More fun than Mayonnaise... or at least equally fun... OK, it's less fun, but you're still reading...
More fun than Mayonnaise... or at least equally fun... OK, it's less fun, but you're still reading...
Last night I ate dinner and then fell asleep on the couch watching cable news... my dad's favorite activity between 7-9pm....
It usually takes me 30 minutes to fall asleep, so I was surprised when I woke up and realized I didn't even make it to the first comercial break.
Plagarissismo
I love the Monday Morning Report, so I decided to rip it off from Sherman.
Weekend Science Update
I used science to overcome my physical ineptitude!
I got a new pepper grill that had to be cured in the oven... but you had to remove the wooden handles first... as you could probably guess, I was too weak to pull them off... instead of calling some girl or my roommate, I threw the grill in the freezer. The metal shrunk. The wood stayed the same size. I successfully pulled off the wooden handles!! Hazaah! Cockeyed eat your heart out!
(un)Employment Report
Got a bill for my March benefits (if I want to keep them).
Was unable to fill out a simple U form (because I was on leave).
Looks like I am no longer an employee here.
My accounting friend is fixing everything. (She agreed that reducing your 40 hr workload by 5 hrs does not equal 0.)
Leading Economic Indicators
At Cub I bought 10 of my favorite Lean Cuisine lunches at 50% and Cub threw in a free pack of ice-cream sandwhiches. Does life get any better?
Spring Break Rock Out 2006
Spring break is a few weeks away. I have a 3 day weekend... no Comedy Shows... so I think I am going to do a big writing session. It's been ages since I worked on any of my plays/essays/poetry.
The Good Times Grill
Threw Jalepeños into my Spaghetti. Wonderful! It's like a beanless cross of Chili and Spaghetti.... Spaghilli.... even bought garlic bread to accompany the tastey delight.
Thurs 3/2, 8pm Announcer
Fri 3/3, 8pm Player
Fri 3/10, 8pm Announcer
Fri 3/10, 10:30pm Player
Fri 3/31, 8pm Player
Fri 3/31, 10:30 Announcer
My parents went on vacation and got me a beautiful, hand-made ceramic cup. Blue waves swirled in the glaze before rippling along its clay body.
Holding the sturdy handle, I could no longer recall how I got out of ceramics. I just knew it was a mistake.
A warm (almost) spring morning.
My view of downtown, crystal clear.
Pure blue sky, an innocent heart.
Trapped in my moving jail,
I drive by a jogger.
She’s free:
no worries, thoughts, schemes,
broken hearts, unresolved questions.
No panic. No anxiety.
There’s just running.
One foot after another.
Peace.
Been looking more seriously at buying a place near the U.... but the prices are amazingly high! Just started waiting for bird flu to pop the housing bubble with a 25% fatality rate.
It's the age old question of: (a) settle for a crappier place with less features, (b) get what you want but live further away or (c) forget the whole notion of home ownership. I have never been one for settling.
I'm also on the brink of a new economic theory: working less so that you can devote more time on comedy is directly proportional to how hard it is to find a home in your price range.
Days like this make me want to work even less. It's just not worth it. What I wouldn't give to make some more pottery.
Trying to decide which grocery store line would be the quickest, I chose the left most lane since it had the fewest number of items in the grocery carts and the fewest number of people. The line moved quickly until the person in front of me. Then the cashier picked up his phone and paged the manager. She arrived promptly and just stood behind the cashier. As far as I could tell, she came for no reason.
Then I walk up to the cashier.
"Do you work at comedy sportz?"
"Yes"
to the manager: "Dude. I told you."
manager: "You were totally right."
[beeps as he scanned my items]
"Remember when you guys kept carrying [imaginary] VCRs from the back room?"
"Yes" (actually meaning "no")
"I'm still laughing about that today! Ah ha ha ha! And that scene about Cheers?"
"Yah" (actually meaning "yes")
"That was totally my suggestion. They were all 'What's your favorite Christmas gift' and I was all 'Cheers Season Two'!"
