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]
"Well, I can see why, Kilgore," you are saying, gesturing toward the Involuntary Celibacy Watch.
That's not what I mean. I've been frustrated because the weeks come and the weeks go, and what are the tangible results of the time dribbled through my fingers? The paltry financial rewards of my dull job, maintenance of my basic metabolic functions, and the occasional fleeting pleasure of self-induced ejaculation. Consult Ecclesiastes or Ernie Ford for further ruminations along these lines.
Earlier this month, I took two days off work to think about these things and to consider ways to use my time more effectively. Here's what I discovered:
There are only 168 hours in a week.
After working, commuting, eating lunch, and sleeping, I have only 64 hours left.
It is not possible for me to train for an ultramarathon, write for publication, write regularly on this blog, attend church, have my meager social life, and still take care of the myriad crap that goes into staying sane, like preparing salad and cleaning the toilet every two weeks.
That third one surprised me. I don't have a wife (or even a girlfriend), or children, or a demanding job, or a fast-paced social life. And yet, no matter how I juggled the hours and activities, I couldn't fit everything into a realistic schedule. Something had to go.
That something is Chaotic Not Random. This was not an easy decision. I have loved keeping this blog -- it has sharpened my writing skills, bolstered my confidence, and allowed me to meet wonderful and interesting people; that is, those of you who have read my posts and left comments and sent kind, thoughtful emails. I thank you for being a part of my life this past year and a half.
I wish I could continue to post here. But I can't. Writing for me is a slow, difficult labor -- a labor of love, to be sure, but still a time-sucking task that consumes an average of three hours for each post, including this one. Even blogging just twice a week wipes out my Wednesday and Sunday evenings, which is time I could better spend preparing pieces for publication.
So this is goodbye, for now. I'm going to give up the chaoticnotrandom.com domain in a week or two, although everything here will remain for posterity on chaoticnotrandom.blogspot.com. If you want to keep current on my writing career, drop me an email and I'll let you know if I get anything into print.
Can you imagine approaching an attractive woman on the street and saying, "Tell you what. Why don't you remove all of your clothes except for a thong and 4-inch heels, then writhe and prance in front of me to the rhythms of bad '90s prom music? Oh, and you have to rub your breasts on my face and smile as though you're enjoying it more than a shoe-shopping spree on Rodeo Drive. If you do all this, I will give you one American dollar." Yet that's the standard deal in strip clubs. Amazing.
A lot of people think there's a cleaning product called Murphy's Oil Soap. There isn't. It's Murphy Oil Soap -- no apostrophe, no "s".
Suppose that I'm at SuperTarget, looking for a checkout lane, when I notice that one of the checkout girls is very attractive. You might think that my best choice, for staring and ogling purposes, is to go through her lane. But I've noticed when I do this, I'm only able to enjoy limited staring and ogling -- you can only stare and ogle so much when a girl is standing two feet away. My recent experiments have shown that by choosing the lane just to the right of the attractive checkout girl, I can stare and ogle with near impunity. True, the attractive checkout girl is a few feet farther away, but I think the large gain in staring-and-ogling quantity more than compensates for the slight loss in quality.
While reading the September 2004 issue of Runner's World, I noticed an item that referred to a marathon as 1,660,032 inches in length. "That doesn't look right," I thought, and it wasn't -- a marathon is closer to 1,661,220.4 inches in length. The error was due to the common erroneous belief that a marathon is exactly 26.2 miles, when in fact a marathon is exactly 42.195 kilometers (approximately 26 miles plus 385 yards, or about 26.21876 miles).
Perhaps this is unrelated, but my eHarmony personality profile notes that I have "a strong need to be precise."
MOVIE STUFF:
In the climactic scene of Reservoir Dogs, Joe has his gun pointed at Mr. Orange, Mr. White is aiming at Joe, and Nice Guy Eddie has his gun pointed at Mr. White. Then everybody fires, and two seconds later, Joe and Eddie are dead and Mr. White is mortally wounded. But who shot whom, and in what order? I ran the scene back in slow motion, and this is the best I can figure it out:
Joe shoots first, hitting Mr. Orange.
Mr. White fires next, killing Joe.
Eddie fires, missing Mr. White. Strangely enough, he starts to recoil and collapse at this point as though he's been shot, even though nobody has fired at him.
Eddie fires again, hitting Mr. White.
As he falls, Mr. White shoots and kills Eddie.
Can anyone corroborate this? I only have the movie on VHS, and the slo-mo playback is pretty grainy.
While watching the dreadful Jerry Bruckheimer movie Pearl Harbor, I noticed that during the scene in which Ben Affleck battles German pilots, he shouts to an Allied pilot, "Nice shot, Red Two!"
"Hey," I thought, "that sounds like Star Wars."
Right I was. During the final battle of Return of the Jedi, a Rebel pilot shoots down an Imperial pilot outside the second Death Star. A fellow Rebel pilot shouts, "Nice shot, Red Two!"
