Category: blogiversary

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

From the Department of Corrections: sometimes, I just want to correct what I see as a grave error on other people’s part. I present this small correction, again, since it didn’t seem to take effect quite as strongly as I’d hoped previously.

*****
I know it’s probably pedantic, and too late to change this particular meme, but here goes my tiny little attempt.

It’s come up at work a couple of times recently, so I wanted to point out that what was served by Jim Jones to his followers was not Kool-Aid.

It was Flavor-Aid. OK?

People who are blindly following the orders of a charismatic cult leader are drinking the Flavor-Aid. Got it? Are we clear?

And, no, Kraft Foods did not pay me to make this statement.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

From just over a year ago, when Barack Obama was not the favored candidate running for the Democratic nomination for President, comes this post. I attended then-Sen. Obama’s stump speech in Portland, with the hope that he would talk about the one major issue on every American’s mind at the time: the foolish and illegal Iraq War. That was, at the time, all I needed to know.

The fact that now-President-Elect Obama won both the nomination and the White House is, I believe, because he did, eventually, begin talking about the war.

*****
Barrack Obama gives a good speech. He spoke passionately about all the good things he’d do once he’s President.

But not one word about the most important issue in America right now.

Not one word about what he can do, right now, to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not one word about accountability for the men who lied us into a war.

Not one word from a leading voice of the majority party in both houses of the People’s Congress.

Apparently Congress is powerless these days. The message from the junior Senator from Illinois is that we need a good king, not the bad king we have now.

Yes, a good king would be nice. But what about all those “checks and balances” that the founding fathers put into the Constitution? I’d really like to hear more about those. That’s not Senator Obama’s message tonight.

And that’s all I needed to hear. I’m glad I went tonight.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites.

New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the world, at least among those I’ve visited.

And allowing it to be destroyed marks the point when the majority of Americans began to see that President Bush was not a competent or compassionate president.

My thoughts on the matter, shortly after it occurred, follow below.

*****
I know I’m late with this, but I can’t let the event pass without some small comment.

New Orleans was my favorite city in the whole world, at least of the few places I’ve actually been. And now, it seems, it will have to live on in my memory. Partying, drinking, eating the most amazing food, the local color and history and architecture. Of all the cities I would have liked to retire in, to sit in the shade, drinking and writing and people-watching…

Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Andy Jackson and Jean Lafitte, Delphine LaLaurie, Marie Laveau… The Garden District, the French Quarter, Storyville… Preservation Hall and Café du Monde…

Katrina has all but wiped it from the face of the Earth.

The sewage, the toxic chemicals from the refineries and industrial ports, the dead bodies being exhumed from the Big Easy’s unique above-ground gravesites and floating down streets-turned-canals… It’s going to be uninhabitable for a long time to come.

My thoughts go out to all the victims of Katrina.

And… the economic devastation is going to be rather harsh, too. The Port of Southern Louisiana is one of the five largest ports in the world, and the largest port (by volume) in the United States, larger than New York, larger than Los Angeles. Not only does New Orleans handle oil imports, but it handles food and timber exports to the rest of the world.

We haven’t even begun to feel the effects of this natural disaster.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Even now, three years later, people searching for “Kate Beckinsale” end up at my little corner of the internet.

Mostly for the picture in the following post. Although the story about the masturbating rabbit is my first mention of her – but no picture. My readers enjoy visual stimulus, I suppose.

*****
Joss Whedon is helming a remake of Wonder Woman?

There’s some bogus MTV “poll” on who Joss should cast that has its results rigged to give one of three answers: Catharine Zeta Jones, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah (pardon me for being non-PC but WTF?!) and “unknown actress”. No, I’m not gonna link to the poll; I already said it was bogus.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the creator of Wonder Woman, Dr. William Moulton Marston writing under the pseudonym of Charles Moulton, was, well, into bondage and submission — which is why in every single comic he wrote, Wonder Woman ended up being bound somehow. And loving it. Often, other women and men were bound up somehow, too; the most obvious way being with Wonder Woman’s golden lasso.

Dr. Marston was a fascinating character. Inventor of the pseudo-scientific “lie detector”, a feminist theorist, and apparently happily polygamous, fathering and raising two children with two different women. He claimed to have created Wonder Woman in an effort to get boys to enjoy being bound and dominated by women:

But, apparently, the woman-dominated society Dr. Marston attempted to create by means of comic books did not come to fruition. Even the sight of Halle Berry in a leather dominatrix outfit with a whip didn’t save the truly awful “Catwoman” from dying a horrible box office death, f’rinstance.

