My Addled Brain

I love this time of year. People young and old from all over the country brave harsh arctic conditions (or in the case of our area, highs in the mid 60s, which as far as most folks around here are concerned are equivalent temperatures) to decorate their homes with lights, lawn ornaments, plastic figurines, and more recently, giant inflatable lit up holiday dioramas. While I admire the spirit behind such sentiment, I really do have to wonder what drives a person to look at that seven foot snowglobe, complete with “snow” that blows around inside, and think to themselves “you know, that would really compliment my three thousand icicle lights, twelve candy canes, the animated polar bear, and fifteen foot “MERRY CHRISTMAS” sign on my roof”.

Then again, I guess there’s not much wondering to that, is there?

Sadly, none of this may last. There’s a War on Christmas out there (brought to you by proud American Christian and Eric Deegans drinking buddy Bill O’Reilly) , you know. The subject has been done to death, however, so all I’ll add to the conversation is the thought that maybe, just maybe, Christmas had it coming.

You see, Christmas has already been waging war on us, and has been LONG before 9/11. A bunch of humbug, you say? If that’s so, then how do you explain this? An army of Santas terrorizing the streets of cities all across not just the US, but the world! Armies of rampaging, jolly fat men, declaring Santafada, armed with a hidden cache of cookies and milk to torment both the diabetic and the lactose intolerant.

And America is responding. With judicious use of “Happy Holidays” and the removal of anything utilizing words like Christmas, manger, and frankincense, America can take back our streets and cities from these insurgent Santanista rebels. No longer will we cower in our homes, fearing that counterattack might result in a coal-stockinged retaliation from those who wish to ruin the true meaning of the holiday season. Never give in to those cottonball bearded terrorists!

Happy birthday (belated on these pages) to Teh One, who turned 17 Saturday.

Wait, that can’t be right. That means…uh…oh, sorry. She’s 27. Not 17. Definitely not 17. Nope, no way.

Celebrations were had here and there, and my gift to her was the gift of people dressed up as homeless felines belting out broadway tunes. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the show, it’s just not really my “thing”, if a “thing” can be an intangible concept, which I always believed was the exact opposite of a “thing”. Anyway, I did learn a few things Saturday night, among them:

• Cats have three names. A boring name, an f’ed up name, and a name no one else can know. I assume this is because if you knew it, the cat would be forced to do as you say. Or perhaps it’s just embaressed by it.
• “Jellicle” is an adjective, desribing a person or animal that has not been spayed or neutered. Here, I’ll use it in a sentence for you: “Mr. Barker ended another episode of the Price is Right with ‘This is Bob Barker saying, have your pet de-jelliclized.’”
• “Deuterotomy” sounds like an unfortunate medical procedure. Attaching “Old” to it makes it sound like it happens all the time. Example: “I took Growltiger in to the vet for the ol’ deuterotomy, and now he’s de-jellicilzed.”
• If your cat gets cat-napped (punny!), don’t bother with the police or a private detective. Just call Doug Henning.
• Once again, it is proven that anything can be made better with the careful addition of pirates to the narrative.
• Even if your show is devoid of the most basic of interesting plots, throwing in a despondent chick with a set of pipes can liven up any situation. During the reprise of “Memory”, I was surprised the balcony didn’t collapse.

If any of you have gifts to lavish upon her, feel free to instead make a donation to the Addled Brain Charitable Organization in her name. Your contributions will go directly to a worthy cause, namely expensive electronics for my house. Hey, those were some expensive tickets! I gotta get something for my generosity.

I said it would be occasional. The occasion, apparently, is not as occasional as some had hoped, I guess. Well, after this, maybe you’ll hope they’re a little more occasional.

The honest truth is, DK was an absolute beast in the sack. I’d run off with him for the evening, and we’d make mad, passionate love wherever we could find a place we thought we might not be discovered. The first couple of times, we got a hotel room. While I enjoyed every minute of those visits, they utterly paled in comparison to the first time we tried a construction site. The raw steel and wood, the smells of the site, not to mention how easy it could have been for strangers to see us in the act, just added to the thrill for both of us. So I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise when my boyfriend found us at the top of a five-story girder framework one afternoon just before DK and I really got into it. For some reason, Victorian era dress style really turned him on, so I had purchased a pink gown, complete with the frilly full hoop skirt. Next thing I know, I hear from the bottom “It’s me, Mario! And I’ma gonna kicka you ass, you two-a-timing wench! Ha haha!” I looked down, and even from five stories I could see his dead-eyed look. He was holding a sledgehammer. Well, I shouldn’t say holding, he was swinging it like a madman, tearing up anything in his path as he worked his way, slowly, up to us.

- From “Of Bananas and Barrels”, by Princess Peach

I still remember the first time I stepped into a Best Buy. Every geek’s wet dream of a store, complete with loud music, video games, enormous televisions, PC equipment, tons of CDs and VHS movies (this was 1993, people). It was all I could do to prevent myself from skipping up and down the aisles, grabbing things nearly at random, Homer-In-The-Land-of-Chocolate style. Such joy! Such happiness! Such a friggin’ setup!

I popped into Best Buy today to pick up a car charger for my cell phone. I know it might be hard for some of you to believe this, but I actually forgot to charge my phone last night. I know, I always have things together, and never ever forget to do the little things. I’m a shocked as you are. Honest. But I digress.

I opted for a rather elaborate looking model, which was the only one that actually fit my phone. This device apparently doubles as some sort of calculator, or maybe a tricorder; the LCD readout on this sucker (yes, an LCD readout on a plug) is massive, probably tacked on by some engineer with a bad idea and too much free time , and most likely pointless. Being trapped by the forces of necessity and nerdishness, I proceeded to the checkout line, where I was immediately battered by a barrage of sales pitches. Exchange follows:

Clerk: Hello. Do you have a Reward Zone card?
Me: No.
Clerk: If you get one, you can get points good toward your purchases here as well as online. Do you have a Best Buy card?
Me: No.
Clerk: It’s 90 days same as cash. Would you like an introductory subscription to Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly? 8 issues free?

By this point, I was starting to feel like I was being presented by verbal pop-up ads, and I felt like clicking them closed with my fists. But I realized the clerk was only doing their job, and was probably being watched at all times to make sure she said everything they had to, or face losing their six dollars an hour.

Me: No.
Clerk: Can I have your phone number?

Despite my reputation as a lady killer, I quickly realized this was not a question that might lead up to a steamy tryst somewhere in the home appliances section. Now they’ve started collecting personal information.

I remember the first time I went into a Radio Shack, ages ago, and got asked for my address, phone number, and date of birth. I felt like they wanted to do a background check before they sold me a spool of speaker wire. As a result, I now avoid that place at all costs. I realize I don’t have to answer their questions (as I won’t give that stuff out to just anyone - I’d better know the person, or at the very least, be given large amounts of cash on the spot), but it’s the principal of giving up my personal information freely so they can make more money. Some people worry about Big Brother in the government. Well, Big Brother has gone private - and all he’s interested in is marketing every last thing he can to you. So I may just be giving up on Best Buy for now, until it’s safe to approach their registers again.

Of course, I say that now, but then I’ll see another album that I need to buy (yes, I buy albums - I have no use for your iPods and your filesharing), and I’ll go crawling back because it’s a dirt cheap loss leader, selling out my pride and my ethics for three dollars off.

Hey, at least I’m honest about it.

I like Gina. Not just because she’s the ringmaster of two previous as well as this upcoming third, and final informal gathering of Rawlings cast-offs for some movie you’ve probably never heard of. Not just because she’s an unrepentant geek. Oh no. We like her because she will kick my ass if I don’t, and if liking her means I don’t have to live in mortal fear of her vengeance, then so be it.

I bring her up because she reminded me of a story The Madre likes to tell about me when we’re gathered with people who are unfamiliar with me - give them a feel for what it might be like to be locked in a small room with me for hours on end. I told her this story, and she liked it so much, I have decided to share it with you. Yes, you are special.

In my more formative years, I attended the prestigious La Petite Academy, suffered through grueling classes like coloring and naptime, and after a year of work and non-stop dedication, I had found myself a proud kindergarten graduate. Well, as we all know, graduations require ceremonies, and this one was no different. During this ceremony, each of us had to do a short speech on a part of the body, and I had been given the honor of speaking to the audience about the inner workings and mysteries of the human heart. Displaying the resolve and tenacity that would stick with me to this very day, I completely forgot about this assignment, and it was never mentioned to Madre. So, on that fateful evening, she was very surprised to learn that her son had a speech, and had prepared it all by himself. How proud she must have been!

Well, proud until it was my turn to speechify, anyway. Recent to this event, my grandmother had passed away, and I suppose the event had stuck with me just a little bit. I was introduced, and with a determination to give the best speech I could, I stepped to the front of the stage, stood there with a serious look, and said “When the heart stops, you die.”

With that, I returned to my chair. I’d like to think Madre was stunned at my insightful and eloquent speech, but more likely she was desperately trying to camoflage herself in the sea of parents sitting in neat rows of stackable orange and yellow plastic chairs.

It’s this kind of eloquence in front of others that led me to my now infamous best-man’s speech at my MCG’s wedding, but he can tell you all about that himself. I will say that what it lacked in grandeur was almost made up for with it’s simplistic, guttural utterances.

The show, kids, was spectacular. That BNL puts on quite a performance, and Steven Page has a set of pipes that could kill a man, should he choose to use them for evil instead of good. Luckily for humanity, he instead decides to sing about breaking and entering and primates. And the world is, indeed, a better place.

Teh 1 and I decided to get a downtown hotel for after the show. This was more for my convenience and our safety than any real desire to ring in the new year our own little way without destroying our own home, and would allow me to get my drink on in style. So, after checking with our good friends at Travelocity, we discovered that the only hotel with any vacancies was the Ashley Plaza Hotel, a lovely little spot run down shithole right next to the TBPAC. I wholeheartedly recommend this hotel to those of you who, when you vacation, like your hotel room to be mostly uninhabitable. We proceeded to our room, past the out of order Coke machine, and around the corner to the room. Our first warning sign was that the room we were given had both AC units pulled out of the wall and placed almost haphazardly about the room - I might use the word “strewn”, but there could have been some sort of Feng Shui reason for the placement. A quick trip downstairs, on the elevator that was actually three inches below the floor when the doors opened, and I secured ourselves a new room, right after the couple that needed a new room because other people were already in the one they were given. This was warning sign #2. We proceed to our new room, passing the out of order ice machine, down the hall with gaping bleach wounds in the carpet, to our dank, musty double that looked straight out of the 50’s. You know, Psycho era type stuff. The toilet in our room had a plunger problem, so you had to manually turn the water on and off. Warning sign #3. By this point, we had pretty much decided it was still useful to us as a place for me to get over whatever I would drink that night, so we could get out as early as possible the next day. With that, we headed out to the show, taking the ever-so-convenient trolley-bus-thing that happened to run in front of the slum hotel.

Well, I didn’t really get tossed at the show. In fact, I think the words “barely buzzed” applied. And despite gorging myself on free delictables all night, I was riding an energy high after the show ended - BNL did a two and a half hour set, which is damn near amazing to me. So, we proceeded to walk back to our hotel, which was a little over a mile away. Despite the walking, we were growing uncomfortable with our choice of sleeping arrangements. And by the time we arrived at the hotel, we had decided to get our money back and go home. On our floor, we passed what I can only imagine to be a father and his pre-teen son engaged in some sort of wrestling/slap-fight thing (they were after the broken ice machine, but before the bleach incident). We snatched up our bag, and proceeded downstairs post-haste.

Teh 1 went to the car, and I got in line behind a gentleman with no shirt on, who had come downstairs because, apparently, his bed was totally bereft of blankets, soap, and shampoo. The security guard attempted to politely inform the rather large hispanic man with the eagle tattoed across his back that he shouldn’t come down without a shirt on, to which the man politely replied to him something about not having to if his room were prepared correctly. I almost told him of a couple rooms that I knew of that had all the sheets he wanted as long as he didn’t mind not having AC or a working toilet, but thought better of it. So, while the man and the guard exhanged pleasantries and, most likely, were having some sort of mental brawl communicated with icy glares, I proceeded to get my money back from the short lady with the lisp behind the counter.

The moral of this story? The Ashley Plaza Hotel, despite it’s best attempts at looking like a lovely hotel on the website, should be avoided by everyone at all costs. The end.

Happy New Year everyone.

This idea kind of came to me in a dream last night. I’m pretty fond of it, and since I’m too lazy to write complete short stories, I think excerpts from the private lives of fictional people will have to do. Less grunt work. So, I’ll be dropping one these in whenever I feel like it - which may be never again, depending on how it’s received and what I think about it later.

For weeks afterwards, I had dreams where I would be walking through the streets of downtown, presumably on my way to the station, on a beautiful spring morning. Suddenly, I would hear a loud crack of thunder, and I would look up, and see a torrential downpour of frozen Butterball turkeys come tearing from the sky, smashing car windshields, obliterating building roofs, and narrowly avoiding pedestrians scrambling for whatever cover they could find. Oddly enough, I could walk through this frozen thanksgiving hailstorm with nary a scratch, despite the obvious carnage it wrought.

Twice, I had the same dream, except instead of turkeys, they were people.

–From “A Newsman’s Life”, by Les Nessman

Yeah, it’s a bit wierd, unless you get the gag. But hey, it’s me - what do you expect?

Hat tip to Emily’s mom via MCG - what famous movie star does our good friend Darryl Sutter, head coach of the Calgary Flames, resemble? Click his grill for the answer.

I finally figured out why I hate the company microwave.

As part of my recent return to all things webby, I picked up a few books. Well, OK, 6 books. I’ve started on what I think will be the most facinating one of the bunch - The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, a rather interesting (from what I’ve read so far) treatise on why simple things should not be difficult to use.

