The weekend forcast calls for . . .

. . . a veritable shit-storm. A front of explosive Diarrhea just rolled in about 15 minutes ago, wreaking havok on my office's toilet. Couple that with a camping trip scheduled for tomorrow and the outlook for this mid-July weekend is dim.

Hope is a good thing but it looks like we can expect at least an 80% chance of pressure-washed trees and/or ruined socks.


In related news: I'm pretty sure, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, that lactose intolerance is catchy and somehow airborne. I never had any trouble digesting dairy until I started dating a girl needs Lactaid to even drive through these states. All of a sudden, I can't have a non-fat latte without shredding my insides and lining the toilet bowl with them.

And yes the bathroom I just defiled was the same one my coworker took her soda into.

Now you understand.

Read the full thing here.

I've never been more disturbed

I just saw a co-worker take a beverage into the bathroom. I'm going to lose sleep over that.

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He'll be here all week

I've been trying to avoid complaining about work because when at work but not working, the last thing I want to think about is the job I'm not doing.

I just can't avoid it any longer

Whenever someone even remotely affiliated with authority walks into the office, my boss says really loudly, "Whoa [insert name] is here, every body make it look like you're working."

This makes all the underlings laugh -- five times a day, every day.

The irony of the joke is not lost on me, and I'm not just poo-pooing middle-aged humor. An ironic joke is really only amusing once. Repetition in humor can be done to great effect, but recycling jokes based on a leige-lord masquerading as a serf is just annoying.

Other one-liners beaten to death:

"You're confusing me with someone who knows what is going on."
"I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid."

Hmmmm, those're all that come to mind right now . . . but there will be more.

Oh yeah, he's the only Jewish person I've ever known who spends most of his time whistling




...Christmas tunes





...in the middle of summer

granted I don't know many jewish people.

Read the full thing here.

Blogspot matchmaking service: Universal truth-o-meter?

Holy shit, in response to an anonymous comment to my last post, I decided to put a few things in my profile, to abate what seems to be one person's raging lust for information about me. I typed in some things, whatever came to mine, didn't bother with interests because, well, you wouldn't GET my interests and my influences are mostly German. So then I save it, then revise and save again because the occupation field apparently requires you keep the witty non-sequiters to 40 characters or something--which is what's wrong with this country by the way: field lengths.

Finally I amputate my response until it's completely nonsensical and save. Then, characteristically, out of my intense self-preoccupation and to make sure I didn't misspell anything, I check the formatted version.

Strange.

All my bands and books have turned into links. . . so this is how they make money, I think to myself--outloud--the heads of coworkers craning around to see which worker shattered the collective drone. I slump in my chair and expect the click of a band to take me to itunes.com or to Amazon for one of the books.

The truth, as I'm sure most of you know, is much more sinister. Clicking my own link for The Decemberists took me to a page filled with faces smirking ironically in thick-rimmed glasses and with cigarettes perfectly framed in the upper-left corner of the webcam snapshot. More frightening than the fact that I'd been setup for complete indexing and cataloging by some annonymous taunt, was the fact that I'd been more or less perfectly categorized by this system based on my enjoyment of a single band. Any of these face shots seemed like viable candidates for a torrid affair of intellectual and sexual comingling. By that I mean a casual friendship I unsuccessfully try to steer towards romance.

I'm ever more frightened of places like eharmony.com who, with their trademarked 29 points of compatibility, could probably tell me things about myself I don't even know.

ME: "Excuse me, Dr. Harmony, all these potential matches are men."
eHarmony.com: "Indeed."

It also makes me think that the three and a half years I spent emerging from my pupa into the rarified air of snot-nosed individualism was all a big waste of time. I mean I specifically listen to the Decemberists because no one else does (except for every friend and aquaintence I have). I read books I think no one else has read just to lord the fact over EVERYONE. This page of smiling pseudo-literati was really fucking with me.

