playtime: a winner

This was more difficult than I thought.

The owner was a realtor, which gave J a big edge. However the car was a very recent Silver Mercedes E320

What J said about Sylow being right about the car soon to be owned by his ex-wife looked about right too.

But that 5yr old Gold Cadillac is way off as is the 'kick the habit' comment. J, you win...nothing.

MaryBishop, as usual, is simply describing herself.

Minivan guess way off on vehicle and driver.

Weinkraut, very nice description. Thank you, please come again.

Miss Kate, like marybishop, little projection goin on here. You win my dream date.

Sylow, the convertible part set you back. The fact that you started the whole describe the hidden life behind the driver thing (a great improvement over the original design) wins you not a prize, but a title: Co-inventor of The Game. Congrats. Royalty checks to follow.

Capt. That leaves you. Closest on the car, the driver was male and had a cat (named Irwin, though). These combined make you winner of The Grand Prize. TWO TICKETS TO PARADISE! As soon as I learn the lyrics, I will record myself singing this classic Eddie Money hit, post it on the web and provide you with link. Good work!

playtime

Inspired by the unmitigated success of The Weekly Geekly, which rumor has it may be picked up by Network next Fall, I have decided to try out a cybergame here. I call it The Miss Kate Had Some Trouble With The Machine This Morning And My Espresso Was Undrinkable So I Needed Something To Occupy Myself With During My Morning Commute To Keep Awake Game.

Here's how it works: I see a lot of personalized plates on my commute. I choose one and contestants will guess the car (model, make, year, color, condition).
The contestant I deem comes closest wins The Grand Prize*

Today's Plate: RESULTS

Good luck!

*Grand Prize to be determined at a later date

some things are timeless...hot women fighting, for instance

We watched an episode of the 70's television Wonder Woman yesterday.

Not long ago I had a Twinkie after not having had one for ten years. I loved Twinkies so much as a kid. Now I find I am unable to even swallow one bite. I drink basically nothing but mineral water now. I remember having a sip of mineral water as a kid and thinking it was some sort of cruel poisonous hoax.

Which is why I am happy to report that Wonder Woman is still enjoyable. Sure, the acting is cheesy. Sure, the long shot of the invisible airplane with a doll sitting in it is laughable. The doll's legs aren't even bent.

But the show had everything: espionage, a tropical island full of scantily-clad immortal woman, talking computers, sword-fighting robots, car chases and girl-on-girl fighting complete with clothing loss.

And Miss Kate will do her Wonder Woman impersonation whenever I ask.

(p.s. I hope the inclusion of the phrase "girl-on-girl" in this post will generate more search string hits for my blog. Up to this point, more people get here with the search "itchy beard" than any other.)

it's a joke

A recent conversation:

Six year old: Mom, don't drive past the cemetery! I don't like it!

Four year old: Why don't you like it?

Six: That's where the dead people are.

Four: Why did they all die over there?

Six: All people die and then they bring them to the cemetery

Four: All people die? Mommy, do all people die?

Mom: Yes, all people die.

Four: Am I gonna die?

Mom: Yes.

Four: And you?

Mom: Yes.

Four: Is this true or is this a joke?

Mom: If you need this to be a joke then it can be a joke.

Four: It's a joke.

I remember all the nights as a kid I spent in terror of nothingness. I never thought of heaven. Never feared hell. The quandry of non-existence I felt and understood naturally.

Now, I am insulated against it. My reaction to the conversation above is to combat it with my particular brand of humor: It's life, but yeah, it's a joke...it's a big fuckin' joke.

But sometime in the middle of the night after I heard and laughed about that conversation, I felt that fear in earnest for the first time in many years. Sitting here now, I can pile barriers of rationalizations and jokes and Zen-isms in front of it, but to recall that fear...that is to remember what it is to be a child.

i remember back when i used to look forward to the weekends

Fuck fuckfuck fuckity fuck! Fuckin' fuck fuckly fuck (fucking fuck). Fucking fucks a-fuck "fuckingfuck."

fuckfuckfuck fucking fuckness

Fuckness fucks fuckfuck fuckers? Fuck!!

Fucked refucks fuckiest fuck.

Frig!

and they're off

I almost lost my foot at the Roosevelt Raceway.

