There's something very eerie about seeing all those pictures of the New York City skyline draped in darkness. No constellation of lights running up the sides of buildings. No indication of life within the walls. Just silent obelisks seemingly indifferent to a lack of energy, while people all over the city stifle their own personal panic at being without electricity for probably the first time in their lives.
Don't worry, folks. It's like camping, er, except I've never seen a campsite with 50 million people. Although, that would be a pretty wicked camping trip.
I'm curious, of course, to see what kind of conspiracy theories arise because of this. It's inevitable, really. People have become so dependent on electricity, they can't imagine a failure in the power grid without cooking up ridiculous reasons for its hiccup. Here's the deal. American power grids are oversaturated, underpowered, and getting older by the day. This won't be the last blackout, folks, mark my words. Best to keep a flashlight and a few porno mags handy.
Ah, but today is Friday, and that means it's time for. . . The Cheddar X
1. How do you relax after a difficult day?
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I go for a run. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I go to hapkido. Pretty simple, really. However, this question reminds me of one of my first real job interviews when I was pretty much fresh out of college. There I was, armed with a mass communications/journalism degree (with a useless history minor), thinking for all the world that I was a hot commodity sure to be snatched up by the workplace, when I got a phone call from the biggest newspaper in the area, the Rochester Post-Bulletin (motto: All The News That The Mayo Clinic Deems Fit To Print).
This was a big deal for me; the chance to work for the P-B right out of college. The only problem was, I was doing a phone interview right after I came in from a run, and I mean RIGHT AFTER the run. No sooner had I walked in the front door, when my mother handed me the phone. So, there I was, a huffing, puffing, wheezing mess of a sweaty young man, trying to fight through a phone interview for a job I was probably very underqualified for. But then, the interviewer asked the question: How do you deal with stress?
Of course, what he MEANT was, how do I deal, internally, with the difficulties and stresses of working under deadlines. In my runner-fatigued and excited mental state, however, what I THOUGHT he meant was, how do I deal with stress EXTERNALLY.
"Oh, I drive around a lot."
BZZZZZ! BZZZZZ! Wrong answer! Wrong answer!
I didn't get the job.
2. What's your favorite form of transportation?
A female on all fours. Did I just type that? No, no, seriously, I would have to say trains. Not the Am-Trak kind of trains, mind you, but the inner-city train/subway systems. Or, at least I liked the ones in Tokyo. They were so alive and romantic, and schoolgirls would pinch my ass from time to time. Ah, Japanese trains, where sexual harassment meets public transportation.
3. What is your worst travel experience?
Well, this is a worst/best scenario, because it was really actually pretty fun at the time, but in retrospect I should have been terrified. My senior class trip to China was just wrapping up, and we were flying from Beijing back to Tokyo on that bastion of airline supremacy, Pakistani Air. Seriously, Pakistan has, or at least they HAD (not sure if it still exists) an airline, and we were on it. As I remember it, it was a conspicuously filthy airplane. To give you an idea, one of the airline discomfort bags in the seat pocket of one of my fellow classmates actually had. . .how shall I put this?. . . residue. . . in it from a previous passenger, and by "residue" I mean the bottom one-fifth of the bag was filled with squishy abdominal discharge. Ah, but there was more.
People still refuse to believe me when I tell them this, but I swear it's true: there was duct tape on the wing. Actual, honest-to-goodness duct tape. I'm not sure what its purpose was, or if it was even serving any purpose at all, but there was an unmistakable square of duct tape on the right wing. All my classmates and I came up with elaborate stories trying to explain the presence of the duct tape. It was a great exercise in creative story-telling.
And then there was the flight itself. Apparently, we took to the air during the one evening of the millenium when all the random winds in the world coalesced at one point on the planet, and that one point was wherever our little duct taped Pakistani airplane wanted to be. Turbulence does not BEGIN to describe the bumping and jostling we endured and the insane ups and downs and tilts and. . . and. . . I'm getting nauseous just typing about it. In other words, we learned rather quickly why there was a goodly portion of residue in the airline discomfort bag.
