Slings and Arrows

Drawbacks to Flight of the Conchords Live

2008-05-16T12:26:00.001-05:00

Flight of the Conchords put on an amazing live show. It’s well worth the ticket price and I recommend it unreservedly. I’ve discovered, however, that if your intention is to listen appreciatively and not actually become part of the show, it’s best to put some distance between yourself and the stage. Sit ten or twelve rows back, like you would at Sea World, because there comes a point in the performance when one of the members of the band jumps off the stage and is apt to rub his keytar on you in a manner that will cause you no small amount of awkward discomfort. It’s difficult—when not prepared for it—to know what to do when someone rubs a keytar on you in front of a large group of people. It’s a situation rife with anxiety and regret.

There’s another drawback to Flight of the Conchords audience interaction—one that is a little more personal, a little more tentative. I have no intention of accusing Flight of the Conchords of being unhygienic. Under normal circumstances, they’re both probably fresh and clean as a mountain breeze. After two hours of animated performance under hot lights, however, I’ve noticed they can get a little noisome. It’s a stink that will linger on you, too, if they get too close to you—close enough, say, to rub you with a keytar.

A Mostly True Story

2008-05-12T09:43:00.000-05:00

He was exactly where I was told he’d be which was, on its own, a bit of a shock, because I really didn’t believe he existed. What truly shocked me, though—what I hadn’t prepared myself for—was his appearance. It was far, far worse than I had imagined.

He was sitting on the sidewalk, with his back against the cold grey stone of what was once a used book store, but had been empty, available for lease, for several months. The intersection on which he and the empty building sat was in a section of town reputed to be governed by drug dealers and other sundry criminals. It was clearly not the ideal location for retail space, but seemed to suit his purposes, presumably because there was no one around with an interest in getting him to move along.

I approached him slowly, nervously. I was afraid—not so much of the risk of potential violence that comes with being in a rough neighborhood, interacting with a homeless and desperate drug user, but more of the excitement roiling in my chest. I was afraid of becoming the type of person who would do what I was about to do.

From where I first spotted him, a little over half a block away, he looked like a burn victim. He had no hair, no ears, and no nose. The closer I got to him, though, the more evident it became to me that he had not been burned. His eyelids and lips were intact, for example, and his scars were not the swirling mass of grooves and pits indicative of burn scars, there was a pattern to them. They were a mosaic of rectangles tilted slightly away from the center of his face. His skin was a patchwork of small, discolored strips, cascading downward. He wore a dirty green t-shirt and baggy, stained jeans. His clothes were dotted with old blood stains and the radiating cloudlike stains of more transparent fluids. He sat barefoot on a sheet of cardboard. Next to him were an old pair of tennis shoes and a dusty, almost empty roll of paper towels. There was a makeshift bandage of what looked to be a paper towel and electrical tape stuck to the side of his neck. It was permeated with thick clotted blood.

I stood over him, intending to speak first, but the smell that came up off him squeezed my throat shut. It was the smell of infection—the smell of rot.

He looked up at me. “What do you want?” he asked.

I breathed slowly through my nose and held the air a moment. “A friend of mine mentioned I might find you here,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “No one approaches me unless they know who I am and what I do. I was asking what part you want.”

I hadn’t given any thought to the details. Ten minutes earlier I mostly didn’t even believe he existed. “I’m not sure,” I said.

He stood up slowly and swayed a bit before he found his balance. His toes had been stripped of most of their flesh. What remained were thin, pointed stubs, like you’d expect to see on mummified remains. He peeled his shirt off, tugging at the area where it stuck to his chest, reopening a small, rectangular scab. Blood slowly oozed from the tear.

He dropped his shirt onto the cardboard and stretched out his arms so I could inspect his torso. What I saw was an amazing and horrifying pattern of geometric shapes—straight lines and sharp corners interspersed with dried blood and pus—oily open wounds and wounds held nearly closed with makeshift sutures. I followed the pattern of scars down each arm to his hands. The fourth and fifth fingers of each hand were missing. The remaining six were scarred only slightly, and seemingly functional.

After a few seconds he silently turned around. The back of his neck and shoulders were the familiar cluster of rectangular scars, but the skin that stretched from his shoulder blades to the top of his jeans was smooth, untouched. Aside from a few moles and patches of dirt, his back was flawless.

He turned around again. “Do I need to take my pants off?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “There’s nothing left worth taking down there anyway.”

“Your back is off limits, I take it?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“You must do all the cutting yourself.”

He smiled at me with chapped, but unscarred lips. “You’re a smart man,” he said. “I can’t reach back there, and I certainly can’t trust people to take only what they pay for.”

“This is probably a question you’re sick of,” I stammered, “But I have to know. Doesn’t it hurt?”

He laughed, loud and hard, giving me the opportunity to glance into his mouth. Most of his teeth were gone. Only the molars remained.

“Of course it hurts,” he said. “It hurts less than it used to—there are fewer nerve endings in scar tissue—but it still hurts. What I buy with the money will take the pain away for a good ten or twelve hours, though, then I’ll come back here. I always come back here.”

“Why do you do it?” I asked, a little embarrassed at the obviousness of the question.

“Because I’ve got no choice,” he answered.

“Do you think you’ll ever stop?”

“Are you a reporter?” he asked.

The question surprised me. “No,” I said.

“Sometimes reporters come down here,” he said. “They ask all sorts of questions and never buy. I don’t have time for people who don’t buy.”

“I’m not a reporter,” I said. “I brought money.”

“Well, it’s a hundred bucks for a square inch,” he said. “I don’t have many fingers left, so they’re a thousand each—fifteen hundred if you want a thumb.”

“I have only two hundred,” I said.

“So you get two inches. What part do you want?”

I thought. I wanted to just hand him the money and walk away. Morally, I wanted to be the person I purported to be—the person I thought I was. I wanted to simply offer the man help and leave it at that. Something other than me was at work in my mind, though—something much stronger and much darker.

“Is there anywhere other than your back that hasn’t been cut yet?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“What about the bottom of your feet?” I asked.

Any hint of a smile or pleasant demeanor left his face then. “Like I said, you’re a smart man.”

He lowered himself to the cardboard again and sat cross-legged, exposing the pale, dirty soles of his feet. They were rough and worn, but uncut.

“Well, he said,” Am I taking two inches from one foot, or an inch from each?”

“I’d like two inches from your right foot.” I said.

“Give me the money, then.”

I took the two new hundred-dollar bills I got from the cash machine out of my back pocket and looked at them. They were smooth save for the fresh crease I had put down the middle of both. I held one in each hand, turning them over and wondering if any of their future owners could ever imagine what their money had once purchased.

I folded them again and handed them to the man, who slid them into his back pocket. From the same pocket he produced a small grey razor blade.

“Do you want to record this?” asked the man. “Most people want to record it, or take pictures with their phones.”

I shook my head.

He shrugged, held his foot in his right hand, took a deep breath and drove the corner of the razor blade into his skin. There was no ceremony to it, he just cut. He made no noise apart from fast, heavy breathing. He made four deep cuts in the center of his foot—a one-by-two inch rectangle exactly like the hundreds of others that covered his body in both size and proportion. I became aware that nearly all his scars matched the dollar amount most people are allowed to withdraw from a cash machine in one day. That made me feel strangely justified in what I was doing. It was evidence that the man wasn’t being toyed with by an eccentric and sadistic group of rich people, he was conducting straightforward business transactions with people like me—the curious and the doubtful.

He slid the razor blade under the flap of skin as he peeled it back by the corner. He pulled the skin free and held it gently in the palm of his left hand. Blood poured from his foot and sank into a pool in the cardboard. He set the blade down with his right hand and fumbled with the paper towel roll until he managed to tear a sheet free. He folded the skin neatly in the paper towel and handed it to me. The package was moist and strangely heavy. I may be remembering the situation incorrectly—perhaps even making things up—but thinking back, it also seemed very warm.

The man wadded the last two paper towels on the roll and pressed them tightly against the sole of his foot. Holding the wad in place, he slid his wounded foot into his tennis shoe and tied it carefully. He looked up at me, as he put on his other shoe, as if to ask what I was still doing there.

“Do you mind answering my question now?” I asked. “Will you ever stop?”

He staggered to his feet and stood with most of his weight on his left foot. He hopped a couple of times before he was able to steady himself. “I used to think that one day I’d be able to stop,” he said. “Now I just hope the infection will take me soon. That should do the trick.”

With that, he picked up his shirt and limped away.

I unwrapped the paper towel as I walked back to my car. The skin, all bright crimson and pale blue, was much thicker than I had expected it to be. He had cut through all the top layers and well into the dermis. I was certain he had exposed muscle, but didn’t remember seeing any. I was unwilling to touch the skin directly, obviously. I just held the edges of the paper towel and stared at the curled, bloody lump in the center.

As I passed a trash can on the next corner, I threw away what I had just bought. I wiped imagined contaminants off my hands and onto my pants, and walked hurriedly toward a safer, more civilized neighborhood.

An Actual Someone

2006-06-28T10:21:00.000-05:00

Until Monday I’d had what I considered to be very standard responses to everything that’s happened. It all started—as most events in my life do—with me lying in bed, trying as hard as I could to sleep despite what was going on around me. My wife burst out of the bathroom, threw herself on top of me, and with eyes wider than any I’d ever seen, told me she was pregnant. I had always imagined that would be the moment my life would change, but it really didn’t. The last three months have been a flurry of doctor visits, prenatal vitamins, healthy foods, and sideways glances from my father-in-law that suggest he might kill me, given the chance. For some strange reason, though, none of it seemed out of the ordinary. No, not out of the ordinary—extraordinary. None of it seemed extraordinary.

Monday, when the nurse performing the first ultrasound asked if we were ready, I thought it a bit odd. What was there to be ready for?

I said I was ready. I wasn’t ready.

A TV screen blinked on and I watched—curious, but not fully impressed—as alternating light grey and dark grey blobs floated past a focal point in the center of the screen. Then, suddenly, I saw someone’s back. That’s when things became extraordinary. Someone—an actual someone—was sleeping comfortably inside my wife.

If I could describe what that image did to me, I would, but I can’t. Sorry. All I can say is I liked what it did to me and continue with the story.

The nurse announced she was going to try to get it to turn around, which I thought absurd. Rationally, I knew—as I had known for three months—that we had a baby in process, but the thought that we had a baby that could respond to stimuli and do things like turn around when prompted to had never occurred to me. The nurse poked and shoved, and the very small back on the screen rolled over and became a very small, very annoyed child, trying as hard as it could to sleep despite what was going on around it.

And that did it. Nothing is ordinary now. Nothing will ever be ordinary again.

The HMS Bill Reimers – Part Thirty

2006-02-10T08:40:00.000-06:00

Giving monkeys higher brain function was widely considered a very good idea. The benefits outweighed the drawbacks, which were few but substantial. The principal drawback, at the outset anyway, was the notion held by most that an equal level of sentience deserved equal treatment, and that monkeys should share the same rights and obligations held by humans. Civil liberties weren't an issue because civil liberties hadn't existed for many years. Monkeys were immediately given the right to vote, but so were plants and computers and jelly donuts, because realistically, it wouldn't make a difference anyway. Marriages were no longer recognized in any form by the government, so monkeys or anyone else could marry whomever/whatever they chose. The only real problem was the notable difference in size between humans and monkeys. The United States, who had always lacked imagination, solved the problem by attaching it to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Urinals were lowered three feet and cars were fitted with very tall booster seats. It didn't take long for car companies to realize, though, that they could make monkey-sized cars for less cost than human-sized cars, but sell them at the same price due to what they called, “Superior monkey handling.” The smaller cars were surprisingly popular. Even Doug had owned an early-model Ford Primate that he loved dearly and called El Toro. Sadly, he lost his beloved El Toro when some teenagers lifted it out of the parking lot of the adult book store and dropped it of a bridge in the hopes that it would explode—which it did. The high rate of explosions among the hydrogen-burning monkey cars was not the only problem they posed. Speed bumps had to be lowered considerably, which rendered them nearly useless; Fast food employees working drive-through windows soon began complaining of muscle strain; And human/monkey traffic accidents were nearly always fatal. A proposal was brought before Congress to build special monkey-only lanes thirty feet above all existing roads. Noticing monkeys were becoming much more costly than they were worth, the Supreme Court quickly decided that being a monkey was not a disability after all, but more of a lifestyle choice and therefore, monkeys were not entitled to any special treatment. Naturally that sparked a nationwide monkey strike and several dozen adorable little riots, all of which ended with the government making a concession and giving all monkeys free bus passes.

Jake was a bigger problem.

Just as it didn't cost Doug anything to ride the bus, it didn't cost Jake anything, either. Des Moines, Iowa Metropolitan Transit Authority rules clearly stated, though, that all non-genetically enhanced animals (Jake included) had to be secured in a cage no bigger than 1.5 cubic feet before boarding the bus. Even if Doug could carry a cage with Jake inside, he was certain he would never be able to persuade Jake to get into it in the first place.

That's what Doug was trying to explain to the driver of the taxi cab idling in his driveway. It was having no effect, though, as the cab driver didn't speak English, which, at the time, was not a cliché. Since driving a cab was one of the highest-paying jobs available, most cab drivers were very well-educated and in fact held several post-graduate degrees. This particular cab driver was no exception. He was also born and raised in the Greater United States, but unfortunately for him his parents were level eight non-conformists and they felt they should stick it to society by inventing a new language that only their son new.

Doug tried to reason with the cab driver. He squinted at the name printed on the posted license. “Listen, Flimburgnak,” he said.

“Beooten heible flapp!” said Flimburgnak. “Labia minora.” Which, because his parents were not only non-conformists, but also appallingly stupid, meant No parrots. I'm allergic.

With that, Flimburgnak Crotchrot shut the cab door and drove away, thinking that macroeconomics may have been the better career for him since numbers were numbers no matter what language you spoke and the hours were undoubtedly better.

Doug and Jake looked helplessly at one another. They had twenty miles to traverse and just under one hour to do it.

Culture Shock

2006-02-02T10:27:00.000-06:00

The differences between Minnesota and Florida are legion. The primary difference (the biggest difference that I’ve been able to spot, anyway) is the way people behave in elevators.

In Minnesota, people file quietly into elevator cars, push the button for the floor they want, and stand as far away from everybody else as they can, all the while not acknowledging anyone else is in the elevator at all.

It’s not a perfect system, but it works. It’s a system with which I’ve grown quite comfortable. I like it.

I don’t like Florida’s system. In Florida, the first person in the elevator becomes the wordlessly appointed elevator operator. It’s that person’s job to greet everyone else, ask which floor they want, and push the button for them.

I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.

On day one, I was the first in the elevator. I pushed the number two button and slid against the wall into the corner. That’s the Minnesota way. That’s my way. A stout old lady ambled in behind me, planted herself in the middle of the car and stared at me. The doors slid shut. The awkwardness was thick and hot as my brief sideways glances connected with her intent and meaningful stare.

“Well?” she asked after a while.

“Well, what?” I said.

“Aren’t you going to as me what floor I’m going to?”

There was a moment of dizzying confusion during which I came to the conclusion that honesty would be my best course of action. “No,” I said.

Then came a disgusted snort and a mumbled diatribe about me, Jesus, and the state of the world. I didn’t hear most of it because luckily, the elevator had reached my floor and I was able to walk away. That’s what elevators do when operated properly. I suppose I’ll never know whether the angry, mumbling woman I left behind got to where she wanted to go.

The second day I was not the first person in the elevator. I was second in a line led by another portly old woman who took position in front of the button panel and held down the button labeled Open Door. I instinctively reached in front of her to load in my floor order and literally had my hand slapped away.

“Excuse me, please,” said the old, round woman very sarcastically. “I’d like to make sure everyone gets in before we begin.”

The third day I took the stairs.

S’long Sukkaz

2005-11-08T15:55:00.000-06:00

Here’s a rundown of my ten years in Minneapolis:

I had five apartments (two with rats, one without a bathroom) and one house with a little toxic mold, but a very nice house nonetheless.

I had seven cars, which is a somewhat astonishing, even to me. One car was stolen, one was smashed, and four I drove until they would drive no more.

One way or another I managed to acquire and un-acquire five dogs, three cats, two birds, and one ferret.

I had seven jobs, six of which I left voluntarily.

I had three serious girlfriends and two mutual breakups.

I had one marriage and one amicable divorce.

I had three psychiatrists, two therapists, and one voluntary weekend in a mental hospital.

Through it all I was very, very cold.

Here are some fun facts: It’s 10.2% more expensive to live in Minneapolis than Clearwater. The average temperature is a full 27.4 degrees colder. Violent crime is 19.29% higher. Property crime is 15.25% higher. Murder is 41.24% higher. Rape is 40.4% higher. Robbery is 52.73% higher. Burglary is 8.24% higher. Larceny is 11.22% higher. Auto theft is 47.49% higher.

People wonder—a lot, and very loudly—why I don’t show any concern over living on the Gulf Coast in light of recent weather anomalies. I tell them it’s because I’m too busy being scared as hell of living in Minnesota.

Suck it, Twin Cities.

The Criminal Mind

2005-09-26T19:11:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me just now that with all the skin missing from my fingertips, I no longer have fingerprints. I got terribly excited. What better candidate to become a master criminal than a man with no fingerprints? I even liked the sound of it—The Man With No Fingerprints—like the title of a Sam Spade novel, very gumshoe. All I needed, I figured, was a thin mustache and a black turtleneck sweater, and I would be set.

I imagined red velvet ropes surrounding a well-lit, glass display case with a perfectly round hole cut into the side. I imagined four bare, metal prongs inside the case that had once held a massive diamond. I imagined flashbulbs popping, and hound dogs sniffing, and a junior detective in a trench coat sheepishly admitting to a chief detective in a three-piece suit that he still hadn't found anything. One of them had a cigar and a gold pocket watch. I think it was the chief.

I pressed the fingertips of my right hand onto the surface of the glass coffee table in front of my chair and closely studied the grease smudges they left behind. There wasn't a ridge or groove among them. I laughed the airy, wheezy, sinister laugh of a master criminal, and I pressed the fingertips of my left hand onto the table so I would have normal fingerprints to compare the blank ones to.

That's when it occurred to me that all the skin was missing from all my fingertips, and I no longer have any fingerprints.

Now I don't feel like a master criminal. I mostly just feel sad.

I'll still probably grow the mustache, though.

Things in Your Refrigerator that Fail Entirely to End Your Pain.

2005-09-24T17:39:00.000-05:00

About two months ago, I lost all the skin on my fingertips. If you were to ask me how or why this happened, I would look blankly at you for a few moments, be surprised that you were surprised, and assume that you didn't know me at all. The doctors at the HMO have no idea what caused this condition, nor do they have any idea how to treat it. They mumble and they scratch their heads, and without any real idea of what they're saying, they explain that it's just another facet of the Unbearable State of Being Dan, and that I should just go home and try to relax.

Skin missing from fingertips and the causes thereof, however, are not the subject of this post. This post is designed entirely to warn an unsuspecting populace that if skin has gone missing from your fingertips, and if you're making fajitas for dinner, the last thing in the world you want to do is chop jalapeños with your bare hands.
Without going into too much detail, I'll set the stage by saying that not long ago at all, I found myself whimpering in my chair with fingertips swollen to the size of Super Balls bearing a color you normally don't see on a person unless they've been cut open, and feeling pain that would make even the most committed masochist scream out the safe-word because things had obviously gone too far.

My brain kicked in after a while, which it will do when there's no other option, and reminded me that the chemical in peppers that causes the burning sensation is an oil, so to wash it away I would need an alkaline. With childhood memories of turning brown pennies into shiny copper pennies, I ran to the refrigerator in search of ketchup. There was no ketchup. Milk is also an alkaline. There was no milk. There actually wasn't much of anything in the refrigerator. There was beer, of course, and alcohol would easily break up an oil, but I certainly wasn't willing to waste a perfectly good beer just to end some searing, paralyzing pain. I considered soy sauce only briefly, then I spotted the pickle jar. I figured pickle juice had to be mostly vinegar, and vinegar is an alkaline. With more effort than I can express with just words (actually, if you have a moment, with more effort than I can express with just words, facial expressions, interpretative dance, or sock puppets), I twisted the lid off the pickle jar and plunged my fingers inside.

I would love to tell you that the pickle juice did the trick, but I am Dan, after all, and things are never that easy. The pickle juice intensified the pain and swelling tenfold. Out of clever ideas, unable to think further through the pain, and (I'm fairly certain) being mocked by the dog, I took the last option available to me. I decided to do what Cal Drier would do. I decided to quit being a sissy and muscle through the situation. Nothing lasts forever, and I am a Drier, damn it. It takes a lot more than jalapeños and missing fingertips to keep a Drier down.
I took a picture of my hand with my camera-phone. Then I bit down on the remote control and I sat on my chair to take the pain like a man.

That's the last thing I remember.

I've since regained consciousness, obviously, and seeing as how I'm typing, you've got a good indication that the condition of my fingertips has improved, so I'll skip the wind-down of the story and come to the point--the new point. The new point of this post is the camera-phone is the greatest invention in the history of man. No one is going to believe this story, as no one believes any of the stories I tell, but I'll show them the picture of my hand like I showed them the camera-phone video of the Golden Queen Pothos pounding on my desk, and they'll have no choice but to acknowledge that the story is—at least in part—the Bible truth.

Amen.

THX

2005-09-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sure everyone who has ever driven a car has done it: has driven up alongside the person in front of them to see if they could get a visual indication of why that person is so stupid. I firmly suspect that the guy who built the second automobile in existence did so only because he needed a vehicle fast enough to catch up to the guy in the first car and see what in the hell was wrong with him.

Pulling out of the grocery store parking lot today, I found myself behind a woman in a minivan with a flat rear tire. Make no mistake, I don't mean the tire was low on air, I mean it was flat. She had nothing more than a rim and a few ragged strands of steel-belted radial. That did not stop her, however from driving along at a healthy 35 mph. I was fascinated. I pulled up alongside her, mostly for the aforementioned reason, but also because I felt I was in a position to offer some assistance. I wouldn't have gone so far as to help change the tire. Oh Lord, no. I learned that sad lesson the hard way. I was willing, though, to at least point out to her in some manner that probably would have involved honking and pointing, that she was using only three wheels on a vehicle that traditionally calls for four.

I don't know that I expected to see her wearing a dunce cap as I drove past her, but it certainly wouldn't have surprised me. What I saw did surprise me. Written on the driver's side window, in letters so clear I assume they were written with an instrument designed for that very purpose, were the words, “Out of gas. Be back in a minute. Thx.”

I did not honk. Or point. Or make direct eye contact. I decided my best course of action was to speed away and go about my business. She obviously knew what she was doing. She knew what she was doing and I did not. To take the matter any further would have brought nothing but unpleasantness to all involved.

I'm safe at home now, a little wiser about the world and generally thxfull to have four sturdy tires, a tank full (halfway) of gas, and no need for window-writing instruments.

The Marble Queen Pothos

2005-09-02T08:36:00.000-05:00

Here’s a situation I never thought I’d encounter: I’m having a difficult time concentrating this morning because the potted plant on my desk is making far too much noise.

The truly amazing thing is not so much that the plant, which I’ve just learned is a Marble Queen Pothos, is making an annoying tapping sound with one of its leaves, but that there’s a plant on my desk in the first place.

So it seems as though it’s going to be one of those days.

Here’s all the information available on the Marble Queen Pothos:

1) You should fertilize it three to four times a year with a quality plant fertilizer.[1]
2) Overwatering is the most common error.[2] Saturate soil with water – allow it to drain. No standing water in bottom of pot.[3] Top 1” of soil should be dry before rewatering.
3) This is a low to medium light plant. A higher light will increase the color variegation of leaves.[4]
4) Prefers a temperature of 60º F. to 85º F.

And that’s all. Try as I may, I’m unable to find any instruction on what to do if your Marble Queen Pothos is tapping a perfect 4:4 rhythm on your desk with one of its leaves. The Green Machine, Inc. acknowledges sentience in their Marble Queen Pothos (see instruction # 4), but they fail entirely to mention what you should do if yours is annoying you while you’re trying to read your Email.

I think I’ll simply move it to the storage room. It is a low-light plant, after all, and in the storage room it can make as much noise as it wants (within reason) without bothering anybody.

_______________
[1] If my basic knowledge of botany is worth anything at all, the best plant fertilizer, as far as I know, is something small, furry, and dead.
[2] This part is a little unclear. The most common error they’re talking about—I suspect—is a puddle on your desk.
[3] Yes, it’s not very well written, true, but if the good folks at The Green Machine, Inc., of Winter Garden, Florida, from whence the plant came, spent all their time focused on grammar, rows and rows of Marble Queen Pothos would go unattended.
[4] This is the most curious aspect of the instruction card. It seems to me that someone who knows of the existence of the word variegation ought to know that there are no such words as overwatering and rewatering.

Transvagrant

2005-08-15T13:45:00.000-05:00

Walking across the Stone Arch Bridge today, I passed a transvestite bum. He was wearing a giant bag full of aluminum cans, a macramé cowboy hat, and shade of lipstick that—in my opinion—was a little too orange for him.

I would give just about anything to know what he plans to do with the proceeds of the sale of the cans. With most bums, a solid bet would be something along the food/beer/crack lines, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this one collected his money and made a beeline for the Clinique counter.

Free Socks

2005-08-01T14:37:00.000-05:00

My faith in humanity (and in myself, for that matter) hit a near-record low today. I decided to take a walk down Nicollet Mall to get some fresh air and determine the best course of action for dealing with the world. I grumbled and snarled and exuded bitterness all around the mall for several blocks. Then at the corner of Nicollet and Eighth Street a cute girl gave me a free pair of socks for no discernible reason.

So that was nice.

I eventually came to the conclusion that the world couldn’t be all that bad if cute girls in dark glasses were wandering around, smiling cheerfully, and distributing free socks to people.

Back at it, then.

Ass Maggots

2005-07-27T15:46:00.000-05:00

I woke up Monday morning to find my sheets peppered with what looked like long-grain wild rice, but ultimately turned out to be dead tapeworm larvae. At the foot of the bed, looking at me with one eye and presumably the bedroom closet with the other, was my girlfriend’s new mangy, cross-eyed, flea-riddled, tapeworm-infested, pee-drinking, might-as-well-be-a-cat, dog.

When I was a kid I found a dead frog in my pool. I sealed it in an airtight coffee can and buried it in the backyard. The next summer, with equal parts morbid curiosity and solid dimness, I dug it back up. Until I met my girlfriend’s new dog, that frog was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen.

My girlfriend loves her, though, so she’s a permanent resident. She’s really not so bad. I think she knows how rough she is aesthetically, and works hard to make up for it by exuding winning personality traits that include, but are not limited to running full-speed into walls. Besides, she and I have this great game we play wherein I look at her and say, “What crawled out of your ass and died?” Then I laugh and laugh and laugh, while she tries to piece together what she did wrong in life to end up where she is.

Burdened With an Overabundance of Sexy Manliness

2005-07-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

An odd thing happened to me during an interaction with one of my female co-workers just now. This is how the conversation went down:

Me (sweet and innocent as a babe in arms): Would you like me to handle the transition of the account into your department?

Female Co-worker (unable to control herself any longer): You smell so good.

Me (suddenly scared and confused): Um…

Female Co-worker (ravenous in her intent): You just smell so…masculine.

Me (concerned that she’s being facetious, as it’s been very muggy lately): I’m sorry, it’s been very muggy lately and it’s a long walk from my car.

Female Co-worker (behaving like one of those women of questionable morals you frequently see on late-night cable movies): No, it’s not that. It’s a good smell. It’s very…alluring.

Me (desperate to end the conversation): I have to go to the bathroom.

So there you have it. It seems that the potency of the old Drier pheromones peaks sometime in the summer of the thirty-second year. This new biological talent of mine would have been far more useful to me, of course, in high school, when girls kept a healthy distance from me and sometimes offered me unsolicited breath mints. There’s no sense in agonizing over what might have been, though. If I can just get myself within sniffing-distance of Angelina Jolie, all will be right with the world.

The Unbearable State of Being Dan

2005-05-10T10:56:00.000-05:00

It’s because I cut my thumb off that I’ve been taking lots of Vicodin. It’s because I’ve been taking lots of Vicodin that I haven’t been able to go to the bathroom for more than two weeks. It’s because I haven’t been able to go to the bathroom for more than two weeks that Sunday found me sitting on my sister’s upstairs toilet in Oklahoma, clenching my fists, grinding my teeth, determined to end the pain or die in the process. That was when the heavy glass light fixture five feet directly above me decided to let loose its moorings and break itself over my head. Now I have a cartoonish lump on my head and yet another deep gash to add to the deep gash tally.

Of course, the odds of a light fixture breaking free with the aid of no outside force whatsoever and falling at the precise moment my head was under it are so small that no one (especially my sister) believes it actually happened. But zillion-to-one happenings are commonplace in the unbearable state of being Dan. Imagine a horrible occurrence so unlikely as to be literally impossible, and you can bet that it’s happened to me two or three times.

PA-TING!

2005-05-03T12:02:00.000-05:00

Most of me is at work right now. I say most of me is at work because quite a bit of me is still at home, in the basement, wound around a saw blade.

I should start by noting that I had my safety goggles on. Safety first—that’s my motto. It’s because I was wearing my safety goggles that I was able to avoid getting blood and bone fragments in my eyes.

I was making a toy box for my sweet baby niece. I had just cut the last piece of wood that I was going to cut that day. It fitted where it belonged nicely. Because I am who I am, however, I decided that if I were to take another 0.00000042 inches off, it would fit perfectly.

Because I wouldn’t be able to tolerate a crooked line on my sweet baby niece’s toy box, I watched the wood go through the table saw very closely—so closely, in fact, that I was able to pay no attention whatsoever to where my hand was. Suddenly there was a blood-curdling PA-TING! as my left thumb exploded into little more than a crimson mist and fond memories. I made a sound I’ve never made before—a sound I wasn’t aware I could make—and I ran upstairs to find my girlfriend.

Now, every guy has a set of criteria that he’d like his ideal girlfriend to meet—attributes that she would have in a perfect world. Because of the very nature of how guys operate, these characteristics are largely unrealistic. Believe me when I tell you, though, that if you have a girlfriend who can keep her head when one of your thumbs goes missing, and get you to a hospital quickly, you have more than you ever could have hoped for.

Six hours later I stumbled out of the emergency room covered in bandages, blood, and sawdust, and I stumbled into a fancy restaurant and ordered a lovely chimichanga with chili con queso. It was very good.

That was Sunday. Since then I’ve been fueled by antibiotics and Vicodin. This morning I saw a plastic surgeon to discuss whether I’ll need skin grafts. He made me take my own bandage off. Whether that’s some sort of new hospital policy, or he just does it for sadistic giggles, I don’t know. I will tell you this, though: There’s no truer test of a man than to give him a tweezers and ask him to take his own bandage off. That was the toughest thing I’ve ever done.

So, what did I learn from this experience? The human race recently had a little movement called the Industrial Revolution, wherein we got smart and built machines to do the work that held the potential for bodily harm. There are big factories with tall and majestic smokestacks on their roofs that churn out hundreds of toy boxes a day. People—thanks to the Industrial Revolution—can walk into almost any mall and purchase an inexpensive yet sturdy toy box and return home with all their body parts intact. Embrace progress—that’s what I learned. Embrace change. Buy a plastic toy box and keep both your thumbs.

The HMS Bill Reimers – Part Five

2005-04-12T13:56:00.000-05:00

Doug sat at the end of his dock, staring through several feet of clear water at his riding lawnmower in the sand below, and pondering how completely unreasonable the people at the temp agency had been. Temp agencies—as far as Doug knew—were among the largest employers in the state of Iowa and probably the entire nation, so how could it be that their undoubtedly large list of clients didn’t contain a single person willing and able to remove his lawnmower from the Atlantic, repair whatever damage had been done to it, and mow his lawn? In Doug’s mind there were hundreds, if not thousands, of day-laborers in the Des Moines metro area that would jump at the chance to spend the afternoon in the sun, helping a monkey who clearly didn’t have the skills necessary to operate a riding lawnmower, and earning up to twenty bucks and a cold beer in the process. But the people at the temp agency wouldn’t even hear him out. He and Jake had been hurried out the door with gentle but firm assurances that the type of services they required were not the type of services offered by that agency. Doug was convinced that the unpleasant reception they had gotten was racially motivated, but was unsure whether the racism was directed toward monkeys or parrots. Either way, it was clear that his lawn was not going to get mowed.

Doug watched a small blue fish hover lazily above the lawnmower’s steering wheel. “I suppose,” he said to the fish, “that I’ll have to pay the fine and let the city take care of it. But where am I going to get the money?”

The fish didn’t offer much of a response. It did, however, give Doug what he considered his most brilliant idea to date: He would charter fishing tours to supplement his income. He had a boat, after all, that wasn’t doing anybody any good tethered to the dock. He wondered only briefly whether he would be able to drive a boat, and decided that it certainly couldn’t be as difficult as driving a riding lawnmower. There were fewer things to run into in the ocean, for starters, and you weren’t in any danger of losing control of your boat and driving it down the embankment and off the end of the dock. Yes, Doug was sure he wouldn’t have any problem maneuvering the HMS Bill Reimers around the coastal waters.

The more Doug thought about his new business venture, the more excited he got. His first step would be to have flyers printed up and post them around the pier, where the tourists hung out. He was on friendly terms with the guy in the thong that sold hotdogs at the pier and was certain he would let him tape a flyer or two to his hotdog cart.

Doug decided he had wasted too much time thinking and staring at lawnmowers, and needed to put his plan into action. He ran back to the house to find Jake and head to the copy shop. Goldenrod—he decided he would put the flyers on goldenrod paper. That would really make them stand out.

How Do You Like My Dark Side?

2005-04-06T11:28:00.000-05:00

Here’s a brief recap of my relationship with my Xbox:

In The Thing, I couldn’t kill the super big Thing in the room with the electrical grid, so I stopped playing.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I did everything I could to kill the six vampires at the dock, but I kept getting killed before I could get the gold potion, and that caused me to cry a little bit, so I decided it was best to stop playing.

In Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball, all the girls rejected me because I sucked at volleyball, so I couldn’t get a game anywhere on the island. Although I stopped playing, I collapsed into myself emotionally. I became withdrawn and stopped socializing with people. I also had to start taking Xanax to quiet the chiding voices in my head.

In Simpsons Hit and Run, I spent three weeks trying off and on to collect all the pieces of garbage around Springfield before the time ran out. I stopped playing when I noticed that several of my fingernails had fallen off and I had been put on notice for missing too much work.

In Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, I spent thirty-two hours straight trying to cross the stone bridge before the pillars stopped spinning. I don’t remember how it ended because I blacked out. When I came to, all the paneling had come off the walls in my basement and I was bleeding out both ears.

In James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, when it occurred to me I would never get past the sniper in the bell tower, I renounced the Christian God and fell to my knees, cursing an existence so black, so meaningless, so ass-backwards that entertainment and torture have become one.

Today I bought a copy of Lego Star Wars.

Those Lego Jedi bastards will never know what hit them.

A Wolf in Cheap Clothing

2005-03-18T11:07:00.000-06:00

I’ve been in a bad mood for six months. Half a year of foul weather, foul moods, sleepless nights filled with venomous thoughts, and a low-grade, noncommittal flu virus have turned me into a snarling, visceral beast that bears little resemblance to the human I once was. I stumble around all day growling and glaring and thinking sanguine animal thoughts. I even have more hair than I used to.

Werewolf folklore says you have to be bitten by a werewolf to become a werewolf, but I think that to become a werewolf, you need only to spend the winter in Minnesota, watching television commercials and waiting for something to change.

Today I planned on writing more stories about a monkey with hampered depth perception and a diesel-powered fishing boat. I should write about him, too, because a funny incident happened recently wherein he heard the phrase, “Watch out for the reef, jackass!” for the first time in his life and mistook it for a warning to stay away from marijuana.

I can’t write about him, though. Drooling half-man, half-beasts don’t write stories about monkeys running aground on a reef near an island where women’s beach volleyball championship tournaments are being held. Instead, they pace back and forth, grumbling and hissing and raging against the pounding in their heads.

The HMS Bill Reimers - Part Twenty-Three

2005-03-01T13:24:00.000-06:00

Jake watched the ringing telephone with growing interest. Not only was it making noise, but a little red light was flashing on its panel of buttons as it did. Jake, in keeping with his parrot nature, decided that his best course of action would be to bite the little red light. And so he did. Well, he tried, anyway. He didn’t get hold of the little red light, but he did accidentally press the speakerphone button.

“Hello?” said a voice on the telephone after some awkward moments had passed.

“Norway forty---” was all Jake was able to manage before an empty beer can struck him sharply on the back of the head.

“Never answer the phone you fool” yelled Doug as he grabbed Jake from behind and held his beak shut. “You have no idea who could be calling. It could be cops, or power-hungry hucksters who don’t have the wherewithal to become cops.”

Doug had recently finished reading The Curse of Lono, and had since been doing his best impression of Hunter S. Thompson, or at least, the person Hunter S. Thompson wanted the world to believe he was. He had been doing it for two days, but hadn’t told anyone what he was doing. The few people he had interacted with in that time simply assumed he was suffering a vitamin-E deficiency, or had perhaps been drinking wood glue.

“Doug?” said the voice on the phone. “Is that you?”

“Look at what you’ve done, you gormless bastard,” whispered Doug, as he squeezed Jake’s head tighter.

“Doug?” said the voice again.

“Who wants to know?” Doug yelled at the phone, and then ducked behind Jake as if it might explode.

“It’s Linda at the hotel,” said the voice. “You have a charter.”

Doug considered this for a moment. “Who is it?” he said at last.

“Three guys in their late twenties,” said Linda. “I don’t know their names.”

