CHANGE JAR STATS
++ As of February 7, 2005,
the change jar was 41.3% full.
++ I last emptied the change jar
on August 11, 2004.
++ The change jar is projected
to be full on October 21, 2005.
[See change jar photo here]
The DMV faxed my driving record to Angie at Allstate. Angie faxed proof of insurance to Neicy at Northeast Denver Federal Credit Union. Neicy faxed a letter of credit to Paul at 700 South Broadway. I suffered through an interminable bus ride from work to the car lot, during which a lady discussed at length her prospects for a career in construction at a volume appropriate for being heard over F-16s taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Did I mention that she had just gotten out of prison on parole, and had stringy hair dyed an awful shade of blond, and looked like God had kicked her in the face a few times with the Ugly Boot? But you figured that out on your own.
Anyway, Paul and I made awkward small talk while I signed about 47 pieces of paper guaranteeing Broadway Car Company immunity from legal action, even if a certain 1991 Honda Accord with flawless leather interior burst into flames while I drove it off their lot. Then Paul handed me the keys and I drove away, feeling the kind of relief normally associated with seeing a REST AREA 1 MI sign.
So look out, you persons with two X chromosomes located in the Denver metro area! Kilgore Trout has wheels.
Trailing 6-2 at halftime, the Colorado Mammoth scored nine unanswered goals to open the second half and routed the Anaheim Storm 15-10, boosting their record to 8-2, best in the National Lacrosse League. Sports don't get much more obscure than professional indoor lacrosse, yet more than 18,000 rowdy fans came to watch a bunch of Canadian men hit each other with sticks. I'm still hoarse from yelling.
When DK and I arrived at our seats -- we have season tickets -- a season ticket holder in the same row shouted, "Where were you guys last week?" (DK and I had skipped the NLL All-Star Game the week before on the grounds that All-Star games are retarded, no matter the sport.)
I shrugged. DK smiled and said, "We just weren't feeling it."
A few minutes later, another season ticket holder in the row in front of us arrived and said, "What happened to you guys last week? We were looking for you, but you never showed up!"
DK and I barely know these guys. But it's nice to be missed, even by people whose existence you have never given a second thought.
Last Thursday, I received a check for $13.86 from Kohn, Swift, & Graf, P.C. as payment of my portion of a $67.375 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed against a group of record companies and music retailers for conspiring to raise prices. Anybody was eligible to get in on the booty who bought a CD, cassette tape, or vinyl record between January 1, 1995 and December 22, 2000. The deadline to file a claim was March 3, 2003.
What, you didn't sign up? That's because you're a sucker, Jack.
I got my statement from my bank yesterday, accompanied by this announcement:
Good news! We've listened to your feedback and have made some changes to your statement. We're happy to announce that your checks will once again be listed in columns.
Huzzah! Victory is ours, comrades! We can finally stop our furious campaign of making phone calls, writing letters, and gathering signatures on petitions demanding that our bank statements list checks in columns, instead of... um... er... however it was being done previously. Who says huge corporations don't listen to the concerns of ordinary Americans?
CLEVELAND -- Sources reported that Dave Williams, who writes a weblog titled "Random Musings" under the name dWill, wrote his 153rd consecutive self-deprecating post Wednesday, even though in real life he is an blustering, overconfident egomaniac.
"Somehow my life today sucked even more than it did yesterday," the post began. "Maybe life would be bearable if I wasn't such a fucking loser and if I thought I might actually get laid sometime this century..." The post went on to describe dWill's romantic failures and troubles with money, and ended, "If there's no post tomorrow, maybe I finally got the balls up to buy a fucking shotgun and put it to good use."
"I'm stacking up some pretty tall dollars these days," said Williams, 32, a salesman at Midwest Fasteners in Cleveland. "Number one salesman in the office -- all the other guys started calling me 'Super Dave' after I closed that $2 million deal with Wickers Construction last week. Yeah, that'll be a fat commission check. I'll have to head downtown this weekend and drop some cash on the honeys at the Nasty Lounge." Williams stated that he "score[s] some pretty sweet tail on a regular basis."
Williams confirmed that his blog persona does not match his actual opinion of himself. "People don't want to read a blog about a guy like me who's good-looking, socially active, and successful in his career. I think most people who read and write blogs are lonely, frustrated people who want to read about other misfits like themselves. So I pretend that I have a pathetic sex life, that my childhood was rotten, or that I don't have any friends. I like to post about how much my blog sucks and how nobody reads it, even though I have about a hundred regular readers. I make fun of my appearance and the size of my penis a lot -- once I wrote, 'I would say that I look like a gargoyle, except women don't laugh at gargoyles when they drop their pants.'"
"I actually have a larger-than-average penis," Williams added quickly.
Lost in Translation (2003)
Starring: Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.
Directed by Sofia Coppola.
Kilgore rates it: 7 (out of 10)
I liked this movie, really I did. But I don't understand why it's received the flood of praise that it has. Bill Murray turned in a fine performance as a washed-up actor having an identity crisis while doing a liquor ad in Tokyo; I believed his character completely. I couldn't grasp Scarlett Johansson's character, though. Supposedly she graduated from Yale, but I didn't buy it. I also didn't buy that she had married Giovanni Ribisi's character. I didn't sympathize with her problems -- she moped around a lot and I didn't understand why. Still, the movie had several funny and touching moments, and earned my eight bucks.
