I've never been in debt. Okay, that's not entirely true. Yes, I've been in the kind of debt where I had to make car payments, and I'm currently in the kind of debt that says I have to make house payments.
I've never been in credit card debt, however. Truth be told, I've never even owned a credit card. I don't trust them. I've been conditioned not to trust them thanks to many years of living with college roommates.
Most of my college roommates had this weird outlook on credit cards. Basically, they thought credit cards were magical pieces of plastic that just magically paid for things and that they were somehow immune from the the ensuing debt that came about due to excessive credit card spending.
I'll admit it: I was sort of jealous of my roommates and their magical credit cards. After all, they always seemed to have money and, if they didn't, they just whipped out their credit cards. Books? Put them on the credit card. Food? Put it on the credit card. Night out at a strip club? credit card.
And yet there I was writing checks and budgeting like a fool. I remember thinking that I was doing everything all wrong. I mean, there I would sit, meticulously lording over my finances, while my roommates went waltzing all over town swiping their credit cards with the careless glee of a six-year-old with a loaded pistol.
Then, one year, I was a roommate with a guy named Chad. Chad was actually a former high school classmate of mine. He was, and is, a tech-head. He's one of those guys who was born to know technology. Way back in elementary school, he taught me how to write simple programs for the Apple IIc, and he always just seemed to know everything about computers.
But he didn't know shit about personal finances. He whipped out any one of his many credit cards with the swiftness and ease of a Old West gunslinger. By the time we became roommates, he had already accrued over $10,000 in credit card debt.
I remember thinking what an incredibly large amount of money that seemed to be, especially when I factored in the understanding that he also received financial aid, and that he also worked. Granted, he worked at the local Brach's candy factory on the Gummi Bear line, which paid about as well as you might imagine, but it was still money, so I came to the conclusion that old Chad was a pretty carefree spender.
Well, one day, I popped into Chad's outrageously messy room where I noticed, tucked between two huge bags of pilfered defective Gummi Bears, a credit card notice that was slugged "Urgent!" and another that was slugged "Immediate Payment Required" and still another that read "We Break Fingers And Toes."
Then the calls started coming in, usually two or three a day. "Is Mr. Haugen available? We really need to speak with him." No, he's not here. "Are you sure you're not really Mr. Haugen?" Yes, I'm sure. "Well, when he comes in, have him call Mike at Discover immediately." *sound of shotgun cocking* Will do.
Chad was masterful when it came to avoiding creditors. He always seemed to leave the apartment just two or three minutes before a creditor called. It was like he had some sort of sixth sense. Which was all fine and dandy, except that I ended up being the intermediary between Chad and the creditors, so I got to absorb all the impatient anger and suspicion of basically every credit card company on the planet.
It was the day a creditor appeared, in person, at our doorstep that I realized Chad's debt situation was probably more dire than Chad cared to admit. There was a knock at the door, I answered, and a gentleman in a suit that looked both impressive and threatening stood before me. He asked to see a Mr. Chad Haugen, at which point I heard a little scuffling emanating from Chad's room as Chad scurried out the back entrance which, conveniently, was located at the far end of his bedroom.
We chatted together, the ominous creditor and me, for about an hour, waiting for Chad to get home, even though, of course, there was no way in holy hell Chad was going to make an appearance while that guy was in our apartment. I even had to produce my ID, so the creditor was satisfied that I wasn't, in fact, Chad Haugen.
After that, I believe, Chad ended up getting a loan from his parents, or somebody, so he could pay off his credit card debt at least enough to keep the creditors at bay. He eventually got a job working at IBM, which was a long-assed commute from Winona to Rochester, but paid a whole lot more than the Gummi Bear line.
As for me, Chad's experience with credit cards pretty much scared me away from plastic for good.
Buyer's Remorse
So, over the weekend, my girlfriend and I hopped across the border to Wisconsin (okay, we didn't hop, we drove) in search of fireworks. Granted, you can buy fireworks in Minnesota, but they're the uber-wimpy kind, the kind that spark and fizzle like wet road flares. Still, I guess I have to give Minnesota a little credit for making SOME fireworks legal. Even sucky fireworks are still fireworks.
Well, it's a funny thing about fireworks' laws in Minnesota and Wisconsin. You see, Wisconsin, too, has restrictions on the type of fireworks Wisconsin residents can buy. If you're a Wisconsin resident, for example, fireworks that explode in the air, like bottlerockets, and dynamite, are illegal.
However, if you're a Minnesota resident buying fireworks in Wisconsin, well, you can buy whatever the hell you want, even though those fireworks are mega-illegal in Minnesota. The only catch is that, even though Minnesota residents can buy the illegal fireworks in Wisconsin, they can't light them off in Wisconsin.
So, basically, you can buy all the illegal fireworks you want in Wisconsin, but if you ever intend to actually light them off, you're going to have to break a law somewhere along the line.
I have no problem with that.
So, I bought the big stuff on Saturday. I bought the artillery shells that go boom in the air, and I bought bottlerockets so complex, they look like they were constructed for space flight. And I bought firecrackers, and I bought Roman candles, and I bought sparklers (okay, that wasn't my choice, that was the girlfriend). I bought about $100 worth of pyrotechnics.
And now I'm left thinking, "why the hell did I blow $100 on shit that's just going to blow up and disappear?"
I go through this every year. I get all excited about buying fireworks. I buy the fireworks. Then I wonder why I bought the fireworks. It's a nasty cycle. Thank goodness it only happens once a year.
Well, at least my 4th of July will be bright, colorful and loud. I sure could use that $100 though, because I'm kinda hungry.
UPDATE: Remember, folks, be careful out there with your fireworks and, for God's sake, don't play with grenades.
Dave Barry's at it again, needling the folks over at Poetry.com. For a reminder of one of his previous jabs at Poetry.com, go here.
Well, this time around, it appears the theme is to conjure a poem about a pustule or numerous putules, and sign each poem with the last name "Pustule" so people can view your creative genius. I'm nothing if not a sucker for pustule poetry, so here are my submissions.
"Pus Comes From Behind" by Freemont Xavier Pustule
I awoke today, as I often do, and felt a pain on my posterior
So I hopped up on the bathroom sink, and aimed my butt right at the mirror.
What I saw there frightened me, and it would have frightened you as well
A pus-filled mound was rooted there, but what it was I couldn't tell.
It was large, golf ball in size, and it was slightly leaking.
There wasn't much that I could do, except start pinching and start tweaking.
I cannot lie to you my friends, each pinch was filled with pain.
Shooting shocks went seering up, from my butt up to my brain.
Yet valiantly I pinched and tweaked, until finally I felt it,
The pustule popped with surprising force, and suddenly I smelled it.
My mirror was all splashed with pus, and the odor was intense.
So, I hopped down off the bathroom sink, and lit up some incense.
Now, of course, the mirror's clean, and my butt now sports three stitches.