Doug stepped out from behind Jake and confronted the phone in an authoritative manner. He felt as though he was being toyed with. “Don’t toy with me,” he yelled at the phone. “This situation needs to be brought under control before it flies off and leaves us to drown in our own callowness. Now—where are they from?”

There was a pause as Linda made the inquiry. “Minnesota,” she said finally.

“Minnesota!?” said Doug. “They could be from anywhere!”

“What do you want me to tell them?” asked Linda, growing noticeably irritated.

“Tell them there’s no sense in hunting shark today,” said Doug. “The situation is too tenuous, my mood too foul.”

“They’ve already paid the deposit,” said Linda. “The short one put it on his credit card.”

“Have they been told the deposit is nonrefundable?” asked Doug.

“Yes,” said Linda.

“In that case they deserve what they have coming to them,” said Doug. “Tell them to meet me at the pier at noon.”

“Are you going to show up this time?” asked Linda.

But there was no reply. Doug simply stepped on the speakerphone button and turned to Jake. “Jake, old boy,” he said. “Those poor bastards will soon learn not to enter into contracts without the invaluable legal advice of someone such as yourself.”

“Norway: Forty-Seven, Ireland: Zero,” said Jake.

“Absolutely,” said Doug, as he hopped off the table and into his chair to watch the girls spread their towels on the cool morning sand.

The HMS Bill Reimers - Part Sixteen

2005-02-14T13:19:00.000-06:00

Eva stared at herself in the mirror and marveled at how far she had fallen. A week earlier she had been content with herself, secure, now she was hiding in the women’s restroom and giving serious thought to setting off the fire alarm. She decided her friends were to blame for her situation. She never would have answered the ad were it not for their motivational tactic of foretelling a future wherein her only meaningful relationship was with her cat. Her friends—they were going to want a detailed account of the evening. They were going to want to hear all about the man who owned his own business, the man who lived on a secluded beach, the man who was, “…short, but considered very cute,” the man who artfully failed to mention anywhere in his ad that he was a one-eyed monkey.

Eva straightened her dress. She was determined to not hurt his feelings. It was just dinner, after all. There was no harm in having dinner with another member of her genus. She would simply finish the meal, assure him she had a lovely time, and they would go their separate ways. Her friends, however, her friends would pay. She took a deep breath, turned, and walked out of the restroom.

She arrived back at the table to find Doug standing on his plate, with his head in his wine glass. He had taken off his bowtie. He was visibly drunk.

Eva cleared her throat to get Doug’s attention. Doug pulled his head from the glass and looked at her. Wine dribbled off his chin and down his sweater vest. “Hey, you’re back,” he said. “How was the John?”

“It was fine,” said Eva. “Is everything all right?”

“Yep,” said Doug. “They’re getting me another booster seat. I think three ought to do the trick.”

“I see,” said Eva, as she sat down.

She slid herself and her chair under the table and felt her heel connect with something soft on the floor. A sharp screech came from beneath the table that startled her and caused her to knock over her water glass. “What was that?” she panted.

“What was what?” asked Doug.

“Norway: Forty-Seven, Ireland: Zero!” said the noise under the table.

“That,” said Eva, “under the table.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Doug.

Eva lifted the tablecloth and peered cautiously under the table. She saw a macaw parrot at her feet, giving her a hard look out of one eye. “There’s a bird under the table,” she said.

“No there isn’t.” said Doug. “Can I pour you some more wine?”

Eva sighed. “Will you excuse me again?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Doug.

Eva slid her chair back, picked up her purse, and walked toward the restrooms. Doug clambered down his stack of booster seats and pinned Jake against the table leg. “If you screw this up for me,” he said, “they won’t find enough of you to bury.”

“Norway: Forty-Seven, Ireland: Zero,” said Jake.

Doug let go of Jake and looked out from under the table at the other patrons of the swank restaurant. “Man,” he said. “I had no idea chicks peed so much.”

Suddenly an alarm bell began ringing loudly and the overhead fire sprinklers kicked in, spraying brackish water over the crowd. Tables were jostled and chairs knocked over, as everyone scrambled toward the exits.

“Norway: Forty-Seven, Ireland: Zero!” screeched Jake.

“I’m not going anywhere without what’s-her-name,” snapped Doug. “I have a good feeling about this one.”

The HMS Bill Reimers - Part Four

2005-02-07T13:27:00.000-06:00

Whenever anyone asked Doug how it was he came to accidentally shoplift a five thousand dollar macaw parrot from a pet store in a strip mall on Iowa’s mainland, he would simply look at his feet and mumble that mistakes were made and that he’d rather not talk about it. When those people went on to ask him why the parrot, whom he called Jake, made a practice of saying, “Norway: Forty-Seven, Ireland: Zero,” and nothing else, Doug would look puzzled and admit that he didn’t have any idea. And if those people were blunt enough to ask what type of relationship a monkey and parrot could possibly have, Doug would throw an arm around Jake’s neck, pat his chest-plumage with his opposite hand and announce proudly that they were drinking buddies.

And they were drinking buddies. They just weren’t very good at it.

Because their combined weight was less than that of a standard six-pack, they were usually only ever able to work their way through about a third of a beer before they started slowly circling each other in their most fearsome battle-stances and hurling slurred insults at one another.

“I’m going to pull your gizzard out through your ass, you half-parakeet bastard,” Doug would snarl, for example, gritting his teeth and shifting his eye patch from one side to the other, trying to get a clear fix on Jake.

“Norway: Forty-Seven, Ireland: Zero!” would come the reply amid a flurry of feathers and claws.

The next day neither of them would remember what had happened the night before, or if they did, they pretended they didn’t, and all sore or bloody spots were treated as signs that fun was probably had by all.

Jake had been living with Doug about a month on the morning that a three-wheeled, propane-powered city vehicle pulled up in front of Doug’s house. Jake, who had been sleeping in the rafters of the front porch, watched a small man in short sleeves get out of the vehicle and step gingerly over the tall weeds between the house and the street. The man had to knock on the front door several times—pausing every once in a while to wipe sweat from his bald head with a pale blue handkerchief—before a groggy and hung-over Doug finally opened it and asked him what he wanted.

The man explained that he had been sent to serve Doug notice that he had forty-eight hours to mow his lawn to a length that complied with the statutes set forth by the city of Des Moines. He went on to say that if Doug was unable to comply within the established timeframe, a city maintenance crew would be deployed to that location to do it for him, and he would be billed for their services in addition to being issued a substantial fine.

The man handed Doug the notice and marched back to his car using his most official-looking gait, which unfortunately caused him to stumble and entangle himself in some particularly thick weeds.

Doug silently watched the man pull himself free from the weeds and drive away in his three-wheeled car. Then he rubbed his nose a couple of times and looked up at Jake.

“Come on, Jake,” he said. “We have to mow the lawn.”

“Norway: Forty-Seven, Ireland: Zero,” said Jake.

Offensive Candy

2005-02-04T13:13:00.000-06:00

I was given a special Valentine’s Day Kit-Kat today. The wrapper had a heart on it bearing the words, “Look for a special message inside!” I tore it open, expecting some sort of holiday greeting.

I did not get a holiday greeting. The candy bar told me I’m too crazy. That really upset me. Candy bars shouldn’t go around telling manic depressives that they’re too crazy.

That’s not entirely accurate. I’m misrepresenting the situation. What the candy bar actually said was, “U R 2 CRA-Z!” I think what hurt the most was the exclamation point at the end. The candy not only wanted me to know it thinks I’m crazy, but it also wanted to be clear that it was adamant in its position.

I won’t deny that the situation left me a little shaken. I hoped to take the rest of the afternoon off work to collect my thoughts and pour myself a restorative or two, so I asked my boss if I could go home. She asked me if anything was wrong. I told her that a Kit-Kat bar had questioned my mental stability in some sort of rudimentary instant-message vernacular and that I was having a difficult time focusing on my work because of it.

She didn’t believe me for whatever reason.

For the past hour I’ve been logging myself on to http://www.nestle.com/Header/Contact+Us/Contact+Us.htm
every few minutes and sending them special messages of my own.

I’ve never used so many exclamation points in my life.

The Generation Gap

2005-01-20T14:37:00.000-06:00

My father began receiving his first digital television signal today. He’s having a hard time understanding what’s being fed into his TV. He called me. This is how the conversation went down:

“I’m not a deviant in any way.”

“Is someone suggesting you are?”

“Hang on, now, I don’t have any desire to watch, or any interest in watching human sex.”

“That’s probably none of my business.”

“But here I go, clicking through the channels, and there are all these people standing up there telling me that I can watch all that business for only $39.95.”

“Yes, well, there are lots of different levels of service.”

“I mean Jesus Christ…”

“I know.”

“Would you pay to watch something like that?”

“Depends—is that $39.95 per show, or does that buy you a whole month?”

Xanax and a Matinee

2005-01-18T14:37:00.000-06:00

One would think that Xanax and a Saturday matinee would go together like pork‘n’beans. It’s one of those combinations that make so much sense in theory that you wind up wondering why movie theatres don’t sell Xanax at their concession stands—Coke, Skittles, and a heightened sense of tranquility. In practice, however, Xanax and a matinee is less like pork‘n’beans, and more like pork‘n’getting kicked in the testicles. I spent eleven bucks on Saturday to sleep through a Kung-Fu movie I really wanted to see. I was cold, I was uncomfortable, and the people on the screen were making an unpleasant amount of noise.

…Of Owls and Attorneys and Whether Pigs Have Wings

2005-01-10T09:16:00.000-06:00

Sitting here, not ten minutes ago, drinking stale coffee and doing my best to cope, I overheard the following conversation between two attorneys:

Attorney #1: “Now, are owls considered birds?”

Attorney #2: “I think so.”

I don’t know where to go with that. Either the situation is so rife with joke potential that I’m overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin, or they’ve truly outdone themselves this time and have left me with nothing.

The HMS Bill Reimers

2005-01-05T10:32:00.000-06:00

Okay, if you insist.

The HMS Bill Reimers

Prologue

Early that century, the sitting President of the United States decided to put an end to the complications that came with democratic elections, like trying to figure out who has more votes than whom, and what precisely that means, etc., and he drafted a bill that, during an election year, gave the Executive Branch of the government absolute power to rearrange the names of the states at will. He then stapled the bill to the back of another bill that gave members of Congress free dessert at the Congressional commissary on the second Tuesday of every month. Naturally, the bill passed and by campaigning heavily in his home state of Colorado and rearranging the state names on election night like a wild, large-scale game of three-card monte, he was able to win forty-seven of the fifty states and land a second term despite the fact that 104% of the population (residents, illegal aliens, and people who just felt like voting more than once) had voted for his opponent. In the years that followed, the practice of shuffling states during an election was a bit of a pain for everyone who wasn’t the president. It was generally tolerated, though, because without ever having to move, most people had lived in all fifty states if they had lived through two or three elections, which gave everybody a smug sense of sophistication and worldliness. The only people who were truly inconvenienced by the practice were the postal workers, who would spend all day delivering mail in a city in, say, Virginia, only to get back to the sorting station and find out they were now in New Mexico. But the world had long since recognized letter-writing as a dead art form and had treated it as such. All that ever showed up in people’s mailboxes anymore were solicitations for weatherproof siding and coupons for discount oil changes. Eventually it was decided that postal workers should be allowed to stick pieces of mail at random into any mailboxes they saw, since everybody would be getting roughly the same thing anyway. The logic being, if someone had important information to give to someone else, they would call them.

One person who did not share this pragmatic view of mail delivery was the executor of the estate of the Earl of Suffolk, who was a gruff old traditionalist and lived in a country where the mail still went where it was intended to go.

The Earl of Suffolk had purchased a lovely little vacation home he had seen a picture of on the southern shore of Des Moines, Iowa (originally Key West, Florida) during the brief and slightly embarrassing time when it was accidentally Marseilles, France. The vacation home was a three bedroom, one-and-a-half bath villa, with nearly two-hundred feet of beach and a wooden dock, to which was tied a diesel-powered fishing boat that the Earl had christened The HMS Bill Reimers without ever having seen it. Although the Earl was intensely proud of his various real estate purchases, he had an advanced case of eczema and never felt well enough to actually visit any of them. It was always the Earl’s intention to leave his vacation home in Iowa (which he still thought was in France) to his favorite nephew, who was attending school at Harvard University in what was then known as Macon, Georgia. Upon the Earl’s death, the executor of his will dispatched a formal and proper letter to the Earl’s nephew that contained the deed to the beach house in Des Moines, the title to The HMS Bill Reimers, and a short note saying how sorry he was to have to deliver the news that his uncle had unfortunately died of eczema, and that he should not hesitate to call if he had any questions.

***

Doug was bred as a helper monkey—engineered, as it were, to assist people with disabilities. Being born into his trade he had been endowed with all the attributes that were common to helper monkeys of the time: most of his genes were emblazoned with a small copyright date and the logo of the company that manufactured them; he had all the intelligence a focused tachyon beam and a public education could give him (which put him at approximately the level of a second-year college student); he had formal training as a helper to the disabled, with an advanced degree in Getting Things From High Places, and he had a little blue vest with a smiley-face and the words “I was born to serve!” printed on the back of it. What he did not have was a job.

He had had a job, of course. Straight out of training he was assigned to assist a man in Beverly Hills, California (originally Detroit, Michigan) who had a debilitating case of chronic fatigue syndrome and could only ever muster up enough energy each day to complain loudly about things. Doug was as disgruntled with his job as anyone would be if they worked as a valet to a man that was too lazy to do anything but yell. Hoping to save enough money to retire early, Doug took a second job at a medical laboratory, testing a new toothpaste that helped with erectile dysfunction. The disabled man Doug worked for was extremely uncomfortable with the noticeable result the very effective toothpaste was having on Doug, and eventually banked enough energy to call the helper monkey distribution center and demand that his perverted monkey be removed from the program.

And he was.

In truth, Doug wasn’t overly comfortable with the effect of the toothpaste, either. It was fun at first, but it got old fast. He decided it was probably time to leave his drug-testing job as well. During a convenient late-night raid by the Monkeys Are People Too: Test Animal Liberation Front, Doug faked an eye injury and began collecting his disability pension.

And that’s pretty much all Doug was: an unemployed, impoverished capuchin monkey, taking advantage of the welfare system and living in tenement housing under the grey, foreboding skies of Beverly Hills, California. Then one day he got a letter telling him an uncle he was pretty sure he didn’t have had died of eczema and left him a beach house in sunny Iowa.

Meatlog: Hour Seven

2005-01-04T15:38:00.000-06:00

It’s been about six and a half hours since I went insane, and I’ve been occupying myself during that time by writing stories about a monkey with an eye patch, and nibbling pieces off a meat log that someone sent me in the mail.

Going insane is nowhere near as exciting as it’s made out to be in books and movies. It’s actually very, very boring. You don’t have anything useful to do, and you don’t see much point in getting up and looking for something useful to do because you’ve gone insane, after all, and would probably just wind up drilling a hole through something, or dropping something heavy onto a police car. So you simply sit, nibbling the meat log you got in the mail and writing stories about a one-eyed monkey who operates sport-fishing charters from a small island off the coast of Iowa.

In truth, he actually has both his eyes, but pretends to have only one so he can continue to collect his disability pension from the government. He never takes his eye patch off, though, for fear that governmental auditors, or freelance binocular salespeople might spot him using two eyes and upset his carefree existence. Once a month he stumbles into the welfare office, purposefully bumping into things and knocking them over and then apologizing and explaining loudly to whoever will listen that he only has one eye. Then a woman named Gladys hands him his check and has him sign his name on a clipboard, and he stumbles back out again, knocking things over on the other side of the room. He’s done that every month for over five years.

Being a capuchin monkey, he has a prehensile tail. He has seen all sorts of documentaries that list, in detail, all the ways monkeys benefit from prehensile tails, but he stands firm on the opinion that the only use his has ever been to him was to give him a slight advantage at the video arcade on Third Street near the burrito stand. Whether that can realistically be called an advantage is debatable, but his initials do appear in the top ten high score listings on all the machines in the arcade except for the one where you have to dance on lighted arrows. He has long since given up trying to play that game, joking with his friends that all the prehensile tails in the world wouldn’t give him a natural sense of rhythm.

...sigh...

So that’s what you do when your mind has completely gone: you write stories about a monkey who drinks instant coffee, reads harlequin novels, and hunts shark in the deep green waters off the coast of Iowa until eventually you run out of meat log to nibble on and you go home to see if there is anything good on TV.

The Glorious Revolution of the Pants Proletariat

2005-01-03T13:58:00.000-06:00

Part of the New Year’s Revolution includes me owning more than four pairs of pants. Upon awakening this morning I only owned four. All four were threadbare khakis. (I’m not much of a shopper.) When the store opened at nine-thirty, however, the focused determination of the New Year’s Revolution overtook me and I burst through the doors, sleeves rolled up, fists clenched, and hell-bent for pants.

A store clerk saw the fierce purposefulness of my gait and the spark of hellfire in my eye and he intercepted me. This is how the conversation went down:

“Can I help you find something today?”

“Pants, Chachi.”

“What style of pants are you interested in?”

“Thirty-two thirty-four.”

Then there was a discussion about whether that actually was a style of pants and whether the clerk actually looked enough like Chachi to warrant me ignoring the name etched into the tag on his chest. He jabbered on about boot cuts and relaxed fits, but after it all, there were only two pair in the whole store that fit the thirty-two thirty-four criteria: woolen, pin-striped pants, and grey corduroys.

The revolution will be woolen—and pin-striped.

The pants population in my closet is now six strong and Chachi the clerk is sitting in a quiet room, having a relaxed fit.

Aught-Five, baby—the year of ample pants.

Purple Rain? I love that song!

2004-12-21T13:35:00.000-06:00

My girlfriend, because she loves me deeply and knows far better than I do what is bound to make me happy, bought me an iPod. My commute has become a wonderful adventure of surprise, humiliation, and extreme cold. I creep down ice-coated asphalt every morning and find myself saying things like, “Ruby Tuesday? I love that song!” Then I’ll mumble something along the lines of, “Of course you do, ass. That’s why you loaded it into the iPod.” Then my mind wanders to skies the color of old undershirts and the spot on my windshield that the wiper doesn’t seem to want to touch, and the next thing you know:

“Paranoid Android? I love that song!”
“You’re not listening to the radio, tardmo.”
“Oh yeah.”

People around me hate one another and risk each other’s lives, trying to get to work a few minutes sooner, and the sun comes up, but the temperature stays right where it is and…

“Lust for Life? I love that song!”
“You really are an ass.”
“Yep.”

…and on I go, inching ever closer to downtown Minneapolis, worrying that winter will never end and that there may come a day when I’m not surprised by what the iPod delivers next.

On Swedish Beds II

2004-12-07T15:05:00.000-06:00

Bonus: The Ikea Bed Villanelle

“I think I’ll be more comfortable,” you said
and looked as though you were about to cry.
My God that’s an enormous freakin’ bed.

Black memories went swirling through my head.
You took my hand and looked into my eyes.
“I think I’ll be more comfortable,” you said.

I cast aside my monetary dread,
for your requests I never could deny.
My God that’s an enormous freakin’ bed.

So to Ikea’s crowded halls we sped
and found the one you wanted me to buy.
“I think I’ll be more comfortable,” you said.

Then over almost-wooden boards I bled,
for power tools will often go awry.
My God that’s an enormous freakin’ bed.

When I was done, from wall to wall it spread
and to the bedroom floor we said goodbye.
“I think I’ll be more comfortable,” you said.
My God that’s an enormous freakin’ bed.

On Swedish Beds

2004-12-06T09:48:00.000-06:00

I’ve seen some big beds in my time, but DAMN.

If you were standing in the doorway of my bedroom and you wanted for whatever reason to get to my sock drawer, you would have to clamber over eighteen feet, seven inches of bed. If you wanted to go from there to the closet to get a belt or something, you’d find yourself crawling over twelve feet, four inches of bed. From there back to the doorway is only eight feet, ten inches of bed travel. There are still several dozen square feet of bare floor in my bedroom, but to get to them you’d have to lie on your stomach and have someone slide you under the big-ass bed that very nearly touches all four walls.

Last night, when I had completed assembly of the new bed and I stepped back to admire it, I decided that either the Swedes are a very large race, hovering somewhere around fifteen feet high, or they’re in the habit of sleeping six or seven of themselves per bed. Either way, their bedrooms must be enormous.

Bonus: The Ikea Bed Sonnet

My girlfriend’s needs are nothing to ignore,
Or so she told me over drinks that night,
And many confrontations were in store
If I’d not make a move to set things right.

So in Ikea’s crowded aisles I stood
Surrounded by the refuse of mankind.
She pointed to a bed of plastic wood.
I wrote a check and softly lost my mind.

And now the bedroom has no open space,
No solid surfaces on which to roam.
How curious it is to see a place
Whose ground is made of spring-filled Swedish foam.

But I don’t stress about it anymore.
Her happiness is worth the loss of floor.

On Reality Vortices and Flagellating Fairies

2004-11-15T13:18:00.000-06:00

I got caught in a reality vortex on Saturday. My girlfriend and I walked into a bar, the patrons of which were each operating on separate planes of existence. Everyone in the bar—including the staff—was horribly out of place, but everyone seemed to be having a lovely time nonetheless. Well, everyone was having a lovely time with the possible exception of two elderly gentlemen who were about to come to blows over whether there was a hidden double-meaning in “Have a nice evening.”

There was a Cossack and a lesbian with a pompadour enjoying a drink together; there was a small group of suburban PTA mothers sitting at a table with a late 1970’s CPA and what looked like the mummified remains of a Chinese woman from the Shang Dynasty; at a table near the window there was an old and noisome homeless man with tumors on his face who was engaged in a lively debate with Miss Teen USA 1999.

My girlfriend and I sat near the jukebox and watched the CPA stand and do his best Bruce Springsteen impersonation, even though a John Melencamp song was playing.

“Is any of this actually happening?” my girlfriend asked me.

“Of course not,” I said. “It’s just another reality vortex. Be patient and don’t make eye contact with anyone. It will soon pass.”

John Melencamp segued into Johnny Cash, and the Shang Dynasty mummy rose and shuffled slowly to our table in the manner that is unique to mummies and most varieties of zombie. She laid an ancient and bony hand on my girlfriend’s shoulder and said, “我射擊一個人在 Reno 觀看他死。”

My girlfriend, whose reflexes are like those of a ninja, froze and stared at me like a human in headlights. I thanked the mummy for her kindness and she shuffled back to the PTA table.

My girlfriend and I had just made an informed decision to leave and find another bar—one not in the grip of a reality vortex—when the homeless man approached us and said, loudly and with determination, “Do you wanna see a dragon?”

When a homeless man asks you if you want to see a dragon, you’ll find yourself faced with a curious dilemma. You don’t want to say yes obviously, because he could produce any number of unpleasant things that he has assigned the title of dragon, and you know you probably don’t want to see them. You also don’t want to say no, because—well, you just can’t go the rest of your life wondering what he would have showed you.

I said that I wanted to see a dragon.

He slapped a painting of what looked like an aardvark in soft watercolors on four-by-six tagboard onto the table.

“That’s a dragon,” he said.

He threw another painting onto the table.

“That’s another dragon with some invisible dragons,” he said.

My girlfriend’s ninja reflexes had forced her hands into tight fists and I could tell she was ready to spring from her chair at any moment. The old man threw another painting onto the table.

“That’s two fairies playing a simplified version of chess,” he said.

I was dizzy. I felt like I was going to throw up. My girlfriend was grinding her teeth and marveling at the state of things. The old man threw his last painting onto the table.

“That’s one fairy spanking another fairy with a brush while a spider watches.”

My girlfriend and I stared at the painting, then at each other, then back at the painting. It was as he had described it.

“Some people say that looks like an octopus,” growled the old man. “I tell them that’s a spider!” he said, slapping his hand on the table.

“It’s very nice,” I said.

“It’s fantasy art,” he said.

“Thank God,” I said

“Well, it’s Bargain Saturday,” said the old man. “Are you ready to bargain?”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said.

Miss Teen USA was watching us from her table, waiting patiently for the old man to return.

“You can have this painting for a drink and a buck,” said the old man.

“I’ll give you five dollars,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

I gave him his money and he gave me my paintings. I hoped that would be the extent of our interaction, but it was not.

“I’m trying to get a business started,” he said suddenly. “Painting murals on the side of apartment buildings.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” I said, imagining a city whose buildings were covered with giant images of fairies spanking one another.

“It’s going to be called ‘Sensual Design by Bruce,’” he said. “My name’s Bruce.”

Then he laughed and walked away.

And that was it.

I’ve spent most of this morning trying to find a screen printing outfit that will print me up a t-shirt that says, “I spent an evening in a reality vortex and all I got was a lousy watercolor of a fairy spanking another fairy with a brush while a spider watches.”

On the Nature of Indifference

2004-10-25T10:45:00.000-05:00

The woman who cleans the bathroom in my office is from Uganda or Angola or somewhere like that. She’s always in the men’s room—which is strange, because the men’s room is never clean and the soap dispensers have been empty since early 2002.

I say she’s always in the men’s room because most every time I have to pee, I find her cleaning-cart parked outside the door. If I’m lucky enough to wander into the men’s room and find it empty, she will invariably barge in while I’m peeing.

