With One Hour Of Television

Sweet Mother McJuggles, what an effing day.

It’s getting a bit old, this work thing, I’m sure almost as old as hearing about it. Wanna hear about a baby crazy cranky with molars coming in? Molars that apparently take 3 and a half months to make their appearance? Neither do I.

I will say that as The Simpson’s keeps the Kickers placated for half an hour, I had the TV on for a bit. And in just a half an hour, I learned such things. Oh, the things I learned.

Firstly, there’s the Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus concert coming to theaters in Disney 3-D. I’m not sure what many of those words mean when they’re strung together like that. But by the sound of the voice over actors voice, I should be really freakin’ excited about it. You might say it’s a once in a lifetime sort of thing this Miley Montana 3-D thing.

Excited, me, for sure.

Second, guess what’s opening on Valentine’s Day? Don’t really guess, I won’t hear you. Step Up 2: The Streets. I am completely unsure what Step Up 1 is, but from the commercials it appears to be partners from either side of the economic divide coming together, learning something about themselves, and dancing their asses off. It’s directed by Jon Chu, the commercial goes on to excitedly tell me. The commercial tells me this in the same sort of hushed, excited tone that I feel a commercial would tell me that the long lost actual first Orson Welles film had been found.

Jon Chu? Jon Chu! Do you know what Jon Chu has done besides Step Up 2: The Streets? Silent Beats. What? You’ve never head of Silent Beats? You’re not alone.

And before I was finally able to extricate myself from the pull of the TV, there was one more commercial.

WalMart, that bastion of all things American, informed me via their marketing folks that there will be all kinds of women all over the country making food and putting snacks into bowls this weekend for their burly men who will continue to sit on the couch watching the Superbowl. Afterwards, I’m sure the women will go back to the kitchen and clean it up, ‘cause well that’s what women do – they don’t watch football.

Sometimes I get so tired…

Sperms Of Endearment

Speaking of 4 and a half minute cum shots…

Wait. Sorry. No one was, but I’ve already started down that path.

A weird thing that I was talking to some friends about the other day; when I was in high school, me and a bunch of my friends – male friends – would all get together and watch porn.

It was typically at Damon’s place as his mother was typically either out of town or so out of it she wouldn’t notice 6 or 7 teenagers in her place, and there was typically beer. Well, there were typically wine coolers the first few times as we hadn’t developed a taste for anything that didn’t resemble Fanta left to ferment in a Southern California garage. At the time, nothing seemed strange about a gaggle of guys, done up on illicit booze and hormones, sitting around together and watching people acting poorly and fucking hard. It was this strange thrill of doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing. Now, looking back on it, it seems a little odd to me, a little strange.

I would like to end this with some teenaged misunderstanding – a sexy misunderstanding – but there’s nothing. I wish there was a tale of one of us discovering something about ourselves…

Wait. There was that guy John. You know, the 22 year old hanging out with a bunch of 17 year olds. I don’t remember how he ended up orbiting our circle except that he at one time dated our drum major. On one of these porn nights, while if I’m not mistaken we sat on Damon’s couch and watched some guy getting blown in a hot tub, John suddenly busted out with:

“You guys only hang out with me because I can buy you beer.”

We all sat looking at him for a minute, no one refuting it, but no one brave enough to admit to it for fear that our alcohol supply would dry up. After an uncomfortable silence, we all went back to watching Intergalactic Hookers, or whatever.

And so that sad day John learned a little something about himself; that he had no friends and we only put up with him as he would occasionally show up with a half rack and a bottle of root beer schnapps.

I guess I also learned a little something that day; I no longer watch porn with my friends.

Week In Review

I have been an awful blogger lately, last week’s output was embarrassing and I beg your forgiveness. If I had a picture of myself on my knees to post here, I would.

And let me make that clear, if I had a “clean” picture of myself on my knees…

My last week was fairly miserable. I mean it started off fine enough, but then things just continued to slide. There was a moment on Wednesday when I could feel a crack in my composure that I was trying to mend (and by mend I mean ignore), but then as things started piling up, the cracking just kept happening.

