"Home, Home On The Raaaaange..."

I ’m back from vacation, if you were wondering. Ah heck, you probably weren’t. It was wonderful, thanks for asking. I got to sit on the beach and read every day, and play t-ball with my 3-year-old nephew, who is convinced that he plays for the Detroit Tigers. I got to see my wife-to-be every day. It feels crazy to call her that. Crazy awesome. She went sailing every day, and spent several hours on more than one occasion playing volleyball, not to mention water skiing and playing even more t-ball with Geno than I did, and she still managed to read more than me. She’s a very fast reader, and I’m a very slow one, but still. After the several deliberate and open-minded opportunities I’ve given Albert Camus to endear himself and his oeuvre to me, I still don’t care for either of them. Sorry Albert, wherever you are. I disliked l’Étranger so much that the day after I finished it I went out and bought two books, the first (The Scarlet Letter) so that I’d have something to read for the rest of the week, and the second (a one-volume compilation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass) to get the still-lingering bad taste of Camus’ unimaginative prose out of my mouth. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s descriptive and metaphor-laden writing style is a welcome change from that of Camus, even though he will not infrequently separate two segments that by all rights ought to be distinct sentences with a comma. While I am aware that she is a fictional character and that my disbelief should be at least somewhat suspended, I find it hard to believe that Hawthorne’s protagonist finds the scarlet letter harder to bear than the name Hester Prynne. Shame on her sainted, fictional parents. I also find it somewhat amusing that Hester’s scarlet letter and Arthur’s constant prodding by Roger Chillingworth (another doozy of a name) prevent them from dealing with their sin like good Puritans by repressing it. Silly Puritans. Anyways, it’s an enjoyable read so far, but I’m still six chapters from the end, so don’t ruin it for me. Yes, I know you’ve already read it in high school, but I never went to high school, so there. I’ll probably finish it tonight. Softball was great fun yesterday, after a week-long hiatus. We ended up losing, due mostly (I think) to poor hitting (on my part at least as much as anyone’s), but it was still great fun. I’m a terrible, terrible hitter. I hit weak fielder’s choice grounders in every at-bat. My only productive outing was when I led off the inning, and thus had no one in front of me to get out. It’s weird for me to find myself getting worked up about a sport. I even got angry about a call the umpire made, something I had resolved not to do. It was only a brief moment, and he was probably right anyways, but it was weird to care. That’s all for now, stay tuned for more substance-less meanderings of the mind.

You heard it here last

Ok, so I'm guessing that both of my readers already know this, but last Friday (yes, the 13th, and no, I don't care) I took Lindsey out for dinner, and afterwards over a game of Legos in the Arboretum asked her to marry me. The negotiations that followed were a little tense at times, and I ended up promising her my firstborn (actually, I think all and any potential offspring, I have to re-read some of the paperwork), not to mention exclusive rights to the remote control, and I might have to get rid of that one really faded t-shirt that she hates, but in the end she said she'd consider it, and for that I still think I get the better end of the deal. So yeah. We're engaged. How 'bout that? I'd say that I'm "totally psyched," but I don't think that term is still in use (the nineties are over, right?), and even if it were, it really doesn't begin to describe the level of psychedness (that's a word, right?) that's going on here. I'm at a loss for adjectives, frankly.

On a more serious note, I would like to ask for prayers for the two of us as we start the lengthy and complex process of getting hitched, Papist style. We have a meeting set up with our parish tomorrow, from which I have no idea what to expect. I'm sort of picturing something along the lines of the Emerald City scene in The Wizard of Oz, where Deacon Lou speaks from behind a screen of fire and a giant hologram of his head, "WHO DARES APPROACH ME? WHAT DO YOU WANT?" At this point I'm shrinking behind Linds (who for some reason is wearing pigtails and a blue dress, and has a small dog in a basket), and manage to stammer out "M-m-m-me... I... I... I would like to marry Lindsey... s-s-s-s-sir...." Ok, maybe it will be nothing like that at all. maybe I should stop writing this. I can't believe that this paragraph started with "On a more serious note," and ended with The Wizard of Oz.

Sorry, Another Short Post

Remember when the World's Tallest Man saved those dolphins? I do, that was awesome. The latest news from Mongolia is that he has, at the tender age of 56, tied the knot. The best thing about the article is that apparently Mongolians still do weddings Ghengis Khan-style:

[He] wore a specially designed light blue gown topped with a gold vest, and rode to his bride’s camp in front of the tomb in a cart pulled by two camels... In keeping with Mongolian tradition, the bride’s attendants tried to “stop” Bao from getting into the camp. But they relented after the giant groom’s sincere appeals, and he was offered tea by the bride’s relatives, symbolizing that he had been accepted into her family.

Where can I get an outfit like that? Do they make it in a size 36?

UPDATE:

Sting: 1

Global Warming: 0

How disappointing. I guess I should be happy, but come on. I mean, it wasn't even a fight. Global Warming just looked like it didn't know what it was doing out there. People were calling this The Greatest Challenge The Human Race Has Ever Faced, and instead it was over so fast it wasn't even funny. Sigh.

The Situation As It Stands

Ok, first The Bad News: Our planet, according to our brightest and best, is getting warmer at a disturbing rate. Apparently, scientists are calling this "Global Warming." Who knew?

The Good News: Sting is on the case! And not just Sting! Depressed Nineties Guy has joined the fight, as well as that funny-smelling guy who sat behind you in English class's favorite band, not to mention Bon Jovi, a woman old enough to be your mom (not to be confused with Jon Bon Jovi), Snoop Dizzle (f'shizzle), that one dude who sang that one song that all the girls liked last year, and thank the gods, Metallica!

WE'RE SAVED!!!!!!

Yes, after having successfully defeated global poverty in 2005 (that happened, right?), the Recording Industry is once again banding together (yuk yuk) to defeat Earth's most fearsome foe yet: Carbon Dioxide Emissions!

Bless you, Recording Industry! Bless you, Sting! Bling!

Dear World,

Thank you for your constant efforts to keep me informed of Paris Hilton's whereabouts, what she is drinking, driving, wearing, eating, and fornicating with. Thank you for making sure that I can't turn on a radio, television, or internet browser without receiving an up-to-the-minute account of what exactly Ms. Hilton is doing, in any possible sense of the word. However, it pains me to inform you that I have no interest whatsoever in Miss Hilton's activities, nor can I conceive of any future situation where I might become interested in such information, unless it turns out that she is some sort of alien invader bent on the destruction of Earth. So, unless she suddenly becomes 20 stories tall and starts eating city dwellers by the bus load, don't bother telling me.

Also, and I don't want to seem ungrateful for your years of hard work, but I feel compelled to tell you before you expend any more energy on this that I have never cared about Princess Diana, God rest her soul. I still don't care what her children are doing, or how they feel about her, now that she's gone. Don't get me wrong, I hope that she is now in heaven, and I bear no ill will towards her bereaved family and friends, if famous people can have friends (I have my doubts). Nonetheless, I feel no need whatsoever to hear or see anything about her at all. I don't care. I have never cared. She died when I was 13 years old, and before she died, I had no idea that she had ever existed. Ten years later, I still just think of her (on the rare occasion that I think of her at all) as the dead broad with the bad haircut. A more interesting monarch would have had her coiffeur beheaded.

So, there you have it. Thanks for keeping me informed, but no thanks.

Ok, whew. Sorry everybody for the self-indulgent rant. I realize that both of my readers probably share some portion of my sentiments.

Icky Thump (Hot Dog, A New White Stripes Album)!

After ten years, six albums and one cliche introductory sentence to a blog post by yours truly, The White Stripes still rock. If you've never liked them, you probably aren't about to start now. If you've always liked them, you'll either love this album, or you're crazy. One of the two. You could call this album a return to form after their 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan, there are no songs played on a marimba on this album, no piano-driven songs whatsoever, and very few (but still some) lyrics which could be construed as pining for a deceased Rita Hayworth (I'm not kidding, there were lots of these on Get Behind Me Satan). Yup, the main component of Icky Thump is the Stripes' distinctive brand of heavy blues-rock, with odd pieces of Country and Cabaret stylings thrown into the mix. Here's a song-by-song breakdown of some of the album's hightlights, in which I shall attempt to be brief:

1. Icky Thump: The first single and title track includes a great, late-Zeppelin-esque riff, Jack trading solos with himself on guitar and what I believe is a vintage synthesizer, and great fast-rhyming lyrics such as: "Redhead senorita lookin' dead came to, said "need a bed?" en espanol..." Ok, maybe you'd need to hear it to get what I'm talking about. It's cool, trust me.

4. Conquest: This song is great. It appears to be a cover of someone named Corky Robbins, who I am not cultured enough to be familiar with. I imagine that in its original form, it was a latin-sounding jazzy thing, and in some sense it still is, except that it's played by The White Stripes. It's got some great trumpet work on it (by a rarity on a White Stripes album, a session musician), and one of Jack's best vocal performances to date.