So casting Wonder Woman, a modern one, at least, is a tricky proposition. Sure, the obvious choice is Angelina Jolie, but, well, in my opinion she’s a little too into the whole B/D thing. Not that that wouldn’t be fun, mind you.

There’s lots of non-obvious choices, or should I say, less obvious choices. But for me, there’s really only one actress on my personal list of “wouldn’t mind being tied up by”.

My vote? I’d write in Kate Beckinsale:

Rawr

…I’m sorry. What were we talking about? Oh, right, Wonder Woman. Yeah, OK, Kate looks better in black leather/spandex/vinyl, I suppose, than the bright red-and-gold of a Wonder Woman costume. I just lost my mind there for a second.

…c’mon, you can’t tell me you didn’t see that one coming?

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Maybe I’m repressed but I don’t like to socially interact with people when I’m eliminating waste from my body.

*****
First rule of men’s rooms: men don’t talk to each other, or acknowledge each other, unless they’re on equal footing. And even then, the topics of conversation are quite limited. And really, only at a urinal. If someone’s in a stall they might as well not be there.

I’m at the gym, in a stall (see above), and a guy gets in the stall next to me. Loudly calls out something that just doesn’t register with me. Because I’m in a stall. I’m invisible, or should be.

He repeats it, and I make out his words: “Hey, do you know when the Notre Dame game is on tonight?”

It takes me several minutes to process, as I wait for his buddy or whoever to respond. When no one does, it dawns on me that HE’S TALKING TO ME.

“No, sorry. I have no idea.” Is this appropriate conversation for strangers that are supposed to be invisible to each other? Is this guy crazy? Wait, sorry, all humans are crazy, so of course the answer is yes, but it’s the wrong question. Is he one of the obviously crazy people? Evidence is collecting, and signs are starting to point to “yes, yes he is, get out now.”

“That is going to be the game” he continues. I fall silent, because, well, there’s really no response to this, for all the reasons I stated above, plus the fact that I simply don’t care about college football.

We both fall silent for a bit. Then I hear ringtones, ringtones that are playing Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”.

And the guy answers the phone.

More evidence.

He chats with the caller, while sitting on the pot. I’m even more stunned, but also… I’m thinking I should flush the toilet or make some noises in an effort to call attention to the guy’s location. Y’know, to alert whoever is stupid enough to chat with this obviously crazy person that he’s obviously crazy.

The guy tries again to find out when this Notre Dame game is, and from the one side of the conversation that I can’t avoid hearing it’s clear that this game is not taking place tonight, or at least the person on the other end believes that adamantly. The guy is not entirely convinced, but then tries to get the person he’s talking to to go to Montana with him next week. The dangers of being alone in the vast open spaces of Montana with this insanely unsocialized man are apparent, though, and the other person declines. The conversation ends.

My services in noisemaking turned out not to be needed. The other person is safe for the moment. I am still in inadvertent contact with this guy. And the final piece of evidence is revealed.

Because the guy starts muttering under his breath.

It’s a Popeye kind of muttering, where I can’t make out all the words. It’s practically Tourette’s Syndrome muttering (Tourette’s is not always curse words; sometimes it’s just pre-verbal sounds, or even tics and gestures, at least that’s my understanding), but one word in about 5 or 6 floats out; I make out “dingbat” and “dickhead” mixed in with the inarticulate grunts and chuckles. I see that he stands up, all the while muttering, and finally he breaks into a bit of sing-song muttering, with a rhythm, or at least a cadence. And then, he’s gone.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Another topic that comes up often when I write is the many different people around me. I’m a writerly sort – maybe you’ve noticed? – and I like to try to capture the uniqueness of humanity. Sometimes I’m doing it from what I hope is a detatched, neutral viewpoint.

And sometimes I’m consciously doing it from my own, biased, flawed viewpoint, with all that that entails.

Here’s my first post about a neighbor that I still have around, even four years later, even after my brilliant plan to escape him.

*****
OK, ignore my previous post. I thought of something to write about.

My current apartment is in a good neighborhood and I’ve been there for years so even though the rent has increased some it’s still pretty cheap. Certainly cheaper than I could find a 1 bedroom/1 bath apartment in Sellwood for if I was looking right now. I’m right on a bus line (important when you’re economically opposed to automobile ownership) and close to a couple of other bus lines. I’ve got a washer/dryer hookup in my apartment (bonus!) and I can walk to the grocery store. Lots of plusses.