Seems Norman has had issues with doors. And refrigerators. And light switches. At first, he blamed himself for these problems - what kind of idiot doesn’t know how to use a door? But then, he looked at how the door presented itself. All the doors he had to deal with opened in different ways - they opened inward, they opened outward, they slid into the wall. But all these doors looked exactly alike. How can you tell? What’s the big secret? He came to the realization that there was none - the problem wasn’t that he could no longer reliably operate a door handle, but that the doors themselves weren’t presenting the normal visual cues one might use to know exactly what direction to operate the darn thing in the first place.

Which brings me to the microwave at work. It’s got the standard numeric keypad, as well as a prominently displayed Start and Clear buttons. But there’s well over a dozen functions that surround the start button, none of which seem to serve much purpose, as far as I can tell. But one of them is the Time Cook button, which allows you to do what most people do with a microwave, which is set a time to cook the item you have placed inside it, be that oatmeal (which I eat most mornings at work these days, the Madre will be happy to know), a wounded GIJoe figure about to succumb to the tortures of his Cobra captors, or that damn cat. Whatever it is you nuke, you typically set the time and go. Most microwaves I have used allow you to either push the prominently displayed Time button, enter your time, push start, and voila! Microwave radiation pummels your selected item with electrons, bringing them to an “excited” state, and warming the contents. Hell, some microwaves don’t even require the Time CooK button, just enter your time and go! It’s almost magical, isn’t it?

Well, I’ve used this microwave for two months, and more than half the time, that damn Time Cook button hides out among it’s rather useless compatriots, impossible to see, so that Warm Chicken and Popcorn can stand up alongside it’s one truly useful function and cry out “NO, I AM SPARTACUS!” at me every morning. It’s like the designers got so caught up in adding so-called “Convenience” buttons that they forgot most people don’t give a rat’s ass about them. Designers keep looking forward, adding features and abilities that few want and even less need, all in the myopic name of progress. Well, if this is progress, somebody get me a bonfire and a cast iron skillet. I’ll rough it, thanks.

I’m just barely into this book, and already he’s got me nodding my head at some of the utter inanities of things. I never quite realized how much time I’ve wasted in my life just looking at a telephone at various places I’ve worked, institutions I’ve attended, not to mention hotels, just trying to figure out how to dial a local number. I’d recommend it for reading to all of you, but as most of you are currently in shock that I can do this much typing at one sitting, I’ll forgive you if it slips your mind.

And if that’s not shock enough - it’s review time! Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

ES makes Being
John Malkovich almost sane.
But damn, it’s so good.

And Kate Winslet…rowr rowr.

So you’re a parent, taking your kids out to see one of the few truly and honestly family-friendly outings around, to see The Nutcracker at your local playhouse. You’ve had your fun, and sure, your son may have been too cool to want to watch it, but your daughter sure had fun, and you’re leaving the show, heading back to the car for the ride home. As you exit the theater, you are met with some friendly, costumed foxes and rabbits - looks like some children’s promotion - who are handing out flyers. But these aren’t just flyers, they’re mini comic books. And they’re not just any comic books, oh no. These are comics that proclaim, in big, red letters, that “Your Mommy Kills Animals!” - complete with a mom, in pearls, apron, and a viscious, bloodthirsty stare, stabbing a horrified rabbit to death, blood spewing in every direction.

Bet YOU’RE glad you took the kids to the ballet, aren’t you?

An open letter to PETA:

Dear attention seeking losers,

Way to go on your latest campaign. While I’m sure the “Shock and Awe” tactic so glorified by the current administration, which I’m sure you hold in the highest regard, sounded like a really good idea on paper, the fact that you would present such a disgusting, reprehensible piece of trash you disguise as informative to young children out for an enjoyable day with their families not only makes you look like jackasses, it actually cheapens your “cause”. People who actually agree with you think you’re a-holes for doing this, so how do you think people who don’t agree with you feel?

Maybe you think you’re reaching a younger generation, and by presenting such shocking images you’re forcing both them and their parents to “think”. Hell, maybe you justify yourselves by thinking that if the parents didn’t buy the fur in the first place, you wouldn’t have to make these “handouts”. Perhaps, oh holier-than-thou-PETA-jerk, you should be allowed to continue this sickening display of poor taste disguised as enlightenment. After all, you seem to have failed to convince the world at large that your core beliefs are right through general education and awareness.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go encourage the leather industry to make more things out of their quality products.

Yeah, so I’m not nearly as good as Ernie when it comes to rebuttal e-mails. Bite me.

You know I saw it. You know you saw it too, don’t lie to me. LotR: Return of the King

I agree: undead
armies are very handy
in a tight spot. Wow.

I forsee nerd riots across the world if this doesn’t win many, many Oscars.