Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
|
|
|
M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
|
|
Tuesday, April 30, 2002 I didn't update yesterday because I left work early to take Trash to the Urgent Care Center. Don't worry, she's not dead or anything. She has a deep cut on her index finger from a rusty nail, and we were getting worried becuase it wasn't healing and it was swelling up and turning purple and forcing her to write "KILL KILL KILL KILL" on every available surface. They put a splint on her finger and told her to keep it elevated, which means she has to go around all the time constantly looking like she just had a great idea. Or she needs you to wait a second. "Yes, dear," I patiently say to her every five minutes. "You're number one." She hates me. But what can I say? It makes me sad to see her suffering, so I figure she owes me that much amusement. * * * Maybe you're tired of reading about all my little projects around the house. It could be worse, though. You could be me. I'm trying to do something on the house every day. Like last night around 9:00, I decided to recaulk the tub and shower surround. I'd wield the caulk gun for an hour or so and take the rest of the evening off. Even taking into account the fact that I'm about as handy with a caulk gun as I am with a spear gun. Did you know stuff keeps coming out of the tube even after you stop squeezing the trigger? That ain't right. Before I started shooting caulk all over the bathroom like incredibly sticky Silly String, I figured it would be a good idea to scrape away some of the old caulk. After I'd done that for a few seconds, it stopped looking like a good idea, since it turned out that the caulk was the only thing holding up the shower walls. Brothers and sisters, can I get an "oops?" I'm just glad Home Depot is open around the clock, because where else is a guy going to get shower wall glue at 10:00 p.m.? Of course I also got some AAA batteries, a couple of rolls of duct tape, a dinky little paint roller for touching up the bathroom wall where I patched it, some stuff for gluing down the loose edges on my new kitchen floor, and a bunch of other crap I can't think of right now. I nearly bought a new bathroom vanity cabinet while I was at it. Normally I'm not an impulse shopper, but I really shouldn't be allowed into Home Depot alone. So I got home and glued the shower surround back onto the drywall (and I can't tell you how relieved I was to see that it still was dry wall, considering how the plastic had pulled away). Then it was time to fire up the caulk gun. Except you know what? Now they have these sealant strips. They're awesome. They're like bathtub caulk in tape form. I was able to slap these up and give the edges of the surround a sleek, neat appearance. It took a little longer, but it was much better than flinging gobs of caulk at the seams and ending up with something that looks like it was done by Jackson Pollock in monochrome. When he was in second grade. It was almost worth having to wash my hair in the kitchen sink this morning while I give the stuff 24 hours to cure. Plus I was in bed by 1:30 a.m. Trash tried to wait up for me, but I'm glad to say she was in bed and asleep by the time I got finished. There she was, sleeping peacefully, her injured hand propped up by pillows. I stood over her motionless form and pointed right back at her, saying, "No, you the man." It's going to be a long couple of weeks for her, I'm thinking. posted by M. Giant 10:33 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, April 26, 2002 The home improvement jihad continues. As of Sunday night, we were just about finished with the second bedroom. All we had left to do was clean the carpet and move everything back in. Our carpet is this joyless tan berber that covers the floors in our living room, hallway, study, and second bedroom. You know how carpet patterns generally have names like "Rhapsody in Wheat" and "Creme Dreme?" According to the carpet manufacturer's website, our carpet is a color called "Dingy Sanitarium." It's not that we don't vaccuum it, because we do. We even hire people to come in and steam-clean it every year, which helps a little bit. For a while it actually looks nice. Then the cleaning chemicals dry up and their psychotropic effect on our brains wears off, leaving us right back where we were before, except poorer. The last few times the carpet cleaners came we weren't able to let them into the second bedroom, because at the time it was either Trash's grad school classroom or somebody's home. So when we cleared out all of the stuff to paint it, we became aware of all of the mysterious stains in there that we knew we'd have to get rid of. Or at least we'd have to get rid of the ones that the furniture wasn't going to hide. (By the way, I honestly don't know where the stains are from. All I know is that if you're reading this, it wasn't your fault. Okay?) So Sunday night I spent about ten minutes trying to get rid of the stains. Then I peeked under the edge of the carpet to see what the floor looked like. Mmmm, hardwood. This was a little after 10:00 p.m. By 11:00, Trash and I had the room's carpet rolled up and sitting by the curb with three Hefty bags full of padding, plus a bunch of wooden strips and about nine billion little carpet staples. Now that the carpet's up, we can see that the floor isn't in particularly great shape either. I spent Monday evening skittering around and scraping wood putty into each of the eighteen billion staple holes. Now I'm going to have to rent a floor sander and learn how to drive it, and from what I''ve read so far about floor refinishing, it's going to be another two weeks before I'm done in there. I think it's going to be worth it though. Another ten minutes trying to get the carpet cleaned might not have killed me, but having that stuff in almost every room on the main floor eventually might have. Maybe we'll rip it out of the rest of the house as well. Of course, that depends on how much work refinishing the second bedroom floor turns out to be. If it's really hard, that ugly-ass carpet might start looking good to me real quick-like. posted by M. Giant 10:50 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, April 25, 2002 Last Wednesday night I had a chance to do something I'd never done before: take care of a baby for more than ten minutes in a row. She's my niece. When we spent the evening together, she was just short of three months old. Now she's just over three months old. Damn, people age fast when they're babies. Since she's not old enough to pick her own Internet pseudonym yet, I'll just call her Deniece (get it? Ha! I kill me!). It was an evening of firsts for both of us, actually. It marked the first time I:
Obviously she experienced more firsts during the same period, since she's, like, less than one percent of my age. It's true what they say about re-experiencing the world through a child's eyes, and appreciating the sense of wonder that someone has when everything is new. So it was kind of exciting to be there the first time she:
