Micheal Keaton

So I go to the mall, again, because I needed a tie - I will never understand why clothing companies can't make an affordable tie that can withstand tempuratures exceding 400 degrees - anyway while I am there I visit one of those little phone stands you find in the middle of the mall, the ones that look like they should be selling tacos or snowcones at the very least but then you get to the front of the line to order and they are all like "why is you current cellphone plan?"

Number one: I was just rudely awaken from a churro fantasy by a large guy behind the counter in a suit with the shapes of stars and arrows shaved into his head (the dress code might be business casual but the hair looked like a comic book villan.) and Number two: my cellphone plan was setup so long ago I only have three digits in my phone number.

(Trend setter.)

So I told the guy behind the counter (which in my head I called "star dancer,") that my phone was so old it was steam powered and asked if i could get a new one - he walked away to check something in the computer all the way on the other side of the phone/churro stand.

This was apperently exactly the moment his partner was waiting for. He was a large black man in a suit, which except for some bad life choices which resulted in him wearing a name tag and standing behind a counter in a mall, could have easily passed for an FBI agent in one of the Die Hard films. He walked up to me and leaned across the counter  - my head was somewhere less compleatly because I wasn't even paying attention at all until the spoke.

"Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Micheal Keaton?"

"???"

Had it not caught me so compleatly off guard I would have answered "actually not a day goes by that someone doesn't say that to me, then again he is my dad."

Of course I am pretty sure this guy was trying to ask me out or thought I was gay and trying to flirt with me to sell me a phone. I just laughed at him not sure if it was a complement or an insult, i mean i don't think micheal keaton's parents remember Micheal Keaton. I told him that I had never head that before and he appologized  - maybe because of the way I was laughing at him but then he returned to his side of the stand while"star dancer," came back with a couple new phones to look at.

Long story short I ended up not getting a phone but i can't help but think that guy just stands there all day waiting to tell people that they look like celebriteis with his partner turns his back. not a bad job to have I guess.

Dalai Lama

Just a link post but I love this, I totally would have tried something like this if I had the chance. . .

Later he told him that on his death bed he will have total consciousness, so you know he has that going for him.

Coat Hook

Sorry I haven't had enough time to update this in awhile but I got a new job and it has sort of been taking all of my time.

So here is the update - somehow I got a job and they gave me my very own office, with giant windows and one of those phones with enough buttons to ensure that I never completely understand it. They even trusted me enough to give me a door with a working lock - I feel like George Costanza when he got his job with the Yankees.

I make nearly twice what I was making at the paper and I get to lock the office door and pretend to be a stock broker. I completely walk around saying things like appointment and conference, just like a grown-up - I even wear a tie.

So today I left a meeting because I needed to use the bathroom. A little known fact about me is I hate to pee in a urinal next to a stranger when a nice private bathroom stall is available, so i went in a used it. I was in a hurry to get back to acting like an adult in the big people's room so I quickly finished and turned around grabbed the bathroom stall door and tried to push it open - of course what I didn't know was this was the type of door that opened inward rather then outward.

I ran face first into the door - hard - which would have been bad anyway but this particular door had a coat hook exactly at eye level. I would be half blind right now had I been standing a half inch to the left. That hook caught me right on the edge of my eye socket, and luckily had a little rubber piece on the end of it.

It still feels kind of bruised. Anyway the eye is fine and I made it back to the meeting just in time to bring up the term "synergy," and wow the rest of the office.

Sort of like mesh but slutty . . .

I went to the mall yesterday, because I needed some cloths and my wife told me about this thing called "clearance," that is suppose to make everything you buy cheaper. Of course the penalty for me saving all this money is that I would have to bring her along and she would drag me into a several stores looking for a dress that doesn't exist.

At first I had fun with it, like loudly asking her what a Kardashian was in the middle of a crowded store or saying loudly "So your trying to tell me that Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana are the same person?" It was really fun although it was less fun for my wife.

She paided off on her promise, I found a button down business shirt with a matching tie for only $3. She also taught me that I hate the future, cheap as it may be. Every store she took me to was playing some kind of bubble gum bop bullshit that made Hanson sound like Metallica. I get it, of course the music is going to be bad, these are stores primarily catering to 12 to 15 year old girls, a few that were 17, and one flirting with 30 that needed a new outfit to match the pair of cowboy boots her husband found at a garage sale. (Although to be fair I did kind of find it cute, sort of like when you buy a little kid a fireman's hat and they wear it all the time pretending to save kittens and making siren noises.)

"Look over there, clearance on all socks!!!"

