Bullitt's Bros

Aikido

2010-07-03T11:04:00.002-04:00

You know those Kung-Fu movies where an old master can send a younger upstart sprawling seemingly without moving a finger? That's Aikido, the art of using your opponents energy against them. My dad is the Aikido master of passive aggression and today he sent me flying through a plate-glass window without moving a muscle. Metaphorically.

As is usual, he woke me up early to ask about where I'd want to go for breakfast... Or more accurately, where he wants to go for breakfast while pretending I wanted to go there.

"Where do you want to go, Daddo?"
"Oh it is fine. Wherever you would like to go."

This line means the opposite of what it says.

"So where would you like to go?"
"Perhaps Burger King?"

Crap. I do not want to go to Burger King. But, this being the master of passive aggression, I don't exactly know how to get out of that.

"If we go to Burger King, though, I want to get it to go. I don't want to eat in a Burger King."
"Perhaps Bob Evans?"

Okay, this is much better. I actually like Bob Evans and it's fast and I have to go for a meeting in not too long.

"Great, let's go to Bob Evans."

So in the car, Dad makes his move... Bob Evans was just a head fake as it turns out.

"Burger King is closer than Bob Evans."

This translates into, "You are more likely to walk on the sun than eat at Bob Evans today."

Fine. Whatever. I really don't want to go to Burger King but he's set on it so I can deal with it for one day.

"Fine. But we are going to the drive through."

So at the drive through I order.

"I'll take a... number four, I guess. With coffee. Can I get anything else than coffee?"
"Orange juice or soda."
"Okay, fine. Coffee. Dad, what do you want?"
"Oh, nothing."

Wait a second...

"Nothing? Are you having trouble reading the drive through window?"
""No, I ate breakfast at home."

So there it is... Dad didn't even want to eat at Burger King but he forced me to go there anyway. Dad is the gold medalist of passive aggression. No one else is even close.

Time-Warner, put-upon little guy!

2009-12-17T03:49:00.003-05:00

I recently received the following email from Time-Warner Cable. My comments are interspersed with theirs. See if you can tell who's who!

You’ve probably heard the news by now. In a few short days, some of your favorite shows could disappear from your TV.
What?? At Time Warner Cable, we’re not happy about this – and we know our customers aren’t happy about it either. But we want you to have the facts, and we want you to be prepared. Oh shit. Like, earthquake prepared? Like, I'm gonna need water? Even in today’s economy, some television networks are demanding massive price increases for their programming – up to 300% more than the current price we pay. And with our agreements with these networks running out at the end of December, some networks have threatened to pull the plug on their sports, entertainment – even family holiday specials – at midnight New Year’s Eve. I'd miss the post-New-Year's-Eve family holiday specials? No more Captain January? No more MLK, Jr. Power Hour?!
We know prices keep going up. We’ve had to announce a few price increases of our own and we know no one’s ever happy about that. But up to 300%? That’s going too far! I could have lived with 290. But 300%?! Those monsters! Please be assured that we will continue negotiating for a fair agreement that protects our customers’ pocketbooks. But if the TV networks follow through on their threats – we’re ready. You’ll find a helpful guide to alternative sources for programming at RollOverOrGetTough.com, so you’ll still be able to watch many popular shows even if a television network pulls the plug. Guys, Time Warner is literally begging the TV companies to keep their shows on Cable, but Time Warner can't help but to cease carrying all their signals if their begs are ignored! Don’t let them hold your TV hostage. Go to RollOverOrGetTough.com now and let us know what you think. Don't roll over, Time Warner! I know you can get tough with them! Why, you've gotten tough with me almost every time we've done business together! Together, we just might make a difference in what America pays for TV. If anyone knows a district Time Warner can be congressman of, please let me know! I want them to fight for me. And my right to pay only $104 a month for non-premium cable.

Our Disturbing Cats

2009-08-07T04:51:00.003-04:00

Our cats have a bad habit. They scratch bits of the rug off their cat tree and then eat the carpet-leavings. I assume all their carpet-munching is due to the fact that they were raised by lesbians.

ZING!

[Note: this post has been edited.]

Certifiable Confusions

2009-08-06T01:17:00.003-04:00

So, in case you didn't know, my mom is a proud birther. Today we had this conversation:

MOM: He's not a citizen because his father wasn't a citizen when he was born. Both your parents have to be American citizens for you to have citizenship.
ME: Wait...so I'm not an American citizen?
MOM: What? No! Uh...wait. Look, it's not...look, he's trying to be president!
ME: Wait...so I can't be president?
MOM: Ha! No! Look, Bobcat, his father wasn't a citizen. He was a student when Obama was born.
ME: But Dad was a student when I was born.
MOM: No, but he was a resident alien.
ME: So your parents have to be resident aliens?
MOM: Look, I don't remember all the things, I'd have to do research, but things changed between then and now. Anyway, why can't he just show the damn certificate?!

I wish he would!

Later on, we talked about what to get my brother for his birthday.

MOM: I think we should get him a gift certificate.
ME: I agree, but we have to be careful that it's a real gift certificate and not a certificate of live gift.

Thai Food

2009-01-14T05:56:00.003-05:00

I would have offered this post on Thai food earlier, but I wanted to wait until about the last day to get an overview of things. This strategy has an advantage: I have a fairly clear impression about Thai food, which is the hard-won fruit of my eating a whole bunch of stuff. On the other hand, there is a disadvantage: I don't remember half of what I ate, at least in any detail. Nonetheless, I'll give it the old grad school try.

I start with some disappointment: by and large, the Thai food in restaurants is, in my opinion, nothing special. Wife and I went to some recommended restaurants in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Ko Lanta, and Ko Samui, and almost none of them blew my socks off. Generally, the fancy restaurants are pretty pricey--say, $100 for two people, which is a lot in Thailand--and in most cases they're not the kind of place you'd rave about to a friend.

Now, I want to qualify this "nothing special" assessment. The food in many of these restaurants is still Thai food, and Thai food is delicious. So I don't want to give the impression that the food is not good. It's very good, if you like Thai food, but it doesn't blow away the Thai food in the States. With one exception: the mango sticky rice here is to fight over. Wife and I had several sticky rice wars, in fact, with us usually evenly dividing the spoils. Some of the mangoes here are very fresh, the sticky rice is always well-cooked, and the sauce they put on the whole concoction--heated coconut milk with melted palm sugar and sesame seeds--is divine. It's salty, sweet, and gives the dish a soupçon of yumminess. More than just a soupçon, actually; more like three to five soupçons.

Soupçon.

There is a flip-side to this disappointing verdict: while the restaurant food is nothing special, the street food surely is.

Just in case you don't what I mean by street food, I'm talking about small vendors with carts, frying pans, portable heaters, etc., who cook up one or more kinds of dishes and charge a small fee (between 30 cents and $5) for them. There is a lot of street food in Thailand. Like, it bespeckles the streets and is available at most every hour of the day. There's a fair number of mango sticky rice vendorsa--always worth a trip--and lots of people selling roti filled with bananas, or honey, or chocolate, or jam, or some combination of the above. In most cases, the roti were like a cross between crepes and pancakes. Thicker than crepes, but chewier than pancakes (and greasier. Yum!). Never more than $1 either.

The most impressive areas for food, though, were in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. In Bangkok the place that thrilled was the food court of the Siam Paragon, reputed to be the fanciest mall in Bangkok (and, I assume, Thailand). There were, first of all, all manner of restaurants: portuguese chicken purveyors, Thai-Italian fusion, Thai-French fusion, Mexican food, Japanese food, Indian food, New Zealand food; but there was also a strange semi-circle of booths, each of which sold intriguing food. There were white, boiled chickens (headless), as well as red, long-cooking ducks (headful) hanging from hooks; lots of stews, most of them clear, but at least one dark, and floating with crispy pork; coils of fried noodles; lots of dumplings, some steamed pale, some fried brown, all apparently filled with deliciousness; and all manner of vegetables. Today, I ate at Siam Paragon, and had some dynamite chicken Tikka Masala and garlic naan. The naan was buttered, and the chicken was charcoaly and high-quality, while the sauce was mild but still had a bit of kick. To wash it down, I had, first, a guava juice, and second, a blueberry smoothie.

Siam Paragon is good--I plan on having some more later today--but the place where the street food really sang was Chiang Mai's Sunday Walking Market.

Chiang Mai's Sunday walking market is a delight. Every Sunday, the city of Chiang Mai cordons off one of its more interesting streets from car traffic and just lets in foot traffic. It's set up on a fairly long street, Ratcha... Rama... well, it's some massively besyllabled name beginning with an "Ra". It think it's Ratchadamuran, but I can't be bothered to find out right now. I'm writing from an Internet cafe, and time is money. Anyway, Ratchawhatever gets filled up with happy Thais and tourists interested in seeing what's all this, then? Along the way, there are wats--Buddhist temples--with Thais giving offerings, burning incense, or praying (on the night we went, there was also a 70-year old Thai Elvis impersonator sitting right outside the front of one wat; we tried to get a picture, but I'm afraid it's rather blurry), and Westerners looking at the nice designs. Most important from my point of view, though, was the food.

It was the best food I had in Thailand.

First, wife got the best roti-dessert I had ever had. It was crunchy, chewy, and filled with bananas and chocolate. It was just a step beyond all the other roti. But I got the best dish I ever had: braised, sweet pork literally pulled off the pig, laid atop a bed of rice with a soupçon of a mildly sweet sauce. Trust me when I tell you it's better than you or I. In addition, I had a perfect strawberry shake (take twelve sweet strawberries, put them in a blender with ice, and blend. It works!) and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff. Moreover, there was some really tasty-looking roasted honey chicken that I didn't have room in my stomach for, and an odd black jelly, supposedly coming from a tree if I remember correctly (and I never do), gooped onto some crushed ice and syrup. It didn't look good, but it did look weird.

So much for the Chiang Mai Sunday Walking Market. So much for street food. I just have a couple odds and ends to add.

First, worth its own mention is the Thai proclivity for juice. They love the stuff. Seemingly every foodery has fruit juice, fruit shakes, and fruit smoothies, and they come in all manner of flavor: watermelon, kiwi, guava, lychee (my favorite), mango, jackfruit (it tastes like a cross between an apple and sugarcane), orange, dragonfruit, and others. They are good. We need to do this in the States.

Second, wife and I discovered one of those delicious holes-in-the-wall you always hear about but rarely find; a place called Da's kitchen. It was an Indian restaurant in Ko Lanta run by a family of Thai Muslims, and they had maybe the best naan and certainly the best roti I've ever had. I hesitate to describe the naan as the best I've ever had because it was so different. Really chewy, not crunchy, and sharp in flavor.

Third, Thais cannot make a hamburger to save their lives. Which leads me to conclude:

U-S-A! U-S-A!!!

SOUPÇON.

Superthai, Part 2: He Is Real

2009-01-12T01:37:00.003-05:00

In my haste to write down my main findings regarding the mysterious creature known as "Mr. Sexyman", I neglected to add some other details about my hike, also important.

1. Did I mention, for example, that he picked the lock to wife's and my room? It's true. The door had accidentally been locked from the inside before we got there, and so we couldn't open it. I don't know what he did, but he took a key--not the key to open the lock; we could have done that--and slipped it against something in the door and opened it. Not that impressive, I know, but it adds to his mystique somewhat.

2. He's a waiter. And a very good cook. In addition to being superhuman. Not that impressive, I know, but remember, he does more besides waiter and cook. He also catches fish with his bare fucking hands.

3. He took most of our pictures for us. I know, anyone can take pictures, but it was nice!

4. He speaks limited English. But get this: he also speaks just as limited French and German.

5. Remember how he got no mosquito bites? Well, he also never gets bitten by leeches. His explanation? "I am too dark."

6. Remember how he caught a chameleon with his bare hands, and it squeaked when he caught it? Well, really, the most impressive part of that is the fact that he SPOTTED. A. CHAMELEON. In fact, he spotted three, though he could only catch one.

7. While he was catching fish, spotting chameleons, and building vine-bridges, he also smoked. Like, the whole time. Moreover, they were hand-rolled cigarettes, rolled in dried palm leaves.

8. He honeymoons in Munich.

9. He envied our upcoming 18-hour plane ride. His reasons: "Relax, go to bathroom, sit."

10. After the 7 hr. 30 min. trek with wife and me, he had another trek, that night. It was a 3 hour trek. He saw some barking deer. The next morning, he had another long trek.

11. Unsurprisingly, after our adventure with Mr. Sexyman, I had to learn more about him. So I talked to Sherry, our friendly, well-speaking English Thai. I asked her what the deal was with Mr. Sexyman. Like, what's his real name? It's not Mr. Sexyman, is it?

Well, yes and no. The thing is, because Thais have such a thriving tourism industry, and because Thais have enormously complicated names, many of them have nicknames. For instance, Sherry's real name isn't "Sherry". It's something complicated, but it sounds vaguely like "Sherry", hence her nickname. Mr. Sexyman's real name is "Sum Ium", which means "gentleman." Naturally, he transmogrifies it to "Sexyman."

12. It turns out that Mr. Sexyman has been working as a guide only for a year. He's a freak of nature when it comes to trekking, and he's been doing it only for a year. How the hell is that possible?

Well, before he was a guide, Mr. Sexyman was a hunter. In fact, his father was a very good hunter, and when Mr. Sexyman was young, he lived in the rainforest with his dad. Let me repeat: since the age of five or something, Mr. Sexyman lived in the forest. That's right, Mr. Sexyman is Blanca from Streetfighter 2.

He and his dad specialized in hunting elephants. Legend has it, in fact, that one killed a man, and he and his dad walked to Burma to kill it. It's like The Princess Bride, except the six-fingered man is an elephant.

Eventually, though, the Thai government made hunting elephants--who are the national symbol of Thailand--illegal. So he and his dad had to close up shop. After that, he hopped from island to island, working in beach resorts. Then he ended up in Khao Sok National Park, helping steward the rainforest, along with a lot of other former hunters (only he, though walked along the jagged rocks barefoot).

13. So that explains Sexyman's super-powers. In addition, I also learned--and I admit, the details are hazy--that he rescued some German hikers who ran out of water by cutting open the right kind of vine that happened to have potable water running through it. On another occasion, he built a make-shift tent for himself out of tree-branches in the top of a tree and slept there.

14. During the trip, he asked us where we were going to stay when we got to Ko Samui. We said "The Library", which is where we are now (it's fantastic. One of the most luxurious hotels I've ever stayed in). He said, "No...stay at King Bungalow! Very cheap!" We said sorry, we already paid for the room. He later asked us again to stay at King Bungalow. We once again declined. Later, we asked Sherry why he was so hot for King Bungalow. Turns out he wants to work on Ko Samui. So he's got a good instinct for selling!

15. One last thing: after the trip, we were dirty, wet, and tired. We each took showers. So did Mr. Sexyman--in the river. Remember, he's a legendary monster from the rainforest.

Superthai

2009-01-10T05:33:00.004-05:00

I know I promised a posting on food, but this is too good to not immediately write down. Here we go:

Ed, the father of my friend Mikey Y, is the stuff of legends. I don't remember too many specifics, but I'm pretty sure he's beaten up two guys at once and wielded a chainsaw with one arm while standing on a ladder. And, he's, like, a nuclear physicist or something. (Mikey can elaborate in the comments.) Despite Mikey's earnest claims, I never fully believed everything he said. I felt that his tales had the air of embellishment. People like Ed just don't exist, or if they do, then books are written about them and we've all heard of them (e.g., Bo Grice).

But count me a doubter no longer. Why? Not because I met Ed. No, because I met another man. His name? Mr. Sexyman.

Now, you might think that "Mr. Sexyman" is not Mr. Sexyman's real name. And you would, I'm sure, be right. But whatever his real name is, it's lost to the sands of time. For even fellow Thais refer to him as Mr. Sexyman.

So what's this guy's deal? Well, to tell you that, I have to step back and explain something about my situation.

Let me inform you a bit of my itinerary for this Thailand honeymoon. Wife and I started in Bangkok, then we went to Chiang Mai, then we went to Ko Lanta (a small island with incredible beaches--The Beach was filmed there, or somewhere very near there), and then we want to Khao Sok national park.

Khao Sok national park demarcates the oldest rainforest in the world--160 million years old. It's an ecological treasure, of course, but more important from my point of view: it has monkeys.

Monkeys are hilarious. I've seen them before in zoos and on nature documentaries, but I've never seen them when they've seen me. Along with eating really good movie popcorn, this is one of my dreams (I'm a man of very attainable dreams; wife has even more attainable dreams. Her great wish is to one day drink a margarita near the beach or a pool. She has lived the dream something like fifteen times). So, I was an interested party in Khao Sok.

When we got there, we were greeted by Sherry, the most helpful Thai I had (up to that point) ever met. She spoke excellent English and knew all about how to get from one part of Thailand to another. She hooked us up for tours and such.

Then we were shown to our room. Wow, it was terr... uh, it was rustic. It cost something like $15 a night, so we were doing pretty well. After settling in our room, we made our way to the inn where we were staying and had some food.

It was there we first met Mr. Sexyman.

He didn't seem like anything much. A very dark-skinned Thai who loved drinking and smoking. He looked fit, and he was very good at Jenga. That was pretty much all I got from him. Oh, and his English was pretty good. He informed us that he would be our guide. He also tried to convince us to go on a more demanding tour than the one we were signed up for. But since we were sick we declined.

It was a good move.

The next day, we met Mr. Sexyman in the inn, and it was off from there to Khao Sok national park. Now, Khao Sok has two areas: a path, full of small, separated rocks, and the rainforest, full of brambles, snakes, and what-not. We were informed that we'd need a lot of bug spray and good hiking shoes. We duly obliged. And what about Mr. Sexyman?

No bug spray. Barefoot.

What?

Yup. He insisted on walking the entire time, on jagged rocks, barefoot.

It must be a Thai thing! Surely all the other guides were barefoot?

Nope. Just him.

I thought to myself, "what a badass."

As we walked further--maybe half an hour--Mr. Sexyman suddenly started up. He heard something. I heard nothing. He then started making some kind of call.

Nothing happened.

Then, about five minutes later? Monkeys.

Yup. He can call monkeys. He can also tell when they're in a 1,500 foot radius. In fact, not only can he tell when they're near and draw them out, he can see them (and point to them) when we haven't the foggiest idea what he's seeing.

Anyway, the monkeys came. Dream fulfilled. They skittered down to the forest floot, and a baby monkey scurried toward some pineapple Mr. Sexyman had cut up for them. He carried it away eagerly.

Wow. I'm starting to get very attracted to Mr. Sexyman.

Then, after walking us for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, we took a break. I thought, "this isn't so bad." Then we got on the real trail.

This was the most treacherous, draining hike I've ever been on. Let me spoil the surprise and tell you that the hike lasted a total of 7 hrs. 30 min. And the terrain! Holy crap. The steepest inclines and declines I've ever walked up or down without having to literally climb (sometimes I had to literally climb). Mr. Sexyman walked it all no problem. In fact, throughout the course of the hike, he lost his balance just two times, for incredibly brief periods of time.

I can't communicate to you how amazing that feat is. Just trust me--the man has the balance of a land-ninja.