I wrote a post back on October 8 about how Lost in Translation got me thinking about why some people are happy and some people aren't. Murray's character, for example, may be washed up, but he's still rich and famous, with a wife and children, and he's getting paid $2 million to fly to Japan and have his picture taken. Johansson's character is a young, beautiful, educated woman dashing around to exotic locales with her hotshot celebrity photographer husband. Wealth, fame, beauty, family, excitement... these people seem to possess all the ingredients of happiness, yet they are miserable. Why? Think about that.
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Starring: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Bob Balaban, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, and Michael McKean.
Directed by Christopher Guest.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)
A Mighty Wind is the fourth mockumentary produced or written by Christopher Guest, following the excellent Waiting for Guffman, the very good Best in Show, and This is Spinal Tap, which I hated and turned off halfway through.
A Mighty Wind satirizes folk music, so I didn't get it. (I don't know anything about music in general, and I was born in 1974, so I really don't know anything about 1960s folk music.) Still, this film is filled with sharp direction by Guest and clever performances by his posse of improv actors, many of whom have appeared in his other movies. If you know anything about 1960s folk music, you will probably love this movie.
Animal Farm (1999)
Starring: Julia Ormond (voice), Patrick Stewart (voice), Pete Postlethwaite.
Directed by John Stephenson.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)
Animal Farm, written by British genius George Orwell and published in 1945, was a brilliant parody of the Bolshevik revolution in which barnyard animals expel their human owners and take over operation of the farm. Originally they follow the principles of "Animalism," a philosophy intended to create a cooperative animal paradise, but slowly the farm slides into dictatorship as a ruling class of pigs seizes control. Pigs named Major, Snowball, and Napoleon represent Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin; and Orwell throws in starvation as a political weapon, bloody purges, dictator worship, showy but pointless construction projects, and historical revisionism. If you haven't read Animal Farm, you should.
The movie recounts the major events as described in the novel but fails to capture the depth of Orwell's characters -- the dumb devotion of Boxer, the horse; the cynicism of Benjamin, the donkey; and the ferocity of Napoleon's secret police force of dogs. A mixture of real animals and animatronics prove believable in this live-action movie; the most memorable animals are Jessie, a collie who narrates; and Squealer, a pig who delivers propaganda. The filmmakers stumbled badly by tacking on a pointless, nonsensical second ending to Orwell's elegant finish. Overall, this film is a serviceable but tepid adaptation of a great novel.
My 1991 Honda Accord SE with flawless leather interior is sitting at 700 South Broadway, where Paul is waiting for Neicy at Northeast Denver Federal Credit Union to fax him a letter of credit. Neicy is waiting for Angie at Allstate to fax her proof of insurance. Angie is waiting for the DMV to fax her my driving record.
So I've spent the afternoon amusing myself by imagining how this daisy chain of fucktardedness could extend further. Perhaps Betty at the DMV is waiting at the VD clinic for Dr. Samuels to get back with her herpes prescription. But Dr. Samuels is at the Denver county courthouse, waiting for Judge Richardson to arrive so that his attorney can explain the difference between art and pornography, using certain photographs of children found in the good doctor's glove compartment as explanatory aids. Judge Richardson is in a small apartment in downtown Denver with his head wedged between the legs of his court reporter, waiting for her to have her goddam orgasm already. The court reporter is waiting for Dave and Lisa next door to quit yelling at each other -- there's no way she can concentrate on coming with all that racket going on. And Lisa is screaming at Dave that she sure as hell didn't give him those red welts on his cock, and it's that slut they met at Laura's party, isn't it? Bessie, right?
"Betty. Her name is Betty," Dave says quietly. "And I love her."
Tune in tomorrow to find out if I succeeded in chewing my own tongue off in frustration.
I was heating up my lunchtime Hot Pocket last Thursday when I noticed a pamphlet on top of the microwave. The cover read: "The Return of the King: Why is Tolkien's Epic So Popular?" and included an image of Viggo Mortensen, riding into battle with his sword held aloft. It turned out to be a tract that uses The Lord of the Rings to promote Christianity. (See it here.) Can you imagine how that sales pitch would go?
ENTHUSIASTIC CHRISTIAN: Good morning, Steve! Say, you like The Lord of the Rings, don't you?
STEVE: Uh, it was a pretty good movie, I guess.
ENTHUSIASTIC CHRISTIAN: Well, then, you should accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior! Because, you know, like what Aragorn did? And Arwen? That's just like Jesus, except that neither one was born of a virgin, or performed miracles, or claimed to have been sent by God, or rose from the dead, or even died in the first place! Um... anyway, read this!
The inside of the tract features a photo of Gandalf, which is odd, considering that both the Old Testament and the New Testament prohibit witchcraft and sorcery (Ex. 22:18, Deut. 18:10, Gal. 5:20). David Bruce, who wrote the text, exhibits the rhetorical skill of a seventh-grader straining to compare Moby-Dick to Flowers in the Attic. My verdict: Worst Proselytization Tool Ever.
I saw a Jeep ad a while ago that showed a Jeep SUV driving across a large body of water on a concrete bridge. No land is in sight. Suddenly, an uprooted tree falls out of the sky and lands on the bridge, blocking the way. Fortunately, because the people are driving a Jeep, they are able to drive right over the tree and continue on their way.
I guess the admakers intended to remind the viewer that since you never know what's going to happen, it's best to be prepared and drive a rugged Jeep 4x4 that can get you out of any mess. But the ad delivers a more obvious message: We know you're never going to take this thing off-road -- you're going to use it to take your daughter to soccer practice and pick up milk at the store. A person like you would only buy a Jeep if you're retarded enough to think that a tree might fall out of the sky and land right in front of you, and you'll need to drive right over it and pick up the pad Thai before it gets cold. God, you're a fucking poseur.
