Recently in Biographical Tidbits Category

Hi. My name is Jason, and I have gout.

If you don't have any first-hand knowledge of the so-called "disease of kings," consider yourself extremely lucky. I wouldn't wish this shit on anyone, not even Dick Cheney, and my Loyal Readers all know how I feel about that guy. I can honestly say without exaggeration or hyperbole that I cannot imagine any pain worse than what I experience at the peak of a full-on outbreak of gout, except maybe a burn. A napalm burn, to be exact.

But Bennion, you're asking, what exactly is this horrible affliction, and how can it be so horrible without having its own telethon?

Courtesy of SamuraiFrog via Byzantium's Shores, it's -- you guessed it! -- another pointless meme!

I hope everybody made it through Independence Day with their original factory-issued number of digits, limbs, and accessories. Had a pleasant Fourth myself, but my Fifth... whoo, boy. I'm wondering tonight if a middle-of-the-week holiday is even worth bothering with; all my various accounts at work tried to push a schload (that's a technical term, don't ya know) through the mill the day before the holiday, and now comes the day after the holiday and everyone is trying to catch up. Which means there's been another schload crossing my desk. Which makes for a lack of blog-time and a very stressed-out (and grumpy) proofreader.

I did manage to check in on a couple of my usual reads, though, and I learned that I've been tagged by Jaquandor to participate in the latest meme floating around the 'net. I'm a sucker for these things, of course -- curse you, Jaquandor, you've discovered my secret weakness! -- so my responses follow the cut:

Originally an email quiz, now gone to ground somewhere in the vast, vast Internet:

I've worn a beard for about 17 years now, not counting one horrible week following a misguided attempt to "update my look," only to discover that I'd, ahem, put on a few pounds since I was last bare-faced. Let me tell you, I wasted no time at all re-growing my time-tested fuzzy accoutrement. I probably would've grown it back anyway, though, even if I didn't need the camoflage for my unfortunate double chin, because I just plain like it. I think it lends my face some character, and, in my mind at least, it signifies both my masculinity and my individuality. And it doesn't hurt that The Girlfriend likes it, too.

However, it hasn't always been easy to be bearded here in arch-conservative Utah, where the preferred look of the predominant cultural group (that would be the Mormons, kids) is decidedly unfuzzy. Before I made a love connection with the current Girlfriend, I heard from more than one young lady that I was not suitable dating material because of the beard, and I also know that I've lost a few job opportunities because I refused to shave it off. Some would call my defiance of the local norms foolish vanity, but I've never understood why, if you keep it clean and trimmed short (as I do), so many straight-laced people find facial hair repellant. (Incidentally, I really dislike the term "clean-cut," because it suggests that its opposite -- i.e., bearded or otherwise hirsute -- is unclean, complete with all the moral intimations that word carries.) And so I have soldiered on through the years, convinced of my own righteousness and determined not to let The Man force me into drab conformity. I've persevered long enough that the beard has largely ceased to be an issue for me -- I've finally found success in love and work without having to compromise my self-image -- but it would've been so much easier if I'd had some kind of support group. Perhaps even an entire web site dedicated to the proposition that beards are cool. But surely there couldn't really be such a thing out there on the vast, vast Internet... could there?

Well, duh...

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the title of this entry comes from an old George Carlin routine called "The Hair Piece." It's reproduced for your amusement below the fold...

Today is my 37th birthday, an event I've been anticipating with about the same degree of enthusiasm I usually reserve for defrosting the fridge. Yes, I realize that I just dated myself terribly, since I don't know anyone who's actually needed to defrost their fridge in years, but I'm feeling pretty dated today anyhow, so what the hell. (Incidentally, I apologize to any youngsters out there in the InterTubes that don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Not to worry, it's just grown-up stuff.)

