pantaloonfan

Slightly Barf-ey

2011-03-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

I have gone through periods in my life where I cycled pretty avidly. I was never particularly fast, but I got by.

Since moving, I refitted my old Schwinn beater road bike to get to and from the train station. Downhill pretty much all the way there, and uphill all the way back. It's barely over a mile, but the extent of my decay has been notable insofar as I feel like I'm going to throw up every ride home I've taken. I think it might be getting easier, and can only hope that it ends up feeling like it's not a total challenge to ride a bike uphill for a mile. Sometime this summer, I pray that it will be more fun than a pure hope that the prickly feeling in my mouth and throat won't result in me giving up my lunch by the roadside.

The technicolor smile has not visited my return ride yet, but it has felt painfully near this week.

Hope abides.

Tomato Mousse

2011-03-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

Our dog, the erstwhile Moose, managed to get sprayed by a skunk last night...

Apparently, tomato juice doesn't work. Good thing, as we didn't have any. We did give him a peroxide wipedown, and it helped a LITTLE bit.

I am hoping that his experience has chastened him just a LITTLE bit about playing with the black and white kitties. It was as if he wanted to smell its butt, and all went to hell from there. All we wanted was him to have a pee before bed, and I was already asleep... lovely wife called from outside, and I came out into the frozen-ness of the great north to wipe down the dog... it's been a great 24 hours, on top of having spent a staggering amount of dough on the sewer yesterday.

Let us hope for a slightly less eventful week to come.

The Most Expensive Dump I've Ever Taken

2011-03-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

We had an operation involving three backhoes, a bulldozer, and six guys in our backyard today to repair a broken horror of a sewer pipe in the homestead's backyard.

It cost the equivalent of a halfway adequate used car, less a 200k civic than a lexus, but not as bad as it could have been.

I've never before this evening had a movement (so to speak, nudge nudge) that cost more than a grand. I've now way done that. Like a multiple of that.

To paraphrase "Lazy Sunday"... you can call me Robert E. Lee for the way we dropped Grants today. I'm very tired and a bit burned out.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

2011-03-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

We find out how nice a used car we are not buying as a result of fixing our sewer issue.

I'm hoping it's more along the lines of a used 200k Civic instead of a Lexus. We will see...

Breaking Sewer News!

2011-03-07T18:19:00.002-08:00

It may go into the street, which in our new fair city is something we would have to pay for. That total would be... $7000 give or take.

OR it goes some random direction, and it's $3500.

OR it gets unplugged with a water jet, which could be $400.

I'm not sure how I'm going to sleep tonight wondering what happens when our new Sewer Guy shows up.

Sidenote: our sewer guy apparently looks like Kenny Rogers.

Our Critter Guy looks like Ray Liotta dressed up as Dog the Bounty Hunter for Halloween.

Sleep tight in your correctly flowing toilet filled homes, people...

2011-03-07T18:19:00.001-08:00

Baby Billboard

2011-03-06T18:25:00.000-08:00

Here's something I can't figure out: my daughter has loads of onesies, all of which have words/phrases/pictures on them.

She can't read.

She can't sit up and look at her stomach.

So, here's a thought: instead of putting "what does the lamb say?" on her onesie, how about a New Yorker article on the onesie, for example? I'm the only one reading it... and I fucking KNOW what the lamb says already.

(Spoiler alert: "Baaaa")

Painting

2011-03-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

We painted the front room this evening. At least the primer is on the walls...

What Starts With "C" and Ends With...

2011-03-04T19:59:00.001-08:00

...ollapsed Sewer Line..."?

I don't know for sure, but you can fill in the blanks. You can also understand that it will cost about as much as a marginally decent used car.

It's in our backyard, or in our front yard or something.

Again.

Pray for mojo.

More Good News!

2011-03-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

No! It's not about jesus!

It's that in addition to skunks in the yard, with baited traps, we've now had a drain backup in our basement! I don't know whether it is strictly considered raw sewage, but when the toilet is passing water through itself the wrong way in your spare bathroom, as well as convincing the local shower to do the same, it's not an easy thing to handle exactly.

Let's hope the home warranty based plumber has some good news tomorrow.

Pray for mojo.

Microserfdom Deconstructed

2011-03-02T17:28:00.000-08:00

I am part of a "daily blogging for a month" exercise.

That's why I'm here after being nowhere for forever.

It's the love I bring to my work.

I've moved to where my commute is long, and am getting a lot of reading done... Just put down the Border Trilogy, and started a new book today, on which I plan on having more to say later...

Shop Class as Soulcraft.

Read it, as it may be a bit of a polemic by a slightly overly intellectual philosopher-turned-motorcycle-mechanic but it is tremendously thought provoking.

The result of today's thought and reading is what I'm considering Dedring's Law: Elegance is not the province of machines. It is the province of human's, though it is not clear that all humans have the capacity for elegant solutions.

IF you do white collar "knowledge work", be aware that the making of rule-based systems, and the improvement of communications networks is putting you closer to irrelevance. The simple way to put it is: you can't hammer a nail over the internet. You can do many, many other things. The idea of knowledge work is a nice thought, but most of us have actually become clerks of one kind or another. The making of rules and procedure manuals renders us less relevant, and renders our ability to think ever less significant.

More to follow down the line. I just had to write SOMETHING today. So 2 for 2. Both are worthless, but both are here.

Beth.

2011-03-01T18:32:00.000-08:00

Here you are.

They will get better, I promise.

Old Friends

2010-04-10T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the records I used to love recently.

That is, I still am fond of them, but had sort of forgotten there were still bands existing attached to the albums I knew and gave some thought to... so in that vein, I'd suggest looking up people whose work you've cared about and haven't heard anything about in a long while.

They're possibly still working, and maybe they've gotten better.

Firewater's "The Golden Hour" is an album I can't stop listening to, after loving two earlier releases and then losing track of them.

MC Solaar also didn't stop making albums after the single solitary one I bought in college, and they remain good, groundbreaking, and in fact great work... more than I thought I could expect to find.

That's about all, I guess.

That and I'm now figuring out how to set up a wireless network at home, with a pish (cheap) netbook gotten "for work", and also for the heck of it. My fiscal discipline makes some sense sometimes... I can do work for a consulting job I have now as a result of a friend doing hopefully both of us a favor.

In other news, finding out in a few days whether I have a job for the long term; I may have either seemed like the wrong guy, or seemed overqualified for it... I hope it's the latter, and that I then convinced the interviewer he was wrong, and I was less brilliant, unique, vibrant and gifted than I seemed.

It's an odd skill to have to master, but finding a way to fall into the extremely narrow band of appropriate skill level is vital and difficult in this blasted wasteland of a job market.

And Another Thing

2010-02-16T01:50:00.000-08:00

I also wanted to mention that I was the victim of a layoff round last summer, and no longer am anything but a desperate striver. It's very Victorian/depression-era in feeling. I'm not liking it.

Wikicize!

2010-02-16T01:45:00.000-08:00

I have a little wikipedia experiment going on...

It is in two parts.

Part the First: I have edited a page about China to (accurately) reflect the truth about one of the most polluted cities on earth.

I am waiting to see how long it might take to get taken down. Whether deservedly or not, it probably will get struck with an edit attempt... This most polluted city is listed at this link... Taiyuan.

I'd like to hear your stories about potentially being edited on a wiki-format to be reduced from telling the truth to watching a lie.

Before I edited the Taiyuan page, the only mentions of environment were related to the awesomeness of the parks. You might see the sentence I added. (BTW, if anyone has a good guide on markup rules and cribsheets for Wikipedia editing please send them. That would be great.)

So there you go.

The second project, still to be fully implemented, will involve some of you who know your marching orders already. Your orders await. Results will follow.

Pride Goeth Before the Swollen Chest and Head

2009-04-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

I was watching Antiques Roadshow with the Wife the other day, one of the appraisees was there with a painting they wanted looked at by the appraiser, and the story they told made me reflect for a bit:

As a person of German descent (and citizenship, for that matter,) I have to tell you my sense of pride in my heritage puffs up a little bigger every time a sentence at the beginning of a story ends with:

"...because the Germans were coming..."

Listen for it, it's one of the most popular phrases in all of history and historiography... from the Roman Empire through today, it's still as good as it ever was. Well, today being defined as "sometime in the 20th century", but still. It's even in Casablanca, can you ask for more than that?

The number of phrases for which it can be used as a closer are nearly limitless:

"This was hidden in a cellar..."

"We drank all the wine we had left..."

"The archives were burned..."

"The able-bodied men all hid in the mountains..."

"Gasoline stores were set to the torch..."

You can play the home game version of this...

Just in Case You Weren't Getting Enough of Me Not Posting Here:

2009-03-31T16:20:00.000-07:00

Clearly I'm not busy enough to add content somewhere else, so please, feel free to check out other stuff I think, specifically about food at cheapgreengourmet.blogspot.com.

I have some things I want to get off my chest about the banking crisis, GM, and my own now precarious state of existence. They will follow in the next day or so.

At Long Last, Lover

2008-12-31T14:48:00.000-08:00

So, I didn't die.

The year has been a frenzy of complex experiences.

So, Happy New Year, and stay tuned for new things here and in a new space as well.

I used to always apologize to my journals when I was a kid for not writing often enough. I told myself I would never do that here, so I won't.

It helps with the guilt to know that no one is out there, so YAY!

Play Ball! (alternately: "Taking our Ball[s] (Off) and Going Home")

2008-06-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

Gojira is now a happy, bouncing, 85 pound puppy. He just hit seven months, and due to scheduling issues with the veterinary clinic, he's off to get himself surgically Stepfordized tomorrow. I'll be chauffeuring him on the long ride into biological oblivion.

I'm so very pleased to be doing my part.

I know I'm turning him into a person, or at least putting my own feelings into his fuzzy little (huge) head, which thinks and processes in ways that I can't begin to really see clearly. I doubt he'll have any idea that anything has happened, other than his Pop having taken him somewhere remote, that smelled weird, where he got really really high on something and then got carried back to the car. That said, I hope he doesn't hold this against me.

In reading a discussion on crate training of dogs (they were all anti-), the refrain was "...I wouldn't want to be locked up all the time..." &c &c, to which one commenter (bless their hearts) added "Well, no one asked him how he felt about being forcibly sterilized, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be crazy about that, personally."

Yeah, that does pretty much sum it up.

No matter how much we all know it's the right thing, and the healthy thing etc., no guy wants to talk about this, and I wager that none of us feel all that awesome about being a part to it. We as a society talk about our neutered and spayed animals having "girlfriends" and "boyfriends" (I'm not the only one who has heard these tossed around) when in fact it's about as sexual as a Manchu dynasty slapfight between eunuchs. They may like each other, but that stuff is pretty far from their minds, folks. Don't try and make yourselves feel that your dog still has the capacity for romantic love in them, because they didn't even if you had let them keep their full complement of original equipment.

So, to assuage my misplaced and absurd guilt, I'm just hanging out with my enormous puppy, who's been resting his head on my lap and leaning on me for the past twenty minutes and has now passed out splayed across the floor.

With his height at around 26" at the shoulder, and a length from the base of his neck to the base his tail of about the same number, splayed out makes for substantial real estate.

He is now, at seven months, the biggest dog I or any friend of mine owns. It's a slightly more substantial roommate than I thought I was signing on for, and the vet seemed to think 175 pounds was in the realm of the reasonable.

Luckily, Bernese Mountain Dog owners we've spoken to have indicated that 150 is certainly the high end of what we might expect. At least I'll still be able to pick him up in that case, which would be more of a stretch for a 175 pound dead lift and carry to the car in the event of something awful happening...

Something about a dog completely erases cynicism, and it's a part of myself I've always been very attached to. He's a tremendous little/big guy, and we're lucky for him.

Other than that, and spending a good chunk of the weekend at work (with faltering, and eventually doomed air conditioning), and sweltering through this lovely heat wave that has finally come to a merciful close, I'm fully in the midst of getting ready for a wedding.

I never knew all the things that would have to come to pass to make this happen, and I'm just hoping everything comes together.

Ladies, if you are trying to shepherd a prospective groom through this process, be aware that they may very well not have a strong opinion about something which is vital to everyone else. It's not that they don't care, it's that it never even occurred to them to consider the question. We care, but sometimes find out that there's a new surprise to care about that we didn't even have on our radar.

We love you, and that's the important thing to remember.

Go and wander over and take a look at Tigger's blog (staceirene.blogspot.com) and get a sense of her wedding dress experience. It is roaringly funny...

At Least Being Morbidly Obese Is Still Free

2008-06-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, hello there New York State government!

Didn't see you come in.

So, I know I'm part of an Elephant Man-esque minority, and am still a filthy filthy smoker, and it's terrible, and I should stop, and you just really want what's best for me with your new cigarette tax, but really, $4.25 per pack for New York City residents? You really have the gall to demand over 100% tax on anything?

Fuck you. Seriously.

Don't pretend that this is to keep people from smoking, because if you look at the numbers from this study which advocates cigarette taxes as a means to get people to quit, you'll notice that with a minor decrease in smoking comes a HUGE increase in revenues! I'm really happy for you! The claim that this is all related to covering health costs for smokers is plenty cute, and I respect the Rasputinian level of bullshit and dissembling that goes into it, but the fact is that as with speeding, local and state governments need people to keep on smoking, and fact need more people to smoke more.

As of 2005, the state of New York (including local government excise taxes) alone took in several billion dollars from tobacco.

It's a really nice dodge to cut income taxes on high tax brackets, and dump the responsibility on the largely less well off population of smokers, who are now paying for the entitlement under SCHIP which provides their own kids with health insurance. So, wouldn't they be better off not paying the tax and avoiding the overhead of a major government bureaucracy and simply paying to take their own kids to the doctor?

It's even more abhorrent because if these taxes were to have the stated effect, taxpayers would be seriously on the hook for entitlement programs.

No, I guess that would make too much sense.

If you had really wanted me to quit, the best way would have been to raise the price from $2.75 per pack all the way up to $8 when I was still a college student, or immediately afterwards. No, you instead chose to raise the taxes in the opposite way: we are all frogs in your slowly heating pot of water. Too complacent to react to another little change in price, we shell out the extra ten cents here, twenty cents there until we are staring down the reality of a ten dollar pack of cigarettes.

I've cut down, and I want to quit, don't get me wrong on that point... I am down from my long-standing pack a day to a ballpark of about four or five on any given day. However, I am going to make my decision when I am good and ready.

In the meantime?

I'm driving out to the reservation this weekend, where for less than half the price here in the city I will buy as many cartons of cigarettes as I can carry, because at least then I'll be supporting a business that isn't taking advantage of me and insulting my intelligence.

They need us badly, and we don't need this mooch riding along and cadging a couple of bucks every time we want to have a cigarette. The fact is, you can only flog the goose to a certain point before it will just die, and quit laying golden eggs.

I think I've gotten to that point.

Join me, fellow consumers. If there's a reservation in Mastic on Long Island, I'm pretty sure you can find one near you. Caravan with friends! Being cheap can be construed as a political statement, and isn't that just the best news ever?

"If there are no cigars in heaven, I shall not go." -- Mark Twain

Diff'rent Strokes

2008-06-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

If you only had one leg, what kind of footwear would you put on the end of it if you were planning on being on a train?

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought "a rollerblade" either, but there's someone out there who disagrees with both of us...

Two canes and one rollerblade, punting down the L train platform at 1st Avenue.

Personally, I would have just gone with the idea that with nothing to brace, or brake, myself and with the "ground" moving as if an earthquake were in the offing, traction is something to which I would ascribe a lot of importance.

I can only assume there's a pretty steep learning curve involved in that decision.

I Never Loved Your (Hypothetical) Mother...

2008-05-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been gone so long.

I've been involved in wedding planning, I was away in San Francisco last weekend.

The reason I couldn't check in is really because of the above title.

I'm sure you've been apoplectic with worry.

In the meanwhile, as I prepare for other obligations, let me leave you with the following thought that occurred to me in Sausalito, where my very lovely cousin was kind enough to take us:
Rich people.

They're like us, but they know how to live.

A Pinch of This, a Pinch of That

2008-05-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

I grew up helping my mother cook, from chopping parsley with a cleaver as big as my arm at five years onwards and upwards. Somehow, since we've moved I've been cooking a good deal more than I had before, and trying to work on some new dishes outside of the vital four or five that I've always done (steaks, salmon with a yogurt sauce vert, gruyere stuffed portobello mushrooms, sherry-ginger teriyaki grilled chicken and a couple of others aside from the standard omelette etc. regimen.)

For what it's worth, I will pass this along to any male folks who fear the kitchen: women love to have a guy cook for them, and you'll get a pretty big handicap for trying, even if it comes out terribly. If you dive in and try to do it, just get ready to look up what the terms mean, (julienne is just a way to cut tiny slivers of a vegetable... you can do that, right?) and never forget the rule that (I believe) Julia Child was fond of reciting: if it doesn't come out "right", it's just a New Recipe!

Eventually, you can just work out your own ideas, but when you are trying to get a little more flexible, and learn some new flavors, work from a recipe. Every guy (gentle lady readers, I don't mean to assume that you all love to cook, but odds are generally that men are less likely to feel compelled to do any of this, so you are free to listen to this marginally informed voice as you wish) should know how to cook two or three different things for dinner without having to have a heart attack about it. It will never harm you, and almost definitely help...

That being said, in the past week or two, I've run through the following that can not be recommended enough:

Miso Glazed Salmon
Tigger loved this one, and was trying to sneak the unused marinade out behind my back while waiting for the fish to cook outside. You can do this on the barbecue grill, with or without Alder or Cedar planks, though they do make it a lot easier to work with the fish, and produce a fantastic flavor if you have the time to find them. Alder-, Apple- or Cherrywood chips on the fire are a great addition, but not essential. They will certainly make you feel more rugged... and there's something to be said for that.

Almost any version of Moroccan lentil soup you can find is to be done and is just tremendous. Just remember to add lemon juice at the end, and give yourself more time to let the soup cook, you can just let it simmer away until you are ready to eat... while you're not required to puree the soup down in a blender, I am not crazy about the texture of lentils or beans, so running it through a blender means not having to go wild with mincing down all the ingredients to microscopic sizes. I let ours bubble away for about two to three hours and it's just spectacular. Not hard, just really good cold weather comfort food.

Last weekend I tried a slow smoked rib recipe, using a pretty standard KC style dry rub, and while I wasn't perfectly happy with the results, consider the following: a full rack of ribs at a restaurant is going to cost you $20 at least. That cut of meat is probably the cheapest thing you can find at the butcher, and there's something really satisfying about standing around a barbecue, indirectly cooking ribs and fiddling with the vents to keep the fire low and slow, while drinking with a good friend for two or three hours waiting for lunch.

The rub needs some working out, and the technique is in development, and it won't impress a date to have you stinking of hickory wood and drunk by the time dinner rolls around, but the next selection is pretty spot on for that purpose...

It's a bit more work, and I wouldn't call it exactly healthy* (note the butter, cream, and of course the cholesterol from shrimp as well) but this version of Shrimp Bisque will not disappoint. You can make it easier on yourself by getting shelled shrimp or another kind of fish and using fish bouillon, but the process of making stock is part of the fun, and having a pot of boiling shrimp heads on the stove has a certain morbid appeal. It won't be a quick process, but it will be like heave when you're finished. For that recipe, I did also add a cup of sherry, which I like the flavor of, and used Old Bay instead of "Creole Seasoning", because the local store was not cooperative with any concept of Creole anything. Worked out just fine. Don't let the soup boil again once you add the cream, or ugly things will happen! Again, this one I like pureed down to make a smooth consistency with all the flavors blending together, but you don't have to if you aren't feeling like it. Again, you'll save yourself a lot of knifework to get the vegetables slaughtered to sufficiently miniscule pieces, but it's your call. I also switched the green peppers for a few tomatoes with the seeds removed, as Tigger loathes peppers. I'm working on that, though.

