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]
About a year ago, I was running on a Friday night when I heard a voice from across the street shouting, "Hey! Hey, runner!"
I ignored the voice. When you're a runner, you get accustomed to ignoring people who shout things at you, because those things are usually not complimentary and are sometimes accompanied by thrown beer cans, tossed by men driving trucks displaying the Confederate flag. So I kept running.
Suddenly a girl materialized, running beside me. A pretty college-age girl with long, dark hair and a smile beautiful enough to momentarily distract me from the taut curves of her body. "Hi!" she said brightly.
"Um," I said. (Full disclosure: I'm blogging this conversation from memory, so some inaccuracies are inevitable -- for example, I may actually have said "er" here.)
"Do you always go running on Friday night?" the pretty girl asked.
"Sometimes," I said.
"You must be in really great shape!" she said. "I don't know how you do it! I'm out of breath already!"
"Heh heh!" I said. "Um."
"Well, I better go back," she said. "I just thought I'd see if I could make a new friend."
"Okay," I said. "What's your name?"
"Amy," she said.
"Hello, Amy," I said. "I'm Kilgore."
We shook hands and then she jogged back to her house. I ran the last few blocks home and ate a Tombstone frozen pizza. I never spoke to Amy again.
I bought a new jacket in Morocco. It's a hippie-type thing with a hood, hand-woven in Technicolor Dreamcoat hues -- orange and black and yellow. I wore the jacket a couple of weeks ago to The Tattered Cover, where I was browsing hard when I spotted movement in my peripheral vision. I glanced up and saw an alternative-looking girl walking toward me. Cute, with dark blonde hair flowing carelessly from beneath a stocking cap.
She nodded. "Cool jacket, dude," she said.
"Thanks, man," I said. And... and nothing. The cute alternative-looking girl kept walking and disappeared into another section.
Yesterday, I was walking back from Wash Park and stopped at the intersection of Downing and Alameda. As I waited for the traffic to clear so I could cross, a thirty-something-or-other woman ran up and stopped at the corner. Cute, very cute. Olive skin and freckled cheeks, dark hair and a runner's lean physique.
She turned to me and smiled. "Do they turn off the water fountains in Wash Park in the winter?" she asked.
"Um, yeah," I said.
"Oh, I see," she said, and smiled again. "I just moved here, so I didn't know."
"Where did you move from?" I asked.
"Arizona," she said.
"Well, if they don't shut the water off, the pipes will freeze and burst," I said. "I guess they wouldn't need to do that in Arizona."
"No," she said, and laughed.
Silence.
(One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.)
The traffic cleared and the cute, very cute woman ran across. "Thanks," she called back.
"You bet," I said, and watched her cute, very cute butt recede into the distance.
Sorry if I sound a little hoarse today -- my throat is still a little sore from the COMPREHENSIVE ASS-KICKING I laid down in karaoke last night at a Halloween party at the home of Mother of Sister-In-Law of Girlfriend of G-Dog, Friend of Kilgore.
I was unstoppable. Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." Aerosmith's "Angel." Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me." Van Halen's "Jump." The Beastie Boys' "Fight for your Right." The Backstreet Boys' "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely." All accompanied by air guitar/air keyboard and power-emoting dance moves, as necessary. Plus I held the mic all cool, like a rapper.
Alcohol? I may have had a few beers, now that you mention it.
My costume was a white T-shirt with black iron-on letters spelling "GENERIC MAN" along with a bar code pasted to my forehead (see a photo here). Mother of Girlfriend of G-Dog didn't get it. "What's the pun?" she asked, wrinkling her forehead.
"Um, I don't get it either," you are saying. "It's a pretty stupid costume, if you ask me."
I didn't ask you, and lots of my fellow partygoers thought it was a hoot and a holler, especially a certain female fellow partygoer who... well, let's just say that I forestalled the reappearance of the Involuntary Celibacy Watch until at least next February 8 at 2:27 a.m.
CHAOTIC NOT RANDOM UPDATE! For the hundreds of you who emailed me, demanding a photo of the Cherry Creek guy holding the "KERRY THROWS LIKE A GIRL" sign, you're in luck. He was out again Saturday, making one last push before Election Day for non-effeminate-throwing leadership, and I got a great photo.
THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 15 (World Series edition)
I guess this will seem picky and grouchy now, seeing as how last night the Red Sox exorcised eighty-six years of demons, reversed the curse, put right the ravages wrought by Bill Buckner and Bucky Dent and Enos Slaughter, anally raped Babe Ruth, etc., but look at this photo of Red Sox third baseman Bill Mueller committing one of his three errors in Game 2 of the World Series. Do you notice anything unusual? Note to Bill: Yeah, you guys won that game and swept the series, and nobody's trying to take away your gum, but dammit! can you not blow bubbles while the ball is in play, please?
During the eighth inning of Game 3, with Boston leading 4-0 and Red Sox second baseman Mark Bellhorn at the plate, Fox cut away to the outfield stands, where roving "reporter" Chris Myers "interviewed" "Leon," a character in a series of mildly funny Budweiser commercials.
In case you weren't paying attention to the previous paragraph, allow me to clarify that Fox did not place this "interview" between innings, or during a pitching change, or during a conference on the mound, or any other such break in the action. They placed the "interview" -- really a painfully unfunny beer commercial cum comedy sketch -- during an at-bat in the late innings of a World Series game where the outcome was still very much in doubt, given the regular-season potency of the St. Louis bats.
Salon's King Kaufman said it better than I can: "I guess [the "Leon" "interview" is] easier and cheaper than knocking on the door of every single baseball fan in the world and slapping them in the face, but it amounts to the same thing."
Fox doesn't understand baseball, its fans, or the subtle rhythms of the game. How else to explain the endless animated gimmickry -- the bright flashes and sound effects when a run scores, the pitch speed indicator bursting into flames, the little AOL stick figure throwing a ball or swinging a bat to introduce an instant replay... hey, Fox, I turned on the World Series to watch baseball, not cartoons, okay? How else to explain the constant cutting away from the field to show random fans eating hot dogs or staring vacantly into space? How else to explain the extreme closeups on Julian Tavarez's acne scars? How else to explain the unholy apparition that is Jeanne Zelasko?
Fox apparently wants to build the largest audience it can by catering to casual sports fans and ignoring hardcore baseball nuts, who wouldn't miss the Series if it was produced by MTV and broadcast in Arabic on Al Jazeera. Well, here's an idea, Fox: instead of showing fans picking their noses in the stands between pitches, why not show some porn? Let's say Pedro throws a changeup to Albert Pujols for a called strike one. Then, while Pedro fiddles with the rosin bag and Pujols takes practice swings outside the batter's box, you could show Janine Lindemulder's head between Jenna Jameson's thighs, or maybe some scenes from Behind the Green Door. I bet those casual sports fans would eat that right up!
When is Fox's postseason contract up? Mark the date on the calendar, because there will be a party at Kilgore Trout's house when October baseball moves to a network that might respect the grand old game.
I didn't watch the postgame ceremony. Why would I? One minute I'm watching the finest athletes in the world struggle to capture the ultimate prize in their sport, and the next minute I'm watching pasty rich guys in suits hogging the trophy and pretending to appreciate the fans while silently plotting to jack their ticket prices the next season.
Then there's the enlightening interviews:
Q: You just won the World Series! How are you feeling right now?
A: Oh, it feels great! I just have to thank God, and praise him... um... it's great, it's awesome, you know? I mean, it's great!
Well, sure. When a guy has just won a world championship, and he's jumping around and whooping and hollering and hugging his teammates and spraying champagne all over the place, it's not hard to figure that he's happy, you know? I don't need Jeanne Zelasko shoving a microphone in the guy's face to confirm the fact.
