This afternoon, I saw the following printed on a fat guy’s chest at the local amusement park:
I got this shirt for my girlfriend.
Best trade I ever made.
This amused me more than most of the things in the park. Just for fun, here’s another one:
Be different.
Say yes.
Anne and I have been e-mailing this afternoon about the previous entry — what I was trying to say, what she thinks I actually did say, that sort of thing — and we just had an exchange that you folks out there might find amusing, especially if you’ve ever known a genuine, stereotypical geek:
ME: The thing that shocked me [about the experience at the comic-book shop] was more that I just didn’t want to talk about [Star Wars]. I didn’t want to defend my preferences for the umpteenth time. I found myself looking at this kid and thinking what all geeks hate to hear… Get a life.
ANNE: oh no! Not the dreaded “get a life”. 🙂
ME: Yes… that soul-crushing, ego-destroying weapon-of-last-resort employed by the practical and small-minded, the plebes and drudges who just don’t see how damned important it is that Adm. Kirk’s insignia changed from the left side of his uniform to the right side during beaming, and that it couldn’t have been anything as simple as a continuity error, there MUST be some “in-universe” explanation for it…
Every once in a while, I feel like I get lucky and manage to really nail a concept or an experience in words. This is one of those times…
My buddy Jack sent me a cute little cartoon this morning, which I’ve decided to share with all you folks out there in InternetLand (hey, it’s a Quick ‘n’ Dirtyâ„¢ way to get an entry up):
Personally, I think this is pretty funny, but then I’m in on the joke. If you don’t get it, go rent yourself a copy of the movie Highlander. I would explain it for you myself, but I don’t have that kind of time right now…
Argggghhhh!!!!
That’s the sound of a blogger who is denied the time to blog. I’ve been accumulating lots of interesting links and topics for discussion, and it’s driving me crazy that I haven’t been able to do anything with them because work and Real Life have been so hectic. But have no fear, my loyal readers — I will return. Hopefully sooner than later.
Last Sunday afternoon, on the spur of the moment, Anne and I decided to drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon.
We were both in a funk, me because of the things I wrote about a week ago, Anne for reasons of her own that I wouldn’t presume to make public here. We each craved a break from our usual routine as well as some reassurance that the whole damn planet really hadn’t spiraled off its axis, or plunged into an parallel dimension where everything looks the same but somehow just sucks. We wanted sanity and peace. We needed sunshine and fresh air and solitude. The solution was obvious, high gas prices be damned, and within minutes we had the top down on my Mustang and we were motoring eastward, toward the mountains and away from the hateful ‘burbs.
If you happen to live along the Wastach Front and you’d like to donate some cash to help the victims of Katrina, might I suggest you do it at a Harmon’s grocery store? You ought to be shopping at Harmon’s anyway, because they’re the local guys and they provide the excellent service you don’t get from SuperWalMart (and you don’t need a privacy-invading Big Brother card to get the good prices, either, like you do at Smith’s). But even if you’ve never set foot in one of their stores, it’s worth paying them a special visit now, because they’re matching every dollar you donate to the Red Cross for hurricane relief. That means if you donate the money at Harmon’s that you were going to give anyway — and you know you were going to give, right? — you’ll effectively double the size of your donation.
I gave some last night. Not much, just what I had in my wallet. But it was money I just would’ve blown on DVDs anyway, and getting some help to a family that’s lost everything is much better than owning the first season of Hogan’s Heroes. Go to Harmon’s and donate now, as a favor to me, before you get busy with your holiday weekend and forget…
I have a list of cities that are special to me. They’re not places I’ve actually been to — that’s an entirely different list. Rather, these are places I’d like to go to. But that makes it sound like this list is just a roster of possible vacation spots, and it’s more than that. The cities on this list are places that occupy large tracts of my imagination and which exert a pull on my spirit that is somtimes difficult to explain. I associate them with works of literature I’ve enjoyed, or movies, or ideals. They represent things to me, and I feel like I know them without ever having actually set foot on their streets.
One of these places is New Orleans, the legendary city of Mardi Gras and the Delta blues, of Tennessee Williams and The Vampire Lestat. Many times I’ve imagined myself strolling through the French quarter to the sound of a mournful sax drifting down from an iron-framed balcony, or touring the grand old mansions and mossy graveyards, or breakfasting on strong coffee and beignets and supping on spicy foods that, like a short-lived affair based entirely on lust, I’ll enjoy at the moment and regret afterwards. Yeah, I know they’re cliches and that there’s a lot more to a city than postcard slogans and imagery cadged from lush gothic novels. But that imagery is much of the reason why I find New Orleans compelling; my sense of the place, my desire to see it, stems from overheated sources. I guess it’s fair to say I’m in love with the idea of cities like New Orleans, rather than the actual places themselves.
Either way, I hope we’ll be left with more than just an idea of New Orleans by the time Hurricane Katrina blows herself out. The last I saw on CNN.com, the protective levees were failing and parts of the city were under six feet of water.
My hopes are with those who couldn’t or didn’t evacuate in time.
Boy, this is just frightening. And depressing. Seems Beloit College has released its annual “mindset list” for students entering college this fall (Class of 2009). The ostensible purpose of this list is to gently remind college faculty that the touchstones they take for granted may not mean anything to this new generation.
The practical effect, however, is to make we who are fast approaching middle-age feel impossibly out-of-touch. If the items on this list won’t do it for you, this little factoid will: the kids who comprise the Class of ’09 were mostly born in 1987… the year I myself entered college. Oy.
Here’s the list, for those who might want to know where this year’s crop of freshmen is coming from:
Here’s some news that will make the blood of moral crusader-types run cold: an Australian researcher has determined that nudie magazines are practically immortal.
During an investigation into the rate at which wood-pulp products degrade in landfills, this intrepid scientist found that magazines with coated, glossy pages — the ones with lots of pictures, in other words — were the best preserved of all the printed matter he uncovered. A 1979 copy of Playboy was described as being in “near-mint condition” after decades in the dump. The smart-alecks at Fark (quoted by the other smart-alecks at Boing Boing) say this means that “porn will be this civilization’s gift to the next civilization.”
So, am I wicked for finding this impossibly droll?
I’m sure everyone has had the experience of hearing a catchy song and having it continue to play in your head for hours or even days on end. But have you ever had a piece of music spontaneously pop into your mind for no apparent reason? It happens to me sometimes… I’ll just wake up with the mental iPod churning out a song or even just part of a song, and then it stays there all freaking day.
Often when this happens, the accursed audio fragment is the theme from an old TV show, usually one I haven’t heard in years, and usually something that just drips with Velveeta. You know what I mean, the sort of theme that you’re ashamed to admit you ever heard once, let alone remembered well enough to resurrect as a continuous loop.
Case in point: I’ve had the theme from Knight Rider running non-stop through my brain ever since breakfast.
Won’t somebody out there please kill me now? Please? Just do it quickly and humanely…