Ed Os Blog

750Words.com

2011-09-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

First of all: Happy birthday to me.

Secondly: the actual blog entry.

Part of the reason that I write this blog is to document. Part of the reason I write is for chicks (clearly!). Part of the reason I write this blog is to ... ponder.

I don't fool myself into thinking that the couple hundred of people who "like" my blog read it regularly, and I'm pretty sure that not many others even know it exists, but pondering on this blog can be challenging because I know I do have an audience.

Which, of course, is part of the thrill.

Even if it's just a few people, though, I have a tendency to censor myself lately in this space in a way I never did back when it was, like, four people that were reading my MySpace blog.

I'm not complaining. I'm just saying.

I found a site, though, that gives me a private area to muse. One that uses a game layer to encourage me to participate daily.

And one that generates lots of stats. Which. I. Love.

The idea is that many of us like the concept of writing, but we don't do it as much as we'd like. We get distracted and/or intimidated on what people might think. 750words.com gives a canvas to write about three pages (750 words) a day, in a totally private environment. Just to get writing and to encourage thinking.

There might be other sites like this, but I don't know them and don't care about them (they're not in my Monkeysphere). I do know this one, and I do like it. I've only made a single entry, and we'll see how long I can keep with it, but... so far, so good.

Here are a couple of screen grabs of the stats for my first entry. (Yes, I wrote for 20 minutes at work, and I feel bad about it, but it's my birthday so cut me some slack!)

I feel like I might be cheating a bit with my writing. I knew what I wanted to explore and what I, basically, want to write about--I've even mentioned it a few times on my blog--while perhaps a more "pure" experience would be writing whatever popped into my head on any given day.

But that's what this place is for. Hah.

So, I hope to explore and develop that idea on 750words.com, and, at some point, come to some kind of resolution about the issue. I might pull entries over to this blog or I might just recap them... or they might end up in a different medium altogether.

Language

2011-08-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

I am sure that someone more wise and pithy than I am has come up with a saying along the lines of "A problem is an opportunity for a solution" or "Turn lemons into lemonaide". Someone more enterprising has even probably made posters with these sayings on them. Something like:

(I don't know what that second one means, but I see a "hand jobs in the future" joke there somewhere...)

My point is that there is almost always a silver lining to something bad, and/or that something bad can sometimes be spun into something good.

My last blog entry was about ambiguity. It talked about how it sucks not to know what we can know and what we can't... and/or that it sucks to not understand whether it's something that should suck or not.

One area where ambiguity (lemons) has provided me lots and lots of fun (lemonaid) is language. I only speak English at any level worth mentioning (I studied Spanish for years and years, but I can barely read it at a functional level; nuanced conversation and intricacies of the language are well over my head, and I can barely remember any of the Japanese I took oh, so long ago) but even given this limitation I have learned to love the lack of clarity that exists there.

Obviously, I want to have clarity sometimes. Maybe even most of the time. If I want to bake a cake, I don't want to have the directions to be "Cook the cake for a while". I will need to know that I need to preheat the oven, the temperature, and the length of time that it should be in there.

In the absence of purely functional needs, though, ambiguities can be quite entertaining. I love puns and other plays on words. ("I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me." ... how can someone not appreciate that?)

While I think my vocabulary is pretty good (in English, at least) I still find myself glossing over what words really mean. I remember words and phrases at a molecular level, if you will, rather than at an atomic one. I remember phrases and context but not always what the words themselves mean and can mean. (Like I might remember what what is, but not oxygen and hydrogen.)

By examining words at that atomic level (or even sub-atomic, if one wants to get into etymology) is great fun. Homophones and homonyms and homographs, oh, my!

I'd be her beau if she'd bow after I made her a bow from a bough and put a red bow on it.

Language is a beautiful thing.

In addition to the words that exist, it amazes me to think of the words that do not exist (at least in English). Agnostic and altruism are words that are fewer than 200 years old, even though the concepts far predated the creation of them. English lacks the hundreds of words for snow that the Sami (not the Eskimos, for the record) have. Thinking about the words that English does not possess--especially for one who does not speak any other languages well--is daunting. I just do not know what I do not know.

I am not a massive appreciator of art. I think that, quite often, "art" is just a word applied to otherwise useless stuff that people make and/or consume. I know that I am a bit of a philistine, though, and I appreciate some of that "useless stuff", so... I don't know where that gets me.

Poets seem, to me, capable of filling gaps in language. They take words that we know (or at least words that exist) and stretch them and make us look at them in different ways so that we feel differently about those words than we did before they were used by the poet.

That, in my opinion, is art worth appreciating.

Recently I have been thinking about the phrase, "I am sorry". It's not an uncommon phrase, for sure, and one that polite children had drilled into our heads at a young age. It's a phrase that too many of us use too frequently even as too many of us use it too infrequently.

Maybe it's just me, but I hadn't really thought about what it means. Or what it can mean.

"I am sorry" is, essentially, the same as "I apologize". When one does something wrong, it is polite to apologize. To acknowledge to the wronged party that it was something that should not have been done.

"I am sorry" also can speak less to the act than the effect:

"I am sorry [that you are unhappy]."
"I am sorry [that I hurt you]."
"I am sorry [that you feel that way]."

It doesn't offer an apology--it doesn't necessarily even claim any culpability.

A third, I think less common, meaning for "I am sorry" is "I regret". Even "I regret" can mean "I apologize"... but I mean it in a different way. I mean it in the "I don't like how this turned out for me" kind of way:

"I am sorry [that I didn't buy gold at $300/oz]."
"I am sorry [that I didn't get that mole checked out]."
"I am sorry [that I ever talked to that chick]."

The ambiguity of language can defeat the purpose of using it. Even a simple phrase like "I am sorry" can carry so much nuance and meaning (that is capable of being interdependent or independent) that it gets to the point where I despair to ever being able to truly communicate anything. (And, given my difficulty on deciding on what I want to communicate, it's particularly frustrating to not be able to do so when I actually get there...)

I am not a poet, but I will have to do my best to make "I am sorry" mean what I want it to.

Ambiguity

2011-08-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

I am not a religious person. I am not a spiritual-but-not-religious person. I'm not eager to die, but (as long as it's not too painful) I am resigned to the extremely high likelihood that I will experience it at some point or another.

At a really high level, then, I think I deal with ambiguity pretty well. Sort of by ignoring it.

In my job, I take things that different people (clients, coworkers, users, et al) express and I mash it up and I form specifications or personas or other documentation that, hopefully, encapsulates and clarifies.

At a micro level, then, I think I deal with ambiguity pretty well. By trying to get rid of it.

In addition to existence- and minutiae-based life, there's a lot of middle ground... some of which (health, relationships) are pretty important and some of which (politics, ice cream) are less so.

It's this cast middle ground where ambiguity is much more difficult for me. (I don't think I'm alone, and I don't think I'm particularly special or remarkable for this weakness, but it's my blog so I'm gonna write about me, dammit!) Economic policies seem to be easier to address than a question like "Why does anything exist?", even if they're more difficult than putting together a set of wireframes for a website. Friendships--even in all their complexities that make setting up a meeting agenda look like child's play--must be more understandable than free will, right?

When I was growing up, my parents had a poster or a picture of something with the Serenity Prayer on the wall. To remind everyone, it goes something like this:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."

Perhaps because I really took the gist of the saying to heart, I ignored that it was a prayer and that the capital G word was used.

I don't recite that prayer to myself on a regular basis, but I take solace in knowing that other individuals have the same challenges I do... I guess misery loves company, right?

Applying it to the big stuff? Easy. I cannot know which definition of agnostic is correct (whether we cannot know God, or whether we do not know of God's existence). I cannot understand why string theory exists, even if I ever end up wrapping my head around what it is.

Applying it to the little stuff? Sure thing. Even when complex, the little stuff just takes clear thinking and creativity and (if it can't be avoided) hard work. I don't want to have to buy a new car, but I can make a decision I can live with if I put my head to it.

The middle ground, though... that's the rub. When must I accept I cannot change something? When should I accept that? When does the serenity I feel by letting go merely provide a nice cover for an absence of courage?

Are these questions big stuff? Or are they little stuff that I'm not willing to (*gasp*) work on?

What is my personal record for number of questions asked to end a blog?

Social Convexity

2011-08-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

Do you know what I think is cool?

(If you guessed "pizza", "porn", or the "Portland Trail Blazers": you get partial credit. It's not what I had in mind here, though, and please remember I do like some things that don't start with "p".)

I think gravity is cool.

More specifically--or more relevantly for this blog--I think that gravity wells are cool.

Gravity wells are (as far as my undereducated-in-hard-sciences monkey brain can understand them) representations of the effect that matter has on everything around it.

Space with no significant mass can be represented as a flat sheet, and when you add an object (a moon, or a planet, or a star, or a black hole, or the million backwards-baseball-cap-wearing dudes I want to shoot out into space) to that plane, you get a bend. A more massive object creates a deeper indentation, with a black hole (which has a singularity of density) creating an infinitely deep well.

I think that's about right.

In any case, the universe interacts with these indentations. They can influence how other objects move and can even bend light.

What if people are ... social wells? They influence people and institutions and events to varying degrees. Some people do a great job of building relationships (of whatever kind) because of their social concavity breadth and depth.

While a concavity can be an indentation on the surface, a convexity is something that pops up OUT of that surface. A bulge, if you will.

I don't know that are gravity bulges, but if we extend the notion of social concavities to include social convexities, I think it gets a bit more interesting.

How might a social convexity manifest itself? A cold demeanor. A distance from other people. An unwillingness to go out of one's way to help others. A physical deformity, perhaps. All things that can help push people away.

Would these rippled in the social plane be absolute or relative? Part of the beauty of gravity wells (it seems to me) is that they are pretty universally applicable (although I'm sure at the quantum level things break down; they always seem to). But for a person: wouldn't one person find a racist dude to be a convexity while another (fellow racist) would find him to be a concavity?

Perhaps. I don't have all the answers (for once).

I just think about my bulge. Or, rather, my social convexity (or, indeed, maybe I have increased social convexity because I think about my bulge) and I wonder if I should be trying harder to have more friends or trying harder to build stronger ties to existing friends.

Or maybe I shouldn't worry about it, because some fellas are convex and some ain't.

The Weekend, Part I: Two Conversations

2011-08-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

My most recent bout of being single (I enjoy the term "bout" in this case. A "bout" is a boxing term for a contest, of couse, and you can come down with a bout of plague. It occurred to me that I actually don't know the definition of "bout". According to dictionary.com it is:

A short period of intense activity of a specified kind.
An attack of illness or strong emotion of a specified kind.

While "bout" might be an enjoyable term, I'm not sure that it will be a "short period". We'll see...) is much like my previous stint sans a SO (stint: another interesting word choice by my stream-of-consciousness... often associated with hearts and jobs): one of semi-soul-smashing loneliness intermingled with hope and punctuated by little adventures.

(How's that for a first sentence to start off a blog?)

This past weekend was the first one in quite some time that I'd gone out three nights in a row. With the demise of Chopstix-as-I-knew it (new ownership removed the dance floor, which means that there will be fewer women dancing, which means that there will be fewer women to admire and/or lightly mock, which means that there is little reason for me to go there) and my work and relationship stuff I had going on, I just wasn't motivated to go out on Thursdays like I once was.

This past weekend, though, I decided to head out for three nights in a row, just to see what would happen. Nothing amazing happened, but enough transpired for me to write a blog about it. Or two.

This one will focus on two conversations I had on Saturday night, and the other one (should I write it) will examine some sketches I made with a new app on my phone as I consumed rum and observed life around me. Generally, as it turns out, the blogs will be written in reverse chronological order.

Talkin' Ball

It was Saturday night. Or, more accurately, it was Sunday morning. Ozzie's was closed and I was standing outside, waiting. Not waiting for anything in particular, but waiting for everyone to go home so I could, too... or waiting for something to happen. Or both.

It was both, this night.

Somewhere on my blog, there's an entry about my first night at Ozzie's. The entry is about a girl I met and how I managed to talk her up (and eventually go on a date with her) in spite of her being escorted around the bar by a guy. I can't find that blog entry (the search feature on Blogger isn't all it's cracked up to be) but that guy has remained a regular at Ozzie's. I'm not sure (actually, I doubt) that he remembers that first night, but he's always seemed like a nice guy. I will call him First Night Guy.

In spite of seeing him (probably) literally dozens of times at Ozzie's, I've never had a conversation with him. Until this night.

Now, before I get into (my recollection of) the particulars of the conversation, I wanted to give a couple of pieces of background info:

First Night Guy does a bit of a schtick when he sings karaoke. He has a drink in his hand (who doesn't?) when he signs up, but he is cogent and (usually) quite sober. When he takes the mic, though? He starts staggering. He leans this way and that. He belts out his song beautifully, but he sandbags it. It's odd but funny.
I do my fair share of drinking and have been known to have diminished articulation capabilities after doing so. I don't claim to remain perfectly lucid after lots of rum, and I'm pretty used to talking to drunk individuals.

My conversation with First Night Guy had the lowest signal:noise ratio I've ever experienced. It was, quite literally, three minutes of him talking where he said almost nothing. As drunk as I was, I knew enough to let him go, because I was witnessing something amazing.

Let me try my best to reconstruct the conversation. We were talking about the NBA, for some reason, before it all went downhill (in a good way!):

FNG: So, I tell you...
Me: Yeah... ?
FNG: I see guys ... you know.
Me:... ?
FNG: From Seattle.
Me: OK.FNG: Jason Terry. Man, Jason Terry.
Me: Went to Arizona, drafted by the Hawks. Sure.
FNG: He... Jason Terry.
Me: ... ?
FNG: I mean, I was preseason McDonald's All-American, but--
Me: Wow. Cool.
FNG: --Michael Dickerson, I mean, he...
Me: ... ?
FNG: You know. They talk about it being rough. But this is Seattle. It's not.
Me: It's not... what?
FNG: Doug Christie? He's serious. But.
Me: Well, he went to Pepperdine and his wife is kind of crazy.
FNG: He went to Ranier Beach.
Me: Yeah ... ?
FNG: [eyes kind of roll back into his head] ...
Me: You OK?
FNG: I mean, the A-T-L? That's serious.
Me: Uh, yeah.
FNG: ...
Me: ... ?
FNG: ...
Me: Um, sooo...

FNG: I think I'm gonna take this taxi.
Me: Good idea.

There were about four spots in there where I wanted to laugh. Four other spots where I wanted to find a bucket of ice water to splash on him to wake him up. I hope he made it home safely. I look forward to seeing him stagger around (either legitimately or not) again soon.

Unsolicited Advice

I like to change things. I don't like to change my place of residence or my place of employment or my friendships or anything else important, so I'm left to changing which video games I play and how I look.

It's fun to wear different outfits and have different facial hair and hair styles. I know that my visage is not really not an important part of who I am (other than, perhaps, my lack of attachment to it), so I'm willing to wear pants that most (straight) guys wouldn't wear. I'm willing to part my hair on either side, depending on my mood. I'm willing to let women I don't know give me advice on how I ought to present myself in public.

This interaction started as so many others have: I drank lots of rum and was wandering around Ozzie's, waiting for my next turn to sing. Someone started to talk to me, so I stopped. In this case, there were two "someones". They were both from Austin, Texas, as it turns out.

The first woman was dark-haired and seated to my left at the bar. The second woman was slightly older and was wearing glasses.

Other than what she said, I don't remember much about the First Austin Chick ("FAC"). She had darker hair and might have bit a bit heavy. The Second Austin Chick ("SEC") had glasses on. She was slightly older. And she had a ... very weird stare.

What do I mean by that? It looked like she was looking at the back of my skull when she looked at me. I don't know how to explain it other than by putting together a magnificent chart:

This is a top-down view of a normal person's gaze (the top one) and her gaze (the bottom one). It was weird.

Somehow, my age came up. I made FAC guess my age (she guessed 26; I'm slipping a bit) and showed her my license to prove that she was way off. At this point, this conversation (or something like it) occurred:

FAC: You do look a lot younger. It's your pores.
Me: Thank you--what?
FAC: I work with skin, and you have great pores.
Me: Um, OK.
SAC: I do hair. I like your hair, but ...
FAC: Yeah, you've got a good look.
Me: Um...
SAC: But you should... your part isn't working.
Me: Uh, OK. [I pushed my hair around a little bit.] What about now?
SAC: Yes. YES! Keep it like that and you will definitely get laid tonight.
Me: Uh. Yeah. OK.

Another time, another place, another woman? I would have said something along the lines of, "Is that an offer?" or "Are you writing checks you won't cash?" or "My hair isn't the reason I'll definitely get laid tonight." or ... something equally ridiculous/crappy/charming.

But she was who she was, and I was where I was, and so... I said, "Uh. Yeah. OK."

At that point they became semi-distracted by someone else, and I took my pores and slipped away.

It wasn't exactly the flawless feet compliment I received in Las Vegas in 2007, but I'll take it.

They Drive Buses AND Entertain Me

2011-08-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

I was txting Shawty the other day. And by "the other " I mean "yes". As part of my txt, I fingered in "I no longer have a cat".

Which was accidental. It's true, of course, but I'd intended to txt "I no longer have a car". Stupid consonants.

In any event, I no longer have a car. For the past couple of months, I have been taking the bus to work and to other places around the city. While it has been a drag in some ways (it takes longer to get anywhere, some people smell really bad on the bus, hot women rarely talk to me on the bus...), it has been just fine in others (it's cheaper than gas and insurance, it's nice for going to Belltown after prefunking, hot women rarely talk to me off the bus, anyway...)

It's also provided me some entertainment. While I generally dislike interacting with people unless I'm getting paid for it or the person is an attractive chick, I must admit that bus drivers can be entertaining.

They can entertaining individually, but they are more entertaining when their behaviors are juxtaposed against one another. Some are cheerful, some are dour; some are helpful, some are grouchy.

Yesterday, I rode the bus three times (it would have been four, but I worked late and mooched a ride home from a coworker). My experience with each of the three busdrivers was markedly different and, taken as a whole, entertaining to me.

Ride #1

It was around 8:30 AM. It was a Monday and it was the first of the month. And I knew I was going to have some troubles.

As part of my bus-riding lifestyle, I have invested in monthly bus passes. Or, rather, a single ORCA card that I can recharge for a month. One need not wait until the actual month to charge it (I could pay for several months in advance), but I get the sense that most people wait until the actual month to charge it (I know that I do; I don't want to lay out $90 earlier than I have to... I don't want my vast estate to be reduced in the event I'm hit by a bus). It does, though, take 24-48 hours for the online recharge to actually kick in.

Which is where I knew I was gonna have some troubles.

There I was, Monday morning, with an uncharged ORCA card. I could have brought $2.50 to pay for my fare, but it doesn't seem right that I should have to pay $90 for the whole month and then still have to pay $2.50 merely because of a system delay.

So I didn't bring cash to pay.

What was the worst that could happen? I understand that bus drivers may not actually stop a rider from riding because she refuses to pay (although my understandings in life don't always turn out to be true). So I figured, if I were called on it, I would explain that the money I paid hadn't kicked in yet.

I was still apprehensive, though, as I got onto the bus. I tried to be cool and act like it had happened before when the scanner on the bus beep beep beep'ed at me, indicating my card had no funds associated with it.

I looked up at the driver and said, "Oh, crap. It's the first, isn't it? It looks like the system hasn't caught up yet."

The driver smiled and said, "It's fine. It's a Monday and the first of the month. It'll be happening all day."

OK. Cool. I sat in my favorite seat (passenger's side, two rows back from the handicapped/disabled/crippled (which is the right term?) area) and made it to work without incident.

Ride #2

The second ride of the day was in the early afternoon. I had a meeting about a mile away, and rather than walking it, I took the bus. It was conceivable that my card would have access associated with it, and the first bus driver had been cool about the situation, so I felt more confident using the bus.

Assuming, of course, I could catch it.

I knew that, as long as the route I needed was running on time, I would make it. If it was a bit late, I'd still get to my meeting in plenty of time. But if it was early (or if I were late), I would have to wait for the next bus and I might be punctualitily challenged. Not good.

So I walked briskly from my office and turned the corner... and saw my bus about a block away, rounding another corner to where it would be stopped. So I picked up my pace to a jog and then more of a running situation.

And I made it. Barely... but I made it.

(Unfortunately, the gel inserts that I had in my boots got all out of whack, pushed up towards the front of my shoes. I had to feel them, all askew, for the rest of the day because I am loathe to take my shoes off and rejigger the goods. (That sounds weirder than I'd originally intended, but I'll let it stand.))

I scanned my card and... beep beep beep. No funds associated with the card.

I looked up at the driver and said, "Oh, crap. The system still hasn't caught up yet?!?"

He smiled at me and said, "No problem!"

OK. Cool. I sat in my favorite seat and opened my notebook to ensure that I was in the right frame of mind for the meeting.

But the bus driver wasn't done with me.

You see, I was the only one on the bus, and although I was sitting about five meters away from him, he decided to strike up a conversation. With me.

Him: You're all sweaty!
Me: A little. [I wasn't. I was winded, but not sweaty. I need to run at least two blocks before I am soaked with perspiration. Give me a little credit!]
Him: It's hot out there.
Me: Yeah, warming up, all right.
Him: [Moving the bus away from the curb and towards the next stop.] I like the heat. It (something unintelligible).
Me: What?
Him: [I couldn't really hear him from here on out, so I'm typing my best guesses.] When it gets hot the women wear less.
Me: Yeah. That's good.
Him: They show more skin...
Me: *nod*
Him: And then they walk around, jump on trampolines...

Honestly... I don't know if he said that, but I am pretty sure I heard something about trampolines.

Whatevs. It was disgusting (I think) but entertaining.

Ride #3

My meeting finished, and I had to take the bus back to the office for my next meeting. I was running late, and the bus was running late, and it was sort of warm out still. I was feeling antsy.

That feeling, coupled with the two-for-two on getting approvals from bus drivers, added to the possibility that my payment had finally showed up on my ORCA card, gave me a sense of confidence about being OK if my card gave me the beep beep beep again.

As with my understandings, my senses of confidence are sometimes at odds with reality.

I got onto the nearly-full bus, and swiped my card and ... beep beep beep.

I looked up at the driver and said, "What the--!?! The system still hasn't caught up yet!?!"

He frowned and said, "It says your card has no funds associated with it."

I looked confused and said, "Well, I paid for August. It should have registered by now."

He frowned and said, "It says your card has no funds associated with it."

I shrugged and said, "Well, I don't have any money on me."

He frowned and said, "It says your card has no funds associated with it."

I shrugged and started to turn.

He frowned and said, "It says your card has no funds associated with it."

I said, "I'm sorry." And walked to a seat on the bus (my favorite spot had been taken by someone else, alas).

I heard him, presumably as he continued to frown, say, "That's OK. Taxpayers will pick up the tab for your ride, I guess."

So saucy! So entertaining!

I think I might need to get a car.

Dream

2011-07-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

I don't dream a lot. Or, rather, I don't remember them very often. I find dreams fascinating--a mix of recent events and deep memories and (seemingly) pure randomness.

Since I think that one of my prime abilities is to take nonsense and restate it as a pattern (or to take nonsense and restate it as slightly more jargon-laden nonsense), I enjoy hearing about my friends' dreams and then theorizing what they were dreaming about. Right? Way off base? It doesn't matter. It's issue spotting without a teacher's guide.

I tend not to analyze my own dreams, though, even if I remember them. I fear that I might convince myself that what I'm half-jokingly claiming that they mean is actually what they meant. When, in fact, I tend to think dreams are like private versions of made for TV movies that we just catch the middle of.

In any case, I had a dream recently.

I was standing in a bar/restaurant. It was in California. Not a specific bar/restaurant, and I couldn't, like, see the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hollywood sign to indicate it was California, but I just KNEW it. You know?

I also knew that I had run into a guy's car earlier that day. I knew I was at fault.

OK. So. I was there. My best friend growing up, Big Cow, was there. And a female... entity... was there. A woman, but not a specific woman, although it didn't seem odd that a woman entity that was familiar to me but that didn't have a specific form was in the booth near me.

Anyway, she and Big Cow were sitting in a booth (not together, but on opposite sides). I was standing near the booth, and I was having a conversation. I was talking to a muscle-bound man who was extremely agitated... agitated that I had run into his car's bumper.

He (with his large friend lurking in the background) kept insisting that I owed him $3200. That seemed a bit steep for me, given I only damaged his bumper, and while I knew I was at fault AND I knew he could beat me up, I still didn't want to pay him that money, or outwardly lie.

So our conversation went something like this:
Him: You need to pay up.
Me: Yes, I do need to take responsibility.
Him: $3200.
Me: I will definitely pay an appropriate amount.
Him: You are gonna pay me $3200, right?
Me: Trust me: you'll get a check for repairs when I get home.
Haha. He kept calling me on it, and I kept trying to dance around it. I think we shook hands at one point, and he had a very firm grip. I think he had a New York accent, too, which is weird given we were in California.

I made eye contact with the female entity sometimes but she was totally uninterested (not uninteresting, of course, but uninterested). I don't remember ever even looking at Big Cow, although I remember thinking that if I got into a fight he wouldn't be much help in spite of being a very big guy himself.

I woke up. I thought it exceedingly odd. I decided to remember it, so I focused on the events in the dream and I typed them up (in a very similar form to the italicized, above). It didn't make sense to me.

But then it did. I hate to admit it that a dream at all influenced my real life (that's crazy, right?) but in this case, it sort of did.

Here we are, less than a week later. And I broke up with my girlfriend tonight.

I can connect the dots, between my dream and that decision, but... I think I'll keep it to myself. I'm sorry. For so many things, I'm sorry, of course. But for not connecting the dots for you: I'm sorry.

Killing Me Softly (?)

2011-07-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

Aging happens to all of us. Until we're dead, I guess (although even that exception could be debated).

I've been pretty lucky in my life on a variety of fronts, one of which is injuries. I broke my pinky finger in elementary school, and I had a series of turned ankle incidents in late high school and into college, but generally I've been lucky. In spite of my relatively advanced age, I've awoken each morning with few (or no) aches and pains.

That is... until recently.

About a week ago, I noticed that my leg hurt. My calf and part of my thigh and my butt. All up the left side, it hurt when I stood up or walked around. It's been a week, and it's not better.

I plan on going to the doctor if it doesn't clear itself up soon, but it's gotten me to thinking.

Thinking about how I perceived aging. And how it might be much, much worse than I'd anticipated.

While I have, for some time, been able to (intellectually) wrap my mind around some of the psychological impacts of aging (lost opportunities, impending nonexistence, etc.) I always had the physical aspects of aging as something creeping and inhibitory. I envisioned that my mind would be slightly less sharp over time, that I would be more easily winded (and enflabbened) and that I might even have to consider dating women in their mid-thirties.

In other words, I envisioned a rather slow decline. Of course, there's always the I met a quick end, but that sort of death is not something I've spent too much time thinking about (other than cat- and student loan-related issues...)

So... I'd anticipated old age creeping up on me: a descent into infirmity before whatever identifies me as "me" is snuffed out. Or moves on. Or whatever.

I did not think about an alternative: that getting old might be painful. That it might involve me wincing every time I roll over in bed or that it might contain maladies that occur with no warning and simply never go away.

That would suck.

I complained about my singing voice being gone some time back in my blog and it (for whatever it's worth) is pretty much back now. Maybe my back will right itself, or maybe I'll get a pill or a massage or something that will bring me back into non-pain during all my waking (and some sleeping) hours.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

In the mean time, though, it's given me more to think about and makes me think that maybe (JUST maybe) dating women in their mid-thirties might be the least of my problems down the road.

Saturday Night's All Right

2011-07-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

Whether it's in the sense of verbal altercations or actual fisticuffs, I don't get in many fights. In fact, I've only been in one as an adult (January, 2008, defending a friend; I lost, but didn't lose eyes or teeth, so it's fine).

Saturday night I went out with Politica. We went drinking and dancing in Belltown, and we walked the mile or so back to our neighborhood.

It was an uneventful walk until we got about two blocks from my place.

I don't keep up on local politics, but there's been a push to allow more street vendors to sell food in Seattle. It's unclear to me whether the laws or regulations have actually changed, but there seem to be more of them popping up lately, and one of them happens to have popped up about two blocks from my place.