But I can tell you, without a single doubt, butt pustules are real bitches.
Dang it! That one was denied! I'll have to try again.
"Farewell To Pustule" by Freemont Xavier Pustule
A pustule sprouted upon my thigh
Dribbling a white, foul juice
The pain was enough to make me cry
As if I needed an excuse.
To the sewing room I ran
Intent on only just one thing.
Find the biggest sewing needle I can.
And forget about the string.
Armed with a three inch needle lance,
Sharpened to perfection,
I proceeded to quickly drop my pants
And said a prayer against infection.
I jabbed the pustule through and through,
And the pain was just exquisite.
Like I was giving myself my own tattoo,
Or the In-laws paid a visit.
It was over quick, the deed was done
And the pustule diminished.
I can tell you though, that wasn't fun,
And I'm glad the thing is finished.
During my first year of college, I had a dorm room entirely to myself. It was a harsh introduction to the realities of living on my own, such as it was, because I had no idea what it meant to decorate and furnish my own living space.
I'm a utilitarian kind of guy. I don't do aesthetics. My idea of decorating is, well, a picture of a tiger charging the camera. I've always basically kind of relied on whatever girl I happened to be dating to make decorating decisions, a philosophy that worked well provided I had a girlfriend.
Therefore, for pretty much my entire college career--and, trust me, it was a career--my wall decorations consisted almost entirely of posters of expensive sports cars I could never afford, and impossibly seductive women in varying stages of undress who I could never expect to sleep with. Oh, and I had a poster of Bruce Lee, too, which I can't really explain beyond the fact he's the toughest guy who ever died.
On the furniture end of things, I basically made use of whatever was available to me. During that first year of dorm life, for example, the school provided me with a really crappy single bed, a crappier desk, and an oh-so-crappy dresser featuring a chipped mirror. For me, of course, this constituted Martha Stewart living, and this was before Martha Stewart was even a household (or prisonhold) name.
At any rate, that first year of dorm life was a pretty spartan existence. The few women that I was able to entice into my room were less than impressed by my decorating prowess, and the general consensus was that any sex was to be done with the lights out so they didn't have to look at Nicole Eggert striking a seductive pose alongside another poster of an unknown female with fantastically large and dark areolas.
Anyway, all of this is entirely beside the point of this post. Well, mostly.
Towards the end of that first college year, there was a rash of incidences wherein some dorm students thought it was funny to set off the fire alarm. During a couple of weeks in the early spring, it was practically a nightly exercise to have the fire alarm tripped, requiring all dorm residents to shuffle out into the early spring air in our jammies at 2 or 3 a.m. Typically, it took about an hour for the fire department to give the all-clear, which was time that would have been much better spent sleeping.
The fire drill joke was funny the first two or three times, because there was a certain amount of fascination in scanning the pajama-bedecked females and ascertaining which ones were affected most prominently by the chilly early spring air.
But, after about the third fire drill, even checking out hard female nipples largely lost its appeal. After all, there was sleep to be had.
So, I hatched a plan.
My dorm room featured a fairly large closet, and it dawned on me one morning, after enduring the latest fire alarm prank, that it was large enough to lay down in, if I so chose to do so. So, after class that afternoon, I set about making a little nest of sorts in my closet. It was pretty comfortable and, with a little ingenuity involving a couple of towels, I was able to set up a sort of curtain that hid my nest entirely.
Sure enough, two nights later, some jackhole set off a bunch of firecrackers in the hallway, and the billowing smoke went and tripped the fire alarm. I dragged myself out of bed and went into my closet, where I made myself nice and comfortable in my nest and drew the towel curtain, hiding me completely from view.
On cue, the resident assistant used his dorm key to enter my room to ensure I had evacuated, and he checked my closet as well. But, thanks to my excellent curtain camoflage, I went undetected.
I utilized my closet nest several times over the following weeks, until they finally started cracking down on the idiots who kept tripping the alarm.
I guess, in retrospect, the whole thing could have backfired on me and I could have been burned alive in the event of a real fire.
But, at least I would have been well-rested in the after-life.
In other news Luciana Salazar is hot. I like to see Luciana Salazar. A Luciana Salazar would be pretty awesome. Mmm, Luciana Salazar.
I rediscovered this over the weekend. I can't tell you on how many levels this amuses me. Like or loathe the man, it's fun to make him dance.
Media Outlets Had Next Two Days Mapped Out; Now Everything's fucked Up
WASHINGTON D.C. (Rhodes Media Services) -- Media organizations worldwide were thrown into a maelstrom after a surprise move by the U.S.-led coalition that turned over sovereignty to Iraq a full two days ahead of schedule.
Newsrooms, which had a stockpile of stories built up, ensuring the next two days would be filled with introspective analysis, criticism and foreboding prognostication, were thrown into a tailspin of journalistic "catch-up" following the surprise handover.
"Sonofabitch," said ABC News anchorman Sam Donaldson. "Here I had a two-part expose all ready on how everything that has been done in Iraq has been totally wrong, complete with unscientific graphs and everything, and now that's in danger of being scrapped entirely. This just really chaps my ass."
Katie Couric, taking a break from her crusade to encourage everyone in the world to get a colonoscopy, expressed her own frustration with the early power transfer.
"This is just another classic example of the Bush administration misleading people," said the one-time-cute-but-increasingly-sanctimonious Couric. "And just think of how this messes with the terrorist plans to upset the power transfer. The car-bombings and beheadings alone would have ensured a busy news desk for at least the next week, but now nothing is certain. Damn it! Be sure to schedule a colonoscopy today!"
UPDATE: Heh. Maybe this entry was more than parody after all. Looks like Tom Brokaw will have some time to sight-see. (via Instapundit).
As per Lily's suggestion:
In the name of all pure and holy
Layne's author may be named Odin Soli
That name is a crime
For which he should serve time
And eat nothing but bad guacamole
Odin Soli, the man behind Layne
Has an imaginative and quick little brain
His next blogging trick
Will be a bi-sexual chick
Who works as a clerk somewhere in Bahrain.
It's time now to talk about global warming because, let's face it, this globe of ours is getting warm. There are many culprits responsible for this planet-wide threat, ranging from fossil fuel emissions, to CFCs to industrial pollutants. But perhaps no other threat promises to warm our globe faster than the unchecked and unforgivable burping of sheep.
Thankfully, however, according to this article, scientists are on the case.
Scientists have developed a serum to reduce methane gas in burping sheep, cows and other ruminants to combat global warming, a German magazine reported on Monday.
The Hanover-based monthly Technology Review will report in its July issue that Andre-Denis Wright, a molecular biologist at Australia's CSIRO Institute, has found a vaccine that reduced the methane emissions of sheep by eight percent.
This is groundbreaking news, people! No longer will you have to drive by a pasture of grazing sheep and turn away in disgust knowing that the peptic grazers are belching our planet's demise. No, now you can still turn away, but with eight percent less disgust.
