Last night, as I sat with my girlfriend at Ol' Mexico playing NTN trivia, the following question came up:
According to a recent survey married men admit to doing this an average of nine times a month.
The answer, of course, was masturbate, and I got it correct for the full 1,000 points. What struck me, though, was how Melissa looked quizzically up at the screen, sizing up the answer, before finally saying, to no one in particular, "that seems like a lot." To which I responded, "pshhhhaw, that ain't nothing." Okay, I didn't actually say it out loud or anything, but I thought it really, really hard.
Discuss amongst yourselves. I'll be here when you get back. I'll just spend the time, er, um, you know, keeping busy.
Have you ever noticed that, when you tip over a bottle of Diet Pepsi, you're actually yelling "God damnit!" even before the bottle tips all the way over?
Have you ever noticed that, after yelling "God damnit!" because you tipped over you Diet Pepsi, nine times out of ten you still allow the bottle to tip the rest of the way over?
Have you ever noticed that, after a bottle of Diet Pepsi has tipped completely over, you tend to stare at it briefly, allowing Diet Pepsi to spill out over your interview notes?
Have you ever noticed how, when you realize that Diet Pepsi has spilled out over your interview notes, you tend to yell "God damnit!" all over again without first addressing the spilled soda problem?
Have you ever noticed how, when you try to carefully carry your Diet Pepsi soaked notebook over to the trash, you inevitably end up dripping Diet Pepsi on both your computer keyboard and your miniature tape recorder, to say nothing of the dress pants you're supposed to wear to an awards banquet that night?
Have you ever noticed any of these things?
Just asking.
A lot of you are going to jump up and yell "I told you so!" regarding this week's screed, for very obvious reasons. Yeah, I'm looking at YOU Rob! Okay, without further ado, I give you Crazy Gary's take on . . . SOLAR FLARES:
FOAMOSTYRE Macheye thermocore. As the solar storms of space & the gases of polyurethane give us life, the LX7 radar gives us the greatest of all, the truth. To put the solar storm into words, left temple digital squares, 903 phantom exceeding inside right angle digital squares right temple LX7 reading sun eclipse solar storms. Now we can reveal the truth. Left temple of the brain is a BEAK 101 planet Mercury. Now for the obesity in the test weight of matter the dry factor & to put in plainly like an ear of corn, the test weight. Now I hope you got the picture.
Gary XXXXXXXX
555-XXXX
I didn't realize that polyurethane gave us life. Sure makes a nice wood finish though. Ah, the mind of the insane. Is there no end to its many wondrous mysteries?
Joshua and I engage in a large amount of. . . how shall I put this. . . spirited discussion regarding American foreign policy, with D thrown into the mix with her perpetually bleeding heart.
I like discussion. Even when it makes my brain hurt and throw up my hands in irritation, I can usually always step away from every lengthy comment thread secure in the knowledge that I've learned something. Even during comment threads that start with Michael Moore and end with the eternal question: "if you believe in this war, why aren't you fighting in it?" We go all over the place, to be sure.
Joshua gets annoyed with me, and in that he joins countless other human beings. But, what annoys him the most, I think, is he sees me as "pathologically incapable of hearing things that might upset my worldview." I'll grant him that, if he's willing to admit the same.
I mean, Joshua once labeled me as hypocritical for adhering to the Constitutional requirement requiring an electoral college, but that I was willing to give our nation a pass because it circumvented the U.N. rule of law when it came to invading Iraq.
Fair enough.
However, the hypocrisy swings both ways here, seeing as how Joshua wants to amend the Constitution to edit out the electoral college in the name of a more pure Democracy, while still maintaining that we should still adhere to the horribly flawed institution that is the U.N.
Another time, I made the assertion that the radical Islamic strain touted by the likes of bin Laden and his ilk has everything to do with a deep-seeded hatred of the decadence of the West, and yet somehow the discussion twisted and turned in on itself until we were talking about the historical evolution of the modern state of Israel. It was a fascinating history lesson, but it did little to address the initial assertion. After all, the Iraeli/Palestinian issue was practically a footnote in bin Laden's doctrine, which put more emphasis on getting the infidels out of Saudi Arabia and cleansing the Islamic world of the impurities of Western influence.
It's not that Joshua or D are apologists for Islamic extremism. Of course not. But they tend to instead focus their ire on the history of American foreign policy, which they basically blame for all the ills of the world. It's never about making the world safe from terrorists TODAY; it's always about trying to point fingers at ourselves for allowing terrorists to exist in the first place. It's never about rebuilding a Democratic Iraq, an act that horrifies Islamic extremists to the point they're willing to stream across the border to blow up ambulances at the Red Cross; it's about blaming the U.S. for going in in the first place without the blessed backing of the almighty U.N. It's always about finding fault with us, without ever looking beyond our borders to explore where other guilty parties may, and DO, exist.