(It sells hot dogs, and while I'm sure the cream cheese-laden pieces are delicious, I don't plan on partaking any time soon. I keep my kitchen stocked with hot dog fixin's, and even I am not lazy enough to not be willing to make that short walk home.)

It was about 2:30 AM when Politica and I approached the stand, and there was a pretty good crowd for a Saturday. People were jibber-jabbering and eating hot dogs. Good stuff.

The crowd was, unfortunately, in our way, and there was not a lot of space to walk between them.

Now, normally I would dodge and move and avoid contact with anyone, but I walked past the first couple of people and, seeing that not ONE person had moved, I got a little aggravated. So I squared my shoulders and just walked forward.

Bumping, of course, into someone.

Someone, of course, who wasn't happy about it.

I'll admit I was not polite. I did not "give" as I walked, and as a result my should hit his shoulder harder than I otherwise would prefer to. Further, 99% of the time if I bumped into a person that hard I would turn and apologize.

But I was irked that they were obstructing the whole sidewalk and the rum in my system had given me precious little inclination to apologize for anything.

While I will admit that I was not polite, there was a marked overreaction on the part of the bump-ee.

I took two steps and then I heard the following gem:

"Do you want to fight?"

I know enough not to turn around. Although I listened for approaching footsteps as I kept walking.

"Do you wanna fucking fight?"

Was it an effort to goad? Was his rage building? I didn't know and didn't want to find out. I can't be goaded. We kept walking.

*splat*

We looked to our left and there, on the sidewalk, was a half-consumed hot dog bun. I saw cream cheese as I glanced down, and I'm not sure if there was meat left or not. I guess it doesn't really matter.

As I walked, I looked over my shoulder and shouted something about the guy wasting his money on a hot dog.

Some time later, as we were safely ensconced in my apartment, I reflected that I was really glad that the guy didn't hit me with that hot dog. I like to think that I can't be goaded, but a cream cheese hot dog hitting me in the back of my head and neck might have been enough for me to make an exception... even if it was to my detriment.

That's What She ... Oops!

2011-06-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

I share an office with two coworkers. Both nice people with whom I get along just fine.

Earlier today my female coworker received a phone call, and I heard her say, "Oh, OK." Two seconds later, I received a phone call from the front desk downstairs, letting me know I had received something in the mail.

"Oh, OK," I replied.

I stood up and went to retrieve my Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray set. I looked at my coworker and asked her, "Would you like me to grab your package?"

She smiled and seemed a bit confused, but I (pleased with my deduction that we'd both received a call from downstairs) offered, "That's what she said."

That's what she said.

It's a great saying that has traveled from awesome to lame back to awesome again. (And, perhaps, back to lame. I don't care.) It was repopularized on the NBC version of the Office, and the BBC version of the Office had the classic "Said an actress to a bishop" version... which I rarely use, on account of its lack of ubiquity.

So I said, "That's what she said," and overlooked her continued confusion. Maybe she thought it was lame, or maybe she thought I was being too cheeky. In either case, I shrugged and exited the room.

I went downstairs and there was one package. My package.

Now it was my turn to be confused.

Upon returning to my desk, I asked whether she'd received something in the mail.

She informed me that she had received nothing but a wrong phone call from the wrong desk.

Oops. I did not see that coming.

That's what she said.

UnfriendEd (O)

2011-05-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

I run a tight ship when it comes to Facebook. I regularly pare down my friends list and I rarely keep non-family members that don't add value to my life (either in real life or Facebook life) on as friends. Not that every time I unfriend someone it means I actively dislike them, but my Facebook friends list generally reflects my real life.

Much of the time when I unfriend someone they know it's coming, and most of the time they don't know it's coming they don't seem to even notice that I've unfriended them (for weeks, if ever)... which helps cement that I made the right choice in zapping them. (I saw one such former Facebook friend on the street the other night; I wasn't sure it was her, and then I thought, "OMG... what if she's pissed that I unfriended her 'lo, so many moons ago?" (I wish I thought exactly with that cadence and vocabulary...) Fortunately, she gave me a finger-wiggling "hello" and a smile that didn't reach her eyes and then we went our separate ways. It could have been worse.)

Because I keep my friends list rather tidy, I am attuned to being unfriended. I know, in other words, when I have one fewer friend than I had before, and by my nature I need to figure out who the unfriender is.

Sometimes it's someone who's hidden their profile, and sometimes it's a glitch in the Facebook system.

Sometimes, though... it's intentional.

This blog details some of those times.

Sometimes my blog rubs people the wrong way. While some might say that apathy is the worst result of writing (and I dislike hearing from my friends that my latest blog is boring *coughcoughWinnercough*), I think that there are far worse results: making my friends look bad, making myself look like a racist homophobic misogynist, or even misrepresenting my actual personality.

In spite of the risk of, say, implying that I am a racist homophobic misogynist, I often am willing to take that chance. You know, for the lolz.

One blog I wrote some time ago is The Unexpected Burded of Extraordinary Charm. It paints a picture of me being so awesome that it excused me walking out of a store with a security device still attached to a jacket I purchased. It was intended to be silly. But not everyone took it that way, I guess.

One of my Facebook friends posted a comment on the blog: "vanity at its finest". Maybe she really thought I was showing my true colors, or maybe she didn't like that Canberry was prominently featured. In any case, she un-fanned my blog and unfriended me on Facebook. I haven't heard from her since.

Oops.

Perhaps because I am pretty uninhibited about what I post on my Facebook wall, I sometimes forget that standard isn't shared by all my Facebook friends. Some time ago, I was Facebook friends with a woman I'd dated casually ("casually" in some regards, if that makes sense) and she seemed to have a pretty good/laid-back sense of humor.

Seemed to.

We'd been chatting off and on for a while and I was Facebook friends with both her and her roommate, and I felt pretty comfortable posting on either/both of their walls, because they seemed to "get" me.

Seemed to.

One day the roomie posted on my friend's wall something along the lines of, "I'm so glad that we got to [do whatever it was]! You're the best for helping me out!!"

And I responded, "She's definitely good for some things. ;)"

Maybe it was the winky. Maybe it was the straw the broke the back of a camel I didn't even know existed, but it was (as the first year Spanish students say) "bastante". Her roomie unfriended me. She blocked me on Facebook. I sent one "REALLY?!?" txt to her. And haven't heard from her since.

Oops, again.

One area of discord on Facebook is politics. I am not a very political person--I have my opinions, but am blessed/damned with the ability to see both sides of almost every issue, so I can muster no passion for political causes, and I certainly am not evangelical about anything other than the awesomeness of tacos and Teenage Fanclub.

There was a woman with whom I was friends on Facebook (a pattern developing, yes?), and she was a big dog person. Actually, a big animal person. I like dogs and kitties, but I'm not militant about it. This young woman worked in a vet emergency room and seemed to be all about animals.

(I am not sure, really, what she was like in real life. Unlike the rest of the people on this list, she was a "pure Facebook" play, as the startup crowd might call it if they tried to meet women in as many different avenues as possible. She was the sister of a friend of my friend, and I lured her into communicating with me. At least for a time.)

Her Facebook naturally reflected her commitment to animals. She posted pics of cute dogs she'd helped. She posted pics of her dogs. She posted about donation and service opportunities to help animals in need.

This is all cool with me, by the way. I respect people who have passion for what they do, and even if her message got a bit pushy, it was fine by me.

I guess it was fine until I ever so slightly challenged her world view.

She posted a status along the lines of, "The difference between dogs and humans is that you can always trust a dog" or "... never trust a human." Something like that.

I find that, to be honest, ridiculous, and I tried to subtly disagree by pointing out that many humans are trustworthy and that some dogs are no good. She sort of overreacted in her response, and I maybe should have let it go, but I pointed out that SHE worked in a situation where she put in a lot of effort to help dogs she doesn't even know, and that dogs lack the depth/capacity to do that sort of work.

Wrapping my point in a compliment, I thought, would make the message easier to handle.

The result? You may be able to guess...

She unfriended me on Facebook. I haven't communicated with her since.

Sometimes Facebook disagreements are aggravated by real life reactions. Much like with the previous chick, I got into hot water with another Facebook friend over animal rights statements. Unlike the previous woman, this person was someone I considered to be a real friend. Or at least something between an acquaintance and a friend... but not someone whom I'd only casually dated or knew because I thought she was cute after arriving on her page from her brother's friend's page.

I have not read Fast Food Nation. I haven't seen Super Size Me. I eat fast food occasionally and I don't want to see the fucked-up things that happen in the industry. I know it's not good for me, and I certainly know it's not pleasant for the animals who get killed in order to make the food.

Similarly, while I eat chicken and hamburger and all sorts of stuff from the grocery store, I don't want to SEE it being made. I don't want to hear the screams of the animals when they die or their glassy eyes as they just sit around, getting bigger and doomed to be slaughtered.

I don't want to see it because I don't find it pleasant, but also because I don't really care. I enjoy the NFL, but I don't enjoy seeing players running windsprints in practice, and I don't want to see them hurting themselves in the weight room. I enjoy water but I don't want to see it running over mud or dead animals rotting upstream before it gets purified and into my belly.

Life is unpleasant, and I know it. I don't need to be reminded of it.

My Facebook friend posted a link to a YouTube video about slaughterhouse processes, and had a comment along the lines of, "Before you eat another being, you MUST watch this!"

To which I replied, "Is celery a being?"

That did not go over well. She unfriended me.

But the story (such as it is) doesn't end there.

Within 48 hours (it might have been that night, it might have been the next night), I bumped into her outside of a bar. She and I "debated" the topic for about two minutes, and it ended with her saying, "I want to hit you in the face right now."

I don't know if I won or lost the debate, but I blocked her when I got home.

Fortunately, several months later we reached detente. She graciously apologized and I humbly accepted and we are Facebook friends once again.

The least expected unfriending I've received was some months ago. I hadn't posted anything outrageous. I hadn't had a blowup with a friend or insulted someone's dog or roommate or roommate's dog... and yet I was down a friend.

Some investigation revealed that it was my paternal grandmother.

I am fortunate enough to have super-cool grandmothers. I am not very guarded in my Facebook persona, and they're either open-minded enough to deal with it or they just don't pay attention to me altogether. Either way it's fine, right?

So when my paternal grandmother unfriended me, I was confused. I looked back through my recent wall posts. I looked at my recent pics. Other than a porn reference and a series of drunken pics of me with shaggy hair, there wasn't much that was potentially offensive.

I couldn't just call her, though. If she was actually mad, then I didn't want to face her wrath without any idea of what I was getting myself into. If she'd accidentally unfriended me, then I didn't want to make her feel bad or demonstrate that I was angst-ridden over it.

It was quite a pickle.

I let it sit for a couple of days and then I made a wall post and my sister and cousin and parents got involved. (It turned out that it was, indeed, accidental. She didn't know how she managed to do it, and was disproportionately apologetic. Or she's an excellent liar.)

And then I was Facebook friends with my grandma again, and Facebook life--for all its ups and downs--was once again good. :)

Potter

2011-05-09T20:34:00.000-07:00

You know how things kind of snowball? Like, you do a little meth and then all of a sudden your teeth are falling out as you pose for a mug shot?

Well, I had something that snowballed. It started off little and then, by the end, it had taken on a life of its own.

First, though, know that I had never lived by myself until just over five years ago. I lived with my parents, and then roomies in college, then my parents again for a year, and then My Ex for the better part of a decade. It was only in early 2006 that I came home to an empty residence.

Well, almost empty.

I have, as you may know, three cats. I never intended to have three cats--especially not in a one bedroom apartment--but it just happened.

That's not the snowballing part, though.

When I was a kid, my parents would leave the house and we would leave music on. Why? I was told it was because the dog enjoyed it. I never really accepted that answer, and while I never fully understood it, I understand now that it was just a habit.

I had my own habit related to my pets, and it snowballed.

Houdini is my oldest cat. He's almost 13, a gray and white short hair. Truman is the middle, and he's 12 and orange and idiosyncratic. Potter was the youngest. He was black and fluffy and the friendliest of the kitties to anyone who came over and visited.

I had Potter put to sleep about an hour ago. But more on that in a moment.

Because I lived alone, except for my cats, I took to talking to them occasionally. Not full conversations, of course, but something above and beyond "Here, kitty, kitty!" and "Stop pooping on the carpet!". When I left for work (or karaoke, or to volunteer at one of the innumerable places that I so often do) I felt like I had to say SOMETHING. An apology for leaving them alone? An explanation for why I was gone so often?

I settled on something odd. Simple, but odd.

"Houdini, you're in charge."

I didn't say it every time I left, but most mornings I did. While there was never any specifics given for the responsibilities involved with being "in charge", Houdini was the natural fit for the job: Truman is too slow (mentally and physically) and Potter was too flighty.

Potter was the baby. He was only two years younger than Houdini, but for some reason he always struck me as markedly smaller and markedly less mature. Innocent, even.

(Anthropomorphism run amok!)

"Houdini, you're in charge" snowballed in my head into discussions and explanations of why Houdini was perpetually left as the feline overlord. I would occasionally argue against imaginary charges by Truman and Potter of discrimination.

Actually, it was only ever Potter. I guess even an imaginary Truman was too laid-back to have any ambition. Mr. Potts, though? My imaginary Potter wanted to be treated like a grown-up. He wanted responsibility.

I bargained with this imaginary Potter, telling him he was getting closer to earning the spot, and that it would be his some day.

Well, I was wrong.

It's Monday night and about 72 hours ago Potter started getting lethargic. He normally wandered all over the apartment, following me and checking out what I was doing. Jumping on the couch, then on my lap, then lying on the floor by the door. And then repeating the cycle.

He slowed Friday night and Saturday and by yesterday he was simply lying in one part of the apartment and then moving to lie somewhere else. He had his routines... but they were all out the window. There was something definitely wrong. He jumped, painfully for him it seemed to me, onto my lap last night as I was using my computer. He'd spent hours at a time there, and part of me worried that it would be the last time.

This evening I took him to the ER and it turns out he had a blockage and kidney issues and heart arrhythmia. It was going to cost thousands of dollars to fix him up in the short run, with absolutely no guarantees it wouldn't happen again.

I cried and I told the vet (who was crying herself; I have no idea how she could care so much about a cat that she had met minutes before) that I had to let him go.

I had Potter put to sleep about an hour ago. He was a great cat and I'm hopeful that he had a good life. I will miss him.

Surprised

2011-04-26T21:59:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen Reservoir Dogs? If you haven't, then you should. It is, after all, one of my top 10 movies.

If you've seen it, then you may or may not remember the following clip. If you have not seen it, you should be able to watch this with minimal fear that any plot spoiling will occur. (Although you cannot watch it without lots of curse words occurring.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPZ9kidioi8

(It's not letting me embed it. *grumble*)

For those of you who care not to watch it, it's Quentin Tarantino talking about the meaning of Madonna's song Like a Virgin. Basically he's claiming that it's about a woman who'd slept with a lot of guys, but then she meets a guy who makes her feel, physically, like she'd never had sex before.

Anyway, I was reminded of this over the weekend. I was at Ozzie's and I was having a drink and waiting to sing, and I heard something.

I've heard some things, in my years going to Ozzie's and other karaoke bars. I've heard some great singers and I've heard lots of mediocre singers and I've heard a massive number of bad singers.

After a while, one builds up a tolerance for terrible singing. One needs a toughness that allows sanity to remain without being overwhelmed by disgust or anger at the people who just aren't good singers.

I have a pretty high tolerance for bad singers... after all, almost everyone that sings is there to have fun, and being positive is much more healthy and fun than being negative.

With that being said, I heard something. I heard a singer that was very bad.

She was so bad, that she caused me pain. It hurt me.

It shouldn't hurt me, you know--my ears should be Bubble Yum by now--but when this chick sang it hurt. It hurt just like it did the first time.

What was it about her? A combination of things. Was she out of tune? Yes. Was she enthusiastically off-beat? Sure.

But she had that special something that made her resonate on a visceral level. I don't know what "it" is, but she had "it".

And I hope I don't see "it" again any time soon.

A Fine Line Between Kind and Stupid

2011-04-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

I work on and with computers quite often. I read about people getting hacked or phished and it turns out that it's not very often brute force: having a computer run every username/password combination is simply too time- and processor-intensive for most potential intruders.

Instead? Social engineering is key. Determining what password a user is likely to use helps cut down the amount of work it takes to get in. Asking what a user's password is can be tricky and might require nerves of steel, but that is even easier.

While it's easy to think that I will never fall for that some or trickery, I try not to delude myself. I can keep my guard up but I know that I can fall prey to it, also.

Of course, even if we sometimes forget, scams--like porn and dating--predate the internet. People learned long ago that cheating someone out of valuables is often easier than earning those valuables through honest work.

OK. So. Please pause there. Hold that thought, even.

Now back to me. I don't like talking to people. Unless it's for my job--where talking to people is a key reason I get paid in (reasonably) hard US currency--I don't like talking to people unless (a) I know them, or (b) they are attractive women.

That might make me sound like an asshole, but it's generally true. I'd say that I'm working on it, but... I'm not. Not really. I don't want to expend emotional effort to learn to like talking to strangers in random social settings.

Even, though, as I have come to terms with my introverted streak, one thing that I do want to work on is willingness to help people in need. I have a tendency to be self-centered and, when coupled with my introversion, it means that I am oblivious (or even apathetic) about the plight of people I don't know (who don't just HAPPEN to be attractive women).

I try, at least sporadically, to help those who seem to need it, even if it means talking to strangers.

Which brings us back to the thought that you've been holding...

Some time back (a fortnight? A month?) I was approaching my apartment building. There was a guy who was using a cell phone right outside the door of the building, and I fobbed (is that a verb?) my way in and past him, and he initiated conversation. I was not altogether pleased, but I didn't want to be rude, so I had this conversation with him:

Dude: Hi, could you help me out?
Me:[warily] Uh... maybe.
Dude: Do you know the best way to get a hold of the building manager?
Me: [pointing to the phone on the wall] Did you use the--
Dude: I just called the number on the flier and used that phone... no answer.
Me: Sorry to hear that. No I don't--
Dude: Hmm... well, could you do me a favor?
Me: I don't--
Dude: I just came from Renton to pick up my friend's car. He passed away and it's in the building's garage.
Me: I don't know...
Dude: If the manager were here, he could just let me see if the car's even there. It's a brown pinto.
Me: Well, yeah, I don't--
Dude: Could you maybe let me in to just take a look? I've come all the way up here and would hate to just turn around if the car is right in there.
Me: Hmm...
Dude: I've got the key, even. Look [shows me the key].
Me: OK. I'll let you in.
Dude: Thank you so much! I appreciate it!
Me: ...

And then I spent the rest of the evening wondering if I should have escorted him to the garage and escorted him back out. Or if I shouldn't have let him in at all. Or if it was just perfectly fine that I let some random dude into the building.

On the one hand, lots of old people die in my building. It's entirely reasonable that amongst the hundreds of my neighbors someone had kicked the bucket.

On the other hand, crime is pretty common in our area, ranging from a bomb scare to Politica's car getting stolen to all sorts of other reasons cops are parked on our block that I don't even know about.

On still the other hand, he seemed desperate. He gave details.

On still... OK. Enough with the hands.

Liars know to give details. Scammers know to make a series of small, reasonable requests and to escalate once they get to "yes". Thieves know ... well, how to steal stuff, I guess.

Was he an honest guy in a jam? Or did I help him break into cars and/or someone's apartment?

And why do I talk to non-attractive female strangers... ever?

All's Weird that Ends Weird

2011-04-18T21:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I like to tell stories of things that happen in my life. Sometimes those things flatter me, but more often they are passively embarrassing or overtly humiliating. This is a tale that is both of those latter things.

I was, once upon a time, singing at Ozzie's. Shocking, I know. I was there by myself on a Saturday night, and I was drinking more than a little bit.

I was downstairs, waiting for my turn to sing, when I saw a couple of reasonably attractive young women standing in front of me. One of them had, I noticed, a card on a necklace around her neck. My eyes are pretty good, but I couldn't make out what it said. Because of the combination of the woman being attractive and me drinking more than a little bit, I asked the woman what the card read.

"Have a man speak to you in another language."

Immediately upon reading this, I went into inner turmoil. It was minor turmoil, for sure, but it was turmoil.

As everyone who knows me should know by now, I'm not a big fan of bachelorette parties. More specifically, I REALLY don't like them. I admit that they have their place as a ritual for brides-to-be, and for the brides-to-be's friends, but I also know that much of that ritual is to mockingly flirt with men around them while ignoring objective measures of attractiveness... meaning they usually act much more hot than they are.

(Yes, I know society's standards for beauty in women is, at many levels, bullshit. I know that how a woman is on the inside matters. I know that it's not fair that gorgeous women get away with more in life than more plain ones. But when I'm in a bar drinking, I rarely care much about any of that.)

So, on the one hand, I had my disdain for the bachelorette party generally. On the other hand, I had a great opportunity to talk to a couple of attractive women, and ... I'd been drinking more than a little bit.

The rum won out (as it occasionally does) and I opened. It went something like this:

Me: Puedo hablar español para usted...
Her #1: What?
Her #2: Ah... [insert a BUNCH of Spanish that I didn't follow at all due to ignorance and rum consumption]
Me: Wow. I didn't get any of that.
Her #1: ...
Her #2: ...

There comes a time in every conversation with women I don't know, where I have to power through discomfort or flee (as gracefully as possible).

The conversation with these two women wasn't a disaster to this point, so I continued the chit-chat, asking if either of them were the ones getting married (they weren't) and if they were going to sing (they weren't).

Her #1 clearly wasn't that into me. My ego told me it was because she had a boyfriend, of course. (Whether facts would tell me that or not is another matter. I never found out.)

Her #2, though? She was staring at me the whole time with a big smile on her face. That, for the record, is either a very good sign (she's interested) or a very bad one (she's totally insane). I decided that it was probably the former, so I got their names, told them it was great to meet them, and that I'd see them around the bar later.

And, I did see them around later.

More rum had gone into my system, and I was getting ready to sing upstairs when Her #2 approached me. She had a card around her neck this time, and as the karaoke song was being queued up, she smiled and stared at me and I grabbed the card and it said, "Be serenaded by a man."

I told her it seemed I was the next best thing, and I sang to her.

She seemed to enjoy it, and at the end of the song I noticed that her entire bachelorette troupe was in a booth on the other side of the room. I noticed because they were all chanting, "Kiss her. Kiss her."

I looked at Her #2 and she stopped staring long enough to roll her eyes. We smiled at one another. And I kissed her.

To the applause of her party.

Coincidentally, it was just about closing time. I asked where she lived (she lived close). I asked her if she wanted an escort home (she did). I asked her if she wanted to leave right then (she did).

On our way out of the bar, one of her friends checked in on her, establishing that I wasn't kidnapper Her #2, and that she was sober enough to not be constructively kidnapped. After a brief conversation, we headed to Her #2's place.

Which was fine. I'm going to gloss over things until the way the night/morning ended, but highlights/lowlights included:

No television (??)
An awesomely friendly Siamese cat
A funny txt exchange with one of her friends that she let me write "her" end of

So... after a couple of hours of talking (and stuff) it was about 4AM. I was exhausted and much more sober. And the conversation got weird.

Her #2: ...
Me: What's up?
Her #2: ...
Me: You're acting weird all of a sudden.
Her #2: ...
Me: What's up?
Her #2: ... it's just ...
Me: ...
Her #2: ...
Me: Is it cool if I crash here tonight?
Her #2: ... well, my parents are going to come pick me up tomorrow...
Me: What time?
Her #2: 10:00.
Me: Bah. No problem. I'll get a few hours of sleep and be out of here well before then.
Her #2: ...
Me: What?
Her #2: ... I think I need alone time.
Me: OK. Now?
Her #2: Yeah.
Me: ...
Her #2: ...
Me: Are you just waiting for me to leave at this point?
Her #2: Yeah.
Me: Ouch. OK.

And so, with that, I got dressed (meaning put my shoes and jacket back on, of course), petted the cat, and departed.

It was (and remains) the oddest brush-off I'd ever received from a woman while in her bed, and I lashed out in the only way I knew how: I failed to ask for her telephone number.

That'll show her, right?

Even after all this time, I'm still processing whether this experience makes me dislike bachelorette parties more or less...

The Invisible Injury

2011-04-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

Growing up, I think we all hear the same things from old(er) folks. Insight and advice and laments and observations that don't really register. Stuff that, essentially, adds up to, "I didn't really think it would happen to me, either, but you'll know what I'm talking about someday."

Which, of course, is not always true. We won't all know what it's like to have lost a leg in Vietnam or to lose our life savings in an elaborate gardening misadventure or to find out that we actually killed our father and married our mother and then gouge our eyes out.

I mean, we all can do anything we want in this world, right? So there's time. It's just not likely.

One of the things that I'd (blessedly) managed to avoid was the aches and pains that so many people talk about as they get older. Until recently, I'd have a sore muscle and then it would go away--either because I tweaked my ankle walking down the street or I slept on my neck wrong.

Lately, though? My knees hurt. I might have tweaked the right one working out, but giving it time to heal hasn't done much good... and now my left one is starting to feel bad, too. Maybe it's feeling neglected in my allocation of attention. I dunno.

Perhaps these are isolated, temporary, aches and pains... like so many in the past. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The thing that I'm more concerned about? My voice. My speaking voice gets dry and raspy at the drop of a hat nowadays and my falsetto singing voice is just... gone. It's been about a month now and I think I'm more worried that I won't be able to sing Grace Kelly than I am that my legs will hurt when I change sleeping positions.

My voice has left me before, of course. My singing voice has disappeared before--late 2007/early 2008 it was gone for about three months, and when we went to Las Vegas in 2009, I couldn't even singing Stayin' Alive--but I always got the sense that it would come back. I always had confidence that, like the bruised tailbone I received in November, 2002, it would linger for a bit and then one day I'd wake up and all would be right again.

But maybe this time will be different. Maybe this time I will never recover, and I will have my singing options reduced permanently. And maybe, just maybe, some day I will tell the story to some young person about how I didn't really think it would happen to me, either, but he'll know what I'm talking about someday.

Birthday Party Aversion

2011-03-06T21:09:00.000-08:00

Shawty? Nope.

TM2000? Nope.

Winner? Nope.

Stix? Nope.

Big Apple? Nope.

Queen Bee? Nope.

F-Bomb? Nope.

Sneetch? Nope.

Raft Mate? Nope.

These are all people that I consider to be friends of mine. They all invited me to their birthday parties/birthday get-togethers within the last year and I did not attend. In over half of the cases, I had declined in advance, but that doesn't excuse my absences. (I'm not counting folks like lol who have given up on inviting me, as well as others I'm almost certainly currently forgetting.)

I've known Shawty for almost exactly three years. We met the on her birthday eve in 2008. We spent, basically, that whole weekend together and we dated for several months after that. In 2009, she was dating another guy but I just happened to be at Ozzie's when she had her party. In 2010, I drove up to Who-Knows-Where, WA, to go to dinner and dancing with her and her friends. I was there as her ex-bf was being all weird when she was talking on the phone to her then-bf (who was an International Man of Asshole, as it turns out).

We chat every day. She's an important person to me, and I know she's been having a less-than-optimally fun time in life lately. Her bday party was on Saturday night, and I didn't go. And I feel like a dick now.

It wasn't a matter of a conflict--I had planned on going, and I would have been happy to spend the evening with her under other circumstances--and it wasn't a matter of really wanting to do something else... I am coming to terms with the fact that I really REALLY don't like birthday parties.

I have spent most of today thinking about what that is... whether there is some legitimate reason that I can hide behind as I reflect on all the birthday parties that I have chosen not to attend.

Let's start with my own birthday.

There's the obvious: I'm old. I don't dislike my birthday, in particular, but celebrating my advancing age? Just not a high priority.
Secondly: I don't care to be the center of attention. Even when I dress ridiculously or sing a karaoke song or take a chainsaw to a marching band, I enjoy being able to disappear.
I've had a bad experience or two regarding my birthday. As a kid I don't really have many memories of my birthday. I don't think I have big parties, but I remember that I would get cheesecake as a wee lad and then german chocolate (with the coconut frosting) as I got older. I have no negative memories of birthdays, which I guess is good, right? Well, in 2008 I had a very brutal birthday party involving misunderstandings and girls and an overwhelming sense of pressure. It was a really stressful night, and it's part of the reason the last couple of years I specifically haven't gone out of my way to do anything.

