Tilting windmills

I have a list where I keep all the books I want to read and all the books that I have read and from this list at my current rate, I should be done with everything in a little less than eight years. Of the books in the completed section, only about one in six actually started on the list so I keep moving these other books in front of the ones I want to read. It will probably be more like forty-eight years before I finish everything on the list. Am I ever going to finish Don Quixote? I've been on page 484 for over a year now.

I was really hoping to absorb all this information and then use it for something, but if I'm eighty-six when I'm done, I might as well just forget it. I think I have forgotten most of what I've read, but I'm hoping it flows from me in some subconscious stream of pseudo-plagiarism. Is it really stealing if you don't do it on purpose? If that defense doesn't work, I'll claim it was satire.

That doesn't require footnotes.

The Big Texan

My wife says that I'm cerebral which I think is a nice way of saying that I want to sound smart. Of course, I'm going to get all defensive and say that it's the opposite. I want to show everybody how many things we could know and how we are just barely breaking through the crust on the Crème Brulée of life. OK, that's kind of a small dessert to describe the vast extent of all experience. Maybe it's just the stem on the cherry of the banana split of life. That doesn't sound as posh though. Maybe it's not a dessert. Maybe it's one of those 72 ounce steaks that you get free if you can eat it all in less than an hour, but some people (about six thousand so far) can actually eat the whole steak. Hmmm, maybe I should go drink a beer.

Analogies are hard.

Human Behaviour

I was in Reykjavik last week for the 73rd annual Origami conference (I've only been to the last four) and it was kind of a let down, but did you know that over half the indigenous population believes in "hidden people" who live in giant stones around the island? They actually build highways around these rocks and don't cut the grass because it's bad luck. Some think they are little elves or garden gnomes, but most believe they're just quiet or shy people that wear clothes from about fifty years ago. Maybe they just want you to build a real house for them. Who wants to live inside a boulder? If you really want to get rid of these guys, you should find a desolate uninhabited volcanic island out in the middle of nowhere (some place icy) and exile all these odd people there. On second thought, Iceland needs every gimmick it can think of to boost tourism.

I'll bet that Bjork is one of these hidden people. It would explain many things.

A Higher Love

I've got this idea for a great concert series. It will star Steve Winwood, Michael Bolton and Jon Secada in kind of a Three Tenors nostalgia for the 80's music we can't believe anyone had the nerve to write. I was thinking we could get Extreme to open each concert with More than Words and they would all end with Mike and the Mechanics coming out and singing All I Need is a Miracle. That song is perfect for Steve or Jon, but if Mike was unavailable, we could get Mr. Mister to sing Kyrie Eleison with them. I know you think it's silly, but these guys could run out the last twenty years of their life selling out to the younger baby boomer crowd that's just now retiring.

Time, Love and Tenderness. Millions!

Hello kitty kitty...

Did you notice that about half of the blogs out there have pictures of cats on them? I'm not knocking cats or anything, but it just seems weird that probably between 40% and 55% of all blogs are devoted to cats. It's like the human nature to love cats has created this whole new method to communicate. We can prolly thank the Creator of Blog Technology for loving cats so much, otherwise we'd be doing something more productive with our time like watching the Daily Show, or The Office.

What have I gotten myself into?

I am the Madding Crowd

Remember when Sergeant Frank Troy plants all those flowers on Fanny Robin's grave much to the chagrin of Bathsheba, and the Gurgoyle completely destroys all his work while he sleeps outside in the rain? Primroses, winter violets, snowdrops, crocuses and who knows what else. Troy was so pissed that he just swam out into the sea and then Bathsheba decides to marry the jerk neighbor. If she had just married Farmer Oak in the beginning, this story would have been a whole lot less gut-wrenching. I decided to go down to Stinsford Church where Mr. Hardy spent the first 2000+ Sundays of his life and see the gurgoyle that inspired him to write this part of the story.

It's wicked!

Chicken Kiev

I was going to write something about Chernobyl since it's been 20 years and all, but it appears everyone's doing that, so I'll just talk about Rinpoche Steven Seagal. You know Chuck Norris could kick his butt. Especially now that the lama has given up the violence and gained 120 pounds. I was born about 65 miles from where Chuck was born (almost 28 years later), but I'm actually an inch taller than him, so I could take his 66 year old butt to school in basketball. I should go back to Maysville, Oklahoma and look at the house I lived in there and then stop by Chuck's hometown. I wonder if Chuck ever gets back there. Maybe he'll read this and tell me in my comments.

Waiting to hear from you Chuck.