8. Little Cream Soda: I wouldn't have guessed that a song with such a silly name could rock so hard. The vocals are something like early Dylan talkin' blues, and the guitar is something like Randy Rhoads heavy metal, though there's no 5-minute fretboard-tapping solo.

9. Rag and Bone: This may be my favorite song on the album, though I probably wouldn't call it the best song on the album, if the distinction makes any sense to you. The verses are a mix of Jack and Meg talking to each other and Jack in song imploring the listener to give them a bunch of junk, which they can find a use for. I can't explain it any better than that. It's hilarious.

13. Effect and Cause: Part of the Stripes' appeal are the simple yet often very clever lyrics of their songs, and this song is loaded with them. It's very fun.

Anyhoo, that's almost all I've got to say about that. It's an awesome album, and if you're the sort of person who likes the White Stripes, you'll like it. Two more side notes before we're done:
First, the White Stripes are weirdos. From their obsession with the number 3 to their color-coordination to their pretending to be brother and sister to writing large pieces of an album about being in love with Rita Hayworth, notwithstanding that a lot of this is probably shtick, they are odd people. They are also awesome. They make cool music that is very fun to listen to, and they're very good performers if you ever get to see them live. Neil and I saw them in Detroit some years back, and for most of the show Jack pretended to think that they were in Toledo ("Thank you, Toledo! It's great to be here!"). Maybe you'd have to be there, but it was funny.
Second, and this is about the comments: I love it when people comment on my blog. It doesn't validate my existence, really, but it does validate the small part of my existence which I spend writing this blog. Please, comment on my posts if you have something to say, or even if you haven't (Lord knows, I haven't). However, before you comment, if you think that you have something witty and clever to say about Meg White's drumming, you're probably wrong. Can't say I didn't warn you.

"She wrote upon it..."

Rather frequently at work we get mail for either the building's previous occupants or for someone who, to the best of my knowledge, has never lived or worked here. Consequently, a few times per week when I get the mail, I have to write "RETURN TO SENDER" across the front of one or two envelopes, and put them back into the mailbox. This is normal. I'm sure this happens to lots of people the world over every day. The trouble is that every single time I do this, I find that the Elvis Presley hit "Return to Sender" is stuck in my head for at least the next hour. Now, I love this song. It's a great song. But such frequent mental exposure to it is beginning to drive me a little batty. Even when I deliberately think of another catchy song while writing on the envelopes and re-depositing them in the mailbox, a few minutes later I'll catch myself humming

I gave a letter to the pooooooostman,
He put it in his sack
(Duh dun duh dun duh dun duh dun - I also hum the bass line)
Bright and early next mooooooooornin'
He brought my letter back
(She wrote upon it)

RETURN TO SENDER!
ADDRESS UNKNOWN!
NO SUCH NUMBER!
NO SUCH ZONE!
WE HAD A QUARREL
A LOVER'S SPAT
I write I'm sorry, but my letter keeps coming back
(Duh dun duh dun duh dun duh dun....)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Somebody help me. Please.

If Only For The Sake Of Updating

Most of the other bloggers I read seem to be on some sort of hiatus of late, so I guess that's my excuse to anyone who says that I should be more on top of things. Of course, perhaps they've also taken a break from reading blogs, and so my excuse will fall on deaf ears. Either way, I'm updating now, and have managed to spend two, wait--three whole sentences talking about nothing but updating, or not updating. Sweet. It's June now, for those of you who don't own calendars, Memorial day already seems like a distant memory, which in my book means that it's officially Summer. Our softball team is still whatever the opposite of undefeated is (repeatedly defeated, if explanation is needed), but I for one am still having a great time with it. I've been playing infield all season, which might have something to do with the team's woes (not to be confused with "whoas"), but I prefer not to think of it that way. I even played shortstop for a few innings a couple of weeks ago. I tried to protest with strains of "isn't that where the best defensive player is supposed to play?" but time was short (no pun intended), and to the infield I did go. Sigh. For no reason whatsoever, I'm going to spend the rest of the post talking about some of the media I've consumed of late:

Music:
I've been on something of a Band kick for the past week or so (capital B), after putting my seldom-used copy of The Basement Tapes in my car's CD player on a whim. It's one of the few Bob Dylan-related things I've bought that I didn't really like, in fact I don't think I'd played it more than once since purchasing it some years ago, before college. I hadn't even ripped it onto my computer. Since then, I'd become something of a fan of The Band, since checking The Last Waltz out of the college library a few years back, and purchasing their first two albums shortly thereafter. I can still hear what initially turned me off of The Basement Tapes when I first heard the two-CD set: Bob Dylan barely sings on the whole album, but he does speak on quite a few tracks, and many (perhaps most) of the lyrics on the thing are less coherent even than Dylan's previous three albums, which were filled mostly with psychedelic imagery and twangy Fender country blues, with some beat-poet aesthetic thrown in for good measure. Suffice to say that while The Basement Tapes were made between two of Dylan's best (and very different) albums (Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding), they really don't represent him at his best, and I bought the CDs because I was a fan of Bob Dylan. Also, while it has been claimed that some of the recordings were doctored with overdubs later (neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned), the "album" is still essentially six guys goofing off in a basement with musical instruments and home recording equipment in 1967, so the sound quality is far from (shall we say) pristine. What surprised me was how much of the album (primarily The Band's numbers, and a few Dylan gems) I really really liked this time around. There's a reason that this thing was one of the very first (and almost certainly the most famous) bootleg recordings for years before it was officially released by Columbia. Anyways, I'm not going to tell you to run out and buy the thing as quickly as you can. The Band's music isn't (or wasn't for me) all that accessible on your first listen on nearly any level. There really aren't catchy pop hooks, polished (or, for that matter, Polish) vocals, or anything of the kind to draw you in at first. I just really like it, that's all.

Book:
At the request of my friend John, who now has a blog about baseball (and, specifically, Sabermetrics), I finally got around to finishing Moneyball , the only book I've ever read about baseball (or for that matter, sport). While I'm not about to move into my mom's basement and start a blog about baseball (or even get more books about it), I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the book. This may be because the Michael Lewis (the author) is a storyteller more than a baseball guy, and so the book is rather accessible to someone who probably watches less than ten whole baseball games in a year, and that's counting an extraordinary two trips to the ballpark, and in a year when the Tigers go to the World Series (I do like baseball, but I'm no die-hard by any stretch of the imagination). Perhaps what makes the book so likable is that for a book about baseball, very little print is spent talking about the events of a baseball game. Almost none, actually. What makes the book interesting is that it's basically about the Economics of putting together a baseball team, written by someone who is not an economist, nor does he work in baseball (this is a good thing: constituents of both groups tend to alienate and/or bore those outside of them). He just likes the story, which is basically the age-old sports underdog story, but this time it's about financial and strategic savvy. Rather than the "Little Team With The Big Heart That Won Against All Odds" story, you get the "Little Team With the Small Payroll That Won Lots Of Games By Hiring Good Players That Nobody Else Thought Were Valuable For Relatively Small Amounts Of Money" story. Doesn't sound quite as catchy as a made-for-tv-movie title, but it makes a far less over-told story. Along the way it allows one to chuckle at some of the conventional wisdom clichés that dominate pro sports and their commentators (one of the reasons for my limited interest in televised sport is the idiots they always get to comment on the games). One of my favorite parts of the book is how Billy Beane (General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, and the book's protagonist) has to keep reminding his scouting staff that when hiring ball players, The A's are trying to win games, rather than sell blue jeans (the book suggests that guys who look good playing baseball tend to be paid more than those who don't, because people tend to think that they play better, even when this is verifiably not the case). Anyways, the book is fun and pretty easy to read if you're into that sort of thing (or, in my case, even if you're not). My only cautionary remark is that it is still about professional sport, and therefore occasionally contains the kind of language which you would expect from such a testosterone-fueled environment.

I've gone on too long to continue, I'll write about the rest of my doings and media consumption later...

And then it was Friday...

I'm sitting here consuming a bagel, toasted with cream cheese, and due to the fridge being devoid of the regular variety, a "Coca-cola Zero." I've got to say, if you close your eyes and think of the most beautiful things in the world, it still tastes not as good as regular Coke. Any big plans for the holiday weekend? I haven't any big plans per se, but a significant amount of small plans that add up, so it should be a real doozy. I'm excited, though. Softball, rock n' roll, wedding, Pentecost, etc... I really hope to squeeze a little BBQ in there at some point, barbecued food may very well be the best single thing about summer, and summer is pretty great all-around. Let's see... what to write about... Reens just got back from the Land o' Saints and Scholars the other day, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit jealous. She sent the bitches to Puppy Camp (also known as my folks' house) for ten days, so K and I had a quiet house (I think we were there at the same time all of twice), and the bitches, whether from boredom or overplayfulness or perhaps malace, killed a few of Owen's kittens. Poor Owen. My dear mother's homeopathic hijinks continue with what appears to be increasingly wreckless abandon, such that Snake Oils and unpasteurized milk now seem commonplace, though still unsafe for consumption (lest one contract "Consumption," yuk yuk). If you had asked me last week what Kombucha Tea was, I'd have guessed that it was something on Star Trek that Klingons used as an aphrodesiac. I'm still not sure that this is a bad guess. That's all for now, hopefully more to come soon. I should mention that I don't in any way vouch for the accuracy of Wikipedia articles, but you ought to know that already.