After about twenty minutes walking through this territory, wife and I were pouring sweat. It was wetting my shirt, dripping on my glasses, mussing up my hair, etc. Mr. Sexyman? Didn't break a sweat.

Ever.

Not for the whole hike.

Then, we got to the main sight of our hike: a nice waterfall with a pool at the bottom where you can swim. So wife and I swam--we needed to cool off, and good Lord it was cold. Like, you never get warm in it, you just get numb. And while we swam (and ate lunch) Mr. Sexyman kept to himself a bit and carved something. What did he carve?

Two bamboo cups.

Yup, he just made two cups for us while we were swimming.

Then he caught a fish with his bare hands.

That's right, some real Tom-Hanks-in-Castaway-near-the-end-of-the-movie shit, he just reached his hand in the pond we were swimming in and caught a fish. In fairness, it took him three tries to do this.

After that, we took a different way back. Along the way, he swiped suddenly at a tree. I heard a strange squealing sound and then I looked into his hand.

He had caught a chameleon with his bare hands.

Then, for the topper, we took a different way back, and came to some rapids. Apparently, most people swam across these rapids, because the rocks you had to traverse were too separated to step across.

So I guess we have to swim?

Nope.

Mr. Sexyman cut (with his machete) some thick vines from the forest canopy, hooked one set to the trees on our side of the river, skipped across the rocks, hooked another vine to the other canopy, skipped to the middle and tied these thick vines together with his bare hands, and made a rope hanger for us to hold on to so we could cross the rapids without getting wet.

It took him half an hour. Maybe twenty minutes.

I am not making this up.

So I believe Mike about his dad. I've met Mr. Sexyman. I might even believe that Aleks Emelienko hunted a bear with nothing but a knife. After all, I've met Mr. Sexyman.

He's not perfect, though. He asked a lot of personal questions.

Chiang Mai Adventure, Part 3

2009-01-07T06:40:00.002-05:00

So, we last left on a cliff-hanger.

I bet you were worried.

Well, as I told mom in a separate email, it really shouldn't have ended with "the horror. the horror." More like, "the mild discomfort. The mild discomfort."

Here's what happened:

After seeing the tea-leaf demonstration, it was time to go to bed. So wife and I retired to our home-stay and took a better look around. We were pleased to find a light in our room. That was the last bit of pleasure.

The bed was rock-hard, like my abs, in my head. It was not comfortable, like standing very close to me. The pillows wrapped little rocks. Why wrap rocks? Why not just put the rocks there?

(OK, they weren't rocks. Rocks would have been more uncomfortable. I'll grant that.)

The bathroom was a fucking enigma, man. Don't get me wrong--I knew what I was supposed to do, and where I was supposed to put it. There was a toilet bowl and even a basin behind it--no squat toilets here!--but there was no flusher. Like, once you were done, what were you supposed to do? All I could was a shower nozzle and two dark-looking buckets of water. Was I supposed to squirt myself off? Was I supposed to have gone in the bucket? I didn't know. Wife couldn't figure it out either. So I just went and let God sort it out.

Then there was the extreme coldness. Although Chiang Mai is hot by day, it is uncomfortable at night, unless you (1) wear a lot of clothing and (2) move around a lot. I had (1) totally covered. It was (2) that's the problem. Moreover, (1) wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It's not comfortable sleeping in a jacket under any circumstances, but when your jacket is very thin, and your covers are not covers, but a patchwork of 1'x1' quilts, you get cold. There was a lot of snuggling that night. But not out of love. It was a purely mechanical, no funny-business kind of snuggling.

Hmm. I guess the word "snuggling" is inapt, then. Let's call it "need-based snuggling."

But I haven't gotten to the best part: the roosters.

Now, earlier that day, I found the village roosters hilarious. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" they'd shriek, and then I'd have a laugh as they skipped from rock to rock. I looked forward to having nature's alarm clock wake me up.

And by God, they woke me up. At 2 am.

Here's the thing about roosters that you might think if you haven't spent much time around them. You may think, "roosters only cock-a-doodle when they wake up, right?" No, sir. Roosters never shut the fuck up.

They start at 2 am and they finish at 6 pm. And it's like they have some kind of rooster-off. Who can piss the humans off the most? And they all win.

So there I was, cold, back-pained, and driven mad by roosterdom. And then? 6:45 rolled around. Wife and I got up, angry ghosts of our former selves. Hair mussed, hungry, but very confused. You know that kind of confused--that "I'm so drowsy I forgot who I am" confused? That was me.

And then Arree greeted us.

She had breakfast ready, and what was it? Well, new, sweet breads. Fairly yummy, I'd say. Also, some coffee. Thank God. And ... stew? OK. I mean, it wasn't new stew--it was the two soups we had last night and mixed together. And there was a lot of rice. And fried eggs, on white bread. And fruits! It was actually a lot of breakfast, now that I think about it.

To thank her, I wanted to say, "that was delicious." So I took out my Thai phrase book and looked that up. I found it, but I had no idea how to say it. So I gave the book to her, pointing to the phrase I wanted her to understand. In other words, I wanted her to read, "that was delicious" and then say to me and wife, "you're welcome. Sorry about the roosters."

Now, there's a funny thing about communication; there's a lot of shared principles that enable even rudimentary versions of it. For instance, if I don't know how to say "I want something to drink", I'll point to me and make a drinking motion. People always understand this. But what if they didn't? What if they though I was saying there was something wrong with my arm? Nothing rules that out. So, when I give someone who's never spoken a word of English a Thai phrase book and point her to the word I want her to read, what does she do? She points to her eye and closes it.

What??

She points to her and closes it, and then opens it, and finally wife says, "oh! She can't see well enough to read!" Sure enough this was right. So I gave her my glasses. She took them and put them in front of her face, sort of. They were actually diagonal across her face, because she was 4'10". And then what does she do? She starts reading, out loud, all the words in the book. So, when I pointed her to a word and asked her to read it, she pronounced it and every other word.

Oh well.

The rest of the day was devoted to white-water rafting and a trek to a waterfall. White-water rafting was a lot of fun--the most fun part of the honeymoon, up to that point. We travelled, once again, with the Dutch family. But travelling with us was also Ian Williams, the chief Asia correspondent for NBC. It's not often you get to meet the such a person. But when you do, you know by hearing him that you needed to hear about many more world events from him. I would listen to him read the weather.

There's not much to say about the white-water rafting, alas. I felt as though my rowing skills improved, that I saw neat parts of Thailand, and that it was good that I re-learned how to swim in August. And as for the waterfall: eh. It's a waterfall.

So ends the Chiang Mai adventure. Next up: the food of Thailand!

Chiang Mai Adventure, Part 2

2009-01-05T23:24:00.002-05:00

So first, a word of explanation: i haven't blogged for the last few days because i've been on an island, koh lanta, with spotty, limited internet access. More important, though, the keyboard available is rubber. This means that it's really hard to type on. It also means that this post will probably have lots of orthographical and punctuation-errors. capitatlization, as you've no doubt noticed, will also fall by the wayside. so be it.

when we last left off, wife and i had just arrived at our home-base for our "flight of the gibbon adventure". today, we were scheduled to do ziplining and a home-stay, that is, to stay overnight in a dilapidated village with a host from the village.

the first thing to do was the ziplining. we were set up on the ziplining with a dutch family, the dufornees, consisting of a mom, a dad, and four teenage children--three boys and a girl. I was a bit worried about hanging out with three teenage boys, but as it turns out, they were amazingly well-behaved. that was nice.

our guides for the ziplining were "tiger" and "leo"--these were not their real names, but they were easy for us to pronounce, and they were named after local thai beers.

here's how the ziplining worked: you were strapped to a line via a harness, and part of your harness was a small wheel that rolled along the line. you were also given a brake in case you built up too much speed as you approached your destination. regardless of your speed, though, you had to raise your legs as you approached your destination so that you didn't bump your ankles on the wooden platform you sped towards. plus, you were given a helmet and a fifteen minute talk before hand about safety. the overall effect of everything was to worry you. you thought of two things: "make sure to apply the brake correctly" and "raise my getaway sticks so they don't get clobbered by wood."

wife and i courteously and fearfully let the dutch zipline first. no casualties. good sign! then i did it.

it was fairly nerve-wracking. i didn't look down, but i did hang, however briefly, over a pit filled with brush, trees, and brambles. i certainly would have broken something had i fallen, and i would have been very terrified. moreover, as i ziplined across the pit, i found myself spinning around, such that my back faced the platform i was speeding towards. this unnerved me, because i couldn't see if my legs were raised high enough. plus, right before setting off, leo screamed, "wait, wait!", giving me the impression i forgot something very important, like the anti-monkey repellent. But i hadn't. and overall, i didn't really 'speed" towards the platformed. more like a quick gambole (sp?). so it wasn't really that scary.

Also, as it turned out, leo was a nutty thai who screamed "wait, wait!" at least once during each ziplining session. It started out scary, then it got funny, then it got to be something you tune out.

i don't know how many ziplinings we did in total. maybe 10, maybe more. it was a nice experience, though. our guides spoke better english than the average thai, the dutch were nice, we got lots of pictures, and nothing was too scary.

then we got back to the village.

we were supposed to have dinner with our hosts that night. wife and my hosts were two older thais, mr. nong and arree. mr. nong and arree spoke no english. not even yes, no, and thank you. nothing. that was ok enough, though, because wife and i could point to things on the dinner table, raise our eyebrows questioningly, and wait for a forthcoming thai vocabulary word. i don't remember what we were told, but it passed the time.

truth be told, i was a little nervous before the dinner--in the village square, there was a butcher selling fresh meat. the thing is, the meat was not in any way cooled. it was just sitting out in the sun, while flies swarmed to it, batted away occasionally by the butcher. one guy bought a piece of raw meat and put it into his coat pocket. is that sanitary? moreover, what else do thais put in their pockets? anyway, this was enough to make mrs. dufornee swear off eating anything for dinner, and enough to worry me a bit.

what was a typical thai village dinner, you may ask? i of course dont know, but i can tell you what we had. let's see: two small, cold omelettes, a bowl of rice drenched in a sweet syrup, water, tea, two bowls of stew--one with ground up beef or pork along with something that tasted like a combination of water chestnuts and spinach, and one with ground up beef or pork along with something that looked like kale. there was also rice.

now, there's a thai custom where finishing your food is an insult to the chef, sort of. it shows that he didn't make enough food for you. so even if you want to finish it, you should refrain. with arree things were different. as soon as you got close to finishing your bowl of stuff, arree insisted you have more stuff. so in order not to insult her, you had to take a second portion and finish almost none of it. seems like a waste to me.

after we had dinner, we went to the town square to have drinks with the villagers and listen to them sing.

let me tell you, those guys get drunk. think american Indian reservation. and they sing. badly. and they ask you for money. for the village, they say.

after hanging out with them for a bit, one of the drunken villagers, "singh" (named, as always, after thai beer. i was starting to wonder, given their drinking habits, whether these were their real names), took us to see how tea was made.

it was somewhat interesting. they took lots of tea leaves, heated them, and rolled them up, tying them up afterwards in a misleadingly simple way with bamboo shoots. also, they did this while drunk. i tried to do it, but i couldn't. of course, i had velcro instead of shoelaces until i was 13, so a knotsman i am not.

whatever. as weird and, uh, strange, as things had been, it held no candles to what we would experience that night sleeping at arree and mr. nong's house.

the horror. the horror.

to be continued!

Chiang Mai Adventure, Part 1

2009-01-01T06:40:00.004-05:00

The last night I spent in Bangkok was the one where I saw kickboxing in Lumphini stadium. Although I had a got time watching young boys get brained, wife and I were not so keen on Bangkok. Too much pollution, too many people, too many loud noises, too much untrustworthiness...all that leads to too much stress. So we were happy to take a trip for the next few days to Thailand's second city, Chiang Mai. (And a distant second it is: Bangkok's population: 8 million; Chiang Mai's: 150,000.)

Not to put too fine a point on it, Chiang Mai is lovely. It's people really are friendly, the scams are easier to avoid (because less agressively pursued), the street food is bananas (as in: it's bananas how good it is. Also, there are a lot of bananas), and the city is very walkable. It's like a Thai college town. Moreover, there are great deals on all sorts of clothes, art, nick-nacks, etc.

I shall cover Chiang Mai--especially its labyrinthine zoo--in a little more detail in a later post. For now, I want to tell you about my outdoor adventure, officially entitled, "Flight of the Gibbons."

Flight of the Gibbons is an outdoor adventure consisting of four parts: a ziplining experience, a whitewater rafting part, a trek to a waterfall, and a stay overnight with some Thai villagers. The first adventurous element, though, consisted of being picked up.

Supposedly, we were going to be picked up at 8:30 in front of our hotel. So we woke up at 7 am (or maybe even 6:30, I forget), got to the front of our hotel by 8:15, and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, at 9:20, the shuttle arrived to pick us up. Only one problem: it didn't arrive to pick us up; it arrived to pick up a bunch of other guests from our hotel. But not us.

We talked to the agency and they assured us another shuttle would be by to pick us up in twenty minutes. So we waited.

20 minutes. I read my philosophy book.

40 minutes. I'm really into my book now.

60 minutes. I'm sleepy. Can I go nap nap?

70 minutes later, the shuttle arrived. If we weren't in Thailand, we would maybe express our displeasure. But that doesn't work in Thailand. You're supposed to display "cool heart", and if you don't--if you get visibly angry--the Thais just check out. They're done talking to you. So we didn't get visibly angry. We get on the shuttle.

About an hour later, we arrived at the village where we would be staying that night (population: 400). It was a rickety little place, full of irregularly constructed sidewalks, antique houses, outdated plumbing, and satellite TV dishes.

We got to the building that deals with Flight of the Gibbon, and inside we found a pretty little Thai lady with what seemed to be foot-long eyelashes. Beautiful, in their way. We were supposed to pay 11,300 Baht for the adventure. So we gave her 12,000.

She thought for a second.

She looked at the price. Then she looked at our money.

Finally, she took out her calculator.

She thought some more.

Finally, she figured out that 12,000-11,300=700. She gave us back 700 Bahts.

At this point, we figured out why they were two hours late.

To be continued!

Lumphini Stadium

2008-12-31T06:44:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I've been doing a lot, and when I have free time, I've usually been too exhausted to spend it blogging. So today I want to tell you about something that at least two of my readers want to know about: watching a Muay Thai kickboxing event.

I--just I, the wife was getting a girly spa treatment--got to Lumphini (pronounced Loom-PEENI)stadium on Saturday night at about 7 pm. At the moment I reached Lumphini's threshold--and we're talking about a wide threshold--I was tackled by a ticket saleswoman offering to sell me seating. There were three kinds of seat to purchase--1,000 Baht ($30) for far away seating, 1,500 Baht ($45) for nearby seating, and 2,000 Baht ($60, obviously) for ringside seating. I opted for ringside seating, because it's my honeymoon, and the honeymoon gods demand blood.

Unfortunately, I couldn't go into Lumphini until 8:15, because there was another set of fights going on at the time; so I was going to see the second set of fights.

So I had to wait. Luckily, there was a little bit for me to do while waiting: namely, eat, drink, and observe. So, I decided to buy a beer--a Chang (=elephant) beer--for 40 Baht ($1.21) and look around.

The first thing to note was that there were two kinds of ticket salespeople: yellow-shirted people who appeared to work for Don King promotions, and red-shirted people who worked for God knows who. Unfortunately, I had bought a ticket from a yellow-shirted tentacle of the Don King octopus.

Second, I looked at the list of fights for that night. There were ten fights, and next to each number was listed both the fighters' ridiculously unpronounceable names, as well as their similarly elongated training camps' names. What was most curious, though, was the weights for these fighters. For the first three fights, each of the competitors' weights was 100 lbs. I know fighters can be pretty small, but I didn't know they could be that small. Finally, the main eventers' weights were 128 and 130 lbs. They were the heaviest ones. So, lots of speedy fighters on the bill.

Third, as I waited, I saw two of the fighters--both Westerners--waltz out of the stadium. "That's a bit off", I thought. "Why don't they use some special entrance?" (How did I know they were fighters? Because they were wearing shorts, black shirts with Thai lettering on it, had hot girlfriends, and, oh yeah, their faces were red and puffy from being punched and kicked a lot.)

Fourth, Chang beer was not very good. It's time to buy a Singh. 50 Baht ($1,51). (While I was buying a Singh, an Australian sidled up next to me and asked for a Singh as well. "50 baht!" he was told. "No! 30!" he loudly purred (only Australians can pull that off). "50!" she repeated. "OK." "Does that bargaining technique ever work?" I asked. "Not really," he Australiaed.

I was finally let in at 8:10. As is to be expected, people who buy their tickets from King volunteers get a raw deal; we're let in second, whereas the people who bought from the redshirts are let in first.

What I didn't expect was how small Lumphini is; probably only a few thousand could fit in there. Also, ringside didn't make much difference. The 1,500 Baht seats were pretty close as well. What about the 1,000 Baht seats? Ah, these, I think, were just for Thais. Think: The Deerhunter. That is, a bunch of old, screaming Asian man yelling at a bookie. Also, Christopher Walken's dead body was there. I don't think I would have been comfortable for 1,000 Baht.

I took my seat at ringside and waited around a bit. Nothing doing, really, so I decided I wanted to pee. I went to the restroom, and whom did I pass on the way there? All of tonight's fighters! They were right back there stretching, jumping around, and doing Thai stuff. If they let schlubs like me next to the fighters, I guess it makes sense that they don't have a separate exit.

I waited around a bit, and then the action started (at about 8:40). The first two competitors came to the ring, and I instantly realized why they were listed as being 100 pounds: because they're 12 years old. Imagine that: 12-year olds fighting in front of a room full of cheering strangers. This is a great country.

Now, one thing about Muay Thai is that there is kooky music and dancing before each match; with these kids there was no difference, except that they were really phoning in the dancing.

Anyway, off to the fights. While I thoroughly applaud putting 12-year olds in death matches, I give a thumbs down to the skill level displayed. They were not very strong, kinda slow, and boring. At least the matches were only one 6 1-minute rounds.

Next bout. A couple more kids fighting. This time they were fourteen. Ho hum. More boring...holy crud, these kids are kind of good. Wait, this is actually exciting! Hey, these kids are evenly matched, and they're kneeing each other and taking each other down! And every time, the kid in blue knees the kid in red, his corner-people--there are about twenty of them--scream, "knee!!"--and every time the red kid knees the blue kid, the people in his corner scream out some gibberish in Thai! What a glorious sport.

OK, on to the third bout. More kids. But now I'm interested. They fight for a couple rounds, and it's like the first match. Round 1, a bit slow, but round 2 was fast and exciting. Round 3 was...HOLY SHIT! A 14-YEAR OLD JUST KNOCKED ANOTHER 14-YEAR OLD OUT WITH AN ELBOW TO THE FACE! AND I WATCHED IT!! THERE IS A GOD!!

The next match was between older gentlemen, but I had seen my fill. It was late at night, and time to go home. Thailand was beginning to prove its point. There's more to it than just smiling scam artists and great food. There's also schoolyard fights between the baddest kids you know broadcast in vibrant technicolor.

Awesome.