Now, onto other peoples' birthday:

While I am friends with the birthday person, I rarely am friends with (m)any of the other party-goers. Being around people that I don't know but am expected to interact with makes me anxious.
There are certain kinds of people that I specifically do not enjoy being around. Both in a general sense and some specific cases.
Location is an issue for me. I really do not like the BalMar, for example. I find the drinks weak and the service ridiculously slow. I find the dance floor packed and unappealing. I can honestly say that I have not had fun any time that I have entered the doors of that place (and once I was pissed when I didn't even get into the doors, although that was sort of Canberry's fault for not bringing the proper identification). There's also the proximity angle to a location... some places in Seattle are difficult to reach via busline and expensive to reach via cab. And I don't drive if/when I drink.

I have a tough time balancing the facts that (a) I do not enjoy being unhappy, and (b) a birthday party for someone else does not exist to bring happiness to my life.

Maybe I'll figure it out and start going (assuming I keep getting invited). Or maybe I'll just figure out that I'm some combination of lazy/selfish/other and make my peace with that fact that I'm not going to attend birthday parties with any regularity.

In any event, I'm sorry to Shawty for not going last night. And I'm sorry to anyone else who may have invited me only to see me fail to attend. I appreciate the invitations and I appreciate YOU. I just don't appreciate birthday parties.

Something I Hate

2011-02-23T23:13:00.000-08:00

I don't really have an overarching, "Things Ed O Hates" list. I have a grumpy streak, like everyone else, but I tend to see the positive in people and things... or I try to avoid those people and things. Maybe I just say all of this so I believe it, but I try to be that way.

Unfortunately, some things are unavoidable. At the risk of missing about 95.34% of the things that I hate, I came up with this list of ten items, normalized to the level of hatred (or, alternatively, disgust/revulsion/whatever), of the top item:

The one thing that I wanted to comment on is number five on the list: early-to-mid-20's guys.

I'm not saying all of them are jerks... I've got some friends who are early-to-mid-20's guys. For the most part, though? The less I say to them (and the less I hear them speak), the better. (And by "them" I mean early-to-mid-20's guys generally... not my friends.)

I was at a housewarming party on Sunday night. I had been invited by one of the two hostesses and wasn't that familiar with most of the people there. Part of the fun was determining who knew whom and who was hanging out with whom, and while most people in my place would have asked, but I was having fun observing and guessing.

The party was stuffed to the gills (at least at first) with hairstylists (I choose my housewarming parties carefully; I'm not purchasing tulips willy-nilly) but as the crowd thinned, it became both easier to contextualize the remaining people and more confusing regarding what I was seeing.

Confusing because there was trio of dudes who looked out of place. In their (yeah, you didn't see this coming) early-to-mid-20's, they were walking around the party, holding on to a pair of Ranier twelve packs.

This wasn't exactly a wine-and-cheese-only party, but I think they were the only ones who were drinking cheap bear from cans, and they were definitely the only ones who didn't want to put their beverages down for fear of someone else lifting them.

Which... OK. Fine. I don't want to fling stones. I was wearing black fingernail polish, for crying out loud. Live and let live. Etc.

But. They're early-to-mid-20's guys. They can't help but annoy me.

As the party continued to thin and I was settling into a chair with the hostess's dog in my lap and one of her friends engaging me in conversation, there was a mix-up involving drinks. It was not a big deal, but someone put their red cup o' booze down and someone else evidently started drinking it.

Like I said, no big deal. I think the confusion was cleared up within 30 seconds, in spite of unhelpful lines of investigation like this:

Person One: What were you drinking?
Person Two: It was in a red cup.

Of course, almost all of us were drinking from red cups. Except the dudes with the Raniers.

Dude with Rainer Number One (DWR#1): What? You had a red cup?!?
Everyone else at the party: ...
DWR#1: [leaning in towards the woman who'd lost her drink] A red cup!?!
Everyone else at the party: ...
DWR#1: [motioning at the large stack of red cups and the prevalence of them in the room] A RED CUP!?!

It was an odd thing, what happened next. No one cared about his mockery/joke/whatever it was, and after building up to some sort of crescendo with no response, he ... deflated.

He deflated and then he sulked.

A bit later, my friend's brother showed up. He's a nice guy who just happens to be shorter than me. And shorter than DWR#1, which provided the impetus for this delightful exchange:

Dude with Rainer Number One (DWR#1): Hey. Is that your brother?
My friend: Yes, it is.
DWR#1: So "short" runs in the family, huh?
My friend: That's it. One more and you have to get out of my house.
DWR#1: ...

There was no apology for being a dickhead, which ampliphied the dickheadedness.

Partially because of the presence of the early-to-mid-20's guys, and partly because of the fact that I didn't really know anyone there, I had sent out some feelers via txt to see what else was happening. One of the txts was to a friend at Ozzie's, to see how busy it was. Her response was that "People are here" ... which is far from a given on a Sunday night.

So, when the early-to-mid-20's guys decided to leave (or at least talk about leaving... the talking about leaving took about 45 minutes, and the leaving took significantly less time), they mentioned Ozzie's.

Me: Oh, Ozzie's?
DWR#1: Yeah.
Me: A friend told me there were people there tonight.
DWR#1: There usually are.
Me: Uh...
DWR#1: People like karaoke.

It was the sort of semi-drunken ignorant condescension that few humans outside of that gender and age range can pull off. It definitely cemented early-to-mid-20's guys on my "Things Ed O Hates" list... actually it might have pushed them past Keith Olbermann and into a dead heat with Scary Clowns.

Now that I think of it, though, my list might be a tad off. In spite of those guys, I had a good time at the party. If there were three scary clowns walking around, I am less sure I could say the same thing.

Ways to Hold a Basketball

2011-02-22T22:11:00.000-08:00

There are many ways to hold a basketball.

One can cradle it to one's chest with both arms, embracing it.

One can hold it under one's elbow, holding it casually against the hip.

One can, assuming large hands with some strength, palm it with one hand.

One can use three fingers of one hand as a tripod.

One can also hold a basketball with one finger... by spinning the ball.

No spin? It falls off. Not enough spin? It wobbles and becomes unstable and falls off.

But get it spinning and it becomes significantly easier. Get it spinning and all one needs to dedicate is the tip of one finger and an occasional well-placed slap... and it keeps spinning.

Until one becomes distracted. Or one simply gets tired of it and lets the ball drop.

Hairshirts, NASCAR, and Fingernail Polish

2011-02-21T21:38:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big fan of religion. I'm not a big fan of motor sports. I am not a big fan of wearing makeup.

And that set of facts is one of the reasons I'm writing this blog.

You know how some people say they're "spiritual, but not religious"? Or that "things happen for a reason"? I don't say those things (at least without irony). While I am slow to mock religious people (at least not as quick as some), I am not a religious person.

When I was in college I went to three Indianapolis 500's. I was going to school in the region, and my friend/roomie was generous enough to let me visit his home and attend the race with him and his family. I was impressed by the speed and the sound and the sheer number of people present, but in an abstract, "I'm just visitin' these here parts" kind of way. I have no plans to ever attend another race, and I certainly would not spend an afternoon watching--let alone attending--a sport that has become more popular than Indy racing: NASCAR.

There are a couple of pictures of me from a couple of years ago where I was wearing a fair bit of makeup. "Guyliner" can be a subtle way to create a "pop" of the eyes... or it can be a horrifically over-applied mess that makes one wonder what the eff they were thinking. I wore black fingernail polish when I dressed up as Adam Lambert for Halloween a couple of years ago, too, but in any event with the exception of occasional (very lightly applied, after learning my lesson) guyliner, I'm not really much of a "wear makeup" kinda guy.

(And, yes, I know that is logically akin to saying, "Other than those sixteen people I smuggled in from El Salvador and held them against their will, forcing them to stitch together fanny packs, I'm not really much of a 'break the law' kind of guy.")

In spite of my lack of faith ("Faith", perhaps, is more appropriate) I can recognize some value in religion--organized or otherwise. I also find myself curious about certain traditions (some of which make me wonder if defining tradition as "accepted continuation of stupidity" is more fair than I'd originally taken it to be)... one of which is the Christian/Catholic tradition of the cilice: wearing a very uncomfortable item--a shirt made of hair or a spiky leg bracelet-like thing--to impact one's own life.

Something that I didn't initially understand in NASCAR is the use of restrictor plates. I'm not at all interested in the mechanics of automobiles (although I could be, if she had a dazzling smile and a nice body), but restrictor plates restrict an engine's intake to reduce its power. In spite of the fact that everyone in NASCAR is trying to go faster than everyone else, NASCAR makes everyone use restrictor plates.

Lately I've had a renewed interest in talking to girls in social settings. It's a long story, but while I'm pretty consistently around women, most of the time I am content to be reasonably passive. There are lots of fish in the sea and if you don't try then you don't fail. All that sort of good stuff.

If you've seen the Da Vinci Code, then you've seen a kind of cilice in action. The albino monk fastens and tightens a metal strap that cuts into his skin. My understanding of why someone would use a chain or a hairshirt within a religious sense is rather limited: I get the sense that it's a way to punish oneself for sins and this penance offers some level of absolution.

NASCAR, like governmental or trade-level organizations, have to place restrictions on the abilities of entities to stray too far from competitors. The NBA has a salary cap so the Knicks or Blazers or whomever can't simply hire all the best players. The SEC places burdens on corporations to ensure that investors are more protected. NASCAR reduces the speed limit of all the racers to level the playing field and to make competition safer.

On Friday I got my haircut. I've documented that my hair was becoming shaggy, and I'd been 50/50 about getting it cut for some time. I was generously given a gift card for a free haircut, and that pushed me over the edge. I got my haircut. And, to be more specific, I got them all cut.

Penance and absolution are fine, and I guess I can see why humans feel the need for them. To me, though? It seems that wearing a hairshirt is a way to ground oneself. To humble oneself and be reminded, with every uncomfortable moment, that God is divine, and man lives only by his grace (or whatever... I'm not particularly good at sounding smart about religion). Wearing nice-looking clothes is great, but if you've got something underneath that just... keeps... itching, I can see how it would knock you down a peg or two.

The thing about restrictor plates is that, while they limits the high end of speed and performance, it does create better competition, since more teams can compete. It also lowers insurance rates and (almost certainly) saves lives. The races are better, presumably, by placing limits. NASCAR improves itself by humbling itself.

Friday night I was out. I was feeling good, and my haircut had elicited multiple positive bits of feedback from friends. I was interested in talking to people (meaning: women; men are, at best, sort of a 3/5 compromise type of deal for me in social settings).

But you know what? I was feeling TOO good. I was sitting at a table, drinking my alcohol and watching people. Txting with friends and checking Facebook. Feeling so cool and so much better than nearly everyone in the room that I didn't feel like talking to anyone.

And so I didn't.

It was still a very fun night, but upon reflection the next day, I determined that I needed a hairshirt. I needed restrictor plates. I needed something to knock me off-balance and humble me and, by making me feel less good, improve things.

So I busted out the black fingernail polish from Halloween. I applied it (unskillfully, of course... precious few of us are born with a priori abilities to apply fingernail polish). And I went out as normal.

It will be gone before I get to work tomorrow, and I won't be in a massive rush to wear it again, but it was an interesting (and, perhaps, slightly twisted) way to spend a couple of social evenings.

At least it wasn't itchy.

An Outrageous Claim (Or: A History of My Work Study)

2011-02-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people claim to be the first at something.

Richard Lewis, in Curb Your Enthusiasm, claimed to be the first to use "The ___ from Hell."

Ridiculous? Sure. Hiliarious? Absolutely.

I have few illusions that I am particularly original. I remember a series of conversations in college with The Ex where I explained that I can't believe that many (if any) ideas are really original. It was a depressing perspective that I still sort of ascribe to.

Anyway.

I went from a very small public school system to a pretty expensive private post-secondary institute. My parents did everything they could, and I am indebted to them, but we didn't have a college fund to dip into, and while some dudes were cruising around Evanston in nice cars and chick-impressive accoutrements, I was getting by with the assistance of a National Merit scholarship, school grants and loans.

And work study.

I'm no expert on what work study is or was, but I'm going to lay it out as jobs that were filled by students... and the students were paid more then they otherwise would have been because of governmental assistance.

I was work study all four years of undergrad. I dimly recall the process of selecting which positions I would apply for... it was (a) what sounded cool, and (b) what paid the most per hour.

Should I have sought something that might have, someday, helped me in a career I was interested in pursuing? Sure. But that sort of thinking is clearly beyond me, as evidenced by my life both before and since undergraduate study.

I had a pair of jobs, each of which I occupied for two years.

The second job was working in the library. My title escapes me, but my job was to take a stack of cards that represented books that were overdue... and to look in the stacks for books that were out of place. If I could not locate the books, I was to call the people with late books and give 'em a heads up. Maybe I was supposed to threaten 'em.

I currently really do NOT like talking on the phone. Unless you're a chick I'm at least semi-wild about, I really don't want to talk to you on the phone. (Exception: immediate family. Mother/father/siblings are excepted.)

This is true today, whether it's a call from my credit card company to my cell phone offering me a special offer, or a client on my office phone informing me of the latest talented Flash developer... I don't want to talk to them. Email? Sure. Meeting in person? Absolutely. Chat? I can do that.

Phones, though? They freak me out. I don't like them.

So... given that half of my job was to call people that had overdue books, and given my reluctance to call people, and given the lack of accountability... I simply didn't do that part of my job.

I'd do the first half... sure. I'd do it with a vengeance.

I'd take a stack of cards with overdue books and I'd go to where they SHOULD be and I'd look for them. Sometimes I'd find them exactly where they ought to be. Sometimes I'd find them close (but not exactly) to where they should be. Sometimes? I wouldn't find them at all.

But I'd find something that was otherwise worth my time. And my $7 an hour (or whatever I was making).

You know how some people have jobs where they sit at a computer all day and can read CNN and Huffington Post and Drudge Report and The Onion all day? Where they can google anything that they want, and the whole Internet is their oyster?

This was before ALL of those sites. This was at the dawn of the Internet, and before the World Wide Web was really in place.

But I didn't need Google. I had tens of thousands of books I could open and peruse. I could start reading an Asimov book or a study on Western taboos... and be pretty confident that my supervisor wasn't going to come and find me.

It was awesome.

I did the library gig my last two years of undergrad. It was a breath of fresh air compared to my first two years.

My first two years? I was a Sound and Sight Technician. I was well-paid ($18 an hour? Something silly like that...) and I worked in big chunks, rather than two or three hours a day. I was responsible for setting up and managing events on campus... setting EQ levels for speakers, playing movies on the Evanston and Chicago campuses, etc.

In terms of learning and "real-life" experience and money/minute... it was awesome. I'd work a weekend or two a month and be done.

But it was stressful.

Shit went wrong. Feedback happened. Speakers would grab a mic and start walking around the room. People would want to play music when it wasn't planned. A co-worker would be sick and I'd have to fill in on a Friday night (never mind that I really didn't have anything else going... it's the principle...)

It was good. It was terrible.

It did, though, form the basis for this blog entry. I can make an outrageous claim. Please feel free to disbelieve.

You know how people occasionally bring laser pointers into movies? How they annoy other movie-goers by flashing them on the screen, putting their spin on the movie and basically spoiling it for everyone else?

Well... I will submit that I was one of the first people to do that. EVER.

"Yeah, yeah," I hear you say, "sure you are. Assholes have been pointing laser pointers at movie screens FOREVER. Why do you think you were one of the first?"

Well, the movie was Terminator 2. We were able to see the film as a second-run movie... it came out in 1991, but I think that we watched it on campus in 1992.

I was working as a Sound and Sight Technician, and we had access to ... equipment. Microphones (including lav mics) and ... laser pointers.

Laser pointers, twenty years ago, were NOT something that you'd pick up in the checkout line at a grocery store for your kitties to play with. They were bulky pieces of machinery that took up considerable space. Imagine an old, old wireless phone.... and then imagine a red dot coming out of it. That was the laser pointers.

So I "checked out" (*ahem*) a laser pointer from our equipment closet, and my roomie and I went to see T2.

I knew that there were scenes with laser pointers, and I was immature enough to use the gadget to enhance my own experience, even at the expense of my fellow viewers.

When the sniper was about to take out the scientist? I hunched over in my seat and pointed my (oversized) laser pointer at the screen. I could hear the crowd murmur... they hadn't experienced this before.

I felt akin to a god.

Not God. Not THE god.

But a god.

When Linda Hamilton got to her "It's men like you" speech... I was warmed up. I countered her anti-man/anti-human speech by putting my laser pointer right on her fucking forehead.

I thought it was great. My roomie thought it was hilarious.

But we had to be quiet, because I was holding a rather large piece of equipment that was altering--and potentially spoiling--the movie-going experience for hundreds of other students.

(The quote that I disrupted, from IMDB:

Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death...

Who wouldn't want to disrupt that ridiculous piece-of-horseshit bit of dialogue?)

I heard giggling. I heard the rustle of confusion. I heard the barely-suppressed laughter of my roomie as I aimed the little red dot at Linda Hamilton's forehead.

But I didn't think THAT much of it. Until the next day.

We were in the cafeteria. I was probably getting Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries and my roomie was probably having a salad... but we overheard people in front of us in line talking. About the movie.

About the laser pointer.

The person said something along the lines of, "Yeah... Terminator 2 was pretty good. But some guy pointed a laser pointer at the screen a couple of times... it was hilarious!!"

You have to remember. This was new. This was original. This was like the fucking Beatles.

I was the first.

You better believe dat.

Storytelling

2011-02-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

I enjoy telling stories.

Most of the time I keep a lid on the telling of tales, because my stories are often inappropriate for the people with whom I'm speaking--because they make me sound callow or a braggart (or callow for thinking it's bragging).

Part of the value in telling stories is the release, right? Having something happen and then just having to get it off my chest. Catharsis to some extent.

The other part of the value I receive is in the response to the story: affirmation that it was an interesting happening, or perhaps even feeling that I entertained the listener.

Unlike some story tellers, I really prefer not to embellish. I don't want to blow things out of proportion. I'd prefer to tell honest stories that are ridiculous enough without having to stretch the truth.

Not all stories I tell are ridiculous, and they can be quite mundane at times.

This weekend, in fact, I had an encounter that I might relay to friends in person or over chat, but only through a story I heard this morning is it rendered blog-worthy.

Here's my story. I'll then tell you the story I heard... and how it dwarfs (even if in a mundane way) mine.

[story]I get emails every morning from Groupon and Living Social. I buy something every couple weeks or so. In case you're not familiar with these websites, they offer local coupons that you can buy... and they're often "$25 worth of food and drink for $10" types of deals.

I recently subscribed to another website, Tippr, and purchased a "$25 worth of food and drink for $10" at Papa John's. I enjoy that pizza, and there's no place that delivers to my apartment, so I made a deal with TM2000 that he'd drive if I bought the coupon.

OK. Fine.

Fast forward to Saturday. TM2000 and I order food and we drive there to pick it up. I have my Nexus One with the Tippr coupon (including certificate number) up on my phone. I'm ready to pay tax, etc., as needed. I even had planned to tip.

When we got to the counter, I was told I needed to have a printout of my coupon.

I've successfully used coupons from other services and not had to print anything out. I don't even own a printer, for heaven's sake. (Actually, I do; I just don't own a printer cable... maybe I do embellish my stories.)

I asked why I needed a printout. She said that they needed the certificate number. I showed her the number on the phone. She asked her manager... or some older-looking dude who may have been the manager. I was told I needed a printout.

I told them to forget it and that I thought it was ridiculous.

And TM2000 and I went to another place where we ate lots of pizza.

I plan on emailing Tippr to complain and see if I can get my money back or what. It's nice to have something to complain about, but I would rather have had pizza from Papa John's as I'd planned.[/story]

This morning at work we had a weird staff meeting with a very strong Valentine's Day theme, and my bosses (who are married) talked about their plans for tonight. Their story makes mine seem even more boring than it is.

[story]About five years ago, my bosses went to a restaurant with a group of people. There were eight people all told, and their group was placed between two other loud and active groups. While the food was very good, the service was terrible. They were all but ignored, and when a group spends $1200, being ignored is not very nice.

One of my bosses expressed her concern through an email. She stated that the food was excellent, but that it would be hard to return if that was the level of service that should be expected.

It appears she was fishing for something... free dessert? An apology? Something to let her know her business was valued.

Instead, she got a very defensive email from the owner. I don't know what was written, but it was enough to keep her (and her friends) from attending the restaurant from that night until now.

She did, though, receive a gift certificate to the new location, and my bosses made reservations for dinner tonight. It had been years, after all, and they had a gift certificate to use.

Fine, right? Seems fine unless you're the owner of the restaurant... because you've got a very long memory.

He emailed my boss and let her know that he remembered her and her complaints and hoped that she wouldn't cause trouble. (A paraphrase on what I was told; I don't know the actual language that was used.)

They have reservations, and after being assured by my coworkers that it was unlikely that there will be spit in their food (at least more than normal), I think they plan on going. They do, after all, have a gift certificate to use.[/story]

Both stories have a similar theme: patient and understanding customer ruthlessly discriminated against by food service entities. My story is based on a financial transation that's about 0.08% as large as theirs, though, and Papa John himself was not carrying a grudge.

At least not yet. That would be a good story.

Why Valentine's Day is a Bit Early

2011-02-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

I am not very familiar with the history of Valentine's Day. I could google is and know enough to write reasonably intelligently, but instead I'll just guess that it has something to do with pagan fertility rites that were co-opted by the Christian church.

Or is that Christmas? Or maybe Arbor Day?

In any case, I have never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day. I am not one that will go so far as to say that it's a holiday propped up by the Greeting Card Industry in cahoots with the Chocolate Cartel and the Flower Junta, but I will say that it seems like it's something that people take too seriously.

If one is in a relationship? I can see participating, and maybe it's a nice way to remind yourself to enjoy your relationship, fix it, or gtfo. Treating it like it's a mandatory sentence to buy this or that or do whatever... meh. It's a bunch of bullshit.

If one is not in a monogamous relationship? (And, based on the previous paragraph, you might correctly guess that I fall into this camp...) Valentine's Day might make someone feel alienated and alone. Which is crap, because there are 364.25 other days a year to remind yourself of that... why let one day, in particular, bum you out? So much better to spread out the isolation than to try to cram it all into one day.

Believe it or not, in my previous life, I actually participated in Valentine's Day unironically. Maybe there was never a huge bouquet of flowers, but I usually got The Ex something. Or maybe I'm just being charitable to my past self. I honestly don't really remember.

What I do remember during that time? We never celebrated Halloween. I think that during the time I spent with her, I dressed up once or twice. I wasn't upset about it at the time, but things are much different now.

Halloween is my favorite holiday right now. Not right this moment, perhaps, but in general.

I get to dress up. I get to see women dressed up. People are in a good mood. I get to see women dressed up.

It's just a great holiday.

Valentine's Day is, to me, the polar opposite of Halloween. It tends to be more formalized, and the women who dress up tend to be dressing up for another dude. No bueno.

In my opinion, then, Valentine's Day should be April 31: six months after Halloween.

It makes sense. To whom do I write a letter about this?

Why, yes. One specific problem.

2011-02-03T22:59:00.000-08:00

Last week I was talking to Hula Hoop and she asked me a pretty straightforward question:

"Does it cause you problems?"

Now, before I spill the beans on what "it" is, let me compliment my parents for a moment. I don't need glasses. My teeth are pretty straight without ever having had braces. I've never broken a bone nor had an injury more severe than ankle sprains that made me miss a high school basketball game and limp around on crutches for a week or two in undergrad.

So what is "it"?

My hair.

My hair is, at the moment, quite long (for me). I remember in high school always wishing and waiting for it to get long enough in the front for it to reach my mouth. When I got to college I had an "only in Oregon" pledge where I refrained (until I caved in my senior year, when I let my inexperienced and relatively unskilled (but well-intentioned) future ex-wife cut it and die it black) from getting a haircut in Illinois... with a resulting see-saw of partly-shaggy-to-short hair.

Fast forward X years (where X<=17) and my hair is long. As long as it's ever been in the front and much longer in the back than it's ever been. Long enough that my boss cracked jokes about it being long... two months ago. Long enough for TM2000 to make graphs about diminishing returns of hotness with hair length. Long enough for HBK to have to brush it aside to compliment my eyes.

And long enough for Hula Hoop to ask "Does it cause problems?"

My answer at the time was a firm "no". I sweat more, under certain circumstances, but that's unavoidable and not too bad. I couldn't think of any downside (other than shampoo consumption and frequent ridicule for flipping my hair out of my eyes (I CAN'T SEE IF I DONT DO THAT! IM NOT TRYING TO BE COOL! (Sorry. I'm sick of telling people that and lately it's been coming out all-caps in real life, too.)))...

Until today. I was done with work and driving home. I needed to turn left and I looked right and then left and... I noticed I hadn't got enough info quickly enough. So I looked left again. Then right.

My hair was restricting my peripheral vision to the point where I couldn't turn left with certainty. I accelerated after my looks and (thankfully) made it out safely... but I've determined that long hair is definitely safer on pedestrians.

I don't think that I will get it cut for this reason, however. Given that I am a white male below the age of 60, I have an innately superior ability to drive an automobile, so even with long hair impairing me, I expect to remain a standard deviation above the mean.

Of course, if/when I get into an accident due to my inability to see traffic the ER might have to shave my head, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Top Weekend Quotes

2011-01-30T13:56:00.000-08:00

This weekend was old-school solo action. Not, like, stay home-and-look-at-porn-alone solo action, but go-out-to-my-favorite-spots-by-myself-seeking-odd-adventure solo action.

Ozzie's and Frontier Room did not disappoint. Here, in chronological order, are the top six things I heard other people say this weekend.

"Oops. He's 30."
Ozzie's has long had karaoke. Now they have rockaroke--karaoke with a live band--on Friday nights. It's awesome. I was there, drinking and watching and waiting for my turn to sing, when a guy's name was called and a group of dudes behind me exploded in shouts of "Happy birthday, man!" "Yeah, Dave! [or whatever his name was]". "The big [?]-0! Woo hoo!"

Which is fine. Totally acceptable, even if the shouts were drunken and partially unintelligible.

There was a group of women in front of me who had heard the shouts, too, and I could hear them talking about the guy who was going on stage, and their conversation went something like this:

Woman One: It's his birthday?
Woman Two: I guess.
Woman One: How old is he?
Woman Two: I dunno. They yelled it but I couldn't understand. 40, maybe?
Woman Three: Yeah, I think so. He looks it.
Woman Two: Yeah, 40.
Woman One: Let me go ask them... [wanders over to the guy's group and comes back a moment later]
Woman Two: Well?
Woman One: Oops. He's 30.
Woman Three: Ouch.

"She likes dudes that know dudes."
I was ordering a drink at the bar and a weird-looking guy was talking to two women. I got my drink but had managed to not receive a straw, so I was looking around for a straw... and the weird-looking guy struck.

Weird-Looking Guy: Hey... hey!
Me: Uh... what?
WLG: [Pointing at a not-bad looking blond] Do you want to meet Leah?
Me: Um. Sure. Hi, Leah. I'm Ed.
WLG: She likes dudes that know dudes.
Me: What? Dudes that know tunes?
WLG: No. Dudes that know dudes.
Me: [Looking at Leah, who gives me an "I dunno wtf he's talking about" look.] Um. OK.
WLG: She's been telling me that... [blah blah blah]
Me: OK. Fantastic. [Turning to leave] Nice meeting you, Leah.

I dunno what he meant, but I wasn't about to stick around and find out.

"Oops. I forgot my ring tonight!"
Part of what I prefer to do--especially at Ozzie's where there are so many things to do (two karaoke areas and a rockaroke stage)--is to keep moving. So I'm constantly battling through bottlenecks and crowds of people.

I worked my way past a group of three women, and I overheard one of them say, "Oops, I forgot my ring tonight!" and the other two giggle conspiratorially.

It's not my business. I don't know her fiancee/husband/whatever. I don't even know for sure that she meant a ring-ring. But I am pretty sure she was.

And that sort of thing disgusts me.

"Don't worry about it. They don't like vagina."
The next night I was at Frontier Room, and my nights at Frontier Room (especially when I go alone) are pretty formulaic:

Have a couple of drinks at my place, listening to music (often The Records)
Catch a bus and get to FR right before they start charging cover at 10:00
Order a rum and diet from my bartender
Chew gum and drink rum and diet and txt with friends until the dance floor warms up and the rum hits me
Ease my way onto the dancefloor
Avoid asshole guys and weird chicks as I attempt to move in a non-offensive fashion to the music
Either catch a cab to Neighbour's or walk home

Also, between steps 4 and 7 I often am moving around, getting more booze and passively seeking interesting occurrences.