Space Cowboy

I was going to write about the pompitudes of love, or pompitous, or pompatus and then I find out that it's really puppetutes and Steve probably didn't even know what he was stealing when he borrowed this from Vernon. Anyway, I just can't listen to this song any more because I always had this idea that the pompatus of love was some noble monogamous ideal of love, but now I'm thinking the people that keep talking about him were probably right. Don't trust this guy. He's probably got hundreds of those little paper puppet call girls all over the country. Why else does he need that big old jet airliner? Maybe it wasn't Billy Joe that shot that guy.

Don't get suspicious? Whatever.

Shock the monkey

I've been thinking about anarchy. Why would someone smart and (sometimes) compassionate like Emma Goldman advocate complete chaos? Recently it's become more obvious that organization only leads to organized destruction, even on a planatary scale, so maybe she got it right. Aren't each and every one of us, with enough time to read what's going on in the world (because you're not looking for a job) saying, "What the frak?"

Well, something probably will survive. It may not be the humans, but then maybe we don't deserve to survive. Those of you nodding your head in agreement right now are the reason we're in this state. Forget the self-pity. Get off your butt and go do something about it. Let's change the world before it's too late. You want a hero? Look at Peter Gabriel, Bono or Desmond Tutu. It takes each of us to make a difference.

You can do it!

Moon in the seventh house

My horoscope today said that I should stop talking to the negative guy at work and let him know that I'm not going to listen to it. I'm trying to figure out which of the 52 people in my group just made redundant it's talking about. It could apply to most of the 16 that are staying too. I guess it might even apply to me except that I usually don't vent to myself.

I don't think Jupiter is aligned with Mars.

Believe it or not...

Aliens must have taken over my body because that was the lamest excuse for a number 50 post that I can imagine. So what would be a good post? How about a Rashomon post where I tell the same thing four times from different perspectives and it turns out that none of them are honest. These ideas all sound good in theory, but when you get down to logistics, it never works.

Do you remember that Zatoichi episode where he had to take the baby back to his father when the mom died and all the Yakuza are trying to kidnap it and it's so hilarious how he tosses the baby in the air and kills three guys and then catches the baby and keeps going like nothing happened. Or when he tosses the baby at the bad guy and makes him drop his sword to catch it then off goes his head. He should have caught the baby with his sword.

I was hoping in the new Zatoichi movie we would find out that he was never blind and that was the twist. I'll bet you wouldn't have figured that one out.

Post Number 50

Finally here. We made it. I couldn't have done it without you. I would like to thank all of you for helping me through this and supporting me in this effort. Please keep up the good work! I love you all.

Good luck with that...

You always want to make your next post be better than the last, kind of like how you hope your children are better off than you, but sometimes it's just hard to top something that good. So I've decided to make this post really sucky. Ah geez, is sucky a word? Sounds like some exotic Laotian dish. "Would you like some Sucky Rice with your Kai Lao and Sousi Pa Gnon?" But with all this talent, how do I make a sucky post? Well, I decided to do a search on Google for "sucky post" and let me tell you, that was a bad idea. Make sure your safe search is on if you want to try this.

So anyway, I got nothing. I don't even know how to write a bad post, so I should just stop here before it starts to get funny. Maybe I should try to bore you to death by writing about all the M. Night Shyamalan movies I've seen. Did you hear he's going to screw up "Life of Pi" now. We're lucky he's only doing the screenplay, but I suppose he didn't mess up that Stuart Little too much. Did you see The Sixth Sense where the guy is dead through the whole movie, or The Village where they try to fool you into thinking it happened a hundred years ago (it didn't), or Signs where you don't know if the Aliens are real until you find out they are, or The Happening where the plants go crazy for some unexplained reason and kill everyone, but just for about 92 minutes. Oh yeah, SPOILER ALERT. Sorry, that was a little late, but you really didn't need to watch those movies anyway.

Here's a challenge. Try to sit through any Shyamalan movie twice in a row. Just try it.

Marriage of true minds

Elvis said, "I believe the key to happiness is, someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to." Well, I love Elvis, I got my blog to keep me busy and I'm hoping to hear what you think about it, so it sounds like I'm in spades. How can so many people go through life without love? There's so much to love and we all need a good laugh, so love somebody, but make sure you ask if it's ok first. It will last to (and through) the edge of doom!

You thought I was going to say something cynical didn't you?