I, for one, am greatly relieved to know that the scientific minds of the world are engaged in such important work as vaccinating burping sheep and discovering such important information as:
Sheep produce 20 grams of methane each day, or seven kg per year, the magazine with 80,000 subscribers reported. Cows produce about 114 kg per year of methane (CH4) -- a gas 21 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for driving up temperatures.
Speaking of bodily emanations, the city of El Paso, Texas was recently named Yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040616/od_nm/life_sweaty_dc">America's sweatiest city.
Accordig to the article, another scientist with entirely too much time on his hands dedicated many precious research hours to make his discovery, research hours that could have been better spent addressing flatulating swine.
Research scientist Tim Long calculated heat indexes and relative humidity levels to come up with his top 100 sweatiest cities in America list.
By Long's calculations, in just four hours, El Paso's residents produce enough sweat to fill an Olympic swimming pool, with individuals shedding more than 36 fluid ounces of perspiration an hour.
You'd think El Paso would eagerly embrace such a lofty distinction, but no, they're fighting back hard.
"We enjoy over 300 sunny days a year with a very dry, temperate climate," said El Paso Mayor Joe Wardy, who is donating to charity what P&G said it is giving him for his city's dubious honor -- a year's supply of antiperspirant. "We were recently ranked as one of the seven best cities to retire in. Every one here knows that this publicity stunt is not based on good science."
Apparently, the good folks of El Paso don't realize that sweating is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in Nepal, it's something to be revered.
Priests offered special prayers as hundreds of devotees thronged a shrine in a remote Nepali village on Wednesday to appease a Hindu deity after its stone idol began "sweating," witnesses said.
Jessica Biel. Amanda Bynes. Amanda Bynes. Amanda Bynes. Hilary Duff. Hilary Duff. Hilary Duff. Hilary Duff. Alyson Hannigan. Alyson Hannigan. Alyson Hannigan. Alyson Hannigan. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Sarah Michelle Gellar.
"Sweating" of the deity at the temple in Dolakha, 140 km (90 miles) east of the capital, has in the past been followed by major political changes or tragedies in the world's only Hindu kingdom, villagers say.
Sex is also suspected. Hmm.. Can you believe it? Yes, I can.. Elisha Cuthbert, Didn't she play a pornstar in some move?, I think so., That was sexy.. Quite.. Yum..
The special prayers were offered after devotees saw a vaporous substance on the stone idol of the god Bhimeshwor, revered as Lord Shiva, third in the trinity of Hindu gods. Goats were also sacrificed as part of the prayers.
It was not immediately known whether or not the goats were belching at the time of their sacrifice.
Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. . Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray.
Growing up, I had one primary fear, and that was of my older brother, Reg. I didn't fear him like the way you might fear a bear, or Michael Jackson, but I did fear him.
I feared Reg in the way that most siblings probably fear a brother who is four years older. Reg was always bigger and stronger than me, and he liked to prove that to me rather routinely.
For the most part, we would get along but, inevitably, the teasing side of Reg would emerge, and I'd basically be at his mercy.
During one winter morning, when I was about eight, with school running two hours late due to a snowfall, my parents were out of the house, and I was happily sleeping in. I was nice and warm and snug in my bed, blissfully unaware that Reg and I were the only ones in the house, and that Reg was feeling mischievous.
"Time to get up!" yelled Reg in a high-pitched voice, while barging into my room.
I tried to ball myself up all nice and protected in my blankets, but Reg was able to whisk them off me with relative ease. I wasn't dressed for a sibling round of teasing. I was wearing only a pair of Superman underoos which, despite their misleading packaging, did not imbue me with super-human strength. If anything, the only thing the underoos did was make me look pretty pathetic and teaseworthy. The only underwear I owned that looked even more pathetic were these pairs that featured little firetrucks and dalmations. They were soft and cottony, and Reg always taunted me with them, calling them "my little boy panties."
'Moooooooommmmmmmm!!" I screamed, as Reg dragged me down the stairs.
"Mom can't help you now," said Reg, laughing. "Neither can Dad. It's just you and me."
I kicked and flailed to no avail. I didn't know what Reg had planned for me, but when he started opening the porch door, I had a pretty good idea.
With a heave and a toss, I found myself enveloped in a soft blanket of freshly fallen snow. A little known fact about Superman underoos: they don't offer much in the way of warmth. I scurried back to the front door, only to discover that Reg had locked me out. I caught a glimpse of him in the window, laughing maniacally.
I figured I still had a chance of getting to the back door before Reg locked that, too, but that would have meant pushing through waist-deep snow, and that would be really, really cold. Still, I had to try something. After all, there I was, practically naked for all the world to see, save for a skimpy pair of Superman underoos, which were quickly becoming wet and soggy thanks to the melting snow.
Crying at the top of my lungs, I started to make my way around the house to the back door. That's when it happened.
As I stood in the middle of the yard, bawling, in sopping wet Superman underoos, two school buses went by, each one packed with fellow elementary students who, if you're at all familiar with elementary students, were always on the lookout for ammunition with which to tease and taunt other students.
Well, you couldn't ask for much better taunting and teasing ammunition than a bawling third-grader, standing in the snow in a pair of soaking Superman underoos. That's some taunting and teasing gold right there.
When I finally made my way to the back door, I found Reg standing there, and he informed me I had to recite a verse extolling his greatness before he let me back in. I can't remember it verbatim but, through my pathetic, gasping crying, I managed to say something like this:
"My brother, Reg, is the greatest brother in the whole world, and I'm ugly and stupid and not worth poop."
With that, Reg let me back in the house. The whole ordeal probably only lasted about five minutes, but it had been the coldest, most embarrasing, most miserable five minutes I could remember.
When I got to school, I wasn't there for more than ten minutes before one of my classmates came up to me and said "Up, up and a-wahhhhhhhhh!" And the day didn't get much better after that.
In retrospect, I think I owe my brother some payback for that little episode.
Brace yourself, folks, because I'm about to emerge from my self-imposed hiatus from political blogging to air some of my musings, which, I'm sure, Joshua will no doubt take umbrage with, thus initiating a lengthy comment thread.
I mention Joshua, by the way, because this post is brought to you by The Red Pages.
As much as I hate to trot out a worn analogy, I feel I must jump back into the wayback machine to 1941. Oh, say, December 7, 1941. Something happened around that time, starting with Pearl and ending with Harbor.
Imagine, if you will, in the days, weeks and months following Pearl Harbor, that the U.S. sat on its hands, taking a timeout to really address and discuss the core reasons why the Japanese hated us enough to bomb Pearl Harbor.
"Oh, if only we hadn't stopped shipping them our scrap iron, this never would have happened!! If only we better understood them, they wouldn't have attacked us!! We should be building schools for the Japanese while working to address and dispell the core reasons things have gotten to this point!!"