That's right -- Jerry Bruckheimer included a Star Wars reference in a movie about Pearl Harbor. Well, heck, a little lack of respect never killed anyone, I guess. I hope that when this guy gets around to making a blockbuster special effects spectacular about 9/11, he doesn't forget to include a guy in one of the Twin Towers, watching in horror as a plane flies toward his building, and then taking a bite out of a carrot and saying, "What's up, Doc?"
Does anyone agree that in the Matt Dillon-Neve Campbell-Denise Richards-Bill Murray-Kevin Bacon thriller Wild Things, the hottest girl by a wide margin is Denise Richards' friend, played by who-dat Toi Svane?
I got my teeth cleaned last week. Was the hygienist cute? I guess she was, now that you mention it. She was slender, bespectacled, slight of bosom, and smartly outfitted in blue scrubs -- I fairly clicked my heels as I followed her out of the waiting room, so eager was I to be examined.
As she took down my dental history, I was relieved to notice the wedding band on her left ring finger -- now I felt no obligation to hit on her. I wouldn't have hit on her anyway, even if she had been wearing a "Single and Horny" T-shirt, but I would have felt obligated to, and then I would have felt weak and insignificant when I left the clinic with no more phone numbers than when I arrived. (Even after discounting for my natural shyness, social ineptitude, and general hostility toward humankind, you have to admit that macking on a dental hygienist is a tough maneuver. I don't doubt it's been executed successfully. But people have also run four-minute miles and climbed Mount Everest, and you won't see me trying to duplicate those feats.)
So this was to be a crush. That was okay, because I like crushes -- that is, I like temporary crushes, as opposed to the pathetic unrequited kind that accounts receivable clerks are known to nurse for years for human resources supervisors until one day they (the HR supervisors) just up and leave to work at Starbucks corporate and don't bother to so much as stop at their (the AR clerks') cubicles to say goodbye.
Temporary crushes, by contrast, offer lots of room for fantasy and self-delusion. For example, let's say you stopped at PetSmart earlier this evening to buy some rat chow. And let's say that the cash register girl was awfully cute: agreeably flat-chested, long dark hair and matching dark eyes, and a smile that would make Apollo squint -- toothsome but not toothy, flirtatious but not wanton, friendly, warm, possibly even genuine.
Your encounter with Ms. Smiley lasted perhaps 90 seconds, from "Did you find everything okay?/Sure did, thanks." to "Have a good night./Yeah, you too." But, as you fight traffic in Cherry Creek, you convince yourself that there was a connection. Nothing major, but as you entered your PIN, you felt a spark pass between you. And you're pretty sure the guy in front of you didn't get quite as nice a smile when she scanned his biodegradable kitty litter. Yeah. She seemed to perk up a little when you came through the line, like she'd been waiting all day to talk to someone like you. Or maybe even you specifically -- you'd been in that store before, and maybe she saw you check out with another cashier and thought, "Wow, he's cute! I hope the next time he comes in he goes through my line!" Now that you think about it, there was an unmistakable hint of recognition in her eyes when she greeted you. Probably she wanted to tell you that she was getting off work in just an hour, if you wanted to grab a caramel-chocolate lattemochaccino at the Peabody's Coffee across the street, but maybe she's shy, or maybe PetSmart has a policy prohibiting employees from hitting on customers, which is bullshit; how can PetSmart stand in the way of something that feels so right? You were this close to asking her out yourself, but you didn't want to embarrass her in front of the other customers, and besides, why not let things simmer for another week or two, until you need to come back for chew toys? None of this is true, of course. Ms. Smiley probably had a number of things on her mind -- her sick four-year-old, maybe, or her delinquent car payment, or her aching feet -- and couldn't pick you out of a police lineup if you built a rat chow bomb and blew up an elementary school. But who cares? It's not about reality, it's about generating the best possible mental images during your daily autoerotic stimulation session.
And once every 31 years or so, the planets align and a temporary crush becomes... something much better. This happened when I was living in San Francisco in 1999 and had a DEFCON-5 crush on Jill, the 22-year-old counter girl at my regular cybercafe. Jill had a taut body, a party girl attitude, and a penchant for dressing like Shirley Manson of Garbage. She was not the kind of girl I usually dated.
One day, while I was sitting outside the cafe, sipping a caramel-chocolate lattemochaccino and struggling to write funny strings of words in my notebook, Jill stomped out to an adjacent table, flopped in a chair, and lit a cigarette. "This day sucks!" she said, exhaling a plume of smoke. "God! I can't wait for it to be over."
"That's too bad," I said. "You should come see Austin Powers 2 with me tonight. That'll cheer you up." I don't normally say things like that to hard-bodied punk-rock-wannabe party chicks who smoke, and I don't know why I said it then. But I did.
She narrowed her eyes and cast me a sidelong glance. "No," she said, "I'm just gonna go home and take a hot bath and relax."
"Fuck that," I said. "You need to have some fun. How much fun are you going to have sitting around your apartment? You should come out with me."