I took Existentialism from a Keirkegaardian Catholic who was very proud of the fact that he grew up in the aftermath of the "free-love sixties". He was fond of drawing attention to the fact that all the counter-culture movements that sprung up then didn't succeed in abolishing homogeneity in society or in bringing individualism to suburbia, they simply created smaller pockets of sheep that thought differently in the same way. That's the kind of cynicism I eat up with fork and knife and seems to have borne itself out today. I'm just one of the throng of Decemberists fans that look and think and dress the same. I would've been in the same basic position if I'd gotten a finance degree and was making shitloads of money.

Though I'd probably be cursed with crappy glasses.

Read the full thing here.

Why does every movie have Nazis?

Are there any new angles from which to examine Nazism that haven't been beaten into total pastiche? Yes. Well, maybe not anymore--but there was, until Facing Windows found it. I'm not going to say any more because it's one of the film's little secrets, the central mystery. The Reich connection is slowly hinted at, nudged into your consciousness. At times I thought I had a leg up on the movie, like I'd won the battle of wits. And that's true, to a point. It's really great work, giving you this info early enough on that it sits there at the back of your mind, stewing enough that it almost seems familiar. Then, just when you're comfortable with it, in comes the obligatory twist. It's not shocking the way The Crying Game is shocking, it's more of a tragic, drawn-out moment. The results are, well, kick ass.

You may have guessed, I thought the movie was brilliantly written. The story is content to draw you along at it's own pace, gradually revealing the mysteries of four lives that become entangled when an unhappily married couple stops to help a senile old man who can't remember anything about himself. One of the few screenplays in a long time that has made me absolutely sick with envy.

And it's Italian, so be prepared to read.

Read the full thing here.

Jerry Stiller is everyone's whore

That's right I said it. I'd thought it for a while but like a good and abiding member of society, I kept my mouth shut, maintained the status quo. But when I saw his visage 15 feet tall in triplicate across the various screens of the White River Amphitheatre, banging his head to the arena-sized rock of RUSH, I couldn't be quiet any longer.

This is but the latest example of the brutal decline of the cast of Seinfeld. The only thing worse than pitching Kentucky Fried Chicken is certainly being a running joke in the multimedia backdrop of a 30-year-old band's reunion tour . . . but like so much of the rest of their careers since, it would make a GREAT episode.

I was going to go on a tyrade about the seedier underbelly of the concert, as if the denegration of David Starsky's dad wasn't enough, but I don't know if I want to.

More or less there were a bunch of Nascar dads--I'm not stereotyping really, they were wearing the clothes and had their children with them--who started to get really aggitated and I couldn't figure out why. The most vocal (well I assume he was talking and not just mouthing, but for the sheer rocking going on, I can't be sure) of the lot was also the most heavy-set and bore the largest mustache. It took quite a while of intense study, but I finally caught a fragment of a sentence: "fucking hate faggots."

I'm no lip-reader and certain words have similar mouth motions as other totally different words, but I'm sure he wasn't talking about olive juice and I can't think of any other phrases with that particular alliterative flavor. When the ringleader physically started to throw things at the best-dressed man in the section, there was no more room for doubt.

This is probably the first time I've actually witnessed this kind of overt hate and it really bothered me--left me seething. It wasn't just the act itself but also the fact that I didn't donkey-punch the bastard. For his part, I'm sure the object of the edible projectiles didn't even realize what was going on, his shirt so stiffly starched that it didn't seem to actually touch his skin and formed a protective shell the popcorn simply glanced off.

I'm still mad at myself for not stepping in somehow, or at least narc-ing them out to security (which if I'm being honest with myself, taddling is just about the ONLY thing I would've done) but for shit sake, they had mustaches.

But looking back on it, I just feel sorry for those hate-mongers, for in their loathing, they missed the real show. Not the band, they really weren't interesting until the pyrotechnics started flaming and the lazers threatened to prematurely blind 10,000-odd people. They missed the closeted gay couple posing as frat brothers.