I wondered what I should do if Deniece did something for the first time while under my care. Should I tell her mom, or should I keep it to myself so her mom could believe that the first time she saw Deniece do something was actually the first time Deniece did it? Obviously day care professionals deal with this dilemma every day, and presumably they've got it figured out. I forgot to ask before Deniece's mom left, though. I wasn't too conflicted when Deniece started rubbing her head. That's not terribly surprising considering that the cranium represents about 95% of a three-month-old's surface area. I didn't freak out when she said her first word to me, because it was "guh." Likewise when she busted out an "ehhhh." When she followed that up with "ratatouille," I knew I was in trouble. And not just because we were fresh out. I came thisclose to calling Deniece's mom when she took her first step. But then I had to put the phone down so I could chase her up and down the stairs. Deniece finally resolved the situation for me by driving to the store to get me cigarettes. That did it. I don't even smoke. Obviously she's not as smart as I thought. posted by M. Giant 1:22 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, April 24, 2002 One of the reasons that people return to other people's personal websites is because those sites give their readers a unique perspective--some point of view they can't get from someone else. What makes me unique, you ask? Raise your hand if you've ever gone in to get a root canal and ended up falling asleep in the dentist's chair. Without anesthetic. Yeah, I figured a lot of hands would go down when I said that. The thing is, I have such a high pain threshold that I'm practically impervious to it. And really, when you're lying flat on your back in a comfy chair with nothing to do, what does one expect? No seriously, the truth is that I showed up right on time for my 4:00 appointment yesterday, but apparently my dentist was running behind. That didn't stop them from ushering me to a room and parking me in a chair to wait. The funny thing is that my body's circadian rhythm has a sense of humor. My metabolism likes to tell my body to shut down for a nap just about every day between 4:00 and 5:00. I'm not sure what evolutionary purpose this serves, other than potentially getting me killed on the drive home. Unless that is the evolutionary purpose, in which case I'm about to be very depressed. The upside is that instead of sitting in my dentist's chair for a half hour, getting progressively more nervous about the pain and expense while working myself into an indignant frenzy over the unconscionable delay, I spent the time between 4:05 and 4:35 sleeping the sleep of the just. Or perhaps even the sleep of the just after. I imagine that the dentist's scheduling specialist expected me to rip out her spleen when she walked into the room to offer me the option of either rescheduling or continuing to wait. I couldn't bring myself to do it. First of all, that's not my way. And secondly, I just had a nap! What do I have to be pissy about? I was sleeping comfortably while thirty feet away, she was dealing with workday stress and trying to earn a paycheck. Furthermore, now I can go home without a numb/sore kisser. I'm looking at my end of the lollipop, and it's fuzz-free, baby. Maybe you're impressed that I'm even capable of falling asleep when at any given moment I'm potentially sixty seconds away from having power tools grinding away at my choppers. Don't be. The night before my first root canal, I could barely sleep at all. Yesterday would have been my third one in about a month. I know that some people think the term "root canal" is a synonym for "pain," but those people probably haven't had one recently. I know what to expect now, and my experience tells me that it really isn't all that bad. Having said that, of course, now I know that my next one will hurt like a motherfucker. posted by M. Giant 11:03 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, April 23, 2002 Sorry about yesterday. I guess I should tell you that every once in a while, I'm going to have a work day when I don't have time to update. On account of having to, you know, work. It won't happen very often, unless I get promoted or something. Let me say that I'm gratified by the reaction to the Osbournes/Trading Spaces thingy. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much out of ideas--I mean, transcript excerpts*, so I'm calling it a wrap. Pretty much all that happens from now on is that Frank joins Jack and Ty's little pot party and they all trade eyewear. And just before the reveal, Paige tells the Osbournes that "at least your problems with pet accidents are over." And Hildi bites Paige's head off. The whole rest of the epsiode is pretty boring. In real-life news, our half-serious quest to get our house ready to put on the market just got a lot more serious. Yes, the house next door sold at an obscene price. The "sold" sign was up when we got home on Thursday afternoon. Now Trash and I have to decide whether we can afford to not cash in and clear out. On the one hand, we have a list of about sixty projects we should do before we can bail. Some of them will take twenty minutes, and some will take a week. On the other hand, the place is in better shape than it was when we bought it. But then, back on the first hand, we practically stole it back then. And, still on the first hand, there's probably some kind of Midwestern work ethic prohibiting us from raking in a hundred thousand bucks of pure profit without putting a little effort into it. Especially when we can rake in two hundred thousand bucks of pure profit by putting in more work. On an entirely different, third hand, buying a house is a pain. Moving is a pain. Giving up our short commutes would be a pain. And unless we build, we're probably going to have to fix and redecorate our new house, which will be (say it with me) a pain. Factor in all of the sweat equity we've already invested, the potential to wipe out all of our non-mortgage debt, the possibility that a huge real estate windfall could allow one or both of us to take a leave of absence from work, and this situation has more hands than a Catholic priest. Pretty much the only way out of this is to figure out how much it's worth to us to go through all this headache, and then try to establish whether selling would net us that amount or more. Of course, it's rather difficult to put a dollar value on how much we love our house and our neighborhood. But we can't wait forever, because if the sale price of the house next door indicates anything, it's that we're on the edge of a bubble. If we're going to collect the big payoff (which we haven't decided to do yet, in case that isn't clear), we'll need to do it within the next year or less, before property values in our neighborhood pull a "dotcom stock." Yeah, poor me. I'm sitting on a house that's worth too much. Boo freaking hoo. * For the last time, not really. posted by M. Giant 10:17 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, April 19, 2002 Ever have one of those dreams where you're back in grade school? I do. With disturbing frequency, in fact. So it wasn't entirely shocking when I found myself standing outside a first-grade classroom this morning. Sure, it was disorienting, but I was torn. Because, you know, it's one thing to walk into a first-grade classroom when you're just dreaming. But here I was, wide awake and thirty-two years old, and those two facts made all the difference. I wandered anxiously between the classroom and the main entrance, trying to figure out just where the hell I belonged. I finally resolved my dilemma by waking up. Yes, I had a recurring dream, but with the twist that in my dream, I knew about the recurring dream, and was dreaming that the recurring dream had finally come true while I was awake, which I really wasn't, but was merely dreaming that I was. My subconscious is one sadistic bastard. * * * Except you didn’t come back to read about my dreams, did you? You came back to see more of my bootleg Trading Spaces transcript.