Oh yeah: F**k Rashad Evans.

Everything

2008-12-28T20:20:00.003-05:00

So Mom and I went to Dorothy Lane Market late last night. It was around 2am or so. Mom bought some chocolate covered raisins in a plastic container. The checkout lady was attempting to run them through the scanner and accidentally opened the box, spilling chocolate covered raisins all over the floor.

As we continued to ring up items, a guy who must have been 85 if he was a day came toddling up to buy some milk and a piece of cake. I am assuming 85 or so not just because he looked it, but also because he mentioned that he had been married for 60 years. The checkout lady warned him as he approached, "be careful, there are raisins on the floor." The old guy looked down, saw the raisins and said, "Now I've seen everything!"

This was an interesting sentiment to hear from a guy who had spent 85 years on this earth. I would figure that he ought to say something like, "Okay." Or, "That's annoying." Or even, "Better watch out for those spilled raisins."

As it is I have to assume one of two things. 1. He is a shut in who has lived in a closet (with his wife) for his entire life and this was the night he ventured out to try things beyond his wildest dreams. In this case, milk, cake, and spilled raisins. Or 2. This guy has seen everything. He has wrestled bears in the backwoods of Russia, he has surfed the biggest waves of Fiji, he was an astronaut and spent time in space. But somehow it was this event - the witnessing of spilled chocolate covered raisins - that he had never had the fortune to come across... until now. The last puzzle piece was finally in place and he had filled out the checklist of human experience.

I am going with the latter. God bless you, Biff Spaceman, and your lifetime of maximized human achievement.

And you're welcome.

Bangkok

2008-12-27T04:59:00.002-05:00

First, about the food: I'm not going to get to the food until I have more data. Suffice it to say, there is an incredible array of weird (duck's beaks, flower salads, butterfly pea soda) and delicious (red curry sauce with roasted duck chunks, flakes of dried pork, and salted egg--that's one dish) food here.

Second, let me say something about Bangkok.

I'm not going to intersperse lines of the song from Chess into this post--too obvious. So instead, I'll intersperse lines from Rammstein's "du hast."

As is well known, "du hast"--"you hate"--begins with the lines (translated from the German), "You/You hate/You hate me/You hate me to say/You hate me to say/And I did not obey."Well, that's a lot like Bangkok. I had heard so much about how everyone in Thailand is so friendly, no one loses their cool, Thailand's main industry is tourism, etc., but don't believe it. Well, believe that no one loses their cool and that Thailand's main industry is tourism, but don't believe that everyone is so friendly. It's not that everyone is friendly. It's that everyone smiles.

Walking through Bangkok at any time of day, if you're a white person, is like walking through a city where everyone in the service industry constantly tries to bend your ear, begging you to realize that you're taking a taxi or a tuk tuk or that you want fine jewelry. Really, it's exactly like that. It's eerie.

Everyone wants you to do something, and they're always smiling, but it's just a facade; you know how, when you're on a desert island, your friends start looking like roasted chicken legs? Well in Thailand almost everyone has been deserted by their money, and tourists look like big, ambulatory, burlap sacks with dollar signs on them. All the Thais want to do is convince you to take a ride in their tuk tuk and then open you up and scoop out your insides.

Not only is that, well, objectifying, but it means that the city is really, at the end of it, a very unfriendly place. You can't ask anyone for help because they either don't speak English, or if they do, they will not help you, but instead take you to their jewelry store. Consequently, when you're feeling bedraggled because of the unlabeled streets, the congestion, the pollution, and the innumberable specks of crap that float through the city and land, over and over again, in your eyes, you don't feel like this is, as Rammstein has it, a city that will "Be upright to her forever".

That said, wife and I are really looking forward to Chang Mai. It's supposedly much more laid back. I'll let you know tomorrow or the next day.

Scam, scam, scam, scammity scam!

2008-12-25T21:31:00.002-05:00

When we last left off, I told you I had been scammed by a wily stranger. Here's what happened.

A man stood in front of a sign saying, "Do not trust wily strangers." Next to him stood an armed soldier. This created the appearance of trustworthiness in the wily stranger, at least to me and wife.

The wily stranger was dressed in a suit and tie, which added to his authority. Wife and I stood in front of the gate to the Golden Palace, a major site in Thailand. It was about 12:30 pm.

He asked us, "what are you looking for?" We said, "the entrance to the Golden Palace."

"Oh, it's closed today until 3:30 pm--there's a Buddhist holiday, and it's full of Buddhist monks. Did you not know about he Buddhist holiday?", he asked, incredulously. His incredulity added to the effectiveness of his facade. I mean, it's obvious that we should have known about the Buddhist holiday, right? "Where you from?" "USA--Los Angeles." "Ah, Obama!"

What?

"Do you speak Thai?", he asked. We of course admitted that we didn't. He asked, again incredulously, "do you know about today's discount?" We admitted that we didn't know what he was talking about. "Today, because it's Christmas and there are so many tourists, eveyone gets a good discount. You just have go to the Thai Tourist Authority (TTA)! Here--I'll have my friend take you!"

From out of nowhere, his friend, a Tuk Tuk driver--Tuk Tuks are motorized rick-shaws, for lack of a better description--materialized. This fellow promised to charge us only 20 Baht per person to take us to the TTA. (It's about 35 Baht to the dollar, so all told this trip would cost us slightly more than $1.) We sort of said, well... and the wily stranger added, "come on, he take you to standing Buddha, and then to TTA, and then back to the Golden Palace!"

Now, let's stop for a moment. Of course we didn't know about the Buddhist holiday. Why would we have--we can't understand Thai, and we don't watch Thai TV. Second, what is the TTA? Something he made up, I'd wager. Third, I should be wary of materializing strangers--sudden materialization bespeaks conjury, or Star Trek transporter devices, both of which are bad news for the people involved with them.

Anway, we got in the Tuk Tuk.

As the Tuk Tuk tuk tuk'd away (they're called Tuk Tuks because that's the sound they make as they motor along, supposedly. However, the relationship between "tuk tuk" and the sound Tuk Tuks make is about the same as the relationship between the sound of the word "smash!" and you smashing a glass), I noticed something interesting. The Tuk Tuk's driver was lower to the ground than we were. In addition, there was a canvas top that prevented us from seeing anything clearly. So we didn't know where we were going, we couldn't speak or read Thai, and we couldn't see. It was like being blindfolded and kidnapped by a minotaur. You're in a maze, you can't see, the minotaur can kill you if he wants to, and you're in a maze to boot. The whole thing is really overkill.

Anyway, wife and I figured at this point that we were being scammed. I just hoped that he didn't entrust us to the loving embrace of brigands. Wife worried about being taken to a jewelry store. Neither of those things happened. Instead, we were taken to the Standing Buddha, a 45 meter tall golden Buddha statue. We took a look around, and were informed by some nearby Thais that if we gave them 90 Baht they would free a bird (presumably, one they had captured). What's the benefit of freeing a captured bird? Apparently, good luck for the rest of your life.

I declined.

Anyway, we went into a temple near the standing Buddha and saw some monks listening to iPods and making Buddhist art.

Whatever.

Then we went back to our Tuk Tuk driver. He hadn't asked for any money yet, and he actually took us to a standing Buddha. Maybe this would turn out not to be a scam after all! When we got back to the Tuk Tuk driver, he told us he had to go to the bathroom. It would only take 3 minutes. We waited in the Tuk Tuk, and a completely random stranger came up to us and started talking to us. "Where you from?" "USA--Los Angeles", we said. "Ah, Obama!" he replied.

I'm beginning to think this is going to become the international greeting from foreigners to USAers. Could be worse, I guess. They could say, "Ah! Bernie Madoff!" Or "Ah! USA Bailout!"

Anyway, he started telling us that we should get a suit--that Thai suits are very well made, and that there's a special discount only for today. Tomorrow, we won't be able to get suits at all. Moreover, we should go to the TTA, because there we can make bookings for hotels, because this is the busiest travel time of the year, and all the hotels are full. So we better book now. Really, we have to do this all today, because tomorrow, they won't sell us the suits or the hotel rooms. It's "more better" if we do this today.

Finally, a bit fed up, I asked him, "how come the suit stores and hotels won't take tourists' money after Christmas? Why don't they want to sell things to people after Christmas?"

This actually perplexed him. He stilled for a moment. Then he thought about it. And then he said...well, I can't reproduce what he said. Because, frankly, what he said was a string of almost incomprehensible gibberish. Not only was the accent thick, but the contents were mysterious. What I gleaned, though, was something like: "they have to stop selling tomorrow, because if they sold even tomorrow then they wouldn't have any stuff for Thai people."

I should have punched him then and there. Instead, his cell phone rang, and he stopped talking to us, and once again the Tuk Tuk driver materialized out of nowhere. "OK, we go to TTA now, OK?"

OK!

He drove us for a while, and took us to what looked for all the world like a storefront. "This is the TTA?" "Yes, this is TTA. They give you information."

Well, I like information.

We went inside, where we discovered a room full of suits! And several Indian proprieters asking us to sit down and have a look around.

I asked a question of the Indian proprieter who was servicing us. "Uh, I was told that we'd be given information, but I wasn't told the nature or contents of this information. Do you know what information we're supposed to learn?"

"Yes, information about buying suits."

Ah. I was always wondering how to give a stranger money to get a good or service in return. Finally, this question would be answered.

I thanked him for this valuable information and we went right back out to the Tuk Tuk driver. "We go now?" He asked. "Yes we want to go to the Golden Palace. No where else but the Golden Palace!" Wife said. He assented and started driving us away.

We drove, disorientedly, for some time. Then all of a sudden we found ourselves turning in to a jewelry store! "No! No, we don't want to go here!" wife said. "Are you sure?" said the driver. "Yes, we're sure! We don't want to go here!" "Maybe you go?" "No!" "But maybe?" "No!" "But maybe you go?" Finally, I said "yes, please take us there."

I should say, what motivated me to go there was that we were having this conversation right in the middle of a busy street. I mean, literally, right in the middle. Like, we were blocking traffic in both directions, and cars swerved around us. I figured I'd put that nonsense to an end and start with a whole new amount of nonsense.

So we went to the jewelry store.

"You have to stay for ten minutes!", he gently commanded us. "I no get gas coupon unless you stay for ten minutes!" So we went into the jewelry store. We were assigned a certified Thai hussler to show us around the store and tell us what to buy. We quickly abandoned her and went to another segment of this maze-like store, where we were assigned another Thai hustler. Finally, we shook her off and went to the third chamber of this discount dungeon and waited around looking at food until ten minutes were up. Then we went back to the Tuk Tuk driver.

"Please take us to the Golden Palace!" we implored him. "One more stop!" he responded. "No, no more stops! Golden Palace!" "But it's fashion for you!" he pointed to wife. "I don't want fashion!" "Why not?" "Because we're not here for that!" I said. "Are you sure?" "Yes! Please take us to Golden Palace!" "But I get gas coupon if you look for five minutes!" We told him we didn't want to go.

So he took us in his Tuk Tuk and off we went. We drove for quite a while, and I was sure he would just take us to the fashion panopticon anyway, but lo and behold he didn't! He just took us to the Golden Palace. I paid him his 40 baht and we got out of the Tuk Tuk.

"Now, you smarter." He said.

And so we were.

One last thing: the Golden Palace is open to everyone every day, and it closes at 3:30.

We still managed to see it, though.

Thailand: So Thai-erd.

2008-12-25T10:09:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm in Thailand. Writing on a computer. In their business center.

How did I get here? It's all a blur. There was some payment involved, though. Oh yes, and there was also an 11-hour flight, followed by a 30 min "break" (which consisted of my wife and me running to our gate), followed by a 7-hour flight, which collective ordeal I entitle, "The Bataan death sit."

Here's a little more detail, though: it was December 23. I turned in my grades (I'm a professor, so I have to grade stuff) and the final draft of a paper to a journal (I'm a professor, so I have to write stuff), and then, wow, it was already 6 am! I didn't sleep at all! The night before 18 hours of flying!

So wife and I were picked up at 6:30 am by a super shuttle and we found ourselves in with five Indians: a man, a woman, and three children. "So...how do you guys know each other?", I imagined myself saying. But I didn't. I also imagined myself suddenly shrieking in a Big Bird voice 40 minutes into the drive, but I didn't do that either. (One of the girl-children was sick, though. I overheard her mom ask her, "do you want to womit?" I sure didn't want her to womit. The smell of womit makes me want to womit, so if she had womited, I would have womited.)

Now, on to the flights: the first flight was a mere 11 hours. It takes 11 hours of sitting on a cramped plane for you to realize that it's actually hard work sitting on your ass. Like, I could literally feel the bed sores developing. And then, when you fly for 7 more hours, it's really like sensory deprivation. I had no idea what time it was, whether it was night or day, how many hours I'd slept, how many meals I'd missed, and so on. I did see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, though. That movie takes an awful glib view regarding mummy-death.

I should say a couple of things right now, though: the main airport in Tokyo, which was where our layover was: not like Bladerunner. In fact, not even like Bladewalker. More like stationary butterknife. Very disappointing. I expected the flight attendants to be fighting off giant penis-monsters, and there was nothing like that at all.

The Thai airport? Made in 2006. Very glass-filled. The whole airport is made of glass and spices.

We took a cab from the airport to our hotel (the price? $30. Not as cheap as I'd hoped.). When we got to the hotel: a nice, long sleep to Erin Brockovich. She was on the TV.

The next day, we decided to hit the sites. First, though, breakfast. I got the typical Thai breakfast consisting of a salmon and cream cheese bagel, two pancakes with cherried strawberries, eggs hollandaise, papaya with lemon juice, a croissant, and dragon-fruit (like a cross between coconut and blueberries). Also, Chinese apples, I think, which are like a cross between apples and sugarcane.

Then, we went out to the Reclining Buddha. Many meters of tired Buddha. We took pictures.

After that, we went to the Grand Palace. I took a picture of a sign that said "Beware of wily strangers." Who was standing next to that sign? An armed soldier. Who was standing next to him? A wily stranger! In fact, the stranger was this wily: he stood in front of a sign that said to beware of him, next to a government official who could overhear everything he said. Now, you might think: not so wily. But you'd be wrong! Because why would a wily stranger stand in front of a sign to beware of wily strangers? Because he reversed psychologized the hell out of us! So much so, in fact, that he scammed wife and me. Here's how...

Oh, wait, I'll leave the scam to my next entry. Suffice it to say, wife and I are fine, and we're only out $1. Which is like a year's salary to these people.

Stay tuned.

To a girl who really likes Netflix. She mentioned it like 3 times.

2008-12-21T23:25:00.003-05:00

I enjoyed reading your profile. I was particularly drawn to your interest in Netflix. It's not commonly know due to the web 2.0 connotation of its moniker, but Netflix was actually named after my grandfather, Netto Flix. Netto came from the old country of Lithuania with only two things - an idea for a movie delivery service and a plan to run a clone of Abraham Lincoln for president. Though Netto spent all his time and fortune on the latter idea, it was the former that captured the attention of a young Marc Randolph who befriended my grandfather, got him drunk on gin, then bludgeoned him to death with a bowling pin and stole the plan. In a moment of awkward regret, Marc named the company after the man from whom he stole the idea for its inception.

Also, I like those red wrappers.

Joe

To a girl who really likes lolcats

2008-12-21T19:36:00.002-05:00

I enjoyed your profile as I also am drawn to lolcats. Recently I began laying the foundation for a completely novel online gaming community based on this meme. The premise is simple: virtual cats programmed to behave like real cats wander around a maze filled with narrow, monorail-like beams, invisible objects of all kinds, and a kindly walrus. Human players, through avatars, observe the cats via a panopticon-like virtual lens and press buttons with phrases like "Oh noes!" "Ize got a murder-urge" and "Invsble uvulaectomy!" The resulting parallel universe of cat-based destruction comedy brings joy to our world.

Of course, if this virtual experiment doesn't work, I will release 1000 rabid, stray cats into an insane asylum.

Joe

More virtual skirt chasing.

2008-12-20T18:43:00.000-05:00

To this girl. She likes Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Hello.

I enjoyed your profile. I too am a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I discovered the show while researching ways to deal with my neighbor who is clearly of Nosferatu-disposition and has plans upon my person, most likely to seize ownership of my mountain bike as it has a comfort ride seat which vampires are know to appreciate. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that despite the show's very direct and informational title, it's largely about people smooching and wanting to be smooched.

While this may be interesting TV to some, it does little to help me hide my neighbor's body which, surprisingly, did not turn into a puddle of water or protoplasm when I put a stake through his heart. Any advice you may have gleaned from the program would be appreciated.

Joe
____________________________________________________

No response yet. I'll let you know.

A response!

2008-12-20T18:31:00.002-05:00

This is from that denim designer I said seemed "mean." I might need to take that back for it seems she has a sense of humor. Her response and my reply to said response below:

______________________________________________

cyborgs never listen. instead of beating him, maybe you should try water boarding- i hear it's totally legal & humane to boot.

re: your list of why you can't date a girl... that will probably be a problem. "father" tells me that the end is near & that we must gain as many new "brothers" & sisters" as possible before the spaceship comes to take the chosen ones... so yeah... you really need to be open to it.

also... i don't do art BUT if you have any excess back skin to spare, i am making a coat for my hairless cat. she gets really cold when i take her for walks.

michelle

__________________________________________________

Michelle,

I checked my book on the Geneva Convention and I am vexed to report my confusion. Guillaume, my cyborg, is only 50% human so "humane" water boarding only partially applies! As this is one of those gray areas of human morality, the beatings will continue.

So, I am in agreement with your Pater. Clearly the end is nigh. I am glad to hear others are also encouraging the apocalypse so maybe, just this once, I will bend my rule about joining a cult. What kind of uniform do we wear? And what body parts must we sacrifice to persuade the mother ship to change her orbit and approach our planet?

And now, what you have been waiting for. The pièce de résistance (or perhaps, the coup de grâce, regardless, it's better in French) a glistening descriptiton of my junk -

It was made by Wa-Chen. It is capable of carrying 700 people together with 260 tons of cargo. The four sails do not face directly forward, but are set obliquely, and so arranged that they can all be fixed in the same direction, to receive the wind and to spill it. Those sails which are behind the most windward one receiving the pressure of the wind, throw it from one to the other, so that they all profit from its force. If it is violent, (the sailors) diminish or augment the surface of the sails according to the conditions. This oblique rig, which permits the sails to receive from one another the breath of the wind, obviates the anxiety attendant upon having high masts. Thus these ships sail without avoiding strong winds and dashing waves, by the aid of which they can make great speed.

Boo-yah. Mission accomplished: You are horny.

Joe
_________________________________________

More to come!

My First Los Angeles Experience

2008-12-20T13:40:00.003-05:00

Although I've lived in the LA (not Louisiana) area for a few months now, I haven't until a few days ago had a prototypically LA experience. What was that experience?

Picture this: a bus slows to a stop on the right lane of a busy street. Cars zip past its left, but one unlucky driver gets stuck behind it. He's clearly agitated, but he can't pass it. So finally, when he can pass it, he slows down near one of the passengers getting in, opens his window, and screams, "GET A CAR!"