The only postgame ceremony that's worth a damn in American major league sports is the NHL's presentation of the Stanley Cup to -- get this -- the players, who fought and sweated and shed blood to gain the right to hoist the holiest grail in sports. Baseball and football and basketball players play to win a world championship, symbolized by a large, gaudy trophy. Hockey players, by contrast, play for the Stanley Cup itself, and to watch each player taking his turn skating alone with the Cup is genuine and moving in a way the other leagues have failed to match.
So I was sitting in my cubicle last week, simultaneously reading Tuesday Morning Quarterback and Mirthful Ones, when my boss poked her head in. I caught her in my peripheral vision and alt-tabbed to the accounting software.
I'm pretty good at the alt-tab maneuver. Speed is important, as is the ability to hit the alt-tab keys without looking, but advanced practitioners realize that the trick is to always know what programs are open on your computer and where you are among them, like how Magic Johnson always knew where his teammates were so he could hit the open man with the no-look pass. It doesn't do any good, after all, if your boss walks in and you alt-tab away from The Onion to ESPN.com, does it? Even worse is when you fail to notice a pop-up and end up alt-tabbing to an ad for herbal Viagra. Always know your position relative to safe programs and how many alt-tabs you need to get there. As we will see, however, even the most blister-quick and self-aware alt-tabber can get caught.
Anyway, my boss poked her head in and said, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
This worried me. I've seen people get fired at my company, and that's how it begins -- they get asked if they have a minute, they follow the boss back to a conference room where the cute HR girl is waiting, the door closes, and five minutes later they're cleaning out their desk with their final paycheck sticking out of their back pocket. My heart twisted in my chest. I didn't want to get fired in front of the cute HR girl.
I followed my boss back to the conference room and was relieved to find the cute HR girl absent. My boss closed the door and sat down, looking at a sheaf of printouts.
"The IS department started tracking Internet use about a month ago," she said. "In terms of time spent, you are one of the top five in the company."
That's ridiculous, I wanted to say. There's no way that anybody -- let alone as many as four anybodies -- spends more time on the Internet than I do. I didn't say that, though. Instead, I rearranged my face into an approximation of sheepishness and took my reprimand like a little boy caught filching Nilla Wafers. What could I say? Sometimes you just get busted.
I spend at least two hours a day surfing the Web, oftentimes three hours or more. That's not three hours solid, of course -- I break that browsing time into dozens of chunks ranging from a few seconds to several minutes, marbled among bursts of actual work like the fat in a cut of prime rib. In the two years I've worked at my job, I've worked about 45 hours a week to do a job that would only require 30 or 35 hours if I didn't waste vast stretches of time reading blogs and napping on the toilet. I estimate that over the last two years, I have stolen over $12,000 in unnecessary overtime pay.
"You're not fired," my boss said, "because you do good work. But you can't work overtime anymore without special permission. And I expect that this will be a one-time conversation."
I nodded assent, mumbled an apology, and rearranged my face again, this time into an approximation of chastened repentance. I went back to my desk and closed down Tuesday Morning Quarterback and Mirthful Ones, and since then I have barely surfed the Web at all except for work-related purposes and during my lunch break. My productivity has soared. I'm going to start casting around for another job next week.
It's not that I oppose my company's decision to prevent me from defrauding them of thousands of dollars each year. But I have a pretty boring job, especially when I have nothing to distract me beyond sexual fantasies starring a certain cute HR girl. One of the reasons I've stuck around is that I've gotten paid well to browse the Internet a lot. Now that I'm getting paid a lot less and can't surf the Web at all, I might as well see what's out there.
TULSA, Okla. -- Nestled on the banks of the Arkansas River, Tulsa is a quiet city of churches, tree-lined avenues, and Jeanne Tripplehorn. It is a peaceful repository of traditional values, where citizens prize self-reliance, where patriots believe in the Second Amendment, and where the blacks mostly know their place. Tulsa is a city where, if anywhere, a president should feel safe and loved.
But like many communities across the country, Tulsa faces a growing problem that it can no longer ignore. Many of its people are presidential abusers.
Take, for example, these abusive statements published by a Tulsan named "bruce" on his Internet "web log":
Plan to fight and win War on Terror®: [president's name withheld] version
Step 1) Make up shit about Saddam
Step 2) Invade Iraq, leaving country in shambles
Step 3) Fail to secure weapons and bomb making material
Step 4) Pretend like everything went great, Osama who?
® "War on Terror" is a registered trademark of [president's name withheld] Inc.
Karl Rove, national chairman of People Fighting Presidential Abuse, has harsh words for "bruce" and presidential abusers like him. "These abusers either don't understand or, even worse, don't care about the damage that their words can inflict on a young, confused president's self-esteem and mental well-being," said Rove. "The shame never goes away. Presidential abusers destroy the lives of innocent presidents, and abused presidents are ten times more likely to become presidential abusers themselves. Presidential abuse should be a crime."
"Why, for the last several years, I've been working with a president -- I'll call him W -- who has been abused every sick way you can imagine. Every day, W has to look at derogatory bumper stickers, hear talk show hosts making fun of his speaking style, see grotesque cariacatures of himself in political cartoons, and read unflattering editorials criticizing his policies. And every day, W cries and blames himself for the abuse. 'I done something wrong,' he'll say. 'I been a bad president and I deserve to die.' And I try to convince him that he's not a bad president, that the abusers are bad people, and they are the ones who deserve to die."
According to Rove, presidential abuse has always been a problem in New York, Illinois, and California, but has recently spread to areas that have traditionally supported and nurtured presidents. "Look at this map," said Rove, pointing to a map of the United States with "problem areas" colored in blue. "Ohio. Michigan. New Hampshire. Pennsylvania. Even Minnesota."
What about Oklahoma?
"Oklahoma is not our biggest problem right now," said Rove. "But still, 22 percent of Oklahomans surveyed said they intend to commit presidential abuse by voting the wrong way on November 2. I didn't have the heart to tell W about that. He would have shut himself in his room and refused to eat for a week. I can't tell you how much pain it causes a president to find out that people want someone else to be president. It would be like if your father told you he wanted someone other boy to be his son."
"What if your son struck out during a Little League game?" asked Rove, extending the analogy. "Would you go on television and denounce his batting skills? Would you say mean things about him in the newspaper? Would you go to a protest where people were carrying signs saying awful things about your son? Of course not. He's just a boy doing the best he knows how. So why do people want to make a president feel bad by blaming him for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, for losing jobs and driving the deficit through the roof, and for using religion and homophobia to divide the nation?"
"He's just a president doing the best he knows how."
What I hate is dog owners, of which we have plenty in Colorado. Dog owners around here do not understand what a dog is -- or, more accurately -- what a dog is not. They cannot grasp that dogs are not human. Dogs cannot reason. They cannot fathom courtesy or etiquette. They act out of instinct and conditioning instead of logic. They are not moral animals. There is no such thing as a "good dog" or a "bad dog," in a sense; we use these terms to describe dogs that behave the way humans want them to and dogs that behave otherwise. What we call a "bad dog" is a dog that is only behaving naturally, by pooping and peeing in inappropriate places, maybe, or by barking in the middle of the night, or by humping a stranger's leg.
Owning a dog is a great responsibility, because it involves spending time and money to train a not-terribly-bright animal to behave unnaturally -- that is, to poop and pee only in designated areas, or to keep quiet at night, or to put on a condom before humping the stranger's leg. Many dog owners do not understand this. They see their dogs as "animal companions" who think and act like humans and are naturally well-behaved.