Another SUV commercial, this one for the Honda CR-V. The ad shows two extreme guys readying themselves to bungee jump from a bridge (we can tell they're extreme because they have scraggly goatees and two-day beards). Then the two guys spot a CR-V arriving on the beach below. A covey of taut-skinned, bikini-clad young women clamber out and start to play volleyball, shrieking and laughing gaily to indicate their readiness to perform oral sex. The men freeze and glance at one another in uncertainty. Then one of them says, "Okay, Plan B."
Are they nuts? I'm no great seducer of women, but I think the obvious strategy is to do the bungee jump and then head down to the beach to swagger among the admiring young women.
I test-drove a 1991 Honda Accord recently, and liked the ride and the flawless leather interior. I took it to a mechanic, who pronounced the car to be in excellent condition. Yesterday I met with the salesman to settle on a price.
I hate to haggle. I like things with set prices, like double cheeseburgers at McDonald's -- if you're willing to spend 99 cents, you can have a double cheeseburger. Otherwise, go somewhere else. Used cars aren't priced like that. Oh, they have a sticker price, but everybody who pays the sticker price ends up in the Gullible People Hall of Fame. The real price is kept secret, like the formula for Coca-Cola, and the only way to uncover it is to execute a series of complex social transactions. I fear complex social transactions. So I promised The Negotiator* a free lunch at Swing Thai if he helped me bargain with the used-car salesman.
Everybody needs a Negotiator friend. When I was in high school, The Negotiator was a skinny guy named Eck. Every year, a group of us guys would pool some money to buy a dilapidated van, which we would decorate with witty slogans like "Don't Laugh, Your Girlfriend Might Be Inside," and drive in the Homecoming parade. So every September we would stand around in a dusty used-car lot outside of town and watch Eck go toe-to-toe with a fat guy who had DWAYNE on an oval patch on his shirt -- the same kind of guy who intimidates me to this day. Eck and Dwayne would dicker for a while, and then Eck would shake his head and walk away. "Let's go, guys," he would say. "This guy's not serious."
"Now, hold on a minute," Dwayne would say, clearly not believing the beating he was taking from this scrawny, acne-ridden 17-year-old. And we would always get a great price.
"Well, you could do that, Kilgore," you are saying. "Just decide how much you're willing to spend on this car, and start with a price well below that, and then you work upwards from there. If the salesman demands too much, you just walk away. There are dozens of used-car lots in Denver, right? So just walk away and let him know you're taking your business elsewhere."
I haven't had a car for two months. This Accord was a solid car, priced well below book value, and walking away would mean at least two more weeks of taking the bus to work, bumming rides from friends, missing work to drag cars to the mechanic... and for what? So I could face another slick, winking used-car salesman? No. I was not going to walk away from this car, and so I needed The Negotiator.
The Negotiator (also known as DK, who serves not only as my Negotiator friend but also as my friend who gets me into hot tubs with models) picked me up from work, and drove to the used-car lot. There we met the salesman, who appeared to have been pressed into salesman duty -- he wore a mechanic's shirt with PAUL on an oval patch.
I pointed out to Paul that while my mechanic had given the car a clean bill of health overall, it needed some minor repairs, and I was wondering...
"I can do that work for you at cost," Paul said quickly. "So that would be $(sticker price), plus $199.95 for preparation and handling, plus $105 for the repairs, plus $(taxes), so the total would be $(total)."
"Only a sucker pays sticker price," said The Negotiator. "Plus, we wouldn't feel comfortable paying extra for these repairs."
Paul said, "That Accord is in very good condition..."
"Sure. There's a reason we're here," The Negotiator interrupted. He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. "But you know that we want to get the best deal we can, and we know that you want to make a sale today. So we're sure you have some room to deal here."
I liked that The Negotiator was acting as if he and I were making the deal together, even if it made us sound like a gay couple. I envisioned Paul drinking with his mechanic buddies at the Candle Light Tavern, draining a pitcher of Coors Light and saying, "Remember those two guys that came in today? I bet the skinny one takes it in the ass from the mouthy one."
Paul left the room, saying he would stick his neck out and see what he could do on the price. The Negotiator grinned. "I could do this all day," he said.
"It gives me an ulcer," I said.
"Really?" said The Negotiator, as surprised as if I had confessed to not wanting a messy three-way with the Bush twins with the bound and gagged President and First Lady forced to watch.
Paul came back and dickered with The Negotiator some more while ignoring me completely. I peeked under my jacket and saw that sweat had darkened the underarms of my shirt. Finally I got a price under the sticker price, with the necessary repairs thrown in for free.
Thanks, Negotiator. Let me know if you ever need help on some calculus problems.
*"The Negotiator" shamelessly ripped off from the beautiful and alluring Trillian.
MILF came over to my desk yesterday, all smiles. "Good morning, Kilgore," she said. "When you're finished posting Friday's payments, can you bring them over to me? Also, I have a picture to show you."
"Sure," I said, hoping the picture involved MILF doing a Tawny Kitaen impression on the hood of a Ferrari. "I'll be right over."
I call her MILF because I want to fuck her. If she called right now and said, "Kilgore, can you come over? I need you to fuck me," I would move so fast that if you were standing by my door, you would observe a bluish tint to my features, due to the Doppler effect. MILF is in her mid-thirties, tall and slender, with long blond hair. She has the kind of eyes and figure that make men say, "You have beautiful eyes," while staring at her chest. She wears a great deal of makeup, but that's okay because she knows how to smear it around until she appears to be wearing no makeup at all. I only know she wears a lot of makeup because once she overslept and came to work with her facial flesh fully exposed. Once I recognized who she was, I asked her if she was feeling ill.
