Mmmm....Filler

One of those entries that I love, wherein other people provide prompts for your content. Sweet, sweet, not having to think independently.

(Borrowed from gheypunk Literati, otherwise known as what you really should be reading right now.)

1. Tell me something obvious about you.

I am a horrible dresser.

2. Tell me something about you that many don't know.

I've already answered this before, and I can't think of anything new. That may be the laziest I've ever been - in a lazy list entry, linking back to an earlier lazy list entry because I'm too lazy. I feel like the world should have been sucked into some kind of vortex by now.

3. What is your biggest fear?

Is it too cliched to say clowns? Because seriously. I also have an unending fear of being attacked from behind while I sleep, which is why I always need to have my bed up against a corner in order to be fully rested.

4. Do you normally go the safe route or take the short cut?

Heh. People can't even pay me to take the short cut. Risk scares me like it's a clown.

5. Name one thing you want that you can't buy with money.

I refuse to be suckered in by this touchy-feely question. X-ray vision.

6. What is your most treasured possession?

Hmm, normally I would say my television, which is the one actual purchase I've made which I love unconditionally. But I'm going to go with the stuffed beaver that Jules made for me that lives on my bed. He is both cute and perfect.

7. What is the one thing you hate most about yourself that you do often?

I cannot stop myself from telling lies to people that I don't know well. It's this weird mechanism I have during awkward conversations so that people won't think I'm boring. Or insane. Which is a little crazy in and of itself, but undetectable in normal circumstances.

8. What is your favorite lie to tell?

Wow, those questions dove-tailed nicely. Umm, I'll go with the interpretation of "favorite" as "most often used" and say: "Oh, that's not a problem at all."

9. Name something you've done once that you can't wait to do again.

Dirty! Uh, actually this is lame but my answer is "buy a car," because it fits all criteria: I've only done it once before, and I really can't wait until I get the new one squared away.

10. Are you the jealous type?

Yes, although I am masterful at hiding it. Growing up in a repressed family has to have some bonuses later in life, right?

11. What is the one person, place or thing you can't say no to?

All three just for thoroughness: Brint, Best Buy, and Pixi Sticks. I'm very easily controlled.

12. What is the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

Straight up: My dad turned down a pretty large promotion based basically on my happiness. There are many layers beyond that and I wasn't aware of it at the time, but it now makes me completely indebted to him forever. Which is what he was probably going for, now that I think about it. He's always been one for long term thinking. Clever guy.

13. If you could do something crazy right now, what would it be?

Get up, drive to the airport, and fly to San Francisco. Jules keeps tempting me with cool temperatures and the promise of a nearby ocean. Landlocked at 106 degrees is no way to go through life.

14. When was the last time you cried?

Um, last week when I was watching Return of the King on DVD. Shut up, it's sad! Elijah Wood is leaving forever!

15. When was the last time you felt so good that nothing else mattered?

April 28, 2005.

16. Do you feel comfortable in public with no shirt on?

I suppose...although lately I've got the computer scientist pallor going on. Maybe if I got a little more sun...

17. Name something embarrassing you did while drunk.

Jesus. One thing. Got lost on campus because I couldn't remember where I lived and only made it home by following cars headed towards the dorms.

18. Name one person, past or present, with whom you'd like to spend the day.

This is the question I despise more than any other list question, and yet it is always asked. Zelda Fitzgerald. For no good reason other than I was reading her biography earlier and she sounds completely crazy, which I can totally get behind.

19. Name one place you've never been and would like to go, and tell me why.

I've had this insane urge to want to visit Rome lately. I have no idea why. I think reading is a bad influence on me. My second answer would be Mars, because I think I look good around red things.

20. What's the story behind your online persona/name?

The name comes from the fact that it is my...name. And my persona is mostly how I am in real life, only more articulate and less prone to swearing. Theoretically, I am more belligerent and my opinions are more numerous here on the interwebs. Clever, right?

Okay, yeah, it's not. Still an excellent Futurama quote, though.

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You?

