So I met this guy who had a lisp and was so self-conscious about it that he kept saying, "I'm not gay. I just sound gay because I have a palette deformity that makes me lisp. But I'm not gay." I told him that was too bad. He said, "What, that I'm not gay or that I have a lisp?" Yes, I said.
April 2, 2013
Charley was sad that his friends felt the need to be this way.
I saw some footage of a house being built in 1923. The construction was top notch and the craftsmanship excellent. When finished, the house was outfitted with the latest furnishings and appointments. It was a grand home and both the builders and owners were proud. Fast forward to last month where a young couple is touring the same house, now for sale. To them it's dark, stuffy, ornate and dated. What was once celebrated is now derided. Old modern becomes old fashioned. There is talk of knocking it down and starting over. A sleek, modern house design is contemplated. On the way out, the woman trips on the porch steps and breaks her ankle. Random accident or just desserts?
April 4, 2013
She lives her life by statistics. She keeps track of everything she does. She has all her tendencies mapped out. If she has a question about anything, she can look up the numbers in one of her myriad spreadsheets. She always plays the odds and the odds are defined by the statistics. Is she living a better life than those of us who don't keep track? Doesn't matter. Same goes for gay marriage. Or personal drug use. Or a million other coping mechanisms we all have in place to deal with life and this reality. Want some good advice? Live and let live, people.
So I'm standing next to this teen who is heavily tatted and pierced with half a dozen metal studs in his face. He says to me, "How about them Blue Jays?" Baseball? Are you kidding me? This kid watches baseball? Baseball is so...normal. I say, "I can't believe you watch baseball." He says, "I don't. I was just trying to be polite and you look like the type who would watch baseball." For the first time I notice he has real razor blades embedded in his ears. He might as well have cut me with his razor blade ear lobes. I used to be the iconoclast. I used to be the black sheep. I was always the "different" one. Sigh.
April 7, 2013
I have an idea that I'm going to pursue. That's all it takes really, an idea. You start with the thought of something and you figure out how to make it real. Which is kind of funny because the idea itself is already real - thoughts are electromagnetic; thoughts are as real as the rocks on the road - but until we manifest it in our literal physical lives, we don't give it much credence. Funny. Anyway, I have an idea that I'm going to pursue. You know, in case anybody was interested.
April 8, 2013
Been getting a lot of notes about IE 10 compatibility issues.
If you are using Internet Explorer and any pages from this site are not rendering correctly and look like this,
instead of this,
then click the little blue compatibility icon in the upper right corner of the IE window
and it will work correctly.
Thanks.
April 9, 2013
A business associate got mad when he couldn't reach me via Facebook, Twitter or Google+. "What the hell, man? You're not on any social media? What the hell?!" What's the problem, I said, if you want to talk, just call. "Well what if I have a great idea at 3 in the morning? You want me to call you then? I bet you wouldn't be too happy then. How can I work with somebody only by phone? That's not modern!" He was right. The telephone is so last century. I immediately joined all the social media I could find. Not.
April 10, 2013
I had to trick someone into doing something they didn't want to do. This is a nicer way of saying I had to manipulate someone into doing something they didn't want to do. But manipulate is so pejorative, and tricking someone casts such a negative light upon my actions, that I've settled upon maneuver. I maneuvered someone into doing something they didn't want to do. Sounds gentler, nicer, more even handed. Persuasion through deceit made palatable through semantics. I like it.
April 12, 2013
You know how alien abductees often say that they were used for reproductive experiments breeding humans with aliens? Could this explain Taylor Swift (experiments that worked) or Donald Trump (those that didn't)? I'm just sayin'...
April 13, 2013
You know what's great about the Internet? It gives a voice to people like me. You know what sucks about the Internet? It gives a voice to people that don't like me.
My monitor keeps losing presets. I have assigned it certain configurations but it seems to change them for no apparent reason. Everything will be great for a while and then it starts to act like it just doesn't care. Is there anything worse than apathetic electronics? I've seen it once before, back in '78, a Texas Instrument calculator went crazy and just started making things up. Now my monitor. Am I cursed?
April 16, 2013
My enemy has no idea that I loathe him. He talks to me like we're good buddies. He thinks we're on the same page. He thinks I'm sympathetic. I smile at my enemy, amused that he is so foolish to think what he thinks.
April 17, 2013
Have you ever had that feeling of impending doom? I'm not talking about some generalized idea of doom - Global warming will kill us all! - I'm talking about a visceral, innate knowing that something bad is coming your way. Even so, how are you supposed to prepare? How can one prepare to see the unseen, hear the unheard, know the unknown? How can you possibly "be prepared" for something with which you are wholly unaware? Expect the unexpected? Puh-leeze.