It was during step 4 that I noticed a couple of guys dancing on the dancefloor. They weren't alone--there were other people on the half-full dancefloor, too--but they appeared to be having a dance-off. They weren't taking it too seriously, and people were amused.

As one of them was making his response, a pair of women wandered up and started to talk/half-dance with him.

Now, I'm no expert either substantively or procedurally in terms of dance-offs (that's more of Thor's department) but even as a layperson I know that people shouldn't interrupt one of the participants.

Justifiably and understandably, then the guy shrugged the women off in order to continue the battle... and one of the women looked downcast and turned away. Her friend, nursing her friend's spirits with venom, explained to her, "Don't worry about it. They don't like vagina."

Effing chicks.

"Do you remember me?"
*tick tick tick*

When I was a kid, I understood I was pretty smart. I was considered smart by my teachers and family and I had test scores and grades to prove it. To what degree it was a big fish in a small pond thing or not is never clear, and how much one's capabilities are enhanced through mere assumption of the possession of capabilities isn't clear, either.

As I've aged, my confidence in my general aptitude has waned. Whether I'm more wise or less smart now doesn't matter. I know that my memory is not particularly great. I know that my intellectual rigor is ... not rigorous.

I don't think I'm stupid, of course. I just recognize my actual strengths: specifically, it's my ability to process information and respond to it more quickly than most people. Much more quickly than many, to be honest.

*tick tick tick*

So when I hear something, I usually get it. I don't need things repeated very often, and I usually can string together a response without too much effort. Whether it's a particularly good response or not is another question, but I rarely feel out to sea or dumbstruck.

*tick*

This helps me when I'm out at bars, because I can avoid unpleasant situations or talk myself into pleasant ones relatively easily. Last night, though, it felt like my one self-avowed strength of intellect had failed me when I was asked a very simple question:

"Do you remember me?"

*tick tick tick*

She was a pretty blond. She looked familiar. She looked like someone I wanted to remember.

*tick*

But I had no response. I was trying to place her face, her hair, her boobs... something.

And I had nothing.

*tick*

I smiled at her and mumbled something... trying to buy time. I could see her smile slipping--almost imperceptibly, but slipping--and I could almost hear a clock.

*tick tick tick*

Smiling ... thinking ... taking her in with my eyes without moving them ... thinking ..

*tick tick*

*click*

Sweet. Got it.

"Sure. You're [her name]."
"You remember me! Yay!"

Hugging ensued.

"You get to dance with two beautiful women!"
Sometimes I see things happen in real life and I imagine scenes from movies. Scenes that probably never happened in movies that may not even exist.

The hour was late at FR. Dancing was happening, and I was participating in my limited capacity. I'd carved out a nice little space where no aggro dudes were bumping into me (step 6) and was enjoying the music.

Earlier I'd bumped into Miss America, who was there with a group of people. She is adorable and fit and--like any adorable and fit woman on that dancefloor--seemed to have to spend more energy keeping guys off of her than in actually dancing. I don't know how women put up with it, man.

So... movie scene. I imagine a scene from a movie like Aliens or Starship Troopers where a group of people are retreating from a large mass of aliens. Aliens that want to eat and/or dismember them. The group is doomed if they all keep running, so one or two of the group turn to the others and say, "Go on without me! I'll try to hold them off!" and after a nod of acknowledgment and gratitude, the rest of the group flees, only looking back right before getting to safety... and seeing the brave individuals getting overrun/eaten/torn apart by the aliens. Going back would be suicide, so a tear is shed and the door is closed.

I imagined something like that after Miss America and her friend sidled up to me on the dancefloor, with Miss America saying, "You get to dance with two beautiful women!"

It was cool. She was going out of her way to be nice. I appreciated it.

But I'd forgotten about the aliens who wanted to rip her apart.

Within 13 seconds of her saying that to me, there was someone dancing up to her from behind. Within 45 seconds another guy was attached to her friend. Within 97 seconds they were being dude-swarmed. And there was nothing I could do. Going into a dude-swarm is suicide.

So I shed a tear and wandered over to a less male-infested part of the dancefloor.

Considered but not making the list:

From a female to me: "I can't stay out late or else my girlfriend gets pissed."

From a female to me: "Those guys have been staring at me all night."

From a female to me: "I won't punch you if you don't touch me."

From a jealous guy to me: "Douche."

Forsaking FourSquare

2011-01-26T20:17:00.000-08:00

Before FourSquare, there was Dodgeball.

Dodgeball was started by a couple of guys, and it got purchased by Google in 2005, with the thought that location-based social networking was gonna be a big hit.

Unfortunately (on the surface) for the Dodgeball guys, Google did nothing with it, and discontinued Dodgeball in early 2009.

Of course, appearances can be deceiving. Not only did the Dodgeball guys get some money up-front, being cut loose by Google let them start FourSquare.

FourSquare, for those of you who aren't technically savvy (and/or live in rural parts of the country), uses an application on your phone to see where you are, physically, and lets you "check in" to specific locations. The thought is that if you have checked in more than others, you become the "Mayor" of that location, and some places give you discounts and such if you're the mayor... although that is a pretty uncommon occurrence. You also get "badges" for certain activities or combinations of checkins, and you get "points", too... which are seemingly useless.

I've been on FourSquare for over a year now. I've checked it relatively religiously when I've gone out over that time, and I'm done with it. I just uninstalled it from my phone and don't plan on using it in the future.

Why? Not because I'm angry with FourSquare. Not because I feel that my privacy has been betrayed, or I feel the service's performance is bad.

I just don't get anything out of it except frustration. As a single guy who owns >3 cats, I've got enough frustration in my life already, so getting rid of FourSquare simplifies my life.

What value did I extract from FourSquare? Or what value would I like to have? Social media can add value to our lives in four major ways, I believe:

Exhibitionism. Social media is often about showing off. Telling others what you think or how you look or where you are or who you know. If it seems narcissistic: that's because it is. But we can all take solace in the fact that only people who care about us (at least to the point of clicking on a button or two to follow us) see it.
Voyeurism. There's also the fact that social media is about being nosey. Seeing what your friend (Facebook or otherwise) is up to. What they're reading or watching or doing. Who they're doing. What their friends look like and where they went to school. If it seems creepy: that's because it is. But we can all take solace in the fact that only people who want us to see things about them put things up for us to see.
Accomplishment. Making things into a game makes them more fun. Being able to count friend totals adds a quantitative thrill (whether it's seeing how many friends one can accrue or how tight one can keep the friends group) and I believe our monkey brains are programmed to enjoy victory, whether it's lighting a fire or finishing a race or hitting level 41 on World of Warcraft. We get motivated over very silly things (see: Farmville) but that motivation is no less real for being silly.
Other utility. I hate to make this a grab-bag, but... it's a grab bag for things that ACTUALLY make your life better. IRL. Knowing the best-reviewed restaurant in your area. Seeing where your friends are hanging out tonight. Getting directions to a concert featuring music you will probably like. All of these things are possible through different services, and there's less sticky residue than is associated with the other three areas.

Looking at FourSquare, for me, in this prism...

Exhibitionism. Sure, I was advertising where I was and where I'd been, but I had no illusions that anyone was really paying attention, and I have a great outlet on Facebook and this blog to let it all hang out. (Not literally.)
Voyeurism. I rarely looked to see where others were, and when I saw that strangers were sharing a spot with me, it didn't help me. "Hey, baby, did you just check in on FourSquare?" is, shockingly enough, not a line that impresses women. Especially when they hadn't just checked in on FourSquare. Oops!
Accomplishment. At the high point of my FourSquare presence, I was mayor of about eight places, from my employer to my grocery store to a hotel in Mexico to a half-dozen restaurants and bars. I will admit it was kind of fun, even if I had no illusions about (a) others not being WAY more active than I was, or (b) it mattering at all to anyone and/or real life. Over time, though, I was supplanted by people almost everywhere. And it would aggravate me. Even though I knew it didn't matter, it would bug me. When I found myself a dozen check-ins behind at a location I had been mayor of a fortnight earlier, I knew that people were either cheating or were just going to those places much more often than I was. Either way, I was feeling frustration and perhaps a hint of failure. Embarrassing but true.
Other utility. I found no real-world value from FourSquare. The "tips" that people can leave are useless. I didn't track my friends through FourSquare. I don't care about trending data with people I don't know. There was, as far as I can tell, not additional utility.

It all came down, in the end, to FourSquare being a game. When games get boring and frustrating, I quit and move onto something else.

So FourSquare is gone. I'm not keen on using Facebook places (a similar service, except that you can allow friends to check you in, too) or more robust trending/amalgamation services like TheHotList... because I see the same problems that I've had with FourSquare and no real additional utility.

I'll stick to Facebook and this blog and wait for something better to come along.

I wonder how long it will take before someone ousts me as the mayor of Qdoba...

I Don't Buy Chicks Drinks

2011-01-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

As part of my trip to Oregon (more on that in another post), I went out with Big Cow, Deek, and LeJohnse. We didn't go out in my home town (I'm not sure there's anywhere to "go out"), and we didn't make it into the big city of Portland, but we did go out in Wilsonville.

After having a quick drink at LeJohnse's place, the four of us (accompanied by a young man I shall call Gamgee) headed to a wonderous place called Wanker's Corner.

The name (at least the second part of it) is a vestige of its original location, I'm told. Given that it's in the middle of a strip mall-like situation, it's not currently on the corner of anything.

Wanker's Corner actually reminded me of Yella Beak... a Yella Beak that someone had shrunk down to a quarter size and stunk in the middle of Wilsonville, rather than the middle of a cow pasture.

Gamgee and Deek weren't drinking alcohol, but that didn't stop BC, LJ and me from imbibing. Towards the end of the night, only BC and I were left from our group, and we had already closed out and were preparing to leave when I heard someone say something about buying drinks.

My general approach to buying drinks is one of quid pro quo: I will buy you one if you buy me one. The general rule is only lightly applied to friends, since I know that they'll get back to me. The general rule is applied very strictly, however, when it comes to women (that I do not know) at bars.

I understand that many women get free drinks from guys. I understand, too, that many guys expect to purchase drinks for women.

I understand, however, that the practice is entirely bullshit and that if a chick is not going to talk to me without me buying her a drink then she can go find some other sucker.

So when I heard a woman talking about someone buying her a drink, I let it be known that I do not engage in that practice. Sober Ed O might never chime in like that, but I was far from sober.

She replied that she would buy me a drink, and that caught me (or at least Drunk Ed O) off guard. I said that we could buy a round each, and she agreed.

So with BC on my left, Kay-One and Kay-One's Friend sat to my right at the bar. I got out my credit card, and Kay-One did the same. In front of the bartender, I reiterated the agreement we'd made. A round of drinks was served. My credit card was charged.

And Kay-One had disappeared.

I looked to K-OF in confusion. Asked her wtf was going on. K-OF told me that there was no deal. I said that it was bullcrap and I looked to the bartender and told her that I would not sign the charge. I was not going, I said, to pay for drinks for those two women.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that BC couldn't take the discomfort... but K-OF was still jibber-jabbering. I think the last thing I heard from her was, "When you come into a bar, you should know..."

Blah blah blah.

I turned my back to her as she kept talking and told the bartender that I was entirely willing to pay for our two drinks, and that I would tip her well for them, but that I would not sign anything for all four drinks and that I would challenge the charges. That the bartender had SEEN us make a deal and that it was not fair.

The bartender relented. Told K-OF that she had to pay for the other two drinks. I tipped well on the much smaller tab and felt a sense of triumph.

Of course, success is rarely unadulterated in this world, so it should not be a shock that I looked down at the counter and saw a note from Kay-One that read something like:

Kay-One
503-xxx-xxxx
I owe you $20 :)

Uh... was I too quick to judge? Was she flattering me? Or was the note to grease to skids for the scam that she'd known she was gonna pull from the beginning?

Not my problem. I don't buy chicks drinks.

NYE 2010: Part II (Non-Hetero Venue)

2011-01-18T20:07:00.000-08:00

NYE 2010 had started off interestingly. The bars were shutting down and TM2000 had headed home.

2011 was about two hours old, and I wasn't in the mood to sleep. I was in the mood to dance.

Or at least not to go home and look at porn.

Why a Gay Dance Club?
Bars in Seattle may not serve alcohol past 2:00 AM. Meaning they get busted if there is anyone drinking past that time (not that they "may or may not... take your chances), so most places give last call around 1:30 and start pushing people out the door shortly thereafter.

I'm no expert regarding the clubs that remain open past 2:00, but they seem to be (a) urban, (b) Russian, or (c) gay.

Given the fact that my dancing skills only tower over my fighting skills, I prefer to avoid aggro dudes (especially when I have my capacity to sidestep them inhibited by alcohol) and so I usually choose (c).

And when I choose (c), I choose Neighbour's. It's a short cab ride or a long walk from Belltown, and it has pretty good music. While I've had extremely limited luck in meeting women there, I have had occasion to dance with a woman or two during my forays into the establishment. Oddly enough, I think the reason I've had almost no luck meeting women there is more to do with my personality than with the fact that it's a gay dance club.

Because while it's a gay dance club, it's not normally a GAY dance club (all caps for emphasis). There are straight chicks dancing and avoiding the standard pack of really short straight guys that seem to think that women go there to be ground upon.

While it's not normally a GAY dance club, on the morning of January 1, 2011, it definitely was.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The First Guy
I was dancing on my own for about 20 minutes when I was approached by a guy.

Now, in spite of me being drop-dead sexy and often by myself in a gay dance club, I'm rarely approached by guys. Which--trust me--is just fine.

But in this case? An older-looking fellow came up to me and actually used an opening line:

"You're a great dancer!"

Bad move on his part. Not that he had a chance in any case, but someone calling me a "great dancer" to my face as I paroxysmally take up space on the dance floor is like someone telling the dude from Powder that they like his tan. It's pretty objectively incorrect and in THIS case a lie.

So I shook my head and said, "Thanks, but no." Which had two meanings, the second of which he did not pick up on.

He talked to me a moment or two longer and then asked if I wanted to "go upstairs" with him.

I knew there was an upstairs, but I didn't see any reason to go with him. I also had a strong suspicion that it was code for something or even a euphemism.

So I declined and continued to subtly thrash about in my personal space.

Woman Interlude
A bit later, two women walked up to me. They appeared to be a couple, and not the kind that would be particularly interested in me, so I was a bit intrigued by what they wanted.

One of the two of them asked me a question that went something along the lines of, "Have you got any [unintelligible]?"

The way she was standing, the way she sort of mumbled at the end... I didn't hear what she said, but I knew it had something to do with drugs.

She, much like the man before her, was barking up the wrong tree. I know less about drugs than any man alive in Seattle. I saw the remnants of cocaine once... and it seemed like such a crazy thing.

In spite of that--or perhaps because of it--we had this conversation:

Me: What? I'm sorry I don't understand.
Her: Oh, nothing. We haven't looked to score any for years...
Me: I really don't know what you even said.
Her: You're just too young. You don't even know what I'm talking about, huh?
Me: Young? I bet I'm five years older than you are.
Her: I doubt it. Let's see your ID.
Me: Uh, ok... [showed her my ID]
Her: Wow! You are old! Are you, like, American Psycho or something?
Me: What? I'm sorry I don't understand.
Her: You know. In American Psycho he does the skin peel treatment to look young?
Me: Oh, yeah, and the pushup routine and stuff?
Her: Exactly. I'm surprised you're old enough to remember that movie...

I think it could easily be argued that she did not need the drugs she was seeking.

The Second Guy

And so she left and I continued to dance. But not unmolestedly.

A bit later, another dude approached me. This guy was short and skinny with shaggy brown hair and geeky glasses and an army surplus jacket. Also? Not so cute.

But he evidently thought I was worth spinning game at. (Spinning game with? Toward? I dunno...)

Him: You look just like a Jonas brother!
Me: Uh... do I?
Him: Don't worry. It's a good thing. A very good thing.
Me: Uh... OK. I guess.
Him: So... *** You wanna go upstairs?
Me: Uh... no thanks.

A few notes:

I can't decide if his opening line was a sincere compliment or a neg.
The *** indicates a physical action: he took his hand and ran it along my stomach vertically from my belly button up to my chest. It was super-creepy.
"Go upstairs" was, as I had strongly suspected, some sort of code for something that I really don't want to participate in.

I kinda turned away from him a bit and he left.

The End of the Night as I Knew It
Time passed. Music played. Each of the two guys walked past me, right before closing, arching their eyebrows inquiringly.

The end of the night was nearing. The sun was about to shine for the first time in 2011. I hopped in the cab and reflected on all of the ill-fitting and awkward moments I'd already participated in after midnight, and I can't wait to see what else 2011 has got up its sleeve.

NYE 2010: Part I (Hetero Venues)

2011-01-11T22:47:00.000-08:00

(I had a busy New Year's Eve this year. I'm going to bust the night into two blogs, one dealing with the first half of the night and another dealing with the latter half.)

The Planning
I'm not usually a huge New Year's Eve guy.

(Actually, I'm not really a huge holiday guy generally. Halloween, for some reason, is the exception.)

I neglected to make NYE plans until about a week before the end of 2010, after TM2000 had mentioned he had purchased an extra ticket for an event at Venom... it sounded good enough to me, so I decided to join him and Thor and Thor's gf.

I've been to Venom a time or two, and it is a dance club that is... well... urban. It always struck me as too crowded with dancefloors that double as thoroughfares, but... whatevs. It sounded good enough to me. It was a masquerade-themed party, and I had a pair of masks for us, so it sounded fun.

The Lines Explained
We had purchased tickets. TM2000 had printed them out. And yet we couldn't get in the best line. We couldn't even get in the second-best line, as it turns out.

The best "line" was an amorphous spot where people who knew bouncers got to get in first. I put "line" in "quotes" because there wasn't a line until people stood there. But they seemed to have first crack at getting in.

Second-best was the people who had physical tickets.

That's right. Physical tickets. Not printed-out tickets

So we were in the third-best line. AKA the worst line.

Which was OK, I suppose. Except the worst line didn't move for the first 20 minutes we were in it.

Insensitivities
As we stood there, the four of us, we were pretty close to the front of the worst line. About eight people were in front of us--although for the time the line wasn't moving, we might as well have been behind 300 people.

It was cold. I was getting antsy.

I mentioned that the club is... well... urban. I did not mention that we had prefunked, and I had a fair bit of alcohol in me at this point.

As I watched people in the other two lines (line and "line") move into the club without us budging, I uttered something I probably should not have.

It's not that it wasn't true--it was. It's just not sensitive and I try not to talk this way.

I said, "Man, there are a lot of fat black chicks out tonight."

Oops.

But... whatever, right? One general statement that lacks sensitivity is not the end of the world (unless it's heard by the wrong person, I suppose, then it might be the end of MY world...)

But it didn't quite end there.

I had uttered it, half under my breath, to TM2000. Thor, standing a full 24 inches away, could not hear what I said. So TM2000 repeated what I said. And then Thor repeated it, kinda laughing.

It went something like this:

Me: Man, there are a lot of fat black chicks out tonight.
Thor: What?
TM2000: He said, "Man, there are a lot of fat black chicks out tonight."
Thor: (Laughing) There are a lot of fat black chicks out tonight?

It was, in other words, repeated significantly more loudly than I'd said it. It might have been true (see scientifically-derived charts), but it was too loud.

(And, yes, I understand that it was racially insensitive on my part. From this point forward, I will refer to this particular group of individuals as BBBW.)

And, alas, it turned out that a woman RIGHT in front of us sort of fit the BBBW bill perfectly. I hadn't even seen her when I'd made my observation. I'd missed a forest-legged example due to the arboreal abundance.

We almost sprained muscles cringing as soon as we saw her. Oops!

She didn't hear us. I don't think. But for just a moment I thought I was going to get my nearly-frostbit buttocks beat down before the year was out.

While it's conceivable she was pretending to not have heard the slight, and while there was plenty of time for me to get a 2010 ass-whupping at the hands of someone else (BBBW or otherwise) I think she'd honestly not heard us... primarily because of her annoyance with the lack of motion in the line.

Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease
About five minutes after our foot-in-mouth placement, the woman and her friend started talking to us. Or, rather, complaining to us. While I normally would be loathe to talk to a stranger who is not physically appealing in such a setting (yes, I'm not just racist, but shallow. I rock!), I felt badly, so I was really supportive of her whining about the lack of movement.

Not only was I feeling annoyed, too, but I figured that if she complained and got kicked out of the line we'd be that much closer to getting out of the cold.

After another minute or two, our neighbor started to shout to a doorman, asking/complaining/kvetching... I stood with my peeps, silently, mildly embarrassed by her loud-mouthed ways.

And yet? It worked. The line started moving about 90 seconds later, within 10 minutes we were all in the club, and within 12 minutes I was urinating relievedly in the men's room.

A Theme Continues
I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about the interior of the club--from 10:40 or so (when we got in) until 12:15 or so (when TM2000 and I left) not much happened.

Actually, I will comment on the makeup of the club: there were two women that I saw that I found appealing. Physically, I mean. I'm sure many of them had fantastic senses of humor and could delight me with tales of travel and World of Warcraft.

But there were only two that I found appealing. TM2000 and I sort of danced near them for a bit until they got wristbands to get into the VIP area and then they were gone.

By the time we left, I was ready to go. I wanted to talk to (or at least look at) women that weighed less than 1.5 times me.

Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen.

Second Location
TM2000 and I had been wearing masks at the party and, as the first hour of the new year progressed, he decided to remove his but I chose to wear mine. Why? I'd like to say I was cold and it was keeping me warm and that's the reason I wore it, but I think it's better explained by the alcohol I had consumed.

We bounced to a few places around Belltown and, since neither of us were keen to spend money on cover for an hour or so of a bar, we ended up at Karma, a little bar with a DJ and small dancefloor that doesn't charge cover.

We'd been there before and it was more our speed than Venom. Oddly enough, though, there was a high ratio of BBBW:everyone else there, too.

The difference? These ones were handsy. See updated charts.

Which is OK. A little groping never hurt me (so far). The thing is, in the immortal words of Axl Rose, "a little wouldn't do and so the little got more and more."

I walked up to the dance floor, and Queen Groper made eye contact with me. I smiled and looked away.

She then made hand contact with me. Or, more specifically, (her) hand-to- (my) hip contact. I winced and edged away.

Unfortunately, she didn't get the point. She was like a black hole (no pun intended)... every time I got within groping range (which was much farther than I would have anticipated; I think her girth created an optical illusion of short arms) she'd touch me.

My shoulder. My hair. My back.

Ew. Not ideal.

I kept drinking. She kept drinking.

I got more comfortable (or at least inured) to her clumsy and ineffectual advances, and she got ... more drunk.

By closing, I'd developed an ability to avoid her. And she'd developed a willingness to pull up her shirt, revealing a bra-free sight that I will not soon forget and not soon hope to see again.

TM2000 and I exited. He went home. I went to Neighbour's, a Capitol Hill gay dance club.

I didn't wear my mask, but my ability to attract individuals I was/am utterly disinterested in continued. (I know... in a gay dance club?!? Who'd have seen it coming?)

More next time, in NYE 2010: Part II (Non-Hetero Venue).

Brand Loyalty, Poetry, and Me

2011-01-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

I've sat through countless hours of commercials that try to differentiate products from one another. Dodge vs. Ford vs. Chevy vs. Datsun (or whomever makes trucks; I never see myself owning one, so I just tune the commercials out) or Miller vs. Samual Adams vs. Budweiser vs. Coors (I don't drink beer very often, but I will admit that babe-focused ads at least get me to pay attention).

These ads vie to make their product different by convincing us that their product name is better. Once we associate a brand with quality or value or fun or whatever, that brand doesn't have to be the cheapest for us to purchase its products.

I'm not immune from brand loyalty (Les Schwab, I'm convinced, will always treat me well, so it doesn't occur to me to go anywhere else or even to shop around when I need tires)... but I am less prone, I'd like to think, than the average consumer. Cars/beer/vodka/toilet paper/paper towels/laundry detergent/condoms/bread/salad dressing/shoes/etc., etc., ... none of the brands in those product areas give me much reason to prefer them.

And most of the brands I do prefer? There's nothing particularly spectacular or special about. I won't give a guy a high-five if I see him with a box of Glad plastic wrap, and I won't start chatting up a woman in the checkout line if we're both buying Heinz ketchup.

All of this is to say there are very few moments I have in my life where I see, like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm with fellow Prius drivers, a stranger who has something that I have loyalty to that I actually consider congratulating on being awesome enough to possess, as well. (Man. That sentence was a piece of work...)

Such a moment happened the other night, though.

I was at Ozzie's, having a drink and watching people sing, when I noticed that a fellow at an adjoining table was capturing his friend's song on his phone. On his Nexus One.

I have a Nexus One (aka the "Google phone"). I love my Nexus One. I only know one other person (Heels) who has it, and it was only sold by Google for about six months. It's a good phone that is a bit different than most other devices out there, and it's not common to see another one "in the wild".

As a result, after the guy finished videoing his friend, I leaned over and pointed to my phone and said, "Nexus One, huh?"

Before I get to his response, I'd like to go on a quick tangent.

I think of poetry--and perhaps art in general--as the conversion of one type of thinking or feeling into another. A poet can express, in words, a sunset or the yearning of unrequited love or the pain of a canker sore underneath one's tongue, and the reader feels those sensations. A poet translates feelings into words.

I am no poet.

So... back to the guy with the Nexus One. I pointed to my phone, said, "Nexus One!" and gave him a thumbs up. And he gave me a look.

A look of irritation and confusion and disgust and boredom and ... I don't know. I am no poet, remember?

The look he gave me made no sense to me--Nexus One owners all know how awesome their phone is, right?--and I've been chewing on it ever since.

My conclusion? He was using his friend's phone to capture the video. There's obviously no other explanation.

My Journey Into Crazyville

2011-01-02T17:40:00.000-08:00

It's not a huge secret that I don't like Apple. I don't care for their software. I don't dig their hardware. And I really don't like their attitudes (both the smugness that permeates its marketing and so many of its users as well as the lack of openness in its standards).

With that being said, I have had to get used to using a Mac because it's what I've been using at work for almost a year and a half now. I still don't have the hot keys down, it still bugs me that there are two "Delete" keys that do different things, and there are innumerable other irritants... but I am getting used to it.

I've eschewed iPhones for a variety of reasons, and I'm delighted with my Android-powered Nexus One.

When the iPad came out, I understood the impact it might have... but I didn't see any time or place I would use it. I am planted in front of my desktop for many of my waking hours at home, and I have my Nexus One the rest of the time. An iPad might work for other people, but not for me.

So when, in an incredibly generous act on the part of my employer, I was given an iPad as part of my holiday bonus, I was sort of uncertain what to do. I was told that I could take it back for cash, but I felt a bit bad. I'm the tech guy in our company, and it seems I should have the latest/greatest gadget.

After some mulling, I decided I'd rather have the money. Whether it will go towards a new TV or a new car or a trip to foreign lands is TBD, but in spite of revisiting the "how would I use it?" question, I couldn't find a satisfactory answer, and I bet if I'd opened it then it would have ended up under some random paperwork on my coffee table, just begging for a cat to jump up and take a nap on it.

Since I had received the actual box with the iPad in it, it was necessary for me to go to the actual Apple store to return it. I took a (slightly) extended lunch this past week and headed out to the University Village Apple store.

I'd been there a couple of times before, but this was a bit of a post-Christmas madhouse. Several things struck me as exceedingly odd--or at least inconsistent with what I find valuable.

First of all was the very notion that I had to go to a store. When I got my Nexus One, I ordered it online. It was shipped promptly and I got exactly what I expected--I even was credited $100 a few weeks later when the price dropped. Going to a store to buy something or return something feels a bit antiquated to me.

Secondly, there were a shit-ton of employees. They were all wearing bright red shirts and carrying little PDA-type devices (iPhones? Maybe. Not iPads, though) and there were a lot of them. I didn't count, but I'd estimate 30.

It was good, I guess, since it was busy. If people go into the store expecting to jibber-jabber, then I suppose it's better to not have to wait too long to do so. Personally? As a general rule, the less I need to talk to anyone in life, the better.