They're not. Dogs, for instance, are predatory animals whose instincts tell them to chase moving objects. I know this because I'm a runner, and oftentimes I'll run past yards with unleashed dogs playing in them. So the dog runs after me, barking and growling, or sometimes he dashes in front of me, blocking my path and jumping up and down, yelping and drooling with excitement. This is the cue for the owner to put down her Nora Roberts novel and shout, "Oh, Digger, stop it! You get away from that man right now!" Digger, of course, keeps jumping up and down, because he's a dog and he doesn't speak English. His tiny dog brain can't process grammar or syntax or the prepositional phrase "from that man." He can understand his own name, the word "cheese," and one-word commands, like "sit" and "stay" and "come," assuming that he is properly trained, which obviously he isn't because properly trained dogs do not chase strangers.
Here's a helpful hint: if you're too lazy to train a dog, you shouldn't own a dog. Get a pet that doesn't need to be trained, like a canary or a hamster. If you own a dog anyway, and your dog can't be trusted not to chase after or otherwise molest strangers, then you are responsible for restraining your dog with a fence or a chain or a leash (a short leash, that is, not one of those 30-foot retractable jobs).
"Wow," you are saying. "What the hell happened to you, Kilgore, to get you all riled up about dogs?"
Well, I was walking in Washington Park one night last week when I passed a woman walking her dog in the opposite direction. As we passed each other, the dog, which was on a leash, leaped at me. Its jaws closed around my wrist and its teeth raked across my skin.
I won't exaggerate the extent of the injury because there was no injury. The dog's teeth didn't break the skin or even leave any marks. My wrist was slightly sore for an hour, and that was it. But still, a person ought to be able to go for a walk in a public park without getting bitten. Do you agree? Am I being completely unreasonable here? Am I also being unreasonable when I say that someone who owns such a dog -- I can't have been the first person he ever snapped at -- should pull her dog to the side when strangers approach?
The woman continued walking while I looked at my wrist, dumbfounded. "Oh, come on," I said in disgust.
She glanced back. "He's a nice dog," she said. It kills me that dog owners will insist that their dog is a good dog or a friendly dog immediately after -- or sometimes while -- their dog does something patently naughty or unfriendly.
"He bit me!" I said, trying to summon righteous anger.
"He didn't bite you," she said.
I couldn't believe it. "What do you call it," I said, "when he closes his jaws around my wrist?"
"He didn't bite you," she called. "Get a life."
Let's recap: a woman failed to restrain her dog, allowed him to bite me, denied that her dog bit me, and then told me to get a life. What are the appropriate words for such a situation? "Go to hell!" maybe? "Fuck you, cunt!" perhaps? Whatever the correct thing was to say, I didn't say it. I turned around and walked away, and thought awful and violent thoughts for the remainder of my walk.
Those of you who have nothing better to fill your minds with than crap from this blog will remember that last year I evaluated the twenty-five quarter designs then released under the U.S. Mint 50 State Quarters Program, ranked them according to aesthetic value, and then reviewed all the designs in a post divided into two parts: good quarters (Maine's was the best), and mediocre/awful quarters (Louisiana's was the worst).
Well, the Mint released five new quarters this year, and I for one can't wait to complain how crappy most of them are! But first, let's review Kilgore Trout's Four Laws of Good State Quarter Design:
FIRST LAW: Pick one image and stick with it. Lots of states can't decide on one thing to put on their quarter, so they take the Chamber of Commerce Postcard approach and try to cram as much stuff into the design as possible. Louisiana's quarter, for example, celebrates the Louisiana Purchase, the pelican, and jazz music, while the Arkansas design includes a diamond, rice stalks, and a mallard flying over a lake.
The first problem with this approach is that it creates cluttered, confusing designs. Good quarters employ economy, simplicity, and coherence in their design -- Maine chose a lighthouse scene, while New Jersey's quarter shows Washington crossing the Delaware.
The second problem with breaking the First Law is that it's wishy-washy. Illinois' carefully inoffensive quarter has a farm scene, a Chicago skyline, and Abraham Lincoln. Just pick one, you bunch of mincing pussies! Show young Abe splitting rails, or a barn and some cows, or Wrigley Field, or whatever you want -- just make a damn decision.
The third problem with breaking the First Law involves space -- or lack of it. A quarter design has to fit into less than eight-tenths of a square inch (less when you consider the space gobbled up by required elements like the state's name, year admitted to the Union, the year of the quarter's release, and the motto "E Pluribus Unum"). When you introduce multiple elements into the design, you have to shrink each one and eliminate detail, making the elements less attractive and harder to recognize. Compare Mississippi's quarter, with its beautifully detailed magnolia flower, to South Carolina's quarter, with its barely visible yellow jessamine flower competing for space with a palmetto tree, a Carolina wren, and the state's outline.
SECOND LAW: Do not show a bunch of crap from your state that nobody cares about. Do you care that Arkansas has the oldest diamond mine in North America? Do you care that the Georgia state tree is the live oak? Do you care that Neil Armstrong and John Glenn were born in Ohio? Do you care who Caesar Rodney was? No, you don't, and neither does anybody else. So let's quit cluttering state quarter designs with this crap.
THIRD LAW: Do not include your state's outline. Attention Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York: I know what your states look like. In fact, I know what all fifty states look like, because I completed fourth grade and don't abuse paint thinner. Putting a state outline on your state's quarter is like putting opening instructions on a box of cereal or a "CORN USED IN THIS PRODUCT" warning on a box of Corn Flakes: the only people who need that information are too dumb to use it. Besides, the state outline forces the shrinking of design elements, allowing for less detail -- imagine how cool Indiana's quarter would have been if it had just been a closeup of an open-wheeled race car.
Keeping those principles in mind, let's look at the five quarters released in 2004, ranked from worst to best:
FIFTH: Florida's First Law-busting quarter incorporates a 16th-century Spanish galleon, a Space Shuttle, a "strip of land with Sabal palm trees," and a Fourth Law violation in the form of the slogan "Gateway to Discovery." This bland quarter uses too much blank space to separate its design elements, which are only loosely related -- indeed, they appear to have been chosen at random. Why not show either the galleon or the Space Shuttle, allowing for greater size and detail? Why include the "strip of land with Sabal palm trees" at all?
FOURTH: Michigan's design includes an outline of the state (Third Law violation), outlines of the Great Lakes, and the words "Great Lakes State" (a slogan too dull to qualify as "retarded" and break the Fourth Law). That's it. That's all that 10 million Michiganders could come up with -- state outline, lakes outlines, three-word slogan. I hereby nominate the residents of the state of Michigan as the Least Creative People in America.
THIRD: Hold up there, Michigan -- you have some competition! Texas' quarter includes an outline of the state (Third Law violation), a big star, a border that looks like a rope, and the inscription "The Lone Star State." That's it. That's all the 21 million residents of our nation's second most populous state -- a state famed for its enormous, ostentatious, and annoying pride in its culture and history -- could come up with: state outline, rope border, four-word slogan, and... a big star. Not the Alamo, not Sam Houston, not a cowboy, not an oil derrick, but... a big star. I guess the Texas-Oklahoma football game must have been on during the selection committee meeting.
A side note: the Mint's writeup on the Texas quarter design notes that "Texas is the only state to have had six different flags fly over its land -- Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, Confederate States of America and the United States of America." This seems like an odd thing to brag about. It's as if the slutty girl in your office stood up and announced, "I'm the only woman in this office to have had 117 dicks in me."
SECOND: Wisconsin takes second place not because its design is any good, but because it's not as bad as the rest and includes a cow. I mean, you've got to have some guts to stick a cow on your state quarter. I'm picturing the governor saying, "I want a design with a cow on it, and anyone who doesn't like it can meet me in the parking lot."