The past few days have been absolutely gorgeous here in the SLC, like a soft, sweet goodbye kiss from your summertime love before she heads back to school. Monday was especially lovely. It was the sort of day that convinces me that God must own a ragtop -- the sky was tall and clear, the details of the Wasatch Mountains stood out in sharp focus, and the southerly breeze puffed gently instead of gusting. As luck would have it, I wasn't at work on Monday... but I also wasn't where I wanted to be, driving the valley and canyons with the top down and the tunes cranked. Instead, I spent much of the day under a blankie on the couch, suffering from my annual change-of-the-season head cold. A miserable waste of a nice day, even if I did get to watch seven hours of Northern Exposure. That kind of DVD marathon is a rare luxury these days, and aside from not being able to breathe and the occasional coughing fit, I enjoyed it.

There was one other good thing about being home sick on Monday: it gave me the chance to see my parents' old truck and camper leave the Bennion Compound for the last time.

When I was 16 years old, my uncle Louie was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS is a neurological disease that causes the myelin sheath coating the body's nerve cells to deteriorate. Think of this sheath as insulation around an electrical wire; when the myelin goes, the nerve short-circuits and ceases to function. The victim first loses strength in affected areas of the body, then loses control over them altogether. In time, the effect of the disease spreads throughout the body and, as the muscles receive less and less stimulation from the deteriorating nervous system, it begins to atrophy. The victim essentially wastes away.

Courtesy of Boing Boing, I've just stumbled onto an absolutely amazing time-capsule: somebody with lots of time on their hands has scanned what looks to be the entire 1983 Sears Wishbook for our Friday viewing pleasure.

I used to love the Sears Wishbook when I was a kid, as well as a similar catalog published by a local Utah retailer called LaBelle's. (I think LaBelle's was local -- I don't recall ever hearing about it being in other states -- but I'm not sure. I may not even be spelling the name correctly. The company carried appliances, electronics, impractical gift items, and fancies for the home; it folded sometime in the late '80s, as I recall.) Reviewing these doorstop-sized paeans to materialism was practically an autumn ritual at my home; I can remember sitting by the fireplace with my mom around Thanksgiving time, paging through the Wishbook and the LaBelle's catalog and circling all the must-have Christmas items with a red Magic Marker. Naturally, I was most interested in the toy pages, especially when they featured some new Star Wars figures, but looking at this online archived version today, I find myself gravitating toward the items that no one really thought to hold onto or collect, the everyday goods that remind me of what it was really like to live in 1983. Seen through my usual haze of nostalgia, twenty years ago doesn't seem that far away to me, but so much of this stuff looks so archaic when you really look at it, especially the electronics with all their tacky, faux-woodgrain cabinets... wow. My late grandmother's antique '30s-vintage radio (which now resides in my living room) actually looks more timeless than that stuff.

Here are some highlights:

Writing last week about my Cambridge adventure reminded me of something I ran across as I was cleaning up after The Great Water-Filter Containment Failure and Basement Flood of 2006. It's a padfolio, one of those cheap vinyl folder-thingies that you sometimes get as freebies at business functions, the ones that contain a mini-sized legal pad, a pen, and a pocket for miscellaneous papers. This particular padfolio is a souvenir of "Cinemark Customer Service University," a corporate training session I attended during my old multiplex days. Yes, it's true -- my minimum-wage, name-badge-wearing joe-job at the movie theater required me to attend a half-day company pep-relly on how to become a better ticket-taker. As I recall, the path to usher's nirvana basically involved more diligence in between-show lobby cleaning and never, ever questioning theater management about anything. As I further recall, this propaganda session and its breathlessly enthusiastic mantra of total obeisance to people who didn't have as much on the ball as my pet duck was one of the final straws that convinced me it was time to start looking for a more grown-up occupation. (True story: the day I finally quit, I had to explain to my manager what I meant when I said, "I tender my resignation." He'd never heard that expression before. And this was the guy I was supposed to bow and scrape to because he was my "superior." Oy.)

Sour grapes aside, I'm not one to throw away free stuff, so, naturally, I used the padfolio and, naturally, I've still got it. And I'm sure by this point you're all muttering under your breath, "Yes, fine, Bennion, we all know you tend to horde crap, but what has this got to do with Cambridge?" I was just getting to that...