It was like that scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park where the RV is going off the cliff and Julianne Moore hits the back window and as she stares through the glass and into the tremendous fall down a cliff, stress cracks start radiating out underneath her with every move. It was exactly like that, without the T. Rex and without Jeff Goldblum saving me by grabbing onto my lucky backpack.

Where were you Jeff Goldblum, you with your stylized speaking cadence?

There was no big issue, just a bunch of little ones; all of them fantastic examples of the ridiculousness of holding an office job. On Thursday I walked out of the middle of a meeting. On Thursday night I got to one of those points where I couldn’t see past the big Monster Truck of Anger that was gunning its engine in front of me, it felt like all the blood vessels inside of me were going blow. On Friday it entered my mind, albeit briefly, that I could just walk away from this gig and not come back.

Which brings to mind a number of questions, like: Why did Heath have to die for Britney’s sins? And what does this say about the poor timing of Brad Renfro? Does anybody else suspect an Olsen twin of performing murders that look like suicides? And seriously, where were you Jeff Goldblum?

Yeah, it all seems pretty petty and ridiculous now, particularly when you get home to a little man who’s so excited to see you that he starts jumping up and down and clapping. How are you gonna beat that? You’re not, not with a ten foot stick made out of crappy office job.

So, I’m hoping to prioritize my time a bit better and get more posts in, realize this job is what it is and get on with doing what I need to to get on out of it.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Rockit” by Herbie Hancock. Don’t ask…

The Mood And Australia

I’m in an all day class today and I’m really excited. Read “excited” as “bored by the prospect of” and “really” as “really”.

I’m going to learn about the power of my career. I’m hoping it’s the ability to breath under water. Or super heated laser beam eyes.

I’m a little beat as I spent a better part of last night tossing and turning. Part of me was worried about not being able to post today – seriously. Part of me was obsessed with Australia coming up with knock off versions of everything in the world. This seemed funnier when I was losing sleep over it.

I’m going to recommend that you read the Australian Billy Cleans His Plate today. If I had the time, I would totally build one and fill it with stories of vegemite. And marsupials, man you cannot go wrong with marsupials.

I’m off for class, books in hand. I’m still really excited (see above)


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “My Iron Lung” by Radiohead

The Moon and Antarctica

Cold one this morning. It was absolutely clear out, which is honestly a nice break from the recent weather. I realize that being a denizen of the Pacific Northwest (or the PNW as the kids are calling it – they’re not by the way) I’m gonna see some rain. I’m okay with it, I don’t like to complain about it, but when it comes down to it, I’m ready for a break. But with the clear sky in January, comes the cold.

Not the kind of Antarctic cold that will freeze your eyelashes or anything, but certainly the sort of cold that will turn every exhale into swampy condensation on your mustache – if’n you have a mustache. I do, connected to a beard, so I imagined that I must have looked like some sort of rabid mountain man by the time I climbed off of Capitol Hill and entered downtown.

All of the puddles were iced over giving the city hundreds of mini ice fields that grabbed onto whatever light was being tossed their way and held onto it like a secret. All of them shown like scratched up magic; the trapped neon looking particularly, beautifully tarnished. I had this mad, childlike desire to run to every one of those surfaces and crack them with my boot, let that frozen light out. I was almost stopped completely by the icy reflection of the moon.

It was a cold and lonely, pale silver, but somehow it was calming. I looked up and noticed for the first time that morning the nearly full moon up above the dark buildings. I immediately thought of Kickers looking for the moon outside the living room window and, unable to see it from his already tiny vantage point, bending his knees, squatting and tilting his head to try and catch it. I thought of all the chaotic change soon to be entering my life and laughed in its face.

It felt good.