Anyway, in addition to the cow, Wisconsin put an round of cheese and an ear of corn on its quarter, along with a banner with the state motto ("Sideways"). Because these elements are all related in an agricultural theme, the design technically avoids a First Law violation, but I would have preferred a single coherent scene like Kentucky's. A scene with, say, a farmer milking a cow would have worked much better.
FIRST:Iowa done good. Iowa done real good. The state of my upbringing is only the second state (New Jersey is the other) to use an existing work of art on its quarter -- in this case, Iowa adapted the painting Arbor Day. Created by Iowa native Grant Wood (who also painted the better-known American Gothic), Arbor Day shows a teacher and her students planting a tree outside a country one-room schoolhouse. The silly slogan "Foundation in Education" breaks the Fourth Law, but overall this design is very classy. I don't understand why more states don't adapt works of art for their quarters. Why go to all the effort of making your own design when some master artist has done the work already?
Coming up in 2005, I'll be busting on quarter designs picked by California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, and West Virginia. If you're too impatient to wait and you have to see the winning designs now now now now now, go to Quarter Designs and check 'em out. If your state's quarter hasn't been released, Quarter Designs has proposed designs for most states (surprisingly, it seems as though Colorado will be going with some kind of "mountains" motif, although some wiseacre submitted a design showing a traffic jam on I-25 and the slogan "Denver: The Sprawl To End All").
NEW YORK CITY -- At 12:11 am EDT Thursday morning, Boston Red Sox second baseman Pokey Reese scooped up a ground ball hit by New York Yankees pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra and tossed the ball to first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, ending the Yankees' season. At the same time, he ended the careers of every person working in New York City.
After the Red Sox stunned the Yankees 10-3 to claim the American League pennant, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner immediately fired general manager Brian Cashman; manager Joe Torre and his entire coaching staff; the team physicians, trainers, and physical therapists; senior vice president of baseball operations Mark Newman; chief financial officer Steve Dauri; vice president of marketing Deborah A. Tymon; the rest of the front office and administrative staff; the custodial staff and the groundskeeping crew; the hot dog vendors, beer men, all other food vendors, and souvenir salespeople; the parking lot attendants and valets; the security staff; and the dopey guy with the big ears who sings "God Bless America."
While the former employees of the Yankees organization cleaned out their desks, a red-faced and bellowing Steinbrenner found a New York City telephone directory and set about firing everybody in the metropolitan area.
"I was pretty surprised to get a call from George Steinbrenner after the game," said Manhattan stockbroker Joe Araceli. "I tried to tell him how sorry I was that the Yankees lost, but then he said it was all my fault and fired me, and he wasn't very nice about it."
"I didn't think he could fire me, since he's not really my boss," Araceli continued. "But I guess so. I mean, he owns the Yankees."
"I got up this morning to go to work and saw I had a message on my answering machine," said Bronx plumber Rodney Aramis. "When I checked the message, it was Mr. Steinbrenner screaming, 'You're fired! You're fucking fired! Don't even bother coming in!' Then he hung up, and I went back to bed. What else could I do?"
As of press time, Steinbrenner had worked his way through the A's, B's, and C's. Experts estimate that he will finish firing every New Yorker by Friday afternoon.
"I don't think it's my fault that the Yankees became the first team in baseball history to blow a 3-0 lead in a seven-game series," said systems analyst Raul Dominguez, eyeing the phone nervously. "I mean, I was just sitting on the couch, eating chips and having a beer."
My parents met at a Young Republicans meeting. My father was the only person I knew who hated John F. Kennedy, and I would not have be surprised to learn that my father had been spotted near the grassy knoll* with a high-powered rifle. My father and I both liked Rush Limbaugh and detested Bill Clinton. I cheered the 1994 Republican Revolution, and I proudly voted for Bob Dole in 1996.
After 1996, I started reading novels by Ayn Rand and essays by Milton Friedman and became a registered, donating, card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party. In 2000, I went door-to-door helping a Libertarian candidate campaign for the Colorado legislature (she finished third). That year, I proudly voted for Harry Browne, the Libertarian nominee. If I hadn't voted for Browne, I would have voted for George W. Bush.
Since 2000, I've lost some of my libertarian faith in the justice of the unfettered free market. In its place, I've gained only a little trust in the ability of the government to effectively regulate human affairs. This places me squarely in the realm of the politically confused. I'm a man adrift without an ideology or a party to guide me. My political philosophy changes from day to day depending on what op-ed columns I read, the alignment of Saturn with Aquarius, and whether the vending machine guy stocked Hostess Chocolate Donettes that morning.
My point is that I'm neither a knee-jerk liberal nor a Democrat. In fact, I have never voted for a Democrat in my life. But on November 2, I will be voting for John Kerry for president.
My reasons for doing so have little to do with John Kerry. To be honest, I don't know much about the man. But before he was even nominated, I had decided I would vote for whomever the Democrats picked , whether that was John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, or a Meat Lover's Skillet from Denny's. I made this decision because it seemed to me that nobody -- not even a delicious combination of diced ham, bacon, and sausage served over seasoned country-fried potatoes and topped with shredded cheddar cheese and two eggs cooked your way -- could do a worse job of governing the most powerful nation on Earth than George W. Bush.
My primary reason for opposing Bush is for the destructive and wasteful war he started in Iraq. By any rational set of criteria, this war has failed terribly. Bush sold the war to the American people based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction which, as it turned out, were only vapors in the fevered imaginations of Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. Over 1,100 U.S. soldiers have been killed, over 7,700 more have been wounded, and uncounted thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians have lost their lives. True, Bush deserves credit for crushing Saddam Hussein's evil dictatorship. But he did so without any credible plan for filling the resulting vacuum of power, preferring instead to believe that grateful Iraqis would greet American soldiers with roses and that a Western-style democracy could be quickly assembled using Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys or something. At this time we have no realistic exit strategy and no assurance that Iraq will not devolve into (a) a money-sucking, U.S.-controlled puppet state, (b) a dictatorship under a new strongman, or (c) a chaotic hellhole torn apart by a three-way civil war. Our adventure in Iraq will cost us at least $200 billion, and nobody knows how high the final tab will run. All this to prosecute a war against a country that represented no serious threat to the United States of America.
Some Bush supporters will concede all of these points while maintaining that the Iraq War, as a necessary chapter in the larger War on Terrorism, has made the U.S. safer against terrorist attack. I disagree. Here are four reasons I believe the Iraq War has weakened America's fight against terrorism:
The minimum $200 billion we will spend on this war could have been better spent on improving homeland security and thwarting terrorist plots through intelligence and law enforcement actions.
This war has overextended our military and left us ill-equipped to respond to legitimate terrorist threats.
This war has infuriated the Muslim world, making it fertile ground for terrorist recruiters.
This war has taught terrorist organizations that the U.S. can be goaded into fighting the wrong war and wasting resources that could have been used to destroy them.
Some Bush supporters have criticized Kerry's plans for Iraq, and with good reason (why does Kerry think that other nations, who didn't want any part of the war when it began, would want to risk blood and treasure now?) But are Bush's plans for Iraq any better? Not that I can tell -- I examined his website and could find no definite strategy for dealing with the problems in Iraq, or even a hint of recognition that problems exist in Iraq. And here's the clincher for me: Bush got us into this mess, so he gets the blame. I'm not going to blame Kerry for not having a good solution for Iraq, because nobody has a good solution for Iraq. There might not be a good solution for Iraq. People aren't calling it a "quagmire" because it's a good Scrabble word.**
I want to keep writing. I want to describe in withering detail every reason I have to vote against George W. Bush. I want to write about the Federal Marriage Amendment and how it symbolizes Bush's eagerness to mangle the law of the land to suit his narrow, bigoted religious views. I want to write about Bush's bungling of the economy and about the jobs he's lost. I want to write about the ballooning deficits Bush has created through profligate spending and irresponsible tax cuts. I want to write about the arrogance of the Bush Administration, about its refusal to admit when it's moving in the wrong direction, about its willingness to use 9/11 to hack away at civil liberties, about its cronyism, about its cynicism, about its intolerance for criticism, about its willful twisting of facts and logic, about its endless grasping for more and greater power.