My dad loved to take us to watch horse races when we were kids. My very first real lie was at the racetrack. You had to be six years old to get in and I was five. My dad told me that if anyone asked, I was six. The guy at the gate asked and I said I was six. He tried to trip me up with a follow-up question and asked what grade I was in. I wasn't expecting this sort of underhandedness but stayed focussed and said I was in first grade even though I was in kindergarten. I must not have said it with enough conviction though because he sent us packing.

That lesson helped to form me into the tremendous liar I am today.

My dad would sometimes set aside a couple of dollars for us to bet with. I am not sure about my sisters, but I knew at a young age how to read a book and have an idea on which horses to bet. He once gave me a five dollar bill to hold onto until we were ready to bet with it, and when the time came I couldn't find it. He was so angry that he just walked to car and didn't even check to see if we were coming with him. I found it in my back pocket on the drive home.

I used to pick up old, dirty tickets off the ground hoping to find one that was a winner. I never did, but I once found one for a race that hadn't run yet. It was for the seventh race and the ticket was for a 1-3 exacta. The 1 and 3 came in at a photo-finish and it was about ten minutes before they finally decided that they finished 3-1, thus squelching my fifteen-dollar dreams.

Going down the escalator, I had my shoe rubbing on the sidewall and my foot got sucked down into the mechanism. Luckily it wasn't just my dad and I there that day as it often was, but his old boozed-up army buddy Monroe was with us and together they pulled me out. A gear had sliced the tongue off of my shoe and the top of my big toe.

I understand that this is not such an infrequent occurrence. A google search of escalator and foot found all kinds of interesting stuff including this guy's blog posting.

The moral of this posting is: stay away from the ponies...gambling is just a one-way ticket to Stumpsville.

the city of my youth

I was told as a kid (by another kid) that if you threw a penny off the World Trade Center it could crush an entire car on the street. Or go right through somebody's head and body. Curious and terrified, I chucked half a pistachio shell over the edge.

The walk from Penn Station to my grandmother's apartment went by Times Square. Back then when Forty Second Street was nothing but sleeze and skank, I managed one time to go into one of the places rather than just look at the pictures in the windows. Inside, I put a quarter into a slot and a window slid open. A woman walked over to my compartment and asked what I wanted. The compartments were aligned in a slight semi-circle so I was able to see what was happening through little windows on the other side of the room. It was sickening. The woman again asked what I wanted and I still said nothing. She said if I gave her two I could touch her. I asked her, "two what?" She said that I knew perfectly well that she wasn't allowed to mention anything about money. I ran out.

I once saw a woman in the street who had jumped from a very high building.

When I was four, a straggly looking man walked up to me with eyes of delight and rubbed my head.

I sat next to an old man at outdoor concert who blew spit bubbles.

Outside a very crowded restroom a woman asked me to watch her baby while she went in.

My grandmother sat us at the very front at a showing of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well... even though people had been sitting for hours holding their seats. We sat on electrical wiring in a place which everyone but my grandmother had deemed to be off limits. As we sat down someone behind us yelled, "they let animals sit here," and my dad turned around and let them know that if they didn't want to be eaten by said animal, they should just shut the fuck up.

you now have fifteen seconds to comply

I installed a new showerhead this afternoon. It was a very painless procedure and only took a couple of minutes. My complete lack of toolsmanship didn't even come into play.

However, the showerhead that I bought has an interesting design. At the point where the showerhead attaches to the arm, both the head and arm are perfectly round and smooth and the fit is somewhat loose. So when you turn on the water, the head is propelled away from the direction of the water release until the hose connected it becomes taut.

When I first tested it, the head slowly turned toward me with just the propulsion of air in the hose, stopped, and then completely soaked me dead-center in the chest. The way it moved was distinctly reminiscent of ED 209 from Robocop.

I can't wait until some guests stay over.



Our new showerhead and the nice man who sold it to me.

give me some help so i know what to do the next time this happens

My cousin came to town last night and I picked her up at the airport. When I got there I went to the Big Board to check the status of her flight. Standing next to and a little behind the Board I saw a twentish couple engaged in an airport embrace. While I was looking for her flight, an older guy with long, browish-grey hair walked right up to them and said, "Hey, can I get a hug too?" I couldn't see the couple from where I was standing. The thought came to my head that he must be one of their dads, but then he turned to all of us at the Board as if we were his audience and said, "No sense of humor," and shrugged.*

I had the information I needed and I walked away, but I'm curious what things you all can think of that I might have done or said at any point in this situation to make it more interesting.