Joshua wrote today about war: I think it's socially irresponsible to pretend that state sanctioned mass murder is just another kind of foreign policy. That war, like justifiable homicide, is homicide first and justifiable second: that it is murder to which one is granted temporary immunity due to extraordinary circumstances and that a failure of diplomacy did not, to my mind, qualify as extraordinary circumstances.
Neville Chamberlain once famously spoke, after what was believed to be successful diplomacy, about achieving "peace in our time," shortly before Hitler unleashed some pretty extraordinary circumstances on the world. I would argue that 9/11 qualified as pretty extraordinary circumstances, with nary a hint of diplomacy of which to speak.
What Joshua and D fail to grasp, and this is my own opinion, is how drastically different the world truly is today. Joshua's keen analytic skills no doubt worked marvelously well in the world of absolutes prior to the war on terror. But the war on terror has no absolutes, no matter how hard we try to cling to concepts such as recognized borders, international law, and national sovereignty. So long as terrorists worm their way unimpeded from nation to nation, you may as well erase all borders from all maps, as far as the war on terror is concerned.
Joshua's definition of war: When there's an acknowledged leadership, engaged in a declared war, that can eventually sign a surrender. When there are armies that can be captured and killed, rather than a population that has to be subjugated. When there are commanders who give orders to an army that obeys them, rather than a philosophy that motivates individuals to a general course of action.
Not in the war on terror. Not by a long shot.
Am I being "pathologically incapable of hearing things that might upset my worldview?" Perhaps. But only because I firmly believe I'm right. So does Joshua. And so the dance continues.
UPDATE: Did I just read this, in the Arab News?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, this is different. A blog created to argue with me. Joshua, you're the coolest.
Michele over at A Small Victory sent me surfing off to this site. I can't look at those album covers without busting out laughing, especially "Devastatin' Dave, The Turntable Slave." Michele's right, though, the "Julie's 16th Birthday" cover filled both my heebie AND my jeebie quota for the month. They're all very classic covers, let me assure you. And, I want to have anal sex with Joyce some day. She looks sooo ready for anal sex.
I'm no expert when it comes to buying a house. Basically, I'm at the stage where I just drive around and look at houses that are for sale and sift through the local monthly realty magazine. But still, even though I'm still in the fledgling stages of house hunting, I've made some observations I think should be noted.
First and foremost, I've noticed that houses tend to be expensive. And I'm not talking about mildly expensive, either. When I say expensive, I mean chop-off-your-leg-and-part-of-your-right-buttock expensive. I'll see a nice modest home for sale, and I'll think "oh, that's a nice modest home, so it can't be too expensive," but then I'll look at the price and wonder if there's a secret diamond mine somewhere in the basement.
I should note that, when I say "modest," I really mean modest. For the past ten years, I've basically rented apartments and spent the vast majority of my time sitting in my one room, which served as my bedroom, and office, and dining room, and living room, and, occasionally, my kitchen.
So, when I say "modest," I pretty much mean it would be neat if I had a living establishment that consisted of more than just a bedroom and a bathroom. When I read house descriptions that tout a four season porch, I think to myself, "wow, that's almost like a bedroom."
Therefore, I'm fascinated when I see some of the extremely expensive homes. You know, the ones that cost a couple million dollars and come complete with a ridiculously small dog wearing a diamond-studded collar. I simply can't fathom living in such an opulent mansion. Sure, it would be fun for awhile, but eventually I'd be left thinking "damn it! This house is just too damned big. What the hell did I need a second kitchen for?"
Maybe I like to tell myself that because I'm bitter about the knowledge that I'll probably never be able to think about even pondering the possibility of exploring the potential of considering maybe examinining the feasibility of securing a loan for a multi-million dollar home.
So no, I'm not a mansion-buying kind of guy. I'm more of a dilapidated-shack-buying kind of guy. But, you know what? Even dilapidated shacks cost way more than they should.
I realize that home ownership isn't a simple deal, and I realize that people selling the houses and dilapidated shacks want to make some money on the whole deal. That's perfectly understandable. But, people selling homes have to understand something: namely, I don't have as much money as they're asking.
I know, I know. That's what banks and loans and guys who break fingers every other week are for. If you don't have enough money for something, you should go and borrow it from a trustworthy institution. Or, lacking a trustworthy institution, you could, I suppose, buy a snowmask and a gun and hope for a few lucky breaks at local convenience stores.
But, because I'm not a violent crime sort of guy, I'm resigned to the fact that, when I actually do find a house that is both pleasant and doesn't cost 30 times my annual salary, I'm going to have to grovel, hat in hand, with a money-lending institution, most probably my credit union.