Of course, as an 18 year-old who couldn't conceive of the possibility of the grim reaper sitting next to me with his scythe at the ready, I thought the flight was super great fun. Me and my fellow classmates had our arms raised in rollercoaster-riding style, thinking for all the world that the flight was an absolute hoot, while all around us people were rocking back and forth and praying and weeping. Wussies.
4. When did you know you were an adult? i.e. what event made you stop and recognize that you were no longer a member of "those damned kids"?
I'll have to let you know when that happens.
5. Why do you blog?
Because I have to do SOMETHING when I'm slacking at work, and solitaire and minesweeper just weren't cutting it any more. Actually, I started because I always wanted to have a personal journal, but jotting with pen and paper seemed boring and unfulfilling, and then Jen offered to create this blogspot template for me, and I've been jotting down things ever since. And I'll continue to do so because this blog has proven to be an invaluable tool for strengthening my writing skills and mining for ideas for columns. Also, it's been crucial for developing my ability to deconstruct arguments with which I disagree, particularly when Jill Nelson ascends her soapbox and spews forth her meaningless blather. There you go, that's your answer: I blog so that I can rip on Jill Nelson. Next question.
6. How does your real life persona compare to your blogger one?
Pretty much the same, except I'm far more coherent here than in real life. In real life, when I try to argue with someone, I tend to trip over my thoughts and my dialogue spills forth in disjointed sentences that I have to reel in try to make sense of.
It happens in all relationships at some time, I suppose. Eventually, you find yourself dozing on an inflatable mattress tube, drifting lazily over the surface of your girlfriend's father's backyard swimming pool, while on the patio set nearby, your girlfriend, her father, and her father's new boyfriend engage in animated discussion about new interior decorating concepts for your girlfriend's father's home.
Sometimes, all you can do is float and doze and marvel at the strange journey that is life.
I remember when I first started dating Melissa, like, maybe the third date. She invited me over to swim in her father's pool.
"Her father has a pool," I remember thinking. "That's awesome!"
So, I went swimming with Melissa for awhile, and then she asked if I wanted to take a quick tour of her dad's place. During the tour, I was introduced to her father, and some guy about my age, who I assumed was Melissa's brother or something. Back in the pool, I asked Mel what her relationship was with the other guy in the house.
"Oh, that's my dad's boyfriend."
You know that look you get when confronted with a really tough calculus problem? Yeah, that would be the look I radiated, I'm pretty sure.
Since that time, the reality of Mel's dad's preference for men is just a given. I've listened to Mel talk about her dad breaking up with his longtime boyfriend, and I've engaged in long discussions with her about getting her dad back together with another guy. Any guy. I talk about getting her dad hooked up with another guy the way I talk about getting Marc together with some girl other than Kelli.
But, there's a large part of me that takes exception to her dad's selfishness (not his lifestyle, mind you, but his selfishness), and some of the stories she has related to me about the early days of his coming out just make me cringe with the unfairness he piled on his three daughters.
Consider, for the moment, that he broke his marriage vows to explore his rediscovered homosexuality. Maybe it's because I come from a strong family background. My parents have been married for 30+ years and have endured plenty of hardship, most of all raising me, but they persevered.
There are those who would say that it wouldn't be fair for Mel's dad to have lived a lie. But, if you take the homosexuality out of the equation, he sacrificed his marriage so he could have sex with someone else. That's just adultery. He broke his wedding vows to have sex with someone else. I know, I know. We live in a society that touts over a 50 percent divorce rate, and Lord knows I may not be immune. But, whether you're gay or straight, the same rules apply, and if you break your vows because of an overcharged libido, you're being selfish. Factor in a marriage that features three children, and you're being monumentally selfish.
But, beyond that was her father's behavior after the divorce. With Mel just out of high school, her dad invited her and her sister, Jenny, to go out with him and his boyfriend. What that entailed was a limo ride to the cities to go to the Gay 90s. The limo was packed with strangers smoking pot and drinking and sharing with the girls while her dad and her dad's boyfriend made out in the back. Mel and Jenny couldn't do anything but keep their eyes trained to the front, while Melissa fought back tears. What the fuck was her dad thinking?