Round Up

So I've been slowly sliding further and further into allergy-related hell over the past month. Once upon a time, when I lived at home and we had a cat, I was constantly fighting a futile war against my own head that threatened to finish me off at a moment's notice. Now that I'm older and have identified my weaknesses, much like Superman and those unfortunate rocks, so long as I stay away from my feral nemeses, I'm usually good to go.

Apparently this is not the case this summer, as each morning my head feels heavier and heavier and I'll have an occasional day where I just cannot stop sneezing. I haven't been able to identify a source, which is unfortunate on many levels, primarily because the main drawback to this allergy is that it screws with my voice, making my already almost-unintelligible mumblings completely useless to transferring any information. Especially over the phone. Which is kind of important in my glorified secretarial job that I've got going.

This weekend, I finally broke down and went to the store to get some potent cocktails of antihistamines and whathaveyou to try and combat the problem at its source. However, the first try of some Benadryll had no effect whatsoever except that it made my lips swell up like Goldie Hawn's in The First Wives Club. Which, y'know, is awesome and exactly what I was going for.

My second try was on Sunday, and I went from the Benadryll to the old school Sudafed. Which (by my body's standards) is like looking for a buzz from cough syrup and then switching over to crack cocaine when that doesn't work. I've never been one for drugs. Don't know if it's my weight, or my constitution or what, but anything remotely strong knocks me on my ass and hard. A simple dose of Dramamine for a plane ride is enough to put me in a near stupor for a full 24 hours.

I took the Sudafed at around 1:00 on Sunday. I only have jump cut memories of the rest of the day up until about 10:00. And most of them are horribly intertwined with the Law & Order SVU marathon that I had on TV all day long. But once I regained actual consciousness, the whole house was cleaned and the dishes were done, so I'm thinking it's not as bad as all that. And I do feel pretty refreshed, sinus-wise. But I fear to take it ever again.

Is it endearing or just depressing that I can't take over-the-counter drugs without hideous consequences? Don't answer that.
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Other news from the frontlines:

• I really enjoyed Batman Begins, but I have nothing intelligent to say on the subject, so I'll leave it at that. Oh, and Christian Bale and Cillian Murphy are both smoking hot.
• Friday was a most horrible day and left me a fiery rage that I rarely, if ever, find myself in. But it managed to end in a not-entirely-hideous fashion, and with a work bonus of a couple dozen farmer's market tomatoes. ...Yeah, I have no idea what that was about either.
• I, along with most everyone I know, got spectacularly drunk on Saturday night, and it was a flawless time. I felt a little out of place drinking fruity mixed drinks of light rum while everyone else was either downing dark beer or tequila shots, but I stand by my choice, as I was awake by 9:00 the next morning with no ill effects.
• I got the cutest little ottoman on Sunday morning for $5.00 and it perfectly compliments both chairs in the living room. The feeling of bargain hunting and fashionable decor is a heady and potent combination to me. I'm quite sure this will be the only time I ever experience it.

#1,243,456

Reason #1,243,456 Why I Will Be Alone Forever

Friday. Eating lunch. Fast food.

Decide to splurge, based on my complex formula that relates relative expense of lunch food to level of badness of the workweek thus far. So I've got me a huge, juicy hamburger and a nice side salad. This hamburger defies explanation, in terms of both taste and size. There are layers upon layers of cheese, and bacon, and other such things. And many, many condiments. It takes intense concentration to eat a burger of this magnitude, lest one makes a huge mess. I am up to the challenge.

I've got my iPod going, a book to read, and a big ol' hamburger. Life = good.

This guy who was a couple of people behind me is wandering around the restaurant, looking for a place to sit. Despite the fact that there are a grand total of 5 people in the entire place, he comes over and takes the seat directly next to mine, giving me that little frat boy nod of acknowledgement with a smile as he does so. Which, y'know, is odd, but I'm digging it, so that's cool. Am suave, sophisticated person, can handle this with aplomb.

I get back to my book and fiddle a bit with the iPod, trying to determine exactly how one gets rid of a musical device in such a situation without looking very awkward and obvious.

Somehow I end up with the iPod just louder than before. I decide I'll work on the sandwich a bit more, before messing with it anymore. So I go to take a ginormous bite out of the hamburger of delicious doom. I hear the guy who sat down next to me talking, but it's all very indistinct and in the back of my mind, because the iPod is loud and full of guitars. I figure he is on a cell phone or something.