But it's 2:30 in the morning, and I need sleep.
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*"Grassy knoll" is one of those terms you only seem to hear in one context, in this case JFK assassination conspiracy theories. Other such terms include "fire-bombing" (only used in connection with the WWII destruction of Dresden, Germany) and "distended" (only used to describe the bellies of starving children in Third World nations).
**A very good Scrabble word. If you held AEGMQRU and played across an I in a triple-triple lane, you would score 248 points.
Seen on the side panel of a box of Corn Flakes: "CORN USED IN THIS PRODUCT." Corn, you say? Used in the making of Corn Flakes? Gosh, do you think so?
Kellogg's put the warning on the box, of course, as a hedge against lawsuits by people with corn allergies. I'm all for informing the consumer, but I think that if you have a corn allergy and you don't know enough to avoid a product called "Corn Flakes," you deserve to have an allergic reaction and die a painful death from anaphylactic shock, suffocating to death on your kitchen floor with a spilled bowl of Corn Flakes and milk congealing on the tiles next to you. Not that I'm trying to be a dick or anything.
While we're on the subject of cereal, let's talk about the instructions on the top flap that tells you how to open the box. Are these necessary? Has anyone ever said, "Gosh, I sure would like a nourishing bowl of Corn Flakes, but how do I open the box? Oh, wait... there's instructions! Thank goodness. Now I can make Corn Flakes part of this balanced breakfast."
Let's face it -- if you don't know how to open a box of cereal, chances are somebody is feeding the cereal to you.
We're not done with cereal yet. While grocery shopping at SuperTarget on Saturday, I noticed that the 31-oz. boxes of Frosted Flakes were marked with colorful sales tags. "Temporary Price Cut!" said the tags. "Was $5.54, Now $4.43."
Good deal, right? Well, not when 25-oz. boxes of Frosted Flakes were selling for $2.54 -- that's 10.2 cents per ounce versus 14.3 cents per ounce for the larger size on sale. (At the original price, the 31-oz. box was 17.9 cents per ounce, which is 75% more per ounce than the smaller box.) I bought a 25-oz. box and felt pretty smug. You gotta keep an eye on these fuckers or they'll rob you blind and rape your asshole.
On Saturday night I went to the Pepsi Center to watch the Heritage Cup, a bienniel battle for world lacrosse supremacy played between Team USA and Team Canada. (Canada crushed the USA, 17-8.) Several times during the game, the scoreboard showed an ad for Mammoth Unleashed, a documentary film about the 2004 Colorado Mammoth, our local National Lacrosse League franchise. (Watch the trailer here.) As the scoreboard flashed images of Mammoth players scoring goals and engaging in locker room hijinks, the voiceover guy intoned, "Mammoth Unleashed reveals the heart and soul of the National Lacrosse League's most prolific franchise."
Prolific? Do Danielle Steel and Stephen King play for the Colorado Mammoth now? Try as I might, I could find nothing in definition of "prolific" that might apply to a lacrosse team, especially one that has managed to manufacture ways to lose in the Champion's Cup semifinals every year stretching back to the Cenozoic Era.
At one point, in an attempt to whip the crowd in a jingoistic fervor, the sound guys played "Born in the U.S.A." When will people realize that "Born in the U.S.A." is not a patriotic song?* Read the lyrics -- "Born in the U.S.A." is about a guy born into a shit life who goes to Vietnam to avoid prison, loses a buddy there, and can't find a job after the war. Yeesh. Didn't anyone bring a Lee Greenwood CD?
*Best guess: As soon as people realize that "YMCA," also played at the Heritage Cup, is a song about gay sex.
On my way to SuperTarget yesterday, I drove through Cherry Creek and spotted a disheveled middle aged man with stringy gray hair, wearing large greasy glasses and a hunting cap, holding a homemade sign on which he had scrawled, "KERRY THROWS LIKE A GIRL." I caught a glimpse of the reverse side: "BUSH 04, CONDI 08." The man was waving cheerfully and giving the "V" sign to motorists and passersby. I have got to start carrying my camera everywhere I go.
Hey, blogger guys 'n' gals! Want to see your hit counter catch fire every October? Well, just write a snarky post or two about McDonald's Monopoly promotion. Then sit back and watch the hits roll in as all the poor suckers searching for rare game pieces visit your site! (This tip brought to you by Chaotic Not Random, now your 24th-ranked link on Google for mcdonald's monopoly.)
Speaking of hits, if you linked to this site today at 5:32:07 pm CDT from a Google search for nude natasha mcelhone, then I thank you for giving Chaotic Not Random its 30,000th hit, you pervert.
A couple of weeks ago, Major League Baseball announced that it had tired of screwing the baseball fans of Quebec and would be moving the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C., where it plans to immediately start screwing the cash-strapped District out of $400 million to build a new stadium. Don't worry, D.C. residents! I'm certain the players on your new team will be delighted to police your streets and teach your kids how to read when they aren't playing baseball.
Anyway, the team needs a new name, and our nation's crack corps of snickering sportswriters, never ones to pass up an easy laugh, got right to the task of making predictably silly suggestions. Salon's King Kaufman, who usually knows better than to reach for this kind of cheap joke, suggested the Washington Filibusters or the Washington RICOs. ESPN.com's Jayson Stark, who doesn't know any better at all, thinks the Washington Cannot Tell A Lies or Washington Tax Cutters will make you squirt milk out your nose. It took Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post to write a sensible column on the matter:
There are only four reasonable choices for the name of the new Washington Baseball Club: Senators, Nationals (if they play in the National League), Americans (if they play in the American League) and Grays. That's it, that's the list. Anything else is a waste of time to even consider, even the Monuments.
Wilbon goes on to argue -- rightly, I think -- for the Grays, the name of a Negro League team that played some of their games in Washington in the 1940s. It's a pity that MLB chose to move the Expos to a city with a previous baseball history, because it nearly forces the resurrection of a previous team name instead of allowing the invention of a brand new name, easily the most exciting stage of development for a new team.