I only wonder if he's a Sybil for some other blog...
For V-day, some friends (and a poor, blogless soul) went out for steaks. It was a great evening, but not particularly romantic. Walking home, I thought of some romance-inducing tips to keep in mind for next year....
*Not if.
Watching the final three episodes tonight, I realized that I lost. The fight is over. No army of letters can save the dead once she has been seduced by death’s cold scythe. There is no more Arrested Development. Yes, plot holes are open for a continuation on Showtime, but the story arc I knew and loved resolved itself tonight. In a frenzy of self-reference, everything came full-circle the way it had to in an idyllic intersection of inevitability and surprise... just 3 years earlier than I would have liked. All that’s possible now is a Siddharthan river-crossing into the mother-world with repetition and variation guiding her re-debute (the good captains of Ground Hog’s Day).
Success is a two-edged sword. The same prowess that gave Arrested Development her power, stole it in the night. She was bold, smart, creative and empowering… With a watchful smile and slanted eyebrow, she let you laugh when you wanted to, but forced you to justify your outburst since there were no pre-canned laugh tracks to guide you to safe waters.
Americans don’t want to be tricked by their art. We shuffle uncomfortably past Soup Cans in museums (and flip over Arrested Development) because we’re not sure if it’s a trick or genuine art. Is it a documentary? reality tv? comedy? When do you laugh? Is incest funny? Do housekeepers live in buses? Why is there a little bit of me in every disturbing character?
Worse than any cancellation, however, is my loss of hope. For years, I have dreamed of a woman as smart, witty, sublime, complex, brash, creative, absurd and challenging as Arrested Development. Tonight I realized that the harshly practical and pedantic cultura americana leaves little room for any such flowers to bloom.
Been vacationing in Illinoissssss:
Dream Snippet: I was going to lounge around home and go to work "a little late today." Ended up going at 11am.
Sad truth: I came in at my normal time.
Snow at the wrong time yesterday increased my roommate's commute from 15 min to 1 hr.
Snow made my bus ride last 5 min longer.
It's nice to be back on the bus.
Tonight we see the (potentially) last 4 episodes of Arrested Development.
AD's inane replacement, Ice Skating with the Stars brings in triple the ratings.
This fact has made me question why I even watch TV since broadcasters aren't targeting me.
I hereby plan on not watching anything other than Family Guy and Seinfeld.
After two weeks of being away, I was ready to get home! I felt like a guy who had been in a coma for years and suddenly got a second lease on life. I ran from thing to thing.... smelling the laundry detergent I'm used to.... touching the silky fabric on my pillow... looking at pictures of Minneapolis I had taken and hung on the wall... eating tacos I made with real jalepeño, garlic and onion chunks in the meat.... and listening to the water fountain gurgle in my bedroom....
I didn't want to leave my room when the alarm rang, but I was equally excited to take a brisk morning walk to the bus, where I could close my eyes and let my mind wander for 20 minutes while the bus driver worried about lines of backed-up cars stuck on the crowded interstate above us.
Preface: I can think of obvious counter-examples... and I have no hard data or society-wide info to back this up.... however: it seems like most of my friends who are smarter, well-educated and interesting to be around have no interest in nesting and familying-down... and if they do, the instinct hit them much later in life. There are also occasional reports that the population of western europe (it's highly educated!) is down because they aren't reproducing above the replacement level. Many philosophers, like Aristotle, talk about training your mind so that you can overcome "base" (read: "sexual?") instincts and live a well-reasoned, well-measured, pious life.
But what does all this mean for Darwin?
Should I be worried that none of my smart, interesting friends are nesting? Are the comforts of the 21st century reverse-evolving us for the first time in history? Is reason really a "weaker" trait than reproduction? Does reason require you to follow some animal instincts for the betterment of society? Or is my small circle of friends an anomaly in the larger scheme of progress?