* The beginning of the show can still be found in Wednesday, April 17th’s entry, and the transcript continues through yesterday and into today. [BEGINNING OF EXCERPT] INT. OZZY’S HOUSE PAIGE (Voice-over): Hildi’s team has run into a little trouble. The neighbors sit on the floor looking sick. They gaze forlornly at the walls, which are clearly not finished. Hildi walks in. HILDI: Hey! What are you guys doing? You need to finish the walls, people. NEIGHBOR: We’re out of bats. Hildi registers shock. HILDI: Oh, no. Totally out? OTHER NEIGHBOR: They’re squeezed dry. HILDI: Okay. Okay. Don’t panic, don’t panic— NEIGHBOR: We aren’t panicking. HILDI: I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU! NEIGHBOR: Ooookay. MINNIE THE POMERANIAN sticks her head in the door. Hildi grabs her, bites her head off, and hands her to the neighbor. NEIGHBOR: [bleep]! HILDI: We’re just going to have to make do with what they have around the house. Use this for now, I’ll find more. Exit Hildi. HILDI (off-screen): Oh, puppies! Kitties! Where are you? NEIGHBOR: What the hell are we gonna do? OTHER NEIGHBOR: I dunno about you, mate, but I’m gonna do exactly what that mad bitch says. The other neighbor grabs Minnie and gets back to work on the wall. INT. THE NEIGHBORS’ HOUSE Frank is looking at the hole in the wall and trying to calm Ozzy down. FRANK: Listen, don’t worry about it. We can incorporate it into the design. OZZY: [unintelligible] design [bleep][unintelligible]. FRANK: I think we’re ready to steam the wallpaper off. Let me show you how to use the steamer. Frank gives a short demonstration. He holds the steamer against the wall, then hands it to Ozzy. Ozzy makes small, rapid circles on the wall with it. FRANK: Actually, you need to hold it still so the steam has time to penetrate. OZZY: I am holdin’ it [bleep]ing still. FRANK: Oh. Okay. Well, maybe we’ll have Sharon do this part. I’ll just go get her. OZZY: No, I’ll get her. SHAROOOOON! EXT. THE CARPENTRY TRUCK Ty passes the joint back to Jack JACK: So, have you ever seen Genevieve naked? Ty cracks up. After a second, Jack does too. They laugh for almost a full minute, then finally catch their breath. JACK: So, have you? INT: ANOTHER ROOM IN THE NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE PAIGE (Voice-over): Sharon and Kelly discuss the assignment that Frank has given them: a large fabric wall hanging. Sharon and Kelly lean over a large table with a sewing machine set up on it. They shuffle through sections of fabric. KELLY: Mom? SHARON: Yes, dear? KELLY: Did you understand a word that sweaty old poof said? SHARON: He’s not a poof, darling. KELLY: Do you understand what we’re meant to be doing? SHARON: Of course, dear. KELLY: What, then? SHARON: Weren’t you listening? KELLY: I was trying, but. You know. Aaaargh. SHARON: All right, well, this goes here, and then we attach this to…that? I think? KELLY: What’s it meant to be? SHARON: It’s abstract, darling. KELLY: It’s [bleep]. SHARON: Yes, but it’s not going in our house, is it? KELLY: I hate sewing. SHARON: How do you know? You’ve never sewn in your life. KELLY: That’s because I hate it. INT. THE NEIGHBORS’ HOUSE PAIGE (Voice-over): With day one winding down, it’s time to check in on the teams’ progress. Paige enters the room, where Frank is busily painting an elaborate mural of a pastoral scene around the gaping hole in the wall. PAIGE: Frank? What happened here? FRANK: Well, we had a little mishap while we were removing the wallpaper. PAIGE: Uh, yeah. FRANK: But we’re going to work with it. PAIGE: How? FRANK: Well, it’s going to be covered up by this mural, of course. Plus this wall will have a large fabric wall hanging, a framed painting I’ve got Ozzy working on, some hanging lights, a couple of tiers of shelves, a new entertainment center, a few light sconces, and kind of a faux stone wall thing. Plus I’m putting a screen up over here. PAIGE: And you have to do all that to cover up this hole? FRANK: No, I was planning on doing it anyway. INT. OZZY’S HOUSE Paige picks her way into the living room around the headless bodies of hundreds of bats and the entire Osbourne pet population. PAIGE: Hildi! What? Is going? On? Here? HILDI: It’s my design, Paige. Don’t you think it just screams “Ozzy?” PAIGE: It screams something, all right. It smells like a slaughterhouse in here. Are those their dogs? HILDI: And cat, yeah. PAIGE: Hildi! HILDI: What? Pets are easier to replace than fireplaces, and you didn’t have a problem with that. PAIGE: Yeah, but…Hildi. Where was Michael during all this? And the nanny, Melinda? HILDI: Michael stopped by earlier. Melinda ran when she saw me coming. PAIGE (to the neighbors): What do you guys think of this? NEIGHBOR: Hildi good. OTHER NEIGHBOR: Hildi nice. Hildi beams terrifyingly at Paige. PAIGE: Okay, well, you’re the designer. HILDI: You’re [bleep]damn right I am, you flippy-haired skinny little Broadway-ingenue wannabe! You’re not the boss of me! “I’m getting maaaarried. You’re all inviiiiiited.” Get out of my sight, you glorified VJ! Hildi chases Paige out of the room, then turns to the neighbors. HILDI: So, you guys ready for your homework assignment? [END OF EXCERPT] *In case I haven’t made it clear yet, I don’t really have any such transcript. posted by M. Giant 11:23 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, April 18, 2002 As promised, today I have further excerpts from the upcoming episode of Trading Spaces featuring the Osbournes*. To see the beginning, as well as some language that will hopefully keep me out of legal trouble, scroll down to Wednesday, April 17. Enjoy. [BEGINNING OF EXCERPT] INT. OZZY’S HOUSE PAIGE (Voice-over): Hildi’s team already has the new base coat on the walls, and they’re making progress on the next phase. HILDI (flinging bat blood at the wall): Don’t worry too much about getting it really even. We’re going for a little imperfection here. NEIGHBOR (spitting out a fresh bat head): That shouldn’t be hard. The Osbournes’ security guard MICHAEL wanders in. He takes in the three blood-drenched strangers ankle deep in bat corpses and reacts with alarm. MICHAEL: What’s going on in here? HILDI: Oh, it’s okay. It’s for TV. Michael notices one of the cameras and waves amiably at the home audience. MICHAEL: All right, then. I’ll leave you to it. Exit Michael. INT. THE NEIGHBORS’ HOUSE PAIGE (Voice-Over): Frank has put Ozzy and the kids to work on removing the wallpaper. But where are the kids? Alone in the room, Ozzy slowly goes over the wall with a paper scorer. OZZY: [unintelligible][bleep][unintelligible]. Ozzy stops and looks at the wall. OZZY: Take all [bleep]ing day, this will. [unintelligible]. Ozzy picks up a hammer and crowbar and starts whacking away at the wall. After a moment, a section of it comes clean off. OZZY: Bleeding [bleep]-all! Ohhhh, God. [unintelligible]. Ozzy stares at the exposed wall studs, gobsmacked. OZZY: SHAROOOON! EXT. THE DRIVEWAY PAIGE (Voice-over) Looks like Kelly has plans of her own. Kelly, having ditched her peach Trading Spaces shirt at some point, gets into a car and starts it up. Sharon catches up to her at the driver’s side window. SHARON: Where the [bleep] do you think you’re going? KELLY: Uhh, wotsisname, the Father Christmas-looking guy. Said we need more nails. SHARON: Frank sent you to get nails? KELLY: Yes! God! I’m just going to the [bleep]ing nail store! Sharon opens the car door and ushers Kelly out. SHARON: No you’re [bleep]ing not. Where’s your shirt? KELLY: I hate the shirt. Ugly [bleep]ing colour. SHARON: Your hair was that “ugly [bleep]ing colour” last week. KELLY: Why do you think I [bleep]ing changed it? Kelly flips Sharon the bird as she follows her mom back to the house. EXT. THE STREET PAIGE (Voice-over): Meanwhile, Ty’s about to get a little unexpected help. Jack is leaning against the carpentry truck, smoking. Carpenter/handyman TY PENNINGTON, carrying some shelves, emerges from the truck and spots him standing there. TY: Hey, buddy. Better not let the principal catch you smoking out here behind the cafeteria. Jack doesn’t answer, preferring to hold his smoke in. Ty registers this. TY: Especially if you’re smoking that. Jack finally exhales and holds the joint out to Ty. JACK: Wanna hit? Ty puts down the shelves and looks at Jack severely. TY: Dude, have you ever watched this show? Ty takes the offered joint and inhales deeply. [END OF EXCERPT] More again tomorrow, provided TLC's lawyers don't shut me down. * Again, not really. posted by M. Giant 1:16 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, April 17, 2002 As some of you may be aware, Trading Spaces is showing its first “celebrity” episode this coming weekend. Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks is going to be on the show. Could be interesting, yes? Personally, I’m looking forward to a different celebrity episode. I was able to procure a partial transcript of it in advance,* and I thought I’d share some excerpts with you. Here goes: [BEGINNING OF EXCERPT] Moments before the key swap, host PAIGE DAVIS is standing in a driveway with OZZY, SHARON, KELLY, and JACK OSBOURNE on her left. They’re wearing peach-colored Trading Spaces shirts over their usual clothes. On Paige’s right are two of the Osbournes’ noisy NEIGHBORS, in green shirts. PAIGE: So are you guys ready to Trade Spaces? NEIGHBOR: Just a second—Sharon, before you go into our house, would you mind terribly putting the ham down? SHARON: Oh, [bleep]. Alright, then. Sharon puts down a ham. PAIGE (laughing): Be nice, you guys. Okay, GO! Paige hands out keys and everyone dashes off, leaving her standing there with Ozzy. OZZY: ‘Ang on. SHAROOON! Ozzy wanders away. Paige looks at the camera like, what the hell? INT. OZZY’S HOUSE Designer HILDI SANTO-TOMAS greets the neighbors as they come in to the living room. HILDI: I am so excited about this room. Finally, I don’t have to restrain myself any more! NEIGHBOR: Um, what? HILDI: I mean, Ozzy Osbourne, you know? We can do whatever we want in here! This is such a great opportunity to do something really wild. In fact, to get ready for this project I went off my meds two weeks ago. OTHER NEIGHBOR (apprehensively): Really? HILDI: You’ll never guess what we’re going to do. NEIGHBOR: Glue straw onto the walls? HILDI: No, I’ve done that. OTHER NEIGHBOR: Turn the room into a big circus tent with a ceiling that looks like a giant anus? HILDI: Done that too. NEIGHBOR: You know, Hildy, we’ve had our differences with them in the past, but we really don’t want— HILDI: This is a great room, and it’s really big, but you can’t appreciate it because it’s so dark. So the first thing we’re going to do is put a lighter color on the walls, open things up in here and make it a lot more livable. The neighbors look at each other uncertainly. OTHER NEIGHBOR: Really? HILDI: Here’s the color we’re going to use. The neighbors cringe as Hildi begins to open a can of paint. HILDI: As you can see, it’s a really nice, understated taupe color. Very warm, very relaxing. The neighbors are visibly relieved. HILDI: So we’re going to put that on the walls, and then to add a little texture… Hildi reaches into a large wooden box, pulls out a live bat, and bites its head off. NEIGHBORS: [bleep]! Hildi daubs the bloody stump of the bat’s neck against the wall. HILDI: [unintelligible] 'Scuse me. Hildi spits out the bat head on the floor. NEIGHBORS: [bleep]! HILDI: See, to add contrast, and a little drama, we use this daubing technique. It’s adapted from sponge painting. Obviously it’ll look better once we have the lighter color on the walls, but this is just a demonstration. OTHER NEIGHBOR: [bleep]. HILDI: You guys, it’s Ozzy. He’ll love it. NEIGHBOR: I don’t know… Hildi lunges at him and waves the headless bat under his nose. HILDI: See this? This is you if you don’t get this room cleared out. NOW! Cue high-speed room-clearing shot. The neighbors carry furniture out of the room as Hildi chases them with the decapitated bat. INT. THE NEIGHBORS’ HOUSE Designer FRANK BIELEC greets the Osbournes as they enter. FRANK: So what kind of ideas do you have for this room? OZZY: Some [bleep]ing soundproofing, for a start. KELLY: [bleep] yes. FRANK: Well, we know these folks like to go out dancing, go to the clubs, whatever. SHARON: Not enough. FRANK: So I was thinking we’d make their home sort of a contrast to that whole scene. You know, make it more of a sanctuary, so they can come home and— JACK: Right, I’m off. KELLY: Hey, if he doesn’t [bleep]ing have to stay here, then [bleep] if I do! SHARON: Both of you little rotters are staying. Now sit the [bleep] down. OZZY: [unintelligible]. KELLY: Oh, [bleep] off. OZZY: Oi! [unintelligible]. Unnerstand? JACK: Yeah, Kelly. KELLY: You [bleep] off too. FRANK: Okay, well, we have a lot of work to do, so let’s start carrying stuff out and we can talk about it as we go. Cue high-speed room-clearing shot. Frank, Sharon, Kelly, and Jack appear to be carrying items out at super speed, while Ozzy appears to be carrying items with the speed of a normal person. Shot ends with Jack and Kelly flat on their backs in the middle of the empty floor, ostentatiously exhausted. [END OF EXCERPT] Okay, I think that’s all I have room for today. I’ll try to post some more tomorrow. * Not really. Trading Spaces is the intellectual property of Discovery Communications, Inc. This is a parodic work of fiction; no copyright or trademark infringement is intended or implied. Any resemblance to actual events is totally not my fault. Props to Stee at Television Without Pity for his great recaps of MTV’s The Osbournes. And I’m sure Hildi would never go off her meds without a good reason. posted by M. Giant 11:22 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, April 16, 2002 Last week we got a car key in the mail. Included with the key was a mailer inviting us to stop by a nearby car dealership and try out the key in a new Oldsmobile Alero (TM). If the key fits the car, we get to drive it home. The letter claimed that 5,000 similar key/mailer packages had been sent out in our area, which meant we had one chance in 5,000 of winning the car. I'm sorry, am I supposed to actually believe this? This is clearly some sort of transparent ruse to get bodies into the dealership so some salesperson can glom onto them and not let them leave for a half hour just so they can hear some sales pitch. And in this part of the country, that'll work, because people around here will be so grateful for the chance to lose a free car that they'll feel obligated to hang around and drink bad coffee while being dragged around on a tour of the lot. I imagine the thought of that alone kept people away in droves. Maybe five hundred people actually showed up. That means that the dealer only has a one-in-ten chance of having to give the car away. Multiply that by my one-in-five-thousand chance, and that only gives me a one in fifty thousand chance to win the car. I'm better off playing PowerBall (TM). In fact, it's entirely possible that the winning key was never sent out. Even if 4,999 people out of the 5,000-member field shows up and nobody wins, they can just say that the five thousandth person would have won if only he or she had come in. Then they can sell the car like they planned to do in the first place, with the added benefit of at least 9,998 people in the area knowing where the dealership is now (I say 9,998 because everyone who comes in would have to bring someone to drive their old car home). It's a no-lose proposition for them. Of course, there's no way that they'll get that level of participation, because there's only a two-day window for the contest, which ended yesterday. So do you think I had any desire to piss away my lunch break yesterday schlepping out to a car lot in the western suburbs to talk to some unctuous sales guy for the sake of an inifinitesmal chance to win a boring car I don't want or need from people who have no intention of giving it away in the first place? Damn straight I did. posted by M. Giant 9:34 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, April 15, 2002 I learned an invaluable lesson last night, and I'm going to share it with you all: Bowling is a lot more fun when you own your own ball. When I was a kid, I didn't get why people would spend money on a bowling ball when they could just grab one off the rack at the bowling alley for free. I figured it was some kind of prima donna thing: "Hey, get me, I've got my own ball. I'm a serious bowler." Then about a year or so ago, Trash and I started going bowling semi-regularly on Sunday nights, and I found the perfect ball. Not only was it the right weight, but the holes fit my fingers, which is rare. Most balls have holes that are either too far apart or too small for me, so I'm usually forced to spend the evening handling my ball like a mittened arthritic, throwing gutterball after gutterball. But with this ball, I could hold it comfortably and happily as I threw gutterball after gutterball. The problem was that someone frequently got to it before I did, so I'd get stuck rolling a 35-pound ball down the alley with both hands while some other bastard racked up strikes with my ball. And I had to watch it happening, because my ball glowed like green kryptonite under the black lights and I could see it gliding smoothly down the boards from ten lanes away. It became my mission to own that ball. Theoretically, I knew it was possible because my friend Dirt had once bowled over 200 and the alley let him keep the ball he used. "I can do that," I said to myself. "As long as I get there early enough to bowl six games, I can get 200 easy." Then someone explained that Dirt had bowled 200 in one game, and I wasn't so sure. I didn't give up, though. I worked on my game, trying to work my way up to 200. For a while it was in sight; one night I bowled 191, my best game ever. That ball was practically mine. Then for some reason my curve disappeared and my game turned to shit. My average plummeted as I tried to adjust to this inexplicable development, and I began to doubt whether I'd ever fight my way back north of 130 again. I bowled game after game, each time holding out hope that this would be the game that would win me permanent possession of my ball, each time losing hope by the third frame. And bowling seven pointless frames per game can become a soul-deadening proposition. I became surly and disinterested during games. Between games, I picked fights in the parking lot and had immoral liasons for drug money in the men's room. But then everything changed. Dirt, the man who had given me hope in the first place that I would one day own my own ball, gave me something even better: the ball itself. Trash and I were helping him and Banana move into their new house, and he offered me one of his bowling balls. It's a couple of pounds heavier than "my ball" at the alley, but that was fine since my arm had gotten, if not more accurate, at least stronger from all of the futile ball-hurling I'd been doing. Even better, it fit my hand perfectly. Better still, it was mine. Best of all, it was free. Last night was the first chance I had to use it, since Trash won't let me practice in the basement using wineglasses as pins. And you know what? Bowling is fun again! The only thing is I don't have a bag so I had to carry the ball in and out of the place totally naked. Which made me a little paranoid that someone would think I was trying to steal one of the alley's balls at the end of the night. Because in my head, anyone can walk out of a bowling alley with a ball as long as it's in a bag, but a bagless ball like mine is suspicious somehow. Or so I thought, but nobody even looked at me funny. Which made me realize I probably could have stolen "my ball" all along. Except then I'd have to bring it back to use it, which would put me in the position of basically having to steal it again every week, so that wouldn't have been any good either. In any case, last night was a totally different experience, bowling-wise. I could just relax and enjoy it, and not care that my scores weren't very good. The high point of the evening was when everyone I was bowling with ended up with a final score of 107. There was no pressure, no lofty goal, just fun. I don't mind any more that I'll probably die before I bowl 191 again. And it was all because I finally got a ball of my own. Or maybe it was all the beer I drank. posted by M. Giant 11:16 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, April 12, 2002 Every day when I come home I check the "For Sale" sign next door to see if there's a "Sold" sign hanging from it. Every day I'm disappointed. I say "disappointed," but the truth is that I'm actually ambivalent about the whole thing. If the house next door actually fetches its huge asking price, we're going to have to start seriously thinking about selling ours. I say "seriously thinking about" it, but the truth is that we pretty much already are. The way property values have been acting, we wouldn't be able to afford a house in our neighborhood if we didn't already own one. We've joked about cashing in on our equity, but selling our old house would require us to buy a new one. Because no amount of cash is going to make a U-Haul a home. And selling a house at a ridiculously overinflated price doesn't seem like such a shrewd move when you have to turn around and buy another house at an equally ridiculously overinflated price. So that's not such an attractive option. Or so we thought. Turns out there's a neighborhood on the other side of town that shows all the signs of being the Next Next Big Thing. Except it doesn't know it yet. So our friends Dirt and Banana (not their real names) were able to buy a house there that's as nice as ours for a price that in our neighborhood would be a downpayment on a storage shed. Which got Trash and me going, "hmmmmmmm." We say "hmmmmmmm," but we actually mean, "what if we unloaded our house for five times what we paid for it, eliminated all of our debt, and moved into a bigger, nicer house in a cheaper but just as nice neighborhood?" Where's the downside? Well, obviously having to pack up and move is a big one, but aside from that? Actually, that might be enough of one. The possibility that our house might be on the market by the end of summer has helped speed up our efforts at fixing the place up. We've got some momentum going, which is good. On the other hand, it seems like the house is in a constant state of what I call "stuff spread all over the house where it doesn't belong because the room where it does belong is having something done to it right now." It's getting to the point where we barely notice the mattress on the dining room table or the contents of the medicine cabinet in the hallway any more. You think I'm kidding, don't you? The situation has also changed my mindset when working on projects around the house. I used to do a shitty job and think, "that's good enough for us." Now I do a shitty job and think, "that's good enough for a potential buyer." It's a total one-eighty, and I'm not sure when it happened. Plus I've unconsciously gotten into the habit of mentally identifying things around the house that could go into offsite storage if we did decide to try and sell the place. You know, to make it look more spacious. Christmas decorations? Storage. Half of my guitars? Storage. Cats? Storage. So I'm clearly mentally preparing myself to move. Sure, I'd miss being able to walk to the movie theater, but we've only done that a few times in nine years anyway. Mainly because that theater shows predominantly rotten movies. In any case, we should do okay marketwise, because the house is in way better shape than it was when we bought it. And I say "better," but that's quite an understatement considering that it includes the fact that unlike the previous occupant, we took the art off the walls before we painted them. Consider that a free tip to you DIY-er's out there. posted by M. Giant 12:41 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, April 11, 2002 Lately my wife Trash has become a huge fan of the TV show Trading Spaces. For a while she actually wanted to go on the show, until her desire was overtaken by a pathological and completely reasonable fear of what that psycho Hildi might do to our house. I've always been a little more resistant to the idea. Even if Hildy spares you, the best-case scenario is that now you have one room in your house that's so brilliant, the rest of the house looks like hell. Which has already happened to us. Last year, we did some remodeling in the kitchen. We got more counter space, more cabinet space, a bigger sink, and a new refrigerator. Plus we painted in there. It looked great when we were done. So great, in fact, that now we had to redecorate the whole damn house. That's part of the reason we've been so busy with home improvement projects lately. The other part is next door. Let me 'splain: As of this coming July, Trash and I will have lived in our house for nine years. That's a long time in human terms. In real estate market terms, however, it's apparently several generations. We bought the house in 1993 from a woman who was in a hurry to unload it so she could marry some dude and go help him raise ducks in Fargo. I'm not kidding about this. We obliged by making an insultingly low offer which, to the surprise of ourselves and our realtor, was accepted after minimal negotiation and compromise on our part. There was some slight initial hostility from our neighbors, given that we'd singlehandedly put a dent in their property values by getting a home so cheaply in their neighborhood. They forgot all about it, though, after a couple other houses on the block got sold at more normally inflated prices. We didn't know it at the time, but we owned real estate in a neighborhood that was our city's Next Big Thing. For whatever reason, everybody wants to be our neighbor now. I don't know why. Maybe it's because you can't get there from downtown without driving around one of two lakes. Personally, I see that as a downside, and I won't be happy until Lake Harriet has either a bridge or a tunnel that gives me immediate access to the other shore. Nobody seems to agree with me on that, though. Our next-door neighbors died a couple of years ago, and their kids sold the house to some real-estate speculator from the snooty western suburbs. They came in and did some "renovations." These consisted, in their entirety, of: 1. Slapping new shingles on the old roof. The eaves were nearly rotted away, so they simply whacked them off without replacing them. I just hope they don't plan on showing the house while it's raining. 2. Painting every room in the house. They picked some nice colors, but even the nicest color is going to look a little tacky when you've thrown a couple of coats of it OVER THE LIGHT SWITCHES. 3. Replacing the hardwood floor in the upstairs bedroom. Now this beautiful midcentury home has a bedroom floor that screams 2002. 4. Putting all black appliances in the teeny-tiny kitchen. See #3. 5. Sweeping the ashes out of the woodburning fireplace. They can't say if the fireplace works, as they haven't lit it. The speculators then put the home back on the market for nearly $200,000 more than they paid for it. Considering they spent as much as five hundred dollars on the renovations, this might end up being a good investment for them. Of course, the "for sale" sign has been in the yard for over a month, and they've whacked twenty-five grand off their original asking price. They might have to be satisfied with only a $175,000 profit. In the meantime, we're living next door to a house that's comparable to ours, but it's on the market for nearly five times what we paid. At some point, we're going to have rich neighbors. Not only that, we're going to have rich, stupid neighbors. I have no idea who they'll be, but I'm working on elaborate plans to fleece them out of large sums of money as we speak. Or perhaps, instead of cheating our neighbors, we might be better off cheating their neighbors. I.e., whoever ends up buying our house, should we decide to sell. More on that tomorrow. posted by M. Giant 2:57 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, April 10, 2002 At the risk of turning this into "M. Giant's Incompetent Amateur Home Improvement Corner," here's another entry in "M. Giant's Incompetent Amateur Home Improvement Corner." Yesterday I forgot to include an update on my fourth project for the weekend, which was to finish prepping the second bedroom to be painted. That was another project I didn't have a chance to get to since the kitchen floor ate my weekend. Last night I spent some time working in there and I think it's just about ready for us to so some major damage. I did some more sanding and smoothed on another layer of drywall compound. Unlike the other rooms we've painted, I want to take the time to do this one right. I don't want to get to the painting and find myself trying to cover up imperfections in the walls with an extra saturated paint roller. No, this time I'm going to make sure that the walls are as smooth as a mirror before anyone even opens a paint can. So I've spent hours working toward that end. Then I realized that this is the first room in our house to be sponge-painted, a technique that is ideal for concealing wall imperfections. Oops. Oh, well. Achieving the perfect wall is a good exercise, I'm sure. It'll come in handy when I do the study. That's the room where I've used about five pounds of drywall compund to patch a gaping, jagged hole in the wall that used to go all the way outside. I'm getting good with this stuff. I swear, it's getting to the point where I could use it to patch up the hole in the Titanic if it wasn't underwater. I did accomplish something useful in the second bedroom last night, though: I painted the ceiling. A phrase which, amusingly, happens to be my favorite obscure euphemism for masturbation. There's probably some way that I could draw a connection between that fact and all the time I spent trying to get the walls just right, but I can't for the life of me imagine how to go about it. Maybe it'll come to me later. posted by M. Giant 2:16 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, April 09, 2002 As promised, today I have pictures of my home improvement efforts from this past weekend. We're talking before, after, and in some cases, during. Strap in, because here we go: Here's what the light switches in the entryway looked like on Friday evening: And here's what they looked like Monday morning: Hey, at least I didn't electrocute myself. And here's what the closet in the second bedroom looked like before I ripped down the inner wall and replaced it with sheetrock: If you think it's sad that I destroyed something with character and history and replaced it with something modern and sterile, don't. Because I haven't yet. I haven't even emptied the closet out. As for the kitchen floor, I actually got something done there. Feel free to hum the Trading Spaces theme to yourself as you scroll through the following pictures: Here's what the kitchen looked like on Friday evening after I cleared all the stuff out of there to work on it. Sadly, this was the best the floor had looked in a while. The countless gouges and nicks don't really show up in the photo, but trust me, they're there. Let me zoom in on one of them for you: That's the worst one, right in front of our refrigerator. You just know that's a breeding ground for all sorts of varieties of nasty bacteria. Good thing I can't zoom in any closer. Each gouge and nick has a low point and a high point. The high points are above the general level of the linoleum, and we can't have that. So I had to crawl around on the floor shaving off the sticky-uppy bits with a razor blade. I worked using the linoleum's grid pattern as a guide, doing one 6" x 6" square at a time. After I was done, I had a bowl full of tiny linoleum fragments which I set aside to sprinkle over my oatmeal the next morning. No, I'm kidding. I don't eat oatmeal. The next step was to spread embossing leveler all over the floor, to fill in the low spots in the linoleum so that the new tiles would be able to stick. This was a lot harder than I expected. For some reason, they make the stuff fairly quick-drying. You pour a little on the floor, and you have about three minutes to get it evened out before it gets about as easy to spread as cold butter. I wouldn't mind if they made it a little slower-drying if that meant I could just empty the container on the floor and walk away while it spread out evenly by itself, but nobody asked me. Which is why I was up until 3:00 Saturday morning. After it was dry the next day, I had to go over every inch of it with a putty knife to make sure all the ridges were smoothed out. And as fast as that stuff dried, there were a lot of ridges. Hard ridges. Again, the floor's grid pattern came in handy. I think this was the first time I ever wished our kitchen was smaller. This part took me late into Saturday afternoon, when I took this picture: Notice that by a bizarre coincidence, the embossing leveler is nearly the exact same color as our kitchen walls (you can't tell here, but you'll be able to later). By this point in the project, that fact was enough to sorely tempt me to leave the floor as it was. Hey, at least it was nice and smooth. And I had saved myself the effort of ripping up the old linoleum, which might have taken me as long as ten minutes. What kept me going was my prediction that after all this, laying down the tiles would be a piece of cake. Famous last words. Here's what an hour or so of laying tiles accomplished: Pretty sharp, huh? Trash picked out the tiles. Notice I started in the middle, even though I didn't understand why at the time. All I knew is that everyone told me to start in the middle with an urgency usually reserved for matters of national security. This seemed like it would involve a lot more work than, say, starting in the corner, which would if nothing else save me from having to cut and trim around at least two edges. But now I understand. It's because some of the tiles vary by as much as two or three angstroms in size, which may cause them to get slightly out of alignment with one another. If you start in the middle, they only have have half the distance to get out of line. Not that I didn't do my best with the space I had. That's after all the full tiles were down. Plus the edge under the refrigerator. I'm glad we have a new fridge that rolls nicely now, rather than our old one which used to slide back and forth on plow blades. Otherwise our new floor would have been ruined before I was even done with it. Thanks for talking me into getting a new fridge, Trash. Cutting and trimming and shaping and laying the tiles around the edges took me quite a bit longer than the main part. Especially the door frames. Why do they have to be that shape? Would it kill people to make doorframe moldings that are, like, square? We're lucky enough to have three doors into our kitchen, which factored out to six individual tiles that took me about a half-hour each to get right. Grr. I much preferred the parts where I could fit the tiles against a nice, straight wall. Trash got home when I was halfway around, and came to my rescue, proving to be a huge help. We were done by early evening. I learned that I would suck on Trading Spaces. Sure, I was able to stay well under a thousand-dollar budget (actually, about a tenth of that), but the project took me a few more than forty-eight hours. Plus if someone on the show came back after two days and there was nothing but a new floor, they'd be pissed. Also, my sitting-down-on-the-floor-and-then-getting-up-again muscles were totally shot, my right wrist wouldn't support my weight any more, and my hands looked like I'd spent the weekend taming lions. So there's that. But now I know how to lay a floor. If you're thinking of doing it yourself, here's the most important thing to remember: Hire someone. posted by M. Giant 7:33 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, April 08, 2002 I read an interview witrh David Lynch once, in which he was talking about painting. He said he would often have dreams in which he would see these incredible paintings, and he would be upset because someone else had done them. Then he would wake up and realize that those paintings actually came from his own mind, which meant they were his and thus he was free to paint them. But then he couldn't remember the paintings any more. I had a similar experience this morning. I had a brilliant idea in a dream, but instead of waking up and forgetting it, I woke up and realized what a lame idea it was. I'm not going to go into too much detail about the dream, but the upshot was that I had the idea of using the Internet to publish a sort of "choose your own adventure" in serial form. Like every week's installment would end with a decision to be made by the readers, and I would take a poll to see which direction the story would go in for next week. Even as I was considering this my dream morphed into a sort of Matrix prequel in which the machines had just begun the attack and humans were being rounded up for purposes we didn't yet understand. It was scary in my dream, and I thought it would be a good way to inaugurate the world-changing revolution in storytelling and electronic media to which my prophetic mind had given glorious birth. Then I woke up realizing that there's a reason that most people stop reading "Choose Your Own Adventure" books before high school. And that maybe serialized fiction has already been tried on the Internet with less than spectacular results. And that The Matrix and "CYOA" are probably copyrighted to the hilt anyway. And that no matter how you sell it, no reader is going to consider it much of a conundrum when presented with the situation of being confined inside the nearest polling venue with several dozen panicky neighbors and then given the choices of "A: Try to escape" and "B: Sit around waiting for giant, evil robots to show up and clamp jumper cables onto your genitals." So maybe it wouldn't work quite the way I conceived it. On the other hand, it bears more thinking about. Maybe something from my dream-fevered brain farts can be salvaged and made into something that'll make me rich and famous after all. No, I said me, dammit. You'd better not be stealing my crappy idea. Maybe I'll let you buy it, but that's it. By the way, of all the projects I had planned for this past weekend, I was able to successfully finish... One. Maybe I'll have pictures up soon, if I can figure out how to do that. posted by M. Giant 9:52 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, April 05, 2002 I'm a bachelor this weekend. My lovely wife Trash is going to Milwaukee to meet up with her friends from grad school this weekend, so I have the house to myself. That means I have two days in which I’ll be free to get as much poontang as I would if I were a swinging single guy, which is to say absolutely none. Normally when this happens, I like to spend some time housecleaning, so she comes home to a cleaner place than the one she left. When she goes away, I figure that it's to my advantage to make sure she wants to come back. I like it when she comes home from a trip and walks into a layout from Better Homes and Gardens. Or at least I would, if I were ever able to accomplish that. Not this time, homeslice. This time I've got actual home-improvement-type projects to work on. I’m not getting rid of messes, I’m making ‘em. Here's a rundown of the projects I'm hoping to complete this weekend: 1. Put in a new kitchen floor. I've never done anything like this before, and I'm a little nervous. Mind you, I think the kind of floor I'm putting in is the easiest kind to install, unless you count sawdust or filbert shells as a valid design choice, which I don't. I'm not cutting a huge sheet of linoleum to fit around all of our cabinets or anything, which is good because I have no idea how people are able do that anyway. I'm not putting in ceramic tile, so I don't have to deal with all the adhesive and grout and other messy stuff. No, I'm just throwing down a layer of self-adhesive vinyl tiles. You know, the kind with the backing you peel off and stick to the floor. Of course, before I can do that I have to spread some goop on the floor so the 3-D aspect of the old linoleum pattern doesn't show through under the new stuff. I'm worried that I’ll start lining them up wrong and not realize it until I’m almost to the edges of the room and I have some kind of messed-up vortex effect going. Also, the measuring and cutting makes me nervous. As does the very real possibility that I'll come up a sixteenth of a tile short for the surface area I need to cover. Whatever happens, it'll be a learning experience. Not that what I learn will be of any use to me, because I plan never to do anything like this again. 2. Finish prepping the spare bedroom to be repainted. There's actually not much left to do on this. I started patching the cracks and holes in the walls a couple of weeks ago, but there’s always stuff you don’t see until the room is totally empty and you’re stalking every inch of wallspace with a putty knife. Amazingly enough, I’ve got a good start on that, too. I’ve even taped around the doors, windows and floor trim. I’m getting good at this. See, we’ve already repainted the kitchen, living room, hallway, and bathroom in the past year, and we kind of have a system. What we normally like to do is try to pack it all into one day. That way we can sit around waiting for spackle to dry, debate whether we have the time or the inclination to slap a coat of primer over it, apply fresh paint while dust from the sanding is still flying, and then act all surprised when blobs of damp plaster start coming off on the roller pads. Plus you get the bonus of painting the walls, trim, and ceiling three different colors without the benefit of masking tape. It’s a nearly flawless system and it’s worked well for us in the past. This time, though, there’s not so much of a rush because unlike the kitchen, living room, or bathroom, nobody cares if the spare bedroom is torn up for a week or two. Especially because of something cool I discovered: I have a plastic dropcloth taped down all around the edges of the room, and when the furnace kicks on, the floor vent inflates it from below so the room is like a half-assed version of one of those Moonwalk tents at church carnivals. There isn’t much bounce to it if you weigh more than a gram or two, but when you’re doing home improvement you need to find your fun wherever you can. 3. Fix the closet wall in the second bedroom. Trash happened to discover a slight problem with one of the walls inside the closet: it’s falling off the frame. Our house was built in 1950 or something, so all of the walls are plaster over some weird composite fiberboard material I’ve never seen and which frankly I’m getting pretty tired of patching. So that closet wall is going to come tumblin’, crumblin’ down. After all the work this house has caused me, it’s going to be cathartic to be able to beat the hell out of it with a hammer and a crowbar. And maybe some power tools. Then instead of messing around with giant gobs of drywall compound and a whole lot of sandpaper, I can just slap up a hunk of sheetrock, which will only require me to mess around with neat layers of drywall compound and considerably less sandpaper. Maybe I should wait on this, but hey, the second bedroom is torn up already. I might as well make a bigger mess and clean it up rather than making two smaller messes and having to clean up twice. Always thinking, me. 4. Rewire the light switches by the front door. Ever since we moved into this house nearly nine years ago, we’ve been on a never-ending quest to find a new switchplate for the light switches in the entryway. How hard can this be, you ask? Well, the switches are arranged in a triangle. You can’t find a switchplate anywhere that will fit that configuration. I’m pretty sure that’s because the electrical code doesn’t allow switches to be that close together anymore. I’m also pretty sure that Trash lost the old switchplate on purpose when we repainted the living room, because it was ugly. Although not as ugly as the exposed hardware and wiring we’ve been looking at ever since. It’s okay, though, because I’m going to pull out the entire mess and redo it, with a new switch box and everything. I’m pretty sure I can pull this off, even though the last time I tried to do something like this I ended up with a dimmer switch that doesn’t dim. See, since then, I took a class in electrical wiring. So I’m practically certified. But don’t be surprised if this turns out to be my last entry. I’m just saying. Actually, I think that’s it. I hope I can pull it all off. I’d hate for Trash to have to come home to a house with sawdust and scrap lumber everywhere, exposed wires hanging out of the walls, no power, a kitchen floor you couldn’t drive a Jeep on, and two dead cats. That wouldn’t do much for my chances of getting her to come back from her next trip. posted by M. Giant 11:46 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, April 04, 2002 I’ve decided to get myself a MacArthur Genius Grant. If you haven’t heard of these, here’s the deal. The MacArthur Foundation gives you five hundred thousand dollars. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. You don’t request it, you don’t apply for it, you don’t get nominated, you just get it. Because someone at the MacArthur Foundation thinks you’re smart or talented, and they want to help you do nothing but be smart or talented full-time. It’s a ridiculously, almost suspiciously simple thing to do with half a million dollars. For years, I’ve assumed that a Genius Grant, a.k.a. a MacArthur Fellowship, would always be on my list of Things I Deserve But Will Never Get. Because while my genius is certainly towering and undeniable, it tends to shine most brightly in the little corner of the world I’ve set aside for it. Yeah, that’s it. So I never really expected anyone at the MacArthur Foundation to notice the one-man mother lode of intellect and ability that is I. All that’s going to change, though. A very good friend of mine, whom I’ll refer to by her self-chosen pseudonym of BuenaOnda, was recently accepted into a prestigious graduate studies program at the University of Chicago. Obviously my lovely wife Trash (also not her real name, and also self-chosen, I swear to God) and I are terribly proud of her, even though we’re sad that she’s moving to Chicago and abandoning us. Last night I saw BuenaOnda at the bar and she told me she’s pretty much decided what her course of study is going to be. I don’t really remember the details, because it ended with “job at the MacArthur Foundation” which was tantamount to waving a five-hundred-thousand-dollar check under my nose. Does that seem like a leap to you? Well, maybe that’s why I’m getting the Genius Grant and you’re not. I supported her career ambitions before; imagine how much I’m behind her now that I know she could wind up deciding who gets the Genius Grants. Of course we’ll still miss her, but now I’m going to help her pack. posted by M. Giant 12:52 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, April 01, 2002 Art Buchwald? Mark Russell? Throw me a bone here, people. posted by M. Giant 3:34 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Or James Lileks? posted by M. Giant 2:32 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Okay, would you belieeeeve... Calvin Trillin? posted by M. Giant 2:08 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:All, right. Joke's over. I'm not really Dave Barry. Saying "I am not making this up" doesn't make it true. No, it's just another April Fool's joke. I'm really just Roy Blount, Jr. Although I wouldn't mind a Pulitzer of my own. posted by M. Giant 11:44 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:I initially started out this blog with the idea that it would be anonymous, as a sort of experiment. But I'm finding that it's too difficult to start over. I'm not as young as I used to be. So over the weekend, I decided I would come forward with my true identity. I am Dave Barry. I am not making this up. Over the past six months, ever since the release of Big Trouble was postponed in the wake of September 11, I've begun questioning whether I still have the drive to continue with my nationally syndicated column. I started wondering, is my work today as good as it was when I first started writing for the Herald? Is it my work that keeps me in print, or just the momentum I've generated with my name? So I decided to see what would happen if I ditched the name and took up writing under an alias. Depressingly, the answer is nothing. Whatever I had that landed me this gig all those years ago, whether it was talent, drive, or boredom, it's gone now. Although I guess I can eliminate boredom, because I've still got plenty of that. That's why I decided that the readers of this blog (all two of them, counting myself) should be the first to know that I'm packing it in. This will be the last year of my column. I'll make an official announcement in a few months. Thank you for all your support, and for having the honesty to let me...umm... Okay, obviously this is just a silly April Fool's gag. I'm not really quitting my column. Thanks for reading, everyone! posted by M. Giant 10:33 AM 0 comments 0 Comments:
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