How to name a new team? I have a few ideas:
Don't worry about keeping it local. Whenever a team needs a new name, most ideas get culled from the home region's culture, major industries, geographic features, history, native animal species, famous deceased residents, dietary habits, sexual perversions, or whatever. Of the 122 MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL teams, almost half (57) have names related to their home city or state:
Miami Dolphins
Buffalo Bills
New England Patriots
Baltimore Ravens (named to honor famed resident Edgar Allan Poe)
Pittsburgh Steelers
Cleveland Browns (named after coach Paul Brown)
Houston Texans
Dallas Cowboys
Green Bay Packers (named for the Indian Packing Co., an early sponsor)
Minnesota Vikings
San Francisco 49ers
Detroit Pistons
Miami Heat
New York Knickerbockers (a knickerbocker is a New Yorker)
Boston Celtics
Philadelphia 76ers
Orlando Magic (Walt Disney World -- the Magic Kingdom -- is in Orlando)
Minnesota Timberwolves
Los Angeles Lakers (originally the Minnesota Lakers)
San Antonio Spurs
Memphis Grizzlies (originally the Vancouver Grizzlies)
Dallas Mavericks
Houston Rockets
Denver Nuggets
Utah Jazz (originally the New Orleans Jazz)
Portland Trail Blazers
Phoenix Suns
Seattle SuperSonics
New Jersey Devils (the New Jersey Devil is a legendary monster)
New York Islanders
Montreal Canadiens
Ottawa Senators
Toronto Maple Leafs
Carolina Hurricanes
Florida Panthers
Washington Capitals
St. Louis Blues
Colorado Avalanche
Edmonton Oilers
Minnesota Wild
Vancouver Canucks
Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (another goddam Disney name)
Phoenix Coyotes
New York Yankees
Baltimore Orioles
Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Minnesota Twins
Texas Rangers
Seattle Mariners
Philadelphia Phillies
Florida Marlins
New York Metropolitans
Montreal Expos (after Expo 67, a world's fair held in Montreal)
Houston Astros
Milwaukee Brewers
Colorado Rockies
Arizona Diamondbacks
Is it really necessary, though, to go native when naming a team? Some of the best and most venerable sports team nicknames have nothing to do with the areas where they're located: the Boston Red Sox, the Cincinnati Reds, the Chicago White Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the Boston Bruins, the Detroit Red Wings, the Detroit Lions, the Chicago Bulls [oops, see comments]. When it came time to rename Chicago's NFL franchise in 1922 (then known as the Staleys), did they choose "Bears" to represent Chicago or Illinois or some such? No -- they chose "Bears" because "the Chicago Bears" sounds like a bunch of bad-ass motherfuckers.
Trying too hard to keep it local can result in forced, uninspiring team names, like the Colorado Rockies or the Florida Marlins. When Charlotte's expansion NBA franchise was auditioning names, one of the three finalists was "Flight," an awful name intended to commemorate the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk. (Charlotte settled instead on the less-awkward but certainly tepid "Bobcats.") When picking a team name, go for ring and rhythm over native authenticity.
Don't pick something stupid. You might think this goes without saying, but it didn't stop Houston from naming their expansion NFL franchise the "Texans." Houston is the fourth-largest city in the country, with over five million people living in its metropolitan area, and the best anybody could come up with is was the common name for people who live in their state? What, was "Houstonians" taken already? Good grief.
Another stupid name is the Toronto Raptors, a name foolishly chosen in 1994 to capitalize on the popularity of the 1993 movie Jurassic Park. Well, a decade later, Jurassic Park just isn't that popular any more. With each passing year, more people forget that "raptor" is supposed to be short for "velociraptor" (it actually means "bird of prey"), and the team's name has not aged well. At least they changed their dominant uniform color from light purple to red.
Avoid the singular. This obnoxious 90s trend appears to have fizzled out, but in its wake it left us the Miami Heat, the Minnesota Wild, the Orlando Magic, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Colorado Avalanche, and the previously existing Utah Jazz. The National Lacrosse League is lousy with singular team names: the Colorado Mammoth, the San Jose Stealth, the Arizona Sting, the Anaheim Storm, and the Toronto Rock (easily the worst team name in pro sports). These are all bad names, though, so let's hold the line -- keep your team's name plural, please.
Take the road less traveled. In the four major sports leagues (we will do the NHL the courtesy of continuing to pretend it is "a major sports league"), only six teams -- the New York Giants, the San Francisco Giants, the Tennessee Titans, the New Jersey Devils, the Anaheim Angels, and the Washington Wizards -- are drawn from the realms of fantasy, legend, myth, or horror. Think of the wealth of possible names: the Centaurs, the Hydras, the Goblins, the Gorgons, the Ghosts, the Phantoms, the Ringwraiths. (Well, maybe not the Ringwraiths.) If I could have named our lacrosse team, I would have picked "Colorado Cyclops" or "Denver Demons." And how is it possible that there are no teams called the Dragons?
Likewise, only the New Orleans Hornets and the Columbus Blue Jackets have named themselves after insects. What a waste! Where are the Wasps and the Killer Bees? Wouldn't you rather have a Minnesota Mosquitoes jersey than a Minnesota Wild jersey?
In a startling article titled "Don't Vote" on Slate, economist and professional contrarian Steven E. Landsburg argues the case for staying home and picking your nose on November 2:
We might be headed for another close election, which means your vote could really matter this time, right? Wrong. Your vote didn't matter in 2000, it never mattered before 2000, and it's very unlikely to start mattering now. ...
Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.)
Landsburg then performs a batch of calculations to prove that the odds of your vote being a tie-breaker are "approximately the same chance you have of winning the Powerball jackpot 128 times in a row." He concludes:
Even for the most passionate partisan, it's hard to argue that voting is a good use of your time. Instead of waiting in line to vote, you could wait in line to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win $100 million and use it to advance your causes -- and all with an almost indescribably greater chance of success than you'd have in the voting booth.
If you think that sounds convincing, try this thought experiment: suppose you are a baseball player, going up to bat in a major league baseball game. Should you try to get on base? Why? Even if you try to get on base, you will fail two times out of three (assuming your name is not Barry Bonds). And even if you get on base, what is the likelihood that your doing so will win the game for your team? And even if you do get on base and win the game for your team, what is the likelihood that winning today will put your team in the playoffs by one game? The average major league baseball team sends 6,300 batters to the plate in the course of a season, so what difference does one at-bat make?
Right now you are saying, "Well, what if everybody on the team thought that way?" But Landsburg is way ahead of you:
The traditional reply begins with the phrase "But if everyone thought like that... ." To which the correct rejoinder is: So what? Everyone doesn't think like that. They continue to vote by the millions and tens of millions.
One possible retort: Yes, Americans vote by the millions and tens of millions, but they also don't vote by the millions and tens of millions, and the millions who pull levers in junior-high gymnasiums* on the first Tuesday after the first Monday every leap year** differ markedly from the millions who stay home and try to figure out what percentage of the items in their apartments will fit in their rectums,*** and this has an effect on government policies.
For example, imagine that every smart-ass economist in America reads Steven Landsburg's article and skips voting this election. We can expect government to ignore the needs of smart-ass economists over the coming years: legislation for an Adam Smith**** memorial will bog down in congressional committee, funds will be slashed for federally subsidized pocket protectors and electrical tape for mending broken glasses, and lawmakers will be suspiciously unsympathetic on the issue of jobs outsourced to smart-ass economists in India.
An example from the real world: old people vote in hordes, while young adults would rather play Grand Theft Auto 3. Now you know why no American politician dares breathe a word against our doomed Social Security system.
Perhaps a better retort would be to question Landburg's obsession with casting the tie-breaking vote. Suppose Candidate Smith beats Candidate Jones -- 50,000,000 votes to 49,999,999 votes (forget about the Electoral College for a moment). Who cast the tie-breaking vote? Was it you, assuming you voted for Smith? Was it the very last person who voted for Smith? Or can all 50 million people who voted for Smith claim the honor? If you voted for Jones, did you waste your time? But it was necessary for people to vote for Jones, so that Smith could win by one vote and then all of his supporters' votes could be rendered meaningful. If one less Jones supporter had turned out and Smith had won by two, would that have mean that Smith's supporters would have wasted their time? If there were 25 million people who liked Jones better than Smith but didn't vote, should they feel guilty? Maybe not, because there were probably 25 million people who liked Smith better but didn't vote, and if everybody had voted, Smith still would have won. Except maybe there were only 24,999,998 people who liked Smith better but didn't vote, so if everybody had voted, Jones would have won by one vote. Or maybe not -- HOW CAN WE KNOW UNLESS PEOPLE GET OFF THE @#$%&*! COUCH and @#$%&*! VOTE?!?!
I think Landsburg makes things too complicated. The point isn't whether your one vote will break a tie. It's that your vote, counted one by one with the tens of millions of other votes cast this year, will help to determine the winner of this election. Sure, your vote doesn't count for much, but that's the way it should be in a nation of 300 million people.