Thirdly--and I'd noticed this before--there's just so much elbow room in that place. Each laptop and phone and iPad and piece of hardware was treated like a piece of art. I can't confirm they each have a laser-protected security system when the store closes, but it looks like they've got the infrastructure for it.

Having that much space feels inefficient. When I go to a museum or a gallery, having that much space makes sense. I'm visiting (or, at least on paper, potentially purchasing) art. Giving each piece room to breathe and having a bit of visual palette-cleansing space makes sense.

When I use a computer? I don't need art. I need efficiency.

And that's what all of these things add up to me: fluff. Expensive fluff.

Assuming the software and hardware costs of Apple vs. competitors' products are equal, then I don't see how I can't be paying for fluff. Paying for elbow room in a store I don't want to visit more than absolutely necessary. Paying for in-person support that I don't want to take advantage of (that's what the Web is for, dammit!).

I don't consider myself a fanboy of Google (or Microsoft, for that matter) but I did get some pleasure using my Nexus One as they were trying to figure out how to get me my money.

For the record: the staff members who assisted me were pretty helpful--after I pushed a bit. They offered me in-store credit, which I almost laughed at, and eventually converted the iPad to a gift card, which they could then cash out. The check should be here in 4-6 weeks.

I'm still grateful at my bosses for getting me the iPad, and I'm delighted for all the people who enjoy the Apple experience enough to pay for the fluff. For my part, though, I'm going to plug away with my PowerBook (or whatever markety-marketing name my laptop has) at work and I'm otherwise going to avoid Apple products... which will maybe put me at a return visit to the Apple store in 2018 or so.

Which is fine by me.

2011: A Resolution

2011-01-01T15:09:00.000-08:00

I enjoy writing this blog. I did not start writing the blog, though, just to have fun.

I started doing it, iirc:

To practice my writing.
To document my life.
To get mad play.

While number three might never come to pass (although, now that I think of it... hehe), the blog definitely can do numbers one and two...

But I have to write.

I had 60 blog entries last year. Five a month. Not too bad.

BUT... I only wrote three in the last three months combined, and two of them are lame-ass blogs that have nothing to do with adventures in my life.

So. The new year. People sometimes make resolutions, and I'm not really a "resolutions" guy. It might be said that I prefer to leave things unresolved.

This year, though? I considered three resolutions:

Austerity measures in my personal life.
Flossing regularly.
Writing a specific number of blogs as a minimum.

The first one, as I thought about it last night/this morning after a considerable amount of rum, would involve drinking less, spending less, being alone more, etc., etc. Basically personal changes that would, if implemented at a societal level, cause riots in Europe.

I've reconsidered that one.

BUT... I will floss at least twice a week (which would be a lot for me).

AND... I will write at least 100 blogs this calendar year.

That's fewer than two a week. Fewer blog entries than flossings.

I think I can do it, and I hope that I write at least 100 things that are worth reading... and not just for me. Because while I started off with that original list (or something akin to it) I appreciate that I have friends and acquaintances and strangers that take the time to occasionally read my ramblings and I don't want to let you down.

Happy 2011.

Here's one blog entry in the bank.

I Saw This on the Interwebz...

2010-12-07T23:11:00.000-08:00

So I saw this somewhere or other and I have some things to say about it... watch the video so we have a shared knowledge base.

My brother uses (used?) an alter ego where he claimed he was a hand model. George Costanza was a hand model. Neither of them are quite as annoying as the chick in this video.
I received a pedicure when I visited Las Vegas in June of 2007 (or so) and was told I have "flawless feet". Maybe I should pursue a career as a foot model.
The way she moves her hands... woah. Creepy. Her hands are in perma-claw mode... except claws presumably have a bit of strength to then. Her hands look like noodles that are about two minutes away from being al dente.
"So for me, that means no cooking, no cleaning, no taking out the garbage... no gardening, no sports." Hmm... I've already got the "lazy" part of being a hand model down.
"These hands have not seen the light of day for ... about fifteen years." Another thing we have in common!
"Most people are still really amazed that I can make a full-time living off, you know, about five inches." Uhh... no comment.

Movie Review: Paranormal Activity 2

2010-10-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

Here's my entire review of Paranormal Activity 2, which I saw (for the chart purposes, below) at time period six.

Tale from the Front: Misspeaking to a Miss

2010-10-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a "Gone Dancin'" type of one.

To recap, at a high level, my thinking about dance clubs and my presence therein:

I am a bad dancer. I know that.
I enjoy dancing with women, but I don't go there to dance with women.
I am simultaneously sickened and amused by how lots of guys seem to disagree with the first two points.

So, with those general concepts in mind, I will relate another key opinion that was critical to me making a fool of myself this weekend: I really don't like it when married chicks try to dance with me. At best, they are trying to have fun and are being inconsiderate of my appreciation of women. At worst, they don't take their vows seriously and are trying to make me a pawn in their dysfunction.

(Actually, at worst I guess they are aliens that have been sent to destroy the world but only after eating my cats in front of me...)

Here's a basic decision-making matrix that happens when I'm on the dancefloor and I'm approached by a woman:

Given how much I tend to drink when I dance, "basic decision-making" is pretty much all I'm capable of.

So this weekend, I was moving on the dance floor when a woman started dancing REALLY close to me... too close for it to be accidental. I noticed she had a wedding ring (or at least an engagement ring, or a big ol' "I'm SERIOUSLY pure, bitches!" ring) so I vacated the area and went. For another drink, naturally.

A bit later I saw the same woman, prompted by her friends, backing up towards me. "Backing up" sounds like she was doing some sort of crazy dance move, when in fact she was merely edging back into my space... it was deliberate enough, thought, that I felt she was doing it on purpose, so I left again. I think I might have grumbled something as I did so, to let her know that she should stop making me feel like she wanted me to cuckold her hubby.

About 90 seconds later, I noticed it wasn't the same woman. She was wearing a similar black top but she had no wedding ring on. She was just some other chick who'd wanted to dance with me. Oops.

About 90 seconds laterer, I decided to relieve her of the burden of rejection at my hands and so I approached her and started talking to her.

(In the text I've typed since the graph, above, I've outlined at least three errors I made that night. "Started to talk to her" might have been the biggest one.)

Me: Hey.
Not Married Chick: Hi.
Me: So... I wanted to let you know something.
NMC: What's that?
Me: I didn't avoid you because of--
NMC: What? "Avoid me"?
Me: --yeah, it was because I thought you were married, and--
NMC: I'm not married.
Me: --I know, but I thought you were another chick and I don't like it when married chicks dance on me.
NMC: ...
Me: ...
NMC: OK. Have a good night.

Oh, man. "Have a good night." The perfect end to a truly embarrassing conversation.

I'm used to doing embarrassing things in clubs, but most of them are dance-related. This did NOT help me have a good night.

Monterrey: Part III

2010-09-29T20:52:00.000-07:00

It was Thursday evening and I was in Monterrey, Mexico, waiting for my friend Diecinueve to arrive. I wasn't sure what, exactly, we were going to do, but I was famished and a bit stir crazy. Pretty much anything would have been just fine.

Seeing her for the first time was... less weird than I might have guessed. I can't remember the last time that I had seen someone for a few hours and then, 32 months later, had her knock on my hotel room door to pick me up. There's a first time for everything, right?

She had a project that she was working on at school, and when she picked me up I asked her how it went, and she said that she had a horrible day. I thought she meant, like, "My car's tail light went out" or "I lost my Foursquare mayorship to the local coffee shop today" horrible. In fact, she explained that her best friend had a family tragedy and it was much more horrible than I'd anticipated.

In spite of that news, she took me out to get a sandwich. We went to a place that I would not have associated with Monterrey or Mexico, generally. It was called something like "Peace, Love" and it had a modern hippy/crunchy vibe, with several 60's-esque sayings decorating the place... all in English. Kinda weird.

Also kinda weird? The insane gender ratio. I think that I was one of three or four non-employees who were male, and there must have been three or four dozen chicas there. It was bizarre, and I wondered whether those kinds of places existed in Seattle. Because I like those kinds of places, for some reason.

The sandwich was also quite good.

As we sat and I ate (she was not hungry, but she made sure to point out that she would have bought both a sandwich and a salad; big talker!) and I tried not to stare at the forest of femininity around me, we planned the rest of the night.

She was dressed nicely, and I liked her outfit, but she was aghast at the notion that she'd go out in such an ensemble. I wasn't going to argue with her about how she should dress, but it seemed a bit "Mr. Rogers-changing-into-a-sweater" to me. We needed to go back to her place, then, so she could change, and we were going to meet some of her friends at a bar after that.

There was, naturally, an unexpected snag.

She was driving us back to her place, when she informed me that one of her (five? six?) housemates was home. OK. Fine. It seemed that with that many housemates, the odds would be slim that none would be home. She clarified that one roomie, in particular, was there. And this person did not allow men in the house.

Uh... OK.

Culturally influence? Chemically imbalanced? I am not sure, but Diecinueve dropped me back off at my hotel and picked me up later. No big deal. Just one of the oddities of my trip.

The bar we went to was busy. It wasn't crazy-busy, but it was bustling. I liked the atmosphere, in spite of the fact that there were actually some men in the establishment, unlike the sandwich place.

Speaking of dudes, four of Diecinueve's friends were there, and three of them were dudes. I was introduced to her female friend, Rudolfa, and Rudolfa's friend. The other two guys seemed nice enough but I never talked to them nor got their names. We shared a bottle of rum, though, so I feel like we have a bond that only alcohol can form (a different bond than I've made with women in the past due to alcohol, just for the record).

Rudolfa seemed like a very nice person. I sat between her and Diecinueve at our table and she, like Diecinueve, was very cute. She had long dark hair, big brown eyes, nice legs and... something on the end of her nose.

"Something on the end of her nose?" you might ask. "Yes," I would reply. "Like a zit?" "No." "A birthmark?" "No." "A squirrel?" "Not exactly."

She had, like, a scrape. A scab. Something. I didn't know quite what it was, to be honest, in spite of both Rudolfa and Diecinueve trying to explain it to me. Whether it was a language thing or an alcohol thing, I just couldn't grok how she came to have such an abrasion. I kept getting one-sentence explanations from Rudolfa that were amusing but not entirely elucidating. A couple of my favorites:

"It was his birthday." (Pointing to her friend.)
"It's the climate in Monterrey!"
"I woke up last weekend and a squirrel was nibbling on my nose."

OK. I made one of those up. (Or did I?)

In addition to the pleasant conversation and the rum and the hot Mexican chicks sitting on either side of me, I had one other encounter of note.

Possibly due to the aforementioned rum, I had to use the little boys' room. It was an odd setup, with a sink outside the entrance to both the female and male restrooms. The bathroom itself was a single room without a sink inside... anyway, I went in, locked the door, and did my business.

There was a knock on the door and I could see, through the frosted glass, that someone was waiting to get in. I'm not sure why a knock on a locked bathroom door (when I'd been in there for about 27 seconds) was perceived to be helpful (other than denying me the luxuriant urination session that I usually indulge in), but the reason I'm telling this mini-story is because of what happened when I opened the door.

First: an aside. An aside about expectations. When I go to see a movie, I try to keep expectations low (so I don't have Star Wars Prequels anger). When I talk to someone I don't know, I assume that they are well intentioned simpletons (so I don't get disappointed when they say "irregardless" or use "literally" incorrectly with no self-awareness). When I get out of bed in the morning, I remind myself that a lot is probably going to go wrong (just kidding on that; I don't actually start thinking until about 25 minutes after I get out of bed).

I learned to temper my expectations not through a long spiritual journey or in one of the innumerable post-secondary classes I'm still paying student loans on, but through a post-Nerf basketball session at a friend's house where I took a big swig of iced tea that I thought was apple juice. It tasted like ass--not because it was bad iced tea, but because I was expecting the sweet payoff of apple juice.

Expectations being at odds with reality can lead to disappointing things (like the end of my trip to Monterrey, in my next blog post, or the Obama administration) or to funny things (like the Obama administration).

In THIS case, I opened the door and saw a guy whose eyes were about ten inches lower than mine. He stepped aside so I could get to the sink, and I prepared to descend the step to the sink area.

I prepared to descend that step not because I remember its presence but because I saw a guy whose eyes were ten inches lower than mine and I assumed I was elevated.

Nope. He was just a short dude.

The expectation of that (imaginary) step, helped along, perhaps, by the oft-aforementioned rum, led me to lose my balance and almost sprawl onto the floor. While I'm sure that a common sink area outside of a pair of bathrooms in a Mexican bar has a squeaky-clean floor, I preferred not to end up with a Rudolfa-like nose injury, and I was able to regain my balance, wash my hands, and make it back to the table.

All without laughing at the really short guy that caused me the trouble.

We finished our drinks without further incident. Rudolfa gave me a stuffed chili (like a felt and fabric-stuffed one; not a cheese and goat stuffed one) for some reason upon my return. Diecinueve and I made loose plans regarding Friday and Saturday, and she dropped me back off at my hotel.

The first two days of my trip had gone off well. Not without a hitch, but without a kidnapping and without a major letdown.

That would, unfortunately, change. Next time, you'll learn whether I was kidnapped and beheaded or let down by the rest of my trip. I'm sure the uncertainty is maddening!

Monterrey: Part II

2010-09-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

The first thirty hours of my trip to Monterrey, Mexico, were pretty good. Catching up with Patrón, catching up with my sleep, and enjoying the highest pillow:person ratio on my hotel bed were all good things.

At this point, it was Thursday night and I was waiting for Diecinueve to come meet me at the hotel.

I'd met Diecinueve over two and a half years earlier. I'd gone up to Vancouver, BC, with TravelMate 2000 and Flowers and we'd stayed there two nights. The first night we went, TM2000 met a girl and Flowers met a girl, whom I will call Flowers' Friend. I met no girls... or, rather, I met no girls that were particularly interested in meeting me.

Flowers' Friend gave him her number, and so the second night we decided to go to where she (and, allegedly, some female friends) was. It was a dance club, and there was a line. Flowers' friend was in the club and we decided to wait in line (which is a bit atypical of us). So we waited.

And waited.

Eventually we were close to the front, and Flowers' Friend came out to check on us. She brought a friend, and it was... a bit deflating.

What you're about to read exposes me as a bit of an asshole. Not, perhaps, unlike most guys, but... an asshole. My apologies if this is news to you.

OK. Something about Flowers' Friend. She was cute--nice smile, good hair, cute Mexican accent--and she was fit. "Fit" is a good adjective in terms of what women (and, I guess, all people, although I tend to care significantly less about dudes on that front) ought to be. Or, at least, ought to be if they prefer to have me find them physically attractive. (I know that "fit" wasn't part of my CHC scale. I need to think about that one.)

So. Cute. Fit. Good...

Flowers' Friend's friend, who I will call Flowers' Friend's Friend, was not particularly cute. And definitely not fit. In fact (and this is the asshole part) she was more than a bit fat.

Which is OK. I understand that some people are overweight, and I'm sure she was a delightful girl. But I didn't stand in line for 35 minutes to get into a club so I could dance with gordas.

But... we consciously acknowledged the sunk cost effect and decided to stick it out until we got into the club. There was, after all, at least one cute girl who liked Flowers well enough, and we'd already put in the time to get to the front of the line (sunk cost) and ... where else were we gonna go?

So we went in. Paid our way in with the Canadian funny money and approached the dance floor.

Fortunately, Flowers' Friend had more than one friend at the club.

A quick aside about me, at this point: I was wearing a blue blazer over a pretty awesome t-shirt. This t-shirt had a microphone in it and lighted up more as the volume increased. Let me show you, courtesy of a random YouTube video I found:

Silly? Of course? Awesome? Some think so.

Diecinueve was one of those who thought so, which was tremendous news for me.

When we walked onto the dancefloor, we all said hola to Flowers' Friend, and my eyes locked onto Diecinueve and her eyes locked onto my shirt and we ended up hanging out for much of the rest of the night. She was fun and adorable (and fit) and she enjoyed touching my shirt, which distracted her from my intolerable dancing skills.

It was not until later that night, when I learned that Canada had a younger drinking age than the US, that I learned she was ... significantly younger than I'd anticipated. Hence her codename in my blog.

But... who cares, right? Almost everyone is significantly younger than I am, and so we stayed in touch off and on for the next couple of years, and I was about to see her in person for the second time ever when she was meeting me at my hotel on Thursday night.

More on that next time.

Monterrey: Part I

2010-09-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

Originally I had planned on going to Monterrey with a buddy to see the Seattle Sounders play. I find soccer a generally boring sport, but I appreciate the impact and popularity it has around the world, so I thought it'd be fun. I also have a couple of friends who live in the Monterrey area, and it's always nice to have people willing to show you around and apologize more fluently when you upset the natives.

Unfortunately, my buddy ended up not going, but I decided to go anyway, and I decided to skip the soccer game... me navigating Monterrey alone to see an event I wasn't particularly enthused about struck me as madness, and I was more excited about the prospect of hotel nap than that.

Soo... I took a redeye Tuesday night through Houston and arrived at the hotel around noon. Here are some thoughts/experiences from the first half of my trip:

The weather was disappointing. Hazy/muggy/unsunny. There are beautiful mountains ringing Monterrey but I couldn't really see much of them because of the clouds. Compared to the massive flooding the city experienced over the summer, though, from Hurricane Alex, I obviously had little to complain about.

Patrón picked me up and we had lunch together. I hadn't seen her in person in about 15 months, and one of the first things she told me was that I look old. I informed her that I am, indeed, oldER but that I was also operating on about three hours of sleep. Always a nice thing to hear from a friend, in any event. :|

Another odd thing? A consistent topic of conversation (or at least comment) that kept cropping up: marriage. She talked about the people she dated in terms of marriage, she pointed out where people get married, she pointed out where SHE wanted to get married, etc. There's nothing at all wrong with this, but I think she might be pretty ready to get hitched sometime soon. Just a guess. :)

We went to a museum and it was pretty cool. It had art on the wall and architectural models in a special exhibit. At one point I leaned in to see one of the models and, although I wasn't touch anything, I guess I got too close, because one of the security guys said something. Of course, lots of people say things, and since I can't understand Spanish very well I ignored him. Patrón had to poke me and tell me that he was telling me to back up. Oops.

Wednesday night was uneventful; Patrón had a class and then had to pack for her trip to Vegas the next day (ironic given the circumstances in which I met her)... we loosely planned on meeting up for dinner later that night, but it didn't work out. There was no proper goodbye with her, but at least I got a good night of sleep.

The next morning I got out of bed around 10:30. I went to the gym in the hotel and lifted a little bit, and then I wandered across the street to a mall to get some food. Inside were all the exotic food options one might expect: Subway, Chili's and McDonald's among them. I guess a mall is a mall, right?

After some deliberation, I remembered that Mexican McDonald's had not, the last time I'd checked, changed their fruit pies from fried to baked. I have no idea how much worse, health-wise, a deep fried apple pie is than a baked one, but I have a strong opinion on how much better they taste. Much better.

So I approached the woman behind the counter.

And it was suddenly weird.

Not McDonald's. That wasn't weird. It was weird.

I was weird.

I've studied Spanish for enough of my life that I should be able to speak it reasonably well. I should be able to say standard things like, "Where is the bathroom?", "I would like a Big Mac and an apple pie, please," and "How old are you, pretty girl?" in Spanish without freezing up.

Normally I don't freeze up. If properly motivated, I can talk to business people, homeless people and beautiful people without too much trouble.

At that McDonald's? I simply couldn't communicate. Couldn't understand what she said. Couldn't say that I wanted a Big Mac. It was an odd feeling and not one I enjoyed very much.

After stumbling over my words in two languages for about 20 seconds, I figured out that McDonald's wasn't open yet so I went over to Chili's and had a breakfast skillet.

Got back, took a nap, hit the gym again, showered again, and waited for Diecinueve, my other friend in Monterrey, to pick me up for dinner.

Monterrey: Prologue

2010-09-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

I've been to Mexico before. Over a decade ago--right before I started law school--I spent two weeks with Big Cole and two other high school chums in a fortnight trip that included Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán. I lost some paperwork and I was in a serious relationship, but it was a good time.

I went to Cancún and Playa del Carmen for my honeymoon. As fun as it is to talk about my marriage on my blog, I'm gonna skip that trip except to say the combo of beaches and Mayan ruins was incredible.

About two years ago I went back to Mexico. TM2000, Flowers and F-Bomb accompanied me to Puerto Vallarta. I was single and I was alcohol-friendly and I had high hopes.

Ugh.

The April 2008 Mexico trip was the biggest bust ever. Two of my three companions were recently involves with girls (one is engaged to the woman; the other is not) and it was Spring Break.

Good? Uh...

HIGH SCHOOL spring break.

It was a disaster.

And so I came back to Mexico for a fourth time. By myself. Hoping for the best but preparing for four days and nights of hotel gym time and HBO Signature.

That's a prologue. I'm at the end of night #2 and tomorrow, when the rum has worn off, I plan/hope to give a recap of my trip so far.

Mixed Signals

2010-09-18T03:18:00.000-07:00

A prelude: I haven't written many blogs lately. I don't know if it's because I am content in life, busy in life, or have given up on life, but I haven't felt a compulsion to do so.

I'm writing in a state of rather severe intoxication, which might result in some typographical errors but is almost certain to result in a more transparent communication of the weirdness that help fill in the gaps of my life between sleep and work and porn viewing.

Tonight was a Friday night. I didn't have plans, and the guys I usually hang out with had other plans (F-Bomb presumably was with the future Mrs. F-Bomb and TM2000 was with a group of people that I no long hang with). I got home from work and the gym about 5:30 and played some Civ IV and ate some leftover pizza and took a nap.

The alarm went off at 8:00 PM. I was confused, as I heard the alarm, regarding where I was and why I was being awakened.

It was like my life distilled down to its essence.

Since I had no plans, I turned off my alarm and rolled back over to go to sleep.

No dice.

I decided that I could hang out on my own Friday night. I could put away clothes that had piled up and do laundry that had piled up and do situps to counter the chubby stomach that had piled up... but I decided to wander to Ozzie's.

So I took a shower. I put on a rather subdued outfit that had, as its sole bit of flare, a red patent leather belt that I had bought for my Adam Lambert Halloween costume. As it turns out, no one saw it all night, but (A) it fits better now than it did last October (gym participation ftw!) and (B) I was a bit worried that I was wearing it for the same reason some guys wear womens' underwear.

In any event, Ozzie's was fine. It was an odd night and I was pestered by a Nebraskan Amazon, but .... whatever. The reason I am writing this long prologue is due to what happened after closing.

Let me say this: with the exception of January 2008, when I am within a bar I feel pretty safe. I recognize that I am a terrible fighter and that if it came to a real brawl I'd lose teeth and an eye and maybe a toe or two. Within most bars, I play it cool and trust that security will limit the ridiculousness of the assholes who want to fight.

Outside of bars is often more interesting, unfortunately, than inside them. After closing everyone pours out (eff me... it took four tries to type "pours"... it was "ous" and then "pusaja" and then "pous" before "pours") and people are all more... equal. It's weird. The power dynamic between men and women levels out and anything can happen.

Of course, the downside of this is that ... anything can happen. There is security, but someone can take out a tooth or an eye or a toe or two before anyone can do anything. Also, I've seen American History X. Curb-stomping is scary shit.

So... I'm hanging outside of Ozzie's after close. The rain is pouring down, and I'm standing beneath overhangs and whatever to try to stay semi-dry.

Somehow I'm surrounded by dudes. Not guys I know, but guys who are willing to talk to women. So I stand there and listen. There's a woman with an umbrella and she talks about how she's not from Washington... she's from California. I'm from California so I pay attention and it almost gets me knocked out.

How is that? Because about 20 minutes later I've moved a half-block away to get away from the dude-bro's and drunk women who want to go home with them and/or punch them in the neck and then act like they shouldn't be punch back because they're chicks.

So. I got some space. I'm txting TM2000. I'm waiting for (ideally) the rain to let up, even though I only have two blocks to walk to my apartment.

Who should stumble by me but the chick who was born in California. She has an umbrella and I'm tired of being wet so we have this conversation:

Me: You're from California?
Her: Yes! I hate the rain!
Me: I'm originally from California, too.
Her: Oh, yeah? Where?
Me: A naval air station in Hanford.
Her: Hanford? Yeah. I know that. I'm from Oakhurst.
Me: Really?
Her: Yes. You've heard of it?
Me: Totally. My grandmother and aunt lived there when I was young; I visited there a few times.
Her: Really? Cool. You wanna get under my umbrella with me?
Me: Uh, sure. But I'm sure that your boyfriend would not approve. [Note: I didn't know she had a boyfriend. It was a test.]
Her: He's over there. He's cool. It'll be fine.
Me: OK. Uh. I guess.

At that point I got under her umbrella with her. It wasn't a small umbrella. There was no touching. I was just slightly less drenched due to her kindness.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. She and I were talking about her hometown when suddenly a guy cruised up.

He was short and he was very pale/redhead and he had a VERY short haircut.

He was also this chick's boyfriend.

We had this conversation. It was awesome.

Him: Dude. I'm gonna knock you out.
Her: Haha. He's kidding.
Me: What?
Him: If you don't leave right now, I will drop you.
Me: What?
Her: He's kidding.
Me: Is this your boyfriend?
Her: Yes. He's cool.
Him: I'm not fucking around. I will punch you in the fucking face.
Me: (Backing up.) Dude. It's cool.
Her: Haha! He's funny.
Me: Are you kidding?
Him: No. I will knock you out.
Me: (Backing up.) OK. It's cool.
Her: (Advancing, grabbing my forearm.) He's TOTALLY kidding. Isn't he funny?
Me: ...
Him: Seriously. Leave.
Me: I'm waiting for a friend. (A lie.)
Her: (To me) He's just joking. Don't worry.
Him: I'm not joking.
Me: OK. Byebye.
Her: No! He's kidding!
Him: No I'm not.

It was bizarre. I don't see how they could have legitimately been on such different wavelengths, but I don't understand why she would keep pursuing me as he's threatening to pummel me.

Yes, he was shorter than I was.

Yes, I am not a gelatinous tub of goo.

But I don't know how to fight and I am the first person to admit it. There's no way I was about to stand my ground and call him and his girlfriend out as being totally ridiculous.

So I stepped out from under the cover and into the rain. I waited for them to stagger off and I set off for home.

It was an odd night. But I have all my toes/eyes/teeth, so I consider it to be a success.

For my birthday? An ulcer!

2010-09-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

Of the strengths I have, one is standardized test taking. I kinda joke about this fact occasionally, but one reason I believe that I do well is because I remain cool under fire. I don't get anxious about stuff very easily... whether it's because I can manage stress well or just have a general indifference is a fair question.

For some reason, though, I get stressed out around my birthday. Which is funny, not just because I rarely get stressed out, but because I sort of (at least internally) mock those who get more emotional around certain times: the holidays, weddings, menstrual cycles.

It's absolutely emerged in my consciousness, however, that I get more stressed out around my birthday than I should.

Two years ago I was supposed to meet people at Ozzie's for a semi-party and the night had a stressful pre-semi-party set of circumstances that led to me going home early and pissing off at least one friend who was kind enough to come with the intention of hanging out with me.

Last year was more serene, I think, but this year I had another little hiccup that threw me off and almost resulted in me hang out alone on my birthday evening. Which would not have been the end of the world, perhaps (although perhaps it would have been; fortunately we'll never know) but it would have been a bit of a waste, too.

Thinking about why I get stressed makes me more stressed, and I think I'm going to leave that as an off-blog topic of self-examination/recrimination. Instead, I will live you with this image:

Safeway Musings

2010-08-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

As I so often do after going to the gym, I stopped by my local Safeway for some foodstuffs. I had a few thoughts during the expedition:

Hot Sauce? Hot Damn!

I grew up eating a particular kind of hot sauce. La Victoria Salsa Brava.

Is it authentic? No. Is it particularly spicy? No. Is it anything other than familiarly tasty? No.

The problem has been that for a couple of years now, I have been unable to get it in "Hot" flavor. Mild? Yes. Medium? Sure? Hot? No.

Until today. I was stocking up on the Medium when I saw they had Hot and it was on sale. I bought three bottles (enough to last a couple of months, at least) and I smiled more broadly than any condiment should cause me to.