I'm not looking forward to that. I don't like borrowing money. Mostly, though, I don't like the thought of being insanely in debt. No one really enjoys being in debt, but I truthfully despise the concept. The thought that you own something, but not really because you're in debt is entirely bothersome to me. When I finally paid off the remaining $4,500 on my car this summer, I wanted to run to my credit union and do a taunting dance while waving my payment coupon book in front of me like a fan. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nah, nah, nyahhhhh!
So, if you know of home for sale in the Rochester area that consists of a bathroom and a bedroom, and maybe a kitchen (I'm not too picky), that costs under $10,000, please let me know immediately. I can afford that.
Why is Blogspot sporting ads about Bad Breath and Halitosis on my blog? Are they trying to tell me something?
Roosevelt Believed America Was Entering Quagmire, New Reports Show
New York (Rhodes Media Services) -- New documents unclassified and released today show that senior U.S. officials, including then President Franklin Roosevelt, worried that the war effort in Europe would result in another Vietnam, even though that war had not yet begun.
The documents show that a slow start in desert warfare had military experts wondering if America had entered a quagmire and that Nazi-sympathizing beduin insurgents constituted a guerilla threat not unlike what they should expect in a couple of decades in Vietnam.
"Despite our best intentions to rid the world of the Nazi threat to civilization, I fear that bands of individuals, armed by the Nazis, could mean a drawn out conflict with many American casualties, just like we can expect when we go into Vietnam in the 60s," said General Eisenhower in a 1942 memo to President Roosevelt.
Roosevelt echoed those sentiments, saying that he feared unrest at home may make it hard to garner support for the ongoing war effort, and added that he couldn't afford a quagmire after convincing a dubious American public that war against Germany should come before an all-out war on Japan, the country that attacked America in the first place.
This, obviously, is a must read.
UPDATE: I love this, too. It's a letter to the editor to the Star-Tribune that states:
Contrary to what other letter writers have written, Americans should be told that more Americans have died in Iraq so far this year, than died in the first two years of the Vietnam War.
James Glaser, Northome, Minn.
Um, gee, James, that's real nice reasoning, you have going there. I think Michael Moore did the same thing awhile back, but he's a cake-stuffed blowhole living off the big dollars he hates rich Americans for having. You, on the other hand, are just a North woods inhabitant in the same town where my grandmother lives. Let me spell it out for you.
Assuming you place the start of America's role in Vietnam at, oh, let's say 1963, a quick Google search finds that just over 320 soldiers died in that time. What is the current "body count" in Iraq? 309? Oh, forget it. Let's move on to the REAL point.
In 1963 and 1964, we had somewhere along the lines of 16,000 troops in Vietnam, and they weren't tasked with a full scale invasion, you know, an ALL OUT military campaign. Rather, most were there in an advising capacity, training native armies. Compare that with Iraq, where we have over 150,000 troops stationed. In case James is mathematically challenged, which I'll assume he is, that's over nine times the troop strength of Vietnam during the first two years.
But, you know, fuck it. There just no explaining shit like that to some people.
ANOTHER UPDATE: That's it. I had to put Healing Iraq as a permanent link on my list of blogs. He says it all from both sides of the fence. Read him daily.
It had been a year. Or almost a year. Long distances had corroded the magnificent foundation they had built up when they met the previous summer. That was a perfect summer, or as near-perfect as one could expect considering it ended with him getting mono.
A new summer was about to start. A new beginning. A chance to reestablish the foundation they built so strong together the summer before, the summer that consisted of a stunningly simple meeting of hearts and minds. They had met in late June at the post-wedding reception party for a couple he knew very well and she knew not at all. She was a crasher. It didn't matter. At that point in the evening, even people who knew each other extremely well, could barely recognize one another.
He was standing in a puddle when he first met her, trying to wash off the dog poop he absolutely knew he had just stepped in.
"Are you aware you're standing in a puddle?" she asked.
"Hmm? Oh, it's not that I'm standing in a puddle so much as I'm scared of solid ground," he explained as slyly as he could. "Have you ever stopped to think that maybe I'm just being different? Maybe I just refuse to conform with the land walking majority and want to reconnect with my latent mudskipping genetic roots."
"Like all men probably should," she said, smiling as she walked away.
They continued to bump into each other as the evening progressed, with each keenly aware that there was a sexual chemistry between them that almost saturated the air. And, as the sun gradually started pushing its way over the horizon, it illuminated her truck, windows steamed with passion as they pawed and raked each other's bodies, going plenty far, but not all the way.
The rest of that summer had been a blur of activity, and passion, a powerful driving union of two souls who only felt totally at ease when together. The summer flew by, with neither realizing that it would be the happiest they'd be together.