Right, once again this is body language observation and thus open to interpretation, but I have several friends who were or are in fraternal organizations of the Greek stripe, I know what happens, maybe even engaged a little "bonding" from time to time. There comes a point in a boys life when curiosity outstrips fear and . . . hmmm, I'd go on but I hardly know you. The point is that this was not your run of the mill pledge-week homoeroticism. No, this was full on unrequited love. I have to hand it to them though, they had the aging frat alumnus look down quite well--though that was the ultimate downfall, they had it down far too well.

Maybe they weren't closetted at all, maybe their absurd matching getups were regular weekend attire, maybe they actually walk in the hinterland where gay culture and fantasy sports co-mingle, wanting their homo-erotic cake and buffalo wings too.

This blog isn't about biased commentary, this is about unadulterated truth. They were dressed in identical Rush Tour shirts, identical Lee dungarees, identical beige hats from American Eagle, the artificially weathered kind. The tall one stood ABSURDLY close to his squat mate, far too close for even the most intimate of friends, their entire bodies physically touching for the better part of 4 hours.

The short one didn't move much, mostly just the self-conscious head-bobbing and foot-tapping I've more or less raised to the level of art. The tall one, meanwhile, danced like a goddamned youth pastor, raising his hands to the glory of Rush, each swaying motion glancing his head-nodding friend ever so slightly. Fascinating.

All of this would be mere conjecture by itself. Lumped together it becomes something more. Of course when the taller one had to inch by the shorter one after a bathroom break and the short one helped his friend past with a gentle squeeze of the uppermost thigh, the verdict was in.

Dammit if I didn't forget my camera, otherwise this would be a career making blog . . .

Read the full thing here.

One hot dose

Friday night I got thirty years of rock condensed into one spectacular . . . ly long night of Nascar T-shirts, male short shorts, bad bleach jobs, worse facelifts, and of course all the homophobia you could shake a broomstick at.

The band was RUSH, the anniversary was diamond (paper depending on whose grandmother you talk to), the crowd was stoked and also mostly high or drunk, the performance--I understand--was quintessential. I say understand because I really have no frame of reference to compare it to, having only previously heard Tom Sawyer and a handfull of tracks from Roll the Bones. So I take the word of my two young cousins, who accompanied me--or rather, whom I accompanied. They supplied the ticket and the running commentary on Neal Peart's all inclusive drumming aesthetic and the evolution of Geddy Lee's voice; I supplied the car.

As this was technically a family outing and I really never see my family as I live such a distance away as to make travel prohibitive, I tried to understand this thing that my cousins were obviously so wrapped up in. The task proved more or less impossible. There was just too much funny shit happening in the audience to care about what was happening onstage.

Cousin: Whoa man, did you hear the guitar at the end of Working Man there?
Me: Yes, wow.
Cousin: That was amazing
Me: Yeah, so is that man with the David Crosby Haircut and Marlb-rolled sleeves.
Cousin: [laugh] Yeah
Me: Wow he must've really liked the solo too, he's taking off that bleached denim sleeveless jacket with the Rush pentagram thing and holding it aloft. And now his girlfriend--there, the one with the track marks--is illuminating it for all the world to see with her Harley-Davidson Zippo.

That was almost word for word one of the many FANTASTIC observations I was able to make of this most American crowd in their natural habitat: Drunk and blindly clutching at lost youth.

There was also the guy in the threadbare shirt commemorating Rush's 1976 "Two Hemispheres" Tour with hair more or less like these guys, who kept looking back at me with a more or less ironic look on his face, mocking the fact that I wasn't double-fisting the devil horns. He actually smirked in disbelief and shook his head. I'm a lost cause, you're right

There were of course SCORES of ex-high school football players, whom you could distinguish easily enough by their tight, curly mullet and full beards, their mil-spec cellphones clipped to their large-buckled belts and the small studded earring they kept in their left ear--a silent vigil to that district championship, that miracle season, 197x. The sub-genus, Ex-quarterback, further differentiated by the bleached-blonde silicon repositories that hung off their arms, their baby-doll t-shirts doing nothing to hide the scars from that third cesaerean section.

I'll add more to this later . . . .

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