quickly tried to formulate a plan. I could tunnel under them through their legs I figured. I could hop the bar and run down to the end and out the back before the bartender could catch me. But no... It just wouldn't work. I sighed. And then it occured to me. I could bribe them - charm them - fool them into a false sense of serenity.
"I think that last one is 'penguin'," I said to them, smiling brightly.
They looked blankly at me until the words I had spoken registered in one of the girl's brain. Oh, yah.. that sounds right she said. The rest of them followed her lead and began to nod their heads. She bent studiously over her trivia pad and scribed P e n g u i n with her little golf pencil. She looked up, happy. They all smiled. I made my move.
I grabbed my helmet and streamed out of my chair before they knew what was happening. I hooked one hand around the collar of my jacket, never slowing down, and even though it was on the back of my chair I managed to muscle it off in one quick motion. They reacted slowly, the outer units moving to close the gap much later than those on the front lines. I managed to flank grandma and then I employed a wiggle tactic to get past the ring leader, thereby avoiding a major confrontation. By the time she wiggled back I was free. I ran from the room, pushing at both the double doors and opening them wide to the evening air. Not until I was out on the sidewalk did I breath freely.
The speaker outside the bar crackled.
As I walked away I heard it ask What is the largest creature without a backbone?
20030605
New Blogger is proving to be difficult.
If you don't know how to play Go than you should - go get a board and start to play.
why, if you willed it you would, you'd have done it my way.
Some things in life are necessary, and surprisingly, not so bad either.
If you've never trumped a card in whist or pegged a hole in cribbage or even doubled a game in backgammon.. then go get with it!
These are things that should be done because .. uhm. I said so.
If you've never ever grilled corn on the cob or danced in the street,
you're at fault and truly, you need an infusion. An electric jolt to clear your illusions.
If you don't know why there is salt in the butter or why a 19 in the hand makes people mutter
then get out and about and see what is up cause you've missed the point you've lost your ticket -
sneak in the backdoor and experience it anyway, it's worth getting caught to clear up your head. You need to go out and do this tonight, do this today before it's too late, before you are soft and laid in your bed.
20030604
Less than nothing.
Less than nothing is what I've done today, and perhaps the last few days. Text twist has a firm grasp on my will power . . . I have actual shit to do, and I decide not to. I am the fucking king of bad decisions. Put it's more than that. When you give someone a deadline, often, they make it. Even when there are no explicit consequences, they make their deadline. Why? because we've been trained that when you miss deadlines, there are consequences. People yell at you. They frown disapprovingly. They make you pay more money. So those things must be punishment. Why? I would argue from my evolutionary standpoint that frowns, yelling, reprimands are good predictors of 1) loss of group inclusion, 2) loss of trust (trading potential), 3) loss of status/power, or others. These are all important social domains to attend to, in an environment such as the one that we were adapted in. But so what. Well, if these things don't come, and we know they aren't coming, the anxiety is much slower to promt us out of laziness. And in the absence of deadlines, it's amazing that anyone does anything at all. Nothing I am saying is revolutionary. "People are lazy." Wow. But the question is, maybe those mother fuckers that get things done immediately know what the fuck's up. Because I hate it when three days have gone by, with no deadlines, and I am just 100% unproductive. My text twist skills improve.
"Nothing, unfortunately, is true all of the time in this life; only most of the time, and even then it's only partly true."
Excellent. That really is what many, many people struggle about. Why those "who moved my cheese" motherfuckers made so much money.
alas. off to rent my apartment.
First NHL game ever to be played outdoors will happen in Edmonton against the Canadiens in November!
Some things in life cost just the right amount of money.
Have you ever noticed it costs one to two dollars to get a new key cut for your apartment? How cheap is that!? $One gets you a whole lot, if you really think about it. It gets you your home. Access to your things. Security to keep others away from your things. Also, it's not as if a key is a cheap flimsy little trinket. A key is thick hard metal that you can use to cut through twine if you really need to. You can stick a key in someone's eye and they'll be none too pleased. You can ruin a very very expensive sports car with one little key. A key can represent everything. A key can get you into your lover's apartment and into their lives. A key can help you start that motorcycle on top of a moving tractor trailer truck so that you don't need to call up your operator and get a how-to-hotwire-a-motorcycle program uploaded into your brain. A key can get you into a can of sardines and out of a pair of roller skates.
And for all that your friendly hardware store clerk only asks you for one little dollar. How cool is that?
20030603
I inquired "why are we drinking out of Mountain Dew cans with holes in the bottom."... Roo pointed out the arrow printed on the side of the can, which read: "For best taste, drink by date on bottom of can."
Sometimes work is just that: work. Physical or mental effort. Effort: Something done or produced through exertion.
And I don't have to define Exertion for you.
Tried to write you all a big long post about radiohead, beastie boys, and the state of commercial radio but it was.. well.. exerting to say the least.
Tried to work one too many 50 hour weeks and I think it's catching up with me.
Do you ever get up in the morning and just feel UGH? my friend asks me. Well, yah.. we all do.