Don't You Tell Me How to Live My Life

Whenever we check out at the grocery store, we can (a) provide our own bag, (b) use paper, or (c) use plastic.

I wouldn't be opposed to option (a) except my self-awareness indicates that I would bring my cloth bags from my car (with groceries) and then they'd sit there, rather than be brought back to my car... rendering them useless the next time I went to the grocery store.

I should, arguably, opt for option (b) since my father worked for many years in the now near-defunct timber and paper industry in Oregon (OK... I don't know if it's nearly defunct or not, but it's dead to me). Of course, my dad used to be part of a union, too, and heaven knows how I feel about organized labor.

The tie-breaker is that my cats use the kitty box. A lot. They use the kitty box quite a lot. And I need to clean it to have any chance to ever EVER have a visitor to my apartment come back (trust me; I had one woman abandon a pair of shoes and her pants at my place, rather than ever return, due to my cats (man... that sounds kinda bad when I tell the story like that)).

So, in spite of the massive plastic bag pollution that is a terrible thing, I get plastic bags so I can use them to dispose of my used kitty litter. I don't feel great about it, but I do it.

What I do NOT need is, as the checkout guy is restocking the plastic bags so he can put my La Victoria Salsa Brava (Hot) and other goodies away, is for him to say, "Let me get more of the evil bags."

Fuck you.

That's like a cop rolling his eyes as he recites the Miranda rights or a prostitute being glum over getting out a condom. None of these things make me happy, but they're necessary. Stop giving me grief.

A Poisonous Idea

Last week a 14 year-old robber shot and killed someone. Bad? Sure. No 14 year-old should be robbing, let alone killing. I gotta think, though, that it's not THAT uncommon... the reason I read about it is because she killed her victim after being made fun of for being so young.

Can you imagine that? Being robbed by a tween is sort of embarrassing, and a bummer, also. But being killed by one due to one's inability to stifle mockery? That totally sucks.

So imagine when I saw someone that looked like Bret Michaels today as I unloaded my groceries. I so wanted to tell her she did a great job hosting the Miss Universe pageant.

Yes, it was a her.

And, yes, Bret Michaels has had phases where he looked like a chick, but this chick looked like Bret Michaels when he looked like a dude.

I can't say I really thought of the victim of the 14 year-old robber when I bit my tongue--I'm not really someone who talks shit to people in an unprovoked way as we're both walking down the street--but I think that if I do choose to start comparing strangers to celebrities, I'll start with, say, Selma Hayak. Or Justin Bieber.

The Grossest Thing

2010-08-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I was under the weather.

I felt myself coming down with a little somethin' somethin' on Sunday evening, and all through Monday I sniffled at work and then Monday night I was shivering in bed and barely slept. I called in sick (well, emailed in... do people still "call in" anywhere?) and spent much of the day in bed.

At some point I made soup and then, for dinner, I felt like something sweet. Unfortunately, my choices were limited.

Let me comment about my refrigerator before I continue.

My fridge is pretty well-stocked. I usually have an apple or two and some lettuce; several types of cheeses (including cheddar, for late night quesadilla adventures); a doorful of condiments (mustards and steak sauces and whatnot); lunchmeats; beers that people have brought over and not consumed.

In other words, lots of stuff. As a single guy who can barely keep his half-dozen (up from three!) plates washed, I'm pleased that I keep myself in a position to be able to make food if I really needed it without leaving my apartment.

The thing is, not all of that food is good. Half of the lunchmeat is out of date, there are two half-consumed two liters of soda, and I don't even want to open the more distant tub of sour cream.

In other words: I'm good at buying food, and I'm decent at eating it, but I'm bad at cleaning out my fridge.

If you read the title of this blog, you might be worried after this preamble. But this is not a blog about fungus or rancid meat or gerbils who have sprung, fully formed, from head cheese (I don't even know what head cheese is, and I'm disgusted to learn it's a meat product; I was going for an Athenian birth allusion... )

No... this blog is based on the grossest thing I have encountered in my refrigerator:

Chocolate chip juice.

"What is chocolate chip juice?" you might ask.

There are two answers I can give you to that question: the first is that I have no idea what it was--chemical breakdown of the chocolate chips? condensation from the fridge? Spilled water from my Brita filter that I never use but has been sitting on the top shelf right above the bag of chocolate chips at the back of the fridge for a long time?-- and the second is that it was a liquid I found intermingled with the chocolate chips in the Nestle bag.

The problem was not just that I had impaired chocolate chips, but that (a) I had already mixed the pancake batter, and (b) I had my heart set on chocolate chip pancakes, and (c) I had no second bag of (unrunny) chocolate chips.

So... I powered through. I pulled the strainer out of my cupboard and poured the chocolate chips into the strainer and I rescued a few lucky chips from sharing the fate of their brown brethren (the trash can) and put them into the half-dozen flapjacks I made.

They melted strangely and weren't quite right, but they were close enough in terms of taste to stave off my sweet tooth... and I am still alive so it seems the chocolate chip juice was not poison nor was it the antidote to otherwise poisonous chocolate chips.

Earlier today, though, I stepped on a sticky spot on my kitchen floor. I thought I was rid of the chocolate chip juice, but I will have to spend time mopping that mystery sauce before it's gone once and for all.

From the Mind Vault

2010-08-20T21:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have something happen to me that is worthy (in my estimation) of a blog, but I don't get around to writing it, or I wimp out due to the subject matter.

Well, this happened to me some months ago, and I was 50/50 on writing a blog about it... and I never did. I feel it's a story that needs to be told, and given the chances of me going to Mexico next month and never coming back, I might as well let it all hang out... Ed O's Blog style.

Or something.

So here it is.

I was in Safeway the other day, buying a few things. I see the same people pretty much every time I check out, but the checkers see so many people I'm not shocked that they don't remember me. I'm reminded of the saying, "You have a lot of clients as a lawyer, but your client only has you as a lawyer" and so I hold no ill will.

Going through the express lane, I noticed there was a new woman, and we had this exchange:

(Ring up hot dog buns) Beep
(Ring up gallon of milk) Beep
(Ring up pack of gum) Beep
Checker: Do you want to keep this outside of the bag?
Me: No, I'm good.
Checker: OK.
(Ring up can of energy drink) Beep
Checker: Do you want to keep this outside of the bag?
Me: No, I'm good.
Checker: OK.
(Ring up box of condoms) Beep
Checker: Do you want to keep this outside of the bag?
Me: No, I'm good.
Checker: OK.
(Ring up box of condoms) Beep
Me: I'd like to keep those outside of the bag.
Checker: What?
Me: Nothing.

Now, buying condoms is not like buying toilet paper. One involves a signal of accomplishment (or at least aspiration) while the other seems... not. Even I, though, who rarely shy away from my selection and purchase of birth control, could not be so brazen in my joking. Maybe someday.

Mayor of Mexican Nightclub Kidnapped by Drug Hitmen

2010-08-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

MONTERREY | Sept 26, 2010 1:55pm EDT

Mexico (Reuters) - Suspected drug hitmen have abducted the foursquare mayor of a local discoteca near Mexico's northern city of Monterrey in the latest surge in violence threatening to undermine industry and scare off social media geeks.

Gunmen with automatic weapons burst into Classico early Sunday morning in San Pedro Garza García, an affluent suburb of Monterrey, police and officials said, and targeted Ed O, a tourist from Seattle.

"He was led out of the club by armed men. He wasn't beaten, he wasn't hand-cuffed or tied up," Alejandro Garza, attorney general of Nuevo Leon state, which includes Monterrey and San Pedro Garza García, told a news conference.

Nuevo Leon Governor Rodrigo Medina said Ed O was probably targeted for his efforts on foursquare, a popular social media network. The tourist's family has not received any ransom demands.

Ed O's foursquare feed reveals he had checked in at Classico earlier in the evening and had become mayor by default. "The regulars know better than to claim Classico. The cartels just don't like people who use foursquare," explained Medina.

The abduction follows a spike in social media-centered violence over the weekend in northern Mexico, where rival gangs have engaged in bitter Tweet flame wars and have allegedly phished their competing Facebook community pages.

I Lack Flavor

2010-08-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

Let's talk politics here for a moment before I get into something that a chick told me over the weekend.

I don't vote. I appreciate that people vote (although I am torn between being relieved that there's not a true oligarchy and that too many "normal" people are just too stupid to be making laws that affect me) but I don't consider it to be worth my time.

I also tend to be more rightward-leaning on the political spectrum when I am bothered to think politics in practical terms, which means (a) that any vote I made would probably be useless, since it would be going in favor of the loser, and (b) it makes speaking politics very sketchy with people in real life because most other people are more emotional and/or cocksure about political perspectives than I am.

With this being said? I consider myself progressive on several issues, and when I go out and about on a Thursday night I rarely think about race (someone might say that's because the places I go are predominantly white, and there might be some validity to that). I was forced to think about it rather late this past, Thursday, though, because of an exchange I had with a woman at Ozzie's.

I was waiting for my turn to sing, and I was at the bar solo, and I was speaking to a nice young lady. She was Asian, but (in spite of the fact that so many of my friends are currently dating Asian women) that didn't really matter to me. Race, though, was clearly on her mind, and it became apparent about 15 seconds into our conversation:

Her: What are you?
Me: What?
Her: What are you?
Me: You mean, like, what? Like, "I am awesome"?
Her: No. Your race. Are you Asian?
Me: Oh, uh... well, my mom was adopted, but--
Her: Because I don't date white guys.
Me: [ignoring the fact that I didn't want to date her, necessarily] What? Why not?
Her: White guys lack flava.
Me: They lack flavor?
Her: Yeah, flava.
Me: Flavor. Uh, OK...

I think we had a few more sentences exchanged, but I wasn't about to debate her as to whether we have flavor or not, and she CLEARLY wasn't picking up on the fact that I was hitting the "r" in flavor pretty hard, just to goad her into calling me on it.

Boo, racism!

Tuesday Night (or: Fat Grizzly Adams)

2010-08-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

I used to go out on Tuesdays quite a bit. Especially during funemployment, I could wander in really late and sleep the morning away and be no worse off. Last night (a Tuesday) I had planned to stay in, do my dishes, talk about cleaning other parts of my apartment, and generally relax.

But it was not to be.

I received a chat message from Winner right after I got home, and I got this chat:

6:02 PM Winner: edo, why are you you?

and what are you doing tonight?

me: i just got home

can I have 5 minutes?

Winner: no

fuck you

we're going out tonight

(courtesy of Big Apple)

me: wowzers

6:03 PM heh

Winner: let's say 10

be ready

with your hair did

6:05 PM and no stache (from Big Apple)

Winner is not really the kind of person that says, "Fuck you" to me (indeed... few people do, even in jest, on account of my legendary temper and penchant for eye gouging), so I wasn't shocked that it was Big Apple who was in charge.

I was in the middle of making dinner, and had no intention of shaving my mustache just yet, so I txted back that I wasn't sureI was going to make it out. And then it happened.

(Hopefully that sounds super-dramatic. It wasn't, but I like adding spice to blog entries occasionally...)

Big Apple txted me and asked why I was trying to ruin her night out. Ugh.

I hadn't seen Big Apple in over a year, and I will be honest: I am particularly susceptible to suggestion when it comes to her. I don't really know why--I generally am rather skilled at ignoring peer (or near-peer, when I'm feeling particularly superior) pressure--but she could probably get me to do just about anything for her. And she probably knows it.

So, when she said we were going to sing karaoke, I just rolled with it. I had a drink and the two of them picked me up and spirited me off to Hula Hula... a place I used to frequent but haven't been to in the last year or so.

It was fine. It was fun. It was good to see the ladies, even if they didn't sing... I got in four songs, which made for a busy night.

A bit before midnight, we decided to go to another bar. I didn't catch the name of it, but Big Apple wanted to see another friend and so we drove to Belltown and parked and walked into the Two Bells, which I had been to for lunch but didn't really know was a bar that people went to at night to drink and hang out.

Well, if last night was any indication: it's not a bar that many people go to to drink and hang out.

There was a bartender, Big Apple's friend, another chick with a guy, and two dudes sitting with one another. It was a friendly enough place, although I knew I was done drinking for the night and I was wondering if I was going to be able to get a ride home or if I'd end up hoofing it.

I was sitting in a booth, talking to Winner, and Big Apple was bellied up to the bar, between her friend and one of the two dudes sitting with one another.

Let me say some things about this guy, who we will call Fat Grizzly Adams (see picture to the right). He was fat and had a bushy beard. And a bit of an attitude, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Big Apple and her friend were talking and looked over my way and I asked them what they were talking about and it was, of course, my mustache.

I have a love-hate relationship with my facial hair. Up until relatively recently, I was pretty much unable to grow any significant amount, and I'm still in the "it's fun to play with growing it in different ways" kind of immaturity that, presumably, many guys grow out of in their junior year of high school. I'd let my facial hair grow for a bit over a fortnight and then cleaned it up so I'm left with a rather tidy 'stache and soul patch.

Crappy? Yes. Ironic? Yes. Awesome? Yes. When it comes to facial hair, these concepts all get intermingled and confusing.

In any event, Big Apple and her friend had a conversation (between the two of them, but staring at me) that went something like this:

Big Apple: He needs to shave the mustache.
Big Apple's Friend: I dunno.
BA: He does.
BAF: Mustaches are hard to pull off, but he does it.
Me: I do, huh?
BAF: Yes, it's a tidy mustache.
Me: Oh, yeah?
BAF: Maybe it's the hair.
BA: Yeah, the hair! You make the hair just right so it goes with the mustache.
Me: Uh, no, actually, I...
BA: You do! You stand in front of the mirror, adjusting it so it all works.
Me: Uh, OK...

Watching this exchange, of course, was Fat Grizzly Adams. Remember: he has a beard. A big bushy beard. Big Apple turned to him and had this exchange:

Big Apple: You! You have a beard.
FGA: Yes, I do.
BA: You grew it to show him what a real man looks like!
FGA: Yes, I've grown it for a year to show him what a real man looks like...
BA: It took a year to grow that?
FGA: Yes.
BA: Oh. You're not a real man, then.

I don't think he appreciated that jibe, although he probably was so shocked and delighted that she was talking to him that he didn't mind too much.

One thing he did appreciate was when I decided to leave. I think that most guys, no matter how far out of their league the girls are, and no matter whether the girls have boyfriends (or even like guys) or not, would prefer that other guys leave women unattended. It was past 12:30 and Big Apple was talking about getting waffles and I just decided to walk home. I bid Winner adieu and then wandered up to the bar...

Me: OK, I'm outta here, Big Apple.
BA: You're leaving? OK. Are you walking?
Me: Yep.
BAF: Where do you live?
Me: Lower Queen Anne.
BAF: Ah... well, that's not too bad.
FGA: That's not bad at all!

...

Notice the exclamation point at the end of Fat Grizzly Adams' statement. That exclamation point is to indicate both the energy level with which he made his proclamation and its ludicrous nature (see picture to the left).

This is a guy who looks like he hasn't walked a mile in the last month, let alone at 12:30 AM on a Wednesday morning. No offense to fat people generally, but some offense to THIS fat person: shut up. Don't tell me what a good or bad walk is. I was already leaving you alone with my lady friends... no reason to get all uppity.

I made it back to my 'hood in one piece, and I ended up getting a pretty good night of sleep. I'm not sure that Tuesday outings are going to become a part of my regular agenda, but I had a good time and look forward to resting up tonight without having Fat Grizzly Adams irk be beyond reason with five simple words.

The Risk of Eccentricism

2010-08-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw a guy in a hat. Not a backwards baseball cap, to his credit, but one of the hats that are in fashion these days. A fedora or something similar.

Good and fine. He looked different and a bit daring... until a guy with the same hat showed up. It reminded me of this:

Important Things with Demetri Martin
Coolness - The Dragon Man
www.comedycentral.com

Of course, it's likely that 18 months from now fedoras will be everywhere... the dragon tattoo thing probably would remain less common.

Compliment?

2010-08-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

Part of the fun of going out is looking different. Different shirt/shoes/whatever. Being the same can be boring and getting attention (either good or bad) can be much more interesting than blending in. From blue contacts to old Keyshawn Johnson NY Jets jerseys, pushing the limit of what I'm comfortable wearing and looking like keeps it interesting.

Last night I was in a bar that I go to quite a bit, and although I don't know the name of a single person that works, there, I am enough of a regular that I talk to the employees occasionally. I had gone with a different look--parted/slicked hair and a mustache, essentially--and I had this exchange with the barback:

Her (from behind the bar, after looking at me): Haha!
Me: What?
Her (doing a circular indicative motion in front of her face): This whole thing.
Me: Me?
Her: Yeah.
Me: Ah...
Her: You look handsome.

And then she wandered off.

With compliments like that, who needs negs?

Digital Divide

2010-08-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Last night I was drinking and waiting for the dance floor to warm up. I was at the bar by myself, and I had my phone out to occupy me. I'm rarely EAGER to start dancing, and I need to have a crowd to have some sense of anonymity and solitude.

I was standing next to a table of three women and they were talking amongst themselves as I killed time txting and looking at websites and taking notes about those around me (I tend to forget things when I'm mid-drinking binge, so I type them up to remind my future sober self). I had the sense that I was amongst their topics of conversation.

Normally I discount that sense--it makes me feel paranoid and egocentric--but one of the women rotated on her chair and chastised me for txting.

I smiled and talked to her for a bit, and even managed to speak to her much cuter friend for a couple minutes. I don't think she knew, though, that I was more eager to blog about talking to her than I was to actually talk to her.

Walking before running

2010-08-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

As my last post noted: I've had a bit of a creative block lately re: my blog. I've had some half-baked ideas but lacked the energy to complete them.

My response? Itty bitty blog posts.

Rather that post about 10 things and try to stitch them together, I'm going to post a series of one-off encounters or observations. I don't know how it'll turn out, but at least I'll get something written.

Here goes..

Momentum

2010-08-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me aknowledge: it HAS been a while since I've written a blog entry. I have gone through these patches before where (a) nothing happens to me worth blogging about and/or (b) I lack motivation to blog.

I can't quite tell which it's been recently.

One thing I've been pondering is how I will answer the "what's new?" question. What IS new, I wonder.

Work? The same. Good.

Girls? The same. Sort of. Which is the same.

Friends? Cool people. Mostly absent.

Night life? Cats? Porn? Dishes? Laundry? Recycling?

The same.

None of this is bad, but it makes for some boring catching-up with friends and family that I haven't talked to in, say, a month.

My life is not boring... don't get me wrong. Stuff happens. Just not stuff that I can talk about (either because it's sort of sensitive or because without context it makes no sense).

This has carried over to my blogging.

I'm sorry. I'll try to do better soon, including a blog entry about some of the type of people that I experience when I go out dancing.

USA Wins Lottery

2010-07-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

When the USA stepped into a corner market in San Jose, California, it just wanted a late-afternoon snack. It ended up getting a lot more than that.

"I hadn't eaten any gummy bears in a while, so I grabbed some and then saw that the lottery was past fifteen trillion bucks, so I decided to give it a shot."

That shot paid off, as the former hegemon was the sole winner of the $15,101,982,332,288 jackpot announced last night. Needless to say, the country has big plans for the winnings. "I've got some bills that I should probably pay down, but I also want to do some traveling. North Korea's been looking at me funny, and I might wanna throw some money at that."

While debt elimination and military projection of power may seem like the responsible thing to do, the USA has more whimsical ideas, too.

"Maybe I'll get, like a dozen iPads so I can put them on my wall and have some sort of virtual window onto an alien landscape. Or go to Mars. Wait and see, right?"

The winning numbers were (4, 8, 15, 16, 24, 42) were selected through a lucky confluence of cultural literacy (the USA is "a big Lost fan") and incompetence (the USA "totally got one of the numbers from the show wrong").

The windfall is a change of fortunes for a nation that has recently seen the BP oil spill, an early elimination from the World Cup, and Justin Bieber.

This is How We Do It...

2010-07-09T03:03:00.000-07:00

There is a line.

When you are, as a single guy, talking to a woman, there is a line.

It's boring to compliment her eyes. It's rude to talk about her boobs. It's homosexual to gush (figuratively) over her shoes (literal gushing over her shoes might lead to the police being called).

Any woman that's worth speaking to is probably used to being spoken to. Being like other guys is something that won't help out, unless she's already decided that she wants something from you. While some guys probably have the burden of fending women off irrespective of what they (the guy) say, I don't have that problem. I would like to think that I am not offensive, visually, but I have no illusions that I can merely strike a pose and wait for attractive women to start grinding on me.

So... I need to be different. Different, as I told Canberra earlier today, can be very good. Or, as I discovered earlier tonight, it can be very bad.

I was at Chopstix tonight in the presence of The Regular and TM2000. The ratio of chicks to guys was amazing... before they showed up, I had counted a 36:6 chick to guy ratio (I guess that's a 6:1 ratio, but enumerating the population helps clarify the picture). By the time they were both there, things had evened out a bit, but the primary fact remained: women outnumbered men, but quantity did not mean quality.

In other words, there were a lot of women there, but very, very few who were physically attractive enough to be worth talking to (yes, throw me under the bus if you must as a shallow asshole, but that's the first (significant!) filter I apply as a single guy, and I don't think I'm at all unique in that).

TM2000 and I were monitoring the people entering the establishment, and it was a great chance for me to practice my poker face. As the rum entered my bloodstream and the fuglies piled into Chopstix, it became more and more difficult for me to keep a straight face. I didn't begrudge women who hadn't seen the inside of a gym (or a dentist's office, for that matter) this millenium getting out and having some fun, but the law of averages dictated that a fair number (4%? 7%?) of those women should be relatively attractive.

But... nope.

Incredibly, I was approached by one of the women who wasn't bad looking. She had a friend with her, and the friend was, in the estimation of both TM2000 and myself, the best-looking chick in the place. In spite of that fact, I held fast to the precept that being like other guys is boring, so I was being slightly contrarian.

It didn't really work. To wit:

Blond Chick: Hi!!!
Me: Heya.
Blond Chick: This is my friend... she just moved to Seat--
Me: (To Brunette Chick) Hi, there.
Brunette Chick: Hi.
Me: Is it your birthday?
Brunette Chick: What? Uh, no.
Blond Chick: She just moved to Seattle.
Me: Ah. I thought she said you just turned 21.
Brunette Chick: No. I am 25.
Me: Oh, really? I would have guessed 35.

That, my friends, is going for broke. That is taking all of your chips and pushing them into the pot when you're holding a pair of 10's. Probably (although I am too ignorant of the math to know for sure and too lazy to Google it for confirmation) a losing proposition but... who cares?

That's the beauty of it.

The reason professional golfers choke is because they overthink things. The reason (I'm guessing) poker players make mental mistakes is because they get nervous about their investment in the pot (which is entirely different than Flowers' investment in pot).

I can hear the age of an attractive woman. I can add ten years to said age, and I can say that she looks like she's ten years older than she is. And I can shrug off if she gets huffy and walks away, because I know the clever women--the women who potentially GET me--are going to fire off a question about where I was when JFK was shot, or asking if I'm pissed that my Social Security benefits don't kick in for another six years (when I turn 62).

If the chick gets offended, rolls her eyes, and turns away? Good riddance. It doesn't mean that she's a moron or that she's not a good American or that she doesn't have super-awesome taste in underwear, but it DOES mean that she is incompatible with me. Which is unfortunate for her... because I have managed to identify some incredible people--male and female--who get me, and some of them happen to be incredibly smart, fun, attractive females.

After the blond and the brunette turned away, I looked at TM2000 and The Regular and felt a pang of guilt. They didn't nominate me as the asshole who turns away (relatively) hot chicks, but they had to bear the consequences of my actions. I was able to placate myself knowing (a) TM2000 doesn't need my help meeting chicks, and (b) The Regular has idiosyncratic challenges re: women that are independent of my personal style with the fairer (if less logical) sex.

The women went back to their table, never to return. They were, in fact, driven from the dance floor by my single neg. We never learned their names, and we saw them go home with average-to-douchey-looking guys towards the end of the night.

That, though, is single life. The women might have been physically attractive, but they lacked a particular sense of humor and have ended up as bit characters in a single blog entry.

Their loss, right?

Violence on the Dance Floor

2010-06-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

I know I'm a bad dancer, but I don't let it get me down. It's mindless fun that I partake in occasionally.

Actually, it's less mindless than it should be because when I dance I make every effort to not touch anyone. I like my bubble, and I assume, short of quite explicit indications otherwise, that others like theirs, too. So I end up apologizing a lot for bumping people. I know it's ridiculous, but I can't help myself.

You know how you should leave two car lengths on the road in order to allow proper stopping distance? (Or something like that...) And you know how sometimes someone fills in that gap by darting in front of you, spoiling your good, safe driving?

That happens to me on the dance floor. I give a couple of body widths between myself and dancing women, and more often than not some dude jumps in front of me to grind on the girl. Making it awkward because he leaves me in a position of trying to back up or being RIGHT up against his butt.

Anyway.

In spite of various frustrations, I honestly try to be a considerate dance floor participant. Maybe I do it because I'm polite or maybe I do it to atone for my utter lack of skill.

In any case, my good nature did not help last night in a bit of a frenzied environment.

It started off normally. It was about 11:30 and the dancefloor was reasonably busy. Not terrifically so, but not much room to maneuver outside of one's bubble. I was flopping around in time to the music when I saw a guy dancing near me go flying about five feet forward. It was out of the ordinary, so I looked to see who had pushed him.

Two women were giggling and looking guilty and I locked eyes with one and said, "Wow. Really? Haha." She laughed and we talked for about 10 seconds when I (BOOM) felt an odd sensation in my groin region.

This sensation was not due to the stimulating conversation, it was due to a third woman thrusting her butt into my crotch.

BOOM

The assault repeated itself and it was clear that it was not a sexy dance move. It was not joking. She was trying to move me and trying to cause pain. And was succeeding, at least, in the latter.

Wincing from the testicular assault, I engaged her in conversation and we had this brief chat:

Me: Why? What's going on?
Her: That's my sister and my cousin.
Me: Your mom is your aunt?
Her: They're not interested in you.
Me: Uh, OK. (Looking towards the first two women, who were giggling about 4 feet away) Was I being disr--

BOOM

There comes a time when one's patience is stretched too thin. I learned last night that my personal patience is stretched too thin at an accelerated pace when my nads are being mistreated.

So... after getting hit in the balls for a third time, I put my hands on her waist and I grabbed her and... pushed.

I'm not the strongest guy in the world, and I'm not proud that I would have to push anyone (let alone a chick) but I was sick of being crushed, so I pushed.

And she went flying.

Not, like, against the wall. Not to the ground. Just... away. Away from me and away from my family jewels.

Of course, while it might have helped preserve my chances for fathering children some day, it did not go over well with the pushee. The woman came storming back, screaming and flipping out. And she was joined by a fourth woman, who was significantly bigger and decided to stick up for her friend.

As these two angry women were converging on me, I stuck my hands in the air to indicate I had no interest in fighting or otherwise interacting with them.

The pushee just yelled, but the big girl took my defenselessness as an opportunity to put me in a death grip.

Well, given that I am typing this and given that I would be totally ignorant as to how to escape any kind of death grip, I suppose it wasn't an actual, bona fide death grip. But it WAS her grabbing my throat with her right hand.

So there I was, standing on a crowded dance floor with my hands up in the air with one woman screaming at me and another on with her hand on my windpipe.

My life is awesome.

Movie Experiment IV: Bananas

2010-06-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes planning just doesn't work as expected. Sometimes, like last night, it does.

The fourth Movie Experiment night came off flawlessly. The movie, #4 on my top 10 list, was Bananas, a 1971 farce involving Woody Allen as a sniveling loser whose search for love takes him to foreign lands. (I don't wear glasses, so I don't relate too closely to the character.)

Travelmate 2000 was kind enough to host the event, which was not held at my place because of Viewmaster's allergies to cats... allegedly there are three level of cat irritants, ranging from no effect to, like, swell up and stop breathing, and I didn't want to take a chance that one of my feline menagerie would be of the lethal variety, so I let TM2000 host.

Another deviation from the original concept: the four person party morphed into a five person party. Motown and Skynet responded as a pair to my invitation to participate in the Movie Experiment, and I wasn't sure if they HAD to go to the same movie or not, so I invited them both.

We had pizza (thank you, Pizza Hut's $10 for any pizza deal) and salad (thank you, Viewmaster) and banana nut bread (thank you, me, for taking the time to make and bake it) and we watched the movie.

