Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
|
|
|
M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
|
|
Friday, February 28, 2003 Reader Mail Slot, Episode X Paradoxically, this month’s Reader Mail Slot begins with a Reader Mail that may threaten the very existence of Reader Mail! From Fran: You should put up a Comments feature and I bet you'd get great comments from people who relate to your stories, as well as good feedback on your writing, if you wanted any. I’ve thought about that. I do love getting comments and feedback on my writing, and I’d probably get more if I didn’t make people open their e-mail clients to give them to me. But on the other hand, that would make the Reader Mail Slot kind of redundant. Since that’s the closest thing to a gimmick that I’ve got, I’m not about to let it go. If I had Comments, I wouldn’t be able to do entries like today’s any more, and my will to maintain Velcrometer would drain away month by month until its bleached skeleton became one more insignificant addition to the vast, neglected boneyard of abandoned online journals. Er, maybe that’s what Fran had in mind. Let’s just move on. From Anna: I noticed today you were bitching about Sitemeter. Let's say I share your pain. I finally gave up and got a freebie stats program installed on my webserver. I thought I'd pass along a link in case you were interested. It's a program called AWStats, and you can download it free. It’s pretty damned nifty and since it runs on your server, it never fails. The only thing you have to do to make it work is turn on verbose logging on your server. Maybe your host would do that for ya. Whatever. I can’t even get my host to rise when I bake it. (See, that’s how far I’ll go for a joke. Nobody will get that but Catholics, and they won’t think it’s funny. But I’ll remember you all when I’m roasting in Hell for blasphemy.) Anyhoo, if you want to see a demo, you can click on the image links on that page and it'll show you what kind of output it creates. Even though all I know about servers is that you should tip them at least fifteen percent, I followed Anna’s suggestion and had a look. The amount of data that’s available on these reports is like a drink from a firehose. My brain was full in seconds. I can’t imagine the effect that that much data would have on my cerebrum if it actually had anything to do with me. Since this is a Blogger site, though, I don’t think I’ll be able to set it up here. For now, I’ll be sticking with Sitemeter, the AOL of webstats programs. It’s easy, straightforward, and works most of the time. Especially since I put the fear of God into them with my merciless little exposé. Yeah, who’s the man? [adjusts package] Okay, the answer to that depends on whom you’re asking. For instance, I’ll give you an entirely different answer than my cats will. And speaking of cats, here’s Molly to rescue me from my own clumsy segue: I read today's entry regarding your cat's dentist appointment, and having gone through this twice with each of my two cats (including tooth extractions), I wanted to suggest that you might try Hill's Prescription Diet Feline T/D dry food. Both my cats had pretty bad teeth, and my vet suggested I try this food (she also suggested brushing, but I value my health too much for that). It made an amazing difference in both cats, and they have not had any teeth or gum problems since. You can only get it from a vet, which is kind of a pain, but in the long run, I find it worth the extra money and hassle. Thanks for the tip, but now the cats’ teeth are actually in better shape than mine are. Besides, they’re already on vet-prescribed food. Strat has his anti-whizzer-infection food to keep him from getting sick and peeing on me again. Orca is on a Thorazine-laced mixture to take the edge off her murderous rages. Both have to have a powder sprinkled into their food that keeps them from shredding all the furniture at the same time, and drops mixed in with their water to suppress the night terrors from all the drugs they’re taking. These two are more medicated than your average American fourth-grader. Okay, not really. Except for the no-more-peeing-on-Dad food, which they’re staying on no matter how bad their teeth get. Obviously, maximizing their health minimizes trips to the vet, which in turn minimizes battles to get them into their carrier. Robyn had a suggestion on that front: I have a cat myself...do you have a top opening cat carrier? If you don't, invest. SO much easier than trying to shove the squirming thing into the itty-bitty side hole. God, you’re not kidding. Our carrier is of the plastic shell variety. When we first got it, I spent like three hours trying to stuff one cat in through one of those little holes in the side. Then, when I finally succeeded, the hateful beast just walked out past that swinging metal grate at the end of the carrier. I decided to just stick her right back in the same way, and that worked much better. Boy, was I embarrassed when the vet explained that those were just airholes. Sorry, cat. Hey, did you know people read me as far away as Japan? It’s true. Here’s Rachel to prove it: I currently live in Northern Japan [See?], where ovens are a total rarity (rice-based diet and all that). After 2 years I've discovered you can get around ovens, if you have a toaster oven and are creative. For example, did you know you can bake a batch of cookies 4 cookies at a time? See, this is funny because we already had a toaster oven in our basement that we never used. The day I got this e-mail, I dug the little appliance out from behind the bar, and Trash and I feasted on toaster-ovenned corn dogs and fake chicken nuggets. Different people have different reasons for creating blogs and online journals. Some do it because they’re so brilliant that they have to share their wisdom with the world. Others do it because they’re so stupid that without their readers telling them what to do they’d likely starve to death. Thanks, Rachel. We owe you our lives. Oh, sorry, you weren’t done. And it helps keep everything warm, too! (We don't have central heating here, either.) And yet I’m still too stupid to have revisited this e-mail when my furnace filter was clogged. Hey, stupid people, get blogs! They’ll save your life one day! They’ll also give you minor headaches, as Kimberly points out: I think there's something wrong with your permalinks. The most recent entry's permalink always sprouts up the entry before it (even though that entry has it's own permalink id.) This is very sad to me because it makes linking to you more difficult. Sad to you? Sad to you? Here I am, wondering why the hell I never get Slashdotted or Plasticked or Instapundited or anything, and it turns out it’s all the fault of a bug in Blogger’s code! Fark! I handled it like a champ, though. I let Kimberly know that I had no time for her petty concerns and it was probably her browser’s fault anyway. And, for bonus points, I didn’t really understand what she was saying anyway—despite her being perfectly clear—and so I inaccurately said I couldn’t reproduce the problem. With these skills, I could totally get a job with Microsoft Tech Support if either one of their current employees quits or dies. And I know it’s not just my blog either, because it also happens at Dave Barry’s blog. And he’s got a freaking Pulitzer. But I’m going to try and get it fixed. Hey, Blogger guys? One of your million users would like you to take a look at this issue, okay? Don’t make me do what I did to those guys at Sitemeter. They’re still smarting from the tongue-lashing I gave them, you know. Hey, if I get them to fix it, do you suppose I’ll get a Pulitzer too? That’s the sort of question I’d normally wrap up with, but I’d like to leave you with a final thought from Imchoboo, upon seeing the naked picture I posted of “myself.” ew ew ew ew eeeeeewwwwwww!!!!!!!!!! I think we’ve all learned something. posted by M. Giant 2:40 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, February 27, 2003 The Land of Make-Believe Fred Rogers is riding the big trolley in the sky today. Along with Sesame Street and Electric Company, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was part of the holy trinity of my pre-school television viewing schedule. I give those shows some of the credit for the fact that I was able to read when I was three years old. Actually, I might have been able to read starting at six months, but since I couldn’t talk yet, who would have known? Three decades later, my favorite shows are Buffy, The Sopranos, and C.S.I., and yet my killing-people-and-vampires skills place me at the bottom percentile of my age group. I guess it’s true what they say about it being harder to learn things as you get older. In any case, in Mr. Rogers’ honor, I’ll be picking up a forty-ounce of my other favorite thing from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and emptying it out on the TV. One for my neighbor. * * * Speaking of probably literate pre-verbals, yesterday I forgot to mention Deniece’s other obsession: seventies soul music. This dates back to when she was six months old. Trash and I were watching her for the evening and she was nearly inconsolable. The only thing that would calm her down was Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” in the CD player on infinite repeat. We took turns rocking her around the living room for hours, like a weird dance-marathon sitcom episode. Since then, she’s been a huge fan of Stevie, Marvin Gaye, and James Brown. You can tell because she’ll spontaneously start dancing when she hears their music. Her mom frequently tunes the digital cable to the “70s Soul” music channel and just lets Deniece go. And go she does. She swivels her hips. She raises the roof. She plants her hands on the edge of the coffee table and shakes her booty like the shortest hip-hop video babe in history. All with a smile on her face that nearly wraps around her entire head. I swear, this kid is going to be so upset when she gets old enough to realize she’s white. * * * Short entry today, because tomorrow is Reader Mail day and I’m going to be buried. It’s your own fault, you know. It doesn’t mean I’m feeling creatively bankrupt today at all. posted by M. Giant 3:14 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, February 26, 2003 Deniece at Thirteen Months Last weekend, we drove down to Iowa for my niece Deniece’s birthday party. Yes, she had her actual birthday last month, complete with party and frosting shampoo/facial. That was for the Minnesota relatives. This was for the Iowa relatives. Ergo, two birthday parties in two months. I just hope Deniece doesn’t get too grouchy the third weekend in March when a third birthday party isn’t forthcoming. And again in April, and so on. The second year of a child’s life is a little early for her parents to have to start dealing with “that time of the month.” When we arrived at Deniece’s house early Saturday afternoon, her mom was just about to put her down for her nap. That was kiboshed when Deniece heard us come in. She appeared regally at the top of the stairs in her mom’s arms, giving us a huge “hey, it’s Aaaah and Eehh! I love Aaaah and Eehh!” smile. We weren’t in the house two minutes before her parents had her demonstrating her newest skill. “Deniece, show us your tummy!” Whereupon Deniece would instantly grab the hem of her shirt and gleefully lift it up to her chin. Thirteen months old and she’s ready for Girls Gone Wild. Except, not ready ready. If you know what I mean. Ew. I think I just squicked myself out. Also, I shudder to think of the Google hits I’m going to get from this paragraph. One of Deniece’s abiding interests—aside from the standard thirteen-month-old pursuits of eating, pooping, falling down, and learning to pretend to be unable to understand a word of English because hey I’m just a baby over here and since nobody’s physically preventing me from walking across the floor that must mean that I’m finally allowed to gnaw the electrical outlet plates off the wall—is cell phones. Once, Trash’s uncle got a call that appeared to be coming from Deniece’s dad, my brother-in-law. Uncle: Hello? Deniece: Aaah. Beeeeaaaaf; gxx. Nuuuu. Uncle: Hi, Deniece, how’re you? Deniece: Nnnnnnnnn dehh (uuurooooong). Ba? Uncle: That’s nice. Deniece: Uncle:So, what’cha doin’?. Deniece: Gluhhh. Uncle figured that Deniece’s dad had called him and was just holding the phone to Deniece’s ear so she could say hi, and that the adults would be talking in a minute. Then it turned into two minutes. Then five. What actually happened was that Deniece had gotten a hold of BIL’s cell phone and pressed the right combination of buttons to get the Uncle on the line without BIL ever knowing. That is, until the Uncle asked BIL about it later, and they figured out that Deniece had made the call all on her own. Of course, this is only the call they know about. Deniece could be having an intense telephone correspondence with somebody in Manila and nobody will know until the bill shows up. BIL was telling us about this incident during our visit in December. The next day, we saw the Uncle and asked him about his conversation with Deniece. “You mean last night?” he asked us. She’d done it again. While Deniece made non-specific vocal sounds into her dad’s phone, Uncle could hear us in the background talking about the last time she’d done it. BIL started locking his phone shortly thereafter, against the day when she actually succeeded in calling the White House. Naturally, we gave Deniece a toy phone of her own for her birthday. She’s fascinated with it and the noises it makes. This is what she’s into: flashing and phones. She’s growing up so quickly. When the Uncle showed up, he made his entrance by peeking around a corner from the hallway at her. Deniece spotted him and headed straight for him at top speed, forgetting in her excitement about the whole “around the corner” concept of spatial relations and plowing into the wall. Her new phone hit the linoleum at about the same time as her ass, and both displayed admirable durability. I guess she’s not growing up too quickly. posted by M. Giant 3:47 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, February 25, 2003 Graduation My mouth has been shot full of so much Novocaine that my entire head is numb. I have to twist my neck if I want to look to the side, my tongue feels like it’s the size of a burrito, and I sound like Sylvester the Cat when I try to ssthhpea—excuse me, when I try to speak. My next couple of meals will consist of Slim-Fast™. And I couldn’t be happier. * * * It was a foggy February morning and I was running late for work. I nosed my car to the edge of the street. There was a pickup truck parked with its front bumper practically parallel to the left edge of the driveway. But around it, I could see a car slowly turning the corner onto my street. If I hurried, I could pull out and be out of its way before it drew even with where I was. I hurried. There was a car in front of it that had been obscured by the parked pick up truck. My front bumper crunched into its right front fender. Nobody was hurt, but fixing the damage to the other driver’s car cost my insurance company nine hundred dollars and change. I left the scrapes on my bumper alone because accidents resulting in more than a thousand dollars of damage require one to notify the police. And they were gunning for my public-menace ass as it was. That accident was three years ago this past Sunday. And I couldn’t be happier. * * * This week, I get to start worrying less about some things that have been worrying me. For one, I now only have one speeding ticket on the past three years of my driving record. And that one will be two years old on Friday. The next business day, I plan to call our insurance company and let them know that since the last three years have been so much better than the previous three driving-wise, I’d appreciate it if they could stop gouging me quite so deeply, thanks very much. So, provided I don’t get caught breaking the sound barrier during my commute for the rest of the week, my days of exorbitant car insurance rates will be coming to an end. (I looked for a little Java applet that would knock wood every time someone downloaded this page, but I really don’t know much about that kind of thing. Do it for me, would you please? The knocking, I mean. Thanks, that’d be great.) The other thing that’s been weighing on me is my teeth. Today’s appointment marked the end of my “course of treatment” (dentist talk for “endless and expensive torture sessions”). The last of my cavities have been filled, all of my roots that needed canalling have been canalled, and I have more crowns than a homecoming court. I’m done. Finished. Today was the first time in a year and a half that I didn’t have to get out of the chair and go right to the office to make the dreaded “next appointment.” My next appointment’s already made, it’s six months off, and it’s merely a semi-annual cleaning. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it. And not just because I learned my lesson after skipping a couple dozen or so of them. Now that I have a smaller percentage of my original teeth than Joan Rivers has of her original face, I want to take better care of them. In fact, I’ve already started, as Trash can confirm, having had to add dental floss to the “utilities” column of our budget. I don’t want to go through another “course of treatment” like this one. At least not without some tougher torture restrictions added to the Geneva Convention. And the OCD I’ve developed regarding brushing and flossing is an excellent trade for not having to lie still for hours at a time while screaming power tools grind away at my choppers and fling bits of dental shrapnel down the front of my shirt. (Actually, I do still have a tooth that’s going to need to be pulled, but I’m not counting that because a) it’s technically oral surgery and b) it kind of undercuts my theme. So I’m going to gloss over that.) It’s great not to have to worry about these things any more. Plus our furnace works fine with the new filter, so I don’t have to worry about that either. And I just found out that a promotion that I’ve been angling for isn’t going to happen because the company won’t create the new position I wanted, so I don’t have to worry about whether I would have been able to do the job. With all this worrying behind me, by next week I’ll be so happy that I’ll be peeing my pants. Which worries me. posted by M. Giant 3:19 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, February 24, 2003 Into the Cold It’s easy to get into a rut with this weblogging thing. You get into this mindset where bitching and ranting seems like the easiest way to get a cheap laugh, and then you forget about the deleterious effect that all of that negativity must be having on your karma. So I’m going to try and be a little more positive and upbeat today. Furnaces are wonderful things. It can be cold enough outside to turn flame into a liquid, but a furnace will keep your living space warm and cozy. And the great thing about having your furnace break when the temperature is a number of degrees that a quadruple amputee could count to on his fingers is that you know it happened almost right away. If the thing craps out in May or June, it could be months before you realize anything is wrong. But when you wake up in the morning and your bare feet hit a hardwood floor that feels like the back wall of a meat locker, you can’t help but be alert to the situation. I find that so, so pleasing. When we bought the house, it had this hulking gravity furnace that took up half the basement. A gravity furnace, as you know, operates on the principle that heat rises. That’s it. It makes the heat, and the warm air does what warm air does. It was ridiculously primitive, and everyone told us that that was to our advantage. Since there were few moving parts, it would never break down and it would last forever. It lasted us five years, then broke down. One morning in early February, I woke up and spent a few minutes trying to figure out how many doors and windows had been left open all night. Since the answer was none, the problem was obviously with our furnace. I went downstairs to find it cold and dark. The furnace, as it turned out, had an Achilles heel: its pilot light. Eventually the problem was diagnosed thusly: every time the furnace kicked on, it blew out its own pilot light. Two moving parts, and they managed to screw each other up. We have an agreement with our gas company; we pay them a few extra bucks a month, and they come to our house and fix any appliances that happen to break. We got our money’s worth that winter. A couple of the repair guys had their own keys to our house. I also went through a couple of boxes of wooden matches relighting the pilot light over and over. I got good at it, though. The first time I had to do it, my hand shook as I anticipated blowing the house higher than Chernobyl. By spring, I was so blasé about the procedure that I just kept a lighter and a can of hairspray in the basement so I could shoot a geyser of flame in the furnace’s general direction whenever the pilot light went out. That summer, the beast was dismantled and taken away, and we got a new furnace installed, along with central air. That was almost five years ago. I don’t have the paperwork in front of me, but I’m pretty sure we got a five-year warranty. The frost forming on both sides of our windows pretty much confirms that. The thing is, it’s still running, but the air coming out of the grates is reticent and tepid and the cats have taken up ice skating on their water bowl. It was actually a couple of degrees chilly last night, but I told Trash it was all in her head because a) I wasn’t particularly cold, and b) it’s easier to tell the other person she’s crazy than it is to call someone to fix the problem. I applied a little percussive maintenance myself to the furnace, but judging from the clouds of vapor we were exhaling this morning, it didn’t work. I called the gas company this morning to have someone come out and look at it. The first thing they asked me was when was the last time I checked the filter. Er. Um. At least I knew that it couldn’t have been more than five years ago. We set up an appointment for the guy to come out and take a look at it tomorrow morning, on the condition that a new filter didn’t fix the problem. During my lunch, I picked up a couple of new furnace filters (I knew the correct size from memory, so that’s something, right?) and brought them home. I remember installing a new furnace filter last time I had the access panel open. Oddly enough, during the intervening months some prankster had apparently replaced it with an incredibly furry acoustic ceiling tile. With that thing in there, it’s a wonder we didn’t suffocate. But now we have a new filter gathering up all the dust motes and cat hairs and assorted other allergens and histamines and what have you. It’s too early to tell if we’ll get enough heat back. Although if we wake up at three in the morning and it’s two hundred degrees in our room, that’ll be a clear indicator. posted by M. Giant 3:31 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, February 21, 2003 Alert Level Orange: the Color of Dumb I’m starting to think that Al Qaeda has already launched its latest attack on the United States. As everyone predicted, it isn’t hijacked planes this time. It’s also not poison gas in the subway, mercury in the water supply, dirty bombs, or malicious code that tells your TiVo to climb down from your entertainment center and kill you in your sleep. It’s something much more insidious than that. I believe that Al Qaeda operatives working in this country have released a chemical into our nation’s nightclubs that makes people do incredibly stupid things. I’m not talking about the ordinary, garden-variety stupid things like spilling someone else’s beer, eyeing someone else’s date, or, in many cases, going to the club in the first place. I’m talking about the kind of stupidity that gets people killed. Earlier this week, some moron fired off a blast of pepper spray in a crowded area of a Chicago nightclub that wasn’t even supposed to be open. The resulting stampede for stairs and the one open exit killed twenty-one people. Last night, the eighties hair band Great White detonated a pyrotechnic display in a Rhode Island club that had, from all appearances, been constructed entirely of kitchen matches. As of this writing, the body count is at sixty-five and rising, and may include one of the band’s guitarists. The socioeconomic impact of Rhode Island losing a third of its population overnight has yet to be determined. Let me make it clear that I’m not blaming the individuals whose sense of self-preservation led them to create a deadly crush away from the people who’d put them in these situations. Their loss is a tragedy and my sympathies go out to all of their friends and families. And let’s face it, If I were in a bar right now and someone started shooting poisonous chemicals or gouts of flame at my face, I can promise you that I wouldn’t be all, “after you, my dear fellow who’s been blocking my view all evening.” I’d become two hundred pounds of human aerosol propellant just like everyone else. No, my issue is with the people who triggered these nightmares in the first place. And it’s hard for me to believe that they’d be so blithe about putting so many lives in danger without some kind of nefarious external influence. In the past week, eighty-six people have been eighty-sixed because they were dancing to the wrong music at the wrong time (a charge that even before last night might have been leveled at any Great White fan post-1989, but I’m making a point here). That doesn’t come close to September 11, obviously, but it’s more than a busload. It’s more than the number of NASA astronauts killed in the line of duty. It’s more than the cast of ER. They weren’t threatening anyone. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t combatants in a war. They were going about their lives when death came for them. That has all the hallmarks of a terror attack. So now that we know what the current Orange Alert is about, we know what to do about it. Stay out of nightclubs. If you must attend a show, see it in Minneapolis, which apparently hasn’t been hit yet because club owners still know how to get people out alive and unhurt. And if you absolutely cannot avoid making the scene somewhere else, make sure you know the location of all exits, windows, and stupid people. And if you see someone about to cut through a structural support or open a jar of Sarin gas or do something else stupid enough to get you killed, that plastic sheeting and duct tape you bought last week will come in handy after all. Shrink-wrap the imbecile and carry him to the curb. posted by M. Giant 3:27 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, February 20, 2003 Can You Hear Me Now? Good. A few weeks ago, Trash went to get her cell phone replaced because she was tired of being stuck with a one-way telegraph up in the hinterlands. We went to the phone store near my office. Back in a different era, it used to be a pager store. Wow, if those walls could talk, huh? The stories they could tell of a bygone age. Anyway, Trash let the guy talk us into getting two phones instead of one. Apparently the second one was free and there were unlimited minutes and family calling plans and what have you. I don’t know the details because whenever people start talking calling plans to me they might as well be reading me instructions for a dialysis machine, backwards, in Farsi. But I did pick up on the whole “two phones” thing. “What are you going to do with two phones?” I asked Trash. “Carry one around while the other is recharging?” I got the look. The look that doesn’t require words. The look that told me one of those cell phones was going to be mine. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have pointed out that matching phones would be nearly useless considering how good she is at communicating non-verbally. Although I was resistant to the idea, I could see the benefits. Up to that point, the only way she could reach me when I was “in the field” was via my pager. Which was an imperfect system. I’d get a page, then have to find a phone. Or, as was more frequently the case, I wouldn’t get the page, and then have to explain why I didn’t return it. And while “I left my pager at home” was often a factually accurate statement, it wasn’t an explanation that could empirically be called “good.” And even when I did have it with me, I couldn’t always tell it was going off because I could never figure out how to manipulate the two—count them, two—unlabeled buttons to make it go from “saucily vibrating” mode to “please lynch the owner of the portable car alarm” mode and the only way to be sure to catch every subtle, polite buzz was to carry it around between my teeth, which seemed like defeating the purpose of a device that was, after all, designed to promote communication. So now I have a cell phone, too. And it comes in handy, like this morning when I dropped her off at work and she called me one minute later to say her whole building was closed because a transformer blew or the air vents were belching out billowing clouds of anthrax or the hallways were infested with chainsaw-wielding mutant kangaroos or something. A month ago, I would have had to wait until I got all the way to work, then left again to come get her. This way I could whip a bootlegger’s turn in the middle of the road and leave the piled-up cars in my wake. Then when I went back to work, I was able to avoid the big traffic hairball by taking a different route. While we were in the phone store, I couldn’t help noticing all of the various accessories to go with your wireless talkbox. Wall chargers. Car chargers. Batman-esque phone holsters. Snazzy faceplates. Peripheral DVD drives. But I already have the ultimate cell phone accessory: a spouse who’s had a cell phone for years. It’s great because even though I have a cell phone now, nobody calls me on it because they have Trash’s number. So they call her, and if it’s something that involves me, I just get a call from Trash. It’s the ideal setup. I don’t even have to remember to turn off the phone in movie theaters because when we saw Chicago with my parents, the only people who had my mobile number were sitting next to me. It’s awesome. And even if I did get a lot more calls, I wouldn’t mind so much because I have it programmed to ring to the tune of “Play That Funky Music White Boy,” which is a decent step towards making it my personal theme song. But on the downside, I’m a customer of the company that has those commercials with the rage-inducing “can you hear me now?” dude. Have you seen the newest ad? He gets on an elevator with a woman who’s minding her own business, and he presses the button for every floor so he can run through his miniature Socratic dialogue from Hell at every altitude. Like I needed another reason to smack that guy. If he hijacked my elevator like that, I’d stuff him through the emergency hatch, duct-tape him to the cable, holler, “THERE IS NO SPOON, BITCH!” and leave his coworker at base camp to listen to the clean, clear transmission of his shrieks of agony. But that might just be me. posted by M. Giant 3:42 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, February 19, 2003 Take it Off! I now know that when you use the word “naked” in your weblog, in any context whatsoever, you’re going to end up with some prurient phrases in your referral logs. I’ve had people visit my site looking for pictures of Bitty Schram in the altogether, Paige Davis in her birthday suit, Nikki McKibbin stripping, and Marcia Brady wearing nothing but a smile and a livid handprint on her backside. Obviously, people looking for such images go away disappointed. But the sad part is that they end up here in the first place. Posting pictures of celebrities in any state of dress isn’t exactly my thing. I hardly ever post pictures of anything, period, and since the cable on my digital camera broke, that probably isn’t going to change. Except… There was one search that showed up yesterday that’s giving me second thoughts. “M. Giant Velcrometer Naked.” Now, how am I going to not take that personally? I’m both oddly flattered and mildly skeeved out. I’m sure Sars and Pamie and Uncle Bob are totally used to stuff like this by now, but it’s a new one on me. Of course, as surprised as I am that the search actually happened, I’m not surprised that it led them here. I mean, you do a search like that and where the hell else are you going to end up? The Onion? But the most awkward thing is the position it puts me in. For one reason or another, I always feel some kind of obligation to give people what they come here looking for. I suffered guilt for months over people who came looking for videogame hints. Every would-be George Foreman Grill™ gourmet pierces my conscience like the flashlight-beam eyes of a starving child on a late-night infomercial. Because I can’t help those people. Those dozens and dozens of people. But this one person? I can help. So I enlisted my wife’s help (after considerable debate; seems she wasn’t so hot on the idea my posting a sample of my lubriciousness on the web), and I decided to fulfill the demand. I just hope y’all can be discreet and not spread this around too much. Ready? Here goes. Oh, first I should mention that this probably isn’t work-safe. So take that under advisement. Sorry. I’m stalling. I’m a little nervous. But I guess the only way to do it is to just do it. I’m dropping my digital robe… Right… Now.  You’re welcome. posted by M. Giant 3:22 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, February 18, 2003 You Can’t Spell “Pointless Venting” Without “Oven” There are two hundred or so employees in my office. There are three microwaves. That’s not enough. Especially between eleven and noon on the first day after a long weekend when everyone has had time to put together lunches and bring them from home. I went into the break room today at eleven-thirty and there were half a dozen people standing there clutching their Gladware™ containers and Lean Cuisines™, their eyes fixed on the sad bank of nuke-boxes like those of a desperate cadre of Expos fans at a sports bar while their lunch breaks tick away. It’s ridiculous. These glorified clocks stand empty most of the day, except when everyone has to take a number just so they can have a turn splattering their precious molecules of cheese and tomato sauce all over the inside of one of those coveted cubic half-feet of irradiated real estate. I’m fortunate enough not to have a fixed lunchtime (which, in the manner of salaried workers everywhere, means I rarely take one), so rather than standing at the end of a line like one at a Soviet butcher shop, I decided to put my lunch back in the fridge and come back later. The food will get warm faster that way anyway. It’s obvious what we need to do, isn’t it? Just take the doors off of the microwaves, set them to run for an hour, and people can just walk in front of them holding their food. Everybody wins. There are a few bugs we’d need to work out. For instance, the vending machine would have to be moved out into the hallway; the chocolate bars we get out of it are little more than brown-smeared wrappers as it is. But I think the inconvenience of that would be more than offset by the spike in productivity we’ll see when people stop taking maternity and paternity leave. And time off for dentist appointments would decrease dramatically because nobody would want to drink out of a soda can while it’s spitting blue sparks. I’m going to bring this suggestion up to Human Resources. I bet they make me a director for this. * * * At home, the situation isn’t a great deal better. We’re just fine microwave-wise—it pisses off our edible electrons just like it’s supposed to—but our conventional oven has been out of commission for a couple of weeks. My dad and I were in the midst of swapping out our horrible old oven when we discovered that we were short a seven-eighths-inch fitting. Whatever that is. This is a fifties-vintage oven we’re putting in, connecting it to a fifties-vintage gas line. Home Depot and Menards? Not so much with the fifties-vintage stuff. So Dad had to get on the Internet and pretend to be a defense contractor or something in order to get the right piece. In the meantime, we haven’t been able to heat up anything that you can’t cook with a stove, microwave, toaster, or magnifying glass held over the sidewalk. Which is harder than it sounds, especially in winter. How about some tater-tots? How about some frozen pizza? How about some jalapeno poppers, or a potpie, or some of Trash’s wonderful oven-baked chicken? Sound good? Too bad. Go chew on this old shoelace, Oliver Twist. I don’t know how people are ever able to survive month-long kitchen remodeling projects. I mean, our kitchen is barely recognizable compared to what it looked like three years ago, but we did it in short bursts that never rendered any one vital component non-functional for more than a day or two. We get out of sorts when we have to use “heavy wash” mode on the dishwasher, for crying out loud. But Dad found the oven part, and we’ll have a new, working oven in a matter of days. Not a moment too soon, either. I was starting to get suicidal. In fact—and I hate to admit this—I tried to pull a Sylvia Plath. Trash found me that way and reminded me there was no gas supply to the oven. God, what a waste of seven hours. posted by M. Giant 4:16 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, February 17, 2003 Be True to Your School “I think I’d wanna go to third world countries and, like, bathe their children…I’m a mercenary kind of person.” Melissa on Joe Millionaire, 1/27/03 “The more less confident you are, the worse it looks on you.” Melissa on Joe Millionaire, 2/3/03 “So the sun setted.” Melissa on Joe Millionaire, 2/3/03 "Somewhere, Miss Alli is shaking her head sadly and saying, 'I hope everyone already forgetted that Melissa is from Minnesota.'" Kim on Television Without Pity, 2/5/03 Tonight is, of course, the finale of FOX’s televised ritual of humiliation entitled Joe Millionaire (and how sad is it that I have to specify which of FOX’s televised rituals of humiliation I’m referring to?). Unless, as with last week, it’s not. It’s down to Zora, the substitute teacher, and Sarah, the bondage film star. At the end of the last real episode, Melissa was eliminated. This might have been because Evan (a.k.a. Joe Millionaire) had already gotten what he wanted from her, but I prefer her ejection was a punishment for [Rex Harrison voice]the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue[/Rex Harrison voice]. Not that Evan would have noticed anyway. In any case, it’s natural that Kim would have sympathized with Miss Alli, a fellow TwoP recapper who, like me, lives in the Twin Cities. They’re co-workers, after all. And Kim would have had no way of knowing that Melissa and I WENT TO THE SAME HIGH SCHOOL. Yes, Coon Rapids High School in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, the institution that helped forge the incisive and articulate mind behind Velcrometer, also produced a woman whose syntax is fractured enough to one day make her the President of the United States. I never met Melissa, because she graduated eight years after I did. So I never even went to school with anyone who went to school with her. But we may have had some of the same teachers. In which case they—and especially my English teachers—have some ‘splainin’ to do. I fact, here’s a thought that keeps me awake nights. My speech coach in high school used to be Garrison Keillor’s speech coach when he was in high school. Imagine that same teacher trying to guide Melissa through an oral presentation of any kind. From Keillor to me to Melissa. How’s that for decline? That is some serious Willy Loman shit right there. * * * My former speech coach and I would like to thank whoever nominated my November 8 entry for a Diarist.net award. By some incomprehensible turn of events, it’s now listed as a finalist for Best Comedic Entry. My congratulations go out to the other finalists in this and all the other categories. You should go read them now. posted by M. Giant 2:38 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, February 14, 2003 Be Mine. Mine, I Say! So, here it is, Valentine’s Day, and I’m thinking about how happy I am that I married the person I did. Okay, to be honest, I think about that every day, but if every entry were about that then this blog would be even more boring. Anyway, one of the reasons I’m glad I married her is her sense of humor. She’s very, very funny. And she thinks I’m funny. Except when I’m not. It’s surprising how important the second part is. Without that, the first part is kind of meaningless. But even without the sense of humor, I’d be happy to have married her because of her ability to effortlessly charm the pants off everyone she meets. Some people have the gift of conversation. With Trash, it’s more like a super-power. And lest you think that she’s one of those people who’ll just exhaust you with a seamless monologue of chatter, that’s not what I’m talking about at all. Trash can draw you out, connect with you, make you feel like the most important person in the world, and leave you emitting a faint, lingering glow. And most of the time, she doesn’t know she’s doing it. I didn’t fully appreciate this quality of hers until I imagined what social engagements would be like if I were saddled with someone like…well, like me. Now I appreciate it. But even if she couldn’t do that, I’d still be in good shape due to her mastery of the quotidian details of modern life. Every once in a while she’ll toss me some kind of minor task like researching the car insurance or calling to find out why this month’s water bill was seven hundred dollars or making dinner plans, and I realize, this stuff is hard, dude. And she does it all the time. It’s like I get to be an eccentric genius whose wife handles all the day-to-day management of the household because the genius is too flaky and irresponsible and consumed by his life’s work of building superintelligent lawn mowers or something. Except I don’t even have to be a genius! It rules! Because there’s already a genius in the family. But we’re talking about the kind of intelligence that’s more concerned about what it doesn’t know than what it does. Trash demonstrates that someone who asks “why” is so much better to be around than a know-it-all. Her brains and her curiosity combine to make her an intellectually stimulating companion. Even when we’re just sitting on the couch and watching Are You Hot? But if she were to undergo a lobotomy that rendered her a drooling revenant, it would still leave her kind heart and generous nature. This extends from anger on behalf of those who get screwed by the world to a chronic inability to walk past a Salvation Army bell-ringer without dropping a bill or two in the bucket. You know that line in As Good As It Gets where Jack Nicholson says, “you make me want to be a better man”? I won’t say that, not just because it’s played, but also because it doesn’t go far enough. I’m already a better man for having her in my life. And yet, even a dull, humorless, useless, moronic, selfish Trash would be a bargain, because I’d get to look at her every day. Last month we were driving up Lamar Boulevard in Austin. A guy was wandering up and down the center median, trying to sell something to drivers stopped at the red light. I passed on his offer, but he got a glimpse at my passenger and said, “Hey, you’ve got an angel there.” He didn’t know the half of it. Happy Valentine’s Day, Trash. posted by M. Giant 1:37 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, February 13, 2003 Moving Out I swear to God, this blog is turning into a karmic weapon. I just have no idea how to aim it. I make fun of the Osbournes and Sharon gets cancer. I joke about the chances of our shower door shattering, and it explodes at my wife days later. I drop a NASA gag and Columbia is raining onto Texas within forty-eight hours. I kid—kid, mind you!—that our B&B in Austin was boarding a deceased guest, and today I get this e-mail from my younger sister in New Jersey. Apparently the guy in the apartment next to hers—a fellow who had introduced himself on her moving day by asking to borrow twenty bucks, and whose sense of boundaries went downhill from there—has, um, terminated his lease. With a length of rope. Debitch the Younger had been out of town for a few days. In fact, she’d met my mom in Washington, D.C. for a visit and some sightseeing. She returned home on Sunday and hadn’t seen her neighbor since. (Apparently this is unusual. I’ve lived in too many apartments to think that’s a good thing. But anyway.) Neighbor had been out of sight and out of mind for a few days. Yesterday, my sister called her landlord to complain about a bad smell in the hallway. I know that smell. Neighbor was not, sadly, out of nose. Shortly thereafter, the police were on the scene to cut down Neighbor’s distressingly funky remains. My sister said it was like a very short episode of Law & Order that ended before the opening credits. Two hours later, an ambulance screamed up with lights flashing. That tells me that the EMTs in my sister’s town are either very bad or very, very, very good. My sister is understandably a little freaked out right now. I mean, for four days she lived next door to a dead guy. Who was home. She spent last night in a hotel, and I can’t blame her. I’d much rather sleep where somebody probably committed suicide at some unknown point in time than next door to where I knew somebody committed suicide a week ago. On the other hand, this is something she can use to her advantage. She can save a lot of money in rent. Just think of all the things she can say to the landlord now: “If it weren’t for me, you’d still have a dead tenant.” “I’m buying air fresheners in bulk now, you know.” “When are you going to start showing the apartment? Because I’d like to meet my potential neighbors and tell them the story before they sign anything.” “Did you know I can reach the neighbor’s window from my window and paint REDRUM on it?” “Are you sure it was really Neighbor who was dead in there? Because I swear I woke up and saw him hovering above my bed last night.” So my sister isn’t too bad off. But I’m still stuck with the problem of having a blog that kills people. I’m at the controls of a mysterious force that’s affecting the fabric of the universe, but I have no idea what any of those controls do. This must be what it’s like to be Alan Greenspan. But…uh…how about that Saddam Hussein, huh? Gosh, it’d sure be a shame if anything was to happen to him without the U.S. being involved in any way. Yeah, that sure would suck, all right. Boy howdy. What? It’s worth a try. And Kim Jong Il also. posted by M. Giant 3:39 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, February 12, 2003 Al Dente My cat and I are both having some dental work done today. Obviously, it’s a lot more difficult to get one of us to open wide for the power tools than the other. Orca had to be crammed into a box, bundled screaming into the car, taken for a half-hour drive (during which she never left off her panicky, betrayed howling), physically wrestled into the office, abandoned there for the day, and rendered profoundly unconscious so she could get her teeth fixed up. I’m just glad she’s easier to get into the dentist’s chair than I am. Orca’s intelligence makes it rather a challenge to get her to the vet. When I pull out the cat carrier, her turbo boost/cloaking device combo kicks into effect and the only way to run her down is to set fire to the furniture. That gets expensive, so I prefer to outwit her. Except that she’s not a lot less smart than I am, and when you adjust for her lack of thumbs, language skills, and ability to walk upright, we end up fairly evenly matched. Plus I wanted to leave at 6:30 a.m., a time when I can normally look forward to another hour of sleep, which left me at a crippling disadvantage. So what I did was, I took out the cat carrier last night, as soon as I got home from work. I cleaned it out and left it standing in the middle of the living room with its door open. I arranged a cozy U of M sweatshirt on its floor. That way, Orca could wander in and out of it as she pleased. Which she did. I dared to think there might be a chance that she would sleep in there for the last part of the night, and in the morning I could just go downstairs and close the door. The likelihood of that happening was roughly equal to that of my getting in my car, flipping on the cruise control, settling back for a nap and waking up at my destination. But you never know unless you try. (You shouldn’t actually try that other thing, by the way. Professional driver, closed course, et cetera.) I also picked her up several times over the course of the evening. I’d give her a little affection, scritch her ears, compliment her fashion sense, and put her back down where I found her. That way, I figured I could lull her into a “he’s going through a ‘picking me up and putting me down’ phase” sense of security. All of this might account for the aforementioned “betrayed” note of her cries when I popped her unresisting form into the cage this morning. The fact that she had to fast all night to prepare for the anesthetic—and then listen to me feed Strat once she was incarcerated—didn’t improve her mood any. I was glad that wasn’t my favorite sweatshirt in there with her. The vet called earlier and said Orca had done just fine under anesthetic (whatever that means; doctors say that about people undergoing surgery too, that “they did great,” as if the patient had to scrub in or tie a couple of their own sutures or do anything besides lie on the table and be an immobile husk) and she was in great shape for a cat her age. She suggested that we might need to start brushing the cat’s teeth on a regular basis. When I relayed that recommendation to Trash, she said, “Has she met Orca?” I can only assume that the vet didn’t get to spend any time with a fully-conscious Orca; otherwise she never would have been able to get those words out without being struck by lightning. I’d rather turn on the garbage disposal and polish the blades with my fingers. I get to pick her up tonight and bring her home, but I’m going to have to watch out for her. This is the first time she’s been under anesthetic since we had her fixed over a decade ago. I’ll need to close off part of the house so she doesn’t tumble down the stairs, and keep Strat away from her so he doesn’t smell other animals from the clinic on her and knock her ether-addled ass over. On the other hand, something tells me she’s going to be willing to put up with a lot more petting and attention from me than she usually does. Or at least unable to not put up with it. Too bad my own teeth will be too sore for me to enjoy it. posted by M. Giant 3:31 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, February 11, 2003 Frustrations of an Online Traffic Whore There is a contingent of online diarists, journalers, and bloggers who don’t care about their site traffic. They talk about how they don’t care who links to them, how people are finding them, what kind of messed-up Google searches are leading people to them, or even the raw number of page views they get. I do not number myself among that contingent, i.e., liars. Hence that Site Meter icon way down at the bottom of the page. I’ve got the free version, which is, as they say, worth every penny. That’s not really fair of me to say. Site Meter does provide me with some interesting and useful information. When it works, that is. When it doesn’t, I find that fairness becomes less of a priority to me. Here’s the thing: I wouldn’t mind if it were just that the reports were temporarily unavailable. I wouldn’t go all Veruca Salt, stamping my feet and wailing that “I want to now who’s finding me by Googling ‘Michael Jackson lawsuit’ noooowww, Dadeee! NOW!” What bugs me is that when Site Meter’s down, it’s all the way down. Meaning it’s not even recording my hits during its outages. And that’s frustrating to me, because it means that the Pulitzer selection committee is going to look at my reports and they’ll think that I had only six hits during a period where I may have had seven or even as many as eight. And that could make all the difference. These Site Meter people are costing me money and crippling my literary career! Of course, how tacky is it of me to be complaining about a free service? Pretty tacky, I admit. It’s not like I’m paying Site Meter or anything. All they get out of it is a piece of my browser window given over to a banner ad whenever I look at a report. But wait—is that banner ad still there when I go to pull up some info and I just get a message saying, “this report is unavailable”? Yes. Yes, it is. I’m holding up my end of the bargain, Site Meter. I’m ignoring that banner ad just as much as I would be if you were giving me the information you agreed to provide. It’s you who are falling down on the job. I wouldn’t even mind if the outages weren’t so frequent. Or so long. Or so long and frequent. I suffered in silence when my stats were “unavailable” for the better part of a week, a week that ended up putting a sizable dent in my January totals. Then the reports came back, and I was happy again. Then they went away some more. Then some more. Then an entire afternoon. I sent a pissy e-mail to Site Meter’s webmaster, communicating my displeasure. I explained that I had been considering getting a Site Meter Pro account (in other words, one that I’d be paying for), but if this was the kind of service I could expect, then I wouldn’t bother. Hey, whadd’ya know? I guess I’m a liar after all, because I never had any intention of doing any such thing. Later, I got a response, saying there was a problem with the server and it would be fixed in a couple of hours. No explanation for previous outages. No promises to try to minimize future outages. And certainly no apologies of any kind for outages past, future, or present. Just two lines that amounted to “siddown and shaddap.” Again, I realize I’m not paying for this or anything. It’s not like I can demand my money back. I get that. But you’d think that for a company whose entire clientele creates, owns, and maintains websites, they’d want to make customer service a bit more of a priority. You never know what kind of grouchy rant some frustrated blogger might post on his or her page one day. Some frustrated blogger who isn’t nearly as patient as I am, for example. I’m just saying. posted by M. Giant 3:36 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, February 10, 2003 Courtesy Call It’s tough to write a daily blog without falling back on bitching about telemarketers at least once in a while. But there’s a reason I haven’t done it so much. And it’s not pretty. There’s something I have to confess. If, upon reading it, you’re seized by an overpowering urge to close your browser window and never come back, I won’t blame you. Just hear me out first. I used to be a telemarketer. Actually, it could be argued that what I did was even worse than telemarketing. I was a “telephone solicitor.” That doesn’t mean I wandered the streets asking people for spare phones. No, I called people at home. In the evening. During the dinner hour. To ask them for money. I wasn’t even offering anything in return. I was just asking for donations. And if you gave one? That just made it more likely that we’d call you again in a year. The only way I was able to live with myself while doing this job was by sucking at it. And thus I was fired after less than a year. But I still felt that I had a karmic debt to repay, so for years I was nice to telemarketers who called my house. I never gave money or bought anything, mind you, but I was still nice about it. I did that for ten years and called it even. Now I’m much more of a hard-ass; if they keep trying to sell me after I’ve said “no, thanks,” once, I hang up. Yeah, telemarketers reading this are trembling in fear. Interestingly, last week I got a call from someone who does the exact same job I used to do, for the same institution. “I’m just going to stop you there,” I said pleasantly after listening a few words of the same rote pitch that I used to blurt out. “I used to have the same job you’re doing, and it sucks, and it’s not your fault, but I’m not contributing, okay?” I think she may have been a little amused, perhaps a little appreciative. But she was definitely thrown. And I can tell you from experience that if the telemarketer is thrown, then you’ve won. She let me off the phone with a half-giggled “okay.” I’ve heard all of the allegedly humorous and effective ways of getting rid of telemarketers. From putting the phone down on the counter and walking away to belting showtunes into the mouthpiece to asking for a minute to consult with “Lord Satan,” none of them are really my style. But the other night, I accidentally stumbled on a method that I can’t wait to try out again. Telemarketer: Hello, I’m calling from MCI, your long-distance company about a rate reduction. Me: Oh, yeah, I’ve kind of been shopping around for a better long-distance plan. Telemarketer: … Me: Does the new plan have that local access service charge? Telemarketer: …um… Me: Because the local phone company charges you $1.95 a month to let you access their lines and you pass that fee on to us. Telemarketer: Naw… Me: Really? Because I called about it when it showed up on my bill. Everything I’ve said to this person is true, by the way. But at this point, I remember that MCI is not “my” long-distance company at all. Merely “a” long-distance company, as far as I’m concerned. As soon as I get an answer to my last question, I’m going to point this out to the gentleman. Except he’s hung up on me. Let’s replay that part of the conversation: Me: Really? Because I called about it when it showed up on my bill. Telemarketer: [presses “release” button] Me: Yes! So apparently, all you need to do to get rid of telemarketers is ask them arcane questions that they couldn’t possibly have the answers for. The possibilities are endless. Telemarketer: …So we’d like to send you your new credit card. If I could just verify your address? Me: After the introductory period expires, what’s the APR going to be? Telemarketer: Um, that depends on the prime interest rate at that time, as determined by the Federal Reserve Board. Me: And what will that be? Telemarketer: …[presses “release” button] Me: Yes! Or: Telemarketer: So would you be interested in supporting the Minnesota Orchestra this year? Me: I don’t know. Are they going to do anything about the seating of the percussion section? Telemarketer: Uh… Me: Because where we normally sit, the percussion section tends to drown out the lower brass instruments. You hear so much about the acoustics of that place, and then you go to hear a concert and you can barely pick out the sousaphone. What’s up with that? Telemarketer: …[presses “release” button] Me: Yes! I’m free! Free from annoying telemarketers! All I have to do is annoy them more! Of course, this is going to get me back in the red karmically in a big hurry. But I can live with that. posted by M. Giant 3:20 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, February 07, 2003 What's So Damn Grand About It? Trash is back today. But where does she keep going? Perhaps I should explain. Trash works for a company that helps people find new jobs when they get laid off. Last month, the biggest employer in a northern Minnesota town laid off almost half of its workforce. It was as if somebody dropped a neutron bomb that leveled most of the jobs and left the buildings and people still standing. Trash’s company got the contract. Now a rotating delegation of her colleagues makes the four-hour drive north to Grand Rapids every week. It’s an inconvenient distance. Driving takes half the day, but getting to the airport and flying there would save hardly any time. Besides, the memory of Senator Wellstone is too fresh for anybody to want to fly up there. Hell, the memory of Buddy Holly is too fresh for anybody to want to fly up there. At Trash’s company, nobody else can do what she does. That’s good in the sense of appreciation and job security. It’s less good in the sense that she has to go up almost every week throughout the project. I’ve been wasting a lot of pixels complaining about the cold in Minneapolis, but at least I don’t have to spend my January and February midweeks in a town whose latitude is higher than that of 95% of residentially zoned Canada. (I have no idea if that’s true, but it might be. Look it up if you want.) On her very first day in Grand Rapids (latitude 47.22), the temperature was twenty-five degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. That’s thirty-two below Celsius, for all you Canadians who live further south than Grand Rapids. In other words, the temperature at which ice becomes a metal and the air itself turns blue. Going outside meant instant death, so the hotel had retained a space-suited valet to drive guests’ vehicles up and down the hallways, delivering them directly to the doors of their rooms. I suggested to Trash that maybe all these newly unemployed people might get to work on some terraforming. Then maybe the town might attract some industry besides ice-farming. Fortunately, that was as cold as it’s gotten while she was there. Even so, after a day at negative twenty-five, it’s startling how warm negative fifteen isn’t. Just because the thick clouds of vapor you exhale clatter to the frozen ground instead of saying “fuck this” and sprinting towards Pensacola doesn’t mean that your nostrils and eyeballs and joints don’t want to know what the hell you’re doing on Europa. “So what, it’s cold up there,” you might think. “She was in the field office or the hotel room the whole time, right?” Sure, but indoor heating equipment is only doing its job when you don’t have to think about it. Which wasn’t the case. At the hotel, the heater in her room had two settings: “off, “and “Saturn V Rocket.” With the overzealous window unit belching a Dantean roar of superheated gases into the room, she had to turn it off if she wanted to talk on the phone, watch TV, or finish her ice cream before it caught fire. Meanwhile, at the office, the project manager was seen on at least one occasion to prop the front door open to allow comparatively warmer air to waft in. There were several calls to building management, all of which produced a man who gazed at the wall thermostat, gave it a hostile thump, and lumbered away, saying, “that should do it.” “That should do it,” agreed one of Trash’s coworkers, but the percussive maintenance program clearly has its limitations. The company is considering relocating its base of operations to someplace warmer, like an igloo. Aside from the cold, the town is known for two things: the paper mill that pinkslipped three hundred people last month, and for being the birthplace and childhood home of Judy Garland. No wonder she always sounded so depressed. And no wonder Trash is always so happy to get home. Of course, that might not be the only reason [sly wink]. posted by M. Giant 3:21 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, February 06, 2003 From Point “A” to No Point at All It’s not weird to sing in the car, I don’t think. Cars have radios for a reason, after all, and radio stations play music for the same reason. So don’t be self-conscious. When you’re alone in your car, driving down the road, and a fellow motorist glances over at you and happens to catch you with your head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth agape, veins standing out from your neck and foreheaed, with one fist clenched as if holding an invisible microphone, there’s no need to be embarrassed. It’s perfectly normal. Lots of people do it. I won’t tell anyone. Just wave and be on your way. Because you can be comfortable in the knowledge that at least you’re not a freak like me who only sings the harmony parts. I don’t know why I do this. Actually, yes I do. I’m not a good singer. I don’t like to sing in church. It practically takes a court order to get me onstage at a karaoke bar, and even then I’ll only do the Fred Schneider part on “Love Shack.” I’ll sing with my band, but that’s different because there are seven kinds of cacophony drowning out my voice. And even then, I rarely sing lead unless it’s on “Sweet Child O’Mine” by Guns & Roses, which is supposed to sound vocally horrible anyway. I’m all about singing backup harmony whenever possible. That includes the times that I’m in the car by myself, because I’m too self-conscious about my singing to pretend to be the lead even when nobody can hear me. Don’t you feel sad for me now? Don’t you want to, like, hold a telethon or something? This is really not filling up as much space as I’d hoped. Hold on, I’m going to change topics so abruptly that we’ll probably pull a couple of gees. I never told you about when we had to change planes in Minneapolis on our way to Austin last month. As I mentioned, we flew from Rochester to Minneapolis to Memphis to the Texas capital. From Rochester to Minneapolis, we spent twenty minutes in the air. From our arrival gate to our connection gate, we spent nearly twice that long walking through the terminal. You think I’m kidding. I’m not. The airport has been under construction since the day it opened, I think. They’re always adding something on, like a parking ramp or a concourse or a runway. The last time I looked at the “completion” date for the airport project, they expected to have everything done by 2010. By that point, of course, everything tht exists today will need refurbishing so they’ll have to start all over. Either that, or ubiquitous flying Jetson-mobiles will make public airports obsolete. But anyway. The airports used to have concourses that were designated by color. We had Green, Gold, Red, and Blue, as if they were named after X-wing squadrons. But with all the concourses they’ve added in recent years, that’s been dropped in favor of letters. I assume that’s because too many colors would be confusing, especially to international travelers: “We’ll be landing at the Taupe Concourse, which should give you plenty of time to make it to your connecting flight from the Tan-Maroon Concourse, which you can reach by going past the Ecru Concourse and through the Periwinkle Concourse. Just be sure to steer clear of the Kind Of A Pale, Dusty Rose With A Faint Bluish Undertone Concourse.” Anyway, We landed at the far end of the A concourse. Our connecting flight was at the far end of the G concourse. I’ll illustrate it thusly: imagine that the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is shaped, from above, like a giant letter H. We landed at the very extremity of the lower right-hand leg of that H. Then we had to walk to what amounted to a letter in an entirely different alphabet. This is what happens when you give almost an entire airport to one airline. It’s good that one of the additions to the airport will be an internal monorail. It would be better if the monorail had been built before the terminal’s footprint was made larger than a suburb. I’m all for a brisk stroll every now and then, but if I’d known I had a hike like that in front of me when I left I would have ditched our bags in Rochester and worn the same clothes all week in Austin. Then at least my BO would have distracted people from the fact that I was sitting in my rental car singing backup harmonies. posted by M. Giant 3:43 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, February 05, 2003 Sock it to Me With Trash out of town, I’m in the middle of another bachelor week at home. There are socks scattered all over the house. Believe it or not, there is no causal relationship between those two facts. Our cats are like small children in that their interest in a particular toy is inversely proportional to the amount of money it cost. They have a fifteen-dollar windup mouse that will skitter the length of the kitchen floor under its own power, but they’d much rather chase a tossed sandwich wrapper from Arby’s. And their cat beds and cat blankets have gone ignored because there’s no place they’d rather curl up than inside a grocery bag or under a newspaper. Yes, our cats like to pretend that they are not pampered royalty with a basket full of toys, but destitute housing-project vermin who have nothing to play with but refuse. Charming, really. But recently, like in the last couple of weeks, they’ve discovered the joy of an entirely new category of plaything: socks. They’re not picky about choosing the socks. Clean, dirty, mine, Trash’s, single, or balled-up in pairs, there’s nothing to stop them from stealing a bit of footwear, carrying it around the house, and dropping it whenever they get bored. Or, as is more likely, judging from the number of socks lying around, whenever they decide it’s time to get new socks. Don’t ask me how the cats learned how to open drawers. We don’t keep our socks in drawers; there isn’t room. They go in a laundry hamper. I don’t know which is odder: that the cats took over a decade to figure out they could swipe socks whenever they wanted, or that they decided that stealing them was worthwhile at all. In any case, when we come home from work our house looks like Bluto Blutarsky has moved in and he thinks the hatch to the laundry chute could be hidden anywhere in the floor. For a few days, it was kind of irritating because we never knew whether the socks were clean or dirty when we found them. They seemed equally willing to help themselves to the clean sock hamper and the dirty clothes hamper. Then we figured, if they were dirty, they needed to be washed anyway. If they were clean, then they’ve now been transported from room to room in the same mouths that the cats use to clean their anuses. So at least that question has been answered. But it’s still irritating. We haven’t actually caught either one of them in the act yet, so we don’t know if it’s both of them or just one of them that’s doing it. My money’s on Orca, though, and here’s why: When she first came to live with us, she was quite the little thief. I’m not just talking about the fish stick incident, which I will now recount. During her first month in our apartment, Trash and I were in the bedroom, having just finished a fish stick dinner. There were a couple still left on the tray, and Orca sneaked up, grabbed one in her mouth, and tore out for the kitchen with the contraband food sticking out between her teeth like a Groucho Marx cigar. I chased her down, she realized she was cornered, dropped the fish stick, and dashed away. I picked it up, threw it in the garbage, and made to return to the bedroom, only to collide with Trash on my way back. Trash, you see, was chasing down Orca, who was trying to make off with her second fish stick in as many minutes. That wasn’t all she stole. You know how you can get a big bag of assorted unshelled nuts, and as you go through them you drop the empty shells in a big bowl? Orca would raid that bowl. But the weird thing is, she would only steal the walnut shells. Pecan, almond, hazelnut, peanut shells held no attraction for her. But the walnut shells called out to her with a song she could not ignore. Of course, once she had the shells, there was the question of what to do with them. It’s not like she had a place to stash them, so they just ended up scattered on the living room rug. One morning Trash awoke to hear me yelping my barefoot way to the bathroom. I explained that overnight, the living room had become a minefield of spent legume casings. She went back to sleep. When she woke up, I was gone for the day and the rug was a toe-slashing obstacle course. “Why didn’t you pick up the walnut shells?” she asked me later. “I did,” I said truthfully. Orca had simply retrieved them and laid them out again. “Well, at least she wasn’t stealing money from you,” you chuckle indulgently. Yes, she was. She just couldn’t spend it. She would dig around in our change jar and fish out quarters—just the quarters—and they would end up scattered among the walnut shells on the floor. I don’t know how rare it is for cats to have both kleptomania and OCD, but we were just about ready to call the circus when she got over it. The next time we rearranged the furniture, we discovered that she’d had a couple of places to stash her loot after all, but the behavior appeared to be over. Now it’s back, but it’s in a new form and it’s increasing my laundry load (as well as making it look like I can’t carry a hamper from room to room without leaking socks all over the place). This is the point where I would be expected to drop some kind of punchline like “what I really need is someone who’ll steal my cat,” but that’s not even true enough to be amusing. In fact, I had a killer ending paragraph all ready to go, but I have no idea where it is now. I’ll probably find it under the sofa next week. posted by M. Giant 3:32 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, February 04, 2003 Flu With Trash out of town again this week, I’m not only alone, I’m also sick. Being home alone is no fun if you can't get out of bed, and spending several days in bed is no fun if nobody’s around to bring you stuff. So I’m on an intense regimen to get better before she comes back. I’m engaging the pathogen with a multi-pronged attack, including: Sleep. Like Ralph Wiggum, that’s where I’m a Viking. Cough Formula D, some off-brand red goo that makes me want to turn my head inside out every time I take a swig of it. I’m hoping it’ll be worth it, though, because it’s Maximum Strength red goo. Is there any strength besides “Maximum,” by the way? What if I only want to feel a little bit better? Could I go to the pharmacy and have them hook me up with “Middling Strength” or “Puny?” Lots of fluids. Water, tea, juice, pop, soup, whatever. This does not render the previous item redundant. Goo is not a fluid. Pills. These are like some kind of over-the-counter flu/fever/pain relief/decongestant/antihistamine/expectorant/rehydrator/dessicant/emulsifier combination that make me want to take a nap before I’ve put down my water glass. So it and my “non-drowsy” cough syrup have to fight it out. Since the pills have my laziness on their side, they win. But the cough syrup gives me twisted fever-dreams in revenge. TheraFlu™. You know, the powdered medicine you mix with hot water? It’s actually not TheraFlu™, technically. I sent Trash to the store to get me some TheraFlu™ the other day. I’d drunk two cups of it before I went downstairs and realized that it wasn’t TheraFlu™ at all. It tasted like TheraFlu™, and it made my throat feel as if it were being held open by the Jaws of Life like TheraFlu™ does, but it wasn’t really TheraFlu™. It was a TheraFlu™ knock-off, and it was called something else. You know what it was called? I’ll tell you. It was called “Flu.” “What the hell is this?” I demanded. “I asked for TheraFlu™, dammit! And what do you bring me? Flu! I’ve got flu already! The last thing I need is more flu!” “Let me see the box,” she said, laughing at my pain. “You come get the box,” I told her. “I’m not touching no ‘flu,’ I’ll tell you that for free.” She picked up the box to read the label. “Inactive ingredients,” she began, and dissolved into hysterics. “Oh, thank heaven for small blessings. Bring your sick husband a box of flu and it’s not even active. I’m glad someone’s looking out for me.” “Stop it,” she guffawed. “You know, it seems like if you’re going to end up with inactive flu anyway, you might as well just save your money. Now we have no TheraFlu™, inactive flu, and less money? How does this work to our advantage?” I think that by that point in the conversation, Trash decided it was time for the sleep part of the regimen again. posted by M. Giant 3:12 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, February 03, 2003 No entry today. I finally caught whatever plague it was that leveled Trash for three weeks and now I feel like death on drugs. You're just going to have to make it through the day without my usual wit and wisdom. What with all the cold medicine I've been ingesting, I've certainly had to. posted by M. Giant 3:22 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