There have been others, but these were something to write home about. Or, for that matter, randomly stand on a virtual street corner shouting about. Enjoy good eating and beautiful weather if you are blessed with it, and be well.

*It is all well and good to be aware of counting calories and being healthy, but there are times where it is best to remember these words:
"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart that looks at her watch." --James Beard
That being said, you'll find that the other recipes indicated here are not only cheap and satisfying, but remarkably healthy. Maybe a little heavy on the salt for the salmon, but that's about it.

I Know, Never Talk About Politics or Religion, But...

2008-05-09T14:34:00.001-07:00

I've already screwed up the religion bit, so why not?

I am a lifelong Democratic voter, and I live in New York.

I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary here, and really wanted her to win. Had I had my druthers, I would have loved to see Bill Richardson run the table, but he had left the race when he got here, and I made a choice I still feel was the right one.

Barack Obama doesn't seem to have what it takes (to my mind) to win in the Rustbelt must win states that every Democrat needs to get themselves settled into a big leather chair in the Oval Office in late January. Something about being smart, thin, and not having a Southern accent just combines to a terrifyingly bad combination for the general election... I firmly believe that having a Southern accent is the one and only way for a Democrat to become president (Clinton, Carter, LBJ, need I say more for the modern era?) At least try and eat some gravy when it's offered to you.

All that being said: Hillary has started to turn into Democratic Party's Real Life Version of Monty Python's Black Knight.

While I have no doubt that getting one's legs bitten off is no fun at all, that's pretty much the only remaining recourse. I think we're about where it's time to pack the tents up and call off the invasion... okay? For the love of all that's holy, even George McGovern, for whom you were a campaign volunteer is telling you to let this one go.

It's the junction of the Black Knight, and an old SNL sketch of "The Superfans" that I recall vaguely, with a phrase to the effect of "...though the Bears are mathematically eliminated from making the playoffs, Ditka will bring them to the Super Bowl."

Dear "Reader, kindly forgive any inaccuracies in that "quote".

I believe, after watching photos of her working her way through every diner and bar in Indiana, that she (win or lose) just kind of loves the horror of being on the campaign trail, and I only worry that she has now worn out every Dairy Queen in the nation... she seemed tremendously happy sharing small talk over a Blizzard in AP wire photos printed today.

It's time to put this race to bed, and... Mrs. C.? Try and remember: Rocky lost in the first movie.

James Carville reportedly said that if Hillary gave one of her balls to Obama, they'd both wind up with two. No one is questioning that you've got moxie, kid. It takes a wise general to know when to concede the field, and the time has come to do just that, or risk having Grandpa Abe McCain as President.

Have a lovely night, folks.

And, since I'm totally making a whore out of myself: drop on by www.humor-blogs.com if you have a minute. I've listed myself there, for reasons of proving to myself that someone out there cares, or doesn't.

Someone Must Be Pretty Excited About Summering at the Vineyard

2008-05-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

Went for a walk today through Murray Hill in Manhattan, and saw what may be the whitest person ever:

A British Racing Green Mini Cooper rolled by, with the vanity plate "CHUKKA 6" on it.

A rich, white, mini driver in Manhattan who was a polo fan.

I can only speculate on whether he picked "6" because he was behind five clamoring people on line who wanted to shout their love of polo, or whether they are even more awesomely riche and like Magnum P.I.'s boss have tagged all their cars with CHUKKA [#].*

*To be fair, Robin Masters didn't initally have the cars festooned with personalized, serialized license plates, but the episodes that I remember from my occasional dabblings in my youth sure were marked "Robin 1"

Can't Comment

2008-05-05T20:14:00.000-07:00

I just had a really rough day.

I have some things about Gojira, and the wedding event planning weekend we all just endured, ad all kinds of other stuff.

I also just got in touch with an old friend's mom, to find out about inviting my oldest and best friend to this here wedding, and I just found out that his dad passed away. I feel really awful right now, and I feel especially awful that I let myself get so separated from someone I have this much love for, and I have no funny to bring.

His father was in his sixties, as are my parents.

More stuff will follow, but I have nothing at the moment. Thanks for understanding.

Addenda and Further Evidence of Being Doomed

2008-04-24T16:45:00.001-07:00

I think I might need to apologize for making light of the papacy.

God seems to have something he (or she) is trying to tell me.

I arrived home filled with the giddy joys of spring, walked Gojira, returned and found myself in dire need of a trip to the bathroom.

I went in, chipper and prepared to do the unmentionable, and was assaulted by the stippled, translucent plastic panel over the light in our lovely suspended ceiling in the bathroom (large, wobbly, and fragile) which decided to run free and tumble out of its moorings onto my head. It may have been trying to commit suicide after the loss of its companion light transmitting panel several months before our arrival here in this land of milk and honey. I can't speculate on the motives of inanimate objects.

After rescuing the wayward guardian of the cavity in our bathroom ceiling, I realized: there was no toilet paper.

I, resourceful man that I am, decided to grab a reusable grocery bag and run to the local store. Arrived there, reached up to grab a few rolls (after an eagle-eyed analysis of price and square footage of paper per roll) and was greeted with a deluge. The toilet paper is stocked in the case cartons on top of the produce cases, and the entire top box of Four-Mega-Roll packs of Cottonelle came tumbling down onto my head.

As I was gathering myself from the assault of two cartons of toilet paper rolls, I looked over, and an elderly woman who had been likewise pummeled from above, holding a gigantic radish, shrugged her shoulders and said:

"At least they were soft..."

Indeed.

No employee of the store seemed interested in my plight, so in a wonderful deluge of embarrassment I gathered up the four thousand rolls of toilet paper, gently stacked them back in their cartons and put them up on tiptoe back in their aeirie, where they could again survey the land of broccoli and lettuce.

I was the lucky recipient of a corrugated cardboard paper cut on my knuckle for the trouble.

Dashing home, I had some time with Tigger before yoga, in the span of which, our wonderful Gojira laid a trail of urine across the kitchen floor. He does this while walking, and I dare say that if it had been a straight line, instead of his trademark swaying zigzag it would have been a good twenty-plus feet.

We discovered we were pretty much out of paper towels.

Have Gojira, Will Travel

2008-04-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

It’s been a frustrating couple of days.

I lost my Moleskine* notebook yesterday, which is where I write down all the random thoughts that end up keeping me organized and giving me recall of the things which irritated me enough to want to whinge out my irrelevant disdain about them to whatever part of the internet feels like paying attention. (Wow. Heck of a run-on sentence there... but, precocious lad that I was, I wrote those at an advanced grade level when I was already quite young.)

I know. It’s not really a problem, but it bothered me.

So I have nothing that strikes me as being particularly interesting to say anymore. That is based, naturally, on the pompous premise that I had anything interesting to say to start with. (Should that read “…with which to start”? Possibly, but that’s just a little too awkward, so we’re finishin’ with the danglin' preposition on the end of the sentence, because I’m that much of a rebel, Dottie.)

Tigger and I, as well as Tigger’s parents, are going through the Adirondacks to look for places to make an honest woman out of her, and hopefully not get dragged bodily into the pit of jackals that is the American Wedding Juggernaut. Apparently one needs to have welcome gifts and party favors. I hold that if I’m a party to feeding people, and doing grievous damage to their livers, they don’t need a party favor, they just need alka seltzer and possibly some sunglasses, or a blood transfusion. I am learning to accommodate in these matters.

However, that’s not how it’s done, and I am willing to work with that.

Gojira is coming as well, hopefully not to any kind of ill effect for him or us. We’re having to bring his crate with us, which is a mammoth affair.

When you read this, or when you get home (oh wonderful hypothetical folkses) do me a favor:

Take out a tape measure and pace out a space somewhere in your house which measures 48 inches long, by 30 inches wide, by 32 inches high (if you aren’t able to pace vertically, just try and imagine it). Here's what we have... just look for the BIGGEST one they have, and you’ll have an image of what contains all the lolloping, smelly love we are blessed with.

That’s what we have in our kitchen currently. It makes our rolling, full-size dishwasher look like a twee little breadbox, and while Gojira has a divider to shrink off where he can giddily pee all over his bedding, he still takes up a gargantuan piece of real estate. Oh, he does still enjoy a good old-fashioned crate-pissing sesh’, but his indulging of that hobby has become markedly less common.**

This wire behemoth is making its way to the Northwoods with us, and we are optimistic that we will have some room to put a toothbrush and perhaps a change of underwear for each of us somewhere in the car. The other option is that we bung him into the thing for the trip with the seats folded down. Not sure whether that that would even fit in the Subaru, but I’m seriously considering it. Perhaps we could strap him, in the crate, to the roofrack? Would that cause problems with the authorities? I can only assume that having that much wind in one’s furry face would be the dog equivalent of freebase, nose-wise, but there are no doubt other stodgy folks who would consider it irresponsible. Fine then. Rob my dog of a spectacularly intense experience if you’re going to be that way. Jerks.

We’re getting the wind in our noses, the three of us, and will “see” you all back here in a few days.

*“Moleskine – the only tiny little notebook pretentious enough to think that you need to read it’s history, which we put in every damn one we sell.” They do, however, have a tremendously easy feel especially when writing with a fountain pen, so if I’m going to roll with pretentious, I… could… go… ALL. THE. WAY.

**Once recently I can’t blame him for, though it was pretty spectacular to come home to: the dog walker had her sister come “slightly later” to take him out (as she had National Guard Reserve training), and she must not have noticed that he had burst a seal in the crate (euphemism for: “peeing all over the plot”), and put him back in after a walk and feeding, to the joys of a soaking wet dog bed. He responded by attempting to dig through the dog bed to find clean bedding (tearing the zipper and seam) and then nosing up through the top bars of the crate to grab the uncovered cushion for his larger, nicer dog bed, teasing it down to wrap around the foot of the crate, and then tearing off postage-stamp sized pieces of bed cover until there was a snowy wonderland all over him and the kitchen. He may also have eaten a fair bit of stuffing. That’s my boy!

Popin' (and Antipopin') Ain't Easy

2008-04-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

So, I'm not really religious.

At all, really.

However, New York City has been All Pope All The Time for the past few days, given his Holiness's visit... but there's a newsflash!

I know it seems hard to believe, but Benedict XVI is not the real pope.

("No WAY!!" "WAY.")

I wanted you hypothetical readers to be the first to know, because I care that much. I should say by way of full disclosure that even if I were loyal to the religion of my family history, the Pope still isn't someone who is in close, tight touch with my particular brand of Jesus, but all the same, I felt you should "all" know about this.

The real pope lives in his parents' house in Kansas. I know this is totally for reals because he even has a blog! If there's anything we've learned from the internets (and the periodic pandering of the mainstream media) it's that having a blog is the real sign of being authentic!

He's even been written up in the local newspaper! We all know how being discussed in the local rag is the real sign of meaning in this world, so all hail Michael I!

It's not quite that simple, though.

This guy also says he's the pope, as do the guy in charge of these folks, and Mirko Krav Fabris (Krav I), and Amit Katwala (Errol I), and this guy who actually made an abusive cult out of the whole "I'm the Pope" thing, and someone else who might live next door to you for all I know. These are all super crazy versions of the Traditional Catholics (pre-Vatican II) who are exemplified by Mel Gibson's dad, who believe that current Catholicism is bankrupt.

If you read up a little further, though, you will find that there's a Special Land Beyond Weird called sedevancantism where not only is the current Catholic church heretical, but all the Popes since Pius XII are also heretics, and as such there are no living Cardinals to ordain a non-heretic Pope, and as such a conclave apparently can be called by (in the case of now His Holiness Michael I) six whole people who happen to be formerly Catholic who can name a new Pope.

By the way, I'm the Emperor of Brooklyn.

But totally seriously, you guys: Michael I not only is the Pope, but he's also a real estate agent! Just in case anyone was looking for ranch-land in Colorado, who's more trustworthy than God's representative on earth? He also is proximate to anyone living near his parents' house, where he lives.

I've always been interested in cult life experiences, and this kind of falls into that category to my mind... as such, as a reader of Richard Feynman, I was really excited to find some information on Cargo Cults, which Feynman talks about in some ways in his writings (in terms of "cargo cult science"). Reading about the Cargo Cults (and specifically the John Frum group in Vanuatu) was an interesting analog to my random perusal of crazy cracker popisms... there's a lesson there, though:

at the end of the article in the Smithsonian Magazine, Chief Isaac (the leader of the John Frum group) says when asked "John promised you much cargo more than 60 years ago, and none has come. So why do you keep faith with him? Why do you still believe in him?":

"You Christians have been waiting 2,000 years for Jesus to return to earth,” he says, “and you haven’t given up hope."

With that, this borderline atheist (who studied Latin for a good bit of high school) says "Quo vadis" and good night.

(No offense intended to any Catholic hypothetical readers, this faithless author doesn't know what to believe and has all the respect for any beliefs you folks might have, but wanted to inject some awareness of how completely transcendently weird some things actually get in the realm of religious faith. It's why I just scratch my head, sleep in on Sundays, and don't know what to make of what any potential G_d wants me to do. Just sayin', really.)

This Post Has Been Slow Cooked in Hot Water in a Plastic Bag in a Vacuum for Tenderness and Pretension

2008-04-14T20:22:00.000-07:00

So, here we are again. I’m going to talk about current television, which in the near future will make this post seem about as current and relevant as a briefcase sized cell phone in an ‘80’s movie, but there are things that have to be said. Or not, really, but you can always find something else to keep you entertained while you wait for the dryer to finish running so you can get dressed and go outside.

It would have seemed impossible to me that I would find Top Chef as compelling as I do, but I have to admit that it gets me right in the wheelhouse. Project Runway (I say with a bit more shame) is equally irresistible.

While I care a good deal less about clothes than I do about food, and in fact avoid buying and looking for things to wear as if it might kill me, there’s something almost redemptive about giving people the opportunity to win something based on actual talent. Anyone with half a brain (and it might actually be required that you have exactly that quantity) could manage performing a sack race on a beach, sexual acts on a has been celebrity (yes, I’m looking at Flavor Flav and Bret Michaels), or eating insects, all for a chance at a pile of cash or a giant novelty check.

Ask someone to make a ball-gown out of trash?

How about making hors d’oeuvres from what you find in a snack machine?

Prepare dishes for a lavish banquet with a budget of $200/$300/$500?

These are actually tasks requiring some thought, ability and talent.

While I never would have thought that watching people make and eat food and spout off about it would make for good visual entertainment, it actually does in a strange way, and we both sit here and have intense opinions about it. I would have thought it would have played out more like the experience of watching a slide show (the real kind without clip-art and without sound) of a symphonic concert, but strangely, it works.

I worry that it builds an appreciation for the aspects of food and eating which have little to do with the actual joy of food, and merely makes us respect foolishness involving complicated titles, and preposterous forms of “presentation”, but I am hooked absolutely.

The personal drama, the storylines of mutual loathing and irritability seem to be a fundamental part of Top Chef in a way which they are not on Runway. I don’t know exactly why this is, perhaps people who are all about the schmattes* have a greater sense that taste is always at least a little bit subjective, and if I don’t love what you do… eh, whatever. Competitive, but aggression is definitely of the passive, slightly (very) bitchy type.

In the midst of this ramble, coming to the actual point any minute now.

A lesson in life to take for yourselves is this: If you ever use the phrase “…the [my name] [positive characteristic]…” be assured that you lack that quality thoroughly. Witness Richard Blais on the most recent episode of Top Chef, who had been doing a veritable shuck-and-jibe soft shoe for Tom Colicchio, mentioning in his post-mortem interview that “…I guess the Richard Blais charm just wasn’t working on him…” Talented he may be (although hearing anyone squawk away with obsessive love or negativity about sous-vide’ing things gives me a little bit of a headache, and the thought of pretty much any kind of meat being cooked in a plastic bag in warm water just really doesn’t do the trick for me, in all honesty), but he’s never struck me as being charming in any particular way.

The final thought is this: Spike, how many goddamn stupid looking hats did you bring with you? What the heck is up with that misshapen woven rattan baseball cap? When you go by “Spike”, you’ve pretty much got your gimmick covered. You really don’t need to be The Guy Who Always Wears Ridiculous Haberdashery. I can’t imagine what it must be like to leave your house on a trip, and have to seriously contemplate exactly how many fedoras you need to bring with you to get through a week at the beach. I understand that someone can easily be nudged through their own insecurity to look for an identity in some outward physical manifestation: “I’m the guy who carries a basketball everywhere!” “I’m the guy who wears lots of rings!” “I’m yet another wildly unique emo kid dressed entirely in black!” “I’m the girl who always has her pet rat with her!”**

In this case it just happens to be "I'm the guy who's always wearing a wacky-ass hat!"

These are things we abandon when we grow past a certain age, okay? Even if you’re balding with an ursine ferocity***, it’s still all going to be fine. Put the hat down, and back away.

*Looking at Yiddish phrases, two things struck me as remarkable: first, the number of Yiddish words that have become OED accepted in English use (I never knew that “maven” came from Yiddish, for example), and secondly that “shlimazl” is the second most difficult word, out of the most difficult non-English words to translate. It’s one of those things that you understand, but can’t exactly express in a clean phrase. Oh, also that “schlong” came from Yiddish too… just wanted to keep it clean and classy in here.****

**This last, chilling option is from a real-life example that I can recall from my own tender high school years, and a particular person who was the most metal girl left, in a period where it was no longer such a big thing, and had a rat that rode around in her shirt, and drank out of her mouth when the opportunity presented itself. I thought she had the whole identity thing ankled even without the addition of a rat in the shirt, but to each their own. Wherever she is, I hope things are going well.

***Come to think of it, baldness up top would make the scraggly beard make more sense…

****So, how much would you hypothetical readers love it if I could figure out how to do HTML jumps back and forth to and from the asterisks? SO WOULD I!! I just haven't gotten that high tech yet. Me and my suitcase cellphone will have to place some calls to People In The Know.

Koans (Pretty Much) of a Spring Evening

2008-04-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

How big can purses actually get?

Why do women, by wearing Uggs or pointy-toed shoes, seem to want to convince us all that their feet are a completely unnatural size and shape?

Why do cyclists of any sort adhere so slavishly to the exact aesthetic standards of their particular sub-sect?

Why do soccer fans show their devotion with scarves specifically?

How early in a company's existence is the decision made to buy very nice or very cheap pens?

And, now more a Taoist thought:

Describe the smell of concrete or asphalt under a warm rain without referring to memory.

While we're at it, do you remember the particular smell on your palms as a child after running up and squeaking down an old school metal playground slide what seemed like a million times?

Is There Concealed Carry in the Afterlife?

2008-04-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

Charlton Heston has passed to the great ape rodeo beyond.

I guess we can take his guns away now.

Does his successor have to do the prying, I wonder?

Another Grab Bag of Assorted Fragments

2008-04-03T15:18:00.001-07:00

I will refrain from any large scale reference to the industry of wedding hyping, but reserve the right to return to that subject if it becomes necessary. Fair warning has been given...

That being said, Tigger and I were on the train this morning, and she had some of the glossy bricks of bridal planning periodicals that are de rigeur for the process in which we have gotten ourselves involved. That being the endless logistical complexities of getting a bunch of people (with whom we're already acquainted, so that shouldn't be too hard for the team) to show up somewhere of our choosing, eat food that we provide (again, biological necessity takes care of the "why" they might be feeling), and drink themselves silly (see above), and watch us have a gorgeous, fun day of committing ourselves to a life together.

I know, it seems like it should be easy, right?

It may well just be, but dispatches are still coming from reporters in the field, so the specifics are somewhat hazy.

So.

She's reading through the magazines, and looks over to me...

T: It's funny. All the women in the ads in here just look like they're in a very bad mood. That's like a ten thousand dollar wedding dress.

Me: God, you're right... maybe they really wanted the fifteen thousand dollar dress they tried on right before?

I wonder whether the subtext here is to inculcate the idea that nothing can actually satisfy the discriminating reader, or the waxed and preened bride sample presented. I don't have answers.

I was on the train today, F train to Brooklyn, and a real fixture on the subways came through the car. I remember him from years ago, seeling Street News (the homeless published weekly paper they had as an "opportunity" a while ago,) and later from selling batteries.

He walks through the car, selling real Duracells at a buck a pair. I was always happy to see him, as I was inevitably shelling out significantly more at convenience stores to keep the discman humming at the time. I would stock up, he would say thanks, and announce "I'm a businessman! Double-A, triple-A duracells ONE dollar-one-dollar!" Then he was gone, having announced the time before leaving the train car...

I have for a while now been using an iPod for my mindless distraction on the train, and since then haven't had to buy batteries anymore. I wonder whether the battery guy realizes the reasons behind a fall-off in business, and whether he has a burning hatred for Apple, iPods and rechargeable implements generally. I wouldn't hold it against him, it's a tough road to try and re-engineer a business model...

More to follow tomorrow, specifically about futurists... look for it in this space!

Finally, for anyone out there planning on getting a dog, let me share one vital tidbit:

We all want to believe that our dogs will do what we want because they dote on us, and because our praise is the next best thing to ambrosia of which their fuzzy little heads can conceive. Having now been working with a bare dog larder for a few days, and having fallen into that mistaken belief... AND having just resorted to chopping up a whole pound of cheddar into teeny little cubelets and tried some obedience exercises, let it be known that...

...training a dog with no treats in play is quite a lot like traveling across third world countries without a sack of gifts and/or cash for bribes. You may get through, but you're just making things a lot harder on yourself.

You may think you are getting by on your charm and good looks, but they will run out eventually, and whether it's a guard post on a muddy jungle road in territory held by the Karen People's Army in Burma's back country, or a particularly interesting bird on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, you will eventually be humbled.

Take care of yourselves. You're beautiful. Don't go changing.

Some Rilly Rilly Big News

2008-03-31T19:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, news of a personal nature is being included here:

Tigger and I got engaged on Friday!

Not that any of you hypothetical readers ever leave comments anyhow, but if you have bitter stories to share, here and now are not the place, and not the time for them respectively.

I figured doing this on the day before we had half the world coming to our house for brunch/housewarming/meet Gojira etc., would really be just the best idea evar.

Clearly I am getting high on something, but don't know just what, given how well I conceived of all of these logistics. That said, I'm happy to have a more interesting story to tell. Maybe you'll end up hearing it, if you in fact exist.

All the details are going to follow, if I get around to deciding how much to expose my soft underbelly to (albeit hypothetical) strangers... we'll see.

Meanwhile, hope you are all just as happy as I am at the moment.

Also hope you are less tired, and didn't have a hangover for at least a solid day, and at the moment today felt a bit like it too. Woo!

Little Help?

2008-03-25T19:14:00.001-07:00

You know, hypotheticals, I work my fingers to the bone over here...

I'd like everyone to send this address to at least seven people, with a threatening chain letter. I want to get to where I can start BLEGGING.

Not actually serious, here. I'm just blegging in my own way, but just for attention, not a splashy new pair of sunglasses. The difference being I'm blegging hoarsely into the void, which makes it less acquisitive, and more just a little bit desparate, I suppose. Were I to be serious, that is.

Isn't that why we all come ride the tubes though, kids?

Anyway, in all seriousness, if you haven't read it, go check out fatty's blog, but you probably have since after all, he's a bloggie winner, and a celeb in his own right. There's an old saying in German: "What does the moon care if a dog barks at it?"

Well, "woof woof" and all that.

We Are Experiencing Technical Complexities

2008-03-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

Two things.

One: when I got my current iPod as a gift from Tigger, I thought they were excessively large and I would never need the space for everything.

Fast forward two plus years, and my 30 gig iPod (or in this case the one I got Tigger for her Birthday) has blown a seam trying to just keep up with all the music we've been adding to iTunes for the purpose of getting rid of our brick and mortar CDs.

The day has arrived, and we now have too much stuff to put on the pods. I didn't think it would come to this and it has, and suddenly with all the photos I shoot (Nikon D70, gigs at a time after a trip get ripped to the iPhoto and stored, always nice to have those along for showing people our waterfalls/puppy/selves) I'm looking at the 160 GB iPod and thinking "Yeah, that might hold us for a while."

We've gotten completely accustomed to such mammoth amounts of data being flung around, it's kind of hard to really grip, mentally.

My college Mac held (I think) 80 MB on the hard drive, and it was the uprated model, yet still black and white. I'm not even that old, at least as far as I'm concerned. That is one tenth of a CD-R. Don't even get me started on how much of a CF card it is, or how much of a DVD-R or whatever.

Second point: I bought a "terrestrial" phone for the first time in about ten years today. We both have cell phones ("Gee REALLY???" "Yes, really, along with the rest of the developed and developing world, we do. Can the sarcasm.") so it has never really been necessary, but suddenly we have cable service that was practically doing backflips to get us to agree to have a phone line through the modem, and it would be LESS than just getting cable and internet, so FINE. We did it. Well there's that, and there's the fact that our turn of the century electrical system basically gave my cell phone a surge-induced ice-pick lobotomy, causing it to lose all my contacts, forget all my text messages, and stop making or receiving calls, and I need to be reachable on a day off of work tomorrow...

The good news, in our image infatuated society is: don't worry, my cell still turns on very nicely, and looks perfectly fine. It just won't do anything, and its memory is putting it in the category of a hobo found at a Phoenix strip mall not knowing its own name and gibbering about un-nameable awfulness while scratching its face incessantly.

So I went ahead and went to get a phone to plug in to our cable modem, since we're paying for it anyway.

The first cordless I brought home, with an answering machine attached (which makes me think that maybe we'll do up a novelty type message, for old times sake... possibly including Gojira making some contribution, 'cause why not, eh? (which in turn makes me lament the end of the attempted amusing outgoing message, which was oddly killed by the cell phone, perhaps because the culture was all about phones for "business" people just didn't feel like impersonating Peter Lorre or whatever, go figure, right?)) it didn't work, at least in terms of charging.

Want to apologize for the nested parentheses. I learned German growing up, so I am immune to any confusion due to endless subclauses, and I think in those terms. You hypothetical readers will just have to get accustomed, or just cease to exist in my fertile imagination, which is where I think you reside anyhow... fame and fortune are around the corner!

Anyhow.

It wouldn't charge the handset, and I had to try and pack it up and return it to the local store where I bought it. It sucked. Hard. Trying to get that thing back in the box was like trying to put an octopus to bed, to take a phrase from addiction counseling... there were about 600 plastic baggies, forty-five twist-ties, and sixty-seven folded pieces of cardboard to get this thing packed the hell up.

I went back, with a slightly misformed and bulging box of phones (it had the now common two handsets, with a spare charging base to keep at the other end of your cavernous suburban estate, though you can get them with up to FOUR handsets.) Ended up getting another phone, from Panasonic, which had one handset only, but allows for additional handsets when we hit the lottery (if we ever bought tickets) and buy our hideous mafia palace on Long Island.

I want to tell you how much I love the good folks at Panasonic, and I'll tell you why:

First off, here's the top of the box. You'll note that it's hazardous chemical free in production. The first phone was from another company, and had cadmium batteries. This one, has NiMH batteries, and even better... they are normal AAAs, so you can replace them when they start losing the plot. I could make an iPod related comment here, but I'm a nice guy (bear with me... play along, alright?) so I won't do that. Regular AA NiMH batteries. How easy was that, industry???

And now, the "piece de resistance", this is what you see right away when you open the box, on the flap right below the lid:

Look carefully.

That there is a diagram showing you how to re-pack the box. That's right, folks. Someone wants to prepare us for the possibility that we have to put the jigsaw puzzle of death back together and return the product!

If you have any friends who are designers, I want you to print out this photo, and glue it onto the bottom of a frying pan. Wrap your friend in a blanket featuring images of Fallingwater, Guggenhem Bilbao, and anything by Alvar Aalto, and hit them in the face with said pan until they understand how simple and liberating good design actually can be for all of us.

Have a great day, and a wonderful tomorrow, folks.

Sidenote: the new phone works, too. Which is wonderfully ironic given that returning it would have been so much easier than the other one...

Telemarketers, here I come!

Reporting From the Smoking Rubble of a Battered Tokyo

2008-03-22T22:05:00.001-07:00

Gojira is doing well, while sometimes "bad" and sometimes "good" he is adapting well to this strange cavalcade of newness that is Brooklyn.

We got up (Tigger and I) this morning, after I had had my pre-getting up awakening of taking G. out for his morning emergency #1's (we were up a little bit later than typical infant parents last night, so paid the price as dog caretakers) and I had been towed around the neighborhood by what is definitely a draft dog.

T: Do you want to make some breakfast?

P-Fan: What, make something other than dog food in this kitchen?

Yeah, hypothetical people... the dog has had about ten times the number of meals I've had come out of that kitchen, if not more. It just seems like there's no time to do anything else.

The thing about it is: every person with (or without, which is somehow more insulting and absurd) when we speak about "little" Gojira's habits of jumping up on strangers or whatever else, always says "Well he's just a puppy!"

Here's the thing: we weighed him earlier this evening, before giving him a bath ('coz we know how to rock a rockin' Saturday night party up in this place!) and he's 60 pounds.

60 pounds.

Less than 5 months old.

For context:

Maybe you can't read that, or do the conversion on what 60 pounds actually IS, but he would be in the 95th percentile in body weight for a six year old human child. Name me one kid in the first grade who is at severe risk for knocking over strangers or peeing on the floor if he isn't in control.

Didn't think you could.

So, all the people who want to tell me that G. is just a puppy, let me say here: yeah. I get that. The rest of you with puppies don't have a giant breed/giant dog on your hands (if you do, scratch that, and let's all start a club or something... seriously. Write me, one of you two hypotheticals, though the odds are slim) and unless you do, cut that advice off at the pass, okay?

It's a whole different world from a fluffy 20 pound dog that just wants to pee saucer sized puddles of "error" on the floor, or jump up to nuzzle and lick someone's calf. We had the ENTIRE KITCHEN FLOOR spattered with an "accident" this evening when we had our timing and crate training off by a bit. Hell, G. can knock over three year olds if he's too exuberant without even realizing anything has happened.

He's loving, and enjoys baths, bible study, and long walks on the beach... he just doesn't know his own strength.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes that I just can't take as advice or all will be lost:

"If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then give up. No use being a fool about it."

--W.C. Fields

We will carry on being fools at the casa, and hope in all the important ways in your lives that you do the same.

For the children, or something.

At some point, I may have some words about our errant, whoremongering governor (who I voted for and was a big supporter of, so again... don't take me to the dog track and expect good advice or anything, alright?)

The Joys of Spring

2008-03-19T16:39:00.001-07:00

So, I awoke to a reasonably stout and hearty rain this morning, and no sooner than I could rub the sleep from my eyes, was out with the dog into the abyss of morning. He didn't seem overeager about it either, and accomplished the mission at hand (codpiece free, thankfully not taking a page from our soon to be cashiered Commander In Chief) in short order.

This was followed by a long day at work, standing on the battlements bearing ongoing witness to the bloodshed and debacle, metaphorically smoking a cigarette and hoping that the city walls hold under this renewed onslaught from without.

Home again, getting my hand brutalized by a subway door, and with a sharply aching shoulder where my clavicle broke at the beginning of our odyssey together, gentle hypothetical readers (first pain I've had in months, so a little disappointing) I had opportunity to reflect on how awesome it is to have pain that arrives when the weather changes.

It makes me feel all strapping and puissant from the very base of feet to the ends of my disheveled hair. It's a vibrant feeling, really. It just happens to have an old man-ish sharp pain in my back and shoulder doing a tap routine on stage left... and we all know that tap is God's way of saying that progress is good and vaudeville should stay well and dead.

We had planned on doing laundry, but we have pretty much bagged that concept for this evening, as it involves a drive, and it's late already.

For the joy of a bit of time recovering, I'll happily do some creative accounting as to what I consider "clean enough" for tomorrow to get me through work.

So, in the meantime (as I am telling myself this is a short post, gentle hypotheticals, which it never looks to be when I "publish" my inevitable tomes) there's someone who you just have to read:

arcticglass.blogspot.com

She biked the iditarod, and describes the experience in detail... if you come upon this in the future, when it languishes in the dusty back rooms of the Old Internet, start in March of 2008, it is a tremendous accomplishment, and while there are those who are doing an 1100 mile version, 350 miles for a mortal human is almost inconceivable.

Look, read, and leave some love in the comments... some things are just infinitely resistant to cynicism.

And be well...

Really Bearish

2008-03-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

So I haven't mentioned this before, but I work for a bank. I'm nothing high-flown, just a spreadsheet monkey with a couple of flat panel displays. (FOUR OF 'EM! They give me the worst feeling of dryness in my eyes, so don't be jealous.) So it's not my brilliance that makes the money, or my bad luck or stupidity that loses it when that happens to be how it goes.

That said, times right now are as dark as anyone with lots of experience seems to be able to recall, and while no one is outside on bread lines or selling apples, it's not as farfetched as you might think, somehow. Bear Stearns was a veritable 800 pound gorilla in New York (and global) finance, and the sudden collapse is pretty much unprecedented.

The fact is that while we look at this as the comeuppance of greedy and wealthy people, there is something that has been mentioned but bears reiterating: one third of the company was owned by the employees. The $240 million dollar purchase price for JP Morgan was one tenth of the value that was in the marketplace on Friday ($2/share, down from $30/share) and just over an eightieth of the prices that were prevalent a number of months ago.

So.

Let's do the math:

Roughly 14,000 employees held a third of the company, 120 million shares. That, at the 52 week high of $159 per share comes to just over $19,000,000,000.00

That is a value in employee hands of over $6,000,000,000.00, which has turned into an $80 million value in a matter of two days.

That's an average of almost half a million dollars in savings lost per employee.

Oh yeah, and half the staff is going to get fired.

I've talked to colleagues who have friends who've lost pretty much everything overnight, and are now unsure of how to pay for their mortgages, which is (to say the least) a touch more ironic than I even need to comment on... the unaffordable mortgage, the teaser rate, and the overengineered nature of the Mortgage Backed Securities marketplace are the source of the pain, and to see perfectly honest and hardworking people lose a lifetime of work is pretty grim.

Even if they were among the highest paid Americans, it is still hard to imagine going through three days with that much of a drawn out punch in the stomach.

People are quick to judge the industry, quick to lay blame for the structuring of transactions that allowed ratings to be synthetically created (legitimately, especially given that the ratings agencies played along...)

The fact is that we don't want to spread the blame evenly, and justly:

-People wanted houses that were more expensive than they could afford.

Greed.

-Realtors wanted the biggest commissions they could get, no matter what the cost.

Greed.

-Local mortgage issuers wanted to get people the biggest loan they could sell to a lender.

Greed.

-Issuers wanted to sell highly rated securities built on mortgages paid by people with lousy credit.

Greed.

Blame everyone you feel you need to, but don't forget where that chain started.

Tigger and I looked at buying, looked at vacation houses, and didn't go ahead with the plan, because prices were inflated, the market was overheated, we would have gotten a fishy tweaked out adjustable rate, and...

WE WEREN'T SURE HOW CONSISTENTLY WE COULD COVER THE NUT.

Read that five times, slowly. If you can't pay your bills, it's your damn fault too.

And now? Now we all pay for your stupid house as taxpayers.

Your goddamn welcome.

I'd just like to keep my job, okay?

Up, up and Away

2008-03-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

The last of the moving is done. It's a strange feeling having given the keys back today, and knowing I won't unlock that door anymore. As much as I knew it was coming and we'd been sleeping in the new place already, it just didn't seem real that we were leaving the old behind.

I feel a bit like Larry Walters at the moment. You sit in the yard, inflating the balloons, filling ballast jugs, lifting off while tethered to the ground, all the while flying. When the moment comes to release the rope that anchors you, and spring upwards into the sky it is unsettling. However much the dream may be to fly your chair off into the blue, when the reality arrives it cannot be easy to process.

We've cut the tether, and are on our way (hopefully not into any commercial flight paths.)

No Mas

2008-03-12T21:04:00.001-07:00

I'm ready to be done now.

All those anxiety and stress evaluations where they talk about moving as being one of the greatest sources of tension one can experience... I get that now.

I just want to have all my stuff in one place, and I want to feel like I can just live normally again. We've slowly put things into place, and with the addition of the training/housebreaking/integrating a dog into life it's just been really extraordinarily draining. I just want it to be a good, normal day to day for a little bit before something else intrudes. I'm stressed enough about recession, and layoffs, and who knows what else, and this is just putting me at a point of exhaustion that I'm getting a bit tired of altogether.

There's no pithy here tonight folks. I just have run out of whale oil for the week.

48 hours from now it will be finished, and I will be relieved. I think I may be planning on:

-A trip to the beach this weekend

-Sleeping

-Drinking myself into some sort of stupor on some evening

I dream big, kids. That's how you make it to the big leagues, right?

In Which I Am [Easily] Distracted

2008-03-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

So, I know the two of you hypothetical readers have been fretting day and night about where I've been, but fret no more! I did not fall down a well. I have merely been tumbling through and down the rabbit hole of moving, stress, job insecurity, and a newly acquired relatively Hairy Roommate.

He had a rough first twenty-four hours. If you were to ask the kitchen floor it would tell you that it does not even have hopes to ever regain its innocence. But then, you know how much kitchen floors are all about hyperbole, so don't take it too seriously. I, on the other hand, could do with not wiping up diarrhoeic leavings again any time soon.

Ah, hope springs eternal.

So, for all of you legions of imaginary friends out there, be of good cheer, for soon I will either leave a bunch of things and dust bunnies in our old apartment, or be fully moved into this one.

Or I will be fetal and completely immobilized on Thorazine in a lovely white facility somewhere. I'm waiting for the Vegas odds to come in, but it's pretty much anyone's race at this point.

Tune in for updates!

(And be glad, at least I only talked about fecal matter briefly with you good, hypothetically slavering hypothetical readers. We've been talking about it at Casa de Fan y Tigger pretty much incessantly for more than 36 hours! It's a damn PARTY!)

Go with G__.

Pray for Mojo.

For a Banana, I'll Tell You Your Fortune

2008-03-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

I forget from whom the quote came, but some sage once said that anything is funnier when you add a monkey.

I seriously need someone to add a monkey to my life at the moment.

We have been moving our assorted crap for two straight days, going in on day three, and it seems endlessly awesome at the moment (sarcasm smiley omitted because they don't exist.) Even better, we have a small mildew "situation" at the new apartment that is hopefully going to be corrected by the landlord's guy by this evening.

Further: I had the singular pleasure of having "Movin' Out" by Billy Joel, and the first few riffs of "Bad Moon Rising" running through my head all day yesterday as a result of them being on the radio during on of what seemed like endless trips back and forth in the Lesbomobile (Subaru Outback wagon) to move boxes.

I am here to tell you that both of the artists in question (Mssrs. Billy Joel and Creedence Clearwater Revival) can sort of DIAF on my grand toteboard of life's people for me right now. If I never hear "heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack" again, I will die a slightly happier man.

Wherever you are, stay there. Help may not be on the way, but make sure there's a compelling reason to even go outside for coffee. Seriously.

Really Simple, Really

2008-03-01T00:44:00.000-08:00

Go.

Now.

Buy yourselves (hypothetical pair of readers) a couple of Clifton Chenier records.

Now.

I'm up, way too late of course... trying to sleep waiting for the move. I am up, and listening to Clifton and his Red Hot Louisiana Band (their real name) just ripping the hell out of God's atmosphere.

You should be doing likewise.

If you have doubts, just know that this guy toured 300 plus dates a year, even while receiving kidney dialysis at the tail end of his career. They had a big station wagon (the same kind of vehicle that I hope to hell will get us moved in tomorrow and Sunday) and a trailer, and they unleashed unholy hell all over this great land.

Buy his stuff. No other people will understand why, but trust me.

It's that good.

When have I ever used bold and italics before?

A Little Friday Filler

2008-02-29T19:15:00.000-08:00

So.

The apartment looks like the inside of C-130 delivering a humanitarian relief shipment. Even better? Sure, I'll go there. We were thinking we were going to be in the new place tonight at least to paint. Tigger wants to paint stuff (mainly because the departing tenant worked with a lovely dark mustard shade in the living room with the blue carpeting), and we picked a color. Painting is something that I, and most guy friends of mine have confirmed this, give little thought to, and would generally roll with white all day long... but all's well.

We are not in the new place right now. You can tell because I wouldn't have an internet connection. Or furniture. Or whatever. Former tenant drags feet, we wait in the staging area.

So.

Instead of all that, I am freshly showered and in a bathrobe, with a cocktail in hand, sneaking in a February 29th post because it just had to be done.

I am, however, not in the best of shape after sleeping poorly and insufficiently for days now, and spending some time being absolutely in a panic about the next two days, so there's that as well.

So in the meanwhile, go read www.toothpastefordinner.com (while both of you hypothetical readers certainly know about it already, I wanted to share it as I crawled out from under my rock, ran across it today, and divebombed* a couple of years of the posts.) I guess when a late-forties suburban dad in the office sees it and says how much he loves it... it's not exactly like I'm setting up the first flash mob here or something like that.

The remarkable thing:

-It's a web comic.

-It's funny.

I know you don't believe me, I wouldn't either. It is, however, true.

In other news: Moose (according to numerous sources in the know) is likely to be around 150 pounds when fully grown.

In other, other news: I know no one wanted to endlessly hear me waste their time talking ad nauseam about a dog. I will make an effort to be irritated at other things again, instead of just marveling about this one thing in particular. Ire fuels the litter box... that and poorly spelled, inarticulate opinions.

So to be in line with the form... YOUR LOOSERS PWNT!!!@# 1110100111

Is that better? Does it make this feel like the internet again? I guess I could also post more pictures of the dog and fit a different corner of things.

One final random thought in the Grab Bag: on the subway posters for the new pick 5 lottery campaign, it has a little tag on the bottom of the advertising that says (in text smaller than what's on your screen, dear hypothetical readers): "Play Responsibly." Right.

Be well. Pray for Mojo, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow are going to be pretty nuts. We have to move, paint, AND we have to go to a wedding tomorrow afternoon. Sweet! Maybe I'll write that novel on Saturday while I'm at it.

Nothing quite like a bit of cohesive writing with a beginning, middle, and an

*The act of finding a source of writing or other material, and methodically roaring through mountains of archive. It's fantastic, and it's a good reason to keep on sifting through the kitty litter that is the internet and looking for the impossible diamond as you work your way through. I made this phrase up and I am telling you this here. It's like an even more slack Slacker Copyright... I don't even need to buy a stamp!

Today's Post Brought to you by the Color Red (String)!

2008-02-27T15:47:00.001-08:00

As you may know, or not, the great folks at the web presence for kabala will do you--or anyone with access to the wonders of the wondrous "Internet"--the honor of analyzing your first name according to the principles of Kabala! For FREE!!*

So I went ahead and did the analysis for Moose (FHR) and here's the verdict:

"Although the name Moose creates executive ambitions, we emphasize that it limits your versatility and scope, tuning you to technical details."

Damn. That name is what's going to keep our dog from having a well-compensated career as a shallow, unfulfilled executive. Also, something to consider, given that this is intended to be a resource for people: how many engineers do you know named Moose?

"This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the reproductive organs, and elimination system."

AH! Here's the hard sell on that whole thirty bones thing!** Well, I definitely want to be happy, content, and successful at his engineering career... and (until we take them out surgically in just about two months***) I do totally want him to have the strength of TEN dogs in his reproductive organs.

"Your name of Moose has made you practical, systematic, and thorough."

No birdseed would have been left when he remained, if he had been just given the TIME to work on his technical project of sifting systematically, and thoroughly through the entire yard of dirt, so no argument there.

"The name encourages the expression of leadership and organizational skills, shrewdness and analytical ability."

I have to take some exception to this, given that he seems pretty disorganized with his reams of blueprints. He also takes direction from anyone with thumbs, so that's a bit off the mark, but his analytical ability may have instructed him to take this path of least resistance, so who knows?

"You are mathematically adept and have great patience with work of a detailed nature such as bookkeeping, accounting, or technical research."

How ironic is that? I hated math as a young boy, and now work with numbers for a living. Like father like substitute son! He might provide the good example that gets me to balance my checkbook for the first time in my life. Fair trade for picking up his leavings for the next ten years... it's all about the personal growth.

"Particular about your material possessions, you keep everything you own in a good state of repair, and you budget your personal finances very carefully."

I hope he does take good care of them, since Tigger and I just spend more than 350 clams on a full dog trousseau. The china pattern is really quite lovely, though.

"Because of its matter-of-fact influence, this name limits, to some degree, your ability to be flexible and spontaneous."

Again, not sure on this one. From what I hear, he will sleep almost anywhere you put him, inside or out.

"You tend to treat new and unfamiliar ideas with skepticism."

I hate to keep on coming back to the birdseed, but I would definitely call that a new idea that was approached with a dearth of skepticism if anything.

"Because of the serious, responsible qualities of your name, you must recognize the importance of a sense of humour and optimistic perspective of life."

Can't argue here. Though, like with any good cold reading technique, it is good advice for just about all of us. I suppose the kabala approach to dog naming is fraught with trouble, since finding a good "balanced" name is also not part of the free service. Want a set of "good" names? That'll make the full name analysis seem like hack work... a mere $245.00 will get you a Balanced Name Recommendation!****

I need to remind myself to take this all with a grain of salt, as there are certain analyses that I can't agree with at all...

Taking "Douchebag" as an example:

"As Douchebag, you have a natural interest in the welfare of your fellow man, and a desire to help and serve others in a humanitarian way."

Now, gentle hypothetical readers, I've met more than my share of Douchebags in my life, and this description doesn't really jive with any of them I can remember. I will readily concede that it wasn't their officially Given Name, but if it's what everyone calls you (a "nickname" so to speak) isn't that pretty much the same thing?

N.B. Hey Kabalarians! Just kidding around, okay? Don't do some kind of Kabalarian thing that would make me seriously regret this, right? Just send me an email... K? I mean, I think it's a Kreepy Kultish Kavalcade kind of thing you all have going on, but live and let live, right?

*Note that if you want the full-tilt analysis of both first and last names in conjunction, and giving you the interplay that they represent, you will have to pony up 30 bones. However, since I don't believe in Kabala, and am cheap, I stuck with the first name free analysis. I hope you aren't too disappointed. If so, then tough.

**It must be his LAST name that's giving him the diarrhea.

***Tigger has a disturbing command of the exact date ("May 2nd, 2008!") that the snipping is going to happen, and seems also filled with anticipation about it. I don't know what more to say about this.

****Though I do have to give some full disclosure in that your minor outlay of two Franklins, two Jacksons, and a Lincoln will also give you the $30 name analysis for one parent, and a recommendation for a parent as well as a pending child, so I guess we have to call it absolutely bargain-tastic! If you are appallingly cheap, you can just get the individual recommendation for $195, but I say just go ahead and get the analysis and a spare name for your eventual child. You do want them to be happy and healthy with well functioning sexual organs, don't you?

Think Good Thoughts...

2008-02-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

Tigger's sister's dog either was lost, or it seems may have been stolen. It is hitting her family very hard especially having lost a dog who was hit by a car last year. Anyone who reads this, please send out good thoughts for the return of a wonderful, and happy little guy. Check tigger's blog for the information and pictures of the missing friend.

Sorry to be serious here, but it's very hard to see someone going through this. I'm upset as well at the thought.

Our Future Hairy Roommate (or FHR) had some issues of his own with his digestion this week, and while it didn't make the Seattle Post Intelligencer, it was a source of concern for us ordinary folk in the small mountain hamlet of Brooklyn.

To wit: he had diarrhea, and at 50 pounds Gross Dog Vehicle Weight, he had what I can only assume was a lot of it.

Knowing that you fine pair of hypothetical readers come here for classy material, I feel guilty giving you something SO awesome to think about and I suppose I'm apologizing. Just feel lucky while thinking about how wonderful it was for Tigger's folks who were being woken by the big/little guy howling/barking at one in the morning and again at 5 to be released that he might relieve himself.

Food changes were made, rice was added, and no improvement. The "medical team" (i.e. all of us) began to grow concerned. I'm sure you "all" are as well.

The answer?

He was eating discard bird seed. Sneaking it, and sneaking just loads of it every time he was outside; and since it was off the ground under the bird feeders it also included a healthy sprinkling of bird crap.

We collectively buy this dog human grade food with natural preservatives omega-3 oils and probiotics, to give him the best start possible, and he... wants to eat bird shit. I don't have the right words, but for the time being he is at least sleeping through the night again, and that's more than a small relief.

We're in the midst of moving, and all is hell, darkness and chaos. You know the drill. So, since I have no funny on that subject as I as of yet lack perspective on the amusing nature of the situation, here is where you should be reading about moving being engaged in by people way way way more noble than I am:

bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com

Well, I'll be moving with my car, thanks.

That, and movers for the first time in my life as I'm sick of having crisis moments involving elevators and couches. That can go and DIAF.*

In the meantime, stay beautiful just the way you are, and tip your servers out there.

*Little "throwback asterisk", and a "shout out" to my most favorite recently contemplated internet acronym.

There's Something Fishy about this Rocket Fuel...

2008-02-21T15:50:00.000-08:00

There’s been a lot of talk in the press recently about doping in sports, and in baseball in particular. I watched Andy Pettite give his press conference of endless mea culpas over the weekend, and saw a guy who seemed genuine and remorseful. As everyone has certainly said already, he did it once he got caught, and the integrity of that is not the same as what it takes to confess of your own accord etc. etc.

To this I have to ask when anyone has ever simply stepped forward to admit doping, or almost any other transgression.

So let’s just put that aside.

I have to confess that I have never been much of a fan of Roger Clemens, and while I understand that he is trying desperately to salvage his chances of making the hall of fame, and keeping his legacy intact, there is a sense of implausibility that is hard to shake. I’ve tried to believe before, and I suppose I am just low on capacity for that at the moment, I suppose.

The cynical take here is that the sports that actually succeed at catching doping violators are branded as nests of dopers and treated with suspicion. As Hank Steinbrenner put it the other day, the NFL quite probably has as big a problem as anyone with steroids and HGH, but they make it look like an effort is being made, and catch a few small fry without anyone seeming to care too much.

I come back to the Tour de France in 2006, and remember how it felt to watch Floyd Landis’ travails. I wanted to believe him then, and through it all hope that he will be proven not guilty, though it is hard to imagine it now.

I was pulling for Landis, for his sense of weirdness and his tremendous backstory… a former Mennonite kid who had ridden at night to avoid parental judgment, a mountain biker turned road racer with an utterly demolished, rotting hip and the kind of panache that the French talk about, and that makes the Tour at its best a spectacular thing to witness.

I remember watching the events of Stage 15, where Landis rode away from the yellow jersey to retake the lead and feeling a level of excitement at a dog fight of a Tour for the first time in a few years at least.

I remember the disaster of Stage 16, watching Landis collapse, crack completely on the final climb into La Toussuire, a man with nothing left in him. Left for dead, crawling into the finish and leaving ten minutes on the mountain. By all accounts, he was left with an insurmountable barrier between himself and victory in Paris. He traded his yellow jersey for a six pack of beer, a gesture that makes you simply shake your head and laugh at the sense of humor and absurdity in a man who would do that after a day of immolation.

Eddy Merckx believed, and bet on Floyd winning. Having a guy like Merckx believe in you is a powerful sign, and the next stage delivered the Panache in spades. At the start of the day, he showed his cards and told the peloton that he was going to attack… “We’re going on the first climb, so get a Coke and get ready if you want to come with us.”

I was at work, watching the coverage online, dispatches coming through every few minutes, and couldn’t believe my eyes… Landis made good his word and delivered a truly remarkable thing… he rode the field off his wheel, and tore an inconceivable amount of time that no one could recover before the day ended. 120 kilometers nearly alone, and thoroughly alone at the very end, coming up the final climb on the Col de Joux Plane and into Morzine. I was near tears, and was again when I reviewed the coverage from Versus that evening. No one could stay with him, and no one could catch him.

As Phil Liggett said about another man a year later, Landis was indeed riding like a man with four legs…

Then the testosterone test was made known, and the rest is history, to say the least.

I was tremendously let down, and had a hard time watching the Tour the next year, where I happened to make the wonderful decision to pull for Rasmussen. Good job, fan. At this point you’ve both learned that you shouldn’t take me to the track and take my suggestions, okay?

Funny thing, though: I had the recording of Stage 17 on my DVR, and months later when Landis had basically been stripped of the win I watched it again.

And it was still incredible the second time around. Still awe inspiring, and still basically superhuman. Even knowing what I knew, even with the later realities in my memory, I was still blown away.

Not because he won the stage.

Not because any number of other riders could have been doping (which I do believe.)

Just because of the pure act when it counted, and because we never can really know how much difference a minimal application of testosterone even might have.

Maybe Floyd could have done it without the drug. Maybe it would have just been one of the greatest days any cyclist had had in some of our lifetimes. Maybe we would be thinking back on it with wonder and joy ten years, twenty years later.

Pettite said that he didn’t feel like the HGH helped him. Maybe it didn’t help Clemens either, and maybe he would have won all the games, and all the Cy Young Awards without any unnatural means.

The one sad thing is that now we just won’t ever know, and we won’t ever have that day in France as part of our lore for the sport, and that’s the biggest disappointment and shame of all.

That’s where I feel robbed, and you should too.

That, and at the end of the long discussion there's the inescapable fact that after these last two years I don’t think I can bear to watch the Tour this time around, and it’s something I will miss.

Gojira! Gojira!

2008-02-19T18:57:00.000-08:00

We went out to PA last weekend, to meet the new roommate. He's got remarkably good social skills, seems to play well with people and dogs (both strangers and the familiar ones), and doesn't void on the floor, unless of course you don't listen to him howl at 5-6 AM when he has a bad moment.

SWEET!

FYI: We've been enjoying endless jokes about the idea of referring to the little Moose as "The Roommate"... "Jeez, our roommate just sits on the floor licking his genitals all the time"... "The roommate just leaves his body hair all over the couch whenever we leave him alone..."

You get the joke. I'm not proud, but I've gotten a lot of entertainment out of it, and I have no apologies for that. Go somewhere else for apologetic commentary on foolish humor. I won't go there, and you'll just have to learn to be okay with that.

Here's a photo of our little Moose:

Aaaand, for scale, here's a front paw, held in Tigger's hand.

He's twelve plus weeks old, and tips the Toledos at a lean forty-five pounds as of Saturday afternoon. I had a sudden moment standing in the living room with Tigger when we got home, where I couldn't help but wonder aloud as to what we were doing. She seemed unfazed, and all I could say was that when he destroys Tokyo, I just can not be held accountable.

We're Number One!

2008-02-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

Lest I be accused of being tasteful...

We have a bathroom in our office where I work, with two urinals that have no barrier wall-ette between them. There are three toilet stalls along the wall. Now, men's rooms are profoundly unnatural environments when you consider the realities for any period of time. We stand around, exchanging bits of conversation if we know people, or completely ignoring them if we don't, all the while just vigorously blocking out the reality that we all have our cocks out, in what is at least a semi-public place (quite accurately "semi" actually, as it is half public, off limits to half of the world by gender at least) with sightlines to dudes who are total strangers (or at least they are invariably someone we wouldn't generally just stand around with, shooting the breeze or not, with penises in hand and all that, not to be too vulgar about it.)*

We block it out. We carry on! There's work to be done here!

What is even stranger than the fundamental fact of it is the people who come in and go directly to the stalls, and stand in their little box urinating. It just feels tremendously odd, and even leaves you feeling like they suspect you're just loitering around in the bathroom waiting to get a good ogle at their tackle.

We arent, okay? Really, really, really, really not at all. I'd wager that even gay or bisexual guys don't really (except for folks with some very specific fixations) have any desire to peruse the goods on display, so you can come on down and join the rest of us in our Heterosexual Hootenanny of Awkwardness and Denial. It's totally okay! It's SO TOTALLY NORMAL!

I'd rather not be sharing the moment with anyone, but it's just one of those things you have to deal with... weird, but so normal that the weirdness seems to fade in about a couple thirty years. It's not that hard. There are tribes with customs that seem normal to them (something recently about Amazon tribes that need to have their hands stung for ten minute stretches by gloves full of ants with the most painful neurotoxic sting in the world, and they have to do it twenty or thirty times. I don't remember the exact total, but if they can get used to that, we can all get used to our nerf padded American life in all its peculiarities.

*Ladies, complain to your heart's content about the quality of women's restrooms, and endlessly about the endless lines that block the way to them, but at least you get a private suite once you get inside. Yes, there may be no roof, but imagine a lack of walls... aaaaaand just let that settle in, for a moment.

They Keep Oscar's Retarded Brother in the Attic, People.

2008-02-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

So, Tigger was curious to watch the Grammy's this evening. I am not one for award shows, but I AM an angry, and bitter bastard, so this is kind of a summary of the liveblogging that happened in my head.

Hey there Kanye West! How many records can you sell and still be angry? Jesus, even you have to realize the bizarre irony of performing an ode to your anger at the establishment not respecting you ON THE GRAMMY'S.

The idea of it being down to being non-white is a little insane to me, with apologies (of course.) Of all the industries in this fair and blighted land of ours, you happen to be in the one where non-white folks have been getting airtime and a twisted form of respect for about forty to fifty years. Now, I get that most of those people were getting ripped off for their talent, financially speaking, but Sam Cooke already had that thing figured out... not everyone was James Jamerson*, okay?

Christ Kanye, every second white kid under 25 has at least one of your records, all right? It's time to settle in and enjoy the fruits, for pete's sake... And so, I award you the first [possibly] annual Pantaloonfan Lauryn Hill Memorial Award for Bitterness!**

Fergie! Performing something probably called "Finally" with John Legend... at the end I could only think "Finally, you're done with this thing!"*** And Fergz...? Frankly...? Just for "My Humps," okay? If I saw you by the side of the road with a flat tire, I would totally pull over and slash the other three, okay?

The puzzling Ringo Starr won for an old Beatles' song for a Cirque de Soleil piece. This immediately after a sort of odd Beatles montage on stage, which left me thinking "John, Paul, George and Ringo could also be read as "Brilliant/Dead, Hack, Talented/Dead, Incompetent." Ringo couldn't even play the drums on his own records, and I have had a conversation with Bernard Purdy where he did not deny the rumor that he was the drummer on a bunch of Beatles records... All I could think when Ringo walked up with George Martin was that he should have had Martin wear a damn tail-coat so he could have ridden those up to the stage. It would have been in keeping with history.

I give up people. My own musical taste is unpredictable enough... Tigger has faced the white whale and commenced sorting through all the mis-filed CDs in my collection (most are in the wrong cases! I'm that organized!) So we've been ripping CDs into iTunes for a few days... I just put in DJ Shadow, DMX, Rex Hobart, Duke Ellington and Gustav Mahler all in a row! Don't try and guess what the next one was, you'd be wrong.

* James Jamerson, a number of years after his greatest work was in LA, trying to find work, and when he signed up with the musician's union in the city, on the application where it asked about experience, he wrote "All that motown shit." Truer words were never fucking spoken.

** For those of you who missed it, Lauryn Hill, at the height of the Fugees success, said "I'd rather have my baby starve than have a white person buy my album." Yeah, well, that's pretty much who bought the first record that got you recognized, so... it's not as if "Urban Youth" in South Central were Rockin' those Jamzz, okay?

*** And also thought: "I almost broke my nose falling asleep onto my cocktail glass."

Down! Down boy!

2008-02-08T22:35:00.000-08:00

So, as you know from recent mutterings on this page, Tigger and the fan have gotten a new apartment to move into, and both have wanted a dog. We were looking for a Bernese Mountain Dog, and someone called with a purebred that had been owner surrendered.

So, long story short, in the meantime Tigger's family is watching the newest addition to our household:

I was worrying, but then suddenly realized, that this dog is the greatest canine mentalist ever.

It may look like madness, but it's actually that he's focussing his energy on twisting and warping his metal bonds. His greatest inspiration is Yuri Geller (and Magneto), from what I understand...

What you can't see here is that the latch on the kennel has been smashed to pieces, and he's now preparing to make good his escape from mankind's bonds, and wreak slightly poorly coordinated vengeance on the world. Be afraid, or bring chewies or something like that. He's coming... in a couple of weeks.

In all seriousness, I have wanted a dog since I was about twelve, and somehow the pieces have fallen into place. Here's hoping all works out perfectly, or something like pretty well... grandmother style photo madness awaits! Aren't both of you hypothetical readers excited? Yes??

Or no. Whatever. You can't escape it!

FYI, he's just three months old, and that big already. God help me but if they had dog pee wee football, he would totally be on the D-Line in a year.

The Wonder of it All

2008-02-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

To anyone who watched Super Bowl XLII, just imagine being a Giants fan, just imagine watching the game where the Giants went down in acid-soaked flames to the Ravens and coming out of the most improbable playoff run ever to watch that marvel of a fourth quarter... eight long years later, another try worked out so much better. Good on you guys!

It was incomprehensible. I keep on re-reading the articles, and watching the footage and trying to make it seem real. It hasn't sunk in yet, and it hasn't worked.

One more insane moment out of a long series of them in the past few days... hard to fathom.

We may have found a Bernese Mountain Dog to take into our new home, and I need to settle in with the idea that after twenty years of wanting a dog, I may just wind up with one.

And now, having said that, I'm going to get back to something that I was thinking about a few days ago, and it's easier to process this:

I was on my tired way home on the subway just the other day, luckily enough on one of the brand sparkly new cyborg subway trains (6 Line, for the connoisseurs) where the conductor's voice is pre-recorded, has a male and female pair of identities, and everything still seems like it may not have been pissed on more than a few times.

We were happily flying along at a mighty three or four miles per hour when we ground to a halt yet again in the tunnel between 51st and 42nd Street Stations on Lexington Avenue. Please note, for the record, that I get on the train at 51st Street. It was not what I had been eagerly anticipating in terms of the ride, let's just say.

Roboconductor cheerily pops up over the speakers after a few minutes, to announce that we were

"...delayed due to train traffic ahead."

Now, gentle reader, consider that phrase for just a moment, and think hard about which parts of it are actually necessary.

We are clearly not being blocked by a herd or angry subterranean barristas, so it wouldn't be anything other than a train, right?

"...delayed due to ----- traffic ahead."

Good.

Clearly, smoothly running trains would also not be at fault, so traffic might just be the most likely cause.

"...delayed due to ----- ------- ahead."

So, if there were to be a TRAIN causing TRAFFIC, it would have pretty much no bearing on my life it happened to be breaking down or filled with sick passengers somewhere behind me, would it?

So...

"...delayed due to ----- ------- -----."

We can clip out the 'due to', as it explains no statement anymore. Final version would be:

"...delayed --- -- ----- ------- -----."

Hey there, how about just plain old "We are delayed"... how about that shortcut? For that matter, I'm pretty sure I can TELL when I'm delayed on the subway as it happens every time we stop in the tunnel, and remain in one place with the doors closed, while not in motion.

Two options:

1) Just say "We are." if you are going for the whole zen thing.

or

2) Just maybe, maybe leave me the hell alone.

Also, roboconductor, when you thank me for my patience, you're doing so in a situation where I am:

a) Captive
b) Royally pissed off
c) Really, seriously feeling IMPATIENT.

Are you trying to induce patience by incantation? Let me satisfy your scientific curiosity: it's not working. I hate it more than Andie McDowell's presence in a movie, understand? Those of you who've watched a movie with know well what that means, but fill in your own name if that's not clear enough. God, she was almost bad enough to ruin Goundhog Day, and we are all lucky that she had as few, paperishly two-dimensionally scenes as possible in it when all of her sickening bits and pieces of film stock settled like a Newcastle flurry of coal-gray snow on the cutting room floor.

So there.

Be well everyone.

Go Giants!

Just a few words

2008-02-05T19:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a lot to deal with of late.

I went to a friend's wake, he was only forty. I worked with the guy for a long while, and I will miss him.

We signed a lease on a new apartment.

The Giants (I'm a long time fan) won the Super Bowl in the most improbably fashion ever.

Sheldon Brown passed away.

I voted today.

I'm waiting to find out in the next few days what the corporate restructuring plan has to tell me about my future.

I'm at about my limit for handling things in this life.

Tigger has things going on that she talked about on her blog... I am worried for folks, and it's all a lot to deal with.

Insofar as I'm ever funny, I haven't really felt ready and able to bring the funny or the illuminating as poorly as usual.

It'll come back, I think.

I'm also trying to quit smoking. I've never picked an easy time to do anything.

With Mad Respect to People Far Fitter Than Me

2008-01-26T12:58:00.001-08:00

Dear god.

I went with Tigger to see Fuerzabruta at the Daryl Roth Theater last night. I had seen delaguarda a few years ago, and it was tremendous, and to make a long story short:

Go.

Now.

See this.

Get up, put your coat on (after signing on and buying tickets, and this only applies if you are in New York City, or if you are going to come here and all that yadda yadda...) go now, get on the subway (see above, as to living in NYC and all that) and as long as you don't have some kind of photoepileptic condition or something that doesn't let you stand up for an hour and change, enjoy one of the most remarkable visual theater experiences you will ever see in your respective lives (this directed to hypothetical readers numbers 1 and 2).

When I saw Delaguarda, my sister was in town, happened to hear about it, and called up to ask about the show and was simply told this:

"Be ready to stand for an hour, and be prepared to get wet."

Right on, kids. Right the heck on.

Just a Few Fragments for Now

2008-01-18T14:08:00.000-08:00

I saw another "God Is My Pilot" bumper sticker the other day. I had thought all the lame jokes had been made in my head previously (e.g. "Who's driving right now in that case? You? Did God carjack you, why does it look like there's only one person?") when suddenly it hit me like a sack of bibles swung at my forehead by Jerry Falwell...

Considering how gapingly, meticulously awful air travel is (and continues to become) both in perception and actual reality, do you really think that the best way to draw into your crush on Jesus is advertise it with that particular analogy? I know you guys are totally in love, BFFs and all that, but it's a bit like saying god is your dentist in terms of its raw power as an attractant (or, repellant to my mind.) We all know we should go and see our dentist, but we* are at the same time bound simply to put it off until our poor anxiety inducing teeth spontaneously combust.

Air Travel:Transportation::Root Canal:Use of a Day Off.

Who says nobody ever got anything out of taking the SATs?

I know, bus travel is also no walk in the park, but it is more The Accidental Homeless Guy Handshake of Travel, according to my official pamphlet from the travel agent. It's more spiritually chilling than the alternative, but at least you don't have to take your shoes off (if you are actually traveling on a bus and are lucky enough to be a shoe owner) before getting on a Greyhound.

Anyhow, nothing for a few days to come as Tigger and I are off to the lovely Shawangunks up north of our fair city, for a weekend hopefully sufficiently blessed with snow that perhaps we will be able to go snowshoeing. It isn't looking incredibly promising at the moment, so we will instead be doing some hiking, and plenty of eating in that event. Oh yes indeed (unless the circumstances of Needless Affectation Asterisk Point Three means that I start whimpering like a sickly child at the prospect of eating food, in which case I will get to take off a few needed pounds, which just seems like a WIN WIN!)

*By which I mean me. I have a profound degree of anxiety and procrastination about dental care, and wish you would just leave me alone about it. I know I have to make the appointment, okay? I totally will, too. You know, at some point... got it?**

**That point probably might be the aforementioned Calamitous Tooth Event Horizon,*** if I'm completely honest with myself, but leave me alone anyway.

***Which, I think may have happened today, as goddamn Au Bon Pain left some grit in my clam chowder, which may or may not have been added to the finished (and grit free) soup for authenticity and atmosphere, and which chipped a molar. This sucks, and on top of it I had chipped the same molar, right next to this spot before (thanks to the clowns at the Whole Foods buffet, so I'm pretty sure yuppies are after my teeth for some reason.) This has left me now at a point where it hurts when I bite down hard on that spot... which in turn means that I have to face up to it and go to the damn dentist, and I'm getting a little wobbly just thinking about it. So, just... just shut up, okay?

For Once

2008-01-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

That's right. For once, I'm going to keep it brief. At least that's the aim.

Any of you who are cyclists in some form or another have possibly used a stationary bicycle, or a stationary trainer in the past. You, like me, may well hate them with a truly deep seated intensity; you may have love for them, but then people make all kinds of errors of judgement, and I won't be judgmental as a result. Feel free to persist in your madness if it's what you must do.

All I know is that a solid half hour on my stationary trainer leaves me feeling like crying, or better yet finding someone or something weaker and smaller and hitting it, and making it cry instead.

So, jog over and witness the descent into sheer madness of Elden who decided to ride a century (100 miles with as few interruptions as possible) on a set of rollers*.

Give it a read, enjoy... while you still can and he hasn't been hauled, raving and gibbering mad in a straitjacket. I think it might be that winter has left him slightly... off?

*For those who aren't aware of how rollers work, imagine a stationary bicycle workout that had the added benefit of allowing you to fall and injure yourself if you became slightly distracted, or wanted to stop pedaling.

Don't Know Karate...

2008-01-14T17:41:00.000-08:00

So a wild and wooly couple of days are behind us now, a joy to experience, but draining.

Tigger and I took our first bike ride of the year, and while I had had a quick jaunt out to run errands on New Year's Day, it was the first time I really got to use my new wheels, which were pretty rocking (not that anyone cares, but it's an XTR hub and open pro CD rim on the rear, and non-matching ultegra/open pro CD front), and roll out to the ends of the earth without drag.

So, Saturday had the ride, had some brunch on the way, and then rolled down to the beach and watched the sun set before spinning home. Couldn't have asked for nicer (though my feet were a little bit cold when I got home, I underestimated the cold slightly.)

Yesterday, miracles were on order as I watched in absolute amazement as my New York Giants delivered a knockout blow to the Dallas Cowboys. I'm pretty sure the neighbors think we are completely unhinged, but they can relax, it's almost over anyhow, at most another week or three (can't allow myself to really start believing, it's just too much to imagine them doing more than hopefully showing up and being respectable in Green Bay next weekend.)

Finally, I think some news from today has convinced me that Wesley Snipes is crazy enough for TEN men, if you just scratch the surface a tiny little bit. Not only is he claiming that he didn't think he had to pay taxes (typical Patriot fringe group line of thought) amounting to $14,000,000.00, just stare at it for a moment and take in all those zeroes... BUT he also is closely aligned with these guys!

You thought Scientology was wacky? How about a black israelite organization with...

A COMPOUND!*

The belief that 144,000 black israelites will be taken away on a SPACESHIP! They will of course return a thousand years later, to do battle with the Luciferians. I'm sure you're all as relieved as I am. Following in the leader's footsteps, as he himself arrived on a space ship that was conveniently misinterpreted as a comet.

A prophet who used to have an office in Coney Island!

A disclaimer about how they're totally not a cult on their website!**

A prophet who also claims he's an Indian Chief! Of a tribe that actually didn't exist! That supposedly came over from Africa on a land bridge***

And finally, a prophet who is also a convicted child molester.****

So, I guess this proves that it is possible to make Tom Cruise look almost

(deep breath, I can't really believe I'm saying this)

sane...?

*Has since been seized by local government and knocked down, but Wesley did want to build a security force training facility alongside of it comprising a few hundred acres... permission was not granted by local authorities, and a pity it is too.

**I never realized that's what you needed to look for when getting into weird organizations with completely batshit cosmologies and self-proclaimed deities. "Hey are you guys a cult?" "No." "Right, good thing. I was just getting a little worried."

***I suppose he just didn't think construction worker or policeman would work as well for him. Possibly the costume shop was out of those outfits the day he was shopping.

****If you review the details, the fact that he had over a thousand counts that were originally going to trial that were pared down to 200, in the largest child molestation case ever directed at one person is truly unbelievable.

Dispatches From the Sausage Factory

2008-01-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

At this point I'm sure you've all seen the images of Mike Huckabee from his victory celebration in Iowa, after coming from entirely off the radar to take the First Sort-Of-Primary Which Is Actually Just A Caucus Whatever That Might Be, and have seen the circled face on television of your favorite internet star and mine, Mr. Chuck Norris.

In a sign of the degree to which this has galvanized the Republican field, John McCain has announced that he will be accompanied everywhere by Tila Tequila, Rudy Giuliani is hoping to be endorsed by and appear with lolcats everywhere he goes, John Edwards has committed to campaigning every day for a month, and Mitt Romney has leaked that he will be the subject of a soon to be released sex tape.

Welcome to political internet 2.0 people... it's only going to get weirder.

As to Giuliani, to be frank, as a New Yorker and an American, I feel like his message of

"9/11!
9/11!
9/11!
9/11!
9/11!
9/11!
9/11!"*

is subject to a bit of bad timing.

Had "America's Mayor" (though almost half of us New Yorkers didn't like the guy at all, we'll give him that meaningless media induced title) been campaigning a few years ago, the Endless Bloody Shirt Waving Strategy might well have paid some dividends, but at the moment I think it's ill conceived.

It feels a lot like the American public has had a moment that is effectively like waking up from a real Jingoism bender, and his having those morning after regrets, much like a GBH toting frat boy after a night of Jaeger Bombs...

"Man, I can't believe how jacked up on flags I was last night. Jeez, did we invade someone? Afghanistan or something? It really seemed like it made sense at the time. Whoah, Iraq too? Damn. I can't believe how wasted we were. The UN is never going to hang out with us again after that."

We all have metaphorical Sharpie-drawn penises all over our international political visage, and yelling about 9/11 is something we really don't want to indulge in anymore, it's just kind of awkward right now... we totally made out with that dictator** while we were out at the bar last night, and it's just not cool to remind us, okay?

For those of you who don't recognize it, the title of this post is brought to you today with a shoutout to someone really important from my second nation's political past:

"Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." --Otto von Bismarck

*I'm not entirely sure this is a direct quote, but I think it's pretty close to the campaign message he's working on.

**Or this one (Rest In Peace), or these guys, it's frankly all pretty hazy right now... it was a crazy night, man, crazy.

If You Were a Tree, What Kind of History Would You Manufacture from Whole Cloth?

2008-01-11T18:37:00.001-08:00

I was reading the local free rag yesterday, which hawkers hand out at the exits to train stations. It's one of my morning rituals, when I'm not too burned out to remember to grab one, and it has basic local news, celeb details that I skip, and some sports reporting.

It's a phenomenon that is growingly common, they have a bunch of them in London as well as other cities, it's a bit like News Lite... tabloid fold, under 50 pages.

So, I was flipping through while on my shorter walking option to work from the train, and saw an article about the initiative to plant a million trees in New York, a program which is planned for completion by 2016. Very cool, no? Yes, self, it is indeed cool... it is a town of a great many parks, some of which just happen to be only slightly larger than your bathtub. Yes kids, that one is 0.04 acres of verdant wonder.

But I digress.

So, the article in amny mentioned the tree project, and said that cuttings were going to be taken from the fantastic European Beech trees in Central Park, and cloned and subsequently replanted elsewhere in the city. Very cool, no? Yes, self, it is indeed cool.

And there, loyal pair of readers, is where the all the magic happened. Drew Becher, executive director of the New York Restoration Project, "...a nature group that is working with the city on the project..." spoke his feelings, and I quote:

"Everyone remembers the story of George Washington and the apple tree,"

Here the quote is interrupted, to provide the earlier indicated attribution of Mr. Becher. I will pause as well, but just for dramatic and snide effect.

"Wouldn't it be great if that apple tree was still around?"

I'm not expecting him to be a big time history buff, understand me, okay?

I just kind of expected that someone running the program for cloning and planting trees all over New York City just MIGHT be aware of the fact that:

-Said apple tree was not in New York
-George Washington killed said apple tree
-Said apple tree was, in fact, a cherry tree.

But then, those of you who went to elementary school already knew that,

didn't you...?

Please say yes.

If no, would you care for a slice of...

apple pie, anyone?

Gunnysack Grab Bag Mix-n-Match Thursday!

2008-01-10T16:19:00.000-08:00

So no real theme, pretty much, is the idea.

Not so much the idea, but just how things wound up.

As I was talking to someone who had been at Burning Man last night, they mentioned the problematic phenomenon of "Shirtcocking". It is, simply, the act of just wearing a shirt, and having your junk just waving around getting down in some serious dust. Also known as Reason Number 47 I'm Not Going to Burning Man Next Year.

-

There's a strange juxtaposition involved in seeing a Whole Foods delivery van at a stoplight, with the driver gunning the engine hard enough to make the entire vehicle shudder.

-

It's more than a little disturbing to hear someone continuously whistling Rod Stewart's "If You Want My Body" in the office, quickly and a bit off key to boot. It's an open plan workplace, so not only was it any one of 30-40 people who was ripping away with it, but I couldn't even begin to guess who it was.

-

Also, out talking to folks last night, a friend mentioned that a (female) friend of his, when asked about Public Enemy, replied "I don't know them, but then I was never really into Gangster Rap."

-

I work with someone who is 24, 8 years younger than I am. When the announcement came out that Led Zeppelin was going back on tour after a 27 year hiatus, he brightly said "Wow, I wasn't even ALIVE when they last played."

Now, I'm not saying that at four years old I was getting hammered on Budweisers in the parking lot at the Nassau Coliseum waiting for Zep' to play, but still...

-

There was a homeless guy selling a few things at the Second Avenue F Train stop the other day, and he happened to have an 8 VHS tape collection of Tae Bo, with Billy Blanks. I guess he did seem to be in pretty decent shape, but where did he get to watch TV and work out at the same time? Barring that, isn't a set of work out tapes something you'd sell to raise money before you got kicked out of your apartment?

-

In the world of the nature documentary, wildebeest are pretty much always just a buffet item.

-

Finally, as a bit of an homage to bikesnobnyc, two quick mentions from the daily show of horrors that is velospace.com:

This fine creation, with the lovely "Color Matching" "Bar" "Taping"

Goes beyond perfection, into true and special territory, but hold your breath! Take a look at the write up, where he not only shows the original, woefully handlebarred iteration, but mentions the "Sweet" red front tire, and promises the he's TOTALLY "planning on some sick upgrades". An eager public waits, friend.

I'm hoping for lime-green deep V's, but who knows, given the taste and planning that went into this bad boy so far.

At least he's a step ahead of this guy, who is (one can only assume) still saving up for his first hacksaw. The bitchin' pink grips are just place holders for where this sweet machine is going to get chopped all the way to nirvana.

Indeed a Wonderful World

2008-01-09T18:23:00.001-08:00

Tigger and I just watched disc one of the BBC documentary "Planet Earth", with narration by David Attenborough last night.

Point one: netflix is fantastic. I know, I know, 2003 called and wants its revelation back. I just finally gave in and started netflixing things, and am sheepishly compelled to admit that it is pretty damn nice. Now let's just leave that be.

The thing that really struck me was, well, how lousy the life of a Panda is... they have too mediocre and marginal a diet to be able to put on enough fat to hibernate. They have to stay up all winter, eating bamboo, simply because they can't manage to eat anything else up there...

It also means that the milk they feed their young is "tremendously poor", and makes the young Panda cubs develop woefully slowly, taking months before even opening their eyes.

The scene segued to a group of monkeys in China, who live at the same high altitudes as the Pandas, and are the only primates to live in that cold an environment in the world. All I could think, with this bolt from above, was:

"My God. They're Chinese Blue-Faced Freezer Monkeys!"

All of this is evidence to me that there is no such thing as intelligent design, even if I had believed in it before (I didn't, I don't, I don't think you have a brain if you do), as it's all just too strange and sometimes silly to be designed.

Hell, if there were intelligent design, why not just have the Pandas eat...

monkeys.

So, long story short, get Planet Earth on DVD, go forth and get it NOW. Get the one with David Attenborough, he's just brilliant and soothing, and I remember him from documentaries that were great even as far back as my childhood. This one also has footage that will have you pretty much constantly asking yourself "How could they have possibly gotten those shots? HOW?" (This would include underwater, paw level action scenes of bears fishing literally within arms length of a camera lens, occasionally bumping it.)

I'm serious.

It seemed like a constant thought, but it may have been interrupted with a second or two of "WOW!" here and there.

I'm going to be checking your queues to find out who's been listening to me, people (all one to three of you.)

In Which I Discharge Duty

2008-01-06T19:23:00.000-08:00

So I have been really busy, and frankly I am not a ray of sunshine in general.

I figured I'd save my bile until the end of the holiday season, and let you all get to the edge of your own roof over these past few weeks.

That is the B.S. answer. The real one? I've been lazy, I've been tired, it's been cold, it's gotten dark at 4pm. I don't expect you to love me, and like a dysfunctional parent I don't expect either of the two of you to show up at my funeral. It's a deal, right? Good. Now go pour me a nice tall cocktail and empty the ashtray, alright?

I understand this is the time where the understanding is that I give a seasonal/annual retrospective on things, and I am working that out as I go along, but FIRST, a few thoughts on New Year's itself:

First off, having New Year's day brunch is way more fun than having a New Year's Eve party, in that you worry less about people coming. And, you feel okay with no one coming and just starting to drink a 10AM. Hey now! That and: it's a bit easier to make finger food that doesn't involve wrapping or stuffing things (preposition) other things. Just a mental note, thought I'd share it with you.

Watching New Year's ROCKIN' Eve (now with Carson Daly??? Does this mean he's made the most recent deal with the devil? Does this mean my great grandkids will watch an eerily youthful Carson Daly in a North Face parka calling out the final ten of 2298?) I was reflecting:

1. On how awesome NY1 (our local New York cable channel, with news etc.) is. They didn't have a delay on, and when asking around as to what people's resolutions were, one really eloquent guy just YELLS out: "To travel the FUCKING WORLD!!!!" Right on, NY1, and happy NYE to you as well.

2. Lenny Kravitz was on the main network self-abuse fest, and Edgily Introduced His Performance "Off my new, 8th studio album 'Bring it On'!" And couldn't help but think:
How many people just yelled out "Play ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY!"
aaand.... Dude. Lenny. I never was a big fan, but please, stop trying to act this way. I think it's a fair rule of thumb that when you play "New Year's Rockin' Eve" you are no longer The Edgy Outsider Guy. It's time to put away that set of wigs and praying mantis glasses. Do it for the children, and their children's children who are one day going to watch Carson do the Rockin' Eve with their kids rolling their eyes by the imitation holo-fireplace.

As to the other thing: a guy at work asked whether I had resolutions... I never do, I told him.

I don't, to be honest, ever make real resolutions. They just make you finish the tub of ice cream, metaphorically, when you've promised not to ever touch it again, and I don't need that added motivation to carry on sinning once I've inevitably started, but I do have some ideas:

I will do less drinking, and do more cycling.

I will do less eating gyros, and do more running.

I will do less listening to music, and more making music.

I will watch less television, and read more.

I will read less, and write more.

I will finally get back on a training schedule, and make a ride up to Nyack, which I have shocking never done so far (big cyclist destination for road nazis). I will also finally finish a regular century, and attempt a double metric.

And, I will finally start convincing this country to start singing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" again. This shit has GOT to stop. Baseball is supposed to be fun, people. Let's let the seventh inning stretch get back to ball scratching, and getting a fresh beer before they close the concession stands to prevent fistfights, and let it stop being a grand x0,000 person act of waving an 80 foot flag over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

I think the troops probably miss hearing the old chestnut as well, and they deserve peanuts and cracker jack as much as the rest of us do. That, and frankly... do you really think that the most purple, tacky, jingoistic song in this nation's great musical history is actually going to make a difference to anyone, other than destroying one of the oldest traditions in our national pastime?

And if we destroy our national pastime's greatest traditions...

Don't the terrorists win, people? Don't they?

(And while we're at it... using that phrase is the whole reason they all keep on trying to win. So stop thinking that way, you're not sheep.)

Happy New Year people!

Brief

2007-12-19T21:55:00.000-08:00

Today's post is brought to you by the letter R, the number 9, and Mitch Hedberg, the greatest comic to be taken too soon because of an addiction.

If you don't know his stuff, find it and hear it. There isn't nearly enough, as he died young and left a footprint in the collective consciousness that wasn't as big as his heart and spirit deserved to leave behind. So it is some times. I watched part of his DVD of his Comedy Central special tonight, and it felt so different to me knowing that he was gone from our midst so soon thereafter, and it hurts to think about the loss that the continuum of laughter and meaning suffered as a result.

So for now, go out and laugh at and/or about something. That would be some kind of fitting tribute.

"So it goes." --Kurt Vonnegut

Narcissism. I has it.

2007-12-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

So I signed up for google analytics.

I have a few questions, for all you hypotheticals...

Hey there, Hamtramck, Michigan... we had something special on your one visit, it was a whole lifetime led in two minutes. What happened? Where've you been? I hope the kids are okay.

Jeez, Czech Republic, 0:00 visit time? How is that even possible? Were you that mad, that fast?

Same goes for you, Somerset Kentucky. You just actually aren't as exciting as the Czech Republic rejecting me. It's like having a fling with someone on a summer exchange program.

I cry myself to sleep at night with the supposition that google analytics does not always accurately reflect time on site. It's a bit like a narcissistic "Hey, don't worry, it happens to everyone sometimes" consolation, but don't take that last bit of dignity away from me.

I suppose I was curious.

I shouldn't have been.

So, Tigger and I looked at another apartment, and had our differing reactions to it. I think it seems we are staying put for the moment, and while the differential in rent is not large, I'm disproportionately terrified about potential layoffs coming up in the next few months and can envision a time of (to my mind) paucity and freaking out. I know it may be excessive, my apprehension, but it is there all the same.

The place was alright, and had a spare bedroom, and allowed dogs, which I've wanted since I was about twelve. I feel as if I'm giving something long-held up that I've never actively denied myself by denying this idea, but it just didn't seem like the right apartment. I think it may now be decided to forgo the move, and while I'm fraught, it is what felt right (while right at the moment it may seem wrong to me in a month, I had to say how I felt in a matter of a few days) to back away. There were certain things that any sweat equity I could imagine didn't seem to be able to eliminate.

In the meanwhile, I look at perhaps scratching the itch of wanting a dog of my own by walking the dogs at the local shelter that just opened (though I do ask how much prescience and wisdom comes from naming a shelter dog Brooklyn who happens live in, well, Brooklyn) and giving them some times of joy while I figure out what stupid things I need to come to terms with in my life.

I'm terrified of losing my livelihood, and have had a hard time looking at what other venues and opportunities I may conceivably be suitable for, but there it is.

I wonder at the moment, as New Year's draws close, where I'll be and how I'll be in a year, and whether I will have finally given up smoking, or palliative care in the form of distilled and fermented medications. I guess we all find crutches that give us some succor in times of peril, but I don't know that my time of perceived peril has not been artificially extended by means of certain bad habits of denial (both chemical and behavioral.) It's a dark realization, but then again most Realizations are dark in some way or another.

I hope I've lost some weight. The pictures from the office Christmas party made me feel like Jabba the Hutt in the few candids I allowed myself in whose firing line I allowed myself to remain visible.

We aren't all monks. Our moments of Aha are not always blissful and perfect.

So here is the underbelly laid bare.

And there is a thought for a cold evening. Perhaps "some thoughts."

Hamtramck. Come back to me. I miss you endlessly.

"Why not? Surely, in a work that will never be performed, all things are permitted?" --J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace)

In Which I'm a Snarky Leather-Elbow Padded Tool

2007-12-17T19:54:00.000-08:00

At a party the other night:

M: Is Jessica Simpson known for anything? Other than, you know, pop music?

Pantaloonfan: Yeah, I think she won the Booker Prize a couple of years ago.

B: ...?

Pantaloonfan: I think she also wrote the screenplay for The Departed.

B: What?

Pantaloonfan: The Departed. I think she wrote the screenplay.

M: What?

Pantaloonfan: Not really. Just the pop music thing.

They Begat No One, Nor Moved They Any Furniture

2007-12-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

Went out this evening to the event of a friend of my sister's, who has a one-man consulting freelance deal. He incorporated a while ago, for tax reasons, and is a one-man consulting firm. He has an annual company Christmas party, with eagerly awaited announcement of the employee of the year at some point along the way.

It was held in a very Wall Street equivalent part of London, at a bar where loads of folks were clearly on their way home from work, and had decided that they would get home drunk.

Also, it was fancy. Woo hoo. Nothing like showing up in convertible outdoor pants, with a t-shirt from a lobster shack in Maine on your torso when everyone around you is banking/consulting/litigating and generally earning the pants off of life.

The libations for the evening were "Methuselahs" of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Yes, I didn't know there was a name for those stonking novelty bottles in the front windows of liquor stores either, but there is apparently a very specific Old Testament system for naming bottles of champers that happen to be larger than magnums. I myself won't in the near future need to know said names for any order at the local liquor emporium, but for all of you, here they are:

Split – 187 ml (Quarter bottle)
Half Bottle – 375 ml
Bottle – 750 ml
Magnum – 1.5 litres (Two bottles)
Jereboam – 3 litres (Four bottles)
Rehoboam – 4.5 litres (Six bottles)
Methuselah – 6 litres (Eight bottles)
Salmanazar – 9 litres (Twelve bottles)
Balthazar – 12 litres (Sixteen bottles)
Nebuchadnezzar – 15 litres (Twenty bottles)

In addition to these standard sizes, bottles of other sizes and shapes are sometimes created for special occasions, special cuvées or special customers. For example, Pol Roger used to make an imperial pint exclusively for Sir Winston Churchill, who found a half bottle not quite enough, and a whole bottle a little too much, for his purposes. His manservant would bring him his pint every morning at 11 a.m. Two other sizes are occasionally made: the 18-litre, 24-bottle Solomon (Salomon in French) and the gigantic 27-litre, 36-bottle Primat, which weighs 65 kilos.

(The above text is courtesy of These lovely folks though they don't know it)

I especially love the detail about the commissioning of a special bottle size for Winston Churchill, and kudos to a man who happened to want to have 19 ounces (roughly, as memory serves) of champagne with his breakfast. Winston knew how to live, without a doubt.

Another thing that has really struck me since I've been across the ocean (pond is a stupid phrase, and deserves to be dragged out and shot while whining mightily) is the state of automotive existence for our European brethren (I'm including the UK here, though they are at most grumblingly accepting that they are a part of this whole continentalism, though for the rest of the world we can't see what a few miles of Channel water actually means in real terms... do you folks want to be part of the South Pacific confederation of conquered islands instead? I'm sure you could make some calls... for the rest of us American barbarians you are just Europeans who speak our language in a way that still lets you hate us, I suppose.)

I qualify this by saying that I love cars, and love driving. I relish the fact that I rode home from the Christening in a beautiful, brand new Maserati GT, with FOUR WAY BOOK MATCHED WOOD IN THE DASH. I know the capital letters mean that I am yelling. I meant to. It had the paddle-shifters for a real manual transmission and everything. ("Hey pantaloonfan, why do you drive a gutless Subaru at home, then??" "Shut up. I need to take stuff places, both musically and camping-wise and I like putting things in the trunk/back of the wagon*. I have my reasons.")

Europeans have an array of amazingly small cars at their fingertips that we lack over in the US, and I wanted you all to know that there are options that you never even considered:

Hey fellow citizens of the liberated colonies... are you tired of people asking you to move large piles of furniture in your massive 3 series BMW? Well, fear not! You can move on down to the 1 Series! which is described as having pretty much no rear seats at all, compared to the vast tracts of space in the 328s that we already know and love to settle into in the luxurious back seats! Does your agoraphobia happen to want German luxury with all wheel drive Audi weirdness! A4 too big? How about the much more svelte A3?

Or perhaps these massive barges are still far too commodious for you?

Have no fear...

Do you feel lost in your gigantic, echoing Honda Civic? There's always the Nissan Micra...

Still too big? Well, I have good news. The good people at FoMoCo have something that will make Focus owners drool at your sprightly acrobatic mini-ness... The Ford Ka! For times when small means you don't even have time to use all three letters of the word car!

14 inch alloy wheels? CHECK!

1.3 liter fire breathing engine? CHECK!

Swank gray colored wheel wells? CHECK PLUS!!

Sweet.

You're totally going to make all those Daihatsu Charade and Suzuki Swift owners go crying home to their mommies, at 5,000 rpms and 50 miles per hour. Let your aggro flag fly!

Yet, for those times when you really want to bring all the clowns in your myspace circle with you, nothing quite tops the G-Wiz that one can see roaring silently around London and perhaps some other Oh So Fortunate cities...

Hey fellas... you KNOW the ladies love a guy who plugs his car in at night, and can also fit two double amputees in the back seat!

On top of that, you can fit a bottle of milk in the trunk!

(For god's sake, please note that this almost commodious trunk is shown with the seats folded down. I think that says it all...)

You may need to carry the half dozen pack of eggs in your lap in the event that you have those amputees with you, but can you really put a price on finding a parking space? I didn't think so.

Of course, if this is still too worrisome, you can always go with the original pocketmobile, if you have a weird kink for parking sideways in spaces on sidestreets...

The SmartCar is the final answer in all of this. There is nothing more to even be contemplated.

I was going to post something meaningful on the order of advice for my growing (and consistently horking) nephew, and now godson, but I'm too bitter and flippant. It may come later, along with finally bitching about tie knotting and haircuts... just don't know when. Leave me to complain, yell and point fingers for now.

* Have you ever watched "Pimp My Ride" on MTV? I never can help but notice that no one escapes that experience with ANY capacity to put anything in the back of the car. Any hobby or interest is played out in the form of a gigantic object crammed with monitors and speakers that takes the place of storage space in their vehicle. I think if I ever was offered a chance to have a car redone by them, and they asked what I was into, I would simply tell then "My biggest hobby is... putting things in my trunk. I just love putting things in my car and moving them from place to place. That's what I care about more than anything. And I'm deaf. And blind. Leave the fucking monitors and four hundred pounds of speakers on the shop floor."

Idle Hands.

2007-12-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

I made it in to London last night, after a two hour train ride through central Western Germany.

There was a kid on the train, sitting right over from me, who I was pretty convinced was developmentally challenged from the way that he was talking... somehow I started to wonder whether he was actually "tetched" or just playing. It took me forty-five minutes to figure that he wasn't retarded, he was just an idiot. An idiot who didn't know that "taking a joke too far" happens in less than five minutes, generally. That, and the local accent in German can have flavors that make people sound a little like their minds are not in mint condition exactly.

Short flight, blah blah blah. There was a gentleman waiting next to me at the airport who did have the strangest named office staff I can imagine, he was on the phone, and kept referring to two employees, Aryan and Loy. What do I know, but they seemed like peculiar choices for the bouncing baby with which you've just been presented.

I do know that if Aryan fucks up the travel arrangements again, he's going to get fired. Just saying pal, if you're ever one of my hypothetical readers... consider yourself lucky you shaped up, or barring that just know that I would have contacted you directly if I had only known how. Sorry, or congratulations depending on how you played that one.

Got to London, got of the Underground, humped my bags over here, and no one answered the door at my sister's place. Puzzled, I dragged my stuff back over to the local main drag, but not before doing a credible impression of a canny burglar, casing the place for future robbing/burgling. The people at the bus stop down the road seemed to take note as I casually rang the bell a few times, then backed up into the street, smoking and cautiously looking in all the windows I could. Upon arrival, I dialed the cell number for my sister, and had her pick up and not hear me, a good three or four times. Friendly Local Dude informed me that it takes "At least two quid to get a call through to a cell phone from a call box."

Now, I don't expect everyone to be an FX trader here, but that's right about FOUR BUCKS for a few moments of blissful communication.

Got back to the phone, and it was ringing (thank's UK, for not trying to put old-school pager wearing drug dealers out of business! Good job, and I do appreciate it), which turned out to be my sister, who was home, but had a doorbell even more lamentable for the conditions at hand than Tigger and I have at home. We've finally reverted to installing a wireless, plug in jobbie, but it does us no good when the battery runs out, as it recently has.

Part of why I'm up, despite my sister and my brother-in-law already having been abed a good three hours ago, is that I'm waiting to give Tigger a ring, she's had a really rough day today, and is tired out from having been immersed in gutting and hacking away at our kitchen, which has risen resplendent from the dead in vibrant color and with magnificent new door pulls. The thanks of a grateful nation goes out to you, sweetie, thanks...

I spent the day helping out with nephew, who I feel has led me to believe that not necessarily all children will inevitably be terrified of me, even if that only leaves the ones related to me by blood it's a pretty damn nice feeling of relief.

I've changed more than two and less than ten diapers, and while it's not exactly a picnic in the park with all of your long-dead literary and musical heroes on a beautiful day, it's not the end of the world either. He just seems to enjoy any excuse to air out the dirty bits, and is relatively happy while I swipe away with moist towelettes at the nast that he seems determined to swipe his heels through a few times for good measure, and then roll over onto his stomach...

Then, forgive me for saying it, but there come the moments that arrived later, where he lay on his mat, with things to engage his developing mind strewn around him, not quite crying (as I've been told, I haven't seen nothing yet, so to speak, and he's only been a little peeved at the very worst) racking my brain for what he might be needing or missing. I was literally reduced to lightly banging my forehead on the kitchen table a few times to clear the fog before just deciding that it was all for the best, and nothing seemed amiss.

I'm reminded of something a friend of the family said over the weekend:
"When I had my first kid, whenever they cried I thought something terrible had happened. With the second, I just figured 'The kid's crying, the kid's still alive.'"

As a second child myself, I find this idea is slightly chilling. As a person who spent an hour sitting with a baby who was just "losing the plot" as my sister puts it, it seemed like the most understandable and measured way of approaching things possible.

So, I'm killing time, internetting myself furiously, and tragically as always happens when I'm mindlessly tapping away at the interweb with no specific direction in mind, I'm shopping for bikes. I doubt I'll buy one, and Tigger will no doubt have a minor attack of hyperventilation at the idea of another metal stack of disorganization in the apartment... so rest assured, it's just the same dumb window shopping as always happens.

Why is it that the more expensive the item, the more "awesome" any discount seems? (Hey! These wheels were originally $1400! They're on sale for $779, AND there's another 20% off!) I am perfectly aware that it's stupid, and wheels that cost more than I paid for my current nicer bike are certainly silly.

But they do weigh like a whole pound less than the alternative, and they have a fancy single red spoke to tell the rest of the world what an over-moneyed tool you are! Right ON!

Tomorrow, I have the whole morning to take care of the little nephew while meetings are attended, and whatever else is going which now requires my attention to this matter. I'm not worrying about not seeing much of the city on this trip, I've been enough before that it's the whole family members new and old bonding thing that I'm happy about.

I will however probably be in the pub tomorrow night.

The pub, one of the singular, wonderful things about England... not the down-at-the-heels thing that you get in the kind of rotten bars I like at home, but you can still relax in peace and quiet with a book, get a few fantastic hand-pulled pints for the closest thing to a bargain there still is for an American in the UK (2.90 UK Pounds for a great beer is a decent shake, to my mind... maybe it's just being a routinely ripped off New Yorker or whatever.) It's a great pleasure, and one I indulged in after everyone here went to sleep early last night as well.

So, it's about the time to sign off and make a call home to see what's what in stunningly cold New York with the things and people I miss most of all.

I also miss Tivo. Sorry... I should be happy and full of life at not having watched television since last Wednesday, but I'm just not. Shameful it is, but there you have it. I will flab my ass down on the couch and start catching up on ALL the guilty pleasures of a missed almost two weeks the moment I get home. I think I may conceivably suffer an overdose... but that's what it takes to keep up with the culture sometimes.

"The letter with the foreign postmark that tells of good weather, pleasant food and comfortable accomodation isn't nearly as much fun to read, or to write, as the letter that tells of rotting chalets, dysentery and drizzle." --Martin Amis (London Fields)

Wander-not-so-lustig...

2007-12-01T06:23:00.000-08:00

Greetings from sunless Germany!

I´m in an internet-cafe in the fatherland, which is as close to heaven as I can imagine... smoking permitted, beers available for a whopping €0.80, and it´s €1.50 per hour to let all you wonderful semi-hypothetical folks know what´s doing.

Aside from the fact that they feel the need to put the z and y in alternate places on the keyboard, and shuffle around the rest of the symbols, all is just swell.

After a seventeen hour total travel time, I got here, but not before many things swam past the porthole, so to speak.

Checking into security at JFK, I got through the metal detector with no trouble, and was then waved into a strange bulletproof box, where my arm sling was carefully examined by hand. For about five minutes, this innocuous piece of fabric was examined... I have to ask, what would I have had of a non-metallic nature hidden in there that would not have just as easily been hidden in my jacket? Could not any able-bodied passenger also bring, say, a dangerous plastic spork or bendable knife in with them and evade the vaunted metal detection? No matter, though...

So I get on the plane, and the Italian couple next to me feverishly watches for whole empty rows. They find one! Right on, thinks I, I´m going to have the whole three seater to myself! Slide over to the window to watch the takeoff, and when I turn back to move back to the aisle, someone has taken up residence. I asked whether he planned on staying, and the answer was a definite yes. He immediately fell asleep, and did not stop an earth-shaking snoring for the whole flight. Except for meals. Joy. (I did end up talking to him for a bit on the approach to London Heathrow, and he was actually quite nice, so I am a total asshole for thinking awful thoughts about him the whole time, but I didn´t know that at the time, so leave me alone.

Why, WHY do people feel the need to sit down, ram their seat all the way back, and then build a nest of pillows on planes? Why not, I don´t know... just leave the seat up, as you have about the same position? Can someone who happens to be an idiot write me and let me know, as I´m completely goddamned baffled.

Seat-pillow-nest-builder also was in the habit of sitting forward and violently ramming backward every few seconds, which would have been less of a problem but for the fact that the nice people at British Airways put lovely individual monitors in the seatbacks for us all to sit and stare at. So, the picture would grow larger and smaller, jolting up and down every few moments as I tried to watch...

VOD. Yes, Video on Demand has come to airplanes, and while the rest of you globetrotting, walking business class ads may be totally desensitized to it, I was like a child in a puppies, ice-cream and plush toys stuffed with fireworks store.

I want VOD on my toaster.

I want VOD installed in my shoes.

VOD has come, and it is good. It is what we do with it that makes us good or evil.

Which brings me to:

Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer

For one, it´s always awesome watching a scene of unbelievable destruction that happens to take place somewhere you´re about to go... "Wow! Is that the London Eye? Being blown up? Is that the Thames? Being drained into the core of the Earth? Awesome!"

For another, it´s a total piece of crap. Angry Comic Book People hated the first one, which I thought was lamentable, but moderately adequate "I saw it on cable without paying for it" fare. If you hated the first one, really really, do not go near this thing.

It´s got more to do with "humorous" issues surrounding the marriage between the stretching one and the invisible chick. Drollness!

At least the first one tried to be mainly a superhero movie, which isn´t saying that much, but it´s still more than deserves to be said for this one.

As an aside: ladies, you are all wonderful, and are all god´s gift etc. etc., but mark my words... if even Jessica Alba looks dopey with color contact lenses, how on earth do you think the rest of you might be getting away with it??

Speaking of which, are we really supposed to believe that a character who looks like Jessica Alba is really going to get involved with a dude who is (to my heterosexual male mind) not to confused with Brad Pitt? Is it perhaps that he spices things up by being completely distant, and the relationship is fuelled by a complete lack of chemistry? Am I overthinking? Probably.

Also, anytime anyone says "It´s not a game." in a movie, you are in for a world of suffering, pain and eyeball clawing.

Jesus, Andre "Frank Pembleton" Braugher, did you really need the money THAT badly? You can actually act. What did your parents not do for you as a child that made you run with a bad crowd like this?

If you disregard all the warnings I´m trying to give you, and you do end up sitting down to this "experience", take note of the fact that the super-duper spaceship that shows up at a certain point, is a Dodge. The spectacularly unobvious product placement is demonstrated and affirmed by the following exchange:
Human Torch: "Hemi?"
Mr. Incredible: "Of course!"

Now, let´s leave aside that the stretching dude supposedly "invented" this thing... as in, why the nameplate... did he get seed money from Dodge?

On the order of an analysis of the physics of the Death Star, what good would a V8 do in a lifting body sort of air travel vehicle? It operates stupidly on so many levels!

Guys, take a tip from überwhore George Lucas: keep the product placement subtle, don´t talk about it, and make your dirty money outside the theater, not inside. Thanks.

Also, when crashing into Times Square in said airship, how is it possible that the only things hurt are a few bicycles and the inevitable cardboard box type paraphernalia? Does Hollywood think that destruction is only acceptable when no one gets hurt aside from people with speaking parts? I´d personally have a lot of respect for popcorn-movie mavens if they had a couple of innocent victims stumble burning from the wreckage in a situation that calls for it out loud, plaintively.

Then again, who am I to criticize... they all got paid to make the movie. I watched this piece of shit for free. I want my two hours back.

Also saw "The Flying Scotsman". Now kids, I love cycling, and I admire the records of Mr. Graeme Obree, as the Hour Record is nothing to sneeze at, but I also recognize that the kind of suffering cycling entails doesn´t really work that well on screen. I watch the Tour de France and all, but even severely condensed I get as much satisfaction from just reading the summary of the daz´s ride. It´s really mind-bending how rough the sport is, but it just doesn´t make great TV. Too much happens, it´s too spread out, and profound suffering doesn´t look that much different that somewhat profound suffering. That, and it´s impossible to see how steep the grade is without perspective, from a motorcycle or helicopter shot.

So, upon arrival, I ended up waiting for my connecting flight at London´s lovely Heathrow Airport.

I have one question: why is it that every other airport can tell you what gate you need to get to when you check in, but at Heathrow, you stand around, get into a three-point stance in the terminal center, and wait until at most fifteen minutes before departure to find out where you need to be? It´s insanely stressful, people.

Perhaps it´s to encourage impulse purchases of such necessities as $7,000 pens (Cartier, naturally) or perhaps a lovely $11,600 watch (Porsche Design, naturally)? I can dig on impulse purchases, but someone for whom either of those figures counts as an impulse purchase is probably flying in a jet that they own personally, and doesn´t spend too much time waiting around in terminals smelling like ass and unbrushed teeth (I put my toothbrush in my checked baggage, as I am very VERY smart.)

Then, arriving at the gate, we found that the jetway was busted, and we weren´t leaving anywhere near on time anyhow, so SETTLE IN, PEOPLE! Why is it that the English not only seem positively gleeful when they have to wait on meaningless lines, but seem tremendously relaxed and happy when they are working for an organization that is soundly ballsing up whatever it is it´s supposed to do?

Speaking of which, when you think of a Ham and Cheese sandwich, what condiments come to mind? Perhaps I´m being the absolute Ugly American, but what I do not think of is ham, on a roll, with little fragments of cheese embedded in a veritable dike of butter. Ack. Yes, I know it was airline food, but I don´t blame that for it, I just can´t help but blame the general culinary culture. Mustard, people, you have the technology, it´s not dangerous to utilize it. I like a little mayo, personally, but that can be a polarizing condiment. How about a packet of each, and we can each make our own little personalized Ham N Cheese?

Got into Düsseldorf, and couldn´t use my credit card in the train ticket machine. Got cash, went back up to the airtrain station, couldn´t use a €50 bill, went back down, went to the FX kiosk and got change. The gentleman there roundly told me he was sick of making change for people who used the ATM. I offered to go elsewhere, but he said no, he would make me change, but was just really tired of doing it.

One final thought, from taking the train: Germans, if any of the world´s peoples could be, are very happy imposing the collective will on the individual and letting it be imposed upon them, yet even they are okay with having a smoking area on a train platform. It may be twice the size of my couch, but it´s there, with a yellow border painted around it. Hey America, what´s so bad about that? Not judging, and as a smoker I can dig on being polite, but nothing makes a train come faster like a lit cigarette that one has barely started working on. Would that be so hard?

Just saying. Or "just sazing" as this kezboard would have me write it.

More soon on Phamily Phun, the strangely yogurt-like smell of infant feces, aging, Schrebergärten, mulled wine, and prodigious rain.

It´s good to be back...

Oh, and the dioxins have been cleaned up at the playround! Time marches on...

"I got in a car accident on the way home from work. I rear-ended someone. Guy gets out of his car; I get out of mine. He's a dwarf. We're sitting there waiting for the police to arrive and he goes, `I'm not happy.´ I said, `so which one are you?´" --Someone Who Goes By @Hemi (since I don´t know them that´s all the attribution they´re going to get...)

All I Need is THIS PASSPORT... and this paddle game, and that's ALL.

2007-11-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

After a weird couple of days, I’m leaving today for Germany, and following on with some days in London. I’m still in a sling, and still wincing mightily all the way through my day. The slightest motion makes me cringe like I’m thinking about root canals, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m in a sling or not.

Something struck me as very odd: why is it that an x-ray taken in Pennsylvania, which I know is digitized, and which I saw on a computer monitor when the doctor pulled it up at her workstation, can’t be emailed to me?? Tigger said it had something to do with HIPAA (look up for reference…) but I’m just aggravated.

So, in this modern world of digital X-Rays, yours truly had to get a fax sent over, attach a photocopy of my driver’s license, and send it back to them by fax. All of this required filling out forms with my gimpy arm. Right, that’s a really effective method of getting people their radiology documentation.

Anyhow, I went to a follow-up with a regular (non-emergency) doctor here in New York, and they used a fluoroscope to re-do all the X-Rays I had already had done, so they could tell me what I already knew, and send me on my way with another prescription similar to what I already have (but slightly less heavy, apparently.) Also, it seems that the practice in this place was to have the receptionist fill in and sign the prescription slip. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.

So, off to the fatherland and my mother’s home town for a few days of Christeningtastic Excitement! I guess it goes to show that the old saying is wrong: you CAN go home after all.

Except when you try to go back to the playground you used to use as a child, and find out that it’s tainted with dioxins in the sand. Precious!

This was a few years ago, the last time I was out there, and I went to go look at said playground, saw said signs with previously unmentioned skulls &c on them, and spoke with an older guy who was walking his dog in the dioxin laced red sand. He just waved it off and said that he’d been coming for years and he thought he was doing fine, so screw it, in his mind.

I’m not sure I’m so certain.

I will, however, be sure not to eat any sand at any childhood loci of memory. Just in case, it’s best to be safe.

I had hoped to tool around, go to the swimming pool we used to frequent, see the sights, but with an arm in the crapper (ugh, not literally, thanks) it’s less likely to be feasible. I will try and shoot some pictures, but I’m not sure how readily I’ll be able to manage that. Stupid me for getting an SLR, it means I need two hands, which is not so much so good a thing at the moment.

Also: it’s official, I may be becoming an adult (read as: I hate our moth-eaten couch, and have now looked online at new sofas. Oh Lawdy. Heaven forfend.)

Also: I’m a little sad about this trip, as my grandmother has been declining with some speed, and I wonder whether this might be the last time I get to be there with the whole family, and it’s hitting me a bit hard from time to time.

Hypothetical reader, the background here is that we spent every second summer from my first to my eighteenth birthday over in Germany with family, initially split between my father’s mother and my mother’s mother, with the final third of the time being spent on some junket elsewhere. As time passed, my father’s mother had a bit of a hard time getting comfortable with having guests, as she was older and quite particular about, well, everything. So, we spent more time with at my mother’s childhood home, and I have lots of memories that fill me with warmth even now. Paper lanters in the yard, an actual swingset, the local Olympic sized swimming pool, trips into town to go to the music store (yes, I know, I was a weird kid, and somehow staring at instruments when I was young totally geeked me out, though since it still does I guess it’s just a warning sign for those of you with youngsters to be aware of as to future spending habits…)

Anyway, just wanted to give a thought or two to those times, and reflect on how it feels a lot like an era is ending for me, and I just wonder whether I feel like enough of an adult to make sense of the changing of the guard.

My parent’s are obsessive grandparents now to my nephew.

That’s what I’m talking about here. And it’s weirding me out. Kind of.

So, in a little while I’m going to be heading out to a train, to a monorail to JFK, getting on a plane, then off of it, then onto another one, then off of THAT one, and then aboard a train, and then off of that again, into a cab and then into a mattress to mutter and whimper for a while, jetlagged in a foreign country.

Pain medication of the prescription variety will be included somewhere along the way, to be sure.

Keeps me from enjoying a beer on the flight, but never forget that which may be true everywhere EXCEPT airplanes, and the reason why I'm going to be feeling no pain as the drink cart mauls my shattered shoulder:

“Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life – except drink.” W.C. Fields

Good Question...

2007-11-26T19:37:00.001-08:00

Went to a meeting today, for a project management deal that I'm involved with at work. It's a surreal experience at times, but that's nothing to go into in depth.

It was my first day at work in a sling, and if it weren't for me leaving in two days, I would have been home whimpering on Percocet. Hey, it hurts like crazy, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. So, everyone had to ask me the exact same question about what happened, and it would have been great to have a different story to tell them.

Falling down the stairs is not a cool story.

Base jumping would have been nice, an ATV wreck would have been fantastic.

Perhaps a claim that I had shattered my shoulder firing an elephant gun into the back of a fleeing home invader.

Something along those lines, something with a hint of sex appeal. However, I failed to open with the lie, so I ran with the truth. Ah well, so it is sometimes.

At the end of the meeting, someone asked for the nth time what had happened, and then asked how I was feeling. I mentioned that I couldn't really write at all, without some serious grimacing.

They looked back and said "Well, why did you bring a pen and paper with you then?"

Good question.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." --Ernest Hemingway ("A Farewell to Arms")

It's Not Polite to Stair, Kids.

2007-11-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

So, we went out to the Farm to have Thanksgiving with Tigger's folks. My old friend R. came along with us, and all was right in the world.

ATVs were ridden, guns were fired, turkey was eaten, football was watched. Drinks were consumed, out with us into a country night and a bar where some complete stranger kept on catching me to finish telling me some story about a bear and a monkey, which he proudly informed me he "used to tell to his kids". I was playing pool, and every time I had a pause, he would come up to me and carry on telling the story where he had left off. I can not for the life of me remember a single point of the story, or why he was telling it to me, but so it went, and I smiled and nodded.

He finally arrived at the moral/punchline/ending two hours after he had introduced himself to me. He was at this point, to put it quite charitably, very drunk. I was not entirely sober myself, but that was all well and good and it was a happy Friday night out in the country.

Rode home scrunched six people into a car, joyously met and happily to bed.

Here's where it get's interesting, or funny, or really tremendously shitty depending on your perspective.

I have a habit of sleepwalking occasionally, and this house happens to have a habit of having two-hundred year old staircases, which make tight turns (in the back of the house the stairs are more of a servants' quarters/household use shape, with two turns in a flight of stairs, which result in very narrow ends of wedges at the inner part of the turn, which is always exciting at the best of times, and has no hand railing.

We were sleeping on the third floor, in Tigger's old bedroom, and somehow, at some random hour I apparently decided to start walking around, possibly to go use the bathroom.

I had socks on.

Next thing I vaguely remember is being on my side on the stairs, in some noticeable pain, and struggling back to bed where it hurt too badly to lie back down. Tigger was awakened by my screaming (I like to think it was manly "give me the morphine doc!" screaming, but I may have just sounded like somebody stole my My Little Pony and was playing keepaway with it in the schoolyard for all I know.)

I put up a minimal fight about it, and ended up conceding that perhaps going to the hospital was The Best Thing.

I broke my collarbone in either 3 or 4 places, the Oxycodone made it hard to be sure when I saw the X-Ray. All day Saturday sacked out wincing, and all of today as well. Tigger, to her credit, made the whole drive back to New York despite the fact that she usually doesn't care for highway driving and was absolutely wonderful throughout.

Oh, in case it needed to get worse, it feels like I have a sprain on the joint as well.

And, I'm left handed, and it's my left side (right by the shoulder, a handful of hairline breaks all along the end of the collarbone. Oh joy.

And, I have to fly to Europe on Wednesday, and can't take any time off of work until then.

Sometimes you just can't even imagine how things could get more unpleasant.

You know what I like to do at those moments? As a Giants fan, I like nothing more than to come home, doped up on opiates, and watch the Hometown Heroes go down 41-17 to a team with a losing record. Kudos to the Vikings for really putting the Cherry on my Sundae/Sunday of wincing and misery.

Last night, after a day of watching mediocre TV, and eating leftovers, I was at least mercifully asleep, doped up on Turkocet. Ah, tryptophan and Percoset. Sweet, sweet, miserable, addle-pated relief.

Pray for Mojo.

"If you can't be a good example, at least be a horrifying cautionary tale." --sidney (RIP, www.bikeforums.net misses you)

Train Time

2007-11-21T13:58:00.001-08:00

So, living in Brooklyn and commuting into Midtown I spend a fairly dismal amount of time on the Subway. Let's say about 40 minutes each way on a workday. Naturally, you have a good, hefty number of minutes to muse on something, nothing, or everything.

I think there are some people who will start paying attention to their infants when their infants have ipod screens implanted in their foreheads. What motivates you to watch video on an ipod when you have a very rapidly developing human being looking at you for interaction? It is still the case that you don't have to have kids in this or any country if you don't want to. I can certainly see that they don't always want to talk about Proust, or the latest Roca Wear lineup with you, but isn't it a bit of a good thing to look at and/or talk to them? If you were going to have some entertainment or media with you, how about at least reading a book or something?

Don't get me wrong, pompous asshole that I am I definitely understand that not everyone is going to be perusing the latest issue of Foreign Affairs on the train, or even The Economist or the New Yorker, but all that being said it's better to listen to them, occasionally play with or watch them, and even reading People or InStyle would be an improvement.

Yeah, I'm judging you all, all the time. My glass house is absolutely rent and shattered, needless to say.

Also, am I crazy, or was that guy playing a PSP version of Dance Dance Revolution??? Even if weren't someone who hated dancing, I would find the life-size actual footstomping monstrosity that is Dance Dance Revolution (the Arcade version*) blindingly, hoppingly stupid.

Playing it with your fingers?? Doesn't that defeat even the purpose that was defeated by the original purpose of Dance Dance Revolution?**

Until today, I had a bit of scattered schedule for the prior four days of workweek. On each of those days, the time I got on the train was off by a few hours one way or the other. Anywhere between 3:00 PM and 5:15 PM I would get on the train, and on my homeward bound train for four days in a row was the exact same person. I could believe that this was a result of taking the red pill, but I don't believe that. I could believe it was determinism, but I don't believe that. I could believe it was a lot of things, and I could believe that if we do have an all-powerful god he sometimes really, completely phones it in on the details.

Hey there, hypothetical all powerful deity: we do notice these little things, especially in a place where you really don't expect to EVER see the same people again, and feel almost warm when there's a repeater on your regular commute.

Perhaps the presumption of anonymity is the reason why a guy suddenly leapt up from a seat next to me, and crop dusted right past my face at a sprint before plonking down in an empty spot perhaps 12 feet away. Everyone knew it was him, and if he hadn't moved we would have only had a sense of aromatic discomfort (trust me, everybody farts on the train occasionally, it can't be entirely avoided, and while it's not as much fun as farting right before leaving an empty elevator behind it is something to be done stealthily.) As it was, I couldn't help but just exchange completely baffled glances with all my immediate neighbors, as we clutched shirts and jackets over our noses and held our breath.

*I briefly, and badly, played singles league pool, and the place had an attached arcade. The matches were very seriously played, and though I got beaten a lot even with a handicap I enjoyed the quiet focus of the event. It was real, and beautifully laid out pool hall with new tables. There was nothing quite as awesome as lining up a critical shot while listening the brittle, special sound of vigorous pairs of feet stomping away on plastic in a frenzy of hypnotic suggestion.

**I always thought the point of dancing was social, and regretted not being a dance happy fool as I figured it would have been a good sort of activity to be really happy about at all kinds of clubs and parties that I've been to. I didn't go home with the dumb girls at the time, and I feel dancing was my Achilles Heel. So, to me, DDR takes the only thing that makes sense about dancing (fun, sweating, hitting on people when you are single, physical closeness with somebody etc.) and kills it. Everyone stares ahead, grabs on to a couple of hand rails, and takes the stupid, but potentially fun activity and try to beat one another at flailing around.***

***Yes, I'm misanthropic towards elements of our collective "anthropy", and I feel I have my own reasons. See above re: glass houses.****

****Additional thought for a substitute aphorism: "Those who live in glass houses should be well acquainted with a good glazier, or opt for small, petty rocks."

Beware of Dogs and Judges

2007-11-20T17:02:00.000-08:00

Unlike Stephon Marbury, I'm not asking you to feel sorry for Michael Vick. I'm not talking about how normal dogfighting is, and I don't necessarily have any love for Mike Vick.

I love dogs, and the whole story is pretty horrifying.

And so, with all the disclaimer swept briskly to the side, I will say that I really don't envy him for the position he's in at the moment...

Thanks to the presence of the Honorable U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson, I would expect that this will go down in dark and scary ways for the former hero of the Battle of Atlanta Football.

I'm just figuring that a guy who sought the death penalty against David Vasquez (who was retarded, not credibly nearby, not connected by DNA evidence to the attack, AND had his confession certifiably fed to him before accepting an Alford Plea along with a 35 year sentence,) is probably going to be less than lenient.

If he tried to kill an innocent, poor, developmentally disabled defendant, what the hell is he going to do to a genuinely guilty party? Beat him comatose with a rusty office chair? Tie him to an anthill after smearing him with honey? Drag him over broken AOL Free Trial CD ROMs behind a Segway until dead?

Read the other piece in the column above... it's involving a drunk guy and a bag of Fritos, and a hilarious minor assault on a cop for which Hudson sought a five year minimum term for a felony "malicious wounding" charge.

Oh, and by the way he served on the Ed Meese Pornography Commission under Reagan.

A real charmer.

Rest easy everyone, not only are you not in jail, you also don't have a date for a sentencing in front of that guy. Well, at least as far as I know you don't... but who knows who google may bring here in the future, I guess.

"Resist Much. Obey Little." --Walt Whitman

Joy in the Most Puzzling Ways

2007-11-19T19:18:00.000-08:00

So, I have to correct my error in not crediting Tigger on the corkscrew free bottle opening technique. I watched, I marveled.

I'm in an industry where there's a good chance of getting laid off in the current climate. I worry, but what can you do but truck on and hope you don't get run over while playing economic frogger.

We were on our way to the aforementioned divorce party, and since the vagaries of Brooklyn transportation means that you can't get from our particular Here to his particular There, and so we took a Black Car. They are the call-ahead car services without meters here in New York in case you weren't familiar.

I generally don't take them, but it can be useful, and us in the outer boroughs don't have a choice sometimes.

The driver was possibly Iranian, possibly Afghanistani, I didn't want to ask specifically. We all four piled into the car, and he tore around the block, and hit the massive hump in the intersection around the corner. The car touched down on asphalt, sailed up and swamped down again over the bump. He looked over, and gave a small, absolutely joyous laugh at the occasion. You might think it would seem unsettling, but with a bit of a language barrier, he seemed to be sharing his happiness at how fun life was turning out to be.

The radio was playing an old DJ, playing old American pop songs. "Alone Again, Naturally" was on as we wheeled around onto Ocean Parkway.

It puzzled me that a persian or middle eastern car service driver would be listening to old easy listening on an AM burning station out of what may well have been a shack in the Meadowlands. But, you learn to find things more beautiful and less surprising in this life as you go along... anyway...

DJ: "Well, that was my wife Barbara's favorite song. I never knew, until my son told me after she had passed."

As the DJ introduced the next song, the driver looked around at us, smiled and gave another small but rich chuckle.

I don't know what he found funny, but something either in a misunderstanding or in a reality struck a chord with him.

I have known and in the past even worked with some folks who make a far better living than most of us, and than I could even imagine. There seems to be a lot of tension that comes from the lifestyle (watch Bridezillas sometime, Tigger finds it fascinating, and see how miserable people are with a quarter million dollars to pitch at a wedding.)

So, I've decided that if I do end up unemployed, maybe I should about getting a hack license to drive a TLC car. I think maybe some of them get something that would be good to understand.

Also, if you write, or even if you just live somewhat, read Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird". It's really tremendous, as per the first fifteen pages plus the introduction (xx pages in addition.)

Also, if you take pictures, read Ansel Adams's series on photography technique. It will blow your mind open, and then leave you to slowly reassemble the pieces into a tremendous new whole. (1 - The Camera, 2 - The Negative, 3 - The Print.)

I guess that's it, and I'll see about something more interesting or amusing along the way. Things have been really making me stressed recently, and I'm having a hard time with it. So hope you are all well...

And don't forget:

"Take it easy, but take it." --Pete Seeger

Pop... I think I have the Black Lung

2007-11-18T19:48:00.000-08:00

Tigger and I are both down for the count sick today. Her brother came up from Philly for the weekend, we went and had a good time (without a lot of furniture) at my friend's house for his divorce party, and I woke up today with enough soreness in my lungs that it hurts to sneeze.

Good times on the ranch.

Promised ire about tie knotting still to come, tease that I am I can't stop throwing that out there.

Also, the lesson here is that if you have to divide up your property with a former significant other, make sure you get left at least one corkscrew. That is the implement that has the least broad range of use, but is the most difficult to do without when you do happen to need it. Tricks involving screws and claw hammers were used to address the problem (screw goes into cork, claw hammer nail pulling end holds screw, and voila.) I live to serve, and now you know...

God's Most Cursed Transportation

2007-11-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

So, this past weekend, Tigger and I (yes, that's my G/F, and explanations may follow at some point when I feel like it) went down to the wilds of Philadelphia to go to a Wine/Food Pairing Dinner with the good people of her Father's country club. It's a fancy sort of place, there's a waiting list and what for.

I don't play golf, FYI. I have always kind of been curious about it, but as with hunting, fly fishing, and who knows what all, it's something you learn to do from your father, and I didn't about any of those things. One day I may yet grace the wilds of Dyker Beach (a public course here in Brooklyn) with an unfettered chain of octuple bogies, but that day is far off in the future.

Because it was a food and WINE pairing dinner, I didn't want to drive the lesbian-mobile (subaru outback wagon, apparently the lesbians are just WILD for Subarus, don't quite know why, though I encourage the non-existant readership to chime in with non-existant suggestions about why that might be the case) down to get drunk-ish at a country club and get arrested along the Main Line after driving through the front plate glass of a WaWa. Call me crazy, it's just what seems right to me.

So.

We took public transportation down from New York to Philly, first step was the good people at NJTransit, who brought us all the way to Trenton, on an express train out of Penn Station. Yeah, baby, we roll deluxe on our short trips. FYI, Amtrak does everything short of actual anal rape to keep you from taking their trains that could be imagined. The Amtrak fare from New York to Philly (a 1.5 hour trip by plague infested horse or crawl) is close to $70 per head, and that just was so morally offensive I couldn't handle it. Sorry.

The plan was to take NJTransit to Trenton, SEPTA (South-East-Pennsylvania-Transit-Authority, I think) light rail in to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, and then another SEPTA train out to the Club In Question (thanks to Tom Pyncheon for my pompous use of semi-appropriate use of capitalization.) So far, so good. Except, apparently in places other than New York things on rapid transit are not quite as they are in the world in which I grew out of short pants... to wit: someone got on our goddamned delayed SEPTA train, insisting to the conductor that they be allowed to look for the person they had been waiting for who hadn't gotten off the train.

That was not a typo. This guy (and I cut him more slack, as he had a very thick South Asian accent, and was oldish) actually thought he would be allowed to look through the entire train for his missing party.

Apparently, even Philly conductors don't conscience that kind of absurdity. Sadly, though, our VERY tight travel plan left us missing the connection in Philly to the wilds of whiteyland by a grand total of 2 minutes. So, Tigger called her Padre and had him come in to meet us in front of the City Hall in downtown, and bring us out to our Fahncy Wine Tasting, which I frankly had been on the train to arrive at for several hours and didn't want to miss. Don't think that I didn't want to get there.

I always have a bit of a disconnect when I get out of a method of transport in a different town. It was very weird to stand around in the middle of Philly, with the spotlight broadcasted logo from the Commerce Bank branch twenty feet behind me muddling the pavement beneath my feet. So, eventually, after running around from corner to corner and dodging buses where we finally arranged a meeting, we got in the car and made our way out to dinner.

Don't expect some awful Top Chef inspired sommelier-infused discussion of dinner.

The pork tenderloin was spectacular, the second Riesling was quite special. That's the extent of my commentary. (There, are you happy?)

For what it's worth, I am of German extraction, by a degree of one generation (me) born on this soil. So, the fact that it was a German-food and German-wine tasting is partly why I was asked to come, perhaps, but I'm not sure.

So, fast forward to Saturday morning, where we got up, and got on the bus back to New York.

I hate buses.

Profoundly.

It was, after all that, not a bad trip all the same. There was a pair of middle-aged women sitting across from us who were apparently quite powerful...

Dumpy: I'm just glad I'm a clairvoyant, I couldn't handle being a medium.

Scrawny: I think so too, but why?

Dumpy: Well, as a clairvoyant, I see things when I close my eyes, but as a medium you are just hearing the voices all the time.

Yeah. I was on the bus from Reading, PA with a couple of VERY powerful women. Why they were stuck on the damn bus with their remarkable powers is unclear to me, but there they were. And they couldn't help shouting out wimmyn encouraging praise to the female bus driver as she aggroed her way through the Lincoln Tunnel traffic ("Nicely DONE!" "Perfect!" etc., put it in context, motherfuckers, it was ridiculous). Ouch.

Finally, we arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

I don't know why, but every time I've been to a major bus station I've seen at least one person who has had the shit literally (perhaps) beaten out of them in the past twenty-four hours. This time, it was Shuffling Guy With Severely Swollen Left Orbital and Eye Region Subsequent To Severe Fist Trauma. He wasn't even asking for money, just sort of stumbling around the main entrance of the terminal.

Something about buses, man. They just attract darkness. Maybe it's something related to carrying around a chemical tank filled with feces that is a few steps from the gates of hell, but I'm not sure.

All this was really beautifully topped off by the dude in the wheelchair who had made a cap for his amputated leg composed of truncated soda bottles stuffed with bright orange plastice. Hurray. Tigger walked almost into him as I widely flanked the wonder of modern refuse technology. I tried to stop her, but she was already being blocked in by a severed leg and a sere, empty planter before I could stop her. I did my best, but it was just not enough to stop a momentary inward clenching of forearms and 180 degree fear-swivel.

Tomorrow, perhaps a discussion of tie knotting techniques that no-one will read. RIGHT ON!

I'm apparently an employed hobo.

2007-11-08T20:07:00.000-08:00

So, I have a problem with going to sleep on time.

When I was a kid, I could never nap. Didn't want to sleep, couldn't do it if I needed to. In nursery school we were forced to nap for a certain period of time every day, and I remember lying wide awake on a sleeping bag with large, cartoonish comical numbers in a staid but bright array of colors and waiting for the lights to come back on... it wasn't for me.

Even in college, I couldn't nap like normal people, and would just lie down in the daytime with the mythical concept of napping to guide me and would wake up five hours later, having missed a series of commitments.

Steve Fossett* taught me better. (See subsequent comment re Wikipedia... respect your dead betters who happen to be insane wealthy balloonists). I wish I could get a two minute nap whenever I wanted. The modern workplace doesn't respect a need for a miserable cubicle slave to have a quiet place to put our over- or underpaid heads down and pretend to check out for two minutes.

I've got a bit of an insomia issue, which is tired and seems universal for all I know. No one I know personally has ever said to me that they get enough sleep, and I just sort of assume that a degree of sleep deprivation is an aspect of all of our own self-induced Kolyma's (wikipedia is your friend... and yes, that was a COMPLETELY inappropriate parallel, and if you weren't offended, well, you just don't know what that actually meant.)

However, I've spent a period of time of being so desparate for a nap during the daytime that I can't even describe. If I lived in Tokyo, I would spend every lunch break (which I actually don't take, realistically) in a tube hotel, and I envy every salaryman for that weird, sick, perverse, heavenly luxury. However, living in New York, I have now twice in one week crafted errands to run which put me on the subway to take care of business at lunchtime, in no small part because I have a great pleasure that comes from napping on the train.

I sleep (sort of) on the subway on the way to work every morning, and have nowhere to close my eyes during the day in my much deprived state. So... getting on the train to go "take care of something" was kind of an artifice to sleep on the subway.

I mentioned this when I got home, and Tigger said to me: "So, you are actually a hobo?"

Yes.

That pretty much sums it up. I've tried empty conference rooms, but they make me tense. I've tried bathrooms, but (ladies, FYI, dudes crap in public bathrooms, while you guys apparently don't do the same thing) it smells in a manner which is hard to describe without speaking of rotting monkey carcasses, and I've tried leaning against elevator walls... but the subway on a lunchtime "taking care of business" moment was the most satisfying.

I'd like to thank the Lexington Avenue local for a good, solid twenty minutes of rest in the middle of the day. Really, deeply, I am very grateful.

I'd also like to thank the guy at the sandwich shop on Park Row (where I got out to rub the pseudo-sleep from my eyes and go to J & R Music World (thanks for the artifice for the hobo nap)) for actually taking off the rubber glove when he took my money and gave me my change. It's really inspiring to see that there's a commitment to the non-spreading of multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria.

------

I had a moment, stepping outside of work to go have a cigarette. We used to be able to stand in front of the doors, out of peoples' way(s) until recently, and now have to maneuver around some obstacles that I can't really describe to get enough out of the path of good non-evil smoking citizens to indulge in my "twice in the work day" habit.

I sat down on the Homeless Guy Bench Number 3, and felt my shoe slip on something viscous on the ground.

It is a mark of life in New York that I looked down and thought "Damn, it's a loogie" and was actually RELIEVED that it was bird shit.

It may have SARS in it, but thank GOD it wasn't someone's expectoration. It somehow felt more comfortable to me, and it took the arm's length search for white high-contrast swirls in the potential loogie to release me from worry.

Funny how those little things perversely make us seem relieved.

*Still officially just missing. I hope they find the guy... I had a lot of respect for his kind of crazy. If they find him dead, or if they never find him, I wish Mr. Fossett godspeed and good jetstream winds in the afterlife.**

**I don't believe in an afterlife, but it would be nice to think it was out there, wouldn't it? ...(to all my agnostics and atheists... do you sometimes just envy the faithful for the concept of a justice-leveling payoff at the end? Yeah, me too.)***

***Yeah, I know the grammar was spotty on that one, but a double asterisk, parenthetic comment after a question is something that I didn't have time to look up in the manual of style. Sorry. I also know "you" don't exist, so you've gotten more apology than a phantasm deserved anyway.

Just a few things, to start with

2007-11-07T15:14:00.000-08:00

I was out recently, at a "whimsical" get together in the dately neighborhood of halloween. There were candy items scattered around, and I ran across a pair of wax lips in the packaging. Why were these ever made? The taste is pretty much non-existent, and it is at the end of the day... wax. No more, no less.

A little bit of evidence for everyone, in case you were still part of the "jury still out" crowd on the evils of marketing: I saw, on the subway, a Roca Wear branded stroller. I'm not sure whether this is one of the signs of the end of things as we know them, but I DO know that it is a phenomenon I feel uncomfortable commenting on.

Perhaps a little bit on the nose?

Not exactly a part of a "thug life" lifestyle to glamorize, perhaps?

Forgive the run-ons and excessive use of commas (those that have come already, and those sure to come.) All the recreational tinted-wax chewing has gone to my head.

Sorry, to all of you none readers, that I haven't begun with a "well here goes" or a "little something about me" sort of post. Navigating the waters with Loran and old charts at the moment.

More than anything else, I feel a bit like 1995 called and wanted it's phenomenon back... or perhaps an 85 year old man getting a cell phone.

Dialing Klondike three, four two nine one folks.