Then she left for college two states away, while he battled the remnants of mono that had taken him down for three weeks and then he, too, went back to school. Gradually, as the year progressed, and even though they tried to keep everything alive only through the cold wires of the telephone, he could feel the curtain closing. And so could she. They could both feel the distance cutting them off from the intoxicating allure of closer proximity.
What pushed them on, they couldn't say. Perhaps the promise of another summer. A longer summer. A summer they could spend entirely together. A summer she had planned out down to the weekend.
But, he had grown dark inside. Not for her. He still adored her. But he had just graduated college. His base of familiarity was gone, and he was facing an uncertain future, a future that he knew was going to involve a lot of frantic job searching, and frustration, and anger, and resentment. And he didn't want her to follow that path with him. Plus, he was naive, young and scared.
He held her that night, tighter and closer than he had ever held her before, and when she left, they kissed. The kiss. There was something in that kiss. She felt the distance he was building. She felt the compartment he had built inside, a compartment where he was putting all the memories and emotions he had of and for her. A compartment he stamped "Do Not Open."
"You'll call me tomorrow?" she asked, a hint of pleading in her voice, and he assured her he would.
But, he never did.
Since I was 21 and I decided to get a jump-start on Fate and shave my head before the dominant gene passed down from my grandfather on my mother's side could wreak its follicular havoc on my cranium, two features have dominated my identity.
1.) Ryan Rhodes has a shaved head.
2.) Ryan Rhodes always has a goatee, albeit in fluctuating permutations.
I've grown to depend on my goatee as a counterweight to the lack of hair up top. Rather than a healthy head of hair, I've always had a goatee with with to tease and experiment. My goatee keeps me from looking more egg-like than human-like.
Last week, for some reason that escapes me, I decided to hack off my goatee and see how things were going on the skin beneath my omnipresent whiskers. I was not prepared for the individual who greeted me when I raised my mug to the mirror.
I looked YOUNGER. I looked SMOOTHER. I looked decidedly less MENACING.
And, I didn't like it one little bit.
What was funny was that, at work, everybody realized something was different, but they couldn't figure out what it was. They studied me with the intensity of Sesame Street tots trying to figure out which one of the things just doesn't belong there. Finally, the bells started going off and they realized what was different.
They didn't care for it much, either.
I'm growing my goatee back this week. Enough of that shit.
My was greeted as I stepped out the door this morning by a wet blanket of snow, the first snowfall of the year that actually deigned to accumulate and set a tentative foothold around the area. Although I hold out hope that this snow will melt away due to more unseasonably high temps, I have my doubts. My personal Rhodes' Almanac says that this year will be a brutal winter, with gigantic dumps of snow followed by biting January/February temperatures, followed by a stubborn, lingering refusal to surender to spring.
Or maybe I'm overly pessimistic after having driven on slick streets that remind me why it is I hate this season so.
Got into work, settled into my chair, and no sooner had I started sifting through e-mail than my officemate let loose with a quick, staccato hacking cough, followed by two overly animated sneezes (she actually SAYS "Ah-Choo," for crying out loud), followed, of course, by her trademark triple-nose blowing delight. I'm getting closer and closer to asking her to step outside when she has to blow her freakin' nose, because in addition to the annoyance, it's starting to gross me out. SHE'S starting to gross me out.
Halloween was a fun exercise. Every year, it seems, I'm sucked into the lure of donning elaborate make-up and prosthetic facial pieces. I'm getting really good at it, but the sad state of facial adhesives on the market today dictates that any rubber prosthetics I glue to my face will almost certainly start to pry themselves loose about two hours after application. I looked particularly gruesome this year, a testimony to my improving make-up and application skills. But, still, my chin prosthetic started giving me troubles at the casino (where, coincidentally, I lost $40 in 40 minutes). By the end of the night, my face was SCREAMING at me to remove my make-up as soon as possible. I removed the rubber pieces and commenced with a vigorous five minute face itching.
Saturday was spent being gloriously lazy. Melissa tacked away on my computer trying to make a dent in her ever-growing mountain of homework, while I spent most of the day in bed watching cheesy movies (think Highlander: Endgame) and occasionally telling Melissa how to correctly spell a word or two. She's extremely far behind in her school-work, so next weekend looks like a "homework-only" weekend, which means I'll probably be on my own to find fun and happy things to do. I'm sure I'll manage just fine.
Yesterday, my buddy Marc and I went driving around town looking at potential homes for me to buy. More and more, I'm ready, I think, to buy my own house and embark on the adventure of home-ownership. Granted, I won't be able to afford the Taj Mahal or anything, but I think a nice, simple home would be a nice adventure on which to embark. There were a couple of nice prospects we scoped out yesterday, so I guess I'll just have to see what happens next.
My officemate just blew her nose again. That must mean it's time for work.
