Author: Brian

I was born ready… to watch this trailer. It makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNZ6-p-Laa8]

Al Freakin’ Pacino?

…but, I’m sorry, Ellen Barkin is not an adequate substitute for Julia Roberts.

Although Julia probably wouldn’t have been able to top the whole meta “Julia playing Tess playing Julia” thing from “Ocean’s 12”.

My favorite line from “The Office” last night (from memory):

Ryan: It wasn’t personal…

Michael: Of course it was personal. It was business – that’s the most personal thing there is.

I actually told someone yesterday that I don’t celebrate St. Valentine’s Day because “it’s a religious holiday.” I was only partly serious – Valentinus was just a name in a list compiled in the early years of church history, and the traditions that we associate with the holiday today may have been invented out of whole cloth by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th Century. So in addition to being a tribute to romantic love, it may also be traditional to tell lies today.

At least that’s how I see it. Your views may differ.

Tracy says she used my joke about the Single Person’s Bermuda Triangle of holidays: Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day. I can’t take complete credit for that joke but I don’t remember where I heard it first. For me, New Year’s Eve has always seemed more “romantic” than Valentine’s Day. Romantic movies almost never have their climax set on a day in February, but how often do the romantic leads finally get together on New Year’s Eve? Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal did. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks did. Apparently both Nora Ephron and myself see things the same way.

Nora, if you’re not doing anything tonight, contact me.

In any case, I prefer non-traditional celebrations, so even though my family knows I love them, and even though my female friends all know I love them, this one is goin’ out to my guy friends.

In a manly way.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF6rSGfUdyg]

Me: I’ve noticed that I’m getting more of these kinds of trouble tickets. It seems to indicate a pattern.

Management: That customer is probably having a problem with X. Contact that customer and have him/her do Y.

Me: …I’ve already talked to that customer. I was trying to bring your attention to the overall pattern.

Management: I am already aware of the pattern and have been working on it for some time.

Me: …so why is the pattern still occurring?

Management: …crickets chirping…

530 Christian congregations held services this past weekend, celebrating Charles Darwin’s 198th birthday and the theory of evolution.

That number is up 13% from last year, apparently.

The link above doesn’t give the entire article – one has to be a subscriber to New Scientist magazine to read the whole thing. But in the part I can read, I like this quote:

“For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science,” says Michael Zimmerman, founder of Evolution Sunday and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis.

What? Christians are standing up to the voices of the radical right-wing Christianists who have been mixing politics and religion?

That’s awesome. The standing-up part, not the mixing-politics-and-religion part (which leads to fascism, actually).

So, happy birthday Charles Darwin, and more power to Michael Zimmerman and Evolution Sunday!

The Anna Nicole Smith story is a sad one. However, it’s really a personal one for the family and friends involved, and doesn’t have any implications for national or local public policy. It’s not really appropriate for national news shows.

Is it?

It’s such a ritual, preparing a cup of coffee. Leaving room for cream, adding just the right amount of sugar, testing it for the proper temperature, all these things must be done before it reaches the sweet spot, the brief moment in time when all the combinations of coffee-bitterness, milky-sugary-sweetness, and perfect warminosity reach their optimum apogee.

Once it’s there, it’s almost impossible for me to stop drinking it, and before I know it, the cup is empty. Not a cup half-full or half-empty, but filled with nothing but air and not precious life-giving beverage.

Today might be the 10th business day after my state tax return was accepted.

Or it might be the 9th. Depends on if you count the day it got accepted as Day 0, or Day 1.

Either way – fuckers have ANOTHER loophole. They say that you can expect your refund 7 to 10 business days after they’ve begun processing returns. And who the hell knows when that will begin? It’s not like they post that on their website.

C’mon! I’ve already received my Federal refund! Just give it up, Oregon!

Sunday morning I was walking back from the grocery store, carrying three bags of stuff to eat for the week. I saw that Old Barfy was sitting outside in front of Peggy’s apartment, next door to mine. He shouted out, “How’s ol’ Brian doin’ today?”

I nodded a hello and kept my head down as though deep in thought.

Suddenly Peggy burst out of her apartment, the screen door banging against its stop. She was wearing a faded bathrobe and was adjusting her glasses as if she’d just put them on. “Brian? Where’s your cat?” she shouted significantly.