No one in attendance, other than me, knew anything about the movie. Well, I think TM2000 knew Woody Allen was in it, but other than that? Nothing.

The movie itself is silly and it's got some dated material. It has fun with Howard Cosell (who died in 1995) and the Wide World of Sports (which went off the air in 1998). It also has obscure references (does anyone really know what the I Ching is?)

But the silliness is timeless. "Who am I going to leave this hospital to?" is one of my favorite parental laments ever. And this is a gem:

I had a good relationship with my parents. They very rarely h-... I think they hit me once, actually, in my whole childhood. They, they, uh, started beating me on the 23rd of December in 1942, and stopped beating me in the late Spring of '44.

There's also the occasional wince-inducing line which portends the societally unacceptable relationship Mr. Allen has had with his current wife, "Doing a sociological study on perversion. I'm up to Advanced Child Molesting."

(Yes, he probably didn't have sex with her before she was 18, but marrying your lover's adopted daughter is weird, I think we'd all agree...)

After the movie, we talked for over an hour about... stuff. About the movie a bit, but mainly just telling stories. We got into an interesting motif of telling funny hotel/sleeping situation stories.

Viewmaster told a tale of a ski trip she took with some male buddies, including one who pulled an engaged chick back to their shared king-sized bed. Motown talked about a baseball trip he took once with six dudes in a hotel room. I told the story about Vancouver (January, 2008). And about Hawaii (July, 2008) and the other story about Hawaii (July, 2008) and fleshed out the Las Vegas (April, 2009) story a bit.

It sounds like a talked a lot. Maybe I did. I didn't mean to. :)

We also touched upon how my sense of humor rubs people the wrong way, both on Facebook and in real life. All four participants last night are enthusiastic about my blog at some level, which was an ego stroke, and it was nice to talk about the people I've offended and have the gang chime in with comments like, "They just don't get you!" and "Some people need to relax!"

I mean... I think that's true, too, but it's nice to have people agree with me.

The end of the night sneaked up on us, and we dispersed. I took the leftover food (TM2000 is headed for Vegas in a couple of days, so I felt no compunction NOT leaving food behind for the host) and walked home in the pouring rain. In spite of my lack of a jacket and in spite of the fact that the rain made my leftover banana nut bread a bit soggy, I was smiling the whole way home.

It was a good night.

A Story from 2008: Japanese Chicks in Hawaii

2010-06-16T11:18:00.001-07:00

In 2008 I went to Hawaii with a few friends: TM2000, Flowers, and Flowers' gf Ice.

We sang karaoke, we got sunburned, we hiked, and we drank.

TM2000 and I also attempted to meet women. Unless we're in Mexico, that's been known to actually work occasionally.

The last night we were in Waikiki, the four of us met for drinks and TM2000 and I peeled off from the other two, who were probably going to go bump coconuts. And thus begins the adventure.

The Pickup

We weren't sure where to go, and after hitting up a bar we'd frequented, uh, frequently during our stay we decided to go to Senor Frog's. Our expectations were tremendously low... as part of our "No Women Tour of Mexico" some months earlier, we had gone to Senor Frog's in Puerto Vallarta, and while there were some attractive young women there, for some reason the young women are significantly less appealing when their parents are hovering a couple of tables away.

(Translation: the girls were all too young. Even for me. Which is saying something.)

So TM2000 and I took the elevator up to the bar. We ordered a drink. We worked the dance floor a bit (him in a skillful and appealing-to-women sort of way, me in a "oh my God, he's horrible!/someone call the paramedics, because he's going to break something if he keeps moving that spastically and unappealingly" kind of way). TM2000 started talking to a girl, and this is where (finally) things got interesting.

(Actually, things had been interesting the previous night in an adventure I had with a batch of Australian chicks... that will have to wait until another time, though.)

The woman was Japanese and she was there with another Japanese chick. They were being ruthlessly hit upon by dudes, and they were gladly accepting the free drinks that were being thrust upon them.

From my perspective? I almost NEVER buy random chicks drinks. On a date? Sure. A friend I've known for a while? Absolutely. Some girl I just met and might be interested in talking to? No way. I've done that about five times in the 2.5 years, and I have not got a kiss nor a number nor anything but thinly veiled contempt from any of the recipients. I love women sometimes.

If and when I buy a drink, though, for a girl? I think that it'd be a bad sign if she started sharing it with another random guy.

TM2000 was that random guy in this case.

The first Japanese girl, Ichi, had been the recipient of a free drink. A big, colorful, vase-like drink that was probably filled with sugars and liqueurs and odd tropical colors. Evidently it was too much, or she was trying to ditch her patron, or she was just super-interested in TM2000. For whatever reason, she offered him a sip.

I don't even remember if he took her up on it, but I know that it gave us an ability to talk to Ichi and her friend, Ni. The dudeswarm eventually receded and we convinced them to hit up another bar with us. A bar that happened to be on the way back to our hotel room.

The Extraction

Sometimes guys notice when girls are into other guys. Sometimes they do not. This was one of those "do not" situations.

Of all the guys standing around Ichi and Ni, one persevered. The bar closed and the four of us left together, and Clinger was right behind us.

Over the course of the next 15 minutes or so, Clinger followed us. He stayed within about 30 feet of us. He waited at the bottom of an escalator for us. He ignored dirty looks and he ignored when I attempted to get rid of him with a, "Look, buddy, it looks like they're hanging out with us tonight."

Finally, Ichi talked to the guy. She was pretty traditionally Japanese and she was clearly uncomfortable with the "confrontation", but she took his phone number and he finally (FINALLY) went away.

Second Location

After the uncomfortable Clinger portion of the early morning, we made our way to the other bar. It was about 3:00 AM at this point, if I remember correctly, and it was a bar that TM2000 and I had been to several times before.

We had paired off, with Ni sitting next to me and Ichi and TM2000 together in a big booth. I felt justified in buying Ni a drink, and TM2000 did the same for Ichi. TM2000, though, does things his own way, and his own way is sometimes the cheap way.

Ichi wanted a Redbull and vodka. Presumbaly, given the late hour, she needed energy and it didn't seem to be an unreasonable request. TM2000, however, had memories of our trip to Mexico and me getting stuck with a $16 Red Bull and vodka charge... he also knew there were house specials for the night, so he went ahead and got Ichi a mini pitcher of Bud Light. $3. Done and done.

Ichi wasn't going to say "no," I suppose, so the two of them nursed the value that was the Bud Light mini pitcher as Ni and I enjoyed whatever cocktails I had got for us.

We then decided to go back to our hotel room for after-hours. And for adventure. Although I'm not sure promising "adventure" in a hotel room would be the best move with most women...

The Hotel Room

On the walk back, TM2000 admitted that he was feeling a bit sick to his stomach. He seemed pretty sure that he was going to vomit, but we knew there was going to be a problem. Actually, two problems.

Problem #1: Our hotel room was not that big. It had a queen bed and a cot-like mobile bed, and it had a TV, and it had an attached bathroom. It worked perfectly for us and what we needed, but it didn't provide many soundproof vomiting options.

Problem #2: Women are not really very turned on by the sound of a man vomiting. At least not many women.

So TM2000 had to vomit. We had two women in our hotel room who, presumably, didn't want to her him upchuck on the other side of a very thin door. It was about 4:00, so even if we had an audio source (TV or radio) that could drown out the sound, it could have resulted in issues with our neighbors.

Fortunately, we are creative. And, fortunately, we had a balcony.

TM2000 stepped out onto the balcony to spray the lower floors with partially digested food and beer foam, and I attempted to distract Ichi and Ni. I did so, in part, by asking them what they did for a living.

Ichi was, as it turns out, a massage therapist. After several "happy ending" jokes, which were both racially insensitive and probably lost upon Ichi altogether, I told her that was cool and that she should give TM2000 a massage when he got back in. She agreed and I told Ni that I would give HER a massage, too.

He came back in, had something to drink and/or popped some gum in his mouth. Operation: Vomit was successful, and Operation: Freak TM2000 Out was just beginning.

TM2000 was on the right side of the bed, facing the television (which was tuned to TNT or something equally semi-boring) and Ni did the same a few feet to his left. Ichi straddled TM2000's butt and I did the same on Ni.

I enjoy giving backrubs. I hesitate to use the word "massage" because it seems like that a massage might have some medicinal value and/or require some level of professional skill.

Even though I might not be able to give a proper therapeutic massage, I can perform "monkey see, monkey do".

Ichi bent TM2000's arm one way, and I mimicked her with Ni's arm. She pushed on his neck and I pushed on Ni's. Sounds OK, right? Well, again, there were two problems with this:

Problem #1: I was not sober and I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea the amount of pressure to apply. I could not tell how far I should be stretching Ni's limbs. She was little and I probably could have really hurt her.

Problem #2: TM2000 was screaming his head off. Remember, he had been outside when it had been established that Ichi did that for a living. Remember, too, that massages can be kind of painful, even when you expect the person to know what they're doing. In his pain and ignorance, gems such as, "You're breaking my arm!" and "What are you doing to me? Aaah!" were exclaimed, although in real life they were more in bold, all caps.

After the massage session, where miraculously no one was injured and no police were called due to the yelling, Ni decided to go home. I walked her down to the taxi and she went home.

I came back up and Ichi and TM2000 were already asleep. I crashed in the little mobile bed and slept soundly.

The Next Morning

I woke up relatively early in spite of the late night, and I cracked my eyes open to ensure it was safe to be looking around. I was confronted with an odd sight.

It was Ichi, on the bed, resting on her knees. She was looking at a sleeping TM2000, and when he finally stirred himself she waited for a moment and, in an oddly pleading tone, said, "Can I go home now?"

It was one of those odd moments in life where I just don't know what I'm seeing. Was she asking for his permission? Was she asking for a ride home? I honestly don't know.

TM2000 dismissed Ichi and we packed for the trip home and it was good.

Poker Face

2010-06-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

Like any person, there are some things in life that I enjoy (pizza, napping, karaoke, cats, porn) and some things that I do not (seafood, cars, digging ditches, guys with backwards baseball caps who travel in packs, Glee). There are also things that I enjoy the notion of (uhh... some personal stuff I won't go into here) and some things that I do not enjoy the notion of (getting a deep suntan, losing a finger in a meat grinder accident). Then there are things that I should enjoy the notion of, but do not enjoy either the notion or the actual act.

One of those things is poker.

I think, on the surface, I should enjoy poker. I enjoy doing math and it's more of a game of skill than the majority of gambling activities... and yet, I don't like it. I don't like losing money to people and I don't like taking the money of others. I'm not a competitive person, for the most part, either. All of this adds up to me not particularly enjoying the few times I've played and not being at all eager to play again any time soon.

One aspect of it that I do respect and find interesting, though? The notion of the poker face.

(I was hoping to quote some Lady Gaga here, but after reading the lyrics for "Poker Face," I have nothing.)

A poker face can extend beyond the game of poker, and that's why I love it. Compare that to, say, the lesser reach of "Super Mario Brothers hair" or the limited use of a "Yahtzee wrist" and you can see why I respect the poker face.

While my standard state of being is apathy, sometimes I can be roused to reaction by my surroundings. This can have potentially dangerous effects due to me being most interested in situations that are least healthy for me to be interested in.

That's super-abstract, I know. Let me give you a quick example before I get into the main reason I wrote the blog.

The other evening I was leaving work, walking through Capitol Hill on my way to my parked car. There was an older guy (maybe even as old as me!) having a smoke outside of his apartment, and three or four skater kids were right in the middle of some sort of confrontation with him. I didn't catch the beginning of it, but it went something like this:

Cigarette Smoker: Yeah, that's right. Keep walking.
Skate Punk #1: Shut up, old man.
Skate Punk #2: Yeah!
CS: Come over here and call me "old man."
SP#1: I'll knock out your fucking teeth.
CS: I'm sitting right here. Do it.
SP#1: I'll knock your fucking teeth into the back of your skull, old man!
CS: Don't walk away! Hey! Get over here!

I kept walking this whole time, but it was interesting. There was the threat of real violence, there was a very foul-mouthed kid who seemed to be saying different versions of the same thing over and over, and there was a very loud old guy who probably started it by being angry at skaterz for riding on the sidewalkz.

As I walked, and as I considered the threshold at which I would call the cops or otherwise intervene, I had to maintain a poker face. I didn't want to acknowledge it was happening, even as it was about 20 feet from me, because I didn't want to get sucked in. I had to observe without my observation being observed.

Because, after all, one of the last things I ever want to hear is, "What are you looking at?"

Where the poker face becomes especially valuable is when I'm out and about, late at night, in a neighborhood that I don't usually frequent. I ran into this situation over the weekend.

I had gone to Frontier Room with F-Bomb on Saturday night, and he had decided to duck out early. After a rum-inspired night of dancing and general carousing, and seeing a woman that I had obliquely referenced in my previous blog (she waved to me... I have no idea if she was being friendly or mocking), I decided to walk home.

The walk is a great way for me to (a) save a bit of money by not taking a cab, (b) work off a few of the calories that I racked up at the bar, (c) sober up a bit so I don't send any embarrassing emails or Facebook messages when I get back to my apartment, and (d) practice my poker face.

There is a stretch between the bars in Belltown and my place where a poker face is 100% vital to not getting my face pounded into a fine jelly.

Why? Because the scene is... not my scene. I am not making a racial statement when I say that it is far far more urban than I'm used to; in spite of my city-livin' ways, I still am the guy who had a graduating high school class of 30 and had a barn on his property as a kid. There are big groups of people just... standing around. Waiting.

Waiting for me to make a stupid face at them so they can ask me what I'm looking at? Perhaps. More likely, though, that they're waiting for ladies to walk by so they can, uh, interact with them.

And it is these interactions where my poker face is most critical. Most of the efforts of men are clumsy and, ultimately, unsuccessful. They are, as an impartial observer, also very funny to watch... but few guys want to be laughed at after getting shot down by a woman. And so I keep the dead eyes and the blank expression on my face.

I keep that look on my face even when a guy swoops up to two women walking by, says three words, and then swoops back away (shot down? Uglier than he'd thought? Dunno).

I keep that look on my face even when a pair of guys approach a pair of women who are standing with a guy. A guy who is not pleased that his women are getting hit on.

I keep that look on my face when a person in line for hot dogs complains loudly about how she hates hot dogs.

I keep that look on my face as I keep pace behind a group of people walking in front of me, including a very drunk, very attractive woman that is draped on a sub-average-looking guy... and I hear at least a half-dozen people standing on the sidewalk and/or walking the other way wonder what she's doing with him.

I don't WANT to keep that look on my face. I want to laugh--or at least smile--at these situations. I enjoy the notion of interacting, intelligently and honestly, with my surroundings, but I do NOT enjoy the notion of pissing off the wrong guy and losing any body parts as a result.

Can't read my, can't read my
No he can't read my poker face.

(OK. So I WAS able to put some Lady Gaga lyrics in here, after all...)

Impact and Impressions (Expected and Otherwise)

2010-06-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last night was a Saturday night and I decided to go out solo. Drink some drinks, people-watch some people, and dance some dance. I am definitely better at the first two, but if I do the first one well enough the third one can fall into place well enough.

In many ways, Seattle is a small city. If you stay in the same neighborhood and go out to its places, you're going to bump into the same people pretty regularly... but while it's a big city, if you rarely stray from your 'hood, it's possible to go months or even years without seeing people that you met. I tend to frequent the Lower Queen Anne area of Seattle, with an occasional journey to Belltown and an even more rare excursion elsewhere. This means that I rarely have an opportunity to see people who, say, go to Capitol Hill or Pioneer Square on a regular basis.

So shelve that information for now. We'll come back to it in a bit. I wanna get a bit abstract on you here for a moment. Let's talk about impact and impressions that we have and make on people that we meet. I've made some graphs to hopefully articulate my thinking.

We all start with a blank slate:

We have an opportunity to make our mark, and after some time passes, we do so:

Of course, there aren't just binary states... you don't either know someone or not. People have impressions of you, and I think we all strive for this:

We want people to like us.

Actually... do we? I do. I would MUCH prefer people like me than not, even to the point of altering my behavior to please others. I know that sometimes people say they have to "keep it real"... and I'm not suggesting we all give away all of our identities to please others, but we DO dress a certain way, use soap, drive on the correct side of the street, etc., and not just because we have to. I believe that the monkey in us all wants a bunch of green hexagons.

But, the reality is... that's not the reality. (That sentence is incredible, I know.) Some people will like us, some won't give a damn, and some will actually dislike us:

The reason for their feelings isn't very important to this discussion... they might not like us because of our vocabulary, or because we're an asshole to them because we don't like them, or because we prefer Superman to Batman.

While I cannot hope for a realistic level of precision in these graphs, we can get a little closer than the one, above. For every person that we meet and impact, there is a ripple out. Each person that they know gets an impression of us that is generally good, neutral, or bad. These impressions can be based on their observations, your Facebook page, or what they heard about how you chew your food.

With the impact ripples, we get something that looks like this:

I left space between most of the ripples because the impact points we established earlier are often isolated, but in a small enough environment--say, a neighborhood in Seattle--there can be some overlap.

You can see that even people who really like me will have people around them that do not particularly care for me, even if there's a general trend towards green.

Let's apply this to last night, shall we? Or, rather, let's edge towards that application. First a bit more background/context.

About a year and a half ago, in the midst of my funemployment, I made an appointment to meet with a placement agency. I went into their office to meet with someone who works with employers to place people like me so I can apply my skills.

I walked into the office and the administrative person (we'll call her Secretary, although I realize that is a dramatic understatement of her role) was, to be blunt, pretty stunning. She was was wearing a very nice, professional skirt and top (or was it a dress? I remember her correcting me after, but cannot recall at the moment) that highlighted some of her, uh, skills.

She had me fill out some paperwork and I ambled into the office to meet with the guy. I was reasonably effective in the conversation, but a large percentage of my brainwaves were spent thinking about Secretary and what--if anything--I was going to say to her on my way out. I knew I had her name and her email address, so I could do a bit of Facebook research when I got home, etc., etc. Yes, weird. But I'm a dude. I like skilled women.

After the meeting was over, she was not around, so I let myself out. Found her on Facebook later that day, but didn't send her any messages or anything... I am reasonably well skilled at hiding my oddness when I should.

Fast forward a month or two. I am still out of work and I get invited by Secretary's company to have a networking/mixer event at their office. I really don't like mixing or networking in a semi-jobby job capacity, but I knew it was a good idea to go. So I did.

She and I talked a few times. I made her smile, I thought, above and beyond her role of playing hostess/having to smile at everyone. At the end of the evening I told her we should be Facebook friends, she said she wasn't Facebook friends with people that she worked with, and I pointed out that she hadn't got me a job yet, so we were good. She laughed and said I could add her.

So I did. When she accepted me, I noticed she was "In a Relationship". OK. Sure. Fine. I sent her a message and let it go.

A couple of weeks later, we chatted a bit. She was on the outs with her bf. I said we should hang out some time, and she agreed. Nothing set in stone, but promising, right?

A couple of weeks after THAT, she invited me to come out with her friends. I left where I was and met up with them, and at the end of the night we all went back to her place. I think there were two female friends and a male friend. The male friend, in the apartment, pointed out that I had sweaty armpits. I appreciated that. :|

The others went to sleep and she and I crashed on the couch. I went in to kiss her and she turned away. Fine. We sort of cuddled and I went home the next morning (actually, I walked home... it took so freaking long my feet still ache just thinking about it... ugh).

We talked about hanging out again, but it never happened. She moved out of the state, and she invited me to her going away party, but I wasn't able to make it. I actually zapped her as a Facebook friend last week because we never talk and I try to keep my Facebook friends list tidy (that's another blog entry altogether...)

Last night, then. Did I see Secretary? No. Did I see her friends, though? Yes. I'd met some of them and seen others in Facebook pictures. I expected this:

I thought that she probable had a good impression of me, and so most of her friends who knew me would be either green or yellow, too.

I was wrong.

It started off with me seeing the male friend that I'd hung out with that night so long ago. The one that had called me out for excessive sweating. I wanted to tweak him a bit, so I approached him at the bar and we had something like this as an exchange (names changed, natch):

Me: Hey George!
Him: (Does a double take, has a blank look on his face) Uh... hello?
Me: Yeah. How you been? It's been a while...
Him: Do I know you?
Me: Yeah. I met you through Secretary a while back.

At this point, he was confused and off-kilter. Cool. I had planned on shaking his hand and going back to my part of the bar, but what's that they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men?

George was not alone. He was with two other guys and, like, three women. I was reasonably sure I knew one of their names (she was a cute blond I'd seen in pictures on Facebook) and I might have met one of the others that night (I think she encouraged me to get into the cab with them) but I didn't know their names with enough confidence to say hi to them, too.

Plus, I was just trying to rattle George a little for the armpit sweat neg he'd delivered on that night.

The short woman I had no knowledge of was right next to George as the exchange happened, and she joined in the conversation:

Me: Yeah. I met you through Secretary a while back.
Her: I remember you!
Me: Oh, yeah? Cool...
Him: (Looking at her) You do?
Her: Yeah, he's the guy who...

She then turned to him, covered her mouth and LITERALLY whispered to him. Or murmured. Maybe used sotto voce. The point is that I couldn't hear what she said, and I couldn't read her lips... and she had intended that.

George's face went from blank and quizzical to... hard. Not necessarily angry, or hostile, but... hard.

And I knew that I'd made an error. Because it was not this situation:

It was this situation:

Oops.

So I tried to flee the scene, leaving them at the bar after not correcting George when he said it was "nice to meet" me (he had, after all, met me, and it was a failing on his part to not recall said meeting)... and wandered back to the edge of the dance floor to drink, people watch, and consider dancing.

George's group, though, migrated. They didn't migrate next to me on purpose, I don't think, but they DID cause me some discomfort. The short chick who'd brought George up to speed was the biggest irritant... she was staring at me from, like, four feet away, and then when I made eye contact with her, she made an exaggerated, "Why are you looking at me?" face before turning away.

Then, about three minutes later? She had her iPhone up and was taking a pic of me. From three feet away. No joke.

I called her on it and she at first tried to pretend like she was getting video of the dance floor, but then she just flat-out asked if she could take a picture of me. I said "sure", and she did. I knew it was an iPhone when there was no flash.

The room was dark, and when she tried to send the pic to Secretary (which I am 99% sure she did; I looked over her shoulder and have very sharp eyes) it was basically a black box.

So there I was, surrounded by red hexagons, and I wasn't ABOUT to leave the bar on account of their perception of something they think I might have done over a year ago. Eventually, they had enough to drink that they lost interest in me. Or I had enough to drink that I no longer noticed their interest in me. Same difference, right?

I had a couple of other mini-adventures, too, including a brush with the chick that wrote me the pair of notes I referenced in a recent blog post (the first time I'd seen her in about two years) and another late-night trip to Neighbours, but I woke up this morning thinking about

What impression did I make on Secretary? Had I been fooling myself into thinking we actually got along reasonably well and/or did I hallucinate that she invited me to her going-away party? Or were all of those red hexagons misperceiving something?

Hmm...

Movie Experiment III: Hot Rod

2010-06-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

Imagine you planned a picnic for your significant other. The weather forecast was great, you were getting your red checkered napkins washed, and you planned on making delicious sandwiches.

Then imagine that the washer destroyed the napkins and the weather turned out to be cloudy and a bit chilly. The sandwiches were still delicious, but the idyllic picnic just didn't come to fruition.

The third movie experiment night was something like that picnic. I made some delicious lasagna and Hot Rod was funny (especially with the red wine I consumed along with the movie)... but the napkins and weather weren't what they were supposed to be.

It was to be all that the movie experiment was about: three people that I knew reasonably well that had never met nor seen the movie. Three people from three different parts of my life. Lasagna. Andy Samberg.

Things fell apart pretty quickly, though.

Given how much time I have spent on social media sites and how many people I've become friends with (and become unfriends with) it's shocking how little e-drama I've had in the last several years. The most severe case, up until recently, went something like this:

Chick I'm dating is in my top four MySpace friends
I'm in her top four MySpace friends
She puts another guy she's dating in her top friends (but below me)
I bump her down in my top friends list
She puts the other guy ahead of me in her top list
I remove her from my top friends
She removes me from her top friends
I unfriend her (not defriend... totally different)

We both knew it was ridiculous, that little MySpace pissing match, and while ultimately things fell apart (as they always do for me), this wasn't the reason.

In comparison to the more recent e-drama, though, that was nothing. That was light-hearted and juvenile. The more recent case was steeped in gravitas. Juvenile gravitas, but gravitas.

It went something like this:

Guy agrees to come to the Hot Rod movie night
Guy makes random Facebook status update (as is his right)
Flowers comments on status
TM2000 comments on the comment
Flowers and TM2000 go back and forth for a comment or two
TM2000 makes a "racially edgy" comment
Flowers jokes back
One of the guy's Facebook friends (who doesn't know either Flowers or TM2000) makes a crack about how they aren't funny and they need to grow up
I read this and, while admitting that either or both of those assertions may be true, feel compelled to snipe back at the woman I don't know
The guy rushes to her defense, and is unable or unwilling to delete the comments that had offended him
I go back and forth with the woman and the guy a few times
The guy deletes Flowers, TM2000 and me as Facebook friends without any warning or explanation
I block the guy on Facebook

I haven't talked to him since, and, as a result of this, wasn't entirely comfortable having him over for homemade Italian food.

No biggie, though. The show must go on. I still had SSD, my college roomie, and a female friend with whom I hadn't spent much time recently. I looped F-Bomb in as a pinch-hitter and we were good to go. The napkins might not be available, but it was still sunny out.

Unfortunately, I got a txt from the female participant about three hours before the appointed time, begging off due to exhaustion and being kidnapped by a roc. I responded that it was considerate of the giant mythical Arabic bird of prey to allow her access to her cell phone, and that I hoped she would feel better soon.

I did a half-ass scramble, chatting with Politica (she had a previous engagement) and then TM2000 (who actually has been engaged before, but was free to hang out last night after he got in a nap).

The movie was good, catching up with SSD was fun (hearing that his daughter is going to enter kindergarten kind of freaked me out), and the lasagna turned out reasonably well.

There was no sunshine and the napkins were unavailable, but it was still a pretty decent picnic.

Rediscovering

2010-05-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about tearing your apartment apart is finding stuff that you either had written off as lost or had forgotten altogether you possessed. I found a few (minor) gems in my rearrangement so far (I'd probably have found more if I would stop writing blog entries):

A $5 Tully's gift card. I don't drink coffee, and I don't even know where a Tully's is, but still... $5.
A book one of my coworkers wrote. I am torn between linking to it on Amazon and not linking, ensuring his anonymity. I'll ask him tomorrow and edit this post. I will say, while I haven't read it yet, I plan on reading it and THEN buying it. I just spaced that I had it. He's actually an inspiration to complete the book that I've started outlining myself.
I also found a pair of notes that a chick wrote... hmm... three years ago. The two post-it notes were stuck together and tucked in between some Xbox 360 games, and the first one reads:
and the second one...

The funny thing is that the place we were going back to wasn't even my current place. I am a packrat. Those notes brought back memories of the second-craziest chick I ever hung out with more than once. Good times.
A caricature of me from my graduation party (high school; I didn't really have parties for my later three graduations). My adam's apple and nose both stick way out. I guess that was before my cheeks and jowls won the battle for my face.
Speaking of graduations, a partially-crumpled letter from Seattle U, congratulating me on achieving my MBA. I wonder if I should think of the letter as a bigger deal than I do. Hmm...
A card from Victoria's Secret that's good for a "Free Panty VS Undies" (a $7.50 value) plus $10 off a bra. I don't recall where I got this, and it expires June 14, but I can't force myself to throw it away. Between that and the Tully's gift card, I might be able to start giving out prizes at the door during prefunks.
A candle holder from Hula Hula. Why do I have it? Because Patrón stole it when she was visiting Seattle last year (at about this time, now that I think about it), and throwing it away seems like a waste.
Why can't I throw stuff away? Because I find stuff like the recharger cord for my electric razor. The electric razor I think I threw away two weeks ago. Oops.

What other treasures lurk in the remaining mess that is my apartment currently? We will see.

Rearranging

2010-05-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

I moved into my current apartment about 32 months ago. When I moved in, I brought my TV and my couch and my bed and innumerable boxes of stuff.