All of a sudden, he taps me on the shoulder. Now, I don't realize this is him, and I am easily startled. I swing my head around to see what on earth is going on. In the process of this swing, I manage to sling all the constituent bits of condiments that once resided in my hamburger all over myself, as well as a large portion of the guy's arm.

Awkward. But I can recover. I go and grab a napkin to wipe the offending horror whilst apologizing profusely. However, on the transfer over from napkin holder to arm, I manage to snag my elbow in the wire connecting my earpiece to my iPod. Which yanks my head over to the side and causes me to yelp like a wounded puppy until I can get everything straightened out.

To recap: covered in condiments, sore ear, freaked out cute boy also covered in ketchup at my side. Rock on.

After a period where we all catch our breath, we reconvene long enough to find out that he was trying to ask if he could borrow my salt.

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I might as well start collecting my great multitude of cats right now, I'm going to die alone.

Hammer Time

Last night I was determined to cook an actual dinner, rather than just grab the brick of cheese and box of crackers that have served me so well over these last 4 days. I have been slowly expanding my cooking repertoire over the last few months and have three available dishes that I can do for dinner at a moments notice. I can tell, you are impressed, no?

So I get the skillet out, turn on the stove, and collect all my ingredients into a nice healthy pile. I go to grab a fork out of the flatware drawer.

Here, that story ends, and an entirely new one begins.

The whole drawer collapses into roughly 7 different pieces in my hand and plummets to the ground as chunks of wood and flailing sharp utensils. I live in a house of crap.

The central piece of the drawer is the front cover, weighing an estimated 4,000 pounds and is made of actual wood. The rest in flimsy, already cracked and /or disintegrated particle board. So, of course, the piece that slams down on top of my left foot is the front cover. And not only does it manage to hit right on the very top where the one bone sort of protrudes, it does so in such a way that one of the fitted staples that formerly held the thing together impales itself into my foot. The flatware misses me entirely, in my one complete victory of the night.

There is a certain level of pain that I just cannot deal with. It's not necessarily the worst pain I've ever felt, but it's that level of pain that is just an inch more than the pain of stubbing your toe really badly, or slamming your hand in a car door. It's that tiny, tiny extra bit of pain that exceeds your normal threshold of what you consider...well "acceptable pain" sounds made up, but that's what sort of what I'm going for here. I just can't wrap my head around this level of pain - excruciating I can deal with, and minor pain I'm okay with, but I'm helpless to react rationally to the midpoint.

That moment that I stood there, with the top of my foot impaled on a huge chunk of former drawer was a level of pain that I could not deal with. The only other equivalent time I can think of to relate it to was the moment that I broke my leg when I was 14, which was also the first time I ever said the word fuck, and when I use the word "said" I actually mean "yelled, in the middle of a field, so loud that people came out from the house 100 yards away to see what was up."

And again at this juncture, I did the same thing, only I was not in a field. And LaSister is discreet enough to just poke her head out of her door to make sure I'm still alive, and then goes back to what she was doing. Then, I kicked out my foot in rage, and managed to lodge a fork under a toenail.

Rage, man.

Later, once The Hulk had retreated, and with the help of LaSister, I managed to rebuild the drawer using my mad Shop Class skills, a hammer, and three wire nails I had in my closet. I am the master of manly endeavors.

No doubt the drawer will collapse again one day, as it now lies in wait, just looking for that one moment when I let down my guard and innocently pull it open. But for now I have won the battle, if not the war. Although I can't say losses were not to be had, as my foot swelled up ridiculously over the night, and I couldn't really tie my shoe in the morning.

This is a story with no point, only it feels very cathartic to let it all out in a stream of furious typing.

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Also, in an unrelated story, yesterday the power went out at my office building. At that particular moment in time I had been reaching up on a high shelf to get a big box of envelopes. When the darkness enveloped (ha) me, I managed to knock the box off its perch and it proceeded to slam into my temple.

My days of clumsy free living are at an end.

Enemy of Man

Oh crap.