Little Bunny Foo Foo

I suppose it's natural to spend your Easter thinking about and helping all the poor bunnies in the world, but lately it appears many of us have lost our way. I asked a bunch of people at work what they were doing this weekend and not one of them mentioned helping the bunnies. I'm hoping it's because they don't want to brag about their charity work or they're afraid an affinity with rabbits might put some people off (possibly offend them?), but I've got a feeling that it goes deeper. There's a great evil spreading across the world and we all know that it's the bunnies that suffer first and most in these desperate times. I still see the token acts of worship in the choco-bunnies, peeps and egg-hiding, but all the personal shrines are either hidden away (for shame?), or gone completely. We need to do something to resurrect the movement and bring back bunny awareness every day of the year. It's not just an Easter thing.

Please help the bunnies!

Don't Forget

I was trying to think what I regret most about my life, but I must have forgotten because I can't really think of anything. I guess I regret that I forgot anything because what's worth doing if you're just going to forget you did it? Like Nicol said, "it's the doom of man that he forgets." He probably got that from someone else (maybe even Malory himself - which means it was paraphrased from something like "tis the dome of men that they forgete.") But before you send me comments about that, let me tell you that I know Sir Malory never used the word "tis", but without it this doesn't sound very olde.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Now I can't remember. Probably something disparaging about Easter so it's good that I've forgotten.

Good Friday!

While it's still good Friday, we should go ahead and celebrate some of the good things that happened on this day in history. While GF doesn't always land on April 14th, I figure next year we can celebrate whatever day it lands on then. So let's see what happened on April 14th. 1) President Lincoln was shot, but he didn't die until the next day and his assassin broke his leg and was in a lot of pain and eventually died from a gunshot wound. Another good thing was that the doctor that treated Booth's leg, his name ended up being Mudd and he went to a swamp prison to suffer the rest of his life. He saved a lot of people from yellow fever and helped to reduce prisoner mistreatment there. You can decide whether this was good or not. 2) Good thing number two, when they hung those crazy killers from Capote's In Cold Blood so that TC could finally finish his story and make you feel sorry for at least one of them (Perry, not Dick). Whew! 3) Titanic ran into an iceberg, but I'm not sure there's anything good about that story unless you talk to James Cameron. But I can think of several million people who've had to suffer this tragedy again and again and not in a good way. 4) The Donner party set out for California. I guess this was a good day for them starting a new life and all. I can't remember why they were leaving though, so it might have been under other than optimal conditions.

That's all I've got. Why do we celebrate this day again? I think someone important died on this day. Oh yeah, it was Burl Ives - Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Sam the Snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We'll miss you Burl!

Taking the piss

Sometimes when you say something mean, it just tears you up inside like there's a little backhoe excavating your insides. Maybe it's Bob the Builder and he's your conscience and so you've just got to figure out what you can do to make it better. Maybe you could apologize. Maybe you could join the peace corps. Maybe you could become a nun. But knowing Bob, I don't think any of these would satisfy him. You're just going to have to break down and build a new barn for Farmer Pickles, but that Spud is going to cause trouble. Why can't my conscience be Dennis Hopper or Basil Rathbone?

All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.

Harshing my mellow

Did you guys see that movie where a giant marshmallow attacked the city and ate everyone? I think it was a horror movie from the early 70's, but it must have been a big flop because who would be afraid of a marshmallow? Yummy goodness is what I say. Once you get eaten, there would be a party in there. Do you think the guy who thought of that got fired? Probably not because my boss thought up an idea to make your cell phone emit a smell when it rings (smelliphone on the patent application) and he didn't get fired. Well, he did get layed-off, but supposedly those two things were unrelated.

Mmmm. Marshmallows!

Ulysses

I think I've figured it out. Joyce was the ultimate ego-maniac. He had all this trivia crammed into his head that served no purpose, so he took a great book by Homer and turned it into a storage container for all the obscure things to would prove he knew more about everything (than you). So if you have to write a book report about this "story" feel free to use my analysis. Don't you think it's just arrogance to try to write a blurb about every obscure little fact that you know and then link it all together in some popular format hoping that people will flock to it and see how great you are.

I never!

Baby Shower!

I had this dream that I was surrounded by baby heads. They were just floating through space and I kept pushing them out of my way, but I couldn't see more than three feet in front of my face. And after walking for three days without food or water...

I don't know where that was going. I didn't really have a dream about this. I just wanted to use this image. Aren't these babies the cutest thing you ever saw. It's kind of eery since they don't have bodies, but how else are you going to fit almost forty babies in one picture.

Awesome!