It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Couldn't have happened. Not a chance. The idea that we should have responded to Pearl Harbor through diplomatic feel-goodism is just idiotic to its core.
And yet, today, there are those who can say, with righteous indignation, that 9/11 was simply the expected punishment we shouldn't have been surprised to have received. If you just look at our past foreign policy missteps, they say, we should have seen it coming.
Sorry, folks, but on that rather cool yet bright September morning--and you can call me a idiot on this if you want--I didn't see that coming, and I certainly didn't think we deserved it, not even just a little. And I still don't.
I graduated with a minor in history, but I didn't really start learning about the history of the Middle East until Sept. 12, 2001. It was kind of the massive rap on your wrists with a ruler that prompts you to bury your nose in your homework.
I've learned a lot, since then and now: about Israel, about Saudi Arabia, about Iraq, about Iran, about Palestine, about the Taliban and about Islam and Fundamentalist Islam in general. And, you know what? After three years of intensive study on the topic, I can say, with strong conviction that, had I known all of this information on Sept. 10, 2001, I would never have guessed that the next day was going to unfold the way it did. I just wouldn't have seen an attack like that coming, and I certainly wouldn't have thought we deserved it for some reason.
All of this is a hamfisted way of getting back to The Red Pages post that irked me. It's a great historical look at the Israeli/Palestinian situation. It points out, correctly so, that Jews were historically persecuted by the Christians far more than by Muslims. It points out, correctly, that the animosity that exists between Jews and Muslims today can be traced to the establishment of Israel and the turning of the back to Palestine. It points out, perhaps correctly, that Islamic Fundamentalism didn't always exist to exterminate the West. It wasn't always the case that Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism was our enemy. That's only the case today because of failings and mistakes and exercises in political expediency along the way.
None of which really matters.
The Japanese, prior to WWII, weren't generally considered an enemy. The road that led to Pearl Harbor was gradual, and nuanced and, in retrospect, it's not surprising that it happened, but it was certainly surprising at the time, and we certainly didn't deserve it.
Perhaps, 60 years from now, we'll read about the War On Terror, and we'll be treated to a historical perspective of the build up to 9/11, and we'll see all the causes and effects, and then we'll close the book and put it back on the shelf, secure in the knowledge that, despite the mistakes that may have been made, even by our own country and its leaders, leading up to the war, we'd still know that it was a war that needed to be fought. And won.
During my fourth year of college, I lived in an absolute shithole. Actually, no, calling the place a shithole is probably insulting to real shitholes. The place was awful, simply an architectural, design and decorating abortion of staggering magnitude.
God, I loved that place.
It was called the Shark Shack, so named because my roommates mounted an eight foot long plastic hammerhead shark on the living room wall, as well as a plastic swordfish and a taxidermy failure of, I think, a walleye. There was also a stuffed squirrel, which didn't seem to fit with the marine theme, but we really didn't care.
There were five people living in the Shark Shack, including myself, and I think it's safe to say I got a really raw deal when it came to picking out rooms. They said they "drew straws" to see who got which room but I, conveniently, was not around for the lottery.
Thus it was that I ended up in the smallest room in the house. The room was so small, I really honestly believe it had once been a walk-in closet. I ended up buying a futon for that room so I could actually have just a little bit of space. When the futon was folded out into bed mode, you couldn't even fully open the bedroom door. I had to squeeze through.
For my closet, there was this big white metal portable job that was more of a nuisance than anything else, because it robbed me of even more space. I eventually ended up trotting that clanging annoyance out to the garage and utilized a closet that was out in the hall. This proved to be a somewhat bad decision because, during one of our many gigantic parties, a drunken party-goer, unable to get into the bathroom, opened the hall closet and barfed all over my wardrobe.
It's safe to say that the Shark Shack was one of the better-known party havens in Winona at that time.We held huge parties to help bring down our rent costs. We also loved to fuckin' party.
Anyway, at some point during the year, I can't remember when, one of the roommates, Craig, turned 21. The other roommates took it upon themselves to take Craig out to celebrate the momentous event. I had to decline, because I had a huge project due the next day, so I had to stay behind and toil away in my little closet room.
A couple hours later, the troupe of celebrators returned, and they informed me that they had successfully encouraged Craig to drink 21 shots of assorted alcohol to commemorate his birthday.
"Are you fucking out of your minds?" I asked. "The guy could die."
They informed me that they knew Craig, and that he could handle his booze. As if to augment their point, Craig poked his head into the room, and he seemed, by all appearances, to be doing just fine.
But then, the transformation began to take place.
Typically, getting a good drunk on is a process, and hopefully a gradual one. You drink a beer or two, and you feel a general wash of relaxation come over you. Then you drink a couple more beers, and you start feeling tingly, and you laugh at stuff that's not all that funny. Then you drink a couple more beers and your vision gets blurry. Then you drink a couple more beers and you find yourself arguing with a plastic shark on the wall, and losing the argument due to considerable slurring. Such a process of drunkening usually takes quite a few hours to develop.
In Craig's case, he went throught he process in just under 15 minutes. He went from wanting to whoop it up and party some more, to blowing chunks and drunken dementia from about 11:15 to 11:30 p.m. It was kind of fascinating and frightening to behold.
The dementia stage was the most terrifying, because old Craig started hallucinating. Honest to God hallucinating. He was seeing shit that just wasn't there, and he eventually ended up punching at his mirror.
And Craig wasn't a small guy. He lifted weights and was in pretty good shape overall, so it wasn't like any of us were really all that keen on trying to offer assistance. We were more willing to just kind of shout things into his bedroom from the hallway.
"Hey, Craig, are you okay in there?" I yelled.
"Get the fuck away from me, mmbbmmblllmbbmmbb! Grover."
"Uh, was that a yes?"
*thump*
Craig passed out. And he passed out harder than any man I had ever seen. He was crumpled into a pathetic pile on the floor, and a couple of the other roommates, Troy and Rob, managed to get him into his bed, with his face aimed at a bucket on the floor because, man, Craig just simply had to puke at some point.
Not knowing quite what to do, Troy and I decided to enlist some help from our buddies who lived down the block. We figured Craig would be fine because there were two other roommates at home to watch over him and make sure he wouldn't swallow his tongue and die. It never occured to us that other two roommates, pretty drunk in their own right, would just go and fall asleep in their bedrooms.
Troy and I were over at our buddies' place for about 20 minutes, and the general consensus was that they probably wouldn't be much help, so we walked back to the Shark Shack.
Upon opening the front door, we were confronted with a particularly surreal scene. It was raining in the living room. There was water just cascading through the ceiling and, judging by how wet the floor was, it had been happening for quite some time, like, about 20 minutes. Holy hell.