Peggy’s normally nice to me, but because I was still in anti-social mood I wasn’t reading her correctly. Was she mad at me? Did Smacky do something bad? Or was she worried? I stopped on the sidewalk, weighted down by the bags I carried, facing her. “I think he’s in the house,” and I moved my right arm slightly towards my front door. “Why?”

She paused a minute. “Do you go up to the store?”

I was still not getting her. I gave her the confused look.

“Foster’s Market, she’s talking about,” Old Barfy offerred from his seat.

“There’s a sign up there,” she said, “about somebody pouring… something on the cats in the neighborhood.”

“It… burns ’em, or somethin’,” O.B. said.

“Like… acid?” I asked.

O.B. nodded, and Peggy continued, “Anyway, I just wanted you to know, and to keep an eye on your cat.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he was in my apartment when I left. I hadn’t noticed anything on him…” my voice trailed off.

“OK, I just wanted you to know. There’s some real weirdos out there.”

I nodded again, and then finished walking up to my front door. As I put the bags on the ground to dig out my key, Smacky came bursting out of the bushes and made a black furry streak for the front step. “Shit! There you are! I thought you were inside.”

Smacky just flopped over on his side, meowing at me, and rubbing his head on my shoe. He didn’t have anything on him that I could see.

I kept him inside the rest of the day, in spite of the weather, until he scratched me a couple of times. That’s when I threw him out briefly while I watched a movie.

Still feeling un-wordy. Many things on my mind lately – the hours and hours I spend in bed (14 hours between Friday and Saturday, 12.5 hours between Saturday and Sunday); the guy who got evicted from his apartment upstairs yet now lives with the nice lady next door, who sits outside all the time and drinks and smokes and tries to say ‘hi’ to everyone who walks by in a really creepy manner; how little I actually use my computers to do something creative; how freakin’ cold it is; how hard it is to run in the cold and how that’s affected my weekly miles; my super-cool new running shoes; what to do with my tax refund – and by ‘what to do’ I mean the best way to keep me from spending it all on strippers and pizza; how much teevee I’ve been watching since I got a DVR…

..oh, my, that sounds like depression, doesn’t it? Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. I just feel unsocial and un-wordy. My brain is filled (metaphorically speaking) with images and feelings, a stew of mostly-negative but some positive emotions, and the effort of converting those into words, and the words into movements of my fingers on a keyboard, just seems beyond me lately.

Maybe this is normal for February. I’ll keep running when I can, and just keep plugging away at work, and spending time with my friends when I can, and it will sort itself out.

And maybe it’s high fructose corn syrup.

Have you heard of this? It’s chemically- and enzymatically-enhanced corn juice. Some say it’s bad for us in ways we’re only beginning to comprehend. It’s cheaper to make, in the US, because of all the corn subsidies from the Feds, and it has a longer shelf-life than cane sugar, so I know this: that shit’s in everything.

I did some grocery shopping this morning, and one of the items I wanted to stock up on was more jam for my breakfast toast. I normally buy the generic label raspberry, but I’ve had that for a while, so instead went looking at labels. And I had HFCS on my mind.

Hmmm… the jam I normally buy has HFCS listed as the second ingredient. Why would they add a sweetener to fruit? Seemed odd. Same story with the blackberry and strawberry jams. I realized that there’s a difference between “jam”, “jelly”, “preserves” and “topping”. At least, they’re all labeled differently, even though I couldn’t see a difference. They pretty much all had fruit, water, HFCS, and preservatives.

You’d think that, say, Smucker’s “Simply Fruit” preserves would be, oh, I don’t know, simply fruit? Maybe a little water? You’d be wrong, my label-reading friend. In fact, Smucker’s “Simply Fruit” preserves include fruit, water, preservatives, and both HFCS and corn syrup. Why would it need both?

I moved to the ones labeled “organic”. Instead of HFCS, they listed “cane sugar” (probably good) or “organic sugar”. What the hell is “organic sugar”? Since I didn’t have an internet connection there in the aisle, I couldn’t look it up. I still haven’t, mostly ’cause at that point I punted and didn’t buy any preserves.

Meh. That’s how I’m feeling these days; every time I start to take an action, it gets complicated, and I end up not taking any action at all.