Recently, they have repaved my route to work. Actually, repaved is a lie. They did that thing where they lay down an additional layer of blacktop to cover the most egregious holes in the road and leave a foul tar smell in their wake.

Unfortunately, they picked a bad time (namely: summer in Dallas) to do this, and thus the blacktop didn't fully set for a couple of days. Which meant that on this insanely busy section of road, wherever the new blacktop covered a pothole the constant stress of all the cars just magnified every little hole in the street into these huge chasms and quasi-speedbumps that litter every lane of the road.

Which is hell on the already non-existent shocks within the Truck of Malfunction, but not something to get too worked up about.

So yesterday I was driving in to work. It's insanely early, it's a Monday, and I'm doing well just to be staying in one lane before that first cup of coffee. This is further complicated by the fact that it rained the night before and so everything is nice and slick. These are the absolute worst conditions to drive the TOM in, because it's so lightweight that it easily loses traction on roads, usually just following a storm.

I get all the way to the last 200 feet before my building in a virtual fog, just like everyday, without a single issue. Now when you come up to my building, you have to take a very sharp angle from the road to get into our parking garage. This entails coming to a near complete stop in traffic and then hooking around to make the perfect turn, akin to performing major surgery while being pestered by a thousand 7 year-olds. This is inadvisable during rush hour, so the more common practice is to turn off a little early into the edge of the parking lot next door and make the turn at your leisure from there.

So I do this just like usual, only I pull into the lot a touch earlier than normal because traffic is backed up at the light. At the same time that I pull in, there is a man walking to the bus stop just behind me, and a jogger both headed towards me on something of a collision course with the new trajectory of the TOM. I make the appropriate adjustments to drive by them and still make my turn.

Only, as I'm passing them, the TOM hits one of those potholes in the street. And since it was raining heavily the night before...well, you've all seen TV and movies. Drenched, pretty much from head to toe. Both of them. But usually when you see it on TV, it's from the perspective of the drenchee, not the drencher. It's a really bad feeling, knowing that you've made two mortal enemies before 9:00am.

And there's not a lot I could do about it. If I stopped to apologize, I'm pretty sure they would have beaten me up and/or taken my lunch money.

I have officially become an enemy of man.

Weekend Media Roundup

Just a quick review of the new media over the weekend to start things off.

The new White Stripes CD is without a doubt one of the most bizarre things I have ever bought. These people are very famous. And it is very good, but individually, there is only one song that I can ever imagine being on the radio. It's a very self contained CD, involving marimbas and much less guitars than you would expect. And I'm sure it's just a design choice showing off their artistic genius and presenting a commentary on the nature of recording a CD or what have you, but nearly every song seems badly mixed. Like, they forgot to tone down the level of guitar on a couple of the songs, or the cymbals will be just out of control all of a sudden.

Still, it's good stuff. A couple of the songs are sort of creepy, though, in a way that only The White Stripes could achieve.

Man, my CD reviews suck. Music...

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith is basically a movie designed to appeal to every single person on the planet, no matter who they may be. You've got your Brad Pitt, your Angelina Jolie, your Adam Brody, your big explosions, your huge gun fights, and your semi-charming dialogue. Something for everyone. And while there is no plot beyond the two leads shooting hot glances at each other, that's all you really need to make this movie completely enjoyable.

Yes, it goes on forever. And the plot makes not one lick of sense. But I was completely charmed. At the first sign of Adam Brody, I knew that I was beat. I don't think you can genetically engineer a movie more suited to my tastes than this one. Or, I guess you could, but it would probably not have the widespread appeal the Hollywood is looking for, since Adam Brody would have completely ruined the whole marriage dynamic.

At least this way, all the OC fans got the catharsis of seeing stupid season two Seth get the crap beat out of him with a phone.

We takes our victories where we can gets them.

An After-Work Question, If You Will

I'm sorry, but do people really conduct business meetings while in the restroom?

Wait, no, that came out wrong. Because people obviously do conduct business meetings in the restroom, as per the 3 different examples I witnessed today.

New question: WHY do people conduct business meetings in the restroom?