There are a few thoughts that travel through your mind when you see water raining from the living room ceiling, and you know immediately there's probably a monumentally drunk individual upstairs who is responsible. And, I'm here to tell you, not one of those thoughts is a pleasant one.
I was envisioning Craig, face down in an overflowing bathtub, and that he was dead, and that there was going to be hell to pay, and that he probably puked on my clothes just for good measure.
I ran upstairs so fast, I think I took the staircase four stairs at a time. When I got to the bathroom I did, indeed, find Craig face down in the bathtub, but he wasn't dead. Apparently, he had decided that the bathtub offered an easier target than that maddeningly small toilet, so he let loose with an astounding amount of puke into the tub. Then, he tried to wash the puke away, but he broke the pipe, which was basically spewing forth water onto the floor. For his part, Craig looked pretty calm about the whole thing, passed out again on the floor and all.
I turned off the water, checked Craig's vitals, and went back downstairs to assess the damage. Water continued to trickle down from the ceiling for a good half hour, and we had to kill the power to a large portion of the house to ensure that short circuits wouldn't burn the place to the ground.
The next day, as Craig continued to sleep off his 21st birthday, the rest of us sat downstairs, watching TV. Gradually, we heard a cracking sound, faint at first, but it got louder.
Suddenly, a large portion of the plaster ceiling, about a three foot by ten foot section, came crashing to the floor, revealing the lathe board skeleton underneath and pretty much ensuring that none of us would ever see our deposit on THAT one.
At about 2 p.m., Craig came staggering down the stairs. He assessed the damage and looked in mounting irritation at the mass of plaster on the floor.
"What the fuck happened here?!" he demanded.
"Well Craig," I said. "Let me tell you a story. . . "
Back in 1992, I moved to Tokyo when my parents both got teaching jobs at an international school called St. Mary's.
St. Mary's is an all boys school which, for me--a straight horny youth in his late teens--may just as well have been a death sentence. When you start looking at the female faculty for your daily daydreaming sexual fantasies, you realize just how dire the situation was.
To sublimate my frustrated sexual desire, and to keep from hitting on Mrs. Kim and Ms. Hagenson, I took martial arts classes after school and took extremely long walks at night, and I masturbated like the existence of the world depended on it. Thankfully, there was a porno vending machine located about two blocks from my apartment, so I was set.
Anyway, when it came to actual school life, I was a pretty good student. I worked hard and I got good grades, and I was secure in the knowledge that most of my classmates, and the student body in general, basically liked me. At that point in my life, I genuinely believed that it was possible, if I put enough effort into it, to please all of the people all of the time. Since then, of course, I've discovered that it's far easier, and far more gratifying, to piss off most of the people most of the time.
Eventually, the school year progressed to the wrestling season. Now, back in the States, I had been a pretty good wrestler. Not great, mind you, but pretty good. I probably wouldn't have wrestled in the state tournament but, damn it, I like to think I would have been damned close. In other words, wrestling was a pretty important component of my life. And I'd be damned if I wasn't going to make the varsity team.
As it turned out, making the team wasn't all that difficult. I quickly discovered that being a "pretty good" wrestler in the States translated into being a fairly godlike wrestler in Japan. Plus, since my dad was the wrestling coach, I had the old psychological edge working for me as well.
During the first day of wrestling practice, I basically dominated everyone who was three weight classes above me and everyone below that. I felt like Robocop. It became plainly obvious to me that I could basically pick and choose which weight class I wanted to compete in, and nobody could even think of standing in my way.
That didn't stop people from thinking of standing in my way, of course. When I eventually decided that I wanted to compete in the 148 lb. weight class, I did have to face off against an individual who had his eye on that spot. So, a wrestle-off had to be held.
My opponent was a kid named Hikaru, a junior who I had no previous beef with. He was a mix of Japanese and American parentage, and he was a fairly muscular, if not somewhat uncoordinated, wrestler.
My wrestling experience, combined with my technique, easily outmatched Hikaru's superior strength, and I ended up pinning him within a couple of minutes, thus ensuring my varsity spot. Unbeknownst to me, however, was that, at the moment the mat was slapped indicating my victory, I had basically made an enemy for life.
Hikaru, I was to eventually learn, was one of those unstable youths, a young man who believed the world was laid out specifically to aid him, and any time things didn't go his way, he had no problem bending or breaking the rules to get what he wanted. In short, Hikaru was a prick.
Of course, I didn't know Hikaru was a prick, and I certainly didn't realize that, by beating him in the wrestle-off, I had upset his view that the world was laid out to aid him. As it was, Hikaru had decided to hate me, and he was forever looking for any excuse to confront me.
That excuse manifested itself after the very first wrestling meet. A couple of days earlier, Hikaru had hurt his shoulder during practice. He hurt it, in fact, while wrestling against. . . me. I had applied an arm bar, and he had screamed in painful protest, and I released him, not knowing, of course, that Hikaru was secretly blaming me for everything from his bruised ego, to his hurt shoulder, to global warming.
Well, anyway, after the wrestling meet, the St. Mary's wrestlers were cleaning up the gymnasium and rolling up the mats. Hikaru, with his hurt shoulder, couldn't do very much, understandably. I found myself at the end of a mat, helping to roll it up, with Hikaru working alongside me, doing basically very little beyond wincing in pain every time he made a movement.
"How's the shoulder," I asked him, even though I obviously knew the answer.
"Still hurts quite a bit," he said.
"Yeah," I acknowledged. "It looks like it."
You wouldn't think those to be fighten' words but, apparently, to Hikaru, those were fighten' words. He stood up and walked away from the mat, and I didn't think anything more of the exchange.
Later, in the locker room, I was busy being naked. I was taking a piss in the urinal prior to taking a shower, with a towel slung over my shoulder. Upon completing my piss, I turned around, only to be confronted by a fully-dressed Hikaru flanked by two of his pals.
Now, I'd dealt with bullies before back in my hometown high school, and I knew that they worked in groups of three or so, and I immediately came to the conclusion, standing there in front of Hikaru and company, that I was dealing suddenly with bullies. Which would have been fine. . . except I was naked.
There are certain things that are understood in this life, and they are things that you are probably born with. You magically understand, for example, that fire will probably burn you. You understand, for example, that a knife will probably cut you. And, damn it, you understand, for example, that you can not, under any circumstances, get beat up while you're naked. Humiliation, thy name is a naked butt-kicking.
"You've got a problem," said Hikaru.
"And that would be. . . ?" I asked, totally confused as to what I had a problem with.
"You don't believe my shoulder hurts, you fucker."
"What?!"
"I said my shoulder hurts, and you said 'yeah, it looks like it.'"
Now, I couldn't argue with Hikaru's accurate recitation, but I did take issue with his inflection on the word "looks." Quite frankly, that inflection simply wasn't there when I said it. Hikaru was exaggerating.