I like this move for two reasons. First, if the fellow did get a car, it would only make things worse for the driver. Buses, horrible as they are, actually cut down on congestion. Second, he seems to think that the only reason people take the bus in the first place is that they're just too damn lazy to man up and get a car.

Damn, freeloading bus-riders.

Correspondence with women.

2008-12-20T05:04:00.003-05:00

To an artsy type girl:

YOUR PROFILE

I like it. It is the kind of thing that angered the gods of Easter Island and drove the inhabitants mad with idol-building fervor.

I own X-box.

Rapa-Nui.

Joe

No response yet. Not a great effort, but I am just getting started.

_________________________________________________

To a girl whose screen name had ATHENA in it.

Athena is a good name.

I like it for she sprang forth from the head of Zeus fully formed. And she was the goddess of wisdom.

As we need more wisdom in the world, I make it my mission to free as many avatars of Athena as I can from the mortal constraints of passers-by. I have a holy axe and I use it on anyone who seems to have un-excavated wisdom in their cranium. The authorities do not understand my holy mission so if we go to Appleby's together, I will eat my riblets under the table as you watch out for infidels.

Yours in parthenogenesis,

Joe

No response yet. But better, funnier, weirder.

__________________________________________________________

To a girl who had red hair and talked a lot about cutting hair in her profile. She reminds me a lot of my ex-wife.

Hello

You are new to the site therefore I must congratulate you on your decisiveness.

I enjoyed your comments about cutting hair. Currently my haircuts are performed at an insane asylum on the 13th of every month. Not only does this reduce the cost of my haircuts, but it also gives the inmates something more constructive to do than their typical schedule of macaroni sculpting, TV watching, and forced sodomy. I like to think of it as my form of charity. Occasionally an inmate will attempt to force a foreign object into my head but as it's usually imaginary - a demon, a ghost, a secret box made incarnate from the third promise of Fatima - it doesn't actually hurt.

Red is a good color. Your hair is the color of Santa Claus' blood.

Joe

No response yet. But this is fairly good. I wimped out a bit on the Santa line.
__________________________________________________________

To a girl who is some kind of denim fashion designer and had a truly exhaustive list of why she won't date someone. Most notable, if they talk about the size of their "junk." She seems, for lack of a better word, mean.

Hello

I read your entry about why you cannot date someone. It was voluminous and bespoke a difficult path with regards to dating. I also have a list of why I cannot date a girl.

1 - You want me to join a cult. I cannot get group married again.
2 - You want to cut out large swathes of my back-skin for your art project. Once is too many times there, missy!
3 - You won't let me tell you about my junk. Really, this i don't get. I have junk from flotsam piles acrosss the globe. You would be surprised how interesting the dimensions of Burmese refuse can truly be.
4 - You don't believe in the cyclops god. He is real and he is watching with his one baleful eye. His foe is Ulysses and sheep.
5 - You object to my weapons collection and predilection for police station arson.

I would like to see your denim. I am building a cyborg and much of his inner workings are unattractive. This is because I beat him but it's really his fault. He won't listen.

Joe

No response yet. Too direct an attack, I think.

___________________________________________________________

To a girl who is a vegan. Her tag line was "Nasty, Brutish, and Short."

I appreciate your Hobbesian tag line.

I found much to appreciate in your profile. I can sympathize with your veganism in a Peter Singerish way. I personally do eat meat but I have learned to only eat meat from animals that die of old age. This way no cruelty can come of it.

Sure, some people are discomfited by my haunting of animal old age homes and once or twice I was accused of talking animals into suicide in all night, Hannibal Lecter-like jam sessions... but at the end of the day these animals chose to take their lives. One was in a bad master-pet relationship, the other had been castrated by a thoughtless owner. They had reasons to go to the other side. Is it my fault they left behind such tasty corpses? Of course not.

It is my adventures, by the way, that gave rise to the title, "Silence of the Lambs."

And it was a COW'S liver. And Pinto beans.

Joe

No response yet.

_____________________________________________________________

To a girl who lives in West Hollywood where I also reside and claims to read a book a day. Unlikely at best.

Hello

I also share your passion for the written word. So much so that some months ago I affixed a pair of wax lips to a Roget's Thesaurus and made out with it mightily. It began as a burning flame of desire until Rogette's confectionery lips began to disintegrate under the constant barrage of my smooch cannon. Suffice it to say, Rogette's days d'amour are behind me and it is now time to move on to a new voluptuary. I found you on this site and your appeal is vast... in addition to your numerous literary and filmic qualities, you live close and I hate to drive.

Joe

No response yet, but I did just send it.

Joe!

Dating

2008-12-20T04:59:00.003-05:00

Hello all. It has been a long time since I blogged but now it is time. I have recently embarked on a new journey in dating. My goal in dating is simple: comedy. I know some people date for romantic purposes but as that hasn't worked, I am changing tactics.

I signed up for an account on a dating site called OKCupid!. My profile has pictures but is otherwise recreated for you below:

My self-summary

Girls do not like nice guys so let me make it known I am not a nice guy. On most first dates I like to get in bar fights... not with you, of course, but with some random guy who gives you the eye.

After that, as we flee from the police, I will give you a prison-tattoo to commemorate the occasion... something like a a skull with an axe in it or maybe a robot giving the finger.

Next, as we hide in the house of a terrified stranger waiting for the police helicopters to pass by, I will break down weeping because of any one of a multitude of issues... work, family, divorce, whatever. Then I will get hopelessly drunk leaving you to figure out our escape route.

Once we have escaped the roadblocks the SWAT teams have set up, we'll share a piece of pie in a roadside diner with no name. I'll try to have sex with you in the bathroom. You'll say yes or no but either way I won't call again.

If there's a second date, it will be because we were put on a reality show together. Something where, ideally, Brett Michaels is involved.

What I'm doing with my life

I spend a lot of time building my perfect post-apocalypse shelter. I used to say fallout shelter, but there's no guarantee the eschaton is coming in a blast of radiation. It could be anything that brings us over the edge... Famine, Islamic fundamentalism, Prop 8 marches, financial insolvency, my recently synthasized flesh-eating virus. The list is endless.

Anyway my shelter is pretty awesome. It has carpeted walls and a mini-fridge.

I'm really good at

Stabbing. Breaking things. Stealing from the unsuspecting. Giving cute names to non-cute things. Drinking gasoline. Screaming at God. Avoiding the detection of government. Comparing all who disagree with me to Hitler. Disappointing your parents. Phrenology. Dyspepsia. Setting glass eyes.

The first thing(s) people usually notice about me

I'm tall, 6'2"

After that they notice the robot arm, the necklace of ears, and my hawkservant Alphonso.

My favorite books, movies, music, and food

The only book I read is Stalking for Dummies. A book I also wrote.

The only movie I have ever seen is Deep Throat.

The only music I listen to is clown music. You know, that tune they play when a bunch of them drive around in a little car.

The only food I eat is that which I kill for myself. And Cocoa Pebbles.

The six things I could never do without

The Internet
A robot manservant
My cloak of invisibility
A hyperspeed rocketpack
A machine that makes anything I want
Coffeemaker

I spend a lot of time thinking about

What you did, you filthy minx.

On a typical Friday night I am

Ritually gutting a goat. This is important to my religion so if we start dating, all Fridays are off the table.

The most private thing I'm willing to admit here

I think a gnome lives in my stomach and it's his crazed desires that drive me to do the evil I do. And I loved Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It's not just for girls!

You should message me if

You are looking for another chapter in your memoirs and, like all women, yours is becoming dangerously too close to something David Sedaris wrote. I will shake it up, believe that.

So that is my profile. The site also gives you little banners that describe your character... I went for maximun perviness with a touch of Republicanism because I know how girls in Los Angeles like that.

NEXT: My correspondence with women!

A Dadecdote about Logic

2008-10-18T23:53:00.003-04:00

Note: to protect my fiancee's anonymity, for the purposes of the following dadecdote, her name will be Julie.

I'm getting married fairly soon. My Dad congratulated me on this fact:

Dad: To think, next week you will be married! And also, Julie will be married!

The Mimic: A Dadecdote

2008-10-06T01:40:00.002-04:00

I was talking to Mom on the phone. She was on America Online.

Little did I know, Dad was listening in.

She was talking to me about something, and then she signed off from AOL. As she signed off, the AOL voice chirped, "Goodbye".

At which point, Dad said, "Joseph?"

That's right. He confused my brother's voice with the America Online guy.

Let's hope that my brother never tells Dad that he has mail.

A Dadecdote That Didn't Happen to Me

2008-09-25T12:04:00.001-04:00

Way back when, my brother was prepping a D&D campaign.

He was working, on his computer, on a monster he dubbed "Necrovore".

Dad comes in.

Dad looks at the screen. He then shakes his head in disappointment.

"Oh, Sanny. "Necrovore." Mixing Latin and Greek. Eet should be "necrophage"."

We never can do D&D well enough to please Dad.

B's true Mom Stories: Repetition

2008-09-25T03:03:00.002-04:00

I worry that I do this now. Yet if I did, I'd never notice.

I was talking to mom tonight about living in Los Angeles, which is where I live now.

She pointed out to me that I left a TV back in my home town.

Mom: it looks good. How much was it?
Me: $400.
Mom: Wow, where did you get it?
Me: eBay.
Mom: Oh, eBay! For how much?

This reminds me of a Dadecdote that I neglected to tell you.

Recently, I noticed that my car has a dent on the back. Thing is, I'm not responsible for this dent--it used to be my mom's car, and it was dented under her care. So I called her up to ask her what happened.

Mom: Oh, I don't know. You should ask your father.
Dad (already on the phone, silently listening in, like a stalker): It happened at ... the auto ... dealer.
Me: Oh? What happened?
Dad: I received a notice. I took the car in to fix a problem. They fixed the problem. But they dented the car.
Mom: Oh! Why didn't you have them do something?
Dad: I told you, I got a notice!
Mom: What?
Dad: I received a notice. I took the car to the dealer to fix a problem. It was fixed. But during its fixing, they dented the car.
Mom: But why didn't you tell them to fix the dent??
Dad: I told you, I received a notice!

I worry that I do this now. Yet if I did, I'd never notice.

Second Language

2008-07-17T14:34:00.003-04:00

Dad is a Greek. He didn't learn English until his thirties. This means he makes mistakes when speaking English. For instance, he warns people not to "bark at the wrong tree." Similarly, today he told me not to invite too many people to my wedding. After all, "you don't want to make this your big, Greek, fat wedding."

That got me thinking: I'm going to start cooking french fries in Greek-fat. Yum!

Dadecdote: It's My Life!

2008-07-17T10:16:00.002-04:00

Back when I was visiting my parents, a couple of weeks ago, I decided I would mail a lot of my books from my old home to my new office in California.

The process started with the usual missteps: I first went to Office Depot (with Dad) to buy big boxes. I had a lot of books, after all, so the more space, the better, right?!

Well, obviously not. Books, I should remember, are heavy. Boxes are made out of cardboard, which is the Unitarianism of the board-world; in other words, weak. Of course, I didn't make this realization until after I had assembled all five of these big boxes and filled them up with books. As they ripped to shreds in my hands, I thought: "this probably won't make it through the shipping stage."

So I went to U-Haul. I decided to buy some book-boxes. They worked well, but I didn't buy enough. So on a Thursday, I thought to myself: I'm going to go to the post office, mail out the boxes I filled, buy more boxes at U-Haul, fill those, and then mail those out. The problem was, reality intervened.

So here's the nub or the story, the "reality" part. Our insane Romanian housekeeper [IRH] was raising hell again, complaining about something or other. Probably her car costs, or that she wasn't appreciated. Or she was telling Dad how the financial markets worked. Whatever. In any case, as I was getting ready to go mail my boxes to the post-office, Dad asked me:

Dad: San [son], do you want me to go weeth [with] you?
Me: Uh...why?
Dad: To help you!

I thought about this for a second. I know for a fact that Dad is a squirrely guy, so I was thinking: maybe he wants to get out of being around our housekeeper? It would be a fairly sensible thing to want; he can't very well say, "I must leave the presence of thees annoying woman", so he was being canny. Good for him!

Me: Yeah, that'd be good. You should come along.
Dad: OK! I will get ready.

While Dad got ready, I put the boxes I had ready in order. All told, there were seven boxes. At this point, IRH got in on the act.

IRH: Robert, you can't take all these boxes een your car!
Me: Uh...why not?
IRH: Because zere are too many of them!

Then Dad rejoined the party.

Dad: Yes, san, you should not take so many boxes.
Me: Yeah, why is that again?
Dad: Because you cannot feet them in your car.
Me: Actually, I'm pretty sure I can...
IRH: Your father eez right. You need to put some of ze boxes een your car, and some een hees.
Dad: No, you should take four today, and take the rest on Saturday.
IRH: No, you cannot take zem on Saturday, ze Post Office ees closed on Saturday because eet ees ze day after ze Fours of July!
Dad: They are not...closed...on...Saturday.
IRH: Yes, zey are! Take two cars today.
Dad: No, san, we will take two trips, today and tomorrow.

Now, you have to admire the underlying premise of the conversation between these two accented crackpots. Whatever the case with the boxes, one thing was for sure: I couldn't do this alone, and I couldn't do it in one trip. Even though seven boxes of books would easily fit in my car, both Dad and IRH knew that, even if I somehow managed to fit all seven boxes in my car, once I got to the Post Office, I would be completely flustered. I have no idea what they thought would happen; would I get to the Post Office, then just leave? Would I go in and just throw the boxes all around? Would I place them on the floor and look at them blankly, wondering why the magical postal fairies hadn't taken them away?

Long story short, I ended up taking two trips. Remember, I had to get more boxes anyway, and with Dad in the car, that would just be too much to explain. So I went to the Post Office, mailed off "ze boxes", and went home; before Dad and I left, though, we were sure to check the hours on July 5. Sure enough, the Post Office was open that day.

When we returned home, I informed IRH of the Post Office's hours. "Zat ees strange," she said. "Zey must have changed them zis year!" Ah, yes. She must have been right all along but for some freakish decision by the Post Office to take away days off from their employees.

By the way, at the Post Office I asked Dad why he was so intent on coming with me. It was to escape IRH, right? "No," Dad says. "I just thought you needed to be able to pay for the boxes." Ah, that was why I couldn't do it alone--because I wouldn't be able to figure out that transactions require an exchange of goods and services!*

All these years, I thought Mom and Dad were both crazy. It turns out, Mom didn't start out crazy; she was driven to it by Dad.

*--I know, I know, he was just paying for the boxes to be nice, not because he literally thought I didn't know how to buy things. I just like my uncharitable way of putting things better for the purpose of my story.

Preferences: A Dadecdote

2008-07-09T17:35:00.003-04:00

So, as I think I've mentioned somewhere before, Dad has this interesting quirk where he thinks his preferences are shared by everyone else.

For example, at a Christmas party last year, a group of us were holding different conversations in the living room. Dad leaves the room, goes upstairs, and returns with a CD. I don't remember what was on the CD--most likely something from Caesaria Evora--but he walked over to the computer (where I was sitting), handed me the CD, and told me to play it. Now, keep in mind that delightful Christmas music was already playing (at a low level), but because I was under orders, and because I know resistance to Dad's orders is futile, I replaced it with his CD. However, I played it at the same low level I had played the Christmas music.

Unfortunately, this was not good enough for Dad. After all, he could still hear the conversations over the music. Naturally enough, he told me to turn the volume up on the CD, so that everyone could enjoy the music. He didn't ask anyone whether this was OK; that didn't occur to him. He wanted to hear the music so he assumed everyone else did too.

This lack of empathy can sometimes be annoying, especially when combined with other of Dad's goals. For example, if he wants Chinese food (as he always does), he'll ask, "would you like Chinese food?" If you say yes, he'll say, "Okay, let's go", and then we'll go to the Chinese restaurant (there's only one we ever go to).

If you say, "no, I'm not in the mood", he'll ask, "are you sure?" If you say you are, he'll ask you, "how can you be so sure?" If you're honest with yourself, you will admit that it's possible that Chinese food would hit the spot after all; so you're not certain that you don't want Chinese food. And Dad then seems to hold the premise, "if something is possible, then we should treat it as if it's real." That is, he invokes radical Cartesian skepticism, as long as doing so results in your admitting that it's possible that you actually do want Chinese food. After all, if you don't know, as Descartes did not, whether the external world exists, then it's time to get Chinese food: "I think, therefore I will be hungry again in three hours."

A similar incident happened during this latest trip of mine to visit my parents. I was in the car and Dad asked me whether I wanted to listen to patriotic American music. I said, "sure, that's fine". He then tried to put the CD in the player but had a little trouble, so I took it from him and put it in myself. Since I was the one who put it in the player he said, "you really want to listen to this music!"

[You might be wondering: how does his assumption that all people have his preferences result in his regular corralling of you into admitting that you, after all, want Chinese food? Simple: he assumes that if he wants it, you want it too; so if you say you don't want it, you're either lying or self-deceived. He's just trying to get you to admit your preference, in the interest of full disclosure. In this sense, Dad is a dogged truth-seeker.]

Anyway, like I was saying, this lack of empathy can sometimes be annoying, but it can also be useful. A few days ago our insane Romanian cleaning lady was whining, all day, about how her car was damaged, and she needed $300 to fix it. She complained about this from 3 pm to 8:30 pm. For some reason, from 8 to 8:30 she started demeaning herself, saying how stupid she was (I assume she was doing this in order to garner pity, pity that could then be directed to fixing her car). Dad asked her why she thought this. She said she didn't know. Then, in the hopes of cheering her up, dad said she did a good job cleaning today. She countered that he must have thought all her other cleanings were sub-par. He said, "oh, then I mean today that you are extra-good." That confused her, and that confusion angered her, so she decided to leave. Later on, I talked with Dad about her, and he said he had no idea why she started belittling herself. I theorized that she was trying to make him feel sorry for her, so he would give her $300. "But why should I do that?", Dad correctly wondered. I said, well, it's far from clear that you should, and she knows that, which is why she didn't ask for the money directly; instead, she tried to get you to give it to her through sheer rhetoric. "Oh", dad said. "I didn't notice."

Why, after all, would he notice? He didn't want to give her any money! And if he didn't want to give her any, she must not have wanted any!

Winter-Spring-Summer Hiatus

2008-07-06T18:42:00.007-04:00

Wow. I haven't posted anything here since February 5, 2008. Since then, a lot has happened: I got a job; and I now put two spaces after periods at the end of sentences.

Right now, I'm in the city of my childhood, hanging with the parents, and madness has ensued many times.

Today, mom, dad, and I were watching a commercial for an electric razor.

[REMAINDER REDACTED]

Well, mom has told me that I can't keep this post up. Too embarrassing, I suppose. In Mom's words, "you can't post anything that's private."

We'll see what content this edict leaves me with.

Dadecote, #500 and B's true Mom stories

2008-02-05T03:12:00.000-05:00

Dad gets home from work.

In front of our house, there are fire trucks and police cars.

Dad goes in the house.

Inside, there are several firemen, a house full of smoke, and my mom.

Dad: Why are there those trucks in front of our house?
Mom: Because there was a fire in our house!
Dad: Really??

***

Mom: Back in the 1960s, the Americans thought drunk-driving was funny! They made jokes about it! The Irish didn't think it was funny! Oh, wait, yes we did.