But… I hate my neighbors. I’ve got this guy living next to me who has been a nuisance for years. When he moved in, the building was operated by a very bad manager, and my neighbor would always try to get me to contact the manager to complain; the old “let’s you and him fight” technique.

My neighbor is chronically unemployed and so finds he has lots of time to sit around drinking beer and trying to strike up conversations with passers-by. My apartment is on the second story, and to get to it there is only one stair that leads to the walkway all three apartments share. I consider the stairway to be a common area, but my neighbor considers it his living room. He’ll sit there at the end of the day, smoking, drinking, cussing, laughing… and because of the layout this is directly underneath my living room window. Not to mention the fact that I have to step around him and his cronies on the stairs to get to my front door. I dread going home and finding him there, which happens a lot. When I’m home I tend to leave the curtains drawn and windows closed to keep out his obnoxious laugh and the cigarrette smoke.

But that’s not the worst part. Because of all his drinking, my neighbor often ends up sick and hungover in the morning. He seems, though, to make it to the bathroom before becoming violently ill. I know this because his bathroom is right next to my bedroom. Several times a week I am awakened by the sound of my neighbor tossing his cookies into the porcelain throne. Thin walls do not mute this much at all. Joy. The mornings he’s not sick, he’s coughing and hacking due to his smoking habit…

I find all this oppressive. But I’ve not done much about it. I know, I know, I should be less passive. I’ve mainly used this as an excuse not to be home much, which does seem to help my social life.

But I have an opportunity. There are two, 2 bedroom apartments downstairs from me, and the one on the other side of the building from me is open. I would no longer have to step around him to get to my home. I would no longer have to be awakened by the sound of chunky liquid splashing into a bowl, or his hacking cough. And I would still live in the same neighborhood and still have the W/D hookup and all the other things I like about my current apartment. My rent would only go up $100/month, which, if I look at what I would gain (a less oppressive living space) seems very much worth it. I mentioned the possibility of moving to my landlord and now he’s waiting for me to give him a yea or a nay.

However… once again my mind refuses to stay in context. Instead of evaluating the two tangible choices, a voice in my head whispers of other, fictional choices. I’ve started browsing the classifieds, and for around $600 I could move to any number of other places in several cool neighborhoods: downtown, close-in SE, Hawthorne, or the Lloyd Center area. I could move somewhere that had DSL (I’m currently on cable modem, which, for technical reasons involving me wanting to share my bandwidth is less than useful (there’s probably a whole ‘nother post in that topic alone.)) I could gain hardwood floors or bay windows or a great view or sexy next-door neighbors… the mind boggles.

I talked to my sister, and she suggested that for the same money I’m talking about in rent, I could be making a payment on a condo. Be an “owner” not a “renter”. Get some equity. However, my sister thinks of money much differently than me, and I suspect that even though what she says is technically true (“your mortgage payment wouldn’t be more than $600/month, including taxes”), there would still be lots of hidden costs and fees that would make that choice more expensive, both short-term and in the long run. Also, the places I would have to live are not really my favorite neighborhoods: Tigard, Clackamas… basically the ‘burbs. Bleh. I’m a downtown kind of guy. I need to be in SE or downtown. Gotta stick with what I know and love.

So, in the end, those “other” choices are all mythical. I should really decide based on just the two current choices and not introduce extraneous possibilities…

I’m going to move downstairs for now, and keep my eyes open for something better.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Lots of my posts are basically rants. Just me, going off, usually angry, about some small thing.

And they’re usually funny.

Here’s an early rant about the lyrics to a song that, I think, are woefully misunderstood.

*****
Did you ever think about the song “Message In A Bottle”? I mean, really think about it?

Here’s this guy, alone, on an island. He’s basically dying, right? I mean, loneliness can kill you. Maybe he’s got enough to eat, fish, fruits, coconuts. If the Professor was there he could make a friggin’ radio out of those damn coconuts, but, I’m assuming, no, he’s not the Professor. He’s just some guy. Alone. On an island. And, eventually, the way all stories end, if he’s there long enough, he’s going to die.

He’s got to do something. Something to relieve the loneliness. So what does he do?

He writes a letter, puts it in a bottle, and sends it out to sea.

What the hell is that guy thinking? Has he gone batty? Talking to a soccer ball, nutso?

Because he waits a whole fucking year, and wakes up one day, and all he’s gotten for his trouble is more bottles!