I honestly initially thought it looked like his shoulder hurt. However, as I stood there, naked in the bathroom, I came to the conclusion that Hikaru's shoulder, at that time, didn't look like it hurt nearly as much as he let on. Hikaru let me know just how little his shoulder hurt by giving me a forceful shove.
It's curious what you remember of a fight. You might remember a certain sound, or you might briefly be extremely cognizant of your heart beating. For me, what I remember after that first shove, was my penis and scrotum bouncing freely back and forth, slapping softly on my thighs.
The shove skittered me backward between two urinals, and I braced myself with my arms outstretched, accidently flushing one of them. One of Hikaru's buddies started laughing, but Hikaru didn't see the humor in anything. Instead, he threw a punch at me.
It was an easy punch to dodge. It was one of those telegraphed haymakers where he cocked his hand way back in a motion that seemed to take an eternity. By the time his forward motion had begun, I was already pretty much out of the way.
Which meant Hikaru ended up punching the wall. And he was none too pleased with the ensuing pain it apparently caused him. Hikaru crumpled down to his knees, and I used the distraction to run between his cronies, and get free from the bathroom, back into an environment where there were plenty of witnesses. They were naked witnesses, but at least I wasn't trapped in the bathroom by myself.
The fight basically ended there. Hikaru had pretty much bruised his fist, and there was no way his buddies were going to try to beat me up in a room full of my naked teammates. I took a leisurely shower, and I simply waited for my dad to shut things down at the school so I could walk home with him--just in case Hikaru and company were waiting outside the school, which they weren't.
Hikaru never tried to beat me up after that evening, and I suspect it had something to do with my wrestling teammates telling him that there would be a price to pay if he did. But, I still remember that confrontation vividly, because being caught naked in a fight is not something one forgets easily.
I think about stupid things. A lot. Like, every once in awhile, I'll find myself sitting there, wondering what it would be like to be accused of a truly heinous crime I didn't actually commit.
It would be a murder, maybe. A high profile murder, of some sort of important or famous person, perhaps with a decapitation and disembowelment thrown into the mix. And I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and the most circumstantial evidence just initially points to me.
For the most part, I think I'd end up being exonerated, but the media frenzy and the lust to find out personal information about me would probably mean that I would be found guilty at least in the realm of popular opinion.
The press would get ahold of some sort of psychological evaluation of me that reveals that I spent a considerable amount of time as a child shooting birds, and baby birds, and squirrels, and rabbits, and the occasional cat, with my B.B. gun. And then they'd discover that my brother and I, and some of the neighbor kids, would sometimes get together and play baseball, using toads as a baseball.
newspaper stories would no doubt start out something like: "Ryan Rhodes, accused murderer of Hotel heiress and spread-legged trollop, Paris Hilton, reportedly had a childhood fascination with killing small creatures, according to a psychiatrist's testimony today."
So, of course I would be seen as guilty, because I killed small creatures as a child. That would make me an unfeeling, murderous evil-doer. Never mind that it's pretty common for kids to dabble in cruelty like that. People don't want to admit THAT.
It would be easier to dismiss me as an aberrant youth with a bloodlust for killing small creatures, and that that bloodlust caused me to chop off the head of Paris Hilton. Never mind that I have an appreciation for birds and rabbits now, and the thought of picking them off with a B.B. gun is kinda abhorrent to me. Who would believe me?
Then they'd discover the backyard grenade incident, and the story would be twisted into how I spent time creating pipe bombs and couldn't get enough of fireworks, and how I got a DWI when I was 19. All of this would hit the papers, I'm sure.
By the end of the trial, I'd be found innocent by a jury of my peers, but the court of public opinion would have branded me a disgusting human being at best, and a rap-beating murderer at worst.
And man, that would really suck.
Some seriously fascinating, and frankly damning, developments on Layne-Watch have taken place over at Joshua's blog. Does Layne = Acanit? The evidence points to yes, although there still some tiny little bit of wiggle room. I think the case is almost completely closed myself.
I think the one attendee to this meeting (Anita Something) would be an ideal mate for this guy.
Call me Cupid.
I've never been in debt. Okay, that's not entirely true. Yes, I've been in the kind of debt where I had to make car payments, and I'm currently in the kind of debt that says I have to make house payments.
I've never been in credit card debt, however. Truth be told, I've never even owned a credit card. I don't trust them. I've been conditioned not to trust them thanks to many years of living with college roommates.
Most of my college roommates had this weird outlook on credit cards. Basically, they thought credit cards were magical pieces of plastic that just magically paid for things and that they were somehow immune from the the ensuing debt that came about due to excessive credit card spending.
I'll admit it: I was sort of jealous of my roommates and their magical credit cards. After all, they always seemed to have money and, if they didn't, they just whipped out their credit cards. Books? Put them on the credit card. Food? Put it on the credit card. Night out at a strip club? credit card.
And yet there I was writing checks and budgeting like a fool. I remember thinking that I was doing everything all wrong. I mean, there I would sit, meticulously lording over my finances, while my roommates went waltzing all over town swiping their credit cards with the careless glee of a six-year-old with a loaded pistol.
Then, one year, I was a roommate with a guy named Chad. Chad was actually a former high school classmate of mine. He was, and is, a tech-head. He's one of those guys who was born to know technology. Way back in elementary school, he taught me how to write simple programs for the Apple IIc, and he always just seemed to know everything about computers.
But he didn't know shit about personal finances. He whipped out any one of his many credit cards with the swiftness and ease of a Old West gunslinger. By the time we became roommates, he had already accrued over $10,000 in credit card debt.
I remember thinking what an incredibly large amount of money that seemed to be, especially when I factored in the understanding that he also received financial aid, and that he also worked. Granted, he worked at the local Brach's candy factory on the Gummi Bear line, which paid about as well as you might imagine, but it was still money, so I came to the conclusion that old Chad was a pretty carefree spender.
Well, one day, I popped into Chad's outrageously messy room where I noticed, tucked between two huge bags of pilfered defective Gummi Bears, a credit card notice that was slugged "Urgent!" and another that was slugged "Immediate Payment Required" and still another that read "We Break Fingers And Toes."
Then the calls started coming in, usually two or three a day. "Is Mr. Haugen available? We really need to speak with him." No, he's not here. "Are you sure you're not really Mr. Haugen?" Yes, I'm sure. "Well, when he comes in, have him call Mike at Discover immediately." *sound of shotgun cocking* Will do.
Chad was masterful when it came to avoiding creditors. He always seemed to leave the apartment just two or three minutes before a creditor called. It was like he had some sort of sixth sense. Which was all fine and dandy, except that I ended up being the intermediary between Chad and the creditors, so I got to absorb all the impatient anger and suspicion of basically every credit card company on the planet.
It was the day a creditor appeared, in person, at our doorstep that I realized Chad's debt situation was probably more dire than Chad cared to admit. There was a knock at the door, I answered, and a gentleman in a suit that looked both impressive and threatening stood before me. He asked to see a Mr. Chad Haugen, at which point I heard a little scuffling emanating from Chad's room as Chad scurried out the back entrance which, conveniently, was located at the far end of his bedroom.