I'd rather have a tiny, tiny voice in our democracy than no voice at all.
(Postscript: I do think there are people who shouldn't vote. If you're completely uninformed, stay home -- although it would be better to get informed and vote. Some people don't vote in order to protest the lack of desirable candidates, a view argued competently by Kevin Kim at The Big Hominid. Still, I think those people would do better to vote for a third-party candidate they can support. Oh, and go here to read Landsburg's article arguing for the execution of computer virus authors.)
*Or is it gymnasia? Surprisingly, both are acceptable.
**I exercised a bit of creative license there, because not every presidential election year is a leap year. The year 1900, for example, was not a leap year.
***The answer is 8.4%, although it depends on whether you count a chess set as one item or 33 items.
****I am fully aware that Adam Smith was Scottish.
BUSH LEADS POLLS DUE TO "TRIPLE-CHOCOLATELY GOODNESS"
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While the gap between George Bush and John Kerry has narrowed in the last two weeks, the president still holds a slight lead over his challenger in most national polls. What has made the difference in Campaign 2004 so far? Observers across the political spectrum agree that the key to Bush's popularity is his "triple-chocolately goodness."
"Voters know what they want in a chief executive," said Bush campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish. "And the majority of the American people are making it clear that they want a president who combines white chocolate, fudge brownie chunks, and a gooey, dark chocolate center."
"Bush/Cheney 2004," added Devenish. "Get You Some Chocolate.®"
Voters seemed to agree. "I vote on the issues, and I think President Bush will protect us from the terrorists," said electrician Doug Reimer, 43, from Missoula, Mont. "Also, I think he's delicious."
"At first, I thought President Bush was a little too rich and sweet," said Madison O'Reilly, 24, an accountant from Red Wing, Minn. "I mean, that's a lot of chocolate to handle! But now I think he's just right."
"Yummy!" O'Reilly added, with a brown smear of chocolate visible on the right side of her mouth.
"The hard-working Americans who make up the backbone of this country deserve and demand a president who is a strong leader, who cares about their problems, and who is choc-o-diddly-umptuous," said Karl Rove, Bush's Senior Advisor and chief political strategist. "I have no doubt that on November 2, Americans will overwhelmingly vote to reelect the man who has given them more exquisite chocolate flavor than any other leader in our nation's proud history -- George W. Bush."
Democrats have responded that John Kerry offers a tempting blend of creamy caramel, rich nougat, and salty peanuts, all covered in luscious milk chocolate mixed with crunchy toffee bits. "Chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate is all this president has to offer," said Kerry advisor Mike McCurry. "John Kerry goes further, incorporating a variety of textures and flavors into a combination that all Americans can enjoy."
Los Angeles dentist Raymond Tidball, 34, remained skeptical. "John Kerry tastes okay, I guess, if you're hungry enough," he said. "But when I step into the voting booth, I'm going to be thinking about which candidate gives me three times the chocolate. And that's President Bush."
People who talk on cell phones in the park. Yesterday, while strolling in Washington Park, I overtook a group of three girls (I stroll fast). One of the girls was a Paris Hilton doppelgänger, at least from behind -- she had long platinum blond hair and wore a tiny pair of terrycloth shorts that clung to her butt like a drowning man clutching a life preserver. At first I thought she was missing her left arm, but as I drew closer I realized she was talking on her cell phone. As I passed, I caught this angry snippet of conversation:
I have a life. Maybe it's not as extravagant or as big as yours, but I have a life. And I have friends. My friends called me this morning to make plans, and I said, "No, I can't because Curtis is coming over." You have to let me know what's going on, Curtis!
I barely suppressed the urge to snatch the cell phone and scream, "Run, Curtis, run! I know she's got a hot little ass, but it's not worth it! She's not a hotel heiress -- she just looks like one!" Then I would have pitched the phone into the lake and hauled ass. Injured or not, I'm pretty sure I can outrun a pretend socialite.
Washington Park is a pretty little park, with lots of trees, green fields with kids playing soccer, a couple of ponds with ducks and geese, luxurious flower beds, even a resident fox skulking in the shadows. A walk in Wash Park brings a lot of things to mind -- fresh air, sunshine, exercise, relaxation, good times with friends -- none of which seem compatible with chewing out one's boyfriend on a cell phone. Good grief.
The thing where I clip my nails and the clippings fly all over the goddam place. Sometimes they fall neatly in front of me, but mostly they whiz out onto the floor, where they use their chameleon-like ability to blend in with the hardwood. Sometimes they glance off my face. Once I got a clipping stuck in my eye. Did my mother forget to teach me something?
People who take too long in airplane toilets. What do they do in there? Even I can put off masturbating for the length of an 11-hour transatlantic flight. "Come now, Kilgore," you are saying. "Surely this is just a matter of warped perception. Of course it seems you are waiting a long time when you're standing outside the toilet, with a bursting bladder and bored flight attendants watching you. But likely you took just as long as everyone else."
Well, ha. I timed each of my trips to the lavatory, and on no occasion did I require more than 71 seconds to complete my business, including washing my hands. And don't call me Shirley.
Weird conversations with strippers. I went to Shotgun Willies a few weeks ago to help a friend celebrate the waning moments of his bachelorhood and had the following exchange:
"Hi!" the stripper said, as I sat down at her stage. She was pretty, with dark blond hair and tiny breasts on a tiny body. "Have I talked to you before?" she asked.
"No," I said. "It's our first time." I was the only one at her stage. One of the nice things about liking small breasts is that you get the flat-chested strippers to yourself.
"You weren't here another day?" she asked, squinting down at me.
"No, I've never been here before."
"Hi, I'm Halo," she said, sticking out her hand.
It's an odd feeling to shake hands with a naked person, but I did okay. "I'm Kilgore," I said. "I'm sorry -- I don't have a made-up name to tell you."
"Kilgore?" she said. "That's my dad's name!"
"Oh," I said. "Um... is that weird for you?"
"Oh, no," she said, gyrating her nipples half an inch from my face. "He's dead."
I've been feeling a little fuzzy-headed lately. I've been feeling a bit numb, a tad distant, a touch unfocused, and slightly more antisocial than usual. A little depressed. Things that were fun not so long ago now seem pointless. Work is a run in the hamster wheel. Food doesn't satisfy. When I try to write -- a difficult task even in the best of times -- I feel like a man trying to catch a great white shark with a Popeil Pocket Fisherman. The days drag, but I'm still overwhelmed by all the tasks to be completed before I crumple into bed.
It's like someone bleached all the bright colors out of the world.
[More to come tomorrow, including a likely explanation for these phenomena plus a possible solution. You won't want to miss it!]