Back in May, Melissa decorated her dad's home, buying all the items for his house under the assurance he would pay her back. Months passed, and her dad came up with excuse after excuse why not to pay her back. Until last night.
Last night, in the presence of the new boyfriend, Mel pressed for the money, and her dad couldn't jump up fast enough to pay the check. You know, gotta play the role of the good dad and all. That type of shit just pisses me off. Gay or not, this guy is unforgivably selfish.
I read recently that teachers nationwide are worried that an increase in computer word processors may mean the end of cursive writing, because students increasingly prefer the keyboard to the dizzying loops and swirls of cursive writing. As a former elementary school student who endured the disgusting teaching ritual known as cursive writing, let me just say, "good riddance."
I don't like cursive writing. I have never liked cursive writing. For me, cursive writing always represented an unnecessary and pointless step in the writing process.
I mean, think about it. First, you learn the alphabet, and you learn to painstakingly trace out each letter from "a" to "z," in classic script format, and then you have to be able to remember the differences between capital letters and lowercase letters. I learned how to write my ABCs in kindergarten, and I'm here to tell you that writing out legible script letters using big thick crayons the size of cigars was a cruel introduction to the world of learning.
But, it was necessary, of course, because reading and writing are supposedly important and stuff. So, I played along, mainly because I knew, in a short 23 years, I'd be writing news articles for technology magazines and hacking my way as a marginally humorous columnist. I also knew I was destined to be a smoking hot specimen of male hunkiness. What can I say? I had incredible foresight.
But then, just as I had mastered the entire alphabet and was stringing together words and sentences with relative ease, the elementary school powers that be declared that I and the rest of my classmates had to learn cursive writing. Cursive?
"Oh good," I thought. "They're finally going to teach us some swear words."
Alas, when the teacher went up to the board and started writing out a long example sentence in cursive letters, I realized that cursive and cursing are two totally unrelated concepts.
I never fully grasped the nuances of cursive writing. The capital letter "G," in particular, made no sense to me. Come on! It doesn't even LOOK like a G. And don't even get me started on the funky "Z" or the incomprehensible "J." And, forget the tried and true terms like "uppercase" and "lowercase." No, now we had to understand the concepts of "ascenders" and "decenders," which always made me think of escalators for some reason.
When I think back on it, cursive writing represented the first issue on which I tried to fight the establishment, although I guess it wasn't so much a demonstration of establishment defiance as it was my inability to read my own cursive writing, which was eventually dubbed "Ryan-ese." My cursive writing looked like the work of a toddler scribbling with a Spirograph.
And that was one of the most irritating things about cursive writing: everybody's cursive writing looked drastically different from everybody else's. Reading cursive was hard enough without having to translate someone's unique interpretation of cursive. To this day, I've had trouble reading my father's cursive writing, and he's had 50+ years of practice at it.
Eventually, after a couple of years of forced conformity to the injustices of cursive writing, the teachers gave the students a choice between standard script and cursive and it took me all of three minutes to fully free myself of the shackles of cursive writing, and I haven't looked back since. The only remnant of those bygone years of cursive is my signature, an unitelligle and angry swirl of letters that look like an EKG reading of a patient whose heart is in fibbrilation.
Therefore, I hope computer keyboards continue their assualt on cursive handwriting, if for no other reason but to save the world from ever again having to translate my Ryan-ese. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
Normally, when I'm at work and checking e-mail, I glide over anything that has [ProbableSpam] in brackets. You see, the IBM response to the spam problem is not to block probable spam outright, because Heaven forbid there may be actual e-mail swimming in there. Instead, the IBM spam filtering system is one that allows spam through while telling you that system thinks the message probably is spam. It's a perplexing solution to a perplexing problem.
As I said, normally I just delete something that comes through slugged [probable spam], because roughly 100 percent of the time, it IS spam. Today was no exception. I saw a few messages tagged [ProbableSpam] and I quickly deleted them. But, one stood out. There, in the "sender" information, was the name "Gov. Howard Dean." Hey, I know that name. He was on the cover of both Newsweek and Time awhile back. So, I'm getting e-mail from Howard Dean, who, according to the subject line, wants me to "Join to help Howard Dean take our country back."