Assorted

Oh my stars and constellations, an update! The poison ivy game is going as well as can be expected, thanks for asking, which is to say that I haven’t yet reached Round Three. Let me see, where to start. It really has been a while, hasn’t it? Let’s see…
Lindsey and I went to see the band Over the Rhine a while back (nearly two weeks), that was awesome. The venue (The Ark) was small and we sat in the second row off to the right of the stage, Lindsey sang along to the songs, and I think it’s safe to say that we both had a great time. I’d picked up their two most recent albums (Ohio and Drunkard’s Prayer) in the few months since getting the tickets so that I’d know some of the material (I’d only heard of them before through Lindsey), which turned out to be a good move, since most of the songs they played were from those albums, with the exception of a few songs from their forthcoming album. They started the show with “Born,” one of my favorites, and ended with “Stella’s Tarantella,” one of Lindsey’s, the whole set was great. Lindsey stole the drummer Mickey’s setlist after the show, then we hung around for a while to meet the band, and Linds bought a poster and got the band to sign the back of the t-shirt she’d made.
The following weekend I went out to GR once again, this time for the wedding of some friends. As always when I go out there the company was great, and time flew by. I finally got to meet Lindsey’s boss Donna, who was as awesome as I’d heard she was and more, and is also a pretty good dancer. It was a great wedding, and this time out nobody caught my merriment on cell phone video and showed it to my girlfriend’s entire family, so I may have left with some shard of my dignity intact. Eh, maybe not. Sunday evening I had a close call with a leak in my tire, which Lindsey’s neighbor graciously fixed, allowing me to get home that night. Praise God! I never did understand a word that he said, but that stranger sure did fix my tire.
This past weekend was a busy one, but fun. I played softball in Saline on Friday night, which I had to leave early to get to a gig in Ypsi on time, only to find out that our band had been pushed back in the bill, and I would have had time to finish the game, run home, and change before running out. As it was, I played in a grimy bar full of indie scene kids with colored tape on their Chuck Taylors and t-shirts of bands that they really really hope you haven’t heard of in a sweaty company softball team t-shirt, athletic pants, and running shoes. ‘Twas amusing. Saturday I drove down to Hillsdale for commencement, saw a lot of friends for a short period of time, cracked jokes with them about "Pomp and Circumstance," commencement speaker Mitt Romney (the speech had nothing to do with graduation, and everything to do with “I’m Mitt Romney, and I’m running for President”), and the name of Hillsdale’s new Student Union, cheered loudly for my friends as they walked across the stage, ate Chinese, and went home.
Sunday I went to Mass, then stopped at home to wish Mama a happy Mother’s Day and to watch a dozen donuts get devoured by four siblings in approximately 2.4 seconds. I stroked my beard in an old man sort of way and explained to them that “back in the day” a dozen donuts would have been split between all 13 of us, and we were grateful, darnit! On the way back to Saline I received a call from Dean, who informed me that he was hanging out with my housemate, and wondering if I was planning to go with him back to Hillsdale for Justin & Emily’s wedding. Apparently, I was running late. I arrived home a few moments later, straigtened my tie, and we hit the road. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, the wedding was nice, the reception was nice, cake was served, and a splendid time was had by all. Offhand, I'd say that the reception had probably the most Salsa music of any Dutch wedding I've ever attended, not that I've attended many.
Anyways, that's all for now. I hope that all's well with you.

It's Time To Play... The Poison Ivy Game!

For those of you just now joining us, we're going to play the poison ivy game, the game where you get poison ivy! Are you excited to play? I know I am. Let's get things started with Round One. The object of Round One is to determine who gets poison ivy. The contestants (who may or may not be aware of their participation in the game) are told to avoid contact with a certain three-leaved plant, which can be found on roughly every square inch of earth in the State of Michigan, where our game is being played today. Certain contestants will have been given "imunity" up until this point in the game, where they could touch the leafy foe and be unharmed, but there is no guarantee that this will be the case for any single contestant in the current round. Were you immune last round? You might be immune in this round, but on the other hand you might not. In any case, Round One concludes when one of the contestants notices a rather itchy rash somewhere on their person, most likely somewhere on their person that could not have possibly come into contact with the aforementioned plant, such as a part of the ankle that had been covered by a sock, a boot, and a trouser leg. This is where the fun begins, with Round Two. Play in Round Two is subject to three over-arching rules:

1. The contestant cannot, under any circumstances, touch the infected area on his skin. The penalty for doing so is that all other parts of the body will quickly be infected.

2. The contestant is allowed to use whatever medical treatments are at his disposal - ointments, creams, bandages, snake oil, voodoo, alcoholism, amputation - in an attempt to treat the poison ivy and keep it from spreading to the rest of his body.

3. (And this is the important part.) It makes absolutely no difference what the poor fool tries, it isn't going to work. He's just going to keep on finding more and more festering, infected sores all over his wretched body, that will continue to ooze and itch for a period of time that one might be forgiven for mistaking for the remainder of his accursed life. At this Point, we begin Round Three.

Round Three is always interesting, because it's played somewhat differently every time. In Round Three, the contestant walks out onto a tall bridge, or perhaps a tall building, or maybe even a cliff, and hurls himself over the edge, generally (though not always) yelling something along the lines of "Goodbye, cruel, itchy world." Maybe he goes out and buys himself a cheap replica of a Japanese Katana, sharpens it with all the skill that his suburban upbringing affords him, and commits sepuku. One contestant accidentally (or so we think) drowned himself in a tub of calamine lotion. You just never know what to expect from Round Three!

D.Cous. Once Again Lashes Out At The Man

I feel a little bit like I'm sitting in Pierre Bernard's Recliner Of Rage when I do this, but what good is a weblog if you don't use it to rant every now and then? (Please note that the preceeding question is entirely rhetorical.) To be honest, I was thinking about just letting it go unblogged about, having finally gotten what I wanted, when I stumbled accross this article, and was suddenly swept away by a flood of bad memories of long hours on hold waiting just to talk to someone who was something remotely like a human being, or at least had been such before taking a job with Sprint/Nextel. No, I must write. Too many have suffered outrage at the hands of Sprint's unholy legions for me to keep silent any longer. My outrage and that of a thousand voiceless others shall be channelled through this blog into the vast ocean of the Inter-nets, and yea, it shall brimeth over until the world rises up out of its comfy armchairs and its politely distant social cirlces and its Chrysler 300 sedans, and that great multitude of disgruntled wireless telephone consumers shall cry out as one: KHAAAAaann... er... I mean FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!

Ok, phew. Chill out, Cous. You're gonna break the keyboard. Right. To be honest, I'm not totally sure what the oppressed multitude will yell, but it'll be something pretty dramatic, that's for darn sure. You get the idea. By this point, if you're still reading (or, for that matter, if you started reading at all) you're probably wondering what I'm on about, so I should give you a little context: For the past two years, I've been a Sprint wireless customer (my account disappears in two short days, by the way), and at work we have a few Nextel phones, which we are slowly phasing out of use. To that end, I had to call Nextel (somewhat recently acquired by Sprint) to find out when certain contracts expire, how much it would cost to end the contract before expiration, and a few other questions related to the service. It hardly matters what exactly my questions were, because the odds of speaking to a human being at Sprint are slim to none. I would venture a guess that there are more people currently climbing Mount Everest than answering the telephone for Sprint. So, over the course of a week or so, every now and then when I was doing something that did not require leaving my desk, I'd give Sprint a call. The general form of each call was something like this:

*ring... ring... ring...*

Computer: "Welcome to Sprint. Para make-a da computer speak-a da spanish, pressiona uno."

(short pause)

Computer: "To activate your new phone, press one. For all other options, press two."

*2*

Computer: "Please hold. All of our operators are currently assisting someone else, and by the way, your call may be recorded for training and quality assurance purposes."

Then begins a short segment of what, for lack of a better definition, I'll call "music," which lasts for about forty seconds, then loops back to the beginning. I don't know the name of the person who "wrote" this "music," but I'm pretty sure that they were hung following the Neuremburg trials, or should have been.