Some jokes from mom

2008-01-21T12:38:00.000-05:00

Mom called me just now--12:37--to tell me some jokes. The first joke went, "there are these two really forgetful, elderly people. The wife says to the husband, "get me some ice cream." The husband says, "okay." She says, "write it down, or you'll forget!" He says, "I don't need to write it down, just tell me!" She says, "fine. I want ice cream. With strawberry sauce! And ... whipped cream!" The man says "fine." She says, "Are you sure you don't want to write it down?" "Positive!" says the man. Then he leaves. Twenty minutes later, he comes back and ..." here mom trails off. "Damn, what happened next?" she ironically wonders. "Oh, I know! He came back with a hamburger and she said "where are the frie"...no! He came back with toast, and ... wait ... oh yes! He came back with toast and she said "where are the eggs!" No, "where is the bacon!""

She waited for me to laugh. I laughed, all right. Not for the reasons she thought.

"I have another joke!" she said. "This elderly ... oh, damn!"

It just got worse from there. I haven't the foggiest idea what that joke was about, but you can bet it was originally crafted in a group effort by Queen Victoria and Lord Clarendon.

Dadecote, #4037

2008-01-18T07:49:00.000-05:00

It's 7:40. I'm sleeping like a baby, dreaming of explaining modal metaphysics through the medium of a children's book. There's a possible world for little girls called Ethel, and it's full of fairies, a possible world called Jom-Jom for little boys, and it's full of baseballs, a pos...

The dream ends. The lights in my room illuminate. Dad has entered.

Dad: San [i.e., son], you should, eh, call ... John, at [business name omitted].
Me: Okay.

Dad dials the number. He gives me the phone.

I wait. I get John.

I tell John about my car's problem--oh yes, I remember now, my car has a problem!--and after telling him this, he starts telling me that he can't help me, not until Monday, because there are too many other cars. However, he takes a really long time to do it, so during the phone call, Dad says, "ask him whether he can fix your car."

Seeing as how he's telling me that he cannot, I refrain from asking him.

Eventually I tell Dad the bad news. So Dad says I should call John's competitor, Ed.

I call Ed. I get an answering machine.

I tell Dad that, according to the answering machine, Ed's business doesn't open until 8.

"Ok," dad says. And then stares at me.

About ten seconds pass, without him saying a word.

Also, he is in his underwear.

Oh, God, I thought. Is he going to stare at me until 8?

No. He talks.

Dad: You do not want to go back to sleep.
Me: Really? Because I didn't fall asleep last night until 4 am, so, I kinda thought I did.
Dad (laughing): No! You want to get ready.
Me: Well, I'm entirely sure that's correct, but you're saying it with a lot of authority, so I guess I do ...

And now I just wrote this blog post.

Which reminds me: UCLA, I know you didn't give me a fly-back, and in fact didn't give me an interview, but it turns out you want to offer me a job.

This video...

2008-01-16T09:19:00.000-05:00

...looks like it came from The Onion News Network (however, it's mildly funny, as opposed to not funny at all, so keep that in mind). But it is, sadly and amusingly, real.

The video!

B's true Mom Stories, Revisited

2008-01-15T23:03:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm in Dayton right now. I have the following conversation with Mom:

Mom: I saw this movie, it was very disturbing, but I can't remember the name!
Me: Who was in it?
Mom: What's the name of the guy who's the son of Barbara Streisand's husband?
Me: Josh Brolin?
Mom: Yeah! Well, he wasn't in it.

Sorry for not updating the blog for so long, by the way. I finished up my dissertation, then I moved to a new place, then I applied for philosophy jobs, now I'm getting "fly-backs" to interview for some more philosophy jobs ... it can drive a fella mad.

Amazing basketball trick shots ...

2007-11-06T01:23:00.000-05:00

... from a juggler.

Best comment...

2007-10-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

...about the Brandon Vera v. Tim Sylvia fight: "When Sylvia said someone was going to sleep during this fight, I didn't realize he meant me." (From Wrestling Observer)

Congratulations...

2007-10-14T16:26:00.000-04:00

to MikeyY, for (I assume) writing this SNL sketch.

Top That!

2007-10-13T15:28:00.000-04:00

This clip from Teen Witch (1989) is the future of comedy.

I'm actually being sort of serious. For one thing, it is entirely unselfconscious; there's no fourth-wall nonsense, which has gotten painfully stale.

For another thing, the unselfconsciousness, combined with the complete ridiculousness of the outfits, dancing, and rapping (and the magic), along with the genuine, intelligible motivations makes it, like, three straight inside-the-park home runs (i.e., rare). It's like watching an ant farm where the ants discover fire.

Mark my words: earnestness is the future of comedy. (Irony is the past, and naturalistic conversations are the present, thanks to Mr. Apatow.)

Long Interview with Fedor ...

2007-09-24T12:33:00.001-04:00

here. He comes off as nicer, but more evasive, than most fighters.

Ah, Deutschland

2007-09-24T12:09:00.000-04:00

Via Justin Shubow, here's a cute little ditty about Moscow, sung by gay Germans from the perspective of Mongol hordes.

When you think about it, we don't need Japan as our source of profoundly bizarre pop cultural artifacts; we've had Germany all along.

Maybe that's why they joined up in WWII ...

UPDATE (three minutes later): you might want to know the lyrics to this, uh ... "song". Here's a, uh ... "translation".

Faster, Pussycat! Link, Link!

2007-09-23T21:53:00.000-04:00

Here are some great links:

First, a hangry kitty (hangry = hungry + angry).

Second, a couple of really good new songs by M.I.A.: Paper Planes and Jimmy (think disco meets Bollywood).

Third, the ending of Daft Punk's movie, "Electroma" (if you like fire, you'll like this ending!)

Fourth, a very funny British TV commercial. For liquor? I don't know.

Fifth, you might be pleased to hear that our longtime friend is doing quite well nowadays.

Sixth and finally, my friend Justin Shubow has an article on National Review Online. Read it, I command thee!

UPDATE: Here's a kitten doing an impression of my mom.

Oh!!!

2007-09-23T19:35:00.000-04:00

The title was my reaction to this.

Of Course...

2007-09-23T03:34:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not referencing the Jane's Addiction song. I'm talking about Forrest Griffin's upset of Shogun Rua. Of course it happened, because it wasn't supposed to. Upsets are now expected, so when an upset happens, it's not an upset -- it's simply the expected result.

But now that we know this, won't an upset be when a favored guy wins?

This makes my head hurt.

Actually, I can think of a way to resolve this paradox, but that's not the point.

The main reason I write this -- other than to say that Forrest's win over Rua was one of the best MMA viewing experiences I've ever had (Kimo's win over Varelans was also amazing) -- is to highlight this beautiful series of exchanges on the board for morons, Sherdog.com.

In a thread entitled "OFFICIAL: Memorial service for Forrest Griffin", written (of course) before Griffin demolished the quite properly #1 rated Light Heavyweight in the world, the opening post read:

"It was nice knowing Forrest he brought some comedy to the MMA sport. He will be remembered by the TUF noobs as their greatest fighter ever. It is unfortunate that he will be killed in the octagon tommorow [sic]. If you wanna leave your respects for forrest leave a comment for he will soon be departed."

After Forrest's indisputable victory, someone responded, "hahahha boy am i glad i wrote in this thread so it would be easier to find and abuse the TS. whats up now shogun nut huggers lololol!!! who was the guy that said he would eat a baby if shogun lost. i gotta get his number".

This brought the response: "Im going to poop into a hotdog bun and let you eat it for free. I swear I won't even charge you bc your a turd sandwhich!"

Finally, the coup de grace: "Why would a turd sandwich eat another turd sandwich? If I was a turd sandwich I'd probably want some tacos or something."

Classic.

Just for the record...

2007-09-21T23:38:00.000-04:00

Randy Couture picked Forrest Griffin to win every round against Rua. So, assuming Griffin wins, and I imagine he will (because that would be an upset, and unexpected results are the new expected results in MMA), it follows that no one should be surprised tomorrow night.

Unless Rua wins.

B's True Ida Stories

2007-09-10T21:38:00.000-04:00

Some quotes from Mom:

Conversation 1
Mom: Do you know what I had the other day? For the first time?
Me: What?
Mom: A tuna melt!
Me: Oh, yeah, they're great!
Mom: I know! How do my eyes look?

Conversation 2
Mom: Do you know how many people can't see? I was amazed!
Me: How many?
Mom: Lots of people!

The Service Calls from Hell

2007-09-04T18:57:00.000-04:00

So I’ve moved.

I was in Ann Arbor, then I was in New York, then I was back in Ann Arbor, and now I’m in South Bend, Indiana.

There are a number of things a person has to do when he gets to a new city. He has to move his stuff in, he has to buy supplies, he has to familiarize himself with the city. Eventually, in this day and age, he also has to get internet access.

And that’s what I decided to do: get a connection to the internet, and while I’m at it, cable TV.

That, of course, means dealing with representatives from Comcast.

It’s hard to deal with people who work with Comcast on any day – they’re working the phones because they couldn’t deal with more skill-intensive jobs, like Walmart greeters, sign holders, and human shields; so, let’s just say that many of them are talent-deprived. But I was already in a mood, because I had just spoken to someone who worked for Dell. And let me tell you about that.

I called Dell because I had a very easy-to-specify problem: my battery, which originally had a six-hour lifespan, now had an eighty-five minute lifespan. This, as everyone knows, just happens to batteries: the longer you use them, the shorter their lifespan, until eventually you have to get a new battery. Indeed, my computer has even been giving me a message telling me this. Repeatedly. Like, every time I start my computer.

Luckily, I bought my computer (with battery) on September 15, 2006, so the battery’s (one year) warranty was still good. How did I know the date of purchase so precisely? Not because I keep good records; rather, it was because I ordered a new battery from Dell on August 3. It never came. So I called them again, one month later, to order a new battery. Again.

I got a hold of a guy – let’s call him “Chris”, because that was the name he gave me – and told him about my problem. I also told him that I had called a while ago about my battery. He responded that on my file it read that thirty-two days ago I had called about a lack of internet connectivity, but it didn’t say anything about needing a new battery. Fine. The previous worker forgot to put in my order for a battery, so why think he would correctly label what I needed?

Anyway, I told Chris about my problem – in particular, that I had ordered a replacement battery three or four weeks ago – and then he asked me a question that let me know that I was going to be in for a long call:

“How many days are in a week?”

Did this guy just ask me how many days are in a week?

I paused. He had an accent – a Hispanic accent – and I thought: is there any part of the Spanish-speaking world where they have, I don’t know, five days in a week? Or nine? I thought better of it and said, “seven. Seven days in a week.”

He said “okay.” Then he took me through a series of steps. Like, he asked me whether the power meter for my battery was at 100%.

That’s a great idea! Maybe all this time I just didn’t understand that I had to plug my computer into an outlet to get power for my battery!

He also asked me to take out my battery, to restart my computer, to look at the setup, the control settings, etc., etc.

Finally, after fifty-five minutes, he said: “sir, batteries just run out of power after a while. So, even though your battery is fully charged, it still has less power than it did when you first got it.”

This was too much. My computer has told me this every day since August 3. I told the previous guy this stuff one month ago. I told Chris at the very beginning of this call. And now, after dealing with fifty-five minutes of procedures I knew to be useless and inapposite, he explains to me the very problem that I told him I had.

So I blew up at him.

In my way. Which is to say, I said the following: “Chris, I don’t want to seem rude, but I want to say that I told you the very thing you just told me at the beginning of my call.”

Chris’s response: “oh, I’m not telling you what your problem is. I just have to verify this.”

Bullshit. So I asked him, “so let me see: you’re not articulating anything to me. You’re just going through the steps of a ritual?”

He said, “I know you’re an intelligent guy. I’m not explaining to you. I’m just verifying.”

So, Chris was on script. A fifty-five minute script where the big reveal comes at the beginning. It would be like watching a mystery called “No, He’s the Ghost.”

Now I called Comcast. In a state. Unfortunately, as you’ll see, it was the wrong state.

Here’s the problem. I have a cell phone. A cell phone with an Ann Arbor area code. But here’s the thing: I want to have cable in Indiana!

I called Comcast. Got the computer, you know the drill. After a little bit, I was connected to a service representative.

“Hi, I was looking to get cable and internet.”

“Okay.”

She then took me through the steps. Finally, she asked me my address. I told her I lived in South Bend, Indiana.

(Interesting note: none of the service representatives I talked to today, including Chris from Dell, could spell “South Bend.”)

After spelling it for her, she told me that she couldn’t help me, as I had been directed to the Michigan Comcast. So she redirected me to the Indiana one.

After about five minutes of waiting, I was connected to the South Bend Comcast representative. After being informed of my options, I decided to talk to my roommate – also named “Chris”, but much more up on the nature of weeks – and weigh my options. After getting a good bead on things, I decided to call Comcast back.

Once again, I was connected to Michigan. I told her I was in Indiana, and she said she’d connect me there. I waited. When I got to the next person, I told her I was Indiana. Once again, I was connected to Michigan. So she connected me to Indiana. This time, I started the conversation off by saying:

Me: hi, before you say anything to you, I need to make one thing clear: I live in South Bend, Indiana. Although I’m calling from a Michigan area code, I live in South Bend, Indiana. Not Michigan. So please, please, don’t tell me you have to transfer me.
Her: I understand, sir. You live in Indianapolis, and now you’ve moved to South Bend.
Me: What? No, I … look, it doesn’t matter. The point is, I live in Indiana. Can you help me get cable?
Her: Yes, sir. Where do you live?
Me: South Bend.
Her: I’m sorry, sir, I’m the Indianapolis representative, let me transfer you to South Bend.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I waited.

This time, I waited for about fifteen minutes. Listening to that horrible, horrible phone music.

Finally, at the end of the fifteen minutes,

Her: I’m sorry, sir, South Bend Comcast isn’t open today.
Me: No, that’s not true, because I talked to them earlier today.
Her: Well, they’re not responding to my calls.

And then I went on a rant.

There’s no need getting specific with what I said. I just complained about the fact that Comcast was the only cable company around, and so they don’t have to worry about helping their consumers, etc.

All told, I wasted an hour and forty minutes, arguably to get nothing. Not to get too dramatic, but this is the worst thing that has ever happened.

French Beat-Boxing

2007-08-30T21:56:00.000-04:00

This guy is amazing.

Could it be true?

2007-08-14T05:34:00.000-04:00

Of course It's true.

Another great story from the DP

2007-08-04T23:23:00.001-04:00

While bulldogs are still my favorite type of dog, this dog could give any bulldog a run for its money. Don't forget to scroll down.

Meanwhile, the muckrakers at The Daily Kitten are bringing down the standards of cute, baby animal journalism with stories like this and this.

Aw, who am I kidding? They're great reporters too.

Improv

2007-07-29T02:30:00.000-04:00

So I've been watching the Del Close improv marathon. I've seen a few hours of it, and have learned important lessons about improv. Here's what improv is:

Improvisational comedy consists of scenes made up on the spot; you take an audience suggestion, adhere to certain techniques, and then proceed to produce a scene about abortion and/or rape.

The Corrupting Effects of Philosophy

2007-07-26T23:24:00.000-04:00

So, let me first of all say: I am Doctor Bobcat.

I defended my dissertation on Friday, July 20, and I did a bang-up job, at least if you believe the press. Long story short: I am now better than you. Unless you also have a Ph.D.

Speaking of people who also have Ph.D.s, my old roommate Chris got his Ph.D. 8 days before I did. (Since he started a year earlier than I did, it took him one year and eight days fewer to get his Ph.D. than it took me to get mine.)

Not only does Chris have a Ph.D., though, he also has a master's degree in engineering (the hard kind, too -- not that civil crap). So not only is he smart and dedicated, he's also quite well-rounded.

Given how well-rounded he is, it gladdens me to know that he is just as clueless as I am when it comes to living. How do I know this? Let me tell you a story.

Right now I'm living in Ann Arbor, subletting a friend's apartment. This friend has a cat, Lennon. I had to be away from Lennon for a couple of days to visit my dad and brother. While I was away, I had Chris take care of him.

Imagine my surprise when Lennon, whom I had thought to be a boy-cat turned out to be a girl-cat. Or at least, that's what Chris told me.

"Really, Lennon's a girl-cat? Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."

So I had to reassess my relationship with Lennon. Was I cheating on my fiancee by being with that cat? Lots of questions.

But before I answered any of them, I wanted to check Lennon myself. So when I got home, I looked at Lennon's "part". Suffice it to say, it was pretty hard to tell whether Lennon was male or female, but I thought: why did Chris think Lennon was female anyway?

So I called him.

"Hello?"
"Hey, Chris, why did you think Lennon was a girl?"
"Huh? Because she has nipples."

I paused at this.

"Chris, you have nipples."
"...I know, but I don't have that many."
"Chris, let me assure you, male cats have eight nipples."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I have loads of experience with male cat nipples."

See, I'm not the only person who thinks something as absurd as: you can drive on your rims.

I should be dissertating right now, but ...

2007-07-14T02:29:00.000-04:00

Here's a weird happening.

It's 3:30 AM, Canadian time (I'm blogging from Halifax, Nova Scotia; I'm up here for a conference), and I hear a knock outside my door. I don't whether it's on my door or not, so I look through the peephole.

No one there.

I open the door. To my right, I see a young, Asian woman, knocking on the door of the room next to me. When I appear outside my room, she notices me. Wanting to give an explanation of myself -- as I'm wont to do -- I say, "oh, I thought you were knocking on my door" (at 3:30 in the morning). She says, in perfect Canadian English:

"No, I ... hey, this is gonna sound weird, but do you know how to open these doors? I think this is the right key, but it won't work."

"Oh, that's easy," I say. "Just turn the lock to the left." She gives me her key and I promptly do that. The door opens.

"Thanks, she says. You're amazing."

"You're welcome."

She then opens the door and STARTS SCREAMING AT THE PERSON INSIDE. In Chinese.

By the time she started screaming, I was in my room. I start listening to iTunes, but the screaming continues, and gets really loud, and I hear all sorts of stuff being, uh, thrown around and impacting against the wall of my room. I'm pretty sure, anyway.

The screaming has died down, but I have officially checked another item off of the list of polite things I will never do for people again ("helping strangers get back onto 'their' horse", you've got a new buddy!).

What's Going On?

2007-07-04T12:18:00.001-04:00

Here is a surprisingly cogent, and surprisingly scathing, critique of Sicko from, of all people, MTV's Kurt Loder.

To use P.J. O'Rourke's much-quoted bon mot yet another time: "if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free".

This Just In

2007-07-03T11:09:00.000-04:00

Another hard-hitting piece of news from what is fast becoming my favorite paper.

More MMA

2007-07-01T02:51:00.001-04:00

Okay, to go with the picture I sent of Fedor fighting God, here is Fedor armlocking a bear.

This picture comes up in a very funny (seriously!) discussion of the question, "who in UFC, or even in mma in general, do you guys think would have the best chance versus a hearty bear? state your reasons why and which method they win by. And no i am not kidding"

My favorite answers (admittedly, some of these are funny only if you know who these people are):

"Ya a rear naked is the only real chance a fighter might have unarmed and even then, a bear might be able to simply reach behind its shoulder and tear your face off, i don't know how flexible bears are."