Thanks for the invite, Dean, but you just did something that totally exposes how out of touch you may actually be. You see, spam e-mail is despised. Spammers are despised. You, Howard Dean, or more correctly one of your genius promotional lackeys, are a spammer. As Gollum might say, "We hatesssss the ssssspammerssss!"
As a politician, Mr. Dean. . . I'm sorry, GOV. Dean, I'd think you'd be aware that anti-spam legislation is a hot-ticket item right now, and yet here you are sending out spam. For shame. I may revisit the spam later in the day, just to see what Dean has to say, even though I hate to give spam of any kind too much of a read.
For now, let me just say that Howard Dean is a spammer. I hate spammers. Therefore, I must hate Howard Dean.
That's not a good way to get your campaign off the ground, Governor.
For two years, two excrutiating years, my good friend, Marc, dated one of the biggest self-absorbed bitches ever to roam the planet. Her name was Kelli, and she lacked, IS lacking, every social grace there is, and she loves herself to an extent usually reserved for divas. To converse with her is to converse entirely ABOUT her, and it only took me three meetings with Kelli to ascertain, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was an uber-bitch, or, as Cartman on South Park might sing: "She's a bitch, she's a bitch, she's a big, big bitch."
Did I mention she's a bitch?
Well, anyway, during their courtship, Marc disappeared. He disappeared from his friends, and he disappeared from his family. He disappeared from everyone of whom Kelli didn't approve. This was a mixed blessing. One the one hand, we couldn't hang out with Marc, but on the other hand we didn't have to deal with Kelli, who, it was discovered almost immediately, was equally despised by all of Marc's friends and family. It wasn't just me. This girl is universally reviled.
Late in their relationship, after Melissa and I started dating, we dropped by Marc's apartment to say "hi." Not surprisingly, Melissa picked up on the Kelli bitch vibe within three seconds of speaking to her. It went something like this: Kelli started talking about herself (again), Marc interrupted to say something, and Kelli smacked Marc in the face with the back of her hand. Hard. Marc reacted much like a dog that had been tapped on the snout, but he didn't say anything.
Marc is a "Welcome" mat. He's a square of old carpet on which you leave your dirty boots. He's a 6'6" giant who hesitates before swatting a fly. He'll do anything for anyone he considers a friend. His friends and family know this, and we go out of our way not to take advantage of his gentle and self-sacrificing nature. Kelli, on the other hand, used and abused his gentleness with reckless abandon, and it pissed me off to no end each and every time I saw it happening.
Kelli wanted rollerblades. Marc bought them for her. Kelli wanted golf clubs. Marc bought them for her. Kelli wanted a new car. Marc made the downpayment and co-signed for it. Even after they finally, FINALLY, broke up, after Kelli decided to break up with Marc because SHE wanted to date other guys (although all evidence pointed to her dating other guys way before that), she continued to live in Marc's apartment.
Marc prides himself on being "a nice guy," which he is, to a fault. But, Marc doesn't see it that way. He thinks being a nice guy to such an extreme is somehow a badge of honor. Fine. Whatever. But, I learned last night that there are limits to his nice guy persona.
Ever since Kelli and Marc "officially" broke up, he and I have gone out for drinks and trivia quite often to reintroduce him to the world he had voluntarily cut himself out of for two years. For the past four months, we've enjoyed more evenings at Buffalo Wild Wings than I can remember. All the while, Marc was covertly still at Kelli's beck and call, going out of his way to do things for her even though they were broken up, even though she was going through more men than Liz Taylor.
On Sunday night, Marc and I were supposed to go out to our usual haunt for trivia and beer, but he cancelled because he was going to hang out with his little nephew and niece. I was actually somewhat relieved to hear that, seeing as how I was still feeling the after effects of Jim's birthday the night before.
Last night, Marc and I did manage to go to Buffalo Wild Wings for Monday Night Football. As we sat there, enjoying ourselves, our waitress, Joanna, came up to us and asked Marc "So, how did your date with the ex- go last night?" It took me all of four seconds to deduce that Marc had been to Buffalo Wild Wings on Sunday night with that THING that masquerades as a female.