*The guy's voice is an important factor in this. Think of (or find someone who knows) what Dave Letterman sounds like when he is trying to sound like a real creepy dude (creepier than just regular Dave Letterman) and add a little more rasp to it. The second statement should sound like this: no SENSa YUma.

last of the redhot lovers

My friend Jeremy, with whom I don't keep in touch as well as I should, just e-mailed me. Can't think of him without thinking of this story:

Jeremy and I were suitemates on the seventh floor of one of the private dorms. I spent most of my time in his room because my roommate was a jerkoff. He and I sat there in his room one night, alone and with absolutely nothing to do. We decided to drive to the 7-11 a few miles away and find some porno magazines.

Three notable things happened at the 7-11. First, they didn't sell porno magazines at 7-11. This was the days before things like FHM and Maxim. The closest thing to what we were looking for was Easy Rider, and that really isn't ever an option.

Next, there were two girls in the store. I recall they were somewhat slutty looking. They may still have been in high school, but we were just barely eighteen and that didn't bother us too much. Actually, I am pretty sure it is just my older self bringing it up now and at the time it wasn't even a consideration.

Last, the cashier was an older guy with a weird physical deformity. His left eyeball had no iris. It was like the old Little Orphan Annie strips. Just a big, white eyeball.

We bought two sodas, I got a Dr. Pepper and I think Jeremy got a Pepsi. On the way out we noticed that the two girls were sitting on the curb, drinking and eating. We started walking over to them and as we did, Jeremy asked me, "did you notice that there was something wrong with that guy's lips?"

This is the sort of question he loves to ask. Today, this question is doubly funny because it is the exact sort of humor I still love and because it reminds me instantly of years of questions like this from Jeremy. At the time it was just singly funny, but he happened to ask it just as I was taking a sip of my Dr. Pepper. My response, made less than ten feet from the girls, was to drop to one knee and make a sound that came not from my mouth or throat, but from my lungs. It is possible I was exhaling a thin, brown mist as well.

When I gained control over myself, we got in his Mitsubishi Mirage and headed back to the dorm.

you are all a bunch of slackers

As you can see from the report below, you all do the overwhelming majority of your blog visiting during the weekdays. I didn't include the times but, yes, it is right smack in the middle of the workday.

For all you Americans out there, this lack of work ethic is precisely the reason why the Russians make a fuzzier hat than we do. And all you Brits, this is why Camilla will be your Queen one day. And you Canadians, well, this is why your men are so flatulent.

his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him

I don't remember where I was or even which city it was. I was walking alone and I noticed a group of ants on the rock to my right.

Once I had sat and had a picnic in the rainforest outside of Kakamega, Kenya and spent most of the afternoon on the jungle floor marvelling at the efficiency of the ant.

I stooped to get a closer look at the ants on rock. It took a few seconds for my vision to narrow enough in order to reconcile what was taking place in the miniature world.

It was a battle. A horrific battle that brought the bile to my throat. I saw ants with pincers. Enormous weapons as large as any of the segments of their bodies. I watched an ant cut another in half and the top half of the doomed insect continue to struggle with its opponent.

This is Israel.

book of the day club

So, we have a dog. He is six. From seven weeks to about three years old he was very, very bad. He ate my favorite Doc Marten's, my humidor with a bunch of pricey cigars, several of Miss Kate's boots, a bed, a futon mattress and frame, several carpets and an apartment.

But then at around three, he got good. Many people told us that if you can get through the first few years without killing a black lab, you will hit paydirt.

We recently bought bookshelves and our books that have been in storage forever finally are out in the world. In the last week, we have come home every afternoon to find shredded books.

All the books shredded were out of my library of biblical/Judaic studies. They have included Even Shoshan's Konkordantsyah hadashah le-Torah, Nevim, u-Khetuvim, Jastrow's A Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Bavli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature , a Soncino Chumash, Charles' The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English (vol.1), and Harkavy's Complete English-Jewish Dictionary.

Some people would say he chooses these books an account of their age and smell. If it were a dream, a Jungian would say I was feeling guilty about wasting my two master's degrees.