Anyway, I grabbed Friday's payments and went to MILF's cubicle. "Thank you, Kilgore," she said. Then she whipped out a large glossy photo of... of...
[Kilgore grimaces at the memory.]
... of her 11-year-old daughter, wearing garish pink blouse and pants, shod in high heels, reclining awkwardly and looking at the camera in a manner that might be called "seductive" by the type of man who hangs around elementary schools and drives a soundproofed van with no windows in the back. Someone had applied a great deal of makeup to the little girl's face, apparently in hopes of helping her land a role in Taxi Driver 2.
"Oh..." I said, trying not to squirm. "That's nice."
MILF beamed. "Neuroses Outlet graduated from model and etiquette school this weekend," she said, "and every one of the girls got to do a photo shoot like this!" She smiled, clearly wanting me to confirm the wonderfulness of teaching prepubescent girls that a female's best virtues really are physical beauty and feminine wiles.
"Yeah," I said, and cleared my throat. I didn't know what to say. I tried to look anywhere but at the photograph. MILF -- who is a genuinely kind (if confused) woman -- sensed my discomfort and took the photo away while changing the subject.
I won't add much here. Just... if you have a daughter, please put her on the soccer team or teach her how to play guitar or enroll her in drawing lessons. Play chess with her or show her how to derive the quadratic formula or whatever. Anything constructive would be fine, really. She has the rest of her life to worry about how she looks.
Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley.
Directed by Gore Verbinski.
Kilgore rates it: 4 (out of 10)
At no point during your viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean will you believe that you are watching pirates. Pirates are scary -- they do, after all, rape, plunder, pillage, and murder for a living. But these pirates execute their filthy misdeeds in strangely sterile fashion, as if playing cops 'n' robbers while trying not to get grass stains on their new jeans, and end up delivering all the menace of the Hamburglar. You also will not believe the tacked-on romance between the characters played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, despite their dutiful reading of lines indicating that they share a forbidden love destined to triumph across class boundaries.
You should only watch Pirates of the Caribbean to see Johnny Depp's performance as the swishy pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp here reminded me of Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation -- a talented, charismatic actor running rings around a cheesy production.
The Right Stuff (1983)
Starring Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, and Fred Ward.
Directed by Philip Kaufman.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)
The Right Stuff is okay, I guess. I mean, there are lots of moving pictures of planes going really fast and rockets going up into space and stuff hitting the ground and exploding, and the film does a good job of examining the macho camaraderie found in the ultracompetitive world of military aviation, but gosh, at 193 minutes The Right Stuff is long. I bet they could cut an hour from this movie without losing anything vital. Cutting every scene including Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer as NASA recruiters would be a good start.
I don't know how to evaluate the acting in biographical movies. I would like to say, for example, that Ed Harris and Scott Glenn clashed brilliantly as gung-ho John Glenn and prickly Alan Shepard, while Sam Shepard's performance as Chuck Yeager was dull and listless. But I've never met John Glenn or Alan Shepard or Chuck Yeager, so for all I know, Sam Shepard nailed his part while Ed Harris and Scott Glenn were miles off.
For thousands of years, individual human beings have formed unions for romantic, sexual, familial, and economic purposes. The vast majority of these unions comprise one man and one or more women, and the people involved are known as oppolovers, (because they desire romantic, sexual, familial, and economic union with persons of the opposite sex.) Most societies have created a legal institution known as cobonding, in which oppolovers publicy register their romantic, sexual, familial, and economic union. Because societies seem to work better when people cobond, people in cobonded unions enjoy privileges denied to people in un-cobonded unions.
A small minority of people who form romantic, sexual, familial, and economic unions are of the same sex. Such people are known as equilovers, for obvious reasons. Equilover unions are mostly indistinguishable from oppolover unions, as equilovers and oppolovers behave similarly -- they smile at each other over candlelight, argue about who should take out the garbage, raise children, forget each other's birthdays, purchase real estate together, heat up chicken noodle soup when the flu strikes, pick out drapes together, complain about each other's friends, and have sex (although equilovers engage in somewhat different sex acts than oppolovers). Oppolover and equilover unions differ only in that the members of oppolover unions have differently shaped genitals, while the members of equilover unions have similarly shaped genitals.
Also, equilovers are not allowed to cobond. This is because oppolovers have always hated and persecuted equilovers. The oppolovers doing the hating and persecuting have never explained in any satisfactory way why they hate and persecute equilovers, although they often cite orders given by an invisible man who lives in the sky and made everything and loves everybody and holds all possible knowledge and power and cares intently about what people do with the bits of flesh between their legs. The hating and persecuting oppolovers admit they didn't receive the orders directly from the invisible man; the invisible man gave the orders to special people who lived many centuries beforehand, and the special people wrote the orders down in various books. Based on the orders given by the invisible man, the hating and persecuting oppolovers not only banned equilover cobonding, but forbade equilovers to form the romantic, sexual, familial, and economic unions they desired, with punishments ranging from fines and imprisonment to torture and death. They did this even though equilover unions harm nobody, and equilovers are generally peaceful people who mind their own business.
In recent decades in some countries, many oppolovers have come to believe that equilover unions are not a bad thing, and certain countries have eliminated all or some of their laws banning equilover activity. More and more equilovers have chosen to live openly as equilovers, which had not been possible before. Many equilovers have begun to argue that they should be allowed to cobond, pointing out that cobonded oppolovers enjoy many basic rights denied to those in equilover unions, including parental rights, access to health insurance, and inheritance rights.
