"A Very Moving Experience" c. Ryan Rhodes, June 2, 2002
There is an old joke that says, "good friends help you move, but great friends help you move bodies." I would add to this that "really great friends help you move hide-a-beds down three flights of stairs."
A couple of weeks ago, a good friend and former roommate of mine, Mark, who was recently married, asked me if I would be willing to help him move his and his wife's stuff out of their old apartment. Of course, good friend that I am, I said yes.
I said yes to Mark's request because I had lived with him for three years, and I knew that his worldly possessions were few, so moving him would not be a chore. I did not, however, take into account his wife's possesions.
LeAnne, it turned out, owns just about everything. Upon entering the apartment, I was greeted by so many boxes, I thought I had mistakenly entered a warehouse.
Among the movers present were myself, Mark, our friend Chad, LeAnne, Chrissy (LeAnne's sister), and LeAnne's parents (who primarily specialized in critiquing our lousy moving expertise).
After assessing the insane box situation, I began moving items down three flights of stairs to the waiting moving truck below. It was during my fourth laden trip down the stairs that I realized it was about 88 degrees outside. And it was humid. And it was getting dark. And I had better things to do.
In an attempt to speed up the moving process, I started carrying more and heavier things. Eventually, my eyes set on a large empty trunk that I was relatively certain I could manage. So, I firmly grasped the handle and gave it a pull, only to have the leather straps rip off loudly into my hand. With a shrug, I threw the handle into the trash and began carrrying the trunk clumsily down the stairs.
"Oh, you have to be really careful with that," said LeAnne as I came to the bottom step and banged the trunk against the door frame. "This trunk came from overseas with my family a long time ago. It's an antique."
With that, I raced back up the stairs and fished the handle out of the trash, stuck it my pocket, and pondered the next best course of action. Although I have no idea what it means for a trunk to come from overseas, I knew that I didn't like the ominous word "antique."
I eventually presented the torn handle to Mark, and he said he would take care of it. For Mark, taking care of it meant telling LeAnne that he found the handle lying near the trash. The most astounding aspect of this lie is that LeAnne bought it, and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
As the number of boxes diminished, we set our attention on moving furniture, with our first target being the large hide-a-bed that sat there just daring us to move it. Of all the torturous furniture contrived, hide-a-beds have to be the most demonic. How so much steel and wire can be packed into such a small area, yet look so comfortable, is beyond comprehension. Still, it fell to Mark, Chad and me to move the mammoth beast down three stories in 88 degree heat. I was not pleased.
Rather than carry the impossibly heavy device down the 100 ft. hallway, we opted to slide it on its backside, a decision that saved us roughly three weeks of lower back pain. Because we were dealing with something that cost $150 two years ago, we didn't feel too much obligation to be careful. Still, we eventually had to navigate the hide-a-bed down the stairs, at which point there was much cussing and swearing.
Thankfully, we had LeAnne's dad standing behind us telling us we were doing everything wrong. Strangely, as my legs quavered, my arms shook, and sweat poured down my face, his words offered very little in the way of encouragement.
"Guys, hey guys, you're really not doing that right," he chided. "Guys, you're probably ripping the skirt off the couch. Be more careful."
It was at this point that I dropped the couch, turned around, and explained in a calm tone that I would gladly move the couch back upstairs if LeAnne's father wanted to carry it down himself. He declined.
All told, it took three hours, countless trips up and down the stairs, and 10 glasses of water to move everything into the truck.
I'd almost rather move a body.
Book Extract Removed
That's right. I removed that last post. Why? Because, I didn't feel comfortable having that many boner references posted glaringly for all the world to see. That, and it was just too damned long. No one wants to read through that much black text splashed against a turquoise background. It hurts the eyes.
Instead. . .
A Little News of the Odd
Guilty Executives Pick Ethics Lessons over Jail
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) - A federal judge who admits he doesn't "fool with the stock market" said he gave two executives who pleaded guilty in a fraud scheme a choice: lecture students about business ethics or go to prison.
What kind of a half-baked idea is that? That's like sending a crack head out to lecture about the dangers of drug use, or sending a KKK member out to tout racial tolerance.
"Who wants to go to jail? They were very contrite. I think they feel like this might make up for some of their lapse of good judgement," U.S. District Judge Scott Wright said on Wednesday in a telephone interview.
And what, pray tell, constitutes a lapse of judgement? Glad you asked.
Both testified against a third executive at Owl Securities & Investments who was involved in the scheme, which defrauded investors and aimed to bribe Costa Rican politicians in an effort to build a Caribbean port in the Central American country.
EXECUTIVE #1: So you see class, that part when I defrauded investors and tried to bribe Costa Rican politicians, that was wrong. Don't do that. Instead, try bribing Colombian politicians. They're much more malleable when money is involved and. . . whoops, I guess you shouldn't really do that either.
EXECUTIVE #2: Don't get us wrong, the Costa Rican port idea was a sound one. We just messed up a little when we tried to illegally use investor money to fund the project and bribe politicians. You should write that down.
Wright said the two executives would be available to lecture students from high school to law school "about what fraud and cooking the books has done to the corporate world -- people are really losing their trust."
And what better way to restore that trust than to march two corrupt executives out into the lecture circuit? I should really be a judge.
My Little Unseasonal Joke
As far as I know, this joke does not exist, although it could. It came to me yesterday when I saw a picture of Santa Claus and Rudolph online. Don't ask. Anyway. . .
Q: What do you get when you give Spanish Fly to all of Santa's reindeer?
A: You get Comet on Cupid on Donner on Blitzen on Dasher on Dancer on. . .
Hey, why aren't you laughing? That's comedy gold, people!
Time For toilet Talk
I don't know what is is about having female roommates, but for the nine months I've lived in my current apartment with Amy and Emily, I've obsessed (well, by my standards) over the cleanliness of my commode. Now, with male roommates, I could care less. So long as the porcelain fixture was capable of swirling my digestive refuse out of sight, I didn't mind a moss of pubic hairs on the rim or a build-up of hard water shellac in the recesses of the bowl. I figured a good monthly cleaning was all that was required.
Now, I keep careful tabs on my toilet, whisking away stains or dust whenever they catch my eye. I'm forever terrified that one of the roomies will come in and see my toilet in less than pristine condition. There's a commercial where three guys are huddled around the TV and one guy asks how the owner keeps his toilet so clean. Now, I never engage in such conversations with my friends, but I was genuinely interested to hear the commercial guy's solution: Scrubbing Bubbles Wipes. They dissolve in toilet water, don't you know?
Elated, I went out and bought a packet of the wondrous wipes, along with a couple of toilet tank disks so my john remains filled with a blue liquid cleanser. There's something magical about blue toilet water, as if I have my own personal Oracle of Delphi five steps from my bedroom door.
"Oh, great toilet oracle, tell me how I might better serve you so that you maintain a sparkling bowl quality that will be looked favorably upon by my gender opposite roommates."
Granted, the sink and shower are shunned and denied the cleaning obsession bestowed upon their turd sucking bathroom utility counterpart, but if I ever learn that Emily uses my shower regularly, you can bet I'll be in there cleaning the tile vigorously, with my tongue if I have to.
And why do I do this? Simple. Because girls know other girls, and girls talk with other girls. And the last thing I want is to strike up a conversation with a beautiful woman who happens to know Amy or Emily, and who knows me as "the guy with the grimy toilet."
That's an impossible first impression to shake.
I'm No Ebert, But. . .
So, the roomie rented two movies yesterday, Monster's Ball and I Am Sam. At first, I wasn't sure I wanted to watch either of them, but since the only thing I could find to watch on my own television was an early and poor episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I ambled upstairs, plopped myself on the couch opposite Amy, and settled in to watch Monster's Ball.
It was your typical man meets woman story: a white man executes a black woman's husband for some sort of crime that apparently justifies execution, even though you never actually learn what it was he did; man's son (who is trying to follow his father's footsteps as a corrections officer but was kind of put off by the whole execution thing) kills himself shortly after the execution while a disinterested grandfather looks on; man goes to a Cafe to eat ice cream, served to him by the black woman who's husband was executed a few scenes earlier; man quits job as corrections officer, burns uniform, and buys a gas station; woman tries walking home with her overweight son, who is then hit by a car, even though you never actually see that happen; man drives by the woman and her son and notices that they're in some sort of distress; man and woman load the overweight and car-struck child into the man's car and take him to the hospital where he dies; man decides suddenly that his longstanding intolerance of black people is probably not justified so he starts offering to drive the black woman to work, where he continues to order ice cream (and a plastic spoon); man drives woman home from work, at which point the coolest sex scene in all cinema history ensues; man realizes he just slept with the wife of the man who's execution sparked his own son's suicide, so he throws up; man names his newly-acquired gas station after the black woman; black woman meets the man's unfathomably racist father and runs off, justifiably horrified that anyone can be so icky; man puts his insanely racist father in a home and spruces up his own place with a nice new coat of paint; woman gets evicted and man invites her to move in with him in his spruced up and racist-father free house; man initiates cunnilingus to a much appreciative woman; man steps out for ice cream; woman suddently realizes man was the corrections officer attending her husband's execution; man returns with ice cream; man and woman sit outside eating ice cream; man says "I think we're gonna be all right." End credits.
Are you confused yet? Good, because it's a confusing movie. A brilliantly acted confusing movie, but a confusing movie nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed the sex scene between Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton. I give that scene a 3/4 engorged penis. So, to recap, Monster's Ball features a lot of death, a lot of ice cream, a gas station called Letitia's, an ultra-awesome sex scene, and a strange love between a woman and the man that attended her husband's execution.
So, should you see it? Sure, why not? Go ahead. It's not like you have anything better to do.
Where Have You Gone, Long Weekend?
It never fails. I look forward to a long weekend the way a dog awaits a full dish, trembling, sometimes drooling. Four days! That's like, FOREVER! And then it's there, and then it's gone. It makes me wonder sometimes whether all this emphasis on working and employment is really such a good thing. Sure, it puts food on the table and beer in my system on weekends, but it rips my precious time away, time that could be better spent sleeping and dreaming about insatiable female space aliens who need to procreate with earth males with shaved heads to save their planet. Work sucks compared to that.
My weekend consisted of a two day golf tournament, which meant waking up at 6 a.m. both Saturday and Sunday. A major rule I try to follow is that weekend mornings shall not begin prior to 9 a.m. And, considering my golf game this weekend was atrocious, waking up early, in retrospect, was a totally pointless exercise. My hometown also had their annual 4th of July weekend street dance (or, more appropriately, gravel parking lot dance). For Harmony, this is a HUGE event. I guess I had fun, and I talked with dozens of people I haven't seen in a long time, but it still seemed like work, and here's why. I get along with most everyone, with a couple of exceptions. But, at the dance, I would be talking to someone who would start ripping on someone else, and expect me to join in, even though I truly like the person they're ripping on, so I haphazardly try to defend them and point out how decent they actually are. Case in point: I was talking to a good friend of mine I haven't seen in a long time, and he started tearing into a girl standing about 30 feet away. I then had to point out that the girl was actually really awesome, and that we go out to eat occasionally, and that she's my roommate. And that's the way the entire night went. So, it was exhausting. Fun, yes, but exhausting.
And then, suddenly, and perhaps tragically, it's Monday. And my badge won't allow me access into my building, and security has it's thumb up the butt and won't answer the emergency phone, so I waste 15 minutes waiting until someone in security acknowledges that the phone is actually ringing. I tell them my problem, and they inform me that they're having difficulties with the badge scanner, to which I think "No. Really?" So, now I'm at work. Welcome to Monday, everybody. Watch your step. It's a long ways off until Friday.