She glanced at me again. "Okay, yeah," she said, nodding.
"Um, okay," I said, feeling suddenly like an weekend card player heading to the final table of the World Series of Poker. "Let me get your number and I'll call you later."
Because this is a family-oriented blog, I won't describe the good things that happened that evening. I will say that while the good things were happening, I thought, "I really should stop for a moment and write down exactly how this happened, because sure as shit I'm not going to remember in the morning how I pulled this off."
I was right.
Anyway, my dental appointment went fine. The cute hygienist had a gentle touch and laughed politely at the jokes I cracked each time she sucked the spit out of my mouth with the saliva-slurping machine*. And we had this exchange:
SHE: What do you do for a living?
HE: I'm an accountant.
SHE: (Insincerely) Oh, cool! Do you like it?
HE: (Insincerely) It's okay. It keeps me off the streets. Do you like being a hygienist?
SHE: (Pause, wry smile) It keeps me off the streets.
It was a nice moment -- a little sad and a little real.
My next appointment is August 4. I've considered calling a few days ahead and asking if Cute Hygienist can clean my teeth again, but that would probably be too weird. So I'll probably slip the receptionist a ten and mutter, "There's an extra sawbuck in it for you if you make sure Cute Hygienist gets the call."
*DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Where does all the spit go? What is the minimum amount of money you would accept to drink 8 fluid ounces of that spit at the end of the day?
A few weeks ago, while The Negotiator and I waited for the train to take us to the Mammoth home opener, a young man dressed in large clothing and armed with fliers approached us. "Do you guys listen to hip-hop?" he asked.
The Negotiator looked apprehensive, but I spoke right up. "Sure," I said.
"All right, come to the show," he said, handing each of us a blurry flier for MC Twinkie (featuring Suzy-Q) or some such. He turned to go, but looked back. "And use the other side to write down phone numbers or something. Don't litter!"
"Okay," I said, a bit taken aback but impressed by his nerve.
A few minutes later, the hip-hop guy returned. "You guys can throw those things on the ground if you want," he said, looking sheepish. "I don't really care what you do with them."
If you're going to lecture total strangers at a train stop about the evils of littering, I say stick to your guns. Don't back down, man! If anything, you need to crank the volume to 11: "If I see you guys throwing your fliers on the ground, you won't even be allowed into the MC Twinkie (featuring Suzy-Q) show! You'll have to stand outside in the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!"
I made some Thai fried rice last week, and the recipe called for chicken broth. While mixing the broth into a peanut sauce, I noticed the label said, "Use in your favorite recipes, or serve as a hot beverage."
A hot beverage? Chicken broth? Really?
BARTENDER: What'll you have?
KILGORE TROUT: Bailey's and broth.
B: You want Swanson broth? Campbell's?
KT: No, well is fine.
B: Beef or chicken?
KT: Beef. And some oyster crackers.
Ad copy seen in the May 2004 issue of Runner's World, for Adidas shoes:
6 Feb 2001: Kitty Cole and 140 marathoners sail to the most remote continent on earth [for the Antarctic Marathon]. The continent welcomes them with gale force winds, snow squalls and subzero temperatures. The runners' unanimous response? Run the marathon on the ship that brought them there (324 laps on the enclosed 5th deck; 422 on the slippery-but-scenic 6th outer deck). Less than ideal? Maybe. Impossible? Never.
The Antarctic Marathon is not easy. It's not cheap, either -- packages start at $4,699. Now, I'm not going to call someone a wuss for not wanting to run in "gale force winds, snow squalls and subzero temperatures," but if you don't want to face extreme conditions, why waste several thousand dollars on a trip to Antarctica? The continent is on the bottom of the planet! What would you expect, sunshine and green meadows? This ad doesn't make me want to buy Adidas shoes. It makes me think Adidas customers are morons.
[If you think it's impossible to run a marathon in Antarctica, go here to read about the North Pole Marathon, won last year in 3:43:17 -- an above-average time in good conditions, let alone on floating ice floes in snowshoes and -25C temperatures.]
Two stories from work:
We started using a new payroll company this year. Attached to my January 14 paycheck was a coupon for a free sub at Quizno's (with purchase of drink and chips).
A few weeks ago, my company allowed a Sam's Club employee to hang around in the breakroom all day and sell memberships to our employees.
Look: if I want a toasted Turkey Bacon Guacamole sandwich or a 200-pack of toilet paper, I know where to go. I already have to endure TV ads, radio ads, sporting event sponsorships, Internet banner ads, spam, junk mail, billboards, ads showing before movies, candy bar ads on gas station pump handles, telemarketing, corporate naming rights on stadiums, product placement in movies, and buses transformed into rolling billboards. Is it too much to ask that I don't get marketed to at work? What's next -- pop-up ads in the accounting software? Sponsorship patches on our business casual clothing? A requirement that we say "I'm lovin' it" before we can get paid?
Is there a theoretical point at which a culture becomes completely saturated with advertising, collapses under its own weight, and becomes a Marketing Singularity?
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