Thursday, May 29, 2008

Fraction Of The Sun Doesn't Even Make Sense

Yesterday, a coworker asked how I was doing. And while I don’t remember the exact, sarcastic reply, it was a fairly common bumper stickerism. I realized this as I was saying it and pointed out that I do in fact gauge myself by information that bumper stickers give me. I told her that I was also imagining whirled peas, that not all who wander are lost, and that my other car was a broom.

I almost told her that my child was an honor student at Grass Lake Elementary, but she would not have bought that, knowing that my child has a vocabulary of about 5 words (6 if you count when he leaves the “L” sound out of “clock”).

It made me sort of focus on bumper stickers for the last twenty-four hours; which in itself is strange, as I start to lose interest in most things after about 3 ½ minutes. But on my way in to work this morning, I was taken for a moment by a license plate frame. The top portion said “Yea I’m A Bitch” and the bottom portion I skipped on as I figured the cleverness quotient wasn’t going to rank high enough to stop my stride. I’m under the assumption that this witticism ended with something along the lines of “So Deal With It” or “But I’m Super Fine” or “But So Is Your Mom”.

I’m also under the assumption that this particular bitch meant for the engraver to put “yeah” and not “yea”. I’m assuming there was no grand bitch vote and that the yea’s took it.

Which then reminded me of something kc! had sent to me. He sent a link that had a picture of Built To Spill lyrics tattooed on a young woman’s body. Again, they’re being thrown around all willy-nilly here, assumptions that is, but I’m assuming it was a young woman – the young part that is, the shape of the body made it fairly certain it was a woman. Now I love me some Built To Spill, I mean I do, if it were legal for me to marry Built To Spill and settle down and have a whole mess of children (that I would name Bill To Spill) then I would do it. What I would not do is have a line of lyrics tattooed to my body – but that’s me.

What I really wouldn’t do, is have the incorrect lyrics tattooed to my body. I mean I know that “sum” and “sun” sound a lot alike, but I would recommend that before going in under the needle for a few hours and having something permanently added to your body, you go over the lyric sheet once or twice just to make sure you’ve got it right.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Number Nine

Nine years ago, coming off a Lebowski fueled session of late night bowling complete with Caucasians, we stumbled around the world’s biggest little town. Exhaustion, booze and years have left me with fairly hazy memories. There was the crazy lady a couple of lanes over who chucked her ball halfway down the lane with a thundering crash every time she rolled. There was scotch, Highland Park. “See, I told you!” (Or was that the next trip?) A walk down to the river that runs through town. Not being able to actually bowl inside the National Bowling Stadium. Was there an artificial limb in the party ahead of us? More scotch in the parking lot.

And now nine years of laughter and some frustration and excitement and fear and most of all mad love, all of it just seeming like an extension of everything that came before; that line of demarcation just another crazy scene as funny as water wings, as soul stirring as blowing cottonwoods accenting guitar notes reaching for heaven…

Till the wheels come off.


Life Lesson For Today: There is little that a bad mood can do against the mighty power of a little T. Rex.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Videobeard

Hi everyone, once again my job keeps me from the regular sort of posting I would like. Therefore, I will be going into my next job with the expectation that I am allowed blog time.

But hey, how about this weather? I had something on my mind about the preview of summer we received this last weekend, but the return of standard papier-mâché colored skies have driven that out of me. So I will talk about a beard.

I enjoy having a beard, I feel that it adds something to my face – mainly hair. On top of this though, I’m a lazy shaver, so a beard helps to fulfill that laziness quotient. But, as with anything good and mighty, there are drawbacks:

  • Sometimes things get caught in a beard. Fallen bits of lasagna, pieces of fluff from the flannel sheets you were just getting ready to put away for the season until the muddled newspaper sky returned, homeless people covered in Velcro:
  • People make assumptions about you like you’re more threatening than your non-bearded contemporaries, you’re hiding something, you’re a lumberjack… And well honestly, carrying a double bladed axe around town doesn’t help this last assumption out.
  • On those hot, summer (or preview of summer) days, your face will sweat more than normal.
  • I occasionally end up with the stray beard hair in my mouth.

On this last point; I expect this to happen. I mean, I have a bunch of extra hair right around my ol’ mouth hole, sometimes it’s gonna wind up inside. Sometimes, and more often than one would think would be normal, I end up with a beard hair lodged in my gums. I’m unclear how the hell this happens. Sometimes, I think that I may actually be growing beard hair in my mouth. And then I stop and tell myself, “Hey you, you’re being crazy, knock it off.” But still, the thought persists.

What if I’m actually growing all kinds of hair inside my body? What if I become some oddly discomforting David Cronenberg movie?

Seriously, how about this weather…


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Cowboy Dan” by Modest Mouse. Extra nice as it has sufficiently driven out “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.



Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Signs

This is the ballyhooed neon sign outside my window:

The cat's tail wags.

As I was trying to take a picture of the sign I noticed a cop car pulling up onto the sidewalk across the street. I moved over to the desk and there's another cop car on the second street our apartment building sits on. I am in the middle of a triangulation of cop activity.

I watched two officers walk up the sidewalk, hands on utility belts. They entered into the apartment complex across the street.

And just now, a pizza delivery guy walked to the same front door. It smells like a set up to me. "Get out of there pizza guy!" I yelled. "The cops are waiting."

He looked around for my voice, double checked the address, and yelled, "Did you order a large Hawaiian?"

I did not. Pizza guy's on his own, I can't look out for everyone.

And this is the sort of thing that starts to happen when neon moves into the neighborhood.

Monday, May 12, 2008

They Typically Come In Threes

I left work on Friday at about 7. Bif picked me up, which meant that drinking could get started all that sooner; yeah me. As we got near the apartment I noticed that a Jeep was parked in the spot in front that, because of the yellow zone painting but lack of sign, most people don’t realize they can park there without incurring the wrath of the parking gods.