I assume—I’m certain—that the cleaning procedure mandates that employees knock on the door, wait for a response, and then enter. On the rare occasion that the maintenance guy has to go into the women’s room, he will pound on the door and shout, “Maintenance!” for an hour and a half before he works up the nerve to poke his head into the room. Then he shouts “Maintenance!” and “Hello?” for another twenty minutes before he actually goes in.

The cleaning lady, on the other hand, half-heartedly knocks as she’s opening the door to the men’s room. What’s worse is even after she sees me standing at the urinal with a look of horror on my face, she doesn’t turn around. She strolls right in and checks to see how many paper towels are left.

It happens at least once a week.

I once tried to politely tell her to knock it the hell off. It didn’t work. Through a wild display of arm-waving and high-pitched yelling, she made three things clear to me:
1) She didn’t speak a word of English.
2) All restrooms in Tobago are evidently unisex, and I was casting aspersions on her culture and her heritage.
3) I was never to speak to her again.

This morning the cleaning lady wheeled her cart slowly past my cubicle, stumbled into the cubicle of the woman who sits across from me, threw herself onto the woman’s desk and asked that she call an ambulance in clear, concise, unbroken English.

The area around my cube after that was a flurry of security personnel yelling into walkie-talkies, paramedics pumping up blood-pressure cuffs, and attorneys being visibly annoyed that so much noise was being made.

Here is the strange part:

As they wheeled her out on a gurney to Lord-knows-what (exploratory surgery, intense physical suffering, death), the only thing going through my mind was, “Now would be the perfect time for me to go to the bathroom.”

And I did. It was very tranquil—very pleasant.

On Young Minds Expanding

2004-10-11T09:59:00.000-05:00

I think my little brother had his first existential moment yesterday. I took him to see I Heart Huckabees and afterward, in the car, he decided to carpe the diem and ride the wave of facetious philosophical thought to which he had just been exposed. This is how the conversation went down:

“Every time I see a movie…” he began.

I looked at him. It was obvious something was trying to claw its way out of his brain.

“Every time I see a movie that…” he continued.

I waited. Noting happened. After a few moments of awkward, strained silence, he thrust his right hand into the air in a pointed, focused gesticulation.

“Every time I see a good movie…” he said at last.

Watching him try to exchange thoughts for words was painful for me. “We’re not going to talk about Spider-Man 2 again, are we?” I said.

“No,” he replied, determined not to lose a thought that was obviously doing its best to get away from him. “Every time I see a good movie, I feel like I want to live my life without regrets,” he said and slapped the dashboard victoriously.

I had nothing. I wanted to encourage him, but I had nothing. “What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

“I want to live my life without regrets,” he said, apparently irritated that I couldn’t grasp such a simple notion.

I didn’t like where the conversation was going, but I tried to help it along anyway. “Are you saying you want to stop regretting your regrets, or are you saying you want to avoid future regrets?” I asked.

“Avoid future regrets,” he said.

“I don’t think it works that way,” I said. “Regrets aren’t something you can steer clear of; they just show up after you’ve made a mistake. The only way you could live the rest of your life without regrets is to live the rest of your life without doing anything at all—but I think you’d regret that.

That frustrated him. “I just want to be able to do whatever I want,” he said.

“You are,” I said.

He gave me a hard, sideways look to show me he did not agree.

“Look,” I said. “If you operate within the confines of the law and the decaying moral guidelines set forth by the community, you can wake up every morning and spend the day doing exactly whatever the hell you want.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said.

“Thank God,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“I should be able to tell Heather that I like her and not care if she doesn’t like me.”

“Ah,” I said. “You want to ask out the girl you like and not regret it if she shoots you down.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“This is the same girl that has made it clear to everyone—including me—that the two of you are just friends?”

“Yeah. Heather.”

“The same Heather who left for college last month and now lives two states away in a co-ed dorm?”

“Yep.”

“The Heather that you won’t see until the summer because you don’t have a car, a driver’s license, or any money?”

“Um…yeah.”

“The Heather who’s a foot taller than you with long, blonde hair, boobs bigger than her head, a tattoo on the small of her back and tight, pink t-shirts that say things like ‘Hottie’ on them?”

“Yes, dammit!”

“You want to call her from your mother’s basement and tell her you want to start an exclusive, romantic, long-distance relationship with her?”

“Absolutely.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Why?”

“You’d regret it.”

On the Sherwood Ave. Boozehound

2004-09-20T11:50:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend’s dog is an alcoholic.

Of course, you never know what you’re going to get when you buy a dog from the pound. The dogs’ information cards contain the reasons for surrender, but the reasons are all suspiciously vague. They’re softened quite a bit, too. Most of the previous owners put “Moving” as the reason for surrender when a more accurate explanation would be, “There’s so much hair and urine and splotches of drool and general dog-damage in my house that I have no choice but to move to an apartment and close this dark chapter of my life.”

I don’t remember what my girlfriend’s dog’s card gave as a reason for surrender, but I can assure you it did not say, “Raging alcoholic. Spends most of time in shady, smoke-filled bars. Disappears for days, only to return smelling of cheap gin and twenty-dollar hookers. Mean drunk—violent. Will stop at nothing to get alcohol—mostly just barks, but will kill if she has to.”

I invented a new drink last night. I called it an Alan Alda. I can’t tell you whether it was good or not, because I never got a chance to taste it. It all happened so fast. I remember sitting down on the couch, holding my drink in my right hand and pushing the dog away from it with my left. After that is all teeth and claws and pain. The next thing I remember is running my right hand under cold water while the dog stood on the coffee table, lapping up a puddle of Alan Alda.

Right now I’m typing with seven fingers because I lost mobility in three.

Oh, well. Here’s the recipe for an Alan Alda, if you’re interested.

12 oz. can of Sunkist Lemonade
2 oz. Raspberri Absolut
1 tablet 12-Hour Claritin-D (optional)

On the Baying of the Hound

2004-09-17T10:12:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend is gone for a week and I’m in charge of making sure her dog doesn’t die before she gets back. The task is far more difficult than it sounds, as I discovered last night that the single greatest threat to the dog’s health and wellbeing is me, my power tools, and my increasingly skewed moral guidance system.

I sat down on the couch last night to watch a little TV, drink a frosty beer, and enjoy the first night of my week of bachelorhood. The dog did three laps around the coffee table and sat next to me on the couch. ‘This is great,’ I thought. ‘Like a modern Rockwell painting—a man, his beer, and his girlfriend’s dog.’ In my mind, I pictured how the night would go: the dog would sleep on the cushion next to mine, I would scratch her ears affectionately, and we would enjoy a quiet night of sitcoms. Unaware of the plan, the dog stood and engaged in sexual congress with the arm of the couch.

I’m not one to assign human emotion to inanimate objects, like a child who can’t bear to see his stuffed animal harmed, but I could feel the dignity of the couch crying out for help. I grabbed the dog by her nose, looked directly into her eyes, and in a loud, firm voice, said, “No!”

She began barking at me then. Six inches from my right ear, she barked ceaselessly and rhythmically, like a metronome, only much, much louder. I pushed her from the couch and she barked at me from the floor. I yelled at her to stop and she barked louder. I told her to sit and she sat—which was pretty cool—but she didn’t stop barking. “Quit being a bad dog, you bad, bad dog!” I screamed. She continued to bark.

I dragged her by the collar into the back yard, where she stood on the deck, barking at the house. She barked all the way through the 7:00 to 7:30 sitcom. I barely heard any of the jokes. I stood at the back door and yelled at her some more. A voice rang out from the other side of the shadowy bushes behind my house. “Shut your dog up, jackass!” it said. “It’s not my dog,” I whimpered quietly to myself, fighting back tears.

I let her back in. She stood on the coffee table and barked at me while I paced the kitchen and tried to come up with a solution. I offered her a rawhide bone and she barked at me. I held her mouth closed and she barked through her nose. I stuck the rawhide bone into her throat—which worked, but only for a second because she dislodged it with her front paws and continued barking.

I ignored her through the 7:30 to 8:00 sitcom, thinking she would get tired and stop eventually. She didn’t.

Then I got creative.

The following is a list of things that will not stop my girlfriend’s dog from barking:
- Threats.
- Food.
- Isolation.
- Xanax.
- Prayer.
- A cold shower.
- Crying and begging.
- A no holds-barred, man vs. dog, fistfight.

In the end, I gave up. I opened another beer, sat on the couch, and leafed through the Yellow Pages, looking for an inexpensive hotel in which to spend the rest of my bachelor week. The dog kept barking. I took a drink of beer. She stopped. I set the beer on the table next to me and she started again. I picked the can up and showed it to her. She stopped barking, wagged her tail and licked her chops expectantly. I handed her the beer and she ran into the basement with it, leaving a trail of beer that lead from the couch, through the kitchen and down the stairs.

And that was it. I thought the dog had Turret’s, but it turned out she just wanted a beer.

I saw her about a half hour later. She dragged herself slowly and uneasily onto the couch, showed me all the affection a dog can show a person, and fell asleep on her back.

I’m starting to like that dog. We’re kindred spirits, she and I. She’s tasted human blood now, though, so she may have to be put down.

On My Station in Life

2004-09-07T10:50:00.000-05:00

Something happens to girls when they begin to feel safe in their relationships and relatively sure their boyfriends aren’t going anywhere—something unpleasant.

I worked this weekend. I worked hard. Three days of manual labor to make room in my home for my girlfriend and make her feel comfortable therein. She has been stressed for quite some time about whether there would be room for all her stuff, so I rearranged rooms, I painted walls, I hung several yards of shelves, and I moved everything I own into the basement. I bled and I swore and I used power tools in ways that their manufacturers never intended them to be used. I did all this because I care deeply for my girlfriend and I don’t want her to feel stressed. She is sweet and she is kind and she treats me well…

…most of the time.

My entertainment center, which has served me well for many years, was too small. It could hold the TV, its peripherals, and not much else. Because something needed to be in place to hold our combined entertainment-related items, I bought a butt-puckeringly expensive entertainment center. The thing is enormous. It took six hours and several emotional breakdowns for me to put together. When it was erected and the boxes were in the trash, however, all were pleased. My girlfriend and I stared in awe for several minutes at the mammoth entertainment center, which will take me many years to pay for, and much grooviness flowed through the living room.

My sturdy old entertainment center sat bare and abandoned in the kitchen.

Since my kitchen isn’t big enough to accommodate any furniture and since I had no way to dispose of the old entertainment center, I decided to move it into the basement with the rest of my stuff until I could figure out what to do with it. I supposed I could give it to my little brother when he gets an apartment, or wait until one of my sisters showed up with a truck, and I would take it to the dump.

I found my girlfriend in the bathroom and I asked her if she would help me carry it to the basement. I imagined that she would throw her arms around me, kiss me on the cheek repeatedly, and say something along the lines of, “After everything you’ve done for me this weekend, that’s the least I could do.”

What she actually said was, “No.”

I won’t deny it, I was stunned. This is how the conversation went down:

“Will you help me carry the entertainment center to the basement?”

“No.”

“Um…please?”

“Why do you want it in the basement?”

“Because if we leave it where it is we won’t be able to open the refrigerator.”

“Well, do you want to keep it?”

“Not really, but I have no way to get rid of it right now.”

“Just put it in the back bedroom and we’ll figure out what to do with it later.”

That one really got me. I looked around to make sure I was still standing in my house and the entertainment center, basement, and back bedroom were things over which I still had control.

“So you won’t help me move it to the basement?” I asked, about to faint from confusion.

“No,” she said again.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to help you bring it back up later.”

That was horrible. It was as though I had been sucker-punched. Suddenly and with no warning, I wasn’t calling the shots anymore. My world and everything in it had fallen into the hands of another.

“I suppose I’ll just bring it down there myself,” I said, timidly.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she said, turning back into the bathroom.

And that was it. That was the end of it. I pulled and I shoved and I grunted and with much effort, I got a two-hundred pound entertainment center down the basement steps by myself.

My back hurts today. I think it’s just muscle strain. I hope it’s just muscle strain.

On My Appreciation of the English Language

2004-08-31T11:59:00.000-05:00

There are some beautiful gems hidden in our great language. For example, I learned just this morning that everything to the west of any particular point is occidental, and everything to the east of that point is oriental. I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I’ve been having with that. I’ve been referring to everyone east of me as “Orientals.”

There are dozens of jabbering Orientals in the two rows of desks to the east of me. There is only one Occidental sitting in a dark and lonely corner to my west. My boss sits due north of me. I don’t know what you’d call her. She’s from Wisconsin, originally, so I suppose I could technically call her a cheese-eating, Packer-loving Oriental.

She came into my cube about a half hour ago and asked me if I had received a call from an agency in New York. This is how the conversation went down:

“Any word from [New York agency]?”

“That bunch of brainless Orientals? I’d be shocked if any of them knew how to use a phone.”

The look on her face was not anything I would be able to express in words. It was magnificent.