Abandon all hope

Well, I guess I'm going to hell. I've thought about all the options and it really seems like the best choice for me. I'm not going for a while, mind you. I just wanted to let you all know as kind of a legal disclosure thing before you got too engrossed in the rest of my story here. I promise that I'll write when I get there. I get the feeling that most of the propaganda is hype, but I'll let you know the real story once I infiltrate. It sounds like it might be kind of fun. I enjoy the heat and all of the interesting people will be there. I'm sure they will be bored with all the questions like, "Mr. Capote! What did you think of Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of your sorry-ass life?" Or, "Hey Bono! Are you related to Cher's ex-husband and why were you named after a monkey?"

It should be a party!

Haute couture

I've really got nothing to say about this subject, but when fancy people do blog searches for this, they will come and visit me and everyone wants fancy people to visit them, right?

But in the end, I'm stuck with all you prêt-à-porters.

Meaningless Titles

Did you notice that most blogs have titles unrelated to any message in the body of the blog? Like the "El Blog de Julien" or "Visualize Whirled Peas" or "Jebus is coming, Look busy!", but the ones that really say what they mean are the blogs that no one will ever read except you when you say, "What was I reading back in April of 2006? I'll go back to my 'what I am reading' post from April, 2006." It'll probably be on one of those nights when you're feeling sorry for yourself because your girlfriend dumped you and you want to go back and read some of the nice things you wrote about her when you first started going out. Then you stay up until 4.30am reading all 237 posts that document the reason you should feel sorry for yourself, right up to the entry which contains the reason your girlfriend dumped you.

Why did you give her your diary blog URL?

Jebus is just alright

Mungo Jerry said that he dreamt that he was Humbert and that some acquaintance (or maybe just a girl he saw on the street) was Lolita. I guess the song could have been about his girlfriend, but regardless, we know that he was one sick dude. Some of you might be asking what that has to do with the rock 'n soul Doobie Brothers? If so, then you're thinking too much. You might be asking, "Which ones of them were brothers?" Again, you're probably at the wrong web site. When Toulouse Street came out, I was four years old. I don't care what they may say, you've got to listen to the music, and remember, if you want to go to the place that's the best, you gotta have a friend in Jebus.

Oh oh oooooh. Thank you Jebus!

Consider the source

My boss told me I should find another job. He says I probably won't last more than 3 more months and he would be shocked if anyone was here by the end of the year. He always tells me the stock is going to go down 20% or more, so I should sell all my options. Actually he just says, "I would if I were you." He never gives me any "advice." I've been told the management has no idea what it's doing and they are all incompetent boobs (that's the G-rated version - well, maybe PG), but I guess I'll stick around and see what happens.

He was recently forced into early retirement.

Scientology

Dang it, someone already invented my new religion. I was checking out their website, and it was like they read my mind or something. This is so freakin' weird. I figured that I would write a few books, start a cult, get a few Hollywood elites to sell it, make some movies that espoused my ethic, then BAM! I could turn everyone into hamsters and end all of the world's problems (I will explain this in another post), but someone else has already corralled all the Thetans. If only I were the 8th Dynamic - Infinity, then My words would command all.

You would have loved life as a hamster, but when I came to this revelation (that someone had hijacked my movement), my tone scale dropped to a measly 1.2. This is just one step above covert hostility and I'm not sure that I'll ever recover. I guess I'm just going to have to invent a mini-portable electropsychometer (RAZR or mini-IPOD size) and make a million dollars. Then I'll be happy.

You'll see Mr. L. Ron Hubbard.

Manners maketh man

Some guy from Wickham said this over 600 years ago, so I decided to check it out on my way to see HMS Mary Rose and HMS Victory. I stopped in for a bit of the footie at a local pub and asked if anyone had heard of William (you know, the Bishop who built Windsor), but what I got was a bunch of guys singing this:

Portsmouth till I die,
I know I am, I'm sure I am,
I'm Portsmouth till I die!

Hello, Hello,
We are the Portsmouth boys,
Hello, Hello,
We are the Portsmouth boys,
And if you are a scummer then surrender or you'll die,
We all follow the Portsmouth....

Stand up, if you hate the scum,
Stand up, if you hate the scum....

So much for manners...

Outsourcing

Make sure you pick a career where there's no possible way that it could be done from a distance, or where people wouldn't trust foreigners to do it. Take for example a doctor. Would you trust someone from China or India to diagnose your problem over a teleconference? Maybe we should have robots be the doctors. Who can sue a robot? How about lawyers? Couldn't you have a "turbo tax" like solution for all lawyer situations? You could program your defense in a junk bond or insider trading case. If we make the robot lawyers good enough, they might be able to prosecute child molestation or war criminal/mass murder cases. I guess the problem is that there's always going to be a way to beat a computer. Imagine Saddam's counsel standing up and saying, "Your Honor, if it pleases the court, the defense would like to hear the prosecutor calculate pi out to the last digit."