"Arlovski could win.
"If he grew ALL of his hair back. I mean ALL of it, then he can fool the bear into thinking they were buddies, and when the bear is sleeping, then Arlovski could kick the crap out of him."

"bear would win by a ripped-throat knock-out in 10 seconds."

I like how ripping someone's throat out counts as a knockout.

Quick Pic

2007-06-30T02:14:00.000-04:00

I think this is the funniest MMA image ever.

Transformers

2007-06-28T03:12:00.000-04:00

So I just went to the premier of Transformers. If you have plans on seeing it, I'd recommend opening weekend with a big crowd because while it is fun, it is also unbelievably stupid. Not Dumb and Dumber stupid, Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest stupid. It's actually so stupid it makes me worry about my fellow Americans, or at least the opinion Hollywood has of them.

The product placement is also fairly egregious. Creatures from other planets really take to General Motors products as it turns out. If you could turn into any car in the world, your first choice would be a Pontiac Solstice. Right? Right?

After the premier I went to the after party. Wow, color me impressed. Ford vehicles on display and free Burger King for all. I think I saw Josh Duhamel eating chicken fries off of Fergie's belly. It was like Caligula... at a mall. A strip mall.

So if you go, enjoy it... and for God's sake, don't think!

Yikes.

2007-06-27T03:55:00.000-04:00

So today I had this girl in my office for a few hours. Girls don't usually make me nervous. She made me nervous. Yikes.

It's weird to have a job that puts you in contact with the best looking women in the world on a frequent basis but there it is. It's not like there's temptation, there's not, much as in the same way I'm not tempted to buy a rocket powered diamond encrusted Ferarri. Do I want one? Sure. But I can't afford it and I don't want to deal with the other guys who want a ride.

Still though, she is probably the second most beautiful girl I have had in the office... the number one prize goes to Nadine. If you have seen My Name Is Earl, keep in mind that she doesn't photograph all that well. In person she will melt your eyeballs. I have been looking for mine for two years now. Nadine, however, is entirely too insecure to make ne nervous. Leticia knows her effect on men and uses it. Mostly for evil I assume.

1978 seems to have been a good year for women.

Still, I hate them.

Line!

2007-06-18T09:09:00.000-04:00

Why should this guy be the only person with movie stories?

Future-wife and I decided to go see Ocean's 13. We both enjoyed Ocean's 11 (at least, the first time I saw it), and Ocean's 12 (even though realizing it was a pretty lousy movie) and so thought, why not 13?

Well, the movie started at 11, and we got there at 10, to avoid another "Knocked Up" fiasco (short story: we arrived for Knocked Up 30 min. before it started and were about 100 people back). Only two people were ahead of us in line, but I wasn't sure that we were waiting in the right place. So I said, "I'm going to get some authorities!", much to everyone's amusement. They thought I was nerdy, they did. But I progressed, until I found a worker. She politely showed me and all the others where we were supposed to wait (it wasn't where we were actually waiting, and I'll go further to add that our intended line-up position wasn't exactly intuitive), and the four of us lined up there.

About ten, or maybe fifteen minutes after we got into the appropriate line-up space, a crowd of people came from the wrong line-up space, where we used to be, into our area.

I couldn't help but notice that during this period. one lady didn't exactly follow standard procedure--i.e., following everyone else into the appropriate space--but instead walked right over to where the four of us were. I noticed she was very impatient--she couldn't stand still, and appeared constantly to be looking for someone--and thought to myself, "this is gonna be trouble". Eventually, the person she was looking for, "Liz", showed up next to her. Liz's impatient friend wailed, "I can't believe this place. I was waiting for an HOUR and then they tell me that I have to move." (Dear reader: this woman, whom I shall dub, because of her impatience, uh ... Sheldon? ... was not waiting since 9:30 pm; future-wife and the other two people were there well after 9:30 and, miraculously, also well before Sheldon.) Well great; now Sheldon had her rationalization; she had that crazy look in her eyes, that she was going to cut ahead of us.

So of course, she started the cut in line two-step. She didn't walk right in front of me and Future-wife or the two people ahead of us. Rather, she walked alongside the line, although not so far ahead of it that she walked out of line. Gradually, she edged forward until she was ahead of me and Future-Wife even while not being in the line. Rather, she was next to the line.

In addition to Sheldon (and, to be fair, Liz's) edging forward, I also overhead Liz talking to Sheldon about how she (i.e., Liz) was supposed to wait for something--let's say it's food--at some past date, but she absolutely wouldn't do it. Thus, both of them see themselves as exempt from lines.

Sure enough, by 10:40, the time the doors opened, Sheldon and Liz were well ahead of me and Future-wife, but behind the two people ahead of us. And let's say that even Sheldon and Liz couldn't rationalize to themselves that they should be allowed to cut ahead of those two, because those two were waiting right next to the doors; to cut ahead of them, they would have had to literally push them out of the way. Well, Sheldon and Liz weren't going to do that, right?

Right. They did something else.

When the doors opened, Liz--in her mid-forties, mind you--bolted ahead of the two people who were clearly in front of her, turned around and laughed in exaltation, and then took the handicapped seats.

This was truly an awe-inspiring display of movie-etiquette depravity. And it really would have irritated me had the seats been any good.

Seriously, it's times like that--which happen fairly often--that I tell myself the following Jeopardy! answer:

Answer: Someone who, if brazenly cut in front of, has no compunction about punching a stranger in the face.
Question: Who is my brother?

I really want to be my brother in situations like that. I have his anger; I just don't have his follow-through.

After watching that spectacle, I decided I needed some movie popcorn! (Actually, pretty much any event convinces me that I need some popcorn!) So I got in line and then, this happened:

Two Americans--not Mexicans, not Canadians, but white, U.S. citizens--were ahead of me in the popcorn line. The male one of them sauntered up to the counter and asked, "yeah, what do you have to eat?"

Concessioner: Huh?
American male: Yeah, what food do you have?
C: Uh...we got candy, we got ... popcorn, we got ... hot dogs...
AM: Yeah, give me two of them.
C: Hot dogs?
AM: Yeah, two hot dogs. And give me a medium popcorn.
C: Butter?
AM: Yeah, with butter. And give me, uh ... how big are the drinks?
C: Uh...this is a large, this is a medium ...
AM: Give me two medium drinks.
C: What kind of drinks.
AM: Yeah, I don't know.
C: What kind of drinks.
AM: Cokes. Gimme two cokes.
C: Okay, that'll be ... uh ... $24.00.
AM: Wait, she (pointing to the other American with him) might want something.
C: Okay.
AM: Gimme a candy.
C: Okay, what do you want?

I didn't hear what he said. Let's say Sour Patch Kids.

C: Anything else?
AM: Yeah, do you go any trays?
C: No. We're out of trays.
AM: What? Then how am I supposed to carry this stuff back to my seat?
C: Uh...
AM: Tell you what. You carry this stuff for me and take it back to the theater for me.

Dear reader, he was serious.

C (laughing): I can't do that.
AM: Then how am I supposed to carry this stuff back?
C: Uh, I don't know. We can keep some of it here for you.

Apparently, it never occurred to him to have his girlfriend carry some of the stuff.

I can't imagine what Big goes through every day.

A slurry of links!

2007-06-17T21:55:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been so long since I blogged. My explanation: dissertating. Ugh, the first draft is due July 2 or July 6. It's gonna be rough. However, I wanted to share with you some special videos. To wit, a couple of "cracked.com"'s "7 Most Insane Moments from Cable Access TV".

First up: "Speak Out with Ken Sander". The funniest part of this call-in show is that each caller starts to make a valid point before interrupting himself and brutally insulting Sander as a "cockhead". Worth a watch.

Second: cooking with Merrill Howard Kalin. The premise is simple enough: a fat, retarded man hosts a cooking show. The pay-off? Well, I'll let the editors of Cracked.com describe it: "This video is the holy grail brain bomb of public access television."

You might also want to check out "Rogue Helicoptor Pilot" for the description alone.

Double Standard

2007-05-28T11:36:00.000-04:00

How come when I do this, I get arrested?

This video really is pretty cool.

2007-05-23T03:23:00.000-04:00

Lions, crocodiles, and buffalo, oh my!

Quotable quote! Fun at parties!

2007-05-22T00:38:00.000-04:00

"Let's get this bit out of the way. We're not looking for concessions from the West. We want your concept of civilization to be over. We want to destroy it, and replace it with ours."

Sheik Nasrallah - The leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But on the bright side, we just signed a deal to produce this guy's next movie so I guess that's something.

As always...

2007-05-17T21:30:00.000-04:00

I am depressed

Don't Fly United Airlines

2007-05-07T23:20:00.000-04:00

I would normally never blog about something as generally insignificant as a bad experience with air travel, but what I received at the hands of United Airlines makes me want to warn the rest of you to stay away from them forever. I assume they are the official airline of Hell.

Here we go.

I bought my tickets two months ago and I asked for aisle seats on every flight. I typically use Orbitz and so far, if I booked far enough in advance, I have always gotten my aisle seats.

The crux of the problem is the "seating management cards" I received as opposed to seating assignments. Here's where my warnings to the rest of you come in because this could happen to any of you as it's United's policy to randomly give these out. What this means is that your requests for seating are ignored and you are given whatever seat happens to be left over after other seating arrangements for other people are sorted out (what these are, I am not sure but I received this card at 3 of my 4 flights).

FLIGHT 1 - Los Angeles to Washington D.C.

I asked for aisle. I got middle. I was seated next to a guy who was so fat I had to lean on him like a pillow. He was near 400 pounds. I was supposed to cuddle a stranger for 5 hours. I asked if he could get his arms out of my seat and he said, "It's not my fault my shoulders are so broad." I said, "It's not your shoulders." This was apparent to everyone as it was his elbows, courtesy of his super-gut, that were helping themselves to half my seat. This was untenable. I asked every stewardess I could find to get me a new seat and they all said no until the last minute and I was able to get... a window seat. Better than the fat guy, yes, but still not what I asked for.

FLIGHT 2 - Washington D.C. to Dayton, Ohio.

Asked for aisle. Got window. Why? No idea.

FLIGHT 3 - Dayton, Ohio to Denver, Colorado (connection to LAX)

Got a call from Orbitz that my flight was delayed. Called United about it and they assured me it was on time. I asked the lady when my flight was scheduled to depart. She said 3:31. I asked when the flight before was scheduled to land. She said 3:32. This seems to be an obvious problem. I asked how my flight could depart while it was still a minute from landing and she said as long as the computer said it was on time there was nothing she could do and I should get to the airport. So I did.

At the airport they assured me I would get to my connection to LAX on time. I got another seating management card and so, again, I was seated at a window. The plane took a long way around to avoid that storm that's been threatening the Midwest and that made me miss the plane to LAX causing more problems. But before you say, "Good thing they avoided that storm!" The problem is, we didn't. We flew through it anyway and I got to experience genuine roller-coaster ride turbulence. Nothing better than literally hearing people shrieking prayers to God to make you think perhaps Frontier airlines would have been a better choice.

So the plane landed and I missed my flight to LAX. This was at 5pm and I was told at the help desk there were no flights until the next day, which seems kind of nuts. I waited 30 minutes to get this word and then wound up dealing with a new guy (by this I mean new to the job, not new to this Earth as he was at least five thousand years old). I wound up dealing with him for 45 minutes and at one point I actually passed out from frustration. Of course, I just mimed this but it prompted the next guy in line to ask, "are you okay? I said, "Yes. I am doing this for the drama." It got me a few laughs but it did not get me home.

They gave me a voucher for the Denver Doubletree. I asked about getting my roller board with my toiletries out of baggage but they said it would take too long so if I went to carousel 16 they would give me a bag of toiletries for one night. I went to carousel 16 where I was told they had no toiletries and had been out since the day before. Of course.

So I wound up going to the Denver Doubletree, a convenient 40 minutes from the Denver airport. Of course 40 minutes. Why give me a hotel that was actually near the airport? Denversons are made of heartier stuff than that level of convenience would warrant I suppose. So with no change of clothes and no toiletries I went in for the night.

More crap happened but let's just get to the flight. I was in 33 F. All the way in the back. At a window. I had taken a shower but I was wearing the same clothes and had no deodorant. Worse for the people next to me but United makes us all suffer.

LAX

I landed at LAX. I went to the carousel to get my luggage. It didn't show up. Why would it? So I would up waiting about 2 more hours for them to find it for me.

So fly United. If you want to tell stories like this. Mother fuckers.

What's the Explanation?

2007-05-02T20:30:00.000-04:00

Okay, so Joe and I are together in Dayton with the parents. So why haven't we blogged more about their eccentricities?

Well, it turns out that when we're together we just talk to each other rather than the parents. Happily, though, Mom finally came through. Here's what we had for dinner tonight:

1. Tomato soup with meatballs and sour cream. Delicious!
2. Asparagus with grated cheese. Yummers!
3. Stewed tomatoes. Sweet, vegetably goodness!
4. Roasted pork stuffed with garlic cloves. Sensational!
5. Crispy-skin roast turkey. Like Peking turkey!
6. Prime rib. High quality, baby!
7. Bread. You can't beat bread!

And finally, for dessert ...

8. Guacamole!

What?

Well, not exactly guacamole. Actually, it was avocado pudding. With raspberries. In other words: guacamole with raspberries.

Mom tries new things. And actually, this worked. It just needed more sugar. And not sour cream, as Mom's initial impulse dictated.

Not to be missed

2007-04-25T08:45:00.000-04:00

First, this is too important to pass up.

In other news, have I told you that my landlady and one of my neighbors are involved in a cold war?

Allow me to elaborate.

Our landlady--well the superintendant of the building, actually--is an Irish Catholic. Very similar to my mom, except unlike my mom she hates Jews. Well, 'hates' is too strong a word; 'suspects' is better. (See, she works for some orthodox Jews who like to cut corners. So really, she's just complaining about them by implicating all Jews. And she's anti-semitic.)

Anyway, the tenant she's at war with--let's call her "L" for short--is Jewish, I'm pretty sure. So there's tension on that front. And she's crazy. I should have probably said that right up front. And she suspects all Russians of stealing her towels.

Anyway, let me tell you what I know. Most of the people who read this site know me personally, and no how amicable I can be. Plus, let's not kid ourselves, I'm a tall drink of water (and not, as some people say, "stick-legs with a fat gut"). So, these two older women have decided to make me the locus of their complaints. Here's an example.

My ceiling started to develop some water-damage. So I asked the super to do something about it. She said okay, and sent her husband to the apartment above mine. Well, L lives in the apartment above mine and she hates the super and her husband. So she was unwilling to do much, and instead used his appearance as an occasion to complain about them. Or so I was told by my superintendent, who came down to report her failure and blame L for being a "bear" (and the Jews for not paying her and her husband more). She told me to try to speak to L directly, which I was not looking forward to, but not too much longer after she left, who should knock at my door but L. She told me that the super and her husband are terrible, they don't like to do anything, and when the super's husband fixes things, he does a poor job. Instead, I should call the building's Jewish landowners directly if I ever want anything fixed. Also, while I'm talking, I should ask the landowners to do something about the Russians, because L is pretty sure they're stealing her towels.

This was the beginning of a bad precedent. After that, L decided to come to my apartment regularly to complain about the goings-on in the buildings. She blames the "single men" (read: gays) in the building for hiring the Russians who steal the towels (it's the circle of life, I say). When the heating in the building broke for half a night (admittedly, during the winter), she came to my room and told me to call the landowners to do something about the problem, because (a) the super and her husband couldn't/wouldn't do anything about it; and (b) L had (no surprise here) called the landowners far too many times for them to take her seriously anymore. So I had to expend my credibility to do this.

That's one example. The latest one has to do with my cooking. Apparently L has been complaining to the super about my cooking garlic. The delicious smell is permeating her apartment, I guess. The super came to tell me about this charge, and then exhorted me to "cook more garlic", talked to me about other things for about 15 minutes, and then left. Then, last night, she yelled into my window, "I hope you're cooking more garlic!" to which I replied, "I'm not getting involved!" (no, I didn't; I just informed her I wasn't cooking more garlic).

Now, I know how one's of the Hulk's greatest supervillains, "The Confider"* felt. This kind of pressure would drive me to crime too.

*--Note: The Confider?: not a real supervillain. Moreover, he would probably become the friend of someone who had a secret identity--that way that superhero could confide in The Confider, only to his detriment later.

MMA, again

2007-04-23T02:20:00.000-04:00

So, I just saw UFC 70 last night. Cro Cop was, as everyone else (who watches UFC) knows, utterly dominated until the last few seconds, and then knocked out with a high kick. He really looked stiff, nervous, outmatched.

Frankly, all these upsets--Diaz over Gomi, Couture over Sylvia, Serra over GSP, and now Gonzaga over Cro Cop--are making me lose interest in MMA.

Which is weird, right? I mean, you'd think, with all the upsets in MMA, that I'd find it exciting. What could be more exciting than never knowing what's going to happen?

But it turns out, that's not how it works, psychologically. The problem is, if every fight can go either way, you're no longer surprised. Upsets become so expected that there can't be upsets anymore. Worse than that, no one can get any momentum--as soon as a fighter looks dominating, he loses. Consequently, you can't really get behind any fighter, and so you lose your investment in the sport.

There's another problem: I want to see the best fighters in the world fight each other (or I did, until tonight). The reason I want to see this is that I don't know who will win. But the best fighters don't just fight each other immediately, they have to have a tune-up fight. So they send GSP against a pretty good fighter as a tune-up for Hughes II. GSP loses, and we don't get to see GSP-Hughes II. Maybe we never will. Similarly, I'd like to see Cro Cop-Couture. But Couture loses, and now I won't see it (who among us is really excited for Gonzaga-Couture? I guess I'm a little excited, but only because I want to see Gonzaga lose. But of course, I have no idea who will win or lose that fight). Which is sucky.

I don't know why all these upsets are happening, but I think it's seriously bad news for MMA. What do my readers (who know anything about MMA) think? Is Fedor the only dominant fighter left?

Clarification

2007-04-18T07:57:00.000-04:00

Okay, I realize there was some confusion over both my Kant post and my post on mixed martial arts. In light of this, I have decided to post a link to this, which should clear everything up.

Note: it's actually safe for work!

Mixed-Up Martial Arts

2007-04-13T01:57:00.000-04:00

First, I have a question: does "martial" derive from Mars, Roman god of war? If so, does that mean we could also say "martian" arts? Or does "martian" only describe, y'know, little green men?

Anyway, Mark Steyn once wrote, before the 2004 election, that 'if John Kerry wins, I don't know this country', or something to that effect. Well, he ended up knowing the country, at least that year. Well, I can confidently say, I know nothing about mixed martial arts. Here's why.

First, Nick Diaz beats Gomi. That wasn't supposed to happen (apparently Pride thought so, too, as they later ruled it a "no contest"). Granted, he doesn't exactly do it in convincing fashion, but it was close (and great!), and that wasn't supposed to happen.

Next, Little Nog gets beaten by Sokoudjou, a 23-year old with, like, four fights. In twenty-three seconds. By knockout. Arguably, this can be dismissed as just luck.