We chatted together, the ominous creditor and me, for about an hour, waiting for Chad to get home, even though, of course, there was no way in holy hell Chad was going to make an appearance while that guy was in our apartment. I even had to produce my ID, so the creditor was satisfied that I wasn't, in fact, Chad Haugen.
After that, I believe, Chad ended up getting a loan from his parents, or somebody, so he could pay off his credit card debt at least enough to keep the creditors at bay. He eventually got a job working at IBM, which was a long-assed commute from Winona to Rochester, but paid a whole lot more than the Gummi Bear line.
As for me, Chad's experience with credit cards pretty much scared me away from plastic for good.
All this conjecture has reached stupefying dimensions, but I find myself helplessly drawn in. You can join in the fun, or just read and grin, at the following blog watering holes:
onlinehome.us/blog/archives/000725.html">As I Live The Questions Part 1 and onlinehome.us/blog/archives/000729.html">Part 2
Roooossssebuuuud.
UPDATE:
Caroline says: I told you the language on Layne's site was Polish.
Ryan says: I know. I just need to polish my Polish.
Ryan says: Do you have any Polish polish?
Ryan says: Because, you know, I'd really like to polish my Pole.
I know I'm tempting the television gods with a question like this, but: can television shows possibly get any dumber?
Thanks to my long-awaited cable access, I can now surf through a staggering number of channels, but what I'm discovering is that having a staggering number of channels just means I have access to a staggering amount of bad television.
To illustrate my point, let's visit some of the more distasteful television tidbits out there today that are apparently passing as entertainment.
Trading Spaces: My girlfriend used to love this show with a passion, but even she's finally getting tired of it. Think long and hard, people. Would you trust your neighbors to transform a room in your house into something different, if limited to $1,000 and the questionable interior decorating skills of someone with very few qualifications?
American Chopper: A large grumpy man, who I would be scared of from ten miles away, yells at his sons while they build loud motorcycles. It's always the same scenario. Will they finish the chopper on time? Long answer: yeah. Short answer: yep. How they can devote an hour to this crap is beyond me.
The One That Got Away: This is, of course, a reality television show that has nothing to do with reality, which means, of course, that my girlfriend loves it. Which means, of course, that I have to watch it. The premise? A guy with rugged good looks and questionable intelligence is hooked back up with several women from his past who all, for some inexplicable reason, profess to love him. It's great for the guy. I mean, really, he gets to canoodle with a harem of adoring hotties. You know, just like real life! Eventually, darn it, he has to choose just one, at which point, I'm sure, my girlfriend will find another reality television show to watch. Somebody shoot me.
E! True Hollywood Stories: Take the following template and make it into a television show. Tell the story of a Hollywood celebrity, and be sure to talk about their descent into drug abuse and subsequent recovery. It's enough to make me wonder if that's a prerequisite for stardom. Imagine, if you will: you're auditioning for the role of a lifetime, and you're perfect for it. Suddenly, the producer approaches you: "Hmm, it says here that you've never had a drug problem. I'm sorry. I just don't think you're right for this part. Here's a vial of cocaine. Come back after rehab."
World Poker Tour: We've all felt the urge, haven't we? You're in a casino, and you're just burning with the desire to go over to the poker table to watch people play poker! What? You haven't felt that urge? Well, tough! There's a television show devoted to it anyway. How is this stuff entertaining? HOW?!! Is it the huge amounts of money the players are supposedly wagering? Because, I have news for you. . . they're not actually wagering any money at all. It's play money. It's a fictitious number that looks impressive but, in reality, they're just keeping score. It's points, nothing more. And why do the announcers talk in hushed tones? Is there a baby sleeping somewhere in the back of the room?
Celebrity Poker Showdown: Consult the above gripe, except add a bunch of lesser-known celebrities who really aren't all that good at poker.
The O'Reilly Factor: If ever there was a forum in which a grumpy man can shout at people he disagrees with, this would be it. It's like a political version of American Chopper, except the large man is replaced with a small man with creepy eyebrows that make him look like The Joker from the Batman movie.
I could go on, but there's work to be done.
I submitted this little story to Reader's Digest quite some time ago (think years), but it never graced the pages, and I never received $400. *sigh* But, what's not good enough for Reader's Digest is good enough for Rambling Rhodes. Keep in mind, this isn't the version I sent to RD. This is the long version. The version I sent to RD was much more, er, concise.
My first job out of college, following a depressing unemployment stint of four months (thanks for the warning on THAT one, life), was as a news editor for a newspaper called the Stewartville Star, a little weekly with a circulation around 3,500 or so.
It was one of those jobs I believed to be well below my talents, until four months of unemployment and rejection letters basically spelled out for me that I had little in the way of talents. It was the classic catch-22: I had no experience, so no one wanted to hire me. Okay, well, then how in the hell am I supposed to gain experience? No one ever bothered to answer that question. They just sent rejection letters.
Anyway. . .
As news editor for the Stewartville Star, I was basically responsible for a little bit and a lot of everything. City council meetings? I covered those. School board meetings? I covered those. School events? Me. Photography? Oh, that's me. Everything that ever happened in the town and surrounding area? Yup, I was there. I had very little in the way of a life.
Well, one day, I was at the high school, sitting in the office patiently awaiting an audience with the superintendant to discuss something or other that was brought up during a school board meeting.
Now, the thing was, I was a young-looking 23-year old, and I could have probably easily passed as a student if I had wanted to. So it was, I found myself sitting in the school office with a bunch of students who were awaiting an audience with the principal to discuss their less-than-acceptable behaviors.
Prinicpal's office time is nervous time. I remember my trips to the principal's office as a young 'un. The sweaty palms. The disaster scenarios playing in the head. The utter feeling of lonliness. The desire to reach out to whoever may be in front of you at that point in time.
One student, in particular, was really fidgety. He was rubbing his hands together, and it was obvious that whatever brought him to the principal's office was probably pretty bad. He studied me for a bit, probably a bit confused as to my calm demeanor.
"So, um, what are you here for?" he finally asked me, like an inmate in Alcatraz.
"Huh? Oh, I'm just reporting here," I tried to explain.
"Tell me about it," he sighed. "I report here a lot."
From what I can gather, and let me tell you here that the news coverage on this has been maddeningly sparse, apparently Ronald Reagan died on Saturday, or something like that.
I kid, of course. News coverage has been so omnipresent on this story, you'd think Reagan dying was somehow a catastrophic event or something, when in reality most of the world has been writing him off as dead for about the last seven years or so.
News organizations have been waiting for Reagan to die for years now, too. They've had the Reagan memorial stories on tap, all written up and laid out, tucked in some memorial drawer somewhere. They've no doubt been itching for the man to die so they can have a little bit of an easier few work days.
Some reporter probably wrote the old Reagan memorial story a couple of years ago. He was probably pretty proud of it. He couldn't wait for the Alzheimers-stricken ex-president to gasp his last so his article could finally run. Who knew he would hold on so long? No problem. Most of the article could be salvaged, with a little updating, of course.
I imagine that newsrooms across the nation erupted in cheers when the news about Reagan's death was announced. Half day work days for the next four or five days! All that work was done years ago! Now let's wait for Ford to keel over! We have oodles of articles and memorials written up about him!
I don't have much to say about Reagan, really. Hell, I was only five when he was first elected. I only had a vague understanding of what a president even was. Honestly, about the only vivid memory I have about the night he was elected was that I thought his name was Ronald Ray Gun, and I remember thinking what a super-cool, super-futuristic name that was.
Oh, and I see J. Lo is married again.
I haven't done a good Cheddar X in awhile, so here I go:
1. What do you have planned for the future?
World domination, while trampling on the little guys to establish myself as the undisputed Emperor Of The World. I shall crush my enemies with the ruthlessness of a million sadists! I shall rule with an iron fist, and all will tremble before me!
Either that, or I'll buy a Slim Jim after work.
Whichever.
2. Who is the single most important person in your life and why?
Me. Oh, you mean besides that? I could say Melissa, but I don't think that's the case quite yet. Right now, I'd probably have to say it's a tie between my parents, although Melissa could probably usurp them sometime in the relatively near future.
3. Describe yourself in five words.
Smoking Hot Specimen of Male Hunkiness (The "of" doesn't count."
4. You can spend one night alone with any one person you wish--who is it?
Salma Hayek.
5. Name your five favorite movies.
The Shawshank Redemption
The Right Stuff
The Last Emperor
Schindler's List
Debbie Does Dallas
6. Name your five favorite musical artists.
Skip. Next.
7. Name your five favorite movies when you were in high school.
Debbie Does Dallas
Swedish Erotica Volume 1
Swedish Erotica Volume 2
Swedish Erotica Volume 3
Swedish Erotica Volume 4
8. Five favorite musicians when you were in high school.
I can't remember, but I'm sure they all sucked.
Today I suffered a migraine, and a potent migraine it was. It was if Mike Tyson greeted me at my doorstep, recited some Shakespeare, and then gave me a solid uppercut. That would undoubtedly leave my head reeling because, really, who would have guessed Mike Tyson reads Shakespeare?
I've suffered migraines on and off since high school, with my first recollected headache occurring while sitting in my computer class in front of a Mac. At that time, I didn't know what a migraine was, so it was kind of scary to suddenly see flickering lights in my peripheral vision. What was going on? Was I going blind? Was I about to be abducted by aliens? Would I be anal probed?!!
Gradually, the flickering peripheral vision encroached further along my line of sight, until I could only really see, clearly, a six inch circle in front of me. I explained my symptoms to the school nurse, who informed me I was expeiencing a migraine, and that I wouldn't be anal probed. She told me to go home and sleep off the sparkling vision. But, she warned, I'd have a pretty bad headache after the hazy vision passed.
I stepped outside, into a sunny spring day, and I realized that migraines don't react well to sunlight. It was as though God had put a giant magnifying glass between the earth and the sun, and focused the beam on my retinas. I felt like a vampire as I loped my way home, shielding my eyes from the cruel daytime orb, wishing for all the world that I had a dark cape.
Once home, I curled up on the couch and settled in for nap. In my mind, it seemed like a fair trade-off that, in exchange for some sparkling vision, I got half the day off from school and I got to take a nap. Pretty good deal.
A couple hours later, I awoke. And I awoke to the most cruel, piercing headache I'd ever experienced. It was is if every childhood bump, bruise, scrape, cut and illness had all gotten together for a reunion party right between my eyes, behind the bridge of my nose.
Oh, it was such exquisite pain! And I couldn't get away from it. I couldn't walk into the kitchen and leave the headache behind in the living room. I couldn't go back to sleep because, man, I had this really bad headache. It was one of those headaches that is so terribly bad, the only thing you can think of is how bad the headache is, which of course just makes it worse.
I attacked the medicine cabinet like a junkie needing a fix. I located the aspirin and tried that. Nothing. I located the Tylenol and tried that. Nothing. Surely there was a loaded pistol, or at least a sledgehammer somewhere in the cabinet! Anything to put an end to that unreal headache!
Nowadays, when I feel a migraine coming on, I hit the medicine cabinet right away, before I even settle in for a pre-emptive nap. I find that it helps alleviate some of the ensuing headaching nightmare, which is where I'm at right now.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I can't write any more. I have a headache, you see.
It's raining
It's pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed
And bumped his head
And he couldn't get up in the morning
It's been raining like all holy hell over the past couple of weeks, even after some doom and gloomers back in April were predicting drought. I don't mind rain, I guess, so long as it doesn't intrude on my weekends, which of course it has. Although, Melissa and I did manage to do a couple of rollerblading treks over the weekend that exceeded the 30 mile mark, which means my legs are jelly.
During one of our sojourns, we did get rained on a tad, and that stupid little childhood rhyme entered my head, and I started chanting it in a goofy little voice. And, I never really realized what a nonsensical bit of weirdness it actually is. Does anyone know the genesis of that rhyme? Perhaps I should do a Google on it. . .
Huh. Interesting. I just found out that it's followed by:
Rain, rain, go away;
Come again another day;
Little Johnny wants to play.
Little Johnny's an impatient little bastard, I think. Here you have an old man who bumped his head, and apparently he can't even get out of bed due to a massive brain hemorrhage of some sort, and yet all Little Johnny can think of is getting outside to play. "Sorry, gramps, but I want to get out there and play. Screw your old wrinkled ass."
Anyway. . .
Well, now this is interesting. This site says the old man actually has a cold in his head, rather than having bumped it, which is less violent and worrisome, I suppose:
It's raining, it's pouring,
The Old Man is snoring
He went to bed with a cold in his head,
And he didn't get up until morning.
Rain, rain, go away,
Little Girl wants to play.
And, be sure to notice, it's now Little Girl wants to play, rather than Little Johnny. I'm not sure what kind of feminist manifesto may be going on there, but I'd like to see Little Johnny and Little Girl duke it out.
Here, of course, we're led to believe that the old man has a serious drinking problem, and apparently the sun shines while it's raining. Also be sure to notice that his snoring inexplicably makes the buttons on his Chinese shirt spin.
Finally, I guess it was inevitable that I'd eventually come across a blog that mentioned the nursery rhyme. That blog also has pictures of a bra, which I think is kind of cool.
Unfortunately, I still don't know the genesis of that damned rhyme, or what it really even means.
Why, yes, I am slacking at work during a teleconference meeting. Why do you ask?