Case closed!

Cloud Nine

Cloud nine is "the plumpest and most cushiony-looking" of all the cloud types. (Bill Bryson's words) But the cumulonimbus may not be all that it's cracked up to be. Recent surveys show an alarming number of slums located more and more at the heart of these pleasure zones. This is partly due to the extreme need for cheap labor to keep these plump cotton candy palaces affordable. It's becoming more difficult to exhibit a polished exterior on these rotting cesspools where health standards and living conditions in general are degrading to a point of condemnation.

This in turn has caused a whole cottage industry of cloud demolition to spring up in neighboring cirrostratus clouds. Most charts name these Cloud Two (right after Cirrus), but nobody wants to live on cloud two even though they are much higher than the low floating cloud nines. Maybe this is like that misdirection the Vikings used to get people to move to Greenland instead of stopping at the Ibiza of the 800's: Iceland. So now you know. Cloud Two is where it's happening.

True

Everything you need to know about life, you can learn from Spandau Ballet and Desree lyrics because you know, "Money don't make the world go round." Actually, I don't know any other lyrics but I can promise you the lessons are there. It's like when you see an iceberg and you know that nine tenths of it is beneath the surface, but you absorb the magnitude with just the part you can see. When you are exposed to these two philosophical leviathans, you can't help but osmose the bromide and every little counts. That was New Order, but you know they should sue Tesco because of their "Every little helps" campaign. Now I'm in a bother, so I'm going to go listen to Marvin all night long.

This is the sound of my soul.

Agitator General

I went to the annual Tattoo Expo this weekend and it struck me that people mostly have no interest in politics, or history, or civic duty, or really anything their tax money buys. Where is our generation's Studs Terkel? I talked to Lizardman to see if he might be interested in becoming an icon, but he said that I should talk to Boog. Boog didn't really get it though and kept talking about fixing my washing machine. Maybe the Body Art Convention is not the best place to look for an agitator icon. You would think that tatts and revolution would go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

Jesse Jackson, don't you have an apprentice?

Foolish April

If you really want to fool someone for April Fool's Day, you should try it on some day that's not April 1st. Then when you say "April Fools", they would never suspect. What would really be hilarious is to tell them that their dog died or wait until they are getting in their car at midnight in a bad part of town and jump out from behind a tree and scream "April Fools!" The reason this works is that everyone loves to be scared or depressed for a really short time and then feel the relief of having their fears assuaged. Contrast is the definition of life.

Without it we could only control the brightness.

Opus Magnum

Have you noticed that there are no regular stories out there? Every movie is a blatant attempt to be the best movie ever made. How else is it going to win an Oscar? I'm just getting tired of so many twists and so many universal truisms and so many extreme coincidences. Did Dan Brown write everything in the world? I guess that's what makes it refreshing to open and read my electric bill, or sit through an all-hands meeting at work. I just watched Crash because I have to watch the best picture movie (except for the boycotted Titanic), and just like every year since American Beauty it was a colossal disappointment. My wife liked this movie better the first time we saw it when it was called Grand Canyon. Wow! You mean people aren't just good or bad, black or white?

They should make a movie about that.

Lunatic Fringe

Why do you think the crazy people all hide in the shadows? Darwin would tell us they couldn't survive otherwise. Perhaps it's the paranoids who are the fittest and the ones walking erect in broad daylight are making themselves easy targets for the space ray guns that make them stupid. I can hear you laughing now, but actually I work for a company that builds these stupid ray satellites. People ask me why we don't just build satellites that kill these threats to national security, but the answer is simple. 1) bodies always make people ask questions, but stupid people are never a surprise, 2) missing people cause questions too, 3) more stupid people means more cheap labor or 4) higher prison populations which is a pretty lucrative business too. 5) Stupid people are easy to manipulate (voting, spending, distracting with shiny objects), and 6) stupid people remove competition from the stupid inbred rich people who would lose their money if there were really smart hard-working people in the world.

Watch out for the stupid rays!

Lanthanides

For the last time, Lutetium is not a member. I don't care how rare-earth you think it is, we can't let him in. He's a transition element and will forever be in limbo. Isn't it fitting that most of these (mostly) rare metals come from the US and China. Are we lucky, or just more industrious than the rest of the world? Anyway, I vote that we rename the confusing terbium, erbium and ytterbium to larry, moe and curly. They did so much for our culture that they should be honored in the rare-earths. Remember in Three Little Beers when they are driving that brewery delivery truck and sneak onto the golf course. Such hilarity. It's probably not politically correct to have a movie for kids with beer and silly violence any more.

What have we done to society?