Then Tim Sylvia, the 6'8" 30 year-old heavyweight champion of the UFC loses to Randy Couture, the 43 year-old former heavyweight champion. Granted, in his prime it would have been no contest: Randy would have whupped him, and convincingly. But 43 is old for fighting. Especially when you've taken a year off beforehand and when you've got a somewhat suspect chin (well, I suppose against Chuck Liddell everyone has a suspect chin). But of course, Randy beats him, soundly. No luck this time, he beat him in each of the five rounds they fought.

Finally, we come to the latest upset: Matt Serra beats Georges St. Pierre in a little over three minutes. Here's the thing: GSP was fresh off his win over Matt Hughes, who is just like Serra, except better in every way. Stronger, faster, taller, better ground game, and better stand-up. And Hughes got pnwed by GSP. GSP has great striking and great take-down defense--the perfect combination against Hughes, and more than perfect against someone like Serra. And, of course, Serra beats GSP, and he beats him in striking.

So, the next upset will come this Saturday. Matt Lindland, a 37 year-old, 6'0" 185-lb., four-times defeated fighter, is going to fight Fedor Emelianenko, the 30 year-old, 6'0", 233 lb. heavyweight champion of Pride Fighting. Fedor is indisputably the best mixed martial artist in history. So of course, Lindland is going to beat him in, oh, I don't know, 4 minutes. And he'll beat him by knocking him out with a jab.

After that: I'm knocking out Cro Cop. And then: Fred Ettish loses to ... oh, I don't know. Let's say Yates.

Random Thought

2007-04-11T05:47:00.000-04:00

So this Sanjaya kid from American Idol is winning even though he sucks... is it really a surprise that a kid from a country that controls all our call-in centers is winning a call-in show?

I'm just saying...

Uh...

2007-03-29T14:49:00.000-04:00

I assume everyone has seen this by now, but just in case you haven't, here's Karl Rove rapping.

I'm speechless.

Wedding Songs

2007-03-27T22:11:00.000-04:00

If you guys have any suggestions about songs we should play at our wedding, I'm all ears. For now, the two songs I have in mind for our first dance are:

Closer
Under My Thumb

Any others?

A Good Start

2007-03-25T12:46:00.000-04:00

Today I woke up at 12:15--a mere thirty-three minutes before I started writing this--, which was well after Mom and Dad had woken up.

I don't know what had happened, but Mom was on the warpath.

I was in the kitchen eating breakfast, and as I was finishing it, Mom started into Dad.

Mom: Your father doesn't respect me.
Dad: He does not.
Mom: He doesn't give a shit about what I think.
Dad: I do not give a shit. I do, however, give two shits.
Mom: Just the other day, I was watching a special, and it mentioned the Muslims. And he said [she puts on a Greek accent], "they are extreme". As if I don't know that?! Whenever they say the word "Islam" he always says, "they say it means 'peace', but it does not, it means 'suppression.'"
Dad: Ida, it does not mean 'oppression'. It means 'submission'.
Mom: That's what I said!
Me: No, she said 'suppression'; not [turning to Mom] 'submission' and not [turning to Dad] 'oppression.'
Dad: Submission and suppression are not the same.
Me: She knows that, she was just mad, so she said 'suppression' instead of 'submission'. I heard her tell me that Islam means submission the other day [when she and I were at 300].
Mom: I once wrote a letter to myself. I said, "he looks like a robot."
Dad: Ida, do you know from which language 'robot' comes?
Mom: Yes! It's from a Slavic language and it means 'worker'! You didn't expect me to know that, did you?!
Dad: But which Slavic language? Bulgarian? Romanian?
Mom: Oh ... I don't know ... Bulgarian?
Dad: No. It is Czech.
Mom: That's what I thought! If you had said Czech, I would have said it! But you tried to trick me by saying Bulgarian! See, he doesn't respect me!
Me: Look, I do the same thing with my lady. I bait her all the time, it gets her mad, and it makes me laugh.
Mom: You take after your father! Why do you do it?
Me: I don't really know. I think I'm afraid of conflict, so when I'm with my lady I can start a conflict but I'm still in a safe place. But that can't be Dad's story, because he's not afraid of conflict.
Mom: Then why does he do it to me?
Me: Because you're the nearest person.
Mom: He doesn't respect me!
Me: Don't worry, he doesn't respect anyone. Me neither.
Mom: Really? Give me an example.
Me: Oh, you know, whenever we bring up Islam, he always tells me the history. [I could have mentioned as well that whenever we're driving he tells me "'red' means 'stop' and 'green' means 'go'".]
Mom: Well, he's a sadist! If he keeps this up, I'm leaving him. I'm going to go to New York and live with you.
Me: Dad, you have to stop it!!

A Real Conversation

2007-03-24T15:16:00.000-04:00

Mom: Nico, in a half-hour let's go shopping.
Dad: No.
Mom: Why not?
Dad: I cannot.
Mom: Why not?
Dad: It's not possible.
Mom: (sigh) Why not?
Dad: Aren't you forgetting something?
Mom: Oh, Jesus: the guessing game.

The thing Mom was forgetting was that Dad had to go to church. She had to ask me to get the right answer.

But you can't fault Dad. He's just being a good Christian. Remember Jesus' beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land.
Blessed are the elusive: for they shall ... well, you'll see.

Kant on Morality

2007-03-23T01:03:00.000-04:00

A lot of my readers know that I study Kant. But few of you know what Kant 'sounds' like. Without further ado, here are some translations (my own) from Kant's great moral works. First, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals:

"We have, then, to explicate the concept of a will that is to be esteemed in itself and that is good apart from any further purpose, as it already dwells in natural sound understanding and needs not so much to be taught as only to be clarified ... In order to do so, we shall set before ourselves the concept of doodie, which contains that of a good will though under certain subjective limitations and hindrances, which, however, far from concealing it and making it unrecognizable, rather bring it out by contrast and make it shine forth all the more brightly.
"I here pass over all actions that are already recognized as contrary to doodie, even though they may be useful for this or that purpose; for in their case the question whether they might have been done from doodie never arises, since they even conflict with it. I also set aside actions that are really in conformity with doodie but to which human beings have no inclination immediately and which they still perform because they are impelled to do so through another inclination." (4:397, emphasis in original)

Next, from The Metaphysics of Morals, a selection from a section entitled, "Sympathetic feeling is generally a doodie" (6:456):

"But while it is not in itself a doodie to share the sufferings (as well the joys) of others, it is a doodie to sympathize actively in their fate; and to this end it is therefore an indirect doodie to cultivate the compassionate natural (aesthetic) feelings in us ... It is therefore a doodie not to avoid the places where the poor who lack the most basic necessities are to be found but rather to seek them out" (6:457)

Finally, from the Critique of Practical Reason, a famous passage where Kant actually waxes eloquent about doodie:

"Doodie! Sublime and might name that embraces nothing charming or insinuating but requires submission, and yet does not seek to move the will by threatening anything that would arouse natural aversion or terror in the mind but only holds forth a law that of itself finds entry into the mind and yet gains reluctant reverence (though not always obedience), a law before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly work against it; what origin is there worthy of you, and where is to be found the root of your noble descent which proudly rejects all kinship with the inclinations, descent from which is the indispensable condition of that worth which human beings alone can give themselves?" (5:86)

In answer to Kant's question, my guess is that the root of doodie's "noble descent" is probably chili.

Man, I'm immature.

Two funny things, and one of my typical, radical, right-wing political comments

2007-03-21T13:03:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a while. So here goes.

The other day, this is the phone call I have with my parents:

Mom: llasjdfoauiwr
Me: ...What??

There was a lot of noise in the background, which explains why I couldn't hear her.

Mom: It's your father, he's making a racket!

Notice how when he's making a racket, he's "your father."

Mom: Nico, what are you doing?!
Dad: I'm making noise!

He said this like a ten-year old excited because he finally figured out cymbals.

***
I was sitting in my bedroom with Mom, watching American Idol on our HD TV. Dad comes in.

Dad: Robert, when you have time, I would like you ... to help me ... move ... an ... object.
Mom: What kind of object?
Dad: It is a piece ... of ... furniture.
Me: What kind of furniture?
Dad: It has shelves.
Mom: Nico, that doesn't answer the question!
Me: It's a desk. He wants me to move a desk.
Dad: It is not a desk.

Mom gets up and leaves, and also starts laughing.

Dad: Why are you laughing?
Mom: Because you can't answer a simple question.

I go downstairs to help Dad pick up and move the "object".

To be honest, I have no idea what to call this object. It had shelves, and it's a piece of furniture. That's about all I can tell you.

***
I just read this book called The Theocons: Secular American Under Siege. It's about the people who run the magazine, "First Things" (circulation: 30,000), and its sub-sub-title reads: "For the past three decades, a few determined men have worked to inject their radical religious ideas into the nation's politics. This is the story of how they succeeded." I have it admit, it was a terrifying read. Terrifying, of course, because it amazes me that a book so crappy and insignificant could have gotten a publisher, and doubly terrifying that I read the whole thing waiting for a punchline. I thought it was going to be Portnoy's Complaint 2: This Time It's Vercockte! The upshot of the book is that there's a bunch of right-wing Catholics who are trying to get laws passed, and so far they got one passed by Bush: the born-alive infant protection act, which makes it illegal (doubly illegal?) for hospitals to kill infants who are born. I tell you what, I'm scared. Oh yeah, there's also a bit where the author, Damon Linker, tries to get us nervous that Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza (doesn't it look delicious?), is trying to start an über-Catholic town, Naples, Florida, where pornography and birth control will be inaccessible. First the Amish and now Naples! It's only a matter of time before all of America is under Monaghan's sway.

Why do I do this to myself?

2007-03-18T03:24:00.000-04:00

More. This will be the worst century ever. Enjoy right now, it only gets worse from here.

Doom, doom, doom

2007-03-12T05:13:00.000-04:00

More demographic doom for the West. They are watching. Look forward to the short term because there's nothing after that.

Drought blamed on lack of faith

By Liam Houlihan

March 11, 2007 12:00am

Article from: Sunday Herald Sun

A LEADING Muslim cleric has blamed the devastating drought, climate change and pollution on Australians' lack of faith in Allah.

Radical sheik Mohammed Omran told followers at his Brunswick mosque that out-of-control secular scientific values had caused environmental disaster.

"The fear of Allah is not there. So we have now a polluted earth, a polluted water, a wasteland," he told a meeting this year.

"What are the people now crying for? The prophet told you hundreds of years ago, 'Look after the water'."

A Sunday Herald Sun investigation also found clerics railing against "evil" democracy, vilifying Jews and Christians and encouraging jihad and polygamy.

And in a popular DVD selling locally, a foreign sheik exhorts Muslims to take control of Australia by out-breeding non-believers.

British-based Sheik Abdul Raheem Green forbade Muslims from having fewer than four children so Australia would become an Islamic state.

Behind the closed doors of some Melbourne mosques and bookshops, sheiks push for Sharia law, declare Islam at war with the "sick" West and gloat that September 11 boosted Muslim numbers.

At a Muslim information centre in Coburg, extreme literature shares shelves with DVDs by firebrand sheiks from around the globe.

The centre, run by Abu Hamza, serves Muslims in the northern suburbs.

Many CDs and DVDs there feature London sheik Abdul Raheem Green, who is on an Australian Government watchlist.

On one he tells his audience to Islamise Australia through a Muslim baby boom.

"The birth rate in the Western countries is going down. People are more interested in their careers . . . they don't want to have babies," Sheik Green says in one DVD.

"So don't you think, Muslim brothers and sisters, we've got a bit of an opportunity here? They're not having babies any more. So what if, instead, we have the babies?

"In Canada one in three or one in four children being born is a Muslim. What does that do to the demographic shift of a Muslim population in 20 years' time?

Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Waleed Aly said he was disappointed though not surprised by the Sunday Herald Sun's discoveries.

But he said extremist speech and literature was confined to only a couple of Melbourne groups.

"If I walked into (Omran's group) or (Hamza's centre) it wouldn't surprise me," he said.

Mr Aly said he believed Muslims were radicalised by "cult-like peer groups", not hate literature.

300 review... not mine

2007-03-10T05:08:00.000-05:00

So we are going to see 300 on Sunday. It looks like a really enjoyable visual piece. It's written by Frank Miller so the writing won't be particulalry good but I'm sure the action will be there and it will be exciting.

So I looked at some reviews of 300 in preparation of seeing it. I made the mistake of reading AO Scott who I typically hate. He's kind of like a poor man's Aaron Sorkin which means he is functionally retarded. Somehow, however, he can seem normal at a cocktail party. Anyway, here is part of his review:

"They also hew to a warrior ethic of valor and freedom that makes them, despite their gleeful appetite for killing, the good guys in this tale. (It may be worth pointing out that unlike their mostly black and brown foes, the Spartans and their fellow Greeks are white.)"

Really? Is this worth pointing out? What's it saying except that this movie and the people behind it are racist, racist, racist and AO Scott is one of the good whities who will side with the browns and blacks against his fellow whites whenever he sees them being slaughtered... on film, of course. In real life he lives on some upper side of Manhattan where he can avoid most blacks and browns. And good for him. He is soft like a marshmallow in the noonday sun and the first MS-13 gang member who looks at him funny will scare years off his life... so he is best keeping his gates up and defending the blacks and browns (hereforth to be known as "blowns") from the belly of the beast.

I guess something not worth pointing out as far as AO is concerned is that Greeks are Greek and Persians are, well, Persian. This is a movie about a battle betwen Greeks and Persians. Exactly what should the Persians look like if not Persians? Would AO feel better if the Greeks had shaved heads, baggy jeans, and low-rider chariots?

So then I looked at Slate, one of the king outlets of navel-gazing, white self-hatred. Dana Stevens review is all racial politics and no movie review. Here's a bit:

"Here are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with the "bad" (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both). The Persian commander, the god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is a towering, bald club fag with facial piercings, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him."

Nice writing, by the way, Dana... not gay in the homoerotic fashion? So gay in the heterosexual fashion? Or is that gay in the gay fashion? At any rate, why quibble with the details when the thoughts behind this review suck more than the prose. Which sucks.

Here's another gem from Dana:

"One of the few war movies I've seen in the past two decades that doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment"

This reminds me of that famous Pauline Kael comment about her amazement that Nixon won when no one she knew voted for him. So this movie has to include some pat on the head to Dana's opninion of temporal politics or it's lacking in some way? This is not movie review, this is a hack journalist who isn't good enough to write for the editorial page getting his licks in any old way (or is Dana a she? I dunno, I will guess Dana is a tranny). Pauline Kael was a movie critic too. It really is an intellectual ghetto nowadays.

So remember kids, when you see 300, think racism first and foremost!

And people wonder why the newspapers are disappearing. Faster, please.

How emo are you?

2007-03-02T17:35:00.000-05:00

A chilling, hilarious story (recommendation: safe for work).

I forgot to say...

2007-03-01T14:25:00.000-05:00

The wedding will be in the future.

Save the date.

The Announcement

2007-02-26T23:43:00.000-05:00

Okay, there I was.

I had just arrived at my apartment in New York after a trying day with the airlines. I had been scheduled to arrive the day before, namely Valentine's Day, but my flight had been cancelled; this day--my birthday!--my flights had been delayed a total of three hours. I wanted to tell my lady something important, and it couldn't wait. Consequently, as soon as I arrived in my apartment, I asked, "Do you want your present?"

"Sure. Do you want your present, too?"

I really wanted to get my announcement off my chest, but I love presents. So I barked,

Me: Yes!
Lady: Well, sorry; it didn't arrive. But...I got you a sweater vest!

This was too much! I'd never been able to pull off a sweater vest before, and now here was my lady practically begging me to start wearing a sweater vest. What had started out as a frustrating exercise in impatience was fast becoming memorable.

Me: Okay, I have your gift, but I want you to close your eyes.
Lady: Okay.

She moved to the couch and held out her greedy little hands.

Lady: Should I hold out my greedly little hands?
Me: Uh...sure.

I took out the engagement ring I had bought earlier, got on one knee, and asked,

Me: [Name omitted], will you marry me?

My lady was stunned.

Lady: Oh, my God! ... Oh, my God! ... Oh, my God!
Me: Well, is that a yes?
Lady: Yes! Yes, I will marry you.

Then she kissed me.

***

Oh, what a long, strange product roll-out it had been. How did I get to this point?

Here's the long version:

Cut to: February 14, 2003. It was Valentine's Day, and it was a simpler time. Writing my dissertation was the name of a hilarious joke I told myself, Stouffer's frozen dinners hadn't yet come out with their "Corner Bistro" line, and the war on Iraq was obviously justified. A week earlier, I had made contact with a delightful-seeming soul named "ethelredunready", and we had agreed to meet today at a local Ann Arbor joint called Red Hawk. She--I assumed it was a she--told me that I didn't have to go if I was sick, but I ignored that advice as yet another instance of typical female devilry.

It was Valentine's Day and our first date. That was a lot of pressure; would I send her an unfriendly message if I didn't show up with flowers? Would I indicate to her that I was creepy if I did? I didn't know what to do, so I asked that fount of romantic wisdom, Chris D, a.k.a., "photon boy".

Me: Should I buy her flowers?
Photon Boy: Of course! It's Valentine's Day!

That settled that. I went down to the florist.

Me: I'd like a Valentine's Day bouquet!
Work-lady: Lovely! What does she like?
Me: Well...I've never met her before. It's our first date.

The work-lady looked me over and quickly realized two things: (1) he's got no idea what he's supposed to do with woman! (2) I want his money!

So she sold me a massive nosegay of roses and what-nots. Probably orchids.

I showed up to my meeting with my future future-wife. I was sick. Sniffling, even.

She was there, too; she looked good. And most important, a lot like a 24-year old female law student, and hardly at all like a balding, skinny, 40-year old male with blue slacks and a button-up short-sleeved shirt.

I ushered her inside Red Hawk and, as soon as we were seated, I made sure to take out my time piece. I had class in two hours, and I didn't want to miss it for this chick.

I later learned this was a bad move.

I also blowed my nose a lot through the meal.

Also: bad move.

Finally, one of the first conversational moves I made was this:

"So, you study law. Right now, I'm TA-ing for a class in law and philosophy. We're investigating the model penal code for rape. What do you think of rape law?"

Worst move.

Amazingly, we had another date. And another one. And four years' more. A lot happened during those four years--Crash won best picture--but not all of it is worth telling here. Really, from November 23, 2004 on you got most of it on this blog or its predecessor.

But let's get to that last week before I proposed.

***

So, it was February 7, 2007--funnily enough, four years to the day when ethelredunready first contacted me. Ever since I was a lad, I was a firm believer in marriage (as a teenager, I would often lazily write, "Mr. Robert G" over and over). Four years of courtship was a long time, so I finally resolved, "yes, I'm going to propose to m'lady; I need to stop referring to her as 'my girlfriend' and start referring to her as 'my horrible shrew of a wife'." But before I could get to that second title, there was an intermediate step needed: fiancée, or as I call her, "future-wife".