If a guy is in a stall, with the door closed and certain sounds are issuing forth, I think that's more than enough of an indicator that he is probably occupied at the moment. And yet on three different occasions today (I drank a lot of coffee, okay? It was a Friday and I am exhausted.) I walk into the bathroom only to find a high volume conversation going on between a person in the stall and either A) some guy at a urinal reading from a stack of papers in his free hand, or B) a protracted stall-to-stall communication, or C) some guy just freaking standing in the middle of the place, talking to the door.

I can maybe understand A. In an alternate universe where people are naturally weird, maybe you both had to use the facilities at the same time and you just naturally continued your conversation from point A to point B. I do think it's a little weird that you brought the papers along with you, though, Can the meeting really be that important, particularly when the topic appears to be zoning laws? And seriously, you're gonna have to take those papers back with you, buddy. Do you really need a memento of your trip?

And B, I guess it's something of a personal preference. I generally do not want anyone trying to engage me in discourse while I'm doing that sort of business, but I guess there are others out there who are cool with that. Whatever, not a big deal to me, go in peace, brave souls. Maybe it's some sort of bonding ritual.

But C? No no no. You do not follow someone into the bathroom to chat them up, without necessity yourself. It's weird, it's creepy, and it makes it very difficult for me to pee when you are standing a foot away in the middle of the bathroom discussing "the tone that [you] got off of Chuck's email." If you're having a business conversation in the bathroom, it better damn well be a secret communique that you are trying to hide from the opposing counsel, who happens to be a girl. Otherwise, there is no reason you should be all up in my area. A bathroom is a sacred place of peace.

Just yet another reason I am so thankful that I don't have any immediately nearby co-workers. 'Cause people be crazy.

Recaplings

Time again for inarticulate movie reviews with Jason. This time, we've got 3 movies to cover, because when everyone leaves town for the summer, there's nothing left to do but go see movies. Or stay at home eating Oreos and lying on the couch, but you can only do that for so many weeks.

Normally, these things would be spread out over a period of day, weeks, and months as I carefully mete out all my opinions like drips from a broken faucet in order to maximize my writing volume potential. But since work has picked up so much lately that I actively wonder if I will ever have the energy to post again, I'm just gonna go nuts here.

Madagascar. Jesus Christ, this was a horrible movie. I should in some way preface that, but no, it was hideous. Not funny. Not smart. Not clever. Bad soundtrack. Bad voice acting. Took what could have been a really funny premise and slammed it into the ground repeatedly until it stopped moving. And judging from the small children and myself in the theatre, we can safely say that they definitely did not catch the 8 year old mentality they were going for.

I am being overly harsh here, but since I finally took to paying full price for movies rather than continuing to pass as an imaginary student, I get personally offended by movies that take my 8 dollars and then turn out to be 90 minutes of crap surrounding 6 minutes of funny stuff.

The only possible draw to the movie was the colony of gay disco-dancing ferrets, and even they lost their allure about 10 minutes in. Everyone involved in this movie should be shot, or forced to give me my 8 dollars back.

Crash. Okay, this is an entirely different sort of ripped off, but I don't feel great about going to see this. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was an excellent, excellent movie. Well acted, full of stars, very nicely done. But at the same time, I just again, spent 8 dollars to get insanely depressed and contemplate the state of ugly racism in America. On a weekday. That's just messed up.

But totally a good movie that everyone should see. It has Ludicrous! And he acts! I mean, come on people. Any movie that can hold Sandra Bullock, Ludicrous, and Ryan Phillllllipe has to have some sort of redeeming value for every person in the world.

Oh, and there were two semi-secret reveal moments in the movie that were completely broadcast for all the world to see. One was intentional (the one with the shoe) and the other was not, but those two moments served to absolutely rivet me into the movie - both times because you know for a split second before it happens exactly what is about to go down, but you're completely helpless to stop it. Which is really good writing, I guess, to get me that invested through such subtle things.

The Longest Yard. Otherwise called, what you see at the theatre when you just show up at 10 minutes to eight looking for something, anything to watch.

I have a confession to make - I don't get Adam Sandler movies. Well, it's more that, I get them enough that I know why people think they're funny, and I understand their concept and allure, but they never strike me right. The Wedding Singer is the only one I have been able to get through multiple times, and that's such a train wreck of a fact that I can't begin to explain it. It just exists, like, in its own personal dimension where logic and common-sense have no ground.