The moral is that everyone’s on a fucking island, yes? They’re all out there, lonely, sending these pitiful messages out to sea, hoping someone will come rescue them from their little island…

But, butbutbut, those assholes out on those other islands, they’re selfish, just like the guy in the song. They don’t want to risk their skin in the sea. They’ve got a bottle, hey, they can spare one little bottle. On an island with coconuts and all the fish they can devour, who needs a bottle? Hell, it’s probably a rum bottle, and they polished it off (yeah, I’ve seen “Pirates of the Carribean”) and then, with their courage all pumped up from the booze, they just scribbled off some note and tossed that fucker out into the waves.

No, the real moral of the story is that people are worthless. Ain’t nobody coming to save you from your sandy beach; they’re too busy nursing hangovers from cheap rum on their own sandy beaches waiting for you, yes, you, bunky, to come and rescue them.

The real moral of the story is that you’ve got to dive into the briny deep, expose your skin to the saltwater depths, the storms, the sharks and barracudas… and all you’re going to find out there on the other islands are cowardly people with an unlimited supply of booze to mask their fears.

When, all along, the people you need, the ones that are worth meeting, are probably dead, killed when they dove into the ocean, lashed by storms, drowned, exhausted from battling the waves, eaten by sharks. Dead. Like you’re going to be, whether or not you stay on your island or risk trying to find someone worth talking to.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

The early days of my blog coincided with a long and painful breakup between me and a woman who proved intensely attractive and equally frustrating for me. Seriously, she was like catnip to me. To this day, I don’t really know why it’s so.

That being the case, the Charlie Kaufman movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, about a painful breakup aided, and, perhaps, undone by the application of quack memory-erasing science, served as many things to me, coming out when it did. It was a warning, a reminder, a guide, and, most importantly, a mirror for my own actions.

It took me several viewings (including one with my ex-girlfriend) before the warning, reminder, guide and mirror “took” for me, however.

Here’s the review I posted after my first viewing.

*****
Saw “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” last night. I’ve been waiting for this movie to come out for months now. Charlie Kaufman is an amazing writer, having written “Being John Malkovich”, “Adaptation” and “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”, all of which I thought were excellent. And, from the previews of “Eternal Sunshine”, showing scenes of bizarre contrasts (and Kirsten Dunst dancing in her underwear), overlaid with the perfect choice of music, ELO’s ridiculously over-the-top ode to optimism “Mr. Blue Sky”, all hinting at the underlying premise, I realized that Mr. Kaufman is now doing in film what Phillip K. Dick was doing in novels 30, 40, even 50 years ago. It’s about time movies caught up with the printed word.

The premise is simple to describe, but carries a lot of depth and room to explore: Joel and Clementine (played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet), having had a bad breakup, each decide to undergo a procedure where their painful memories of each other are erased. The movie is told from Joel’s point of view, and as he slowly loses both the good and the bad memories of Clementine, he has second thoughts, and struggles, from within his own mind, to stop or reverse the process.

The incredible depth of feeling shown by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in their roles is contrasted with the goofiness of the technicians performing the erasure; those scenes, with Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst, and Tom Wilkinson as the creator of the process, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (goddamn Kaufman comes up with great names!), distract needlessly from the story I most wanted to see, although Kaufman does tie it back together at the end.

But the few sour notes (like Kirsten Dunst’s character and her subplot) do not take away from the painful beauty of watching Joel re-live his relationship with Clementine, peeling back the rotten outer layers and revealing the quiet moments of love and awkward beginning of her coming into his life. Anyone who has fallen in love and watched it fall apart can empathize with the lovers on screen; laughing at their giddy highs and wincing at their spiteful bickering.

When Dr. Mierzwiak asks Joel to collect everything that reminds him of Clementine, my first reaction was astonishment; when someone has been that close to you, it seems that everything can carry a reminder of that person. How could someone quantify every connection they had with a lover? Because, oftentimes, it’s not just small mementos or trinkets or cards that are the vector of a relationship; it’s also places, certain streets or cafés… or even songs or singers or actors… or even concepts, ideas… You get the idea. Our lives intertwine with the other to the point that extracting them from our lives is impractical, possibly even unrealizable. But Dr. Mierzwiak treats this as just a simple step in his process of exorcism, and Joel’s earnest acceptance of this reflects the characters’ naïeveté.