Recently, judicial authorities with jurisdiction over a small area in one large country ruled that equilovers must be allowed to cobond. This has angered some oppolovers who still believe in the orders given by the invisible man. The invisible man's orders, they say, state clearly that to live as an equilover is wrong, and that after equilovers die the invisible man takes them to a place where they suffer the most awful torture imaginable for all eternity. (The equilovers counter that, assuming the invisible man exists, and also assuming that he loves everybody as much as the oppolovers who believe in him are always saying he does, and also assuming that he is all-powerful and all-knowing, he would not punish people so harshly for making an honest mistake, at least not without explaining the rules a little more clearly in person or without making a general announcement to everybody, instead of whispering in the ears of a few special people who lived thousands of years ago and may not have been listening very carefully.)
Anyway, some oppolovers who believe in the invisible man are now trying to prevent equilovers from cobonding by correcting the supreme legal document of the small area of the large country, and other oppolovers who believe in the invisible man are trying to correct the supreme legal document of the large country itself. They call these changes the Defense of Cobonding Correction. This baffles the equilovers, who point out that they are not attacking cobonding, and that cobonded oppolovers will keep all of their rights no matter how many equilovers get cobonded.
The oppolovers who believe in the invisible man state that they wish to Protect Families. This phrase confuses the equilovers, who protest that they love their families (that is, their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters) and have no intention of destroying them.
The oppolovers who believe in the invisible man clarify the point: when they say Protect Families, they really mean Protect Children. Cobonding, they argue, exists to foster stability in raising children, and because equilovers cannot create a pregnancy together, they do not deserve the privilege of cobonding. This idea confounds the many equilovers caring for kids from a previous cobonding; or rearing children obtained through adoption, artificial insemination, or surrogate motherhood. If cobonding benefits children, they wonder, wouldn't society gain by allowing equilover parents to cobond? Equilovers not raising children point out that many oppolovers enjoy the benefits of cobonding despite not bearing offspring, and anyway the institution of cobonding exists for many reasons beyond the rearing of children, or else oppolovers would wait until the birth of their children to get cobonded, and would dissolve their cobonds once their children reached adulthood.
The oppolovers who believe in the invisible man usually short-circuit debate at this point by reading, in loud voices filled with righteous certainty, some of the orders given by the invisible man to the special people thousands of years ago (skipping over the many orders that contradict each other; as well as the orders that are plainly misogynistic, genocidal, psychopathic, or silly).
Riding the bus has been much more pleasant since I met the Eco Pass Lady.
The Eco Pass Lady appears on ads posted inside Denver's buses and trains. She's an attractive Asian woman in her mid-thirties, and she has something to say: I save money all year long riding with my Eco Pass. Plus, my employer saves money on taxes. Bring your company on board today! She states her case with passion and clarity -- after that pitch, who could fail to understand that to ride the bus or train without an Eco Pass is to commit the gravest of errors?
I like the Eco Pass Lady's simple and efficient style. She wears little makeup, and her hair is cut in a no-nonsense, shoulder-length style that I bet looks great with a suit and heels. In the picture, however, she's wearing a sleeveless blouse that reveals her bare shoulders. (She probably goes to the gym after work.) The look on her face says, "Can we move this along? I'm in a hurry." I expect the Eco Pass Lady doesn't take any shit from anyone. If the Eco Pass Lady was riding on the bus in front of a bunch of subliterate troglodytes cussing every other word and hollering about their sex lives, she wouldn't hesitate to turn around and say, "I'm working on something very important here. Would you mind keeping your voices down and watching your language?" They would listen, too.
According to her ID card, the Eco Pass Lady's real name is Jill Smith, and she works as an accountant for A to Z Company. I'm pretty sure that's not her real name. I think they just made it up for the Eco Pass ad. The Eco Pass Lady seems like she would take pride in her Asian heritage -- her real name is probably something like Maxine Wong. That's a really sexy name, I think. I'm not trying to be creepy or anything, like I have a fetish for women with Asian names. I just think the Eco Pass Lady looks more like a Maxine Wong than a Jill Smith, and if her name was Maxine Wong, (or Kathy Nguyen), that would be totally hot, although if it was Jill Smith that would be okay with me too, because Asian women don't have to be named Chang or Kim or Thanh. They can have names like Jones or Brown or Roberts; it's just that those names don't turn me on as much. I mean, you know.
I'm just saying.
Sometimes I think about if the Eco Pass Lady sat next to me on the train. I'm sure she wouldn't pay me any attention -- she'd just concentrate on her Wall Street Journal. I wouldn't make a big deal about her being the Eco Pass Lady, because she probably gets that all the time. I'd wait a few minutes, and then lean over and say, "Don't believe a word they're saying here. There's no way June sauerkraut futures are going above 12. In fact, if you're holding June sauerkraut at 10, I'd dump it immediately." She would demand to know why I thought so, and I would confide that sauerkraut futures are kind of a hobby of mine.
Eventually she would ask if I had an Eco Pass, and I would have to finesse it. "My company won't get on board," I would say. "I've told them, like, ten times about saving money on taxes and all, but they're a bunch of assholes." Then, maybe, she would say she had some additional information at her home, and I could have it if I thought it would help bring my company on board and if I didn't mind stopping in for a few minutes. "Sure, that would be cool," I would say, although I would try not to sound too eager.