What happens next varies a bit from call to call. Most of the time what would happen is that I'd put the hold music on speaker phone and do my work for the next two hours, then hang up in frustration at the end of the work day. About a third of the time, however, the computer would put me on hold for about fifteen minutes, and then just hang up on me. I'm almost sure that this is a breakthrough in the growing feild of Bad Customer Service.
But Cous, you're saying, what about those new-fangled Inter-nets? Surely, a company as large as Sprint would have a usefull and informative website. Good question, reader. Unfortunately, belonging to Generation Y (I think), that was actually the first thing I tried. That's where I got the 3 or 4 different phone numbers I used for the above exchange. Let's try a little experiment, just for fun. Go to www.sprint.com, and at the top of the screen, click on the link that says "Contact Us." Under the headings "Customer Service" and "Nextel," you'll see a link that says "Service & Repair." Click it. Did you get This screen?I did. I think you can click it to make it bigger, but in case you can't, it's a very informative page, telling you when the service and repair kiosk will be open at some sort of racetrack, during some sort of race. Or maybe all races. I'm not sure. It just doesn't say. In fact, it makes absolutely no sense. You know the old cliche about monkeys and typwriters? I think they've moved up to computers and html, but have yet to come up with anything remotely shakespearean.

I've run out of time and lost my train of thought at this point, suffice to say that Sprint doesn't like people, and I don't like Sprint. You get the idea. I'll try to post something happy here soon (Lindsey graduated!), enjoy the weather out there!

A Quick One (While He Eats Lunch)

Typing with my mouth full could prove to be hazardous to my health, but I haven't updated in a while, so I will now. As you may have heard, I spent last weekend in GR visiting the GF and hanging out with her friends at GVSU. Golly, it was great. Ok, that's enough of the letter G for now. Seriously though, it more fun than a weekend in Tijuana, and without getting robbed by currupt police officers, too (not that I've ever done that). I did make the mistake of going shopping for clothing with Lindsey at one point, though. I jest, it was fun (how could it not be with such company?), and I learned something really valuable: Do you ever wonder why women sometimes act crazy? I figured it out. It's because sometimes they are crazy. No more losing sleep over that one. I did manage to impress her with my uncanny ability to find clothes that were the right size for me without trying anything on. She was amazed (not really). She explained to me that (in more than as many words) the sizing of women's clothing makes absolutely no sense any way you slice it. Apparently she's a Gemini in one store, and a Libra in another, and a Leo in a third, or something like that, where I'm a Virgo anywhere I go. She tried to make it sound reasonable, since women have more significant dimensions to worry about (no complaints here), but we ended up agreeing that the real reason is simply that women in general are emphatically not interested in what size they are, in inches or centimetres or kilograms or pounds or whatever. Makes you wonder why they keep scales in their bathrooms, doesn't it? The funny thing is that even when they've cast aside any and all useful forms of measurement, they will still engage in conversations that go something like this:

Woman 1: "Oh my gosh, you're so skinny! You must be like a Cancer (the zodiac sign, not the disease) or something."

Woman 2: "Well, I'm a Cancer at Littlemisscutesie's (not a real store name), and a Libra at Maybe's (perhaps a real store name)."

Woman 1: "Oh my gosh, I hate you."

Cous: BUT IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!!!

Right. The moral of this story is that I bought shorts, so that the world could save on electrical expenditures associated with lighting their homes. Also, I did not try on said shorts, and they fit me anyways. I'm a Virgo anywhere I go.
I also feel like mentioning that Suzy, one of the bitches I live with (relax, I said bitch, not ho), believes that human beings are walking, talking popsicles, and that this ceases to be funny pretty quickly when one has exposed legs. Gross.

E.C. And D.C. Were Both Here

It was September 23, 2006. I remember it like it was last Thursday. The sun was shining, and I could smell hamburgers sizzling on an open grill somewhere nearby as I drove down Dexter-Pinckney Road that Saturday afternoon, with the sun roof open and the wind blowing in my hair (I had more of it back then) as I sang along to the radio at the top of my lungs, taking my hands off of the wheel on straight stretches of road to play some air guitar. I had recently turned 22. The world was my oyster. A large dragonfly suddenly met its end on my windshield, a windshield that a few short months later would acquire a large crack that remains there to this day, but that's another story. September 23, 2006. I had just been over at my fine girlfriend's house, but had neglected to stay for dinner because I had an appointment to keep. An appointment with destiny, or so I thought. "You've been listening to some great Eric Clapton live cuts," chirped the middle-aged probably-mother-of-three-teenagers classic rock disk jockey. "D*mn straight!" I said, but she continued. "...On what would have been our Eric Clapton pre-concert psych-up for the show at The Palace tonight." Uh oh. Would have been? The smile on my face quickly faded. I looked down at my radio in disgust. What have you done to Eric Clapton? I realize that it's disk jockey lady's job to sound excited all the time, but I really didn't appreciate the tone of her voice as she informed me that the concert I was just on my way to attend was canceled, to be re-scheduled "at some later date." If she worked on the Titanic, she would have been thrown overboard for excitedly announcing that "there just aren't enough life boats for everyone! Oh well!" I called up the friends I was on my way to meet, who had yet to hear the bad news. "Hey John" I said, "remember when we went to see Eric Clapton?" "And he ROCKED OUR FACES OFF? Yeah, that was awesome." "Yeah, but do you remember when we found out the show was canceled at the last minute?" I don't remember exactly what John said at that point, but he was pretty upset, as we all were. We were particularly miffed that Ticketnazi, the world's only ticket vendor for any event anywhere, from the Superbowl to your six-year-old daughter's school play, made no attempt whatsoever to stop us from driving all the way to Auburn Hills to attend the event for which we had bought tickets from them. Thanks for nothing, Ticketbastard. What exactly do you do for that hefty "convenience charge," anyways? Nothing? Right, that's what I thought. It was only sheer chance that I happened to be listening to the right radio station at the right time which saved us two hours' round-trip driving (through metro Detroit's trademark perennial road construction) for a show that did not take place. Brilliant. One of John's co-workers, as it turns out, was not so lucky.

Now, fast forward a little more than five months. My windshield now has a crack in it. A few other things have probably also changed, but I can't think of any of them right now. Maybe some babies were born or something, I don't know. "That time we all went to see Eric Clapton and he ROCKED OUR FACES OFF" has become one of the longest-running inside jokes in the history of inside jokes (other notable entries being the entire careers of musician Bruce Springsteen, and newspaper cartoonist Brad Anderson), as has the exclusive use of various pseudonyms for a certain online ticket sales monopoly, which shall not be named. Now it's April 5th. It's freezing out. There are flurries. I am once again on my way to The Palace to see Eric Clapton, only this time we've checked and double-checked and triple-checked to make sure that the show has not been canceled.

I have to admit that I was worried that E.C. had lost his touch, or that he'd end up playing a set mainly made up of his slower, more pop-oriented songs, the ones women seem to enjoy. I'm ashamed to say it, but a small part of me didn't think he knew how to rock n' roll. This small fear gnawed on me for most of the drive out, and into the well-played set of the opening act, the Robert Cray Band. Then the roadies started to hurriedly set the stage for Clapton's band. They even put out a pretty nice-looking rug in the middle of the stage for E.C. to stand on, then set his mic stand and wah-wah pedal on it. I'm not sure what was the significance of the rug, but it struck me as pretty cool. You might say that it really tied the stage together. Then the house lights dimmed, the stage lights came up, and the band walked out onto the stage: Two female background singers, an organist, a bass player and drummer who both looked like they had walked right out of the 1970s (the drummer even wore a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a large gold chain around his neck), a guitarist, a pale, silver pony-tailed piano player, and...
As Clapton strutted out to the stage he lifted his guitar, blasted out a few bluesy fills, then turned to face the band as they all burst into "Tell The Truth," a pretty rocking song from Clapton's 1970 album with Derek and the Dominoes, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, with the other guitarist playing the part of Duane Allman on the slide guitar. I'm probably going to gush a little bit, so if you'd like to stop reading right now, I'll at least give you my three main talking points:

1. Eric Clapton is an amazing musician.
2. Being both an amazing musician and a very successful one, Eric Clapton is able to surround himself with other people who are also amazing musicians, although not quite as awesome as he is.
3. Eric Clapton is an amazing musician.

Got that? Good. Clapton has been around for a while (quite a while indeed), and has been pretty prolific, so his setlist could easily have been made up entirely of songs I didn't know, and I consider myself a fan. Instead, he played this setlist:

1. Tell The Truth
2. Key To The Highway
3. Got to Get Better in A Little While
4. Little Wing
5. Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad
6. Driftin' (Solo, acoustic)
7. Outside Woman Blues (acoustic)
8. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (acoustic)
9. Running On Faith (acoustic)
10. Motherless Children
11. Little Queen of Spades
12. Further On Up The Road
13. Wonderful Tonight
14. Layla

The songs I marked in bold are all from the aforementioned album, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, which is awesome. The band was great. There's something that's always funny to me about background singers, and these ones did the "background singer" dance for the whole show. All the musicians soloed at some point, and they were all quite good. There was a short acoustic set in the middle of the show, when the lights went out and came back on to reveal Eric seated on a chair alone in the middle of the stage, acoustic guitar in hands, singin' the blues. It was great. The only words he addressed to the audience the whole evening were "thank you," and the names of the band members. The seats in front of us were occupied by four or five 15 and 16-year-old boys, who seemed to be having almost as much fun as we were. In the row in front of them was a group of probably 60-year-old tatooed, bearded (even the women, not kidding), leather-clad biker types, who lit up marijuana during the acoustic set, and nearly started a fight a few songs later. I chuckled that the teenagers behind them were acting more grown-up.

Playing an encore has become pretty cliche, such that everyone just knows that the act in question is going to play one, but we the audience still played along for the sake of tradition, shouting ourselves hoarse for the band to come back to the stage and play another song or two. "PLAY COCAINE!" I shouted, half because I actually like the song (terrible as it is), and half just to be funny. "PLAY COCAINE!" Sure enough, the band returned to the stage, waving and smiling at the audience, and Clapton let fly the opening riff of "Cocaine." I laughed. The show wrapped up with Robert Cray joining Clapton and company on stage for the Robert Johnson classic (and also a big hit for Clapton) "Crossroads."

Well, that's all for now. I'd been meaning to post for a while but hadn't gotten the time, I'll try to post something else soon. I tried to draw a picture for the show, but people and Stratocasters are really hard to draw.

Princess

The other day at work I spoke on the phone with someone whose first name was literally "Princess." I'll bet her sister loves her. I was even dumb enough to ask her to spell it for me, thinking that I had misheard her. "Just like it sounds," she said. "P-R-I-N-C-E-S-S." "Oh, what a nice name" I said. "Thanks" she replied, probably having heard that her whole life. The rest of the conversation went on as it would have had her name been something less unusual (ooh, double negative), except that I kept wondering if her middle name was an ordinary girl's name (thus making her full name something like "Princess Katherine Jones"). The thing is that (for whatever reason) while I'm on the phone for work and the person on the other end gives me their name, I try to use it in the conversation. Maybe it's just to remind myself to be civil, or to just feel like I'm talking like a person and not to some sort of drone with a telephone headset on. I like to think that I'm trying to add a personal touch to the conversation, but the real reason is probably something more selfish. Whatever the reason, when I had gotten the information I needed and the conversation was wrapping up, I said "Thanks so much, Princess" right before hanging up the phone, and I suddenly felt like I'd just said something rather sexist. It was like Philip Marlowe (as portrayed by Humphrey Bogart) in the film The Big Sleep, where he adamantly refuses to call any woman by name, instead always saying something along the lines of "Angel" or "Doll-face," or "Princess."
Of course, in the film, this doesn't bother the dames one bit, because, as a general rule, they want nothing more than to bear Bogey's progeny. Crazy dames. Anyways, guess I don't really have a point here, just that I talked to someone whose name was actually "Princess," and that the encounter was amusing to me. Right. Best of luck to you all in coping with the "wintry mix" that has replaced our sunshine and warmth around here. Ah, spring.

Ah, so that's what it's for.

Well folks, I finally figured out what's different about the "new, improved blogger," other than the fact that I now need to have a longer sign-in name. It allows you to customize the look of your blog to a much greater degree without mucking around in HTML, which I don't know how to do anyways. Sweet. So yeah, here it is. Let me know what you think of the new look if you get the chance and are still reading this rubbish, I'd love a little feedback. More posting soon, have a good Tuesday!

S'il Vous Plaît...

Greetings, reader! Just letting you know that if you read this blog (it has been suggested that I refer to it simply as a "blah," but I shall disregard said suggestion for the time being), and if I am aware that you read this blog (which is to say that you comment on my posts), there is a very good chance that I also read your blog. I like reading your blog, so much so that I am disappointed (sometimes to the point of tears) when I check your site only to find that it has not been updated since the last time I checked it. Recently, however, I've been using Google Reader (which can be found at google.com/reader), one of a number of handy tools available gratis from the bounty of the the inter-nets, which allows me to check any number of blogs for new updates simultaneously. Yes, I know that something like this has been available for quite some time, I'm afraid I'm something of a late adopter of new technologies. However, there are a few blogs which I enjoy which do not allow me to subscribe to their feed (I only vaguely know what that even means), perhaps unbeknownst to their creators. And so, dear reader, my request to you is simple: please allow access to your site feed, so that I may more readily read your written ramblings. I don't know much about this stuff, but I know that in blogger you can do so by selecting your blog's "Settings" tab, then click on "Site Feed," click "Switch to Advanced Mode," and then change all the drawbars to read "Full." You can even write a little footer that will show up in my reader at the bottom of each post, if you so desire.

Also, I'm thinking of updating my links (on the right side of the page) as well as my Google Reader account, so if you have a blog and aren't sure if I read it, either drop me a link in the comments, or more privately by email (dcous at hotmail dot com), and let me know if you'd like me to link to you or not link to you or whatever (I don't think that this blog attracts an unsavory element, if that's your concern, it barely attracts anyone at all). Thanks for blogging, it's good to hear from you in one way or another. If you're reading this and don't know me personally, that's kind of weird. Still, feel free to post a link to your blog, you weirdo you.

Oh yes, one more thing: I'm going to be spending the weekend pretending to be a monk in Kentucky, so if anyone needs to get ahold of me, you're probably out of luck. When I get back I'll probably regale you with tales of my harrowing three-day encounter with prayer and (oh the humanity) celibacy.

"SQUEEZE every last drop out of those insolent, musical peasants."

Bonjour, mes amis! Il y a trop longtemps, non? Bon.
As I was saying, it's been too long. Not to worry though, you haven't missed a thing, because nothing has happened. I need to finally knuckle down and do my taxes, which may be a bit more of a pain than in years past, since I'm no longer a student. I just hope I don't actually owe anything. Reens has graciously agreed to give me a hand with it this evening, which is good, since I've never actually done my own taxes. I don't expect that it'll be that hard, but I've been sort of dreading it because it's harder to read anything issued by the Internal Revenue Service (a pretty euphemistic name for the Department for the External Collection of Internal Funds, if you ask me) than it is to slog through Beowulf in its original Anglo-Saxon (believe me, I've actually tried). Perhaps its because to the layman such as myself, it all seems arbitrarily too complicated. Of course, it's not actually arbitrary, the complexity comes from there being a tax on virtually anything imagineable, and a carefully written (if still practically unintelligible) series of loopholes for each tax. Yay, lobbyists. Here's an actual selection from the instructions to Form W-9, which I had to deal with at work:

Payments that may be subject to backup withholding include interest, dividends, broker and barter exchange transactions, rents, royalties, nonemployee pay, and certain payments from fishing boat operators [emphasis mine].

What's with the specific mention of fishing boat operators? I have no idea. I'm guessing that the only people who actually know the answer to that question are a handful of salty old sea dogs, their attorneys (yes, even salty old sea dogs have lawyers these days), a Bhuddist monk who stumbled accross the meaning of U.S. tax law while in a years-long meditative trance, and the anonymous nihilist poet who actually writes all of this garbage, whose impressive oeuvre includes thousands of pages of nonsense which were either accidentally or maliciously incorporated into tax legislation. A few pages later on the form, you find this:

Other payments [sic]. You must give your correct TIN, but you do not have to sign the certification unless you have been notified that you have previously given an incorrect TIN. “Other payments” include payments made in the course of the requester’s trade or business for rents, royalties, goods (other than bills for merchandise), medical and health care services (including payments to corporations), payments to a nonemployee for services, payments to certain fishing boat crew members and fishermen, and gross proceeds paid to attorneys (including payments to corporations) [emphasis mine].

What? Why are payments involving fishing boats different than other payments to "nonemployees"? IS there even a "why"? Keep in mind that the above excerpts were from the four pages of unintelligible instructions on how to fill out a one-page form, which contained only spaces for your Name, Tax Identification Number (TIN), and "Signature of U.S. Person, including citizens of the U.S. and those with Resident Alien status." There was an entire page of possible but not definite situations where you might not have to provide a signature at the bottom of the form, in the event that you are even required to fill it out at all. Anyways, if you need me I'll be meditating on the fact that because the earth is round, there is actually sky beneath my feet. After meditating on that for a while, I'll use the positive energy from the life-force of the birds which are without doubt flying through the sky beneath me to levitate, while at the same time visualizing in my mind each individual drop of ink on each page of my tax forms, and in that transient state the ink and I shall be as one mind, and shall have at one time all knowledge of one another. The ink shall understand my purpose for being, and I shall understand the ink's purpose for being, and when I awake from that trance I shall know how to prepare my taxes, thus validating the ink's existence. And then, Nirvana.

Mad as a March Hare

It should come as no surprise to you (and therefore it probably won't) that I'm generally and in most cases quite specifically opposed to capital punishment, which I believe is defined as the execution of criminals (or perhaps in some few cases the wrongly accused) by dropping the top portion of a greco-roman style column onto their heads. I have no idea if this particular method was ever common (or even for that matter employed so frequently as to be called "rare"), but I'm against it, and other less dramatic forms of execution as well. But as we (the royal "we") have said, you are doubtless already aware of this, and the purpose of this post is actually to inform you (because I am sure that you desire nothing more than to know) of one particular offence for which I am in fact in favor of capital punishment, even as above defined, and that is the use of the grocery isle marked "12 items or fewer" to purchase any number of items greater than 12.

And you thought I was going to talk about something serious. Silly you.

Anyways, having moved on from the thought of a large stone falling on the head of a woman who for all I know might honestly be unable (poor soul) to count the groceries in her cart, and also having used a paragraph break (which is not my custom), I shall move on. I've had a strange feeling of impending doom over the last day or two, and the reason for it (if indeed there is one) completely escapes me. I rather doubt that it has anything to do with the approaching Ides (I'm not very superstitious, or even well-read), but I suppose that it's not impossible. It's just not probable, that's all. Well, I've rambled enough for now. I apologize for the recent lapse in posts, as well as for the seemingly endless lack of substance in what few posts there are. I'll figure out something interesting to say at some point, I suppose I owe you one for reading this rubbish at all. It's supposed to rain today, so keep your parapluie close at hand.

A Late Submission

Lindsey is clearly showing off with this little chocolatey gem (yuk yuk), complete with a wicked lens flare. Awesome. Too late to win a prize, but it may very well be what I need to get the money rolling in.

Can someone explain this to me?

So the fallout from various NASCAR teams' alleged cheating has been in the news, and not being a follower of the so-called "sport," I'm asking someone out there who knows more about this than I to please answer me these two questions:

1.) Is it "cheating" to try to customize one's car to go faster?

2.) If yes, why does anyone watch this?

I'm sorry, I'll openly admit to my almost complete ignorance on the subject, but this seems ridiculous to me.

I have no clue why I'm blogging about this, so I'll stop now. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Feminine Mind Control Day

Well, I won't lie to you. The First-Ever Random Internet Competition thingy wasn't a great success, as there were only two submittals, which you'll find below. I must admit that some of you (perhaps even most of you) have weakened my faith in humanity in a not-insignificant way, but perhaps I should thank you for reminding me of why I decided to take over the world in the first place. Keep in mind that I never really thought that I'd get as many as five submissions (which Jonathan was unfortunately able to deduce), so for me the optimum number would've been four: the maximum amount before I would have to award some kind of prize. So, perhaps it's for the best. In any case, the winner is David, who not only submitted well before the deadline and in the required file format, but also in color. David loses some minor style points on making his prototype a boot rather than a shoe, and I'm not too fond of the square-cut diamonds myself, but these may turn out to be the best choices in the end. He was also quick to mention to me that for added effect, his boot would be made out of dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate, for maximum effect. I can't argue with this. David also submitted a very avant-garde piece of graphic design to accompany his official submittal. Being untrained in the graphic arts myself I was scarcely able to make out what it was, and I know just enough about art to know that if you don't understand it, it must be brilliant. Fortunately, David refrained from art elitism and was good enough to explain to me in his email that what I was looking at was a necklace that held both a golden shoe (with diamonds on it, of course), and a piece of a four-layer chocolate cake. While I don't personally believe that this device would be anywhere near as effective as plan 50WD, I think it would be foolish to discard the idea entirely, and so you see it here. Brilliant. Honorable Mention goes to the only other submission, which was a far more conventional piece of artwork, although not entirely without merit. The scene presented here shows a mad scientist (presumably in my employ) with the requisite german accent unveiling a set of chocolate, diamond-covered hooker boots the size of large buildings. I can't help but wonder if I wasn't unclear in my instructions about shoes rather than boots, but a submission's a submission in this business, so I'll have to take what I can get. Eric (the artist) loses some points for breaking the spirit (if not the letter) of the contest rules, and submitting to me what was, for all intents and purposes, a hard copy. Were it not for the shortage of submissions, I would have disqualified him altogether, but as is he walks away with a generous second place. That wraps up our Feminine Mind Control Day special festivities, best of luck to all you men out there trying to buy your way out of the doghouse with flowers and chocolate and what-not. It probably won't work, and she probably still won't tell you why she's upset with you, but it's worth a try, man. To the single out there who can't help but be bitter on this cold, February day, I can offer this simple piece of consolation: It's a pretty dumb holiday anyways, and this way you're probably getting out of it on the cheap. You have to blow a wad on a nice dinner and a few dozen flowers today? No? Didn't think so. I didn't either, if you're wondering, my wonderful girlfriend has yet to discover the awesome power of guilt, or is just too cool to use it. Either way, I'm not complaining. Peace and love to all of you, and be careful out there in the snow.

Time is running out...

Ok seriously, today is the last day to submit art for The Republic's First-Ever Random Internet Competition (for details, see my eariler post below), before David wins by virtue of being the only contestant (not that his fine submission wouldn't stand a good chance of winning were there more contestants, but still). Come on, people! I'm talking about a bag of coffee from Beaner's (or suitable substitute for the coffee disinclined) and supreme dictatorship of Canada! I'm going to say that you should submit by midnight tonight in order to be eligible, but really if you send it in before I sign in to blogger during lunch tommorow to post the results, you'll be fine. Send all submissions to dcous at hotmail dot com, with "50WD" in the subject line (as I said before), and remember that nobody can really, like, define art, man. Life is art. Art is life. Balogna (Baloney). I'm just saying that you don't have to fancy yourself an artist (or artiste) in order to submit, you just have to know how to either draw pictures on a computer, or to draw them by hand and use a scanner.

Pardon me a rant

Ok, so I've decided to take the plunge (relax-it's not a very big plunge) and buy health insurance. Since going off of my parents' health insurance I've reasoned that I've never been seriously ill, and if the majority of the insured stood to collect on their health plans, very few people could afford them. Anyways, I listen to NPR a fair amount, although not as much now that my morning commute is approximately 60 seconds from doorstep to office, and if I had to pick their cross-program theme for the year thus far, it would be this: Did you know that some people in this country can't afford health insurance? Of course, this is something they've been telling me for years, but it seems to me that the frequency of on-air reminders has skyrocketed in the past month or so, largely due to an increase in the discussion of such things on Capitol Hill. Yes, as we've all been made aware, all persons are endowed by our creator with the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and Health Care. You get the picture. Anyways, I was thinking of all this the other day while looking at the stub of my recent paycheck and the price list for insurance which I could get through my employer. The pertinent part of the price list read something like this:

Single employee, health & dental coverage: X dollars

Next, my attention was drawn to the pay stub, the pertinent (for this post) section of which read:

F.I.C.A. : 2.64 times X dollars

Funny. So, you're saying that I, far from the top of the income distribution, could far more easily
afford health insurance (plus a nice steak dinner about once a week) IF I WASN'T ALREADY PAYING FOR SOMEONE ELSE'S HEALTH INSURANCE! Thanks for nothing, Uncle Sam. Burn in hell.

I assume that you already know, but F.I.C.A. stands for "Federal Insurance Contribution Act," which represents one of the most twistedly appropriate uses of the word "contribution" I can think of, in that the law compels you to contribute to something that you have little or no chance of benefiting from, at least if you're my age. Then again, if someone mugs you on the street in order to pay for others' health insurance and retirement plans, I'd guess that you wouldn't call this a "contribution" save perhaps in jest. Speaking of jest, I ran accross this little tidbit in the FAQ section of socialsecurity.gov, under the heading "Why can't I invest my Social Security taxes into an IRA plan?" Good question. The site's authors, probably shaking uncontrollably from laughter, explain that (and I quote) "maybe your investments wouldn't work out." Oh really? My investments might not work out. This is true, they very well might not, but ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME? I have a better chance of being hit by a meteorite than on getting one red cent back from so-called Social Security when I reach my golden years, as the system now stands. I have a higher probability of a positive return on my investment if every month until I retire I buy a jar to save my own phlegm in, banking on the value of either jars or phlegm or both going up over the next fifty years.

Phew, ok. I'm done. I'm sorry.

In other news, I had a splendid weekend out in GR visiting the GF and contending with the weather, although at one point I got stranded far from base and had to cut open my tauntaun and climb inside its foul-smelling innards to warm myself. Yes, the blizzard conditions were so bad that Storm Team 13 (or whatever it's called) had to send out one of their junior meteorologists into the cold just to show us all on the teevee (as Lindsey says it) just how bad it is. "Yes Rich, as you can see I'm up to my waist in snow and my face is a ghostly shade of blue. Dear Lord, it's so cold. I sure would like to have your cushy job in the nice warm TV studio pointing at doplar weather maps, instead of standing outside in the freezing cold, waist-deep in snow, going through a very long list of school closings and other information that could easily have been communicated from the warmth of a nearby building, or at least from the back of the Storm Team van. I hate you so much. Back to you, Rich." "Thanks, Nancy. I hope you freeze and die out there. We'll keep you abreast of further developments as they occur, folks."

