Slapstick
(8-17 October 2006)
17 October 2006
-I want to let everyone know that my @BP e-mail
account is having problems of late & may well be down at times. If you know my other e-mail address, you can e-mail
me there if it bounces; otherwise, just resend in a little bit. My server is randomly deleting my e-mail settings &
thus undermining my accounts. They're easy to restore, but I had to do it twice yesterday & my only notification
when it happens is someone complaining of a bounce. The idea of losing e-mail, meanwhile, drives me completely
batty.
-Bobby D tonight! Will I finally get "Stuck Inside of Mobile"? We'll find out...
16 October 2006
-So I got caught today, or made someone feel very
bad about themselves. I've been going to JambaJuice a lot lately... in part because I'm overreacting to my latent
weight issues & in part because I've discovered that the Berry Lime Sublime smoothie may be the most perfectly attuned
flavor to my tastebuds in the history of the culinary world. It's so good I can even put up with the imperfections in
texture. So, JambaJuice is one of those unfortunate establishments that routinely insist on making giving one's name a
prerequisite for receiving sustenance. I suppose people do this because it supposedly makes a personal connection with
the customer & makes people feel like their multinational chain cares, but for most people (not just people with names as
unusual as mine), it just leads to an annoying clarification session followed by answering to the slightly wrong name.
For me, of course, this is exaggerated tenfold, & thus my long-time custom has been to give my name as Jimbob at
any name-asking establishment. While superior to picking up a smoothie for Stormy, Stony, Stuart, Tori, or Corey, there
is a surprising amount of clarification required for even the wholly basic name Jimbob. Today, however, the woman
taking my order nearly cracked up upon hearing the name & struggled the entire money exchange to hold herself together.
She choked down giggles & refused to make eye contact with me. Had she tried, she would've seen me on the
verge of laughter myself, clearly conceding that I had been caught & answered to Jimbob nowhere outside of restaurants.
As I sipped my smoothie on the way out of the mall, it occurred to me to wonder how similar her reaction might have
been to my actual name.
-While I have a bit of fondness in reflecting on the woman trying to hold it together at the
JambaJuice register, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the notably similar looking woman who parked her keyworthy SUV across
two spots & then blamed me for it at PetFood Express. "Keyworthy" is a term I've been using lately to
denote a car that, in a pure justice world, deserves to be keyed. I don't key cars because I try to avoid property
destruction as well as interpersonal violence. But I don't really believe they're at all on the same level, & I
don't think that property destruction is as bad as it's considered in most cases. There are times that I wish I had a
little less interest in moral behavior just as far as keying cars went so that I could become a car-keying crusader, actively
demonstrating that people who find themselves above the bounds of parking spaces in order to preserve the pristine nature of
their metal deathtrap are doomed to get the same fate in even worse form. I don't think justice is that important most
of the time conceptually, but here is where I really feel it. So back to the woman & her keyworthy 2/3rds of one
spot, 1/3rd of another parking job. These spots were large enough that I was able to get the Saturn into the final
2/3rds of the second spot! In doing so, without scraping the SUV that ate another large SUV, I was just barely in the
lines & I guess blocked in the door-opening radius of the SUV-consuming SUV. As soon as I climbed out of my car,
the woman who drives the SUV cannibal walks out of the store & rails at me, "Now how am I supposed to get into my
car?" The number of comebacks that have hit me since this woman was long since gone is sufficient to baffle me
with regret, but instead I shrugged & mutely went to check just how bad her parking job really was. It was even
worse than I had thought. I demonstrated to her just how far from any conceivable notion of the lines of the spots she
was, then told her "I guess I'll move, but that's a ridiculous parking job." As I was backing out, I shrugged
at her repeatedly while her look of disdain grew larger. I think there are many people in this country who are just as
judgmental as I am on moral & intelligence grounds, only their grounds are things like vehicle size &
might-makes-right. I guess you couldn't explain America any other way.
15 October 2006
-It's something like the Golden Age of Blogging
among my friends these days. Jake is back with a mission to save the country, Drew is working through all his emotions,
& many people are simply being more regular with the updates. Good stuff.