LEE GREENWOOD BLOWS THROUGH THE LAST OF THE 9/11 MONEY
GATLINBURG, TN -- Country music artist Lee Greenwood has blown through the last few dollars of the fortune he amassed when his signature anthem, "God Bless the USA," achieved omnipresence after the tragedies of September 11, 2001, sources reported Wednesday.
"Things got pretty wild after 9/11, when every radio station in the country was playing 'God Bless the USA,'" said a close associate of Greenwood's, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Lee was cashing these huge royalty checks and flying all over the country, collecting fat fees for singing at baseball and football games and appearing on TV specials and whatnot. He built himself a new 100,000 square foot mansion up in the hills, and dropped a lot of money on cars and jewelry. Every time I saw him, he was wearing a new Rolex studded with more diamonds than the one before."
"And then there were the parties," he added. "Oh, God, the parties."
Little is known for certain about the extent of Greenwood's debauchery, but stories became common in the country music world about wild parties at his compound, featuring performing lions, tigers, and elephants; unlimited access to high-quality cocaine and heroin; and hookers flown in from Southeast Asia. Rumors abound of an underground videotape depicting Greenwood, 60, in an orgy with Alan Jackson, the Dixie Chicks, and two dozen Indonesian whores of both sexes.
But the good times have ended. As Greenwood's appearances have dwindled, along with radio airplay of "God Bless the USA," his mortgage has been foreclosed and most of his cars repossessed, including a 30-foot custom-built AMC Gremlin limousine. The final stage of Greenwood's descent into poverty seems to have happened Tuesday evening, when witnesses reporting seeing the singer drive one of his solid-gold Bentleys into town and attempt to obtain services from "Starfire," a local street prostitute.
"Miss Starfire got into Mr. Greenwood's big, fancy car, but she wasn't in there long," said Owen Wheatley, 84, who watched the incident from his front porch. "After just a minute or so, she got out screaming, 'You ain't got no five dollars! Don't you touch me unless you got five dollars for me!'"
Witnesses stated that Greenwood drove another two or three blocks before his car stalled, apparently out of gas. A haggard and dissipated Greenwood got out with a bottle of cheap wine, which he smashed over the hood of the car before sinking to the ground, weeping uncontrollably.
Despite Greenwood's recent downfall, local residents remain optimistic about the singer's future fortunes.
"All he needs is for President Bush to start another unnecessary war, or for the A-rabs to bomb another building," said Wheatley. "Then they'll start playing his song again, and Lee will be right back in the saddle. You'll see."
My pathological fear of eating the same variety of Hot Pockets two days in a row.
I eat a Hot Pocket almost every day for lunch because they are cheap and convenient and delicious. Safeway puts them on sale a lot, and I usually buy five boxes to stock up until they go on sale again. I buy these five varieties: Meatballs & Mozzarella, Beef Taco, Chicken Melt, Four Meat & Four Cheese Pizza, and Italian Style Meat Trio.
When I get home, I stack the boxes in the freezer, and the next morning I take a Hot Pocket to work from the top box. The next day I take a Hot Pocket from the second box from the top, and so on. Only after I have eaten one Hot Pocket from each box can I cycle back to the top box. Occasionally I have taken a Hot Pocket out of its proper place in the rotation, and on those days I squirmed and suffered and felt shameful and dirty inside, like when I was four years old and Uncle Earl came to visit.
Prescripted greetings. When I pull up to the drive-thru at Taco Bell, a cheerful recorded Anglo voice says, "Welcome to Taco Bell! Would you like to try a Grilled Stuft Burrito with Marinated Chicken or Carne Asada Steak for only $2.19?"
What is the appropriate response if I want two ground beef chalupas with seasoned ground beef and supreme toppings instead? Do I just go ahead with my order, or does courtesy demand that I first decline the offer of the Grilled Stuft Burrito with Marinated Chicken or Carne Asada Steak for only $2.19?
I have a friend who has to answer the phone, "It's a great day at Tires Plus!"
I called my online savings bank the other day to ask a question about direct deposit. A young woman answered, "Thank you for calling Online Savings Bank! How can I help you save money today?"
I should have said, "Giving me your account number and PIN would be a nice start."
The failure of my life to be written by Hollywood screenwriters. For example: I was out running on Saturday afternoon, and some guys drove past in a black truck and yelled "Hey, faggot!" out the window. If my life had been written by a Hollywood screenwriter, I would have chased those guys to the next stoplight, dragged them out of the truck, beaten both of them into bloody submission with wire-guided stunts and CGI effects, and trotted away unscathed while dropping a devastating wisecrack like... um... er... well, I guess this blog isn't written by Hollywood screenwriters either.
How should I respond to being called a "faggot," anyway? "Faggot" is a derogatory term for a gay male, and I'm a straight male, so calling me a "faggot" is more bewildering than insulting, like calling me a "nigger" or a "lousy kike."
I realize that "faggot" in this context means "wimpy or effeminate man," so... ATTENTION GUYS WHO DROVE BY IN A BLACK TRUCK LAST SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND YELLED "HEY, FAGGOT!": When you shouted at me, I was finishing up mile 20 of a 29-mile run, and that is not a misprint. You couldn't hang with me for ten minutes, punk. I've got tough you've only read about in comic books. Shame on you.
This low-carb nonsense. Atkins-friendly wraps at Subway. Burger King boasts about its low-carb menu. A Carl's Jr. ad sells what appears to be a cheeseburger wrapped in a lettuce leaf. KFC argues that fried chicken is health food. Boulder Sausage labels its bratwurst with a circle-slash symbol over the word "CARBS." Michelob claims their lousy Ultra beer should be my reward for working out. I'll take a hot-fudge sundae, thanks.