Anyways, the weekend was an adventure even for those of us who aren't junior meteorologists, and Lindsey was a wonderful hostess as always, as were her friends (and my brother GEC), whose couch I crashed on. The weekend also forced me to realize that I really have been putting off the purchase of new tires for too long, so I'll have to make it down to Discount Tire in the next day or so. That's all the randomness for now, more to come when the time presents itself.

Oh yes, and one more thing: I wasn't kidding in my previous post about the random internet competition. I can't encourage you enough to participate, regardless of what you think of your own artistic abilities. I'm pretty sure I never mentioned strict critera for the judging, and you get a pretty good piece of real estate when I rule the world in exchange for a few minutes of doodling. What could be better?

The Republic's First-Ever Random Internet Competition!

Ok friends, this is it: As I'm sure both of you have noticed, I am not currently in control of the world, or even half of it. I'm sure that this causes you at least as much dismay as it causes me, perhaps even so much that you don't remember my earlier mention of a plan to rectify this situation. The trouble is that notwithstanding the perfection of the plan, things just haven't been working so well in the fundraising department, and I had to have a few fundraising minions thrown into my shark tank just to keep everyone else in the department motivated (yes, people said that springing for the shark tank was a mistake, but with the labor disputes one encounters in this business, those things practically pay for themselves overnight). Anyhoo, it occured to me the other day while I was sitting in my lair petting my cat Bonaparte and chuckling to myself that I might be able to get a few more investors on board with some really schnazzy concept art of Plan 50WD's Primary Mind Control Unit (PMCU), or in layman's terms: "A Pair Diamond-Covered Chocolate Shoes." If a diamond-encrusted shoe made out of chocolate can control minds, I reasoned (and it almost certainly can), certainly a picture of a diamond-encrusted chocolate shoe will have at least some persuasive effect on the rich and unscrupulous, which is where you come in: If you know how to use Photoshop, MS Paint, A Pencil, Paper, and a Scanner, crayons-whatever, I want you to put those skills to work on drawing up some concept art for Plan 50WD. You're allowed to submit up to 2 concepts per person, and if I get at least 5 participants, I'll throw in a prize for the winner (something along the lines of a bag of coffee from Beaner's when the contest ends, and dictatorship of Canada when I rule the world). I'll need any and all submissions to be in .jpeg or perhaps some similar file format, and emailed to dcous at hotmail dot com no later than February 13, 2007, with "50WD" in the subject line. Hand-drawn submissions will be accepted, but must be scanned and emailed. If you try to give me a hard copy, I'll probably lose it. All submissions, and an announcement of the winner will be posted the following day, Feminine Mind Control Day, otherwise known as Singleness Awareness Day, and in some antiquated incarnations of the vernacular, Valentine's Day. Submissions deemed inappropriate will not be posted, and will be immediately disqualified. If I don't know you personally (in which case I have no clue why you're reading this thing), I'll need you to include your mailing address in the email. If you send me a virus, I will find your family and throw them into my shark tank, force you to watch them as they are devoured, and then I'll think of some really painful way to dispose of you, possibly involving unpasteurized dairy products. Now then, stop reading and start cracking on that artwork, Feminine Mind Control Day is right around the corner!

Best Bought Elsewhere

I'll probably get over it at some point, but at the moment I hate Best Buy. You know, the electronics warehouse that cleverly arranges its merchandise so that the only thing you can find without assistance is a television the size of Rhode Island. I was spotted as soon as I went in by the door guy (no, he doesn't open the door or call you a cab, he just stands by the door and makes sure you don't steal anything), who took a second to assess my age and dress before addressing me in the appropriate dialect:
"Hey dude, welcome to Best Buy."
"Thanks man." I replied, wondering if he'd have called my father "dude".
Without any help, and from accross the store, I found the aforementioned television, and wondered for a second how much money I would have to make before I started thinking that such a thing would be a reasonable purchase. Probably at the point where the money isn't even the question on my mind as much as "how am I going to fit that into the Cous-jet, and how would it go with the furniture (Cous-furniture? Cousiture? Cousiniture?) in the Cous-cave?" That line of thought didn't take me anywhere but to a series of bad Batman jokes (Bat-jokes?), so I instead set out in search of the RCA cable for which I had come. I knew it wasn't going to be easy: The place was a labrynth of expensive toys and blue-shirted, khaki-pantsed salesclerks trying to sell them, and it was getting late. They're always hungrier when it gets close to closing time. I headed in the direction I thought most logical, but in the process I had to walk past a video game console. A salesclerk sprang into action! A cold, digital voice chirped at him from the computer implant in his brain:
"Intruder! 22-year-old male in vicinity of Playstation 3, check him for money!"
"Anything I can help you find, bro?" he asked, in a deceptively cheerful voice, beneath the surface of which could be heard the cries of a lifetime of digital torment.
"No thanks, dude." I said, ducking into the nearest aisle and searching frantically for my query. I knew I didn't have much time. The second attack would be swifter and perhaps more powerful than the first. Blast! No RCA cables to be seen in this part of the store, and I was out of time. My eyes darted from side to side, looking for an unsuspecting salesclerk. If I could find one alone in a secluded part of the store, I thought, I could physically overpower them (stop laughing, it could happen) and take their salesclerk uniform, thus allowing me to move about the store with impunity. "Can I help you find something, dude?" Too late! I'd been spotted.
It should be noted that the last time I was in this same store, I actually surrendered to the salesclerks, and let them help me find something. It turns out that the only thing they know how to find is also the television the size of Rhode Island, which they still can't exactly locate, but can get you in the right department before turning you over to Omega 721, the television guy.
I dispatched the second salesclerk as I had the first, but a third followed on his heels, and then a fourth, each as determined as the one before it. I was becoming weary. Too weary, perhaps, to employ my earlier plan to infiltrate their numbers. I needed to find the cable and escape before it was too late. Success! I found it hidden behind the battery kiosk. Another salesclerk was approaching! I ducked behind the kiosk until he passed, then followed closely behind him as he headed for the front of the store, hoping against hope itself that he would not turn to see me there, so close to escaping. The checkout line! I slipped in before anyone else could spot me. I had only to deal with the checkout clerk, then the "dude" at the door, and then sweet, sweet freedom. Arming myself with my trusty debit card, I took a cursory glance at what the guy in front of me was buying. It was an Xbox 360. "The fool," I thought. They got him. His total flashed up on the little green screen: $426.00. I clutched my RCA cable and gritted my teeth as it came to be my turn, and the clerk offered to sign me up for Best Buy line of credit. "Not on your life" I muttered to myself, but was able to make it come out as a friendly "No thanks." I got my receipt and headed for the doors. As they opened in front of me I could feel the cold wind on my face. I nearly wept.
"We'll get you next ti... er, Have a good evening dude." Said the door guy, putting his hand up to his right ear to check his invisible headset.
"Thanks, you too."
A light snow fell as I stepped out to my car, walking past a man with two salesclerks loading a big-screen tv into his Toyota. I smiled.