-We're having a Pumpkin Carving Party
on the 28th (the Saturday before Halloween). Everyone should come! Let me know if you're coming so we can have
pumpkins ready for you...
14 October 2006
-10th place is just not the final table.
-With
the walk-off homer today, our tickets to both ALCS Game 6 & World Series Game 2 are erased. So it goes. I
don't think anyone will be able stop the Tigers at this point, given the superiority of their pitching.
13 October 2006
-Friday the 13th in October turned out to be more
busy than spooky, even if there was a bizarre warping of pictures from one of the printers. Then again, maybe it was
just the paint fumes.
12 October 2006
-Tonight I realized that on top of everything else
wrong with it, disco is the compromise where everyone loses as far as dancing pace. It's not slow enough to be a slow
dance style, but is insufficiently fast to actually make dancing fun. Instead you just sort of shake around, or need
advanced classes to do pre-specified moves. Not my scene, as I predicted. But my co-workers really got into the
staff appreciation disco scene anyway. The work world can be a weird place.
11 October 2006
-Two-thirds of a million people. 2.5% of the
country. The equivalent of losing 7.5 million Americans in 3.5 years. You can speculate all you want on the world
being safer or less safe without Saddam Hussein, but Iraq is clearly vastly less safe. Roughly 225 9/11's, if you're
looking for another way of looking at it. Now, you can say that since my little Iraq Body Count at the bottom of this
page lists no more than 50,000 dead that this means 600,000+ of the deceased are enemy military or insurgents. In which
case it seems clear that the only exit strategy being employed is literally killing everyone who disagrees. If you have
to maintain order by slaughtering a fifth of a million enemies a year (& still fail at keeping order), maybe at a certain
point you should realize that you are the enemy of stability in the region.
10 October 2006
-A third of the way through, & October is right
on pace. I feel strangely ill prepared for work after just one extra day off, but it should be a relatively simple
week.
-Just sleepwalking through today. The impact my bodily changes are having on me are not to be underestimated.
Nor is the lack of others' grasp on how it feels to be me.
9 October 2006
-Well now we'll see if the Bush administration can
level any leverage against North Korea. My theory has always been that Bush is actually scared of NK, so he won't stand
up to them the way he bullies Middle Eastern countries. This will be interesting indeed.
-The Mep Report page is all
new, with a CNN-style format to draw people in. Let me know what you think & if we're any closer to being a site
people will want to spend time hanging out on. Additionally, take the 50th episode megashow for what it is... it's not
our best work, but it has its moments.
-I threw a perfect game in the playoffs in MVP 2005! This really isn't that
big a deal, but when my most exciting baseball moments these days are picking between my 10th & 12th favorite teams
(roughly) for who to root for, it's a big deal to have RJ in a Mariners uniform bringing 27 up & 27 down in Game 1 of the
ALDS. Next season, I really have to up the difficulty level.
-My frustration with not being able to read in bed for
a long time without dozing is reaching new heights. I'm almost never tired, but reading in bed puts me to sleep.
I used to be able to do this for hours... what happened? It just derails my day.
8 October 2006
Happy Birthday to Kaitlin
Dean
-Migraine: 13 hours, right side, significant, caused by movie.
-One
of my great fears of compiling this 2006 migraine log, my first complete such log, will be that I look at it (or even show it
to someone) & they conclude I should stop going to movies in theaters. Which is only one of my favorite activities
that I can imagine. Given the number of overall movies I attend, very few of them actually spark headaches. &
I'm enjoying the whole trigger time, which cannot be said of any of my other known triggers (fluorescent lights, not eating,
certain foods, etc.).
-Em has stepped off the vegan train, after nearly 2.5 years. Asqew mac-n-cheese was the first
step. I think we both always knew this day would come, but it was a bit sudden. Having always thought
vegetarianism was the most reasonable line to draw, I'm certainly not complaining.
Introspection, My Worst
Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
Introspection Directory (Source)
The Blue Pyramid (Home)