Thank god it isn't a dream and I'm not a Jungian.

change of mind

A bill in Texas state legislature would protect pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions based on their opposition to abortion. Most of the prescriptions are for emergency contraceptives and birth control. Ten states are looking to expand "conscience clauses" for pharmacists. from NPR

When I first heard about this situation I took my basic ACLUnik stance and have been appalled that the argument is even taking place each time its come up in the news since then. Until last night.

Nothing has changed about my opinions in the specifics of this case, but it suddenly occurred to me how scary it is for a society to be telling a citizen to ignore her conscience.

In the history of humanity, it seems to me that the majority of instances where someone has said, "My conscience dictates...." have been for the sake of good. Those words are rarely followed by "that I must kill, must harm, must wage war."*

When life places a decision of conscience in your path you have three choices. You can ignore your conscience; you can listen to your conscience and walk away; or you can listen to your conscience and stand your ground.

I haven't changed my opinions about the right for people to get these prescriptions. But I know I want all people to listen to, not ignore, their consciences.

*Dr. Kevorkian is possibly an exception here. In thinking about this aspect I didn't think of Dr. K. right off, but George from Of Mice and Men.

it itches right this second

My beard gets very itchy when it starts getting a little long. Not such a big deal since I own several electric clippers and go to a pretty fancy hair salon every 5-6 weeks or so. But if I ever became your basic street bum, what would I do about my itchy beard? Would I want to squander my precious pan-handling funds on a pair of scissors? Would I be able to find some benevolent barber who would let me in his chair after closing? Or would I just walk around with an itchy, flaking beard, rubbing it up against buildings and parked cars?

My beard is itchy right now, but I am too lazy to do anything about it. Does this mean I am on my way to becoming a street bum?

These are the types of questions that keep me awake at night when my beard itches.

a series of surprises

We got a record amount of rain this Saturday. I am not sure what record it broke, but my neighbor said it was a record and that's good enough for me. Sometime in the afternoon I went in our backyard to throw out some trash. That is surprise #1. I took out the trash and in the rain no less.

As I was putting the trashbag in the can, I noticed that some water was pooling up against the house. Surprise #2. Miss Kate will attest to the fact that noticing shit is not exactly my strong suit.

Next, I went down to the basement to check to see if that pool of water was having any effect in the house. Surprise #3 on a whole series of levels. Cause and effect, spacial relationships, walking downstairs.

The water was effecting the basement...and not in a good way. Next, panic. Not a surprise. Miss Kate and I began imagining what a Saturday visit by the basement floody guy on a record breaking day would cost (granted, we didn't know then it was a record breaking day but it was definitely raining a lot). Also, that morning we brought our mutt to the vet in the rain and as per usual, the vet said, "Oh, this is gonna cost ya, pilgrim." So, now we are broke and getting broker and I am wondering if instead of cash the basement guy would just take a used dog.

Finally, as darkness was setting on our situation, with only a few trips (three, not counting the one where I realized I had forgotten my wallet as I pulled into the parking lot) to Home Depot, I fixed everything. Surprise #4. Um, I don't know how to fix things. And Surprise #5, it was cheap.

we need a real vice president

So the cool thing about blogging is that it is voluntary and sort of anonymous. Anyone can find this blog and if they choose to read it, great. And if they choose to comment, better still. And if not, fine by me.

This is true for everyone in the world except one person. He has visited my blog and Sylow's and Miss Kate's(although, this bit of coercion which is about to happen is the brainchild of mine and Sylow's. Miss Kate is completely and wisely out of the loop).

So, Mr. VP. Out of the closet with you! Sylow and I have compiled a list of juicy tidbits about you from SLIS days and are ready to publish them one at a time along with your cellphone number if you don't join us in our fabulous blog-o-sphere. I mean, really, The Crackhead is even commenting now.

o canada !

I haven't been to Canada in quite a few years and I have only been to the eastern part of the country. This blog, however, has recently been inundated by our neighbors to the north and I have learned a few new fun tidbits:

1) Canadians have a special mixed drink made from rye whiskey and orange drink which they call The Chicken Bone.

2) Canadians keep squirrels as pets.

3) Canadian squirrels like yogurt.

4) Canadians have X-box (I didn't think they had progressed past Coleco-vision).

5) Canadians celebrate Easter. (I thought they were pagans).

Just goes to show you. Can't wait to see what else I may learn.