A Few Poorly-Organized Thoughts At The Start Of A New Year

A few days before Christmas, as I was dropping a few things off at the post office, I held the door open for a woman wheeling in a hand truck full of packages. “Thanks,” she said. “You have a lot of friends” I noted, referring to her load. “Troops” She said, “They’re for the troops. One of them is my son.” I honestly don’t remember what I said to her after that, but I’m sure it was stupid, and in any case it concluded our conversation. We both took our places in line, before the post office clerk said to her “Ma’am, just step right up. You don’t have to wait in line with the second trip.” By that point, the few outgoing packages and bills for work I was there to send seemed to be the most trivial things in the world, which, to be fair, they probably were. That brief exchange has returned to my mind several times as Christmas slipped by and the New Year has already begun to pass by. Perhaps what struck me about it was merely the reminder that our country is at war, and has been in some way or other for more than five years. Perhaps it’s a testament to modern warfare (or perhaps merely to the nature of the conflicts themselves) that the human cost to the U.S. has been sufficiently low that the war hasn’t hit home for (I suspect) the majority of us. Regardless of what you think of the war (and most of us hold at least one strong opinion about it), I have to admit for myself that I don’t think of it often. It’s become that thing which I change the radio station to avoid hearing about, and casually pass over the newspaper headlines that refer to it. Perhaps it isn’t as bad as all that: there’s very little if anything which I can personally do one way or the other about the war, and all that the press dishes out is politicized sound bites and dehumanizing if not misleading statistics. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we’re not all too numb in some way or other about being engaged in something as terrible as war is. I’m not trying to get political here, or make some broad statement regarding what I think everyone else ought to do (a handy working definition of the word politics). I guess I’m just saying that it was helpful to me in some way to be reminded of the soldiers who were not able to come home for Christmas, and those (hopefully few) who never will, and to pray for them and their families. I suppose that’s all I can do. Celebrations of the Incarnation were many and joyful this year (and actually have yet to conclude), and I’m always amazed at the blessing my family and friends are to me, and at the joy I receive through them. Gifts were given and generally well-received, and I believe that I may have survived another Christmas without my lack of gift-giving prowess costing me any relationships, although it may be too early to tell. It seems that every Christmas I suddenly realize that I’ve let Advent pass without taking advantage of this time that the Church gives us to meditate on the coming of Christ and to make way for His coming in our hearts, and I’d be lying if I said this year was much of an exception. It seems that I never cease to disappoint myself, and yet Christ never ceases to be merciful, and for that I can only be thankful. That said, I found myself presented with at least some time just before Christmas where I was compelled by some combination of circumstances to do just what I’d been putting off doing, and felt particularly drawn to the canticles of Zechariah and of Our Lady, rejoicing in God’s faithfulness to His covenant and His people, and in the way in which God makes himself known. I’m as pleased with sweets and Christmas trees and egg nog and hectic reunions with family and out-of-town friends as anyone else, and perhaps more so, but I’m afraid that too often I content myself with the “warm fuzzies” of the Christmas season. Of course we all know that Christmas isn’t really about these things, but I have to admit that a large portion of my enjoyment of the season is wrapped up in them. In any case, there was no light bulb going off over my head, where I suddenly opened the windows to my house and ordered some boy on the street to go buy a huge bird for the Cratchet family, but I was reminded of what Mary and Zechariah were so joyous about, that humanity and the earth were forever changed and glorified by the Incarnation of God as a Man. Christmas isn’t just “not about” desserts and family and presents, its custom-made for the downtrodden, friendless, miserable wretches of the earth, which to some extent we all are. In any case I’m rambling, and I imagine that you’ve better things to do than this, so I’ll bid you a happy New Year, and leave it at that. Thanks for a great year, and hopefully more to come.

Today's Best Headline

Ok, I know I promised to take it easy on the Links, but when one sees the headline "World's Tallest Man Saves Dolphins In China," one simply must share it with the world. Also, the Republic's unofficial photographer and pop culture connoisseur extraordinare linked me to the full-length (six minute) animated short "The Wolfman," directed by Tim Hope. I had only seen a shorter version released some years ago as a hilarious television commercial for the Sony Playstation 2. The longer version is far superior. Happy Thursday!

Nightmares of Yesteryear's Stale Gingerbread...

Hello, friends! I do hope that you've been well, I suppose that I have. I've been meaning to sit down and post a few thoughts on this blog of mine for a good week or two, and now that I sit down in Espresso Royale, cappuccino and laptop in hand, I find that I've really startlingly little to say. I guess that isn't so startling after all, though. Christmas is fast approaching, and although I'm reminded of it every time I use the internet, turn on the radio, or enter the grocery store, I guess I'm still in denial about it. I love Christmas, I actually do. In fact, I love nearly everything about Christmas. I like parties and friends and relatives who I don't see often enough. I even like Christmas music, in moderation. I guess now I'm just getting into my annual gift anxiety stage, where I have yet to complete any fraction of my Christmas shopping. My Christmas shopping ritual tends to be about the same every year, a mind-numbing experience of not knowing what I'm looking for when I leave to go to the store (or stores), and then (predictably) not finding it. The root of the problem might even be something truly depressing. Perhaps I don't know the ones I love well enough to be able to pick out good gifts for them. Anyways, since some of them might (by chance, or perhaps stemming from an overdeveloped sense of loyalty) read this post, and I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to play the martyr card ("you have no idea how hard it was for me to pick out that gift you don't like"), I'm probably better off apologizing for being overly indecisive. I'm sorry.
Moving along, Reens and I set up the Christmas tree last night, that was fun. It turns out that my Type-A sister has a method for doing just about everything, including wrapping lights around the branches of the Christmas tree just right. Or else. She's funny. I also got to hear various fecetious repetitions of the phrase "It must be nice living with a man," which apparently has been said to her about us living together by various people, much to her amusement. I can't figure out what exactly people mean by saying it, to be honest. I mean, it's me. I'm not exactly Mr. Fix-It. I'm taller than Reens, but I think that's about all I've got on her. She's better at fixing stuff and owns her own tools. Nobody says "must be nice living with women" to me, expecting that they do my laundry and cook for me, although to be fair, my sister sometimes takes pity on me eating my crappy bachelor food and offers me something resembling nourishment. Ok, I've babbled enough for one post. I wish you all well, do take care.

It's the little things we do...

Wow, I suppose that all of the spam comments on my last post are the price I pay for neglecting this thing for so long. I should also say that it might be inappropriate to make fun of Diane Rehm's voice, since it is apparently due to a rather unpleasant condition, and as such I am sorry if I have offended anyone's sensibilities. I still say that the person on the phone sounded just like her, whatever her malady. I'll get back into regular posting soon enough, although I'm afraid that I haven't enough time presently for a full-blown update. I'm afraid that I may have to restrict the comments in some way, shape or form, but in the meantime, I just ask that any of you who post comments (for which I'm quite grateful, it feels good to know someone reads this thing, for whatever reason) refrain from doing so anonymously. I would also like to repeat my policy of not using anyone's full name on the blog (or anywhere else on the internet for that matter) without their consent. Also, while I encourage any and all of you to post links in the comments to whatever you think I'll find interesting, do not click any links that are posted anonymously, or by someone whose screen name you are unfamiliar with. Thanks for checking back, I'll have more posts up soon.

Random

I swear, I just got off the phone with Diane Rehm. You know, NPR's ultra-liberal talk show host, who sounds like a chain smoker who's just been punched in the throat. Ok, I shouldn't be too harsh on her, I believe that she has/had some sort of throat ailment, and for that she has my sympathies. Either way, the woman with whom I was just on the phone sounds exactly like her. She of course claimed to be someone else, and I played along, but I was tempted to interrupt her and say "Is this you, Diane? How'd you get this number? That's the Diane Rehm I know, always a joker." Darn me and my politeness. Now she probably thinks that I had no idea, and she'll be laughing her already strained vocal chords to the point of combustion (can they combust? I'm no doctor). I just hope she doesn't mention in on her show on Friday, then everyone will think I'm a gullible idiot. Maybe they already do.

It starts...

Yep, it's happening. I've probably only been lucky to have escaped it this long, but it's happening. I was walking through the grocery store tonight, and I thought I'd been a good shopper. I didn't even become irate and ask the stock clerk why the bath soap is halfway accross the store from the shampoo, and goodness knows I wanted to. Nothing against the guy, he's working the late shift at Meijer, so it's probably best that I didn't comment on this ridiculous situation for which he was obviously not responsible. I did think about it, though. Maybe the Meijer security people picked that up on their security cameras somehow. Whatever the reason, Meijer decided to subject me and my fellow shoppers (of which there was a surprising number, considering the late hour) to a little aural torture. I was already accross the store and in the correct isle to find the aforementioned soap when it hit. It started out as something sort of like techno, but then over the top of the slow electronic beat came a somewhat deep and gravelly female voice with a slight twang, which sounded roughly like what I imagine llamas sound like when they become constipated and are about to die the most painful bowel-related death imagineable: "Aaah'll have a bluuuuuuuuueeeeee Christmaaaaaaas without yooooooooooouuuu..." Ye gods. It's November. I won't be able to enter another store until perhaps New Years without being subjected to seven different Easy-Listening versions of Bobby Helms' awful "Jingle Bell Rock," perhaps followed by Kenny G laying down an instrumental version of "It's the Most Wonderful Time Of the Year," which will make you believe that you have died and gone to hell, and that the devil plays alto saxophone. It makes me wish I'd bought all the food I'll need for the next month and a half while I was there, curse my lack of foresight! Of course I'll have to buy Christmas gifts or something like that (I'm told that this is done this time of year, usually by advertisements telling me to "give the gift of _____ ," where you fill in the blanks with a product name such as "Cars," "Diamonds," or "Llama Skin Coat"). Maybe I can buy gifts online, I'm in the 21st Century, after all. Either that, or perhaps I'll get disowned by all of my family and friends by the time December 23rd (the day I usually get around to doing my shopping), that's never too remote a possibility. Ok, I'm babbling and I need sleep. In fact, I need to have slept. Whatever. I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, and that this is all I could think of to say for now. I'll try to be better, if only because more time writing on my blog might mean less time spent in stores where they play Christma--er, Holiday carols. Stay warm out there, kids.