I looked at Marc with defeated, somber eyes. He knew what I was thinking, and he tried to defend himself.
"I can't help it if I'm a nice guy. I'm not going to cut her out of my life just because we're broken up. Hey, I'm a nice guy!"
Really? Last I checked, nice guys don't lie to their good friends.
This really pissed me off.
I've had a very busy summer. That's a good thing. But, it's also a bad thing. On the one hand, being busy translates into a lot of fun, but it also means my summer has gone lightning quick. I'm ready to slow down a bit, put on the brakes and slide back into a life routine, and that usually happens with the onset of fall, when the shorter daylight hours mean a drawn out darkness that is filled with indoor escapes like television and computer games.
Still, summer is the bestest of the seasons, at least for me. I like the warmth. I like the excitement of a looming thunderstorm. I like the smells, the sounds and just the content feeling of summer. Living is easy now, rather than the chilling difficulty of a Minnesota winter, and I just hate to see it waning.
That's not to say I didn't have a good weekend. I had a great weekend. It just hit home last night as I sat on the front steps eating an ice cream drumstick and soaking in the drone of crickets that the summer days are ticking away, and that saddened me a bit. Seasonal depression: every Minnesotan goes through it.
I went to the cities to see Melissa Friday night. I always go there with big plans to eat Thai food and take in a movie and. . . and. . .
Melissa's place just sucks the energy right out of me. It's too damned cozy and inviting. I just want to lay on her comfy couch and not do anything. It's not like my basement apartment, a utilitarian conglomeration of particle board furniture and a dilapidated futon that repels rather than invites. I enter my room and I think "I really have to get out of here and go for a run." Anything to get out of there for awhile.
Melissa and I did, eventually, get up and go rollerblading around nearby Como Lake. Como is a nice park, and it's always alive with people walking and biking and scooping up dog droppings. It also seems that the big pavilion buiding hosts a wedding reception every weekend.
Early Saturday morning, I had to depart to visit my friend Jim in Farmington, about half an hour drive from Mel's place. We were celebrating Jim's birthday, which for Jim meant golfing. Something I've noticed about my golfing ability this year: I've been too busy to golf regularly, and boy does it show. I suck. I can't do anything off the tee. I might as well be swinging a spaghetti noodle tied to a meatball. It's maddening not being good at golf, especially when I made the varsity golf team and lettered in the damned sport my 8th grade year. Since then, I've just become progressively worse.
Still, there were four of us, Jim, myself, Jeremy and Marc, and we had a really good time. I just wish I had golfed better. A lot better. That's all.
After golf, we dropped by a local casino. I figured I was due to pay a little penance for what America did to the indians and I was going to donate $40 or so to them. Ah, but lady luck was shining on me that day, and I left the casino $175 on the up side. It's a funny thing when I'm playing slot machines: I have nothing but doubt and despair as I play, and then suddenly it flashes up that I won 600 quarters, and I initially just refuse to believe it. No fucking way. The rest of the guys all lost money. Not a lot of money. Ten bucks here, 35 bucks there, but they all lost money. Which meant dinner was automatically on me, the big winner, which was fine. Share the wealth I say. The rest of the evening involved the ingestion of copious ammounts of ale and a cab ride back to Jim's where we watched the making of Caddyshack before alcohol-induced slumber carried us away.
Sunday I awoke to a great surprise: the television network Bravo! was airing a West Wing marathon. Jim and I are West Wing enthusiasts of the hightest order, so we sat and absorbed televised West Wing radiation for the next six hours. Bliss. Granted, The West Wing can be a little bit idealistic and sometimes downright sanctimonious at times, but if you're at all interested in how politics work, and you like kick-ass drama, you simply must become a West Wing enthusiast. Particularly in the post 9/11 world. If you watch The West Wing from episode #1 onward, you'll come away with a greater understanding of how the world theater comes into play, especially the Middle East. Don't believe me? Just check it out. You would particularly be enlightened by the episode that deals with "the virtue of a proportional response." Watch it, and ask yourself what, exactly, would be a proportional response to 9/11.
As Jim astutely observed when I posed the question to him, "I'll let you know when we've achieved it."