I started writing about the things above in italics, but presently it occurred to me that the reasons I'm crashing are pretty dull and not worth prattling on and on about. I could write a big long post about it, but you'd get bored and not leave any comments and maybe even stop visiting this site. And that would be a tragedy, because I like it when you come here, especially if you leave comments. I love that shit. It gets me off better than a bootleg video of Catherine Keener having three-way sex with Patricia Clarkson and Claire Danes. I'm not one of those bloggers who says, "I just want to get words out of my head. I don't care if anyone reads what I write." I do care. I care enormously and far out of proportion to this blog's actual importance to the world in general and my life in particular. I care with the intensity of a thousand... very intense things. Picture a slightly built man with a bad haircut sitting at a computer, staring at his site statistics. Now picture that man with a red face, clenching and unclenching his fists and grinding his teeth audibly. That is Kilgore Trout you are picturing. The last time my blog hits comments dropped sharply, I stopped eating and was unable to achieve erection for three days. In case you missed the point: I use my website traffic numbers and vague praise from strangers to spackle over my insecurities and prop up my sagging confidence in my talent as a writer. What I'm trying to say is that I hope you're not disappointed because I didn't deliver on my promise to explain, in exhaustive and excruciating detail, the reasons for my current depression. It's really no big deal. I don't even know why I brought it up, except that I consider you a friend, and friends tell each other things, right? For example: in addition to being depressed, I am also constipated. You see? I don't tell these things to just anyone. I didn't tell the checker at Safeway (although she probably figured it out when I bought the fiber laxative tablets). I don't even tell these things to the people at work. If people at my job ask me how I'm doing tomorrow, I'm going to tell them I'm fine. I'm not going to say, "I'm unable to think straight and I've lost my creative edge, plus I've been holding a brick in my colon for two days. And you?" But I can confide in you, because we're good like that. You can tell me things too, if you need to. I'm always here to listen, except when I'm out somewhere, or when I'm not paying attention because I'm staring at your girlfriend's chest. So it would probably be a good idea to have some other people lined up to talk to, or at least suggest to your girlfriend that she not wear that babydoll T-shirt around me. I'm glad that we're good enough friends that I can talk openly about what a great rack your girlfriend has, because you know I would never sleep with her, not even if you left town for two weeks, like when you went home for the holidays last year, and even if there was some messing around and some minor penetration, I was thinking about you the whole time and about what a great friend you are.
CHENEY: "VOTE REPUBLICAN OR JONES WILL COME BACK."
AKRON, OHIO -- Speaking at a VFW post in Akron, Ohio yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney told supporters they "must vote for Bush and Cheney this November, or Jones will come back."
"Surely, my fellow Republicans," cried Cheney almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, "surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?"
Now if there was one thing that the Republicans were completely certain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to them in this light, they had nothing to say.
Cheney also explained that, according to new documents just discovered, it was Snowball who destroyed the windmill. "He was in league with Jones from the beginning," said Cheney. "Did we not see for ourselves how he attempted -- fortunately without success -- to get us defeated and destroyed at the Battle of the Cowshed?"
The Republicans were stupefied by this statement. "I do not believe that," said one veteran. "Wasn't it Mr. Frederick and his men who destroyed the windmill? And Snowball fought bravely at the Battle of the Cowshed. I saw him myself. Did we not give him a Silver Star and a Purple Heart immediately afterwards?"
"That was our mistake," said Cheney. "In fact, it was our heroic President who fought most bravely and was wounded at the Battle of the Cowshed. Snowball was always Jones' agent, and he has been plotting with Mr. Frederick to hand the United States over to Pinchfield Farm! Our courageous leader, President George W. Bush, has stated this categorically, my fellow Republicans," said Cheney, frisking from side to side.
"Ah, that is different!" said the veteran, nodding in agreement. "If President Bush says it, it must be right."
"That is the true spirit, my fellow Republican!" cried Cheney, but it was noticed he cast a very ugly look at the veteran with his little twinkling eyes. He added: "I warn every one of you to keep your eyes very wide open. For we have reason to think that some of Snowball's secret agents are lurking among us at this moment!" The large dogs with their brass studded collars stationed to either side of the vice president growled and showed their side teeth.
The rally ended with the chanting of "Republicans good, Democrats bad!" Afterward, Cheney retired to the farmhouse for a dinner of mash with apples and milk mixed in.
3. A fountain in the city of Fes. Be sure you look at this one full size to appreciate the richness of the decoration.
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I love traveling. I hate flying. Why do all trips, no matter how wonderful, have to begin and end at the airport? It's a tragedy, like the Bataan Death March. The airport is the most depressing place around, because nobody wants to be there. Whenever you pick up a friend at the airport, he's never like, "What's the rush? Let's hang around here for a while." He's always like, "Let's get the fuck out of here."
I hate getting up early to make it to the airport on time. I hate finding parking. I hate assuring the agent that yes, I packed my bags myself, and no, I didn't ask any Colombians to watch them while I went to the bathroom. I hate waiting in line to go through security. I hate taking off my belt and shoes. I hate digging out my passport for any person in a navy blazer who asks. I hate setting off the metal detector even though the largest pieces of metal on my person are the screws in my glasses. I hate boarding the plane and waiting in the aisle while some yoohoo twenty rows ahead tries to cram a steamer trunk into the overhead bin. I hate sitting in the middle seat. I hate trying -- and failing -- to sleep on the plane. I hate trying -- and failing -- to get up the nerve to talk to the cute Spanish girl sitting next to me. I hate squirming to get comfortable in a seat designed for Munchkins. I hate that the best movie available is Van Helsing. I hate waiting for the current occupant of the bathroom to finish his revolutionary proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. I hate remaining seated while we taxi to the gate. I hate hustling to make my connection. I hate fresh questions from Customs. I hate realizing that the average Dutch baggage handler speaks better English than I do.
I like airplane food, though. HINT: the chicken is always better than the beef.
I hate people on planes. When I boarded the plane in Amsterdam for an 11-hour flight to Houston, I found myself sitting in the middle seat next to an older gentleman with leathery skin and a shock of white hair. I squeezed into my seat and began to settle in.
"Is that a picture y'all got there?" the man asked in a Louisiana accent, gesturing to a souvenir I had wedged under the seat in front of me.
"No, it's a chessboard," I said.
"Did y'all get that here in Holland?" he asked.
"No, I got it in Morocco."
"Morocco, huh? Were y'all working there?"
"No, I was visiting a friend. How about you? Were you working here in Amsterdam?" I didn't care, but I like to do an impression of a friendly person from time to time.
HINT: Do not do an impression of a friendly person on a plane.
"Oh, I'm up here working," he said, chuckling for no apparent reason. "My company sends me all over the world to work on barges."
"That's cool," I said.
"Yep," he said, "I've been all over Europe, I've been to Russia, Asia, I lived in Japan for a while. All first-class travel, of course."
"Well, that's the way to do it," I said.
"Well, I'm a mechanical engineer, you know," he said. "And some of these boys don't know the first thing about keeping a barge running. I remember one time I found that someone had climbed up on a ladder and tightened two bolts... with a wrench. I said, 'If y'all don't know how to do something, don't do it! That's what I'm here for!' Heh heh heh!" And then he nudged me.
Nudged me.
My chest tightened. I realized, too late, that I was sitting next to an man who was not only extremely boring, but also extremely sociable -- a deadly combination. It was like being caught by The Hag, the old woman at my job who traps her unsuspecting coworkers in pointless, unending conversations. Except I couldn't just leave the break room to get away from this guy -- I would be sitting next to him for eleven hours.
"Yep," he said, "I told them, 'Y'all better get yourselves a new chief engineer, because the one you got don't know squat!' Heh heh heh!" Another nudge.
Like a turtle retreating into its shell, I went into Extreme Boring Conversation Defense Mode, a mode of behavior indistinguishable -- to the uneducated observer -- from Being A Complete Prick. I broke off eye contact. I replied to all of his statements with "Mmmmmm." I answered his few questions in a monotone, using as few words as possible. During a short break in the storytelling, I landed the coup de grâce by reaching forward, decisively picking up my New Yorker, and starting to read.
He didn't speak to me for the rest of the flight. This was fine, except I was sitting in the middle seat. I didn't want to talk to the boring guy, even to ask him to move so I could use the bathroom, and the lady to my left slept for nearly the entire flight. So I held it as long as I could and avoided drinking water. You veteran travelers will confirm that this is not an optimum strategy on a transatlantic flight. By the time we reached Houston, I had a sore throat and a headache. But at least I had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in delicious silence.
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