April 18, 2013
I once had a coach who yelled a lot during practice. I was 18, strong and adverse to authority. The coach was in his 50s and known as a tough guy. My choice came down to either understanding why he was this way so that I could devise a coping strategy, or I would simply have to kill him. Choosing the lesser of two evils, I asked him why he lost his temper so much. He said it was the way he had been coached. He said he had been taught that to control athletes you had to dominate them, bend them to your will. He knew the mechanics of the sport, he knew the strategy, but he didn't know the psychology of how to motivate his athletes to bring out their best. In other words, he was a poor coach. Some people are just in the wrong job, period.
April 19, 2013
No one knew what it was, but apparently it was shocking.
In reference to my bemoaning an inevitable occurrence of a deleterious nature, my friend told me to stop worrying about it. "That's twenty years away from happening," he said. "Relax." Only now it's twenty years later. And it's actually happening. Now what?
April 21, 2013
I'm amused when someone genuinely says,
For the love of Pete!
By the hammer of Thor!
Sweet Jebus!
or, There but for the grace of God go I, Shakespearean English spoken by people who think Shakespeare is just a fishing tackle company.
April 22, 2013
In the old days, everybody would ask how many hits your website got. Then everybody wanted to know how much money you were making from your site. Now no one has personal websites anymore. We've all matured. Like the Queen.
April 23, 2013
My wife has such good taste. We were appliance shopping when she called me over to a very nice looking refrigerator. I like this one, she said. It was $20,000. Thankfully, we were in the store to buy a washer and dryer. After it was all over and we walked out with the most expensive washer and dryer - which looked positively cheap compared to the $20,000 refrigerator - did I realize I had been played by my wife, the clinical psychologist. Good taste and shrewd. Jeez.
April 24, 2013
Somebody I work with said she wanted to know, just for once, what it felt like to be hot. "You know, either be beautiful with a killer bod and have everybody desire you, or have a career that has taken off and everybody wants to be you because you're the hottest...wouldn't that be great? Don't you want to know what that feels like?" I guess what bothered me most about the question was her implied assertion that, you know, I wasn't hot already. Damn.
None of them could get dates. Adam thought it was because his deflated bagpipes looked too much like an oversized pig bladder, whilst Andy thought it was because his deflated bagpipes looked like an empty garbage bag searching for a trash can to line, but Alastair knew the babes stayed away because of their schizophrenic clothing. Did he not have on a proper man's dress shirt, tie, vest and suit coat on the upper half, but a school girl's skirt, knee socks and purse on the lower half? Then you toss in the pig bladders and garbage bags and is it any wonder none of them could get dates?
April 26, 2013
Listening to Michigan's Bob Seger, drinking a beer, and eating little powdered donuts at 8 in the morning after a long night of computerizing, I realize how Michigan has produced some of my favorite things: Motown, Barry Sanders, Mackinac Island, but because I went to Ohio State, Michigan is and will always be, the enemy. Well how am I supposed to reconcile this? Damn you Bob Seger.
Joey turned his back on the ocean and blue sky. Joey was into sand. Joey loved himself some sand. Joey would lay there for hours, slowly raking his hand across the top of the sand. Joey's mother was worried and had thoughts of moving them to Regina. "No sand in Regina," she would say reassuringly. Joey's friends had long ago run off to the water and blue sky. It was just Joey and the sand. And Joey's mother. And threats of Regina.
April 28, 2013
I was watching a show with Louis C.K. as the guest and everything he said, which was just him talking about regular stuff, sounded like one of his comedy bits, but it wasn't, but it was funny and could have been. Finally, one of the other guests said essentially the same thing - that Louis in conversation is just as entertaining as he is in stand up and wasn't that weird for his friends because no one would ever know if he was just being himself or trying out new material. Everyone laughed, including Louis, still, no one was sure.
April 29, 2013
Just yesterday I was out looking at a dead birch tree that was towering over our house. I thought about cutting it down but old birch trees often break off in pieces and fall over a period of time, plus I was feeling lazy, so I didn't do anything. Last night we had a big wind storm. This morning I see that the entire birch was blown over in one big chunk and somehow missed hitting our house. Jeez, can't help but feel I dodged a bullet there.
April 30, 2013
Standing on a downtown corner in yoga pants and a crop top was a 70 year old self-proclaimed "satan hater" shouting scripture to the world. He had horrible teeth, greasy hair, skull rings on every finger, a do rag that looked like it hadn't been washed since the last Van Halen tour and a walking cane that doubled as a blunt instrument. All in all, it was the yoga pants and crop top that were the most disturbing.