The Earth itself seemed to feel an accommodation to change, and had begun to begrudgingly turn a bit differently, allowing the sun to show up a bit earlier than it had been. The last third of the walk was beneath a predawn blue sky that is a color that seems pulled from my very dreams. It’s seems like a blue created by the right combination of words in a Pixies song, a shade of blue that evades any camera or painters brush, a blue that feels like your first solo drive in a car – and you’re gonna take that ride all night and find yourself in a small and empty town when the next day comes to shake your hand.

If you gotta go to work, this is not a bad way to do it. Not at all.

What I've Got

Nothing.

I’m bogged down in work and bothered to no end that I have to concern myself with the end of the fiscal month. I’m bothered that the combination of the words fiscal and month were ever put before me.

I’m bone tired, dog tired, I’ve been tired. T-I-R-E-D spells it. I keep looking at things on my desk as if I’m expecting an answer, as if the stapler will tell my future with its black, boxy, body. I feel that in response to questions I’m turning my head slowly, that I’m moving in dream time. I find myself resting my head in my hands when I read an email. I’m yawning so long and hard it’s almost erotic.

I’ve got an empty coffee cup. I’ve got a bag of almonds. I’ve got a little, green plastic mermaid that’s designed to hang of the rim of a cup holding a cocktail and I wonder why I don’t go to bars that serve their drinks with little plastic things hanging off of them, or piercing food that’s in them. My typical bars don’t have little plastic cutlasses or monkeys or ring tailed lemurs. And as I yawn another porno yawn, I realize I would probably just choke on it in my mad rush to shove alcohol into my waiting maw.

I have a mad desire to walk up to a coworker and start writing on their face; perhaps the preamble to the Constitution. “We the people…”

I like that a preamble comes before a good regular amble.

I’ve got “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston stuck in my head.

Negativity Just Makes Me Stronger

I’ve been, again, being slapped around by some coincidence lately. Typically, as I’ve written before, I start to notice a trend for coincidence and will wait for 3rd occurrence to call it such. This one is new, a new trend in forecasting coincidence, not multiple examples of the same coincidence, but multiple coincidental anomalies stacking up.

I have been spending way too much time at work looking at spreadsheets. Yet on I charge…

Instead of a big, massive, “something’s going on in my world” coincidence, it’s like being in a swarm of coincidences. But unlike bees, which would hurt, this is more like say a swarm of hummingbirds with tickle feathers.

It started with Nikki 2 K’s and me talking about “Bone Machine” by the Pixies. He had it stuck in his head and was digging it fierce. I told him how much I loved that it starts out with this strong and almost backwards drum beat, and then the bass comes in all sly and understated, and then you get slapped in the dick by the guitars. Around about an hour later, we’re in a supervisor check in when, just to shake some shit up, the assistant office manager starts playing a guess the song by the lyrics sorta game. We’re given a “I was talking to preachy preach about kissy kiss” straight outta “Bone Machine”. I almost won that round, but unfortunately left out one “he bought me a soda.”

Later, we’re having some lunch and talking about 80’s movies. We were specifically talking about 80’s movies that we may have loved when we were younger, but should not be revisited. Footloose may have come up, but Footloose comes up in this circle a lot. I mentioned Fletch and how I feared going back to watch The Breakfast Club, not wanting to sully the fond memories I have. At some point Singles came up – not as a movie to avoid seeing again, but because it also comes up in this circle a lot. Talk then naturally turned to the Singles apartment building which is up the street from where I currently live. Y’know, the Singles apartment building:

And the next day, what did I pass on the way to a staged reading? I passed a Safeway. But, soon after I passed the Singles apartment.

There was a third one that I cannot remember unfortunately, completing this coincidence by three rule I seem to have. But today, in the middle of quality scoring some of my reps work and listening to my iPod, I decided I needed to look at something else for a couple of minutes. I went through some blogs that I check on a regular basis, including Dave’s. He is currently playing the shit out of The Basement Tapes by Dylan and The Band. I read this while The Basement Tapes by Dylan and The Band were playing in my ears.

So what, if anything, does any of this mean? Not a damn thing, it’s just a hummingbird ticklefest that will hopefully stop before I pee myself.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Sick Of Goodbyes” by Sparklehorse.