What a language.

Now I’m headed off into the Orient to find some lunch.

On the Migratory Patterns of Inanimate Objects

2004-08-27T13:26:00.000-05:00

I should start by saying I didn’t sleep last night—at all. I lay awake in the humid darkness, sweating and worrying about life until it was time to get up and take a shower. I stood in the bathtub, fighting to stay upright through the empty, dizzy feeling that comes with being awake for twenty-four hours. When I decided I had put enough effort into being clean, I shook the water out of my ears and reached for my hair jelly, which has been sitting in the same spot on the toilet tank for over three years. But my hair jelly was not there. In the spot where it belongs was a tube of some sort of eucalyptus and buttermilk hand cream.

I was paralyzed with fear and confusion. Not only did I need to wrap my brain around where my hair jelly had gone, but I had to determine whether it was possible to own aloe and cocoa butter hand cream and not know it. Fatigue and panic overtook me as I scanned the room for my hair jelly. I doubled over, and with my hands on my knees, dry-heaved above the toilet three or four times. Then I collapsed onto the ground to see if my hair jelly had fallen behind the toilet. It had not.

On the verge of crying, I stumbled into the bedroom and asked my girlfriend if she had seen my hair jelly. She said it was in the linen closet.

Now, a man within his faculties would stick out his chest and demand to know why his hair jelly had migrated to the linen closet, and why a bee’s wax and daisy nectar hand cream had taken its place. A man in the grip of sleep deprivation and hair jelly pandemonium, however, mumbles a timid, “Thank you,” and drags himself back out of the room.

Once my hair had been greased down, my wits began to return to me. I knew I was going to have to get to the bottom of what my hair jelly was doing in the linen closet, but I also knew I was going to have to be operating on far more cylinders than I was if I was going to try.

I walked to the spot on the kitchen counter that is reserved for my caffeine-infused Alka-Seltzer and found, instead of caffeine-infused Alka-Seltzer, a cluster of cloth-wrapped rubber bands, commonly used to hold hair in a pony tail.

Moments later, my girlfriend opened her eyes to see me standing over her, looking pale and withdrawn. She asked me what was wrong. I told her I had misplaced my caffeine-infused Alka-Seltzer. She told me it was in the linen closet.

So it seems as though it’s official: my girlfriend is moving into my house and I for whatever reason am moving into the linen closet.

Yep.

On the Measure of a Man

2004-08-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

The main problem with Bachelor Night was not that my girlfriend was there when I got home; it was that she wasn’t in any kind of hurry to leave. That was a problem for me because I was in a huge hurry to get Bachelor Night started. The beer was chilling in the refrigerator, the itinerary was laid out on the coffee table, and I was stripped down to my drawz. Everything was ready. The urgency to get Bachelor Night started—the urgency that had been building all day—had to do with the first item on the agenda for the night: I had to go to the bathroom.

Having someone else in the house inhibits certain of my activities—going to the bathroom is one of them. When someone else is in the house I have to go to the bathroom quickly and with the water running, for fear that the person is listening at the door and will know that I’m going to the bathroom. But Bachelor Night is different. On Bachelor Night I can really do it up right. I don’t worry about anyone pressing their ear to the bathroom door on Bachelor Night. In fact, I leave the door open. I find myself some good reading material and I take my time—relaxing and not stressing about making unpleasant sounds or smells. It’s a staple of Bachelor Night. It’s a ritual. It’s the measure of a man.

But there she was—sitting silently on the edge of the couch with a sort of dazed look on her face. I dropped subtle hints, like, “When are you meeting your friends?” and, “How long do you think it will take you to get to the restaurant?” and, “Get the hell out of my Bachelor Night!” but nothing took. She just sat there, staring, not saying anything.

The internal pressure was too intense. Defeated, I went to the bathroom, turned the water on, buried my face in my hands, and did a dump-and-run. The whole thing took about fifteen agonizing seconds. It was very painful, several capillary vessels in my brain ruptured, and to add insult to injury, I clogged the toilet.

I limped out of the bathroom, all dizzy and mad, and found my girlfriend standing by the front door, shoes on, keys in hand, bidding my all sorts of cheerful goodbyes. Bachelor Night had started out badly. When the door closed behind her, I hurled myself onto the couch and sulked for a half hour.

And then something magical happened. Suddenly and for reasons I can’t explain, I had to go to the bathroom again—really quite urgently. It was wonderful. I had been given a second chance at a fulfilling Bachelor Night. It was as if divine providence was smiling down on me. Then I remembered that the toilet was clogged and I realized that divine providence is a sadistic sominabeach.

Years ago I had a plunger. It sat next to the toilet. At some point, while I was not at home, my dog decided the plunger would look much better if it were in fifty pieces spaced evenly around the living room floor. I haven’t had a plunger since then, and I didn’t have one last night. I stared into the bowl for about twenty minutes, suffering through contractions and wondering vaguely what to do. In the end, I decided I had no choice but to flush again and hope for the best.

Seconds later I was ankle-deep in water.

I cleaned the bathroom floor and sent the pipe snake into the toilet. The pipe snake didn’t clear the blockage. In fact it didn’t do anything but make more of a mess. I only mention it because something odd happened with it. About the third or fourth time I extracted the pipe snake, it brought with it a long string of dental floss. That’s not odd in and of itself because I flush the stuff down the toilet every time I use it. The strange part is I hadn’t flossed my teeth since I had gone to the dentist—ten days earlier.

I carried the wet towels and the soiled pipe snake into the basement, and with a heavy heart, got back into my clothes and set out into the humid night to buy a plunger. When I finally got the toilet unclogged it was well past seven and Bachelor Night only had a couple more hours left to salvage.

This is the part that’s difficult to believe: I clogged the toilet a second time. It was no big deal, of course, because I had a plunger, but I have to admit I felt a strange sense of pride. The only other man I know who could clog a toilet twice in as many hours is my father. I ambled out of the bathroom feeling manlier than I ever have.

As I sat down on the couch in my drawz and cracked a beer, it occurred to me that if I were to watch sports on TV, I would, at that moment, be as manly as a guy can get. That wasn’t likely to happen, though, because I can’t stand watching sports. I flicked the TV on and saw that channel eleven was showing Girls’ Indoor Beach Volleyball.

With that, I was a die-hard sports fan.

The Americans won against the Romanians. They all hugged after the match.

Bachelor Night had left me proud to be an American, and as manly as I guy can get.

On the Awkwardness of Death

2004-08-18T15:03:00.000-05:00

Because my luck is what it is, I stumbled into the coffee room this morning and stood face to face with the woman in my office whose husband died less than a week ago, and because I am who I am, I handled the situation badly.

Death is awkward, and anyone in my position would have a difficult time coming up with something to say that didn’t sound trite or clichéd. You don’t want to pretend like nothing is amiss, because that’s indirectly disrespectful; you don’t want to bring up the fact that something is amiss, on the off chance they were not dwelling on it at that particular moment; you don’t want to tell them how sorry you are to hear what happened and ask if there is anything you can do, because that’s what every person who has come within several feet of them has been saying to them since it happened; and you don’t want to ask them how they’re doing, because that’s just flat-out dumb.

This much is certain—please believe me when I tell you this: you have to stay calm. Don’t panic, because more than you don’t want to say anything inappropriate, you absolutely don’t want to let out a scream and run out of the room.

I’ve created a very uncomfortable situation for myself. The next time I see her—which could be any moment now—not only do I have to address the issue of her husband’s untimely passing and how I regret that such a horrible thing had to happen to her, I also have to explain why I screamed like a little girl when I saw her this morning, and why I ran from her as though I was running from a five-foot spider.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do. My current plan is to slip her a twenty, say something along the lines of, “Whaddaya say we put this all behind us?” and wink knowingly at her.

On Mental and Physical Health

2004-08-11T11:33:00.000-05:00

Last night, for reasons that have yet to reveal themselves, I got sick and barfed all over the driveway. Then I stumbled into the house, brushed my teeth and spat blood into the sink. Then I drank some Alka-Seltzer to settle my stomach and quell my throbbing headache. Then, back in the bathroom, I discovered sharp and compelling evidence that I have a urinary tract infection. Then I poured myself into bed and fell asleep during my girlfriend’s discourse on why it would be prudent to go to the hospital.

Then this morning a curious thing happened: I was sitting at my desk, watching the room spin and being amazed that I could be cold and sweating at the same time, when two attorneys approached me.

“We’re going up to Corporate Legal, we should be back in about an hour,” said one of them.

“Okay,” I said.

“Yeah,” said the other. “We’re going to meet with in-house counsel about you.”

“That’s right,” said the first one. “It’s about time someone did something about you.”

“I assumed as much,” I said.

“We knew you would,” said the second one.

“Let me know how it comes out,” I said.

“He’s getting better,” one said to the other as they walked away. “This time last year he would have started twitching.”

So there seems to be some sort of balance between mental and physical health; while one is on the incline, the other is befouling the driveway—and vice versa.

Right now I see two computer screens and I feel like I’m floating. I don’t know if that’s mental or physical. I hope it’s the one that allows me to go home early.

On the Resilience of Russian Taxis

2004-08-10T10:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was in a foul mood. I spent the day tortured, like a character in a Dostoyevsky novel. I walked home from work under a grey sky and fought the urge to fall to my knees and scream as my hatred toward myself and toward the world swelled beyond my ability to handle it. At home, knowing nothing in life will ever be good or just, I stood in the back yard and had all sorts of existentialist moments. I agonized and I grieved and I came to the realization that the best any of us can hope for is stagnation and death.

Then my girlfriend came home and found me hyperventilating on the couch. She asked me if I was okay. I told her I was not okay, and she was not okay, and nothing is now or ever will be okay.

She asked me if there was anything she could do to help. I told her that there was no help to be had, that life was just a complicated holding pattern of bleak despondency and relief comes when life ends and not a moment sooner. I told her that although it was only six-thirty, we might as well go to bed, because the only respite from suffering we are allowed is fleeting moments of unconsciousness.

She agreed. We went to bed.

A half hour after that I couldn’t remember what I had been upset about.

A half hour after that I was in a movie theatre and I couldn’t remember having been upset at all.

About an hour after that I was watching a car chase in which a Russian taxi took hit after hit from vehicles of all different sizes, spinning and flipping and exploding and never stopping for second—just grinding along toward its destination, and I wondered at the marvelous simplicity of life.

On Parrying the Wit of the Caribou Staff

2004-08-06T11:25:00.000-05:00

This is how it went down:

I was waiting for Russell to get coffee and I was standing by a bagged coffee display, trying to make sense of the sign. It called the bagged coffee "Incredibly Pure." The way I see it, nothing can be incredibly pure. There can be different levels of impurity, obviously. A bag of coffee with a grain of sand in it would be slightly impure, whereas a bag of coffee with a '67 LeSabre, three syphilitic kangaroos and a jar of weapons-grade plutonium in it would be incredibly impure. Pure, as I see it, is 100%. You can't have an incredibly pure thing because pure is pure and one pure thing is no more or less pure than another pure thing.

That’s what I was doing when it happened: I was minding my own sweet business, grumbling over a poorly-written sign, and listening to Sinatra in my head when an aproned cash register jockey bounced up to me and asked me if I needed help. I told him I did not. Then he officiously asked me if I wanted to buy a bag of coffee. I thanked him for his interest and told him I did not. Then he fleeringly asked me if I was just going to stare at the sign all day.

I stayed calm. That’s the kind of guy I am.

Even though I was under no obligation to, I told him what I was doing and why I was doing it. He took a quick, pensive glance at the sign and told me I was wrong.

Then it was on.

We went several rounds, the Caribou coffee slinger and I. He couldn’t come up with a reason for my being wrong, but insisted that I was nonetheless. I had plenty of reasons for being right, but he was unwilling to listen to them, having forced himself into a fight-or-flight state of mind. He had no interest in gleaning the correct answer, he just wanted a battle.

To add betrayal to injury, Russell, whom I used to respect, took the side of the irrational Caribou tip dependent. I was defeated—not because I was wrong and certainly not because I was outmatched, but because people have no grasp of the rules of intellectual discourse anymore. It was like trying to fence with a guy who had never seen a foil before, and so had armed himself with a tube sock and some liverwurst—I had not choice but to shake my head at the state of things and walk away.

So here I am—mad at the world, hurt by a close friend, and disillusioned by the Caribou employee screening process.

And it isn’t even lunchtime.

On Overcoming all of Life’s Relentless Torment

2004-08-02T10:57:00.000-05:00

Life—more often than not—is a real kick in the nards. It’s a kick in the nards followed by an insulting comment, the faint sound of laughter from onlookers, and a large electricity bill waiting for you if you ever make it home.