In comparison to my previous, cave-like, apartment, my new place was magnificent. Natural light! Enough room for my computer and my TV in the same room! I didn't have to stack my cats, I had so much room.

So I set my stuff up, and it worked well enough. Eventually I moved some of the boxes, and I bought a shelf or two and put up some of my books. And it was good.

Fast forward 32 months, and I decided to change things around.

It started off as a need to clean my apartment. The problem is that I feel that urge frequently, and I act upon it frequently, but... let me present it graphically:

...

I'm sure that needs no explanation, but please indulge me (I did make these nifty graphics, after all (I actually stole one from the Web and then modified it... fair use, suckers!)

I want my apartment clean. I want it to look something like this:

Instead, it tends to look like this. Dirty and disorganized:

Unfortunately, that homogeneous representation is not realistic. It's more like this, with the red being stuff like dishes, vacuuming, kitty litter cleaning, etc.:

So I start to straighten my place. I WANT to clean it. I want to have neither red nor greenish liquid in my metaphorical glass. But, alas, I have limited energy, and my straw is all the way at the bottom of the glass, so I get this:

Not bad. The liquid level is lower... but my stomach is full. So I rest, and plan on taking care of it later. But, unfortunately, over time the red stuff accumulates again:

Even worse? The red stuff sinks to the bottom of the glass. The dishes pile up. The sheets need cleaning. The corpses need to be put through the acid bath. Whatever. So... I'm back to:

And then I get into the cycle where the last three states are repeated. I'm treading water, except insofar as (not represented graphically) the green stuff starts to accumulate, too.

It's no bueno.

This time, though? I've broken the cycle. My place is a fucking MESS, but I've broken the cycle. We'll see what colors the liquids are when I'm done...

Taco Bell Chit-chat

2010-05-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

Overheard at the local Taco Bell/KFC.

Patron (in an overly loud, but not irritated, voice): Next time I'll get the $2 value meal.
Worker (standing behind the counter; didn't seem to speak English very well): OK.
Patron: The #4 meal comes with a drink and a double decker taco and Doritos.
Worker: No. It comes with the Double Decker Taco. Number one comes with a burrito.
Patron (pointing at the sign): No, look. Doritos.
Worker: There is no burrito in meal number four.
Patron: Am I a good customer?
Worker: What?
Patron: I would order a number four, but I just ate dinner.
(Worker walks away from the counter, back into the belly of the Taco Bell/KFC beast)
Patron: I liked your biscuits. Are you happy for me?

Movie Experiment II: Strange Brew

2010-05-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

Strange Brew is a movie that I sort of grew up on. I had a videocassette of the movie that I watched a ridiculous number of times, and my mom and I referred to it as "The Movie" (not in print, so I don't know if it was actually capitalized, but it FELT capitalized when we mentioned it (I don't recall how or why my mother and I talked about it, but I just remember that we did...))

Strange Brew places number ten on my all time top ten movies in spite of how thick the nostalgia is whenever I watch it. Why? Because it's not that great of a movie. It's a vehicle for the McKenzie brothers characters (who originally appeared on SCTV) to talk about beer and be morons in heavily accented Canadian English.

Funny, but not exactly Shakespeare. Or even Mall Rats.

Interestingly, while it is not those things, it has a TON of elements paying homage to Hamlet. It has very little to do with the storyline, for the most part, and I don't know Hamlet all that well, but it's an amusing and random thing.

Another amusing and random thing was the pair of attendees for my showing of the movie.

The two lovely ladies who were in attendance were Shawty and Winner. (Queen Bee, who was a part of the original troika, had innumerable scheduling conflicts and ended up agreeing to see another movie, another time.)

Queen Bee and Shawty are the two people with whom I have interacted since I've been writing this blog that had to wait the longest for a codename. Shawty didn't get her codename until more than two years after I met her... she didn't really even get much mention in my blog with the exception of an example of using a White Knight as a neg.

I remember meeting Winner at Ozzie's almost three years ago (she probably remembers the exact date, both because she's got a good memory and I'm sort of a big deal). You can read a blog dedicated to her and her birfday party here.

Shawty and Winner had never met, and it was fun to get them in the same room together. Both are very opinionated and willing to speak their mind about things (as you'll see when I tried to get dressed to go out) and, in retrospect, it's probably best that Queen Bee wasn't there. Some topics are like politics or religion, and some topics are much more difficult.

Winner brought Mexican beer (the plan had been Canadian whiskey, originally, but Tecate worked just fine in spite of my general indifference to cerveza), I supplied some Hawaiian pizza (Canadian bacon... get it?) and cheese bread... and banana nut bread for dessert (unrelated to the movie, but related to the fact I'd just baked it the night before).

The movie went reasonably well, I think. It was made in 1983, which was several years before either of my guests were born, but the silliness is a bit timeless (for good or bad) and I hope that the ladies enjoyed it.

After the movie, Winner and I were going out to sing karaoke, and Shawty had to go home due to an extremely early work day the next day (today). We ended up going out a BIT later than anticipated because of their aforementioned opinionated ways.

A little background on how I get ready to go out: if I am going to go out drinking, I almost always prefunk, meaning I have some drinks to set a base and cut down on the amount I'll spend out and about town. I know that, due to alcohol, my ability to dress myself appropriately is impaired.

To account for this, I generally decide what I am going to wear (along with a general approach for my hair) before I have a drink. (I also apply guyliner, if I'm going to wear any, while I'm stone sober, because I've seen the damage that can be done when a drunk person (including me) applies it.)

Well, last night I had decided to wear my stupid Ed Hardy jeans, which I had only worn once in public (as part of my Ed Hardy Party last October). After the gym, I took a shower and put them on, with a placeholder t-shirt. After Shawty and Winner got there, I explained that I planned on wearing them out, and that I'd have to figure out what shirt to wear later.

After the movie, it was time for me to get dressed to go out. It took longer than I'd anticipated.

This is a pretty accurate transcript:

Ed O: So... I need to find a shirt to go with these jeans...
Shawty: You're not really wearing those are you?
Ed O:Yes... with my awesome bright white shoes!
Shawty: Jesus Christ...
Ed O: See? [Holds up the shoes, which are still pretty remarkably white.]
Winner: Please don't wear those jeans.
Shawty: It's not just the stuff on the pockets.
Winner: Yeah, it's the cut, too.
Ed O: What? This super-baggy look is my signature look!
Shawty: Uh, no.
Winner: Please wear something else. Please.
Ed O: OK. Sure... [starts to walk back to bedroom]
Winner: Oh, wear the crotch pants!!
Shawty: The what?
Winner: He has a pair of jeans that he wears that you can't help but not look at his crotch.
Ed O: [from the bedroom] You can't help but look at my crotch, you mean.
Winner: What?
Ed O: Never mind.
Shawty: What are you talking about?
Winner: He wears these jeans that his crotch is, like, BAM! Right there!
Ed O: [Wandering out of his bedroom, pulling up the second pair of jeans.] I don't know what you're talking about, Winner...
Winner: Those aren't them!
Shawty: Those are them? His crotch doesn't look big in them.
Ed O: Thanks. I actually think I've lost weight or they've stretched, or...
Winner: Whatever. What shirt are you going to wear?
Ed O: Uh... how's about this? [Walks back to bedroom, comes out wearing shirt number one].
Shawty: No!
Winner: It doesn't work.
Ed O: No? OK, well... [Walks back to bedroom, comes out wearing shirt number two]... this one?
Winner: Eek!
Shawty: Hell, no!
[Shirts three and four are subsequently shot down, as well.]
Ed O: Well, which one SHOULD I wear? You guys know my wardrobe...
Shawty: [Walking back to bedroom] How about that one with the things on the shoulders?
Ed O: The epaulets?
Shawty: Yeah!
Winner: [In bedroom with other two] Yeah... the black short-sleeved one.
Ed O: Hmm... [holds up a shirt number five] This one?
Winner and Shawty (together): Nooo...
Ed O: Well... let me see... [digs through his "recently worn shirts" pile and pulls out shirt number six] This one?
Winner: Yeah!
Ed O: OK... I just wore it on Saturday night, but... [puts it on]
Shawty: What is that on the sleeve? Some sort of stain?
Ed O: I have no idea. [Licks finger and wipes off minor bit of something or other on the sleeve.]
Winner: Ewwww!
Shawty: Who DOES that? Why would you do that? What was it?
Ed O: I have no idea what it was, but it's gone now...
Winner: OK. Whatever. What shoes are you going to wear?
Ed O: One of my two new pairs of black shoes.
Shawty: The more plain the better!
Ed O: Uh, OK. What about these? [Holds up shoe pair number two]
Winner: Ugh. No.
Ed O: Um... OK. How about these? [Points to shoe pair number three]
Shawty: I guess so. Ed, sometimes you buy some cool stuff, but sometimes... I dunno.
Ed O: OK. So here's the outfit. What do you think?
Winner: The jeans don't work. They're too light.
Ed O: F me. Really?
Shawty: I agree. What about these? [Points to jeans pair number three, sitting on the keyboard near my couch]
Ed O: Ah, yes, the dirt-cheap pair of Earnest Sewns I got from eBay...
Winner: Yeah, those might work.
Ed O: OK... [Takes off shoe pair number three and jeans pair two, knowing they'd seen him in his underwear before]
Winner: What kind of underwear are you WEARING?
Ed O: What? They're Jockeys. Canberry got 'em for me.
Shawty: They sure are tight.
Ed O: They're underwear... [puts on jeans pair number three] OK. How are these?
Shawty: Are those girls' jeans?
Ed O: No.
Winner: THOSE look like crotch jeans!
Shawty: They look like girls' jeans.
Ed O: They fit me just fine, and they're not girls jeans.
Winner: Hmm... the pocket looks...
Ed O: The pocket is plain. Stop it about the pocket.
Shawty: I don't like the color.
Winner: The way they flare out at the bottom make them look weird.
Ed O: OK. Thanks. I'm wearing these tonight. But not this shirt.
Winner: Wear what you want.
Shawty: Yeah. Whatever.

It was, like, the single biggest strike against polygamy that I've ever encountered. I don't watch Big Love... are there scenes like that?

So I went and changed to shirt number four. I put on a leather jacket. I put on spectacles (which were vetoed by Winner) and hair product (which did little other than make my hair look puffy throughout the rest of the night). So, for those of you keeping score, it was shoes pair number three, pants pair number three and shirt number four.

After 20 minutes of an uphill climb, fashion-style, Shawty went home, and Winner and I wandered over to Ozzie's.

Movie Experiment, Night II was a great success, even if getting dressed by a couple of girls is less fun than getting undressed by a couple of girls...

Movie Experiment I: Mall Rats

2010-05-17T18:18:00.000-07:00

The first installment of the Movie Experiment was to have been the #10 movie on my list of top movies. However, due to a series of scheduling conflicts between the participants for Strange Brew, Mall Rats, #9 on the list, was the first of the series.

There were no explosions of drama or actual explosives during the movie, which is probably a good thing. In addition to my three cats, there were three attendees.

It was only appropriate that Flowers (originally known as Morpheus) was there. Many basic facts of how I met people and when we first started hanging out have been lost in the mists of time, but I remember that Flowers proved to be the primary factor in my current social circle.

In the old days (well, the old days of my current life) I'd sing karaoke alone. Not just not singing duets, but going to the karaoke bar alone, sitting alone, drinking Sprites or ice water alone. One night in January 2007, I had finished singing a song and a guy approached me. It was Flowers, and he really wanted me to sing Don't Look Back in Anger.

I was flattered, and told him I'd put it in next. He had already put it in for me, however, and he had tipped Krazy Karaoke Host $10 to ensure I could get in before close.

Wow.

Yes, he thought my name was "Neo," rather than "Ed O," but it didn't matter (and, indeed, it gave rise to his original name in my blog). Within a few days, I was in his MySpace top friends, and the rest is history. Or the present. Or the future. Or some combination thereof.

F-Bomb watched Mall Rats with us, too. F-Bomb knew Flowers previous to meeting me, and he has been a recent karaoke/drinking buddy. Prominent F-Bomb adventures include our trip to Mexico in April 2008 and our recent Whistler excursion.

The third member of the Movie Experiment team was Stix. I met Stix at her place of employment in late 2008. She made her first appearance in my blog was when she attended the Killers Seattle show with me last year. One interesting thing about Stix is that she is more willing than any of my other friends to fight. Not, like, argue. I mean take a swing at another person. Just this month, we were at a bar and she looked at a woman and muttered, "Oh, she did NOT just give me that look!"

Fortunately, I've never seen her actually fight, and it was even more fortunate that fisticuffs were unlikely during Mall Rats.

Part of the basis for the Movie Experiment was to intermingle my different friends: take people that I knew from different parts of my life and throw them into the same room, watching a movie they'd never seen.

Last night we had the "movie they'd never seen" part covered, but all three participants already knew one another, so it was a failure on that front.

But that was the only failure. I ordered Chinese food and it was delicious. The three of them all seemed to like the movie, which was a relief.

I felt a bit of pressure, after all, in terms of them liking it... which is sort of weird, given my general lack of involvement with creating the film (and by "general" I mean "total"). I still, though, didn't want to waste their time or have them think less of me due to, say, Jeremy London's bad acting (and, trust me, he has some terrible acting moments).

About 15 minutes (and, in my case, about two potstickers and a pound of mongolian beef) into the movie, the question of when the movie was made came up. "Mid-90's," I said, "maybe 1995?"

It didn't elicit the "I was three years old" response that I seem to get so often when I cite dates for movies, songs, or my degrees, but Stix looked at me and said, "No wonder I don't know this movie."

After it was defined as a movie from 1995, it was fun to watch how many people wore flannel (short answer: a lot). It almost made me forget that it was 15 years ago.

The movie ends with the protagonists getting the girls and Jay and Silent Bob walking off into the distance with an orangutan (a non-sequitur that lead into a brief discussion of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Our movie ended with smiles and discussions of whether they would be participating in any more Movie Experiment nights.

It also ended with one twist: someone put a $20 bill on my kitchen counter. I did not expect anyone to help pay for dinner, but I am put in the odd position of trying to return it without asking the wrong person whether they left me money (implying, perhaps, that they should have, too). I am, instead, going to punt from doing the responsible thing and post it here, in this blog: I don't want your money. I just want you to laugh at the right spots of the movie I make you watch.

Movie Experiment Prelude

2010-05-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

Last April I put together a top 10 movie list. They weren't the movies that I thought were the best, nor were they movies that I thought others thought were the best... the list is comprised of movies that I really enjoy and/or have a lot of nostalgia watching.

When Facebook made a change to allow users to "Like" non-Facebook elements of the Web, I took the time to "Like" each of my top 10 movies on IMDB. Very geeky, of course, but... it's me. C'mon.

As a result of my actions, I sort of spammed my friends news feeds with movies that, as it turns out, most of them had never seen. This, coupled with something else I'd been pondering, led to the Movie Experiment.

The other thing I'd been pondering (above and beyond Iran's race to get the Bomb and whether Greg Oden will be able to ever get in a complete NBA season, of course) has to do with social circles and friendships.

When I started my "new life" about four years ago, I had essentially left my previous friends behind. A clean slate not because I didn't enjoy many of the relationships and the people involved but because of complications related to the termination of my marriage... to be honest, I didn't want to make people choose between me and her, so I didn't give them the choice. Honorable? Cowardly? Other? I dunno. But it's what I did.

Over time, I met new people and people who knew people and built up a new circle of friends and acquaintances. Actually, several circles, with varying levels of overlap.

I think that, for most people, there is a saturation point involving people. Not involving an individual person (although perhaps that, too) but involving the number of people one can know and care about. Our monkey sphere can only be so large.

When I hit that saturation point--or at least approached it--my friend and acquaintance acquisition rate slowed. I spent more time with the same people, and that had the positive effect of allowing me richer relationships. It also had the effect of intermingling my social circles.

I don't really consider myself a social hub (or a "connector", as Gladwell calls them) but, I suppose, over time it's natural that like-minded people hang out together more, and I helped in a few people to the central (current) social circle.

(There is danger, of course, in putting all of your eggs in one basket, whether that's actual eggs or relationships. I did that in my previous life and it resulted in an extended period of emotional isolation (even worse than standard life-drive ennui). I see, unfortunately, similar possibilities now as a single apple can spoil a whole bunch.

(Wow. Metaphors galore!))

Back to the Movie Experiment: in spite of my non-self-identification as a social hub, and in spite of my fears about homogenizing my social circles, I came up with the idea of having movie nights. One of my top 10 movies each week, with three people who are my Facebook friends and, I'd like to think, friends IRL. The thought was to share some of the movies that I think are really good with people who might not even know one another...

I plan on blogging about each of the nights (and, yes, I know that the observer effect might come into play), but depending on the excitement level of any given night I reserve the right to lump multiple nights into single entries.

Negging and Hating at Trinity

2010-05-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

I have never been a big fan of the term "hater." Sometimes valid criticism can be dismissed by over-confident individuals as mere haterade. Or whatever.

My friends and I, heavily influenced perhaps by PUA lingo articulated in The Game and other sources, have integrated the term "neg" into our vocabulary. Backhanded compliments ("Those shoes look comfortable") and offputting acts (offering a chick a stick of gum) allegedly keep women off-balance.

Further, we use the term "negging" for alpha-type jostling in any situation, micro or macro. The larger the group of us hanging out, the more likely someone is going to want to assert himself to establish some sort of dominance--where we eat, where we sit, when we leave, etc. I'd say it's ridiculous except that it's probably programmed into us.

It's a great reason to avoid large groups for me.

Those two elements, then, go into my understanding of our use of the term "neg." It seems like it's pretty much the same as "hate". But it's not.

On Saturday night at Trinity, I experienced one of each. See if you can tell the difference.

The Neg

I was in the Blue Room, moving around a little bit on the dancefloor, when I started up a conversation with a woman. She had made good her escape from a guy who was following her all over the dance floor, so she and I joked about that, and then she pointed to her roommate, who was making her way over to talk to us.

"You need to know," I light-heartedly informed her, "that you might have to make fun of other people if you're going to hang out with us."

"You mean," she coldly replied, "make fun of guys who wear suits to dance clubs?"

My smile kind of froze as I digested that. Was she making fun of me? Or, rather, was she making FUN of me? Or fun of ME?

I wasn't wearing a suit, first of all. I was wearing a black jacket and a tie, sure, but black jeans.

Secondly, making fun of someone wearing a suit at a club is a bit like making fun of someone bringing a baseball glove to a baseball game--doing so is a BIT weird, but it's not that much of a much.

So I politely informed her of the makeup of my wardrobe and went back to talking to her friend.

The attempted neg failed. I did not rise to the bait, and she wandered back to the other part of the dancefloor.

The Hate

Later that night, I was in the main room. F-Bomb and TM2000 had gone home, but I wanted to squeeze all I could out of the night, and staying until closing results in many interesting sights to behold.

This night was no exception.

It was about 2:15, and the crowd had thinned considerably (oddly enough, it had become largely white, while earlier in the night it was about 60% Asian...). I was dancing along the South wall, by myself, when I saw a woman, also dancing alone.

I was drawn to notice her, initially, because she was an attractive woman. Very fit and optimized. ("Optimized" is a term we use for when a woman is all dressed up; if she looks great optimized, she might not look so great when not dolled up, but a woman who's not optimizing and looks great is a definite good thing.) More interesting, though? She was dancing with PURPOSE.

Her purpose? The bounder standing along the wall about 10 feet from me.

She was making eye contact with him. She was bending over in his general direction. She was locked in on him, and he was enjoying it with his eyes.

It didn't make too bad of viewing for me, either, but after a few minutes it was enough, and I started watching other things going on.

It was at that point that I heard, from behind me, "... cellulite ..." in an unhappy voice.

I turned around and saw a pair of women staring at the purposeful dancer. They, too, were optimized. But they didn't look as good, and it was killing at least one of them.

"Can you even believe her," she asked me as I turned to her.

"That's quite an outfit she has on," I commented noncommittally. "Showing quite a bit of skin."

"Yes," the Hater went on, huffily. "And can you believe it, given she's got cellulite?"

"Uh... what?"

"I mean... look at her!"

"I am. I have been. Yeah I just don't see it."

And I didn't. I looked for it at this point... trust me. Heh.

I then looked at Hater's friend, trying to judge whether she was Hater2 or ... something else. Fortunately for all that is good in this world, the friend sort of crinkled her brow, acknowledging that her friend was, indeed, a hater.

I might not be a big fan of the term "Hater". But it has its place in the world.

Because haters be hatin'.

Inconsiderate

2010-04-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at dinner last week with a friend. We had ordered so much Indian food that the waiter had confirmed with us that we knew we were, indeed, ordering three main courses (in addition to the paneer pakoras and our mango lassis).

The restaurant was about half full, and we were enjoying catching up about work and exercise and whatever, when (seemingly, I'm sure, to her, from out of the blue) I started this non sequitor:

"Do you know how, when you're driving, you stop because someone is crossing the street? You might be turning right and the pedestrian has the right of way... but they walk VERY slowly?

Not, like, they're in pain and can barely walk. But, like, they have nowhere to be and all day to get there, and they don't give two shits about whether you, as the driver waiting for them to cross the street, DO have somewhere to go?"

She let me finish asking this semi-rhetorical question (it didn't really matter whether she answered "yes" or "no," although since she doesn't drive, it would probably have to be "no") and we both waited a couple beats, as she knew I expected her to ask, "Where the heck did that come from?" and yet she knew I knew she was a bit confused and wanted to wait me out.

She inhaled to ask me, and I started back in:

"I bring that up because I'm reminded of that situation by that couple over there. They finished eating about 10 minutes ago and they received their check. Their baby is crying... and crying.

In spite of the fact that their offspring is producing ear-splitting noises of discontent, they seem to be in no rush whatsoever to scoop up the little one and flee to the sanctity of their own home. They are so inured, it appears, to the noise that they simply don't give a crap about anyone else's dining experience."

In spite of the inherent kindness my friend possess, she had to agree... maybe because she doesn't have kids.

Eventually, the family left. We enjoyed our food in peace. It was good.

Maybe, someday, when I have children of my own I will forgive individuals who show no sense of urgency to alleviate the sufferings of those around me. Of course, I don't dilly-dally in crosswalks as a pedestrian, so hopefully I can avoid becoming that particular kind of annoying.

Mysterious T-Shirt

2010-04-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

I wore a rather mysterious t-shirt today. First, let me give you the visual:

It is a black t-shirt with a single, white line art element on the front. On the back there is an important clue:

www.phantom.net

It is mysterious because, to be honest with you, I have little to no recollection of where I got it from. I pulled it out from a bin of clothes I haven't worn in years (or ever) and I decided to wear it today as a reminder to try to research what the heck it's about.

A quick Web search won't get you what you want (at least in this case; if you want to know, say, the definition of "febrile" then it can help you out)... www.phantom.net has a simple image on black with "A new site for a new year. Phantom Entertainment. Coming soon."

Not terrifically helpful.

It did, though, give me another keyword to search with. Googling "phantom game" led me to the Wiki entry for The Phantom (Game System).

And it started to come back to me.

A console that gets hooked up to the Internet and streams games to your living room for a monthly charge. A console that was supposed to revolutionize gaming. Wired's 2004 #1 Vaporwear product.

So I remember that. That's fine.

What I do NOT remember is where I got the t-shirt.

Was I working and got it as a give-away? Did I go to a convention or something and get it? Did I steal it from a homeless dude?

I don't know. And it's going to eat away at me, perhaps for the rest of my days...

Haircuts the Mighty Men & Monster Maker Way

2010-04-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

When I was a lad I served a term as an office boy in an attorney's firm.

I also had a toy called Mighty Men & Monster Maker. The idea was that there were different tiles in three different regions that you could mix and match, and then trace over the tiles to make either a monster or a superhero... or some combination. A werewolf head on a superhero body? Sure. Frankenstein's monster with a werewolf head? Why not. The pieces lined up in certain ways, but were independent of one another beyond that.

It was great fun, and it helped me think early on about permutations.

I was reminded of this venerable toy during my trip to Australia. Specifically, I was reminded of it because of many of the haircuts that I saw on Aussie guys.

(As a quick precursor: I don't care about hair that much, especially on guys. My hair does what it wants, for the most part, until I decide to get most of it hacked off. I don't have a particularly good sense of what looks good or bad, so when I bring this up it's not to be snobby.)

Most people have haircuts that ... go together. By that I mean they have shaggy hair, or short and spiky, or parted, or whatever. Bad haircuts and good haircuts both tend to have an internal consistency.

In Australia, that concept seems to be much less common.

Sure, there were many men who had haircuts that looked "normal"... even if the haircut was extremely punk or otherwise out of the mainstream, at least it was normal.

Some, though? They had "Mighty Men & Monster Maker" haircuts.

By that I mean their scalps were seemingly divided into different zones (think a vertically oriented Berlin after WWII, perhaps, or look at the image that I made to simulate it)... and each zone could be entirely unrelated.

One guy had spiked short hair in the "red zone", long flatted hair spilling over in all directions in the "blue zone", bushy hair in the "green zone" and then long, straight hair in the back.

The next guy had long/straightened/flat, spiked short blue, medium, then short and curly in the back.

So many permutations for confused hair.

I was looking for rhyme or reason in the hairstyles I saw. There was none.

Similar, I suppose, to starting off a blog post about Australian hair with lyrics from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Brand

2010-04-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a pitch a few weeks ago. A pitch is, for those who are unaware, an opportunity to go in front of a prospective client and let her/him know why (a) you want to work with them, and (b) you would be a good fit.

Our pitches are usually done with a team of three to six people from my agency and involve a Keynote presentation followed by a Q&A. My portion of the pitch is to outline our interactive process and some of our technical capabilities and philosophies... and then to participate in general discussion as appropriate afterwards.

So I was sitting in a pitch a few weeks ago. It was for the redesign of an existing site, and there was a lot of potential to improve it, and a key differentiator our agency makes is that we consider brand to be just as important as technology.

"Brand" can mean many things to many people, and this is not intended to be an occupational exploration, so I'll keep it simple and say that brand generally means how an entity is perceived and what distinguishes it from other entities.

As part of the Q&A, the potential client asked our team what, based on the existing Web site, we thought their brand was. A coworker answered and then I chimed in, saying something like, "Busy. Which is both good and bad. Good in that there is a lot of activity and energy, but bad insofar as it appears to be inefficient and a bit disorganized."

In life, I've come to know that anytime I open my mouth I might be making a mistake. I remember mistakes I made with friends, with women, and even in law school oh, so long ago. I am hopefully coming to terms with this potential for error and I'm learning to assert things I am comfortable with and which I can defend.

Even with the knowledge that I was stating something I could defend and that I was comfortable with--and knowing that the potential client was unhappy with the current site they had--I was still a bit worried that they were going to take it the wrong way.

After all, brand is very personal. Asking someone about your brand is like asking someone about how they like your hair: whether you spend a lot of time and money on it or not, there's the chance that someone can hurt your feelings.

Brands extend beyond corporate--and even professional--matters, after all. We all have a way that we are perceived by our friends and family and people on the bus.

It's rare that I ask someone about my brand, and it's almost as uncommon as having unsolicited observations offered up about me (other than the rather common ones of, "Are you gay?" and "You look like someone...")

The very night that I gave my "busy" comment, I was given an unsolicited opinion that stymied me. The location was the men's restroom at the Frontier Room. I was waiting behind a guy who was washing his hands in the sink. As he grabbed a paper towel and I washed my hands, we had this exchange:

Him: You look...
Me (thinking, "Uh, oh... do I look gay or 'like someone'?"): Yeah?
Him: You look like you should be in a band.
Me: Oh, yeah?
Him: Yeah, like a band that makes really cool music.

That, my friends, is a compliment. Whether I dressed to look like I am in a band (which I did not and I am not) or not, that he added the "really cool music" part without any apparent irony (or homosexual overtones) means that he had a positive view of me.

He liked my brand.

And yet... what did I do? I got flummoxed. I should have (as attractive women around the world have become used to doing) said, simply, "Why, thank you!", but, instead, I thought, "That's an odd comment... at least it's not the worst thing he could have said."

And we had this second exchange:

Me: I guess that's pretty good, right?
Him: Yeah.
Me: I mean, it's better than you saying I look like an asshole, right?
Him: Are you calling me an asshole?

Ugh. I apologized and said I was not.

I think that maybe I should be as willing to accept input about my brand as I want potential clients to be, huh?