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http://www.pontifexexmachina.com/
Shamed Into Doing An Old Friday Five. . .Sort Of
The plain one known as Layne has shamed me into doing something I vowed never to do; namely, doing a Friday Five. But, I refuse to do a Friday Five. I won't, I won't, I won't. Instead, I'll just list some of the more embarrasing, and not-so-embarrasing, songs I listen to while I'm running. These are all stored on my little MP3 player.
You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon: I'm not sure why I cling to this song. It was played over and over again by the crazy South Dakota girl I dated briefly a couple years ago. She was also gung ho about a horrible assault on the ears song called Heroin by Lou Reed and a bunch of techno-jazz shit that she insisted on listening to while she slept. But, You Can Call Me Al is still a pretty neat song.
Doll Parts by Hole: One of two Hole songs I run to. Trust me, it's a bitch to run to this song, because it's devoid of any coherent beat, but it's angry Courtney Love at her most angry worst/best. The other Hole song on my MP3 player is Malibu, which is pretty upbeat, er, for Courtney Love.
Breathe by Telepopmusic: You may remember this song as the background tune to a recent Mitsubishi commercial. I'm apparently a sucker for Mitsubishi commercial music, because I also run to Days Go By by Dirty Vegas.
The theme song from the movie Gladiator: this tune just does something for me. It's borderline classical, but it's not quite. I like classical music, too, but I don't run to it. This song is just really powerful.
Book Of Days by Enya: Don't ask me. I have no fucking clue why I keep this on there. It's a bitch to run to, it's slow, and it's ENYA! I should remove it, but strangely I don't. You can start your Freudian analysis. . . NOW!
Special by Garbage: Sure, the lead singer for Garbage, Shirley Manson, looks like she could tear me apart in bed while at the same time leaving me the most satisfied man on the planet, but this song just plain rocks, and it's a blast to run to. Other Garbage songs on my MP3 player include Only Happy When It Rains and Push It.
More Human Than Human by White Zombie: Warning, if you run to this song, there is an 80% chance you'll be in a dead sprint at the end. It's THAT fast and THAT cool. Any song that starts with the sounds of a woman being sexed up is just bound to kick ass.
Breathe by Prodigy: On a par with More Human Than Human, I've loved this tune since college. There's something about the sword sounds in the background that just make this song click. Me likey.
Fade Into You by Mazzy Star: When I first heard this, it was an unusually warm October afternoon in the North Woods of Minnesota, and I was driving home from my grandfather's funeral. Say what you want about Northern Minnesota, it still has the most stellar fall colors in the world. It was magical, and it was sad, and this song just brought it all together.
Answer The Phone by Sugar Ray: I know, I know. Sugar Ray? This is just a fun song, and it's great to run to. But. . . Sugar Ray?
Concrete Sky by Beth Orton: Another song I don't recommend running to, but I was drawn to the tune one night while surfing the Web. She has a smokey voice, which I'm always a sucker for. But, jeez, this guy apparently didn't care for the diddy.
Not An Addict by K's Choice: I fell in love with this song in college, and I've never even done drugs. Maybe if I started doing drugs I'd appreciate it even more. Something to think about.
I'm On Fire by Bruce Springsteen: One of those songs that's just over too fast.
There are a bunch of others, but I can't remember them right off hand. This should provide Layne with plenty of psychological analysis fodder though. Knock yourself out.
You Know Your Friend's A Farm Boy If. . .
Marc says: Wow! She's looking pretty good today.
Ryan says: Visiting porn sites, eh?
Marc says: No, just looking at the corn price.
Entering "fuck me for a Buck" Rhodes
Okay, I was totally perplexed when I was going through my referral list and I saw that somebody visited my site from some place called "pornolize.com." So, I went to "pornolize.com," entered my blog URL, and I was confronted with the best fucking laugh I've had in weeks. But, don't take my word for it, do it yourself. Do it now! Do it harder! Come on! Do it! Yeah! That's it! Do it!
Standing Up and Standing Out
I drove up to the cities Tuesday night after work, because I had this big important conference to attend Wednesday and I figured it gave me the perfect excuse to see Melissa during the week. She's drowning in final exam and final project work this week, but we still found time to go out to eat and enjoy some quality copulation.
We ate at Ol Mexico Tuesday night, and much to my wonderful surprise, we discovered that they have NTN trivia, which is a borderline obsession with me. We ate and drank and played trivia until 11 p.m., and it was probably the most perfect Tuesday evening I've enjoyed in months. We got back to Mel's apartment and she insisted on a quickie because she wanted to get as much sleep as possible before taking her exam on Wednesday. Now, if there's one thing about condoms, they preclude any possibility of a quickie. Quickie's don't happen with condoms unless you're a 17 year old male about to boink a porn star. I told Mel that, since a quickie just wouldn't be possible, we'd be better off just going to bed. She wouldn't hear of it, so we proceeded to have a "longie" instead. I was fine with that.
Wednesday, I drove to the big important conference, which was the grand unvieling of a new technology enablement center put together by some company called MSI Systems Integrators. It wasn't an incredible waste of time, but from my standpoint as the product news writer for our magazine, they didn't bring much to the table. I arrived about five minutes late, and when I entered the conference hall, I became immediately aware that I was the only person wearing jeans. Not that I really cared, but I definitely stood out in the sea of suits and ties and loafers. There I stood in my 1969 boot fit jeans, Sketchers, and a Gap short sleeved shirt with collar. And I continued to stand because most of the seats on the outside were taken and I didn't feel like shuffling my way to seats in the center. So, I stood in the back, the young pup bucking the undeclared dress code, and the only person not wearing a name tag. I felt a strange power to my anonymity, keeping MSI guessing whether I was a crasher or some high-powered new-age Hank Scorpio company president. Nope, I'm just Ryan Rhodes, a guy who doesn't dress up unless somebody died.