I had to get a ring. Happily, though, m'lady didn't want diamonds. Blood diamonds and all that. This was good, because not only was she making a negligible positive difference to the plight of the Sierra Leonians, or however plucks the diamonds off the birds from which they grow, she was making a massive positive difference to me: I didn't have to pay $2,000 for a ring (or, 70 months' salary). Instead, I needed only to pay [amount omitted, but you can bet your ass it was less than $2,000] for a sapphire.

I bought the sapphire, and all was well, except for the day I had to leave.

See, there had been a snow storm in Dayton on February 14, 2007, the day I was originally scheduled to leave. And our driveway was something of a snow drift. It was hard to exhume our cars from the drive-way. What it took was speed: I had to speed, in reverse, from the top of the driveway past the snowbank at its mouth. And I had to turn out at an extreme angle to avoid hitting the house across the street.

There was one problem, though: a man named Nico.

Dad has this habit--picked up, I think, from my mom--of waiting at the entrance of our driveway for the car. That is, unless he's driving, he will not sit in the passenger's side until you're at the entrance of the driveway. Then he will enter the car.

The problem was, if I stopped at the entrance to the driveway, my car would be parked in the snowbank. And then it wouldn't be able to leave.

Happily, though, Dad wasn't standing at the entrance to the driveway. He was standing right next to it. On the street. Basically, if I had sped out the driveway to surmount the snowbank, and then wheeled out at an extreme turn to make sure I didn't crash into the house across the way, I would clobber Dad.

At least, it looked for all the world like I would.

So as I sped out, I saw dad in the line of traffic, and I braked. On the snowbank. And I got stuck.

I had to be towed out by a jeep next door.

Luckily, the flight was cancelled that day.

So let's move forward to February 15, my birthday.

Same driveway situation. Same Dad situation. Same result. Except this time, I didn't get stuck on the snow bank. I managed to rock the car out of the bank. After doing that, I went up to Dad and said, "Dad, please don't stand where you're standing. Stand, like, 20 feet away so it doesn't look like I'm going to run you over."

"Okay. I will do that."

I speed out the driveway, and what do I see in my rearview mirror? Dad. Where is he standing? Why, where he was earlier, of course.

I run out of the car, and beg him beg him, "Dad, please, please, please don't stand where you're standing. Stand somewhere else!"

He did. I got out. I got to the airport.

But I was annoyed. My annoyance was like a second bag I had to check. It traveled with me all throughout the flight to New York.

But once I got there, and I saw my wife-to-be, it all vanished, to be replaced by the gentle caresses of an astonishingly wonderful, supportive woman and dissertation-anxiety.

Amazing

2007-02-22T00:42:00.001-05:00

This is probably the worst article I've read in several years. You must read it if you know anything about the UFC or MMA in general.

Revision

2007-02-16T18:32:00.000-05:00

The post of February 9 mistakenly claimed that Anna Nicole Smith's mourning period would be the shortest since Method Man's death. I meant Old Dirty Bastard's death. Sorry.

Joe Rogan v. Ned Holness/Carlos Mencia

2007-02-14T18:55:00.000-05:00

I've often wondered what I would be like if I were really strong and good at, say, boxing. See, I'm conflict-averse by nature, and while I've been getting less and less conflict-averse over time, part of being conflict averse means imagining the worst-case scenario out of minor confrontations. To wit:

I'm at the movie theater waiting in a line for popcorn. A guy cuts in front of me and everyone else. The fella behind the counter says nothing and just begins to take his order. I think about telling him to get to the back of the line, but it quickly occurs to me: "wait, if I do this, he might take out a gun and pistol-whip me with it. He'll probably break my orbital socket. How do you cast a broken orbital? You probably can't. It's probably like a clavicle breakage. I better let him get his popcorn, 'cause I need my orbital to study."

Joe Rogan, I'm guessing, doesn't think like that. He is, to quote Cabbage Correira, "buff n' stuff". So, when he has the opportunity to confront Carlos Mencia over his joke-stealing, he takes it ... and tapes it. Worth watching.

Bulldog Madness

2007-02-12T04:02:00.000-05:00

Here's the reason why their name means (in Latin), "God's favorite".

Insight into Myself

2007-02-11T00:34:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at the coolest site in the world.

It's a history of soda, albeit a very selective one that begins in roughly 1990.

This article clued me in to why I like soda so much--or better, not why I like soda so much but why I want to try every new soda introduced. Partly this is because they are magic. But also this is because I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, the test marketer's dream. Dayton is like anywheresville, USA, minus black people--well, I guess they're in the western part of it--, so I got subjected to the kookiest sodas in the world. I don't think I ever got Pepsi Fire or Pepsi Ice, but I certainly tried "The Wild Bunch"--I even have the cans (that my brother happily collected) downstairs in the basement to prove it.

I can't believe Pepsi Tropical Chill is so old!

News

2007-02-09T08:56:00.000-05:00

Anna Nicole Smith is dead. I predict this will be the shortest mourning period of any celebrity since Method Man.

In other news, Norbit finally hits the big screen. Here's hoping that it's a big failure so I don't have to see its commercials, and nothing but its commericals, for the next two weeks. Still, I can't help but sharing with you selections from my favorite reviews of it.

Walter Chaw, of Film Freak Festival writes:

"It's a thoughtless, cancerous, viral, irresponsible pollution whose existence speaks ill of the society that produced it and of any society that would endorse or defend it."

Jon Popick, of Planet Sick Boy:

"Usually, it takes six or so months for an actor to parlay a Best Supporting Actor nomination into a cringe-worthy career-derailing performance in an unbelievably awful picture."

Mark Pfeiffer of Reel Time: Reflections on Cinema, uses considerably more tact in proclaiming:

"If Norbit doesn't kill cinema, nothing will."

I think critics actually liked this movie. Every once in a while, a movie like Norbit comes around that is so repellently bad that critics can turn to their superlative-ary and let 'er rip. "Finally, I can use 'otalgic' in a sentence!" and that sort of thing. So let me give it a rip:

"Norbit is the double anal of movies."

Promising beginning, no? But where do I go from there? How about:

"It takes a speculum to your brain, spreads it wide open, and pisses on your corpus callosum."

So far, all I'm going for is vivid imagery, rather than big words or social commentary. So let's see...

"Murphy is obviously trying to show himself to be a polymath, but reveals that he is a mere abecedarian."

Good, that's using my thesaurus! Now on to the social commentary:

"Eddie Murphy shucks and jives all the way to the bank. But what's the name of that bank? Tuskegee and Lynch. Tuskegee and Lynch bank. And who's it run by? Frank Middle Passage."

It's easy to be a freaking film critic, man. At least for Norbit.

Inexpressibly cool

2007-01-25T17:02:00.000-05:00

Just in case you haven't seen it -- and chances are, most of the people who read this blog have -- you must see Tony vs. Paul.

I'm not sure how they did it -- though I think that they use the same techniques that claymators used back when there was claymation -- but my guess is that it took an astonishing amount of work.

Music

2007-01-25T12:33:00.000-05:00

I thought Talking Heads had disbanded in 1992, but for some reason they reunited and made a new album in 2005. For some reason, though, they changed their name to "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah". Still, if you liked the Talking Heads's old stuff, you should like this.

Housekeeping Matters

2007-01-25T12:10:00.000-05:00

This post is to be kept confidential.

I'm talking to you, Mom. You'll see why when you read the post.

The Bobcat household has had cleanliness problems in the past. I won't go into them, but suffice it to say they're Dad's and my fault. More Dad's fault.

Before delving any further into the history of my family's mess, I should say that I started out as a clean boy. I would make sure to put my shoes--and everyone else's shoes--into the proper place; I would clean up my toys; I didn't have any papers to organize, but if I had had them, you can bank on the fact that I would have organized them.

What happened to me? My family; my Dad was a relentless messer-upper (he remains unrepentant to this day), my brother was the same during my growing up (he has since changed), and my Mom had given up by about my fifth or sixth birthday (I think she's become a little more hopeful in recent years). So, being a child, I must have concluded that I was doing something wrong by being clean, and I have looked upon non-filthy places with moral disgust ever since.*

Anyway, we got a housekeeper lately. A friend of the family, in fact. Call her L. There's no need to go into L's history--well, no need beyond this: she's from Romania, and she became an adult during Ceaucescu's regime. Consequently, she had to deal with some excesses of communism. So cut her some slack.

Also, she has forearms like steel scepters (from mountain-climbing). I just thought I should mention that.

So, the conversation I'm about to relay is one I've never told my Mom. And once again, I ask her to keep it confidential. So here goes...

One day, of fairly recent vintage, I was home alone with L. L was getting ready to do some housecleaning. I was eating, and the family cat, Bullitt, jumped up on table and started sniffing at my food. I didn't mind, but L shooed him away.

Me: What's wrong with Bullitt?
L: Ach, he iz not clean. You should not let him near you.
Me: How is he not clean? He's such a neat-freak that he licks the filth off his genitals and his smelly place.
L: Bobcat, I haf never told you zis, but ven I vas in Romania, you remember, I was a coroner.

It's true. I mean, it's true that she's told me that many times.

Me: Yes, I remember you telling me that.
L: And I saw sings. Sings I will never forget.
Me: Okay.
L: Once, I vas looking at a man's body, and I vill never forget zis ... no, vait, it vas voman.

I don't think I need to comment about that sentence. She continued:

L: In her liver, I found a cat-hair. She had swallowed one and it killed her.

Really? When you swallow cat hairs they go straight to the liver? Maybe in Romania they connect the liver to the stomach so that the booze will work faster?

L: I can tell you, efen ven it doesn't kill you, you will be praying for death.
Me: Oh. Wow. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more.
L: Vell, ve didn't lif vit cats and dogs for sousands of years. You think everyone was stupid in ze past and zat zey are smart only now?

Actually, I was thinking that the most economical explanation was that L didn't know what she was talking about. But even if she was right, she apparently thinks it's okay to assume that while not everyone was stupid in the past, everyone is stupid now.

Me: Oh, well I better tell Mom.
L: No, don't tell your mozer. Promise me zat you won't.
Me: Why not?
L: Becauze she will not like to hear zat she can't be around her cat.

Somehow, I don't think that's what Mom will conclude. She might conclude that L has a weird sense of propriety--I mean, if I really thoughts being around cats killed people through their livers, I would spread this gospel far and wide. Even if it meant mildly upsettin them. I guess that's where L and I disagree. But of course, I'm assuming even she doesn't believe what she said.

She's a generally nice lady, though. And she helps keep the house clean, which is really nice. And she grew up in a totalitarian society, after all; such societies usually scapegoat somebody. I guess in Romania it was the cats.

*--That's not true; I just like the idea of looking upon non-disgust with moral disgust.

Fantastic Adventures!

2007-01-19T12:08:00.000-05:00

There I was, sitting at home with my flickering lamp.

"Damn that lamp. I don't know why it flickers so", thought I.

Wait; let me give you some background.

Three years ago, I bought my girlfriend a lamp for Christmas. Keep in mind, at this point in our relationship, I didn't realize that at Christmas, you were supposed to get romantic gifts for your special someone. M'lady had told me she wanted a lamp, and I took it upon myself to add "for Christmas" (try adding that to the end of fortune cookie fortunes!). Later on, though, I got her the appropriate "romantic" gifts: chocolates, flowers, miniature pigs having sex.

At any rate, Lampy, as I call it, had been giving us a good run; I had no reason to suspect that Lampy was the cause of the flickering. Naturally, I blamed his lightbulb. So I installed a new lightbulb.

Still flickering.

Well, you can read even in flickering light, so I grabbed Lampy by the scruff and started moving him to the table near where I read.

Then Lampy died.

He didn't die peacefully, like Ronald Reagan, or suddenly but painlessly, also like Ronald Reagan. Nope.

He exploded.

Let me tell you what happened. The lightbulb was flickering, so I picked up Lampy to move him, and then the lightbulb blackened; embers shot out of the top of the lamp, and, literally, a jet of flame, probably half a foot long, shot out of the light switch, while the lamp made a sound like a blender set to "putrify".

Freaking out, I started blowing on the flame. Amazingly, it worked; the flame went out. Then I ducked and started looking anxiously for the plug. The flame started shooting out again, the blender sound recommenced, and stood back up and blew out the flame again. Then, I grabbed the plug (encased in plastic, so it wouldn't electrocute me) and yanked it out.

The flame stopped, and was replaced by a placid smoke gurgling out of the lamp like a death knell (don't think about what that could possibly mean, as you'll be disappointed). Also, the enjoyable aroma of melted plastic filled up my apartment and, to be honest, my apartment complex.

Happily, the smoke detector didn't go off, so that was one less problem I'd have to deal with. Unhappily, the smoke detector didn't go off, so that's one more problem I'll have to deal with.

In the meantime, I looked back at Lampy's smoldering corpse. I grabbed him by the neck and dunked his head into the cold outside air, where he could smoke with some privacy. Eventually, I took him downstairs and put him in the dumpster area.

I lost a friend that day (my friend Brent died), as well as a lamp, but I got a good idea from all of this. When I'm nearing my end, I'm going to have one final surgery where the doctor takes out my appendix and replaces it with C4. Then, I'm going to get into a fight, lead with my appendix area, and blow up the place.

Brent didn't die.

Fight Fans

2007-01-05T11:09:00.000-05:00

I just saw the Fedor v. Hunt fight.

First, it continues my string of unbroken mis-predictions. I thought Fedor would destroy Hunt in about two minutes. It ended up taking him about nine, and he certainly didn't destroy him. Arguably, if Hunt had fought Fedor a year from now, a different outcome would have resulted.

Second, it's only arguable that improving Hunt's game would have helped matters. For Fedor might be some kind of zombie or Frankenstein's monster. On the one hand, Hunt tested Fedor like I haven't seen him tested (though I haven't watched many fights of his). But on the other, what does it take to beat Fedor? He gets solidly punched in the face on two separate occasions by a behemoth puncher, he appears to have a kimura totally locked in and breaks out of it, and after being lain on top of for six or seven minutes, occasionally punched, and fighting against submissions, he just stands up and starts swinging like the fight just started. Does he not get tired? What's with him?

UPDATE: Apparently, Pride Refs really don't want to stop fights.

The Big Question

2007-01-05T05:10:00.000-05:00

So I went back to Dayton for the holidays. After 19 glorious days of staying with parents, everyone has the same question: how much weight did you gain?

A fine question indeed. Exactly how much eating can one person do over the holidays? The answer, as it turns out, is a lot. I weighed myself after getting home from the airport. Flying, and the Mexican Beach Salad I ate at Jerry's Deli, added slightly to my total of... 16 pounds! Holy crap! I left LA weighing 230, returned at 246. If I was an actor I would have gotten the part of the fatter me.

The next morning, I had settled to a nice, round 242. Today after spinning, 239. The holiday weight comes off fast but still... Wow.

Anyway, I was rheuminating on some of the food that led me to my caloric predicament. The sliders with onion rings and fries at the Fox and Hound? Couldn't have helped. The Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia shakes? If one wasn't good for me then numbers two and three sure weren't either. The Coney dogs I got at Skyline Chili on the way home from a lunch of Chinese food? Pure folly in any estimation.

It'll take about 2 weeks to get back to 230. And then another month or so to get to 220. Maybe I'll go down further after that. Dunno.

Today I ate frozen dinners that totalled less than 500 calories and a salmon kabob.

Man, I miss Dayton.

A Passive Agressive Christmas

2006-12-27T12:05:00.000-05:00

I've been passive aggressive all my youth. I've never really stopped, though I've eliminated the more laughable manifestations of it over, say, the last four years. For instance, when I was, say, eight, and my family and I were at a restaurant, an exchange like this would happen:

Joe: I'm still hungry!

Keep in mind that Joe as a youth was always still hungry, though I don't think he regularly expressed himself as an angry five-year old, at least not when he was thirteen. Anyway...

Mom: Well, we could order more food...
Dad: Or, we could refrain from doing so. Eet ees up to you.

By, "we could refrain from doing so", Dad means, "no, you're not allowed to order more food." More on this later.

Me: Joseph, you can have the rest of my steak.

By, "Joseph, you can have the rest of my steak", I meant, "I don't want to give you my steak, but because I am liable to blame myself if you are unhappy, you can have my steak. Hopefully, you will refuse, but if you don't, I will use it as an opportunity to make myself feel good about my moral advancement, especially in comparison to yours."

Joe: Okay, but that's pretty silly of you. (gruumm, grum, graw)

Those last sounds were Joe hungrily eating my steak. Notice, as well, that by making fun of me for offering my steak, he shows that he understands what I was trying to do, but is having none of this "he who gives up his steak is morally superior" nonsense.

Me: ...

Well, I felt sad.

Anyway, there's a lot of implying, or, as the philosophers say, "conversational implicature", in my household. Always has been, as long as I can remember.

Fast forward twenty-two years.

It's Monday, Christmas day. Some friends of the family, the Coopers, are over. We've just finished eating our share of a beautiful boneless Christmas turkey and have retired to the living room. The six of us (three of my clan, and three Coopers) are having relaxed conversations, but then Dad comes in.

I'm sitting at the computer, which is occupied with playing Christmas music, and Dad comes up to me.

Dad: Would you like to play ... Chilean ... music?

Now, as a matter of fact I didn't. But here's what would have happened if I had said that:
Counterfactual Me: No, not really.
Counterfactual Dad: Even though ... eet ees ... unusual?
Counterfactual Me: Yup.
Counterfactual Dad (laughing): Okay, sanny! So perhaps you want to play eet anyway, even though eet ees ... strange?

And we're off to the races. I didn't need that, so I stopped the Christmas music and put in the Chilean music, which was nice, although a little less appropriate for the occasion than, say, Christmas music.

People continue talking while the Chilean music plays. Dad demands me to turn it up by saying, "would you like to turn it up?"

Again, I didn't want to play "exhaustion game" with Dad, as he's been, more or less, undefeated for thirty years.

So I turned it up. Family members and Coopers looked at us a bit askance while Dad grinned maniacally, as if to say, "I've rocked your world, have I not?"

Well, no one's world was rocked, though Mom's world was, uh, slightly annoyed. But what an odd thing to do:

(1) Wait for Christmas day
(2) Wait for guests
(3) Wait for them to finish eating
(4) When they're talking, try to send the message to them to shut up and listen to this old, incredible music.
(5) If they don't listen, turn it up.

Now, although this is ... well, incredible behavior, it's understandable. Imagine the following situation: you've discovered some incredible new music. You have a friend or family member who you know will love this music. So you go to a location where you can both listen. Then he starts talking over the music. Wouldn't this annoy you? It would me.

This is basically what happened with Dad. Except, of course: a. he told no one this is what he wanted; b. he doesn't have any reason to think we would love this music; and c. we were already in a situation where we talking and not supposed to be listening to music.

This is passive aggressive.

And now that I've become sensitive to it, I realize that I've really taken after my dad.

By the way, you don't have to compliment me for this blog post.

This Might be Pathological

2006-12-22T03:13:00.000-05:00

I thought I loved cats. No, James Eric loves cats. (It's not gross; just funny.)

More YouTube Goodness!

2006-12-17T16:51:00.000-05:00

This time, the Upright Citizens Brigade on Jimmy Kimmel.

New Video

2006-12-17T02:19:00.000-05:00

For my money, it beats the ape drinking his pee.