Of special note is watching Joel enlist his memory of Clementine in his quest to save his memories of her. It’s treated in an almost off-hand way, but I immediately picked up on it (all those PKD stories have prepared me for this type of plot twist, I think. I miss you, Phil). Is Joel interacting with just his memories, or is this, in fact, the “real” Clementine? Since, back in the “real” world, Clementine has also undergone this process, did she, also have doubts once she started to lose Joel? There is obviously some connection between the lovers, but is that a mundane material connection of having shared some time together… or is there something more that links the two, even to the point of existing, in some small way, in each other’s heads, that allows them to join forces and counter the erasure?

Brilliant. I will see this movie again.

This movie is Most Highly Recommended.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

Before I head out to find one (or more) election night parties, with hopes of something huge to celebrate about, I’ll re-post, as part of my “30 Days of Blogiversary” posting, my cynicism and anger at the worst possible outcome of election night 2004.

G’night, and I hope we wake up in a better America tomorrow.

*****
Work, America. Keep working. Your president and his staff of rich old white men require your hard work, your sweat, and the blood of your sons and daughters, in order for them to have more money and inflate their flaccid tiny pricks for another fucking. “Freedom” is on the march, they’re stealing your “democracy” and shipping it overseas, but you, the one with hopes and dreams, you just keep your head down, be fearful of the dark-skinned men in beards and the men who want to marry each other. Shuffle along, willingly put your head in the noose and just never ever ask any fucking questions. They know what they’re doing. And you don’t. You don’t know what they’re doing, because you love Jesus and you love America, you know, you read about this back in your state-run school, back when you did read, before all the flashy pictures of wife-swapping and explosions on the teevee distracted you, before they taught you to hate the smart people, you wouldn’t want to be a smart person, would you? Smart people don’t drink beer and have sex, no, their locked in their mom’s basement eating bag after bag of cheese-flavored crunchy snacks. Just keep fearing when they tell you to fear, just keep listening while they’ve switched your participation and citizenship with a glitzy blue-but-mostly-red map and talking heads telling you what to feel (not telling you what to think, no, ’cause thinking’s bad and, hell, even the president don’t think, does he? He just roots out terror and flips the bird at anyone who disagrees with him and marches his toy soldiers off to die for “liberty”.

Work, and sleep, and drink your hard-earned domestic beer and listen when your pastor lies to you about what Jesus says and fear, fear, fear what they want you to fear. And when the world attacks you because you’re an American, and your leaders call them “terrorists”, make sure and completely misunderstand both why they’re attacking and what America really has become.

For the 30 days following this blog’s five-year anniversary, I am reposting some favorite, popular, or unique posts. Feel free to contact me to suggest some of your favorites. If you’d like to comment, click through to the original post.

From the early days of my blog, when I was still trying to figure out what to write, and when, comes a post that’s reflective and thoughtful. It came at a time when I was redefining what I could do in physical terms – Just three days prior to this post, I ran in my first-ever 5K race, the 2004 Shamrock Run, after having been exercising on and off for a couple of years, and a couple of months of “training” for the race.

I was on a steep weight-loss curve – after having resigned myself to the fact that I was just the size I was, and that couldn’t change.

Obviously, I was wrong. I could lose weight; I proved it to myself in the most dramatic fashion.

I could run; again, the proof was in the doing.

These early reflections, below, are still with me even today. I’ve internalized the idea that I can set goals, and that I am not carved in stone. I can change.

Here’s to the future.

*****

First, I understand that fat cells never (or rarely) ever die. They grow and shrink, but you never really change the number of cells you have during your adult life.

Second, I understand that fat cells are where your body stores toxins and poisons and other gunk that doesn’t get filtered out by your liver.

Third, it’s my understanding (as well as making logical sense, assuming the above two assertions are true) that when someone diets, their fat cells dump the poisons and toxins along with the fat. It’s a side-effect of dieting that I’ve read of in several books.

Lastly, I’ve been fat for at least my entire adult life.

That all being the case, then during this whole process of shrinking from 225 to under 180 lbs (or for that matter, from 240 in August 2000, my highest weight ever), I’ve been dumping, along with the weight, poisons that I have carried around with me for my entire life.

I don’t know if it’s scientifically true… but I’d like to think it’s metaphorically true.

So in many ways, I am, in fact, a brand-new person. Or at least, cleaner. I’ve shed more than weight; I’ve rid myself of past hates and fears… At least.

I feel… great. Amazing, in fact. I don’t want to leave behind my past; it’s what made me what I am. But there are certain parts of “the old Brian” that I am not going to miss at all.

This is apparently all part of my adjusting self-image. Brian is dead… long live Brian.