It is safe to say that Sandler movies exist outside my sphere of caring. I know they're there, and people like them, but they are definitely not for me. The analogy has finally come to me: Adam Sandler movies are Diet Coke to me. It's there, people love it, but it complete is beyond me, for no good reason.

And we're 10 sentences out and I haven't said a word about the actual movie. It was good. Another one of those movies that I go into with such low expectations that when it turns out halfway decent I feel vindicated and very inclined to recommend it to everyone. And it had Nelly! If you can't tell, I irrationally love it when singers become actors. Nelly, Ludicrous, Mandy Moore, it doesn't matter, they're all great - it's like finding out your local librarian turns out to have secret ninja skills and fights crime at night in a costume. Well maybe not exactly like that, but you get level of strange combinations of talents I'm going for, right?

Anyways, it was cute, and pretty funny, and had its sports moments, and its touching moments, and its homoerotic subtext-and-actual-text moments, and everyone got theirs in the end, so I felt fully satisfied by the time we left the theatre.

And now from the looks of this, I recommend The Longest Yard over Crash. Which is a damnable lie! Go see Crash! Get some depressing culture in your life. Builds character and whatnot. It really was good.

Summers, In the Past

My first real summer job in college was working for UT at their kids athletic program. Specifically, in the swimming section. My former high school friends in Austin managed to get me the job, and a place to stay, all on the qualifications that I was some guy they knew from Dallas. These people were, and remain, completely awesome. Ostensibly, my purpose there was to get my lifeguard certification and join my friend and roommate Brint in protecting the innocent tiny children from the drownings and the horrors of running near a pool.

But as anyone who has met me knows, I am far too out of shape to ever pass a test wherein I could be certified to save a child's life. I get exhausted climbing into a pool, several lengths of it are enough to send me into cardiac arrest. This does not stop us however, as I was given the most important job at any swimming school: Guy who sits out near the parking lot as ushers the small children to the pool and back.

Normally this would entail a near constant stream of child wrangling and insanity brought on by the every-half-hour waves of toddlers coming in to learn their dives and their paddles and whatnot. My summer, however, they allowed me to hand out parking passes to parents who would rather take the kids in manually than leave them in my care. In other words, to every single parent. Apparently, I am not the sort of person who is to be entrusted with escorting a child, even for 35 feet. I literally had a maximum of 2 kids per week that I would take charge of. So my entire summer, 11AM to 8PM five days a week, was devoted to me sitting on a bench in front of the gym, waging my own personal war against the ant bed three feet away and studiously working on my tan.

I also spent entire days doing ratio tests to determine the makeup of the summer campus population: one day devoted to how many people were smoking, one day for number of people on cell phones, one day for ratio of attractive to unattractive people...it was a long summer.

Other ways I passed the time:

• Playing the snake game on my cell phone: Highest high score is to this day 990. I was all over that game.
• Seeing how long I could hold my breath. I found that if I sat with my legs crossed on a bench and made myself as small as possible, I could get my endurance up to 2 minutes and 41 seconds on a single breath. If it wasn't too hot. This has yet to have a practical application, but I know that some day its time will come.
• Using the left over parking passes to build complicated origami animal armies that would march against each other until the passing students' stares got to be too much for me and I would throw them out.
• Doing the campus newspaper crossword puzzle. Which was actually the New York Times puzzle from a week previous. I got pretty good at those things, but slowly drove Brint insane with my questions about three letter words for African plainstriders.

Side benefits to this job included a pay rate commensurate with all the real life guards, for reasons that I'm still entirely foggy on and that still infuriate Brint to this day, access to all the free brightly colored summer sports school shirts that I could ever want, and exemption from being picked to wear the sports school mascot outfit, which was a giant blue whale, complete with its own foam whistle. After all, what if some poor kid needed guidance to the pool area after 6 consecutive weeks of going there every other day? Constant vigilance, I always say. Plus, I heard the outfit was wicked hot, and older kids and frat boys would try to beat you up.

I consider that my one truly good stroke of luck, job-wise, and I've been paying for it with every job subsequently. Karma gets you every time, in the end.