“That looks like Manboy’s Jeep,” I thought to myself as I continued up on the hill to another spot.

It turns out it looked like Manboy’s Jeep because it was Manboy’s Jeep. As I neared the apartment, there was High Five Hickman waving hello, Manboy talking in low tones on his cell phone. I tried to quickly remember if I had made plans with them and then forgotten, but that seemed pretty unlikely as I rarely make plans with anyone anymore.

Nope, there was an accident. A car full of uninsured chumps had rolled back into the near brand new Jeep and dented the door. It was simply coincidence that brought them right to my front door. The chumps were occasionally coming back to Manboy with a new total of promised money to keep him from getting the police involved but he was holding steady. If he were a band, he’d be the Hold Steady.

I dropped my stuff off upstairs and come back outside to wait with them until the cops showed. It was four, tall, uninsured guys and the only defense Manboy and Hickman had going for them was Hickman’s rape whistle, which I poo-pooed at the time, but I don’t know what those guys had in mind. I mean I’m not any sort of badass, and am more likely to hurt myself than anyone else were we to get in the shit, but these guys don’t know that. I’m big and can scowl with the best of them.

The cops came and I left to get crazy drunk on whisky and Rainier. At some point I poured a mess of Cholula Hot Sauce into my mouth. These are the things that are bound to happen when grandma watches the baby for the weekend.

Saturday night (which is alright for fighting), there was another accident right in front of the apartment again. I awoke round abouts 1:30 in the morning to the sound of a serious collision and people yelling. I had passed out watching a movie on the couch and my first thought was, “what the hell did Riley do?” Then it was, “Do we have any ice cream?” Then it was, “Oooh, I bet that was an accident.”

I got up and looked out the living room window to see one car attached to another. First car was completely facing the wrong way in that lane, second car had a good portion of its front wrapped around the light pole on the corner. I took another look at the clock, realized that closing time was fast upon us and had probably had something to do with this here incident. “Bummer,” I believe I mumbled to myself.

Moments later, sirens came a calling. I laid down on the living room floor (which ironically is where I had found myself earlier that afternoon, pounding headache and uncontrollable sweating that I tacked up to chugging hot sauce) and watched the patterns that the red and blue lights made on the ceiling as they bent themselves around the light pole, pushed through the curtains, danced along the molding.

I’m beginning to believe that the newly placed neon sign outside the building is responsible for this mini rash of bad car karma.

Friday, May 09, 2008

Know Your Audience

It’s an important lesson to learn, to know your audience. One of the benefits of tailoring your delivery to the audience is knowing you have a better shot of having your message listened to.

Yeah, knowing you audience… For instance, I don’t want to walk into a meeting with my manager, HR generalist, directors and VP’s and let loose with a barrage of dick and fart jokes. It works here at Billy Cleans His Plate (I feel I know this audience), but in the confines of the business world, it ain’t gonna fly.

Another for instance for ya, you might not want to, in a same sort of meeting as above, pretend to French kiss a coworker on a stage in front the entire group. As I did. “That’s how I roll, now they know that,” I said, a little cavalier to be sure. But in the back of everyone’s mind I will forever be the guy who practically dry humped a coworker in a meeting. Which isn’t necessarily the guy I DON’T want to be, but it might make me a questionable candidate later down the road.
Again, depending on the audience.

And here’s my point, well one point that I’m sharing with this audience; I feel Coors does not know their audience.

I was walking to work and spied a billboard designed to advertise Coors Light. Apparently, the good people at Coors have developed some sort of contraption on the top of their Coors Light cans that provide a “smooth pour”. Now I gotta say that the majority of Coors Light drinkers aren’t going to give two flying fucks alongside a bullfrog blowing an anteater whether or not they get a “smooth pour” from their can of beer water. It seems to me that the majority of Coors Light drinkers don’t much care about beer period; if they did, they wouldn’t be drinking Coors Light. It seems to me that there are only four reasons to be drinking Coors Light.

1) You don’t know any better.
2) You’re sixteen and it’s what your over 21 year old acquaintance, or friend with a fake ID, got.
3) It’s free.
4) You plan on steady drinking can after can of beer for an extended period of time and are still concerned with your girlish figure.

I might go so far as to say that anyone drinking a can of beer (and man, I like me a can of beer from time to time) aren’t concerned with how that beer comes out the can, except to make sure a majority of it gets down the gullet and not all over the ground.

Coors, know your audience.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Town Without Pity

I’m trying to find a witty/entertaining/caustic/non-whiney way of stating that I’m feeling sorry for myself, but I’m failing.

The pisser is, I have nothing to feel bad about. It’s just one of those weird days where I can’t really cope with anything. I can make it look good from the outside, like I got it going on, but everything just seems to knock another piece off inside me.

Pity party? You bet. A bad, bad lame one, with no keg or chips. Not even a veggie platter.

I kinda want my brother to poke his head around the corner, Tecate Light in his hand and a smile while he says, “You’re doing it buddy.” I kinda want someone to call, tell me they’re coming with a sixer. I kinda want a hug.

I kinda wanna get over myself, I kinda wanna stop ending words with the letter “a”.

I’m upset for and by friends that I love.

I’m upset my favorite song by that little band Grandaddy, “AM 180”, is in a car commercial.

I’m upset to learn, this late in life, that the dream I had of living in an apartment above a store with a neon sign, is not that awesome. The brand new sign that the bookstore put up today shines right into the living room window, and the fact that the neon cat has a neon tail that wags ain’t making it better.

I’m upset with the reaction I got when walking down the street in this:

Kids these days have just seen everything.