Want to lose weight? Try expending more calories than you consume. Too complicated? Try eating a little bit less and exercising a little bit more. This works -- I've lost 20 pounds since last June, and I now weigh the same as I did when I graduated from high school.
I'm bewildered that more people don't watch hockey. The sport features a combination of speed, finesse, power, grace, and guts; ever seen a forward redirect a slapper into the net while getting cross-checked in the back, or a goaltender making a sprawling glove save, or a player returning to the ice with stitches after taking a stick to the face? Now consider that these men ply their trade while balancing on thin metal blades on ice, which is frozen water. Hockey players make the astonishing appear routine -- yet no one watches.
Perhaps no one watches because the National Hockey League allows its skilled players, like Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, Paul Kariya, Teemu Selanne, Alex Tanguay, and Milan Hejduk -- gosh, it's fun being an Avalanche fan these days -- to be clutched, held, and otherwise mugged by guys who should be checking IDs at a biker bar in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The NHL also insists that Sakic & Co. play on a rink roughly the size of an elementary school gymnasium, ensuring that these amazing athletes spend much of the game eating plexiglas instead of schooling defensemen. Yes, tough defense and checking are essential to hockey, but wouldn't you rather see the game's most entertaining players given some room to work their magic instead of watching another 60 minutes of trapping, dump-and-chase hockey? Those of you who have seen the sublime hockey played at the Olympics on the larger international surface know what I'm talking about.
I'm not at all bewildered that pro basketball has declined in popularity. The game's most visible stars are a thug (Allen Iverson), an idiot (Shaquille O'Neal), a cipher (Tim Duncan), and a kindergartner (LeBron James). But beyond its players, basketball has a bigger problem: free throws. A player drives the lane, beats his defender, and goes up for the shot. Exciting, right? Oh, wait -- the defender hacked the shooter's arm, knocking him to the ground. The whistle blows, the game stops, and the fans are treated to the sight of a man taking uncontested shots while nine other men stand around and scout the crowd for future baby-mommas. This happens two dozen times a game. Hey, I think the Discovery Channel is showing a documentary on dung beetles...
The NBA can solve this problem in either of two ways:
Give the players pads and helmets. Legalize all but the most violent fouls. Encourage checking. That is, make basketball into hockey with a hoop and a bouncing ball. Heck, give 'em spiked gloves and roller skates and find out if James Caan is busy.
Reduce the number of fouls required for disqualification from six to four, or even three. Fear of fouling out will force defenders to foul less, giving offensive players more room to create. Team scoring averages will rise to 120 points per game, and basketball will become the fast-paced, up-and-down sport Dr. Naismith designed it to be.
My boss received a brochure yesterday for a business seminar called "The Essentials of Communicating with Tact and Finesse."
If your boss asked you to attend this seminar, wouldn't your boss essentially be saying, "I think you're an asshole"? In fact, wouldn't your boss be saying, "I think you're an asshole, and not just a regular asshole. I think you're some kind of super-asshole, created in an asshole genetics experiment gone wrong, or maybe blasted with asshole gamma rays out in the New Mexico desert. In any case, have fun learning how not to be an asshole, asshole."
What would it be like to spend two days in a Hyatt ballroom with dozens of antisocial, ill-tempered assholes? Remember that these particular assholes have so little tact and finesse that their companies are willing to lose their services for two days and to pay $395 for some seminar company to perform an asshole exorcism. Think about the lively conversations you would hear:
You cunt! That seat is saved!
Owwww! You stepped on my foot, you shithead!
Take the urinal next to me and I'll kill you!
Click that pen one more time, you cocksucker! I'm fucking begging you!
I bet the seminar organizers overbook the venue by at least twenty percent, figuring to lose at least that many to broken noses, disorderly conduct arrests, and guys getting taken to the hospital to have their Palm Pilots removed from their rectums.
Attention ghetto guys 'n' gals! Transportation challenges are forcing Kilgore Trout to ride the bus to work for a couple of weeks. Why not make his experience with public transportation a trying and miserable experience, like the Twelve Labors of Hercules?
Kilgore takes the eastbound 44 bus at the corner of 18th and Stout at 8:36 am. Make sure he boards the bus first, and then you and your friends should sit down directly behind him and commence the loudest, most pointless conversation you can muster. Volume will determine your success -- you must shout at each other constantly, as if you were standing at opposite ends of a football field, pulverizing concrete with jackhammers. Do not be fooled when Kilgore pretends to read a book or magazine. He can hear you just fine.
You should use the profanest language possible. Modify every noun with fuckin' and append the meaningless phrase an' shit to every sentence. For example, instead of saying:
My parole officer told me I flunked my urinalysis.
use:
My fuckin' parole officer told me I flunked my fuckin' urinalysis an' shit.
Confine your discussion to topics that will allow you to divulge the most intimate details of your personal life, including:
your sex life
your criminal record
your drug habit(s)
your desire to divorce your husband, except you can't afford a divorce lawyer, and you are hoping that he will initiate divorce proceedings first, because he can do it for free while he's in prison for beating you
your erotic fantasies
your alcoholic mother
your pregnant girlfriend who could go into labor anytime, and how excited you are to have reproduced yourself, and your fierce desire to make sure that you bring up the baby right, making sure that he studies hard and goes to college and really makes something of himself, although it's obvious to everyone within earshot (that is, the Western United States) that the only real question is whether your son will grow up to be a car thief, a heroin addict, or just a permanently stoned washout like his father
Form your conversation as a continuous stream of random observations, bogus insights, ignorant opinions, and offensive japery. At no point should you pause to think, admit uncertainty, or even breathe -- if necessary, cut a blowhole in the top of your head. Make certain to laugh constantly, even though nothing you say will contain the slightest spark of wit or hint of good humor.