What makes you happy?
And you?
Nothing he says. What about you? He pleads with me as if it will solve all his problems - knowing what makes me happy.
Friends, I tell him, make me happy.
sometimes.
Riding my bike, I continue, makes me happy.
again, sometimes.
Nothing, unfortunately, is true all of the time in this life; only most of the time and even then it's only partly true.
Fuzzy logic.
If all of the people are happy some of the time and most of the people aren't most of the time.. well, then even that some of the time most of the people are only somewhat happy, mostly.
You know what I mean?
Happiness. Contentment. Satisfaction.
These aren't problems for the scientific calculator. It goes deeper than that and onto different planes. Like giant sets of multivariable equations - matrices thrown together not in two or even three dimensions but many dimensions to the point we can not even grasp the most basic of them for indeed each element within the matrix represents a matrix itself and perhaps a child of that matrix is in fact the parent of it as well.
There is incest in the system and it's widespread and so we all have the same neurotic depressions, albeit at different times, that ripple through the system like glitches cracking and popping on a thousand tiny records playing in your head.
And the sky is the color of a tv tuned to a blank channel.
So I really shouldn't complain because I have one of those newer tvs where a blank channel means sky blue and sky blue means blue sky and that means summer is here to bring me back to the place I know, the place I love.
For brief periods in my life I feel like a country time lemonade commercial all summer and rolling fields with dogs playing on the beach and dandelion seeds floating on the breeze - wonderful but melancholy because there is always, invariably, a countdown to the end of summer..
the end of innocence...
the end of the brief period and back into the long cold wintery darkness and questioning thoughtlessness.
If yah know what I mean.
Personally I think it's a big joke and I just don't know the punch line yet because I haven't been paying close enough attention. I am now, though, so it's only a matter of time...
before I get the joke..
about the guy, in the city, with a few of his pals and everyone's wearing masks, right? So this one girl says to the three guys "I want to be famous, damn this worldwide disease" and one of the guys says well come here, to this city, and you'll be famous and we will celebrate you and your disease.
And she said "It's not my disease"
And they all said "Oh.."
I knew that the second Death Star - the one in Return of the Jedi - was much bigger than the original Death Star - the one in A New Hope - but I never realized that it was approximately 5 times the size!
Terribly sad is the drop in traffic due to the end of the traditional school year for many of my college-going readers. That means they get all lazy and summery on me and sit outside on their porches drinking country time and smoking butts and generally ignoring their computers all summer. It's sad because little do they know - when they return to them in a few short months they will not be the shiny and new happy computers they thought they had. When they return to them they will discover old and slow bohemoths - outdated technology barely fit for the city dump.
Such is the way of technology. Moore's law predicted the astronomical advancement of computer chip processing power and the extreme miniaturization of said chips - but it didn't say anything about storage mediums.
Storage mediums are blowing the chips out of the water. Samsung has recently released 1.5GB hard drives on 1" platters. ONE INCH. They're working on a video camera the size of a pack of cigarettes that will record MPEG-4 video.
The big companies are fighting right now on blue-laser DVD technology - shit that will put 30, 40, or more Gigabytes on a single disc.
Ten years ago my first Intel based machine came with a 260mb drive.
20030602
William Gibson, of Neuromancer fame (at least in my head as it's the only book of his I've read) has his own blog. It's a shame, really, because I have never been to his blog. Not even today did I research his site in order to make this post.
Mostly because I'm scared it won't be as good as I want it to be.
The sky was the color of a tv tuned to a blank channel goes the first sentence of Neuromancer. I'll always remember that line, I don't know why. Good. Very good.
Which is why I don't go to his site - this way he'll remain good and I won't have to take any chances.
Yesterday I took a chance. I took a chance on A Mighty Wind by that Guest guy - you know, Mr. Spinal Tap, and gosh if it just wasn't up to the level of his normal work. Oh sure, it was good but it lacked punch - pinash... (is that even how you spell pinash? (notice I'm justifying poor spelling through acknowledgment of said bad spelling (notice I'm embedding these sidenotes so deep into each other you'll have forgotten that I even misspealled a word by the time you find your way out of it all?) which is funny cause I would normally hate that) or is it penash?).
Ha.
It's a beautiful day out today and I want to plan and execute an amazing music festival here in the port city. I want to create an event so wonderful that it grows each year, until the year 2012 at which point it will be so huge that business men will actually build hotels just to house the event-goers. Entire businesses will be created and exist simply for the pleasures of this music, and it will be good. I want this to happen today (the planning) and I want the execution to happen sometime in August, maybe, in the dog days of summer when people are sure to show up in bikini tops and bring their puppies.
Who doesn't like puppies at an open air concert?
I want to get right up there on stage at the very beginning like Mort Fega or something and go
"Welcome to the 10th annual.."
and the crowd would cheer me right off the stage. Wishful thinking for a lazy fuck but there isn't anything better than making a few people happy for a day or two.
For free.
Free is key. Everyone likes a free lunch.
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the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil
