PriorBlog

“Don’t hold aloof from animals’ problem, think about them. If we don’t help them, who will?”

–“Joel Wayman” of “Green World”

I got the job.“Green World” has just emailed to tell me that “We looked thoroughly through your resume and you are the one we choose for this job.” Not only that, but since it’s Christmas time, I get seven percent of the money going through those bank accounts that they want me to set up for them (or him). I told them I was very excited. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to draw this out for a couple of weeks like with my old buddy Falex.

Non-stop Christmas music over the PA system at work.  At least it’s not soft rock.  This is on the “Oldies Station,” another manifestation of omnipresent and derivative media. But you know, I’m glad that I get to hear these songs at work, because otherwise, when would I get the chance to listen to them?Here are some of my favorite Christmas tunes:

*That dlightfully ebullient Mariah Carey rendition “All I want for Christmas.” If there’s one thing that gets my toes a tappin’ and fingers snappin’, it’s that little ditty.

*The Michael W. Smith song where he goes something like “DEO-OOO DEO-OOO, OH HOSANNA ROCKIN!” Every time I hear this I am completely awestruck by how awesome and awe inspiring it is. An awefully good song!

*Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer— still funny after all these years. I laugh just thinking about it. Now that’s funny.

The worst of all though is any version of that “Little Drummer Boy” song. First of all, the whole premise of the song is a big lie. Where in the gospel is there any mention of a little drummer boy? But that’s just factual. This song is also a big lie in content, because the little drummer boy contradicts himself when he brags about how humble he is. “I had an audience with Jesus, [UH-OH MICHAEL W. SMITH JUST WAS CUED UP!! PREPARE TO ROCK!!] and he was so impressed with my drumming he smiled at me.” Sure, kid. Newborns can’t smile. It was most likely just gas.

Heading down to Houston for Christmas. I am curious to see whether their Santa iconography reflects that of a climate that rarely sees snow. Instead, I have a feeling that there will be a bunch of lawn displays and such in which people are supposed to “pretend” there’s snow.

‘The history of mankind is reflected in the history of cloaca’  –Victor Hugo

This morning, furious and angry that I have $5.85 to my name, I was searching through the drawers of my desk for spare change, but all I was finding were plastic newspaper bags that I collect for when I have to pick up dog shit. 

Here’s how I acquire them. 

Wendell Pfennigfuchser, one of the owners of the company I spend the day dicking around at, will come in around 9:30am and pick up his copy of the Wall Street Journal at Denise the receptionist’s desk.  While removing the plastic casing from the Journal, he will ask the receptionist which of the cubists showed up late.  As she responds, he tosses the plastic casing, the sleeve, the bag, whatever onto her desk.  Before it finishes its gentle descent, Wendell is off to his office.  Then Denise will pop over the edge of my cubicle, say something along the lines of, ‘I know you need these for your dogs,’ and trickling down into my cube, as if dropped by the golden hand itself comes my reward.

A few months ago, when I was real low on dog bags, to the point where I was only allowing the dogs a certain allotment of crap a day, what Shanie jokingly referred to as a ‘turd diem,’ it became necessary for me to write requests to various organizations and so forth for their old plastic bags.  Fast forward to now, when I have literally hundreds, maybe over a thousand, bags at home, so the dogs can crap to their small intestine’s content.  This also is part of the reason why there are in the drawers of my desk at work, literally tens of Wall Street Journal prophylactics (the other reason being extreme sloth), which I found myself wading through looking for that elusive quarter I semi-remembered saving way back when.

As if my financial situation were not dire enough, I had just been informed that my company had the nerve to count up all the days I’d decided to not work and dock me two days pay.  It’s a long story, which I won’t get into because I am completely and unequivocally guilty, although if you want, I won’t stop you from thinking they are cheap bastards.

Anyhow, sifting through Wall Street Journal jackets and what do I find printed on the side of one but this little list of comma-phobic rah rah rich guyisms.

Don’t you feel inspired now?  I know I do.  I think I might call Smith Barney and “hitch my wagon to a star” or “live the life I’ve imagined” or “stick some Smith Barney suppositories up my ass and crap gold plated turds for Christmas.”

Haha.
“”

One more thing since I am in a bad mood.  The “fruitstand” that I go to lunch at insists on blaring one of the “local” “soft rock” stations.  In between “another hour of continuous soft rock” they played this xenophobic Perdue chicken ad in which a guy named “Raul” with a greatly exaggerated Indian accent waxes on and on about his “Mongolian” restaurant, while a white voice clues him into to virtues of some new Perdue chicken product.  I guess feigning confusion over ethnic origin protects you from any charges of racism, but the worst thing about the ad is how monumentally funny it thinks it is, and how monumentally unfunny it really is.  You can almost see these morons as they wrote the thing tumbling over with tears of laughter in their eyes.  “He’s a m-m-m-Mongolian!  That’s hilarious!” 

Obviously any attempt to be funny is intentional, but certain failed attempts reveal their author’s sense that beyond mere intention, what they have said will certainly bring the house down.

 A prime example of this was that series of ads run during the World Series in which a guy (a dude to be more specific) attempts to live in his car.  What a hilarious concept, because a car is not a house.  The dude then goes on to have a series of adventures thinly masquerading the fact that what he’s really doing is what every car commercial does, have a road test and brag about gas mileage.  Since he exhibits a nihilistic obnoxiousness in doing so (think Tom Green dressed as a stoner-surfer-dude) it’s supposed to be uproarious.  It’s not.  Even though this year’s World Series was the dullest since 1990, [Aside from games one and three in 1988, every World Series Tony LaRussa has been involved with has been a total snorefest.  That's why I am not voting him into the Hall of Fame.] I attribute the lousy teevee ratings to that dude’s car commercials. 

You’re probably wondering what I was doing buying lunch at the “fruitstand” when I should be brownbagging it because of being so low on flow.  Very true, but it’s not like I had enough to buy a hoagie.  I made due with a bag of Darrel Lea licorice, then made my way back to work where there were a bunch of holiday freebie chocolates from big clients.  That and a few cans of Coke are enough to keep this drone going.  I’ve been ingesting so many sugary treats lately my dandruff probably tastes great on French Toast.

Here is a photo of my new bike for those of you lacking imaginations.

I found a bike on my way to work today. I think it might be from 1956. Maybe this can be Bambi’s Christmas present.

There’s this house on my walk to work that always has interesting trash in front of it, a lot of times bikes and bike parts. I’ve always been tempted to grab one of the bikes and ride it to work, since at that point of the walk, work is a little over a half mile away. A few weeks ago they were tossing out books. I grabbed a few. Ever since grabbing the books, I’ve realized that it’s okay to grab the bikes too, because just like nobody leaves books out on the side of the road when they want to keep them, so too does nobody leave 1956 Schwinn Flying Stars on the side of the road when they want to keep them. An odd thing about the house, though, is the constant supply of bicycle trash it supplies the side of the road with. The owner must be a bike rehabilitator or something, and the parts that he sends to the side of the road are those that he deems worthless. I got myself a headset and handle bars as well.

There are a number of other strange and enchanting places I pass on my way to work, but further descriptions are not important to us at this time.

Yesterday, when I was trying to find out whether or not the Latvian American home for Crocodiles was a real organization, I got sidetracked on some of the sites google brought up. 

This always happens to me, I like tangents.  One of my favorite past-times is typing in a random phrase into google and wandering onto websites that aren’t expecting me.  To get the best results, I type in a phrase that would make me mad, something that somebody would say that would make me think they were an idiot.  I pop that phrase into google (google blogs is even better) and then see a list of people using it.  Then, via the slug, I choose the site I know will infuriate me the most.  Most of the times there will be a bunch of things on the site to piss me off, and I’ll really stew, but not in a ‘I’m going to go punch somebody kind of way.’  No, the feeling is a more pleasurable anger, possibly arising out of the fact that the writer is a few times removed from me.  It’s almost like you have them as a specimen in a petri dish.  They are too small to challenge your smirk, in fact, much like the constellation in the night sky which is not a thing of beauty, but God’s scowling at us, the specimen lies unaware of the reader’s true nature.  If I was to respond, try to hurt them with words or something, they would fire back, force their way however tangentially into my life, and start messing with me, and consequently leave me with the anger now divorced from the aforementioned pleasure. 

Anyhow, back to yesterday, where my “researching” Green World (one of the other names the Latvians used to disguise their duplicitous scheme) brought me to a number of Green (as in politically) websites, one of which had an essay written by a guy advocating a one state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.  Don’t want to get all political, but if there is a one state solution I think it involves lollipop trees and the Jordan River turning into chocolate, and not a thick goopy chocolate that would stain all the holy stuff, but a chocolate that you could swim in, which was also low in fat, but tasted great of course.  The author of the essay (I would link it, but a. that would mean I’d have to get off my ass [i.e. open another window] and find it, which is too much work, b.  do you really want to read some stuff like that when instead you can get me making fun of it?) compared the prospect of a two state solution (no chocolate river but possibly lollipops on trees and middle class Palestinians commuting to Haifa in Range Rovers) with the bantustans in South Africa.  Bantustans!  This gave me a great idea for a political cartoon based on yesterday’s news that Talabani scolded the authors of the Hamilton Baker report as thinking Iraq was a colony.  I thought it would be funny to have Bush trying to assuage Talabani by calling him on the phone and saying something to the effect of “No, don’t worry, we don’t see you as a colony, more as a bantustan.”  (Yes, basically stealing somebody else’s idea, applying it to an ever so slightly different situation, and making a joke of something terrible at the same time.  Bravo, me!)  But before I could make that cartoon, I’d have to a. learn how to draw, and b. learn more about South Africa and bantustans.  The only thing I know about South Africa is that it is home to some of the foremost cricketers in the world and had some racial problems a few years back. 

So, I google “bantusan” and wouldn’t you know it… More websites about Israel show up than South Africa (especially if you spell it wrong like I did [bantusan])!  This is something I find interesting on a lot of levels, but since I am not intellectually competent enough to really get into it, I’ll allow you the benefit of a few moments to meditate on it yourself, because even though I am as dumb as a box of rocks, I still think it’s a curious development.

What would a post like this be without some links to smarter people’s thoughts?  Remiss.

Here is an interesting take on the Israeli-Lebanon conflict by Andre Glucksmann.   

The title is The Jerusalem syndrome.  And here is a link to a wikipedia entry on the real mental condition of said syndrome, which in some ways is really funny.

One more thing, because this whole post is striking me as being a little too flip, and I think it’s necessary to prove that there are things I care about, and that, contrary to what my mother says, everything is not “a fucking joke” to me.  I was on ESPN.com’s hot stove section last night, where they have their projected starting lineups and pitching rotations for all of the teams next year.  They had Cole Hamels as the Phillies projected FOURTH starter behind Jon Leiber.  I realize that not everybody else in the world is as pro-Hamels as I am (shoe-in 2007 Cy Young), but this is ridiculous, and I am pissed.  The Phillies had a better record than the “World Champion” Cardinals last year (in a tougher division no less) and yet the lame brains over at the “world leader” of sports can’t spend more than five seconds on the back of Cole Hamels’ baseball card.  Disgraceful.

I got this email today from the American Latvian Humane Society saying that they saw my resume on Monster and wanted to know if I would be interested in a part time position that paid such and such.  When I first read the name of the organization I thought it sounded Mike Bauer-esque.  I was also suspect of their HR departments 11 day old Yahoo email address, another trademark of Bauer’s.  But, just in case, I do need a new job after all, I replied that I was interested and asked if they had a website.

Surprisingly they did.  They sent me a link to an admin page, which made them seem legit.  So, thinking maybe I’ll be helping Latvian animals for a living, I fill out a membership or whatever, and then get inside.  If you are interested in checking out this scam yourself, check out it out.  You can even apply for the job yourself.  Obviously you’ll want to use fake information.

A few months ago I wrote to a Nigerian scammer complaining about their lack of sophistication, and suggested that they have websites to make themselves and their businesses seem more real, or at least more real in a cyber-sense.  It warms my heart to see that they’ve taken me seriously.  There’s even Flash on the site.

After you set up an account, you find out that this international animal rescue league needs part time employees to -what else?- open bank accounts for them.  There’s even a little bank account entry page in the admin section, but I’ll let you find all that stuff on your own.

For those of you interested in getting to know Nigerian scammers better, you can download my letters to Falex here.  Last year I baited a scammer pretending to be an eccentric millionaire with ties to the Russian oil industry.  You can pretty much skim his initial letters because they are all boilerplate.

On Saturday Bambi invited over her friend Nirmal to beat me at chess. I lost both games, but had some very excellent positions and chances, the types of which only a master could screw up. Nirmal didn’t really gloat too much after winning, which leads me to suspect that he thought winning was easy. That’s okay, he can think that. I intend to really study the game and improve to the point where I can beat the guy’s who don’t shower in Harvard Square.

In the evening Ricco came over to make Perols. Originally I thought that Perols were some type of Filipino food, but we ended up having KFC instead. Heim, Lowenthal, and Woodward came over as well. I guess I should recount all of the funny things that were said, but there were too many, and I don’t feel like typing that much.

Listening to the BC-Maryland game right now. WEEI doesn’t have the game so I am listening to WZBC instead. The kid announcers are great, but I could really use some Sarandis about now. We’re up 56-50 with about ten minutes to go.

I realize this blog entry is completely dull, but for some reason I am looking for quantity over quality with this blog, as if that hasn’t been apparent already.

Turns out, after all the stress and aggravation, that Heim has come to the rescue and will take care of the dogs over the holidays. I can’t thank Heim enough. Heim is the greatest, there is nobody like Heim.

Minutes before Heim called saying that he could take care of the dogs, I was looking at Google maps, considering the possibility of driving down to Houston with the baby sitter-less dogs, making an heroic HallMark special worthy appearance, and then driving home. According to Google it would take me 36 hours to get there. Although it would have been a major pain in the ass, and in all likelihood I would never have even tried it, I did enjoy a romantic fascination over the possibility of such an idiotic journey, and amused myself with a series of imaginary adventures I would have along the way. Of course, while doing this I didn’t betray my thoughts, keeping a distraught and beleaguered outward appearance so Bambi wouldn’t think I wasn’t taking the possibility of a Christmas away from her and Hazel seriously. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but does now, that maybe Bambi’s distraught and beleaguered appearance was just that as well, and that she was happily entertaining the prospect of my absence. This might be why, when she spotted the google map, with the giant purple vein leading from Boston to Houston, she called me a moron. She also informed me that our car, a 2004 Toyota Corolla, was “not equipped” to make such a trip.

To celebrate Heim becoming our dog sitter, I brought a six pack over to Scott and Michael’s house and bored them with my baseless political opinions, which where countered with Michael’s description of a 95 year old man’s penis that he saw during his first trip to his new gym’s locker room. It should be noted that Michael is very adept at description, as anyone who’s read his descriptions of Thai iced teas can attest. I sincerely doubt that even in some of the more highly regarded medical journals, there has ever been or ever will be a more precisely detailed and yet aesthetically rewarding description of an elderly man’s bird.

I’ve been trying to find a person to take care of two of my dogs over Christmas when we’ll be away. Part of the problem is that the dogs don’t have shots, or if they do have shots (I am pretty sure one does) I lost their papers. Of course you need shots and papers to get into most dog kennels. But I don’t want a kennel anyways because that means I have to pay money for them to be taken care of, when I’d rather guilt somebody into doing it. No dice so far. Anyhow, I am formulating a plan that most likely will require a little bit of insider knowledge to pull off. Basically it goes like this. On the day before we leave for Houston, I am going to take Shanie and Ezra down to the shelter and say, I’m sorry, but I just can’t handle these dogs anymore. I have no choice but to give them to you so that you can find them new homes. Then, when we come back, I send Bambi into the shelter and she says, I’m looking for some dogs to raise. Do you have a beagle and a dachshund? Then they say, sure, here you go, and in return she gives them a small donation equaling one fourth of what it would take to have them in a kennel.

Bambi gave me her old ipod a while back, and it took me until this week to start using it on a daily basis. Even though I just started, I am kind of disappointed in the amount of selections there are on it. Her new ipod has about ten times more songs. And plus, since I am too lazy to figure out how to update it with new songs, I have worn myself out on the music I like. Right now I am listening to The Stone Roses, who I liked years ago, but am now only listening to because I am familiar with them. Worse still, this is the “complete” Stone Roses, which means the first couple of tracks aren’t from that album whose name escapes me, but everybody had, you know what I mean. I think it might have been their only real album.

Maybe it’s good that I haven’t updated the ipod because if I had done that I would have made myself sick of all the music that I like now. Sometimes I go searching for new music on the pod, but I eventually come to this point where I am searching for music that will produce within me a very particular type of joy, one that can’t be attained from something new because it requires a slight familiarity. At the same time, I’ve sucked all the music I like dry (except for that Mark Mulcahy Fathering cd my brother in law gave me the other night, which I am intentionally feeding myself in small doses to enjoy it longer), so that the old effect is no longer produced. Maybe to do this right, I should only be allowed one song per day. This could be something highly planned and ritualized, I would do it preferably at night, when it’s dark and I can’t be distracted. To heighten the effect I could spend the day doing completely mind numbing tasks, something like work, purposefully deadening myself to better amplify the power of such an event. Or maybe not. Maybe I could get the same effect from slacking off all day, or at least I hope I can.

There was an interesting article about the remains of the Bamiyan Buddhas in the New York Times website today.  I guess some people want to put the Buddhas back together again.  And then there are some archaeologists who are taking advantage of the fact that since the Buddhas are now rubble they can glean more information from them.  For instance, did you know the small Buddha was constructed in 507AD and the larger (180 feet high) one in 554AD?

There was also mention of this:

“The most exciting find, he added, was a reliquary containing three clay beads, a leaf, clay seals and parts of a Buddhist text written on bark. The reliquary is thought to have been placed on the chest of the larger Buddha and plastered over at the time of construction.”

This sort of reminded me of buildabear.  A few months ago we were in a buildabear shop and were told about how each bear has a little something extra stuffed into it, like a heart or an angel pendant or something.  Kind of makes you wonder if the people who make buildabear profitted from the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.  If so, I think that is deplorable and hope UNESCO does all it can to rectify the situation.