Watch Kilgore carefully for signs of irritation, such as: glancing at his watch, sighing while staring out the window, clenching his jaw and/or anus, sudden weeping, flaring his nostrils, and rocking back and forth while rolling his eyes and muttering lyrics to Linkin Park songs. How many did you get? All of them? Hey, you guys are doing great!
Thanks to those who commented on the new design. Per Eric P's suggestion, I lightened the gray to make the text more readable. I like the colors for now, even if they make my blog look like Anarchic Not Random (nice one, bruce). I picked red and black because they were my team colors at Mason City High School in Mason City, Iowa, back when I really was a tormented 15-year-old writing awful poetry:
I kneel at the edge of a pond
staring deep into its silvery depths.
My reflection leers up at me as if
in mockery
challenging me--
Who are you?
What are you?
I can't answer those questions.
I don't suppose anyone can.
Years I have spent
casting and cultivating a false image
until I have fooled even myself.
I am trying to destroy this wall I have created
but sometimes I do catch a glimpse
of the actual me--
and he scares me.
So I thrust him back behind the wall
like a child pushing away a terrible nightmare.
A burning tear trails down his cheek
and drops into the pond.
I don't write poetry any more. Praise Jesus.
The drawing at upper left is not of Jerry Seinfeld's Uncle Leo, as norbizness imagines, but "Fettered Man," a 1927 ink drawing by German artist Käthe Kollwitz. Those of you who have been peeking in my bathroom window while I shower know that I have this image tattooed on my left shoulder.
Walter Christensen was the only one to correctly identify "Fettered Man," and scores his third shout-out of the last two weeks. Walter confessed that he right-clicked on the image, selected "Properties," saw that I had named the image "kollwitz-fettered.jpg," and let Google do the rest. Cheating? That's what you say. I call it adapting and overcoming.
Little Kilgore decided it was time to move out of the Blogspot house and get his own pad. Let me know what you think of the design or if you're having trouble viewing the site on your browser.
I've posted a couple of longer pieces under "Essays & Stories" on the left, which you can view as HTML or as Word documents. I'll be posting more of these as I get them polished to a high gloss. I welcome your comments, suggestions, pungent criticisms, or effusive praise.
Huge shout-outs will go to anyone who can name the artwork at the upper left and the artist who created it.
Huge shout-outs go anyway to Walter Christensen -- whom you may remember as the co-champion of Chaotic Not Random Reader Challenge No. 2 -- for sending me a link to the Fixing Your Feet Ezine, published "the middle of each month to inform and educate athletes and non-athletes about proper foot care skills and techniques, provide tips on foot care, review foot care products, and highlight problems people have with their feet." Thanks, Walter! I spent a lovely afternoon ignoring my job and reading about curly toes, hammer toes, Morton's toes, and the finer points of callus filing. Click here to see photos of truly disgusting foot problems, including someone removing his big toenail with pliers. The Fixing Your Feet Ezine operates as a Yahoo! Group and claims 1,040 members (well... 1,041 now). I was unable to discover if they sponsor singles activities.
I'll be blogging on a slightly lighter schedule from now on -- probably four days a week instead of five. I love blogging, but unfortunately I'm a very slow writer, and posting five times a week takes too much time away from my other writing projects.
If you are a reasonably attractive female middle school or high school teacher, do you feel weird knowing that young boys think about you while they masturbate?
The Super Bowl played in 2016 will be Super Bowl L. I can't wait!
The second toe on my right foot is all fucked to shit from running. Layers of calluses and dead skin and healing blisters cover the end and the side that rubs against my big toe. The nail is lumpy and discolored -- I've lost it twice and it's starting to tear loose again.
I'm wondering if I can use my deformity to make a little cash. Some people have foot fetishes, and pay a lot of money to look at pictures of perfectly shaped feet. Do any foot fetishists like to look at feet with fucked up nails? Why not? Some people like to look at pictures of amputees, for chrissake.
I watched the Colorado Mammoth suffer their second loss of the season on Friday, falling to the Calgary Roughnecks, who broke a 13-13 tie with 19 seconds left. I blame this loss on the terrible decision to change the music played after the Mammoth score from the very decent "Boom" by POD back to the tepid "Bang on the Drum" by Todd Rundgren, the song used last year. I'm putting "Bang on the Drum" on the list of inexplicable stadium anthems, along with "YMCA".
Attendance was 18,305. This is lacrosse we're talking about here.
Go here to look at the healthy young women of The Wild Bunch, the Mammoth's dance team.
I had a great time last night with the Popular Kids. Before going downtown, we spent a few hours getting hammered at Cute Girl On Whom I Have Sustained a Desperate, Pathetic Crush For Nearly Two Year's condo. I learned that Cute Girl reads lots and lots of novels by noted late-20th century American literary figures V.C. Andrews and Sidney Sheldon. This discovery decreased the force of my crush on Cute Girl by an estimated 15%.
WHAT I PREDICTED LAST TUESDAY: "How badly you [that is, the Panthers] lose the game [that is, the Super Bowl] will depend on how much teal you wear. ... If you wear white or black jerseys with teal as an accent color only, you will likely contend for most of the game, only to lose on an Adam Vinatieri field goal..."
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: The Panthers wore white jerseys and pants with teal accents. They contended for most of the game, tying the score at 29 with 1:08 left in the fourth quarter. They lost on an Adam Vinatieri field goal.
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