She took me to a place called "The Body Shop," or like "Body Movements," - I can't remember exactly the name but it sounded kind of like a strip club and most of the cloths inside looked like something a young girl working her way though college might wear. There was a dress (I say "dress" because I don't know what else to call it) which stretched from the ceiling to the floor hanging on the back wall - I thought it was just a prop but when I turned around I saw several more of them on a rack. These things were like 8 feet long, so either I just didn't get it or this was club wear for WNBA players. There was another rack that had these silver pants that were sort of like mesh but slutty, they looked like something out of one of those really bad 1980's teen films - not the good ones with Molly Ringwall, but the bad ones like with Madonna.

This is what you are nostalgic for?

I felt dirty just being at the mall, all these little girls who couldn't even drive yet were there with their moms buying thongs and lots of belts, for some reason these people found the level of their pants waists to be very important.

The only glimmering moment of hope in all of this was the boys were all wearing jeans that were so tight that there was no way they will be able to reproduce.

What I have learned. . .

So I got a job, this time as the educational coordinator for a local college. Somehow.
This ends a six month unemployment adventure which has helped me to both become more enlightened and in touch with the universe in a zen sort of way and to finally explore the hellish nightmare of suburban life that can drive some people to pray to God for a knife to cut some haggard old divorcé in JC Pennys because of the way she looked at you while buying pants.

 I would like to take a few minutes to share some of the things that I have learned in the past few months.


No matter how much I would like for Sardines to taste like Vienna Sausages they don't, and no amount of hot sauce can change that.

Shoes and silverware are what separate us from the animals, if your day does not require you to use either of them you are doing something wrong.

Whether it's global economics, theoretical particle physics or ancient linguistics - Nothing is more complex or difficult to understand then the inner workings of a garage door opener.

Powdered sugar and confectioners' sugar are the same thing and neither one taste good in coffee.

Subway does not take checks.

There is a city permit for just about everything - but if your town is small enough you don't need one. You can just call city hall and tell them what you are going to do and they will say "Okay, but be careful." - You don't even have to actually be careful.

It is easier to put up a clothesline then it is to fix a dryer.

Anyone can grow mold on the dirty dishes in the sink, it takes real talent to grow tomatoes there.

Wait until you see the third turnip to attack the final boss in Super Mario Brothers 2.

90% of basic cable is infomericals at 3 a.m. and they are all bad.

I know we live in this puritanical society but I still don't think pants should be required if you are just checking the mail.

Phantom pains

I heard a story once about a man with one arm, he said that in his dreams he still had his arm. He said there were times when he would wake up and it felt like he had lost his arm all over again.

Because I have a job interview with a local college, I felt it was time to loose the ponytail and shave the beard to look more respectable and less like an effeminate deadhead.

I keep picking up stray rubber bands and reaching back to realize that there is no hair. Not that I have changed my mind about cutting my hair but it is kind of sad.

A brush with death, kind of. . .

So I was watching CNN 2 at about 5 a.m. after finishing a plate of homemade blueberry pancakes and I realized that my fingernails could use a quick trim.

Luckily the nail clippers were exactly where I had left them after my wife called me gross for cutting my toe nails  - on the coffee table in the living room.

About ten seconds into it I was already on my fourth finger - you can say what you want about my hygiene habits but I have always taken pride in my ability to speed through a fingernail cutting session in under 1 min 30 seconds. I don't know the world record I am pretty sure I would be in the running but to be honest I don't care because I don't do it to be competitive.

So it was at this time, while I was pondering possible sponsorship deals for my fingernail cutting skills, when I nearly died.

They would still loose.

There is a theory in physics, more like a theory that high school physics students talk about when they get stoned and drink Mt. Dew while listen to the Flamming Lips. It says that at the lowest form of matter, even the charge inside the atoms themselves are held together by smaller particles and they are held together by even smaller particles and smaller and smaller until you eventually get to tiny little "vibrations" between parts of parts of particles. This means that if you can find the right frequency, the right angle and the right timing then it would be possible for an object to pass through another object. Of course the possibility of all those vibrations lining up perfectly would be like several billion to one shot, per particle - but still technically possible - - - -Statistically speaking what happened to me at the coffee table was only slightly more likely to happen then all of the particles in my leg lining up and falling through the floor.

(science)

Somehow I clipped a nail and it flew through the air reaching speeds upwards of 200 miles an hour and ricocheting through the living room behaving like a cross between an epileptic toddler and the magic bullet that Oswald fired at Kennedy.

Somehow the tiny little fingernail  - - without even touching the rim - - shot right up my nose. It hit the hole so perfectly that it actually made it to the cusp between the inner area when the nose starts to stop being nose and starts to be the inside of your face. I panicked of course as most of you would when a large rouge fingernail lodges itself in your nasal passage.

I nearly choked and realized that if I inhale this thing is not stopping till it hits lung. I grabbed a napkin and blew my nose - It worked and thankfully I survived.