Normally I’m kept down by life’s relentless torment, but this morning I discovered the key to overcoming it. This morning I discovered that there is no day so bad, no problem so insurmountable that it can’t be washed away by having your back scratched first thing in the morning, before you fully wake up.

Here’s what you need to do to be ready to cope with anything life decides to slap you in the crotch with (pay attention, this is important):

Step One: Find someone willing to scratch your back first thing in the morning, before you fully wake up (ideally someone with long fingernails).

Step Two: Do whatever it takes—and I mean anything—to keep them from going away.

Step Three: Sleep on your stomach with your back exposed.

And that’s it. Once you’ve done that you can make a rude gesture in the face of adversity, because no matter what happens, you’re going to look forward to waking up the next morning.

On Being Thirty-One and One-Third

2004-07-28T11:04:00.000-05:00

Today is my thirty-first and one-third birthday and for whatever reason, no one seems to care.

I’ve gotten no calls from my family; I’ve gotten no presents; I’ve seen no signs of a cake; no one has offered to buy me a beer; and when I ask people if there’s anything special they’d like to say to me today, they wrinkle their eyebrows, shake their heads, and look at me as though there is something wrong with me.

It’s not every day that a guy turns thirty-one and one-third, you know. In fact, some would call it a once-in-a-lifetime event. Is it too much to ask that the people who purportedly care about me shake me by the hand, slap me on the back and say, “I’m glad you didn’t fall off a bridge or something at thirty-one and one-fifth because it’s damn good to have you around. The first round is on me.”

I guess I’m going to have to buy my own drinks and celebrate this milestone by myself.

That’s the way the world works, I suppose.

**Addendum**

My ex-girlfriend remembered. This just came in over the e-mail:

Happy Birthday, Honeybear! Love, love, love and kisses! I hope you are having a fantastic and wonderful day doing things you enjoy with people you like. You deserve to have some fun. I hope the day will be all you wanted it to be.

See? That’s not so difficult, people—a quick note to throw a little appreciation in a guy’s direction and let him know you’re happy he made it to thirty-one and one-third.

This much is certain: if it comes down to it, I know which one of y’all I’m going to save from a burning building.

On Anaphylactic Shock

2004-07-26T13:06:00.000-05:00

I left a meeting early.

I don’t usually go to the meetings I’m supposed to go to, but this one had food at it. Naturally, I was the first one to arrive. Meetings over the lunch hour usually have safe, nondescript foods—salads and breads and lean deli meats and the like. The goal of meeting-food is to provide something that everyone can enjoy. You’d never find, for example, barbeque ribs at a corporate meeting because the vegetarians and PETA members in the crowd would run to Human Resources, bang their fists on desks, and demand equal treatment.

That’s why everyone in the conference room was surprised when the organizer announced that as a change of pace she had ordered Chinese food. She called it Chinese food, anyway, and I’m sure whoever sold it to her called it Chinese food, but if you were to take it to China and try to serve it to someone who has a firm grip on what Chinese food actually is, I’m certain they would poke gingerly at it with a chopstick for a few seconds and ask to be excused from the table.

We all took a step back as she peeled the foil coverings off the plastic tubs and grey, malodorous clouds of MSG wafted through the air. We looked at each other nervously, the attorneys, the executives, and me, quietly daring each other to take the first plateful.

I went first because after all, it was free. It smelled horrible. It looked worse. It looked like something the evil alien leader would eat in a bad sci-fi film—slimy, maggoty, squirming things that let you know he’s not only an evil alien warlord, but he’s gross, too, so you should have no compunction about cheering when the burger-eating humans blow up his spaceship.

I took a couple heaping spoonfuls of what I thought was chicken fried rice, and sat down to listen to important business matters. I had nearly finished all I had taken when I realized I wasn’t eating chicken fried rice—I was eating shrimp fried rice. I could tell because my airway swelled shut and the muscles of my alimentary canal went into spasm, trying to get rid of what my stomach clearly recognized as a threat.

That’s why I left the meeting early. I left in a very big hurry. I went straight to the men’s room and spent the next forty minutes befouling one of the stalls. I won’t go into what happened in the stall—partly because I don’t remember most of it—but I will say without fear of exaggeration that there is nothing remaining in any part of the thirty feet of my digestive system. It is completely empty.

Now I’m back at my desk. My breathing is labored, I’m shaking, I’m sweating, I’m cold, I’m seeing floating colors that I’m sure aren’t there, I weigh approximately twelve pounds less than I did this morning, and I could use a mint.

Just another day at the office.

On What May or May Not be Real

2004-07-22T11:33:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to the bar and argued with a guy for two hours about whether sience is just another religion and then I walked home. On the way home I saw a woman who had a lens from a pair of eyeglasses taped over her right eye with packaging tape; a man with only one limb whose wheelchair had toppled off the curb and who was lying in the street, refusing the help of those who offered; and a bald man who was bleeding out the back of his head and who was trying to get on a bus with an intricate configuration of metal pipes that wouldn't fit through the door.

Then at home I spent an hour listening to Alan Alda try to convince me that the first people on the continent came from three different places.

Then I went to bed and decided that nothing that had happened to me was real and I probably hadn't even woken up the morning before.

Then I woke up this morning and it was Thursday.

Now I don't know what to think.

On Removing Irritants from One’s Nose

2004-07-21T13:14:00.000-05:00

There was a hair in my nose last night at the restaurant that vibrated when I exhaled. It made my whole face itch. It was driving me insane. I was so wrapped-up in the torment of a vibrating nose hair that my girlfriend had to quietly clear her throat to get my attention.

“You know I’m not the type of person that would tell you what to do,” she said. “And I would certainly never try to change you...”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“…but would you please take your finger out of your nose while we’re at the restaurant?”

I apologized and assured her I didn’t take the request as a personal attack and told her to feel free to tell me to take anything she wanted out of my nose. She said she was sure she’d take me up on the offer, and I postponed the battle with the nose hair until we got to the car.

As the night wore on, my girlfriend watched stoically as I sent (in no particular order) my index finger, my thumb, a Phillips screwdriver, a wadded section of my shirt, the corner of the remote control, a tortilla chip, a quarter, and a rolled magazine subscription card up my nose to try to get it to stop itching.

Then I remembered I had a nose-hair trimmer in the bathroom.

I got the trimmer, fired it up, and stuck it in my nose, buzzing and grinding away as I stood in the middle of the living room, watching the TV.

After a few minutes I stopped and took a couple test breaths. The vibrating had stopped. I laughed and growled and trash-talked my nose hair, examining the head of the trimmer, hoping to see it. There was nothing there.

I turned around and noticed I was blocking my girlfriend’s view of the TV. She was staring at me with a look of horror that is usually reserved for someone who has just kicked a puppy. That’s when I began to think that I might have been better off staying in the bathroom with the nose-hair trimmer.

I apologized again and she told me it was okay, but when she looks at me now, she looks at me less as an object of desire, and more as a man who owns a nose-hair trimmer.

The good news is my nose doesn’t itch anymore.

On Lynchburg Lemonades

2004-07-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve had in-laws. They were a nightmare. They had no time for me and they made no effort to hide it. Every moment spent with them was a moment so rife with awkward tension that sweat would literally pool in my socks and underwear. The first of many thoughts that ran screaming through my head when my wife announced she was leaving me was, “Thank God I never have to see her parents again.”

You can imagine my reaction, then, when my girlfriend looked at me this weekend and said—ever so casually—“My parents want to meet you.” It’s mostly a blur, but I distinctly remember dry-heaving and being lowered into a chair and told to put my head between my knees.

There was a lot of discussion after that, and a lot of trembling, and in the end I decided that there comes a time in every man’s life when he has to fill his chest with air, clench his teeth, and do the right thing to keep his girlfriend happy.

First, however, I was going to need some bourbon.

I drank two Lynchburg Lemonades, did everything I could think of to get my hair to lay down, and I got into the car to go to Sunday dinner. That’s when the bourbon kicked in. I was drunk. I was really, really drunk.

In the car, I quietly coached myself. “Be polite but assertive,” I mumbled. “Don’t be a sycophant. They’ll walk all over you if you give them the opportunity.” I was pumped. I was ready.

I had a little trouble walking in a straight line from the car to my girlfriend’s parent’s front door, but I was sure that after a few deep breaths and a vigorous shake of the head, no one would be the wiser about the Lynchburg Lemonades.

I stood firm, focused on not tipping over, and remained composed through the standard, “Pleasure-to-meet-you’s,” and the, “No-no-the-pleasure-is-all-mine’s,” but was thrown for a loop when hit with the not-so-standard, “Please-don’t-touch-the-dog-or-she’ll-pee-on-the-floor.” The room began to spin. A small, white cat brushed against my leg.

“I can pet the cat, though, right?” I said.

“That’s not a cat,” someone said.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” I said, bending over.

“That’s the dog. Please don’t touch her,” someone else said.

“That’s not a dog,” I laughed, scratching the cat behind its ears.

“Please don’t touch the dog!” someone blurted.

“Hey,” I said. “I think your cat just peed on the floor.”

Things went a little downhill after that, but all in all, I think it went well.

On Being the Candiest Poop-Stink to Grace Cha-Cha-Cha

2004-07-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

It was brought to my attention yesterday that at least one of you (possibly more) has been referring to me as “…the candiest poop-stink to grace cha-cha-cha.” Granted, this information was given to me by a man who had likely been up all night drinking wood stain, but that makes the situation no less hurtful.

Now, I understand that I am often difficult to get along with, but really, name-calling is never justified—especially when you’re going to use such a stupid name. I had to take a poll to determine whether I was being insulted. 12.7% of those polled seem to think there’s something complementary about being the candiest poop-stink to grace cha-cha-cha, 4.8% refused to participate, and an overwhelming 82.5% agreed that the candiest poop-stink to grace cha-cha-cha is not something they would enjoy being called.

To sum up: most of you I care about and respect deeply. There is, however, one of you (possibly more) that I consider to be the most butter-licking fartwad in all of Dorkland.

On Killing Sharks

2004-07-14T13:44:00.000-05:00

The Mighty Shark Hunt ’03 was a complete failure. I spent two thousand dollars to fly two thousand miles to sit in a hotel room for a week, drinking overpriced beer and watching network television. When I left the Atlantic, its shark population was as strong as it ever was and my newly-formed opinion of the Bahamas and its inhabitants was giving me tension headaches.

But that was last year.

The Mighty Shark Hunt ’04 kicks off at the end of August—this time in the Pacific. I have a good feeling about this one. Mistakes were made last year that I won’t repeat. I put too much faith in the locals to supply me with boats and fishing rods and the like—never again. I’ve worked out a new system where I can catch a shark all by myself. The way I figure it, all a person needs to kill a shark is his swimming trunks, some sun block, vodka, vermouth, martini olives, and a couple hundred dead chickens.

In less than six weeks I’ll be standing on the edge of a reef, surrounded by a two-mile crimson cloud of chicken parts, enjoying a cool martini, and waiting for something over sixteen feet to swim within lunging distance.

Then it’s on.

The secret to wrestling a shark into submission is to maneuver yourself into a position that allows you to stick your leg in his gills. You simply step into his gills like you’re stepping into a pair of pants. Then you hold your breath and do a few ninja-kicks until he suffocates and dies. After that it’s just a matter of dog-paddling him to the shore and dragging him to an outdoor bar to impress all the girls therein.

Yes, the Mighty Shark Hunt ’04 should be a breeze.

Updates to follow.

On Proving One's Technological Prowess

2004-07-13T13:21:00.001-05:00

This is how the conversation went down:

Girlfriend: “You mean to tell me you don’t have a blog?”

Me: “Well…no.”

Girlfriend: “What’s the matter with you? Everyone has a blog. Even I have a blog.”

Slightly Embarrassed Me: “I just don’t have a whole lot of spare time.”

Girlfriend: “You don’t know how, do you?”

Shocked Me: “Yes, I do.”

Girlfriend: “I could show you how if you want me to.”

Totally Emasculated Me: “Look, I could be blogging like a fiend in under thirty minutes, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

That was a little over eighteen hours ago. I’ve been trying to get this thing up and running every minute since. I’m still not sure I got it right. If someone were to wander up to me now (as people seem to do) and ask, “Do you have a blog?” I would say, “I’m not sure. I think so.” If they were to go on to say, “What’s your blog’s address?” that’s where my confidence would fail me and I would stare blankly at them until I started to tear up and have to excuse myself to another location.

I’ve read the blog-starting instructions again and again in much the same manner that a chimpanzee would read an electrocardiogram—there has been a lot of screaming, several bathroom breaks, and very little understanding.

A few minutes ago, however, something went “beep,” the screen had the word “congratulations” on it in bold letters, and I was directed to an area that allows me to type text—this text.

So this is it—the maiden voyage. Good luck everybody, I’m about to click the little grey button at the bottom of the screen.

…tell me I don’t know how to blog.

Sheesh.