I will say one thing for the $4 million MSI TEC center: that place has A LOT of high technology toys, most of which was "donated" by IBM, including a huge mainframe, an iSeries 810, a Shark storage rack with 1.5 TB of data storage capability, and a slew of other equipment that could keep a small country operating well into the future. Pretty cool stuff, even though I have no idea how most of works. All I know is that the technology is what I write about, which in turn pays my rent and other life expenses, so I was obligated to ooh and ahh.
MSI knew how to shmooze, providing everything from limo rides, to snacks, to drinks. I almost didn't feel worthy in my jeans and Sketchers.
Last night, Mel and I went back to Ol Mexico for food and drink and trivia, and we also watched the Wild hockey team show that they are hopelessly outmatched by the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. Oh well, it's been a great ride.
And I got to have some stellar morning sex this before driving back to Rochester, and that always makes the drive home seem pretty groovy.
News You May Have Missed, But Shouldn't Have
It's been an edge-of-your seat few months in the news. We've weathered the huge SARS scare, we've learned that our state of Minnesota is in such dire financial straits most college student credit card debts look applealing by comparison, and there was some sort of scuffle over in some country called Iraq, or something.
Given our preoccupation with such gigantic news stories, it's understandable that other important news items just slipped through the cracks. But, fear not! As a dedicated journalist, and a marginally humorous columnist, and a smoking hot specimen of male hunkiness, I'm here to catch those jilted stories and bring them to you, my valued readers. I mean, sure, the war in Iraq was a pretty big deal and all, but in my opinion it should have shared front page ink with a story about 87 nude passengers on a flight to Cancun.
According to a May 5 Associated Press report out of Miami, Fla., a Houston travel agency specializing in clothing-optional getaways organized the trip. Passengers paid $499 for the trip, with many heading to Cancun's El Dorado Resort & Spa for Nude Week.
I guess, to me, the real news here isn't the concept of a clothing optional flight so much as the revelation that there's a place on this great earth that celebrates "Nude Week." Now THAT'S a week worth observing.
"These are professionals who lead very stressful lives and are ready to let it all go," said Donna Daniels, co-owner of the Castaways travel agency and an in-the-buff traveler on the inaugural flight. "They are adventurers and risk takers. They don't even want clothes as a constraint."
Well, if nudism is a sign of an adventurous risk taker then, judging by all the nude pictures of me as a baby and a toddler, I was Evil Knievel. You can't flip through my photo album without seeing at least one picture of my bare bottom on every page. I'm sure my parents were forced to wonder on occasion, "what is our child smoking?" Well, I'm here to tell you, I wasn't smoking anything, and if I was, and somebody stole it, I certainly wouldn't report it to the police like SOME people.
According to a Yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=757&e=10&u=/ap/20030508/ap_on_re_us/bus_driver_marijuana">May 8 Associated Press report out of Dublin, Ga., a school bus driver who reported an apparent burglary at his home, also told police someone took his marijuana.
Okay class, what's the most alarming part of that sentence? Hint: school bus driver. And here everyone in Dublin, Ga., just thought it was coincidence that that one bus was always travelling so slow and stopping at every fast food drive-thru in town.
John Randolph, 29, made the call Monday, according to a Dublin police department report. When officers arrived, Randolph said a thief took four "dime bags" of marijuana, along with a .22-caliber pistol, a gold necklace and $30 in change. Randolph told the officer he was "saving the marijuana to smoke when school was out," according to the police report.
I really can't add anything funny to that excerpt. Some comedy just simply writes itself, which is more than you can say about six monkeys in front of a computer.
According to a Yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=817&ncid=757&e=10&u=/ap/20030509/ap_on_fe_st/britain_monkey_authors">May 9 Associated Press report out of London, researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.
This groundbreaking research was meant to test the theory that an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of computers would eventually, out of sheer coincidence, produce works comparable to Shakespeare. Lacking an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of computers, however, the researchers had to settle for a single machine and six Sulawesi crested macaques. The results were less than encouraging.
"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language. Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard."
I guess I can empathize with the monkies on this one. Many is the time when, confronted by writer's block, I was sorely tempted to simply press a lot of S's and then defecate and urinate on the keyboard. Granted, I held back, but the strong urge was there nonetheless.
"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there."
That's more than I can say.
My IBM Bathroom Is ALWAYS Being Cleaned
I just stepped away from my computer so I could go relieve my Diet Pepsi filled bladder. Lo and behold, there was a yellow caution sign propped in front of the men's room. This is the warning to all men that a cleaning lady is inside doing her bathroom cleaning duty. That's just fine. I prefer clean bathrooms.
However, it seems like that damn caution sign is up ALL the time. Every time I need to go to the bathroom, that damn yellow sign is posted in front of the door. Every. Damn. Time. I can't take it any more. I'm about to pee in my empty Diet Pepsi bottle. What could they possibly be doing in the bathroom that takes that long to clean, and why does it require cleaning nearly 20 times a day?
Even worse that seeing the sign standing like a sentry is being caught in the bathroom when the cleaning lady pops her head in the door and yells, "Cleaning lady! Anybody in here?!" It's mortifying to be in mid-grunt while at the same time yelling back, "Yes, I'll just be a minute!"
Back when I went to school in Tokyo, the cleaning ladies didn't have such qualms about cleaning around men with exposed privates. The little old ladies would just come right in, no matter how many guys were lined up against the urinals or in the stalls, and they would just start cleaning. I swear, if I left my wang exposed long enough, they would have scrubbed that, too.
But here, the culture is a tad different. I actually would care less if the cleaning ladies at IBM marched in when I was in mid-pee. I mean, at least I'm relieving my